You'd rather see another crappy, slow editor packaging an entire browser? Because that seems like what people are using for "cross platform toolkits" these days.
I'm glad Zed is being ambitious, it's truly a joy to use because it feels native.
And to be honest, it's Windows, who cares. If you are a developer you should have switched to Linux years ago anyway.
> If you are a developer you should have switched to Linux years ago anyway.
This is so often repeated, but I genuinely don't understand why. Could you try selling me on it? I ended up going the sysadmin/devops route instead after college, but the more I learn about Linux, the less I understand why anyone would choose it for personal, active manual use.
I can understand server deployments, it works well enough. It's available at no cost, Windows Server is way out in the far other end in terms of current desired behavior, and whatever pains it has you get paid to make up for. None of which applies on a personal device level.
The most common selling points I see are more performance and less "spying". I find neither of these very persuasive, and I'm not interested in ideological rationales either (supporting free software). If you have anything else, I'm all ears.
Not selling you on it, as I find that, if you're using IDEs, OSes don't really matter. And windows can be actually beneficial as you'll get prime support from most vendors. Where Unix shine is adhoc automation. Almost everything is fully hackable and that makes some solution easier to implement.
As in case for the desktop, you can switch out your audio stack, alter the display of any element and many other things. Using windows is borrowing some shoes while Linux can be your favorite slipper.
Well, the thing I absolutely love about my linux setup, is that I can literally leave my computer running for a year, come back after that one year, and find it in exactly the state I left it. The system will never attempt to do anything for my own protection. No updates without me confirming them, never suddenly having it shut down because there’s a “critical” vulnerability. When it updates it never magically reverts a setting I had set.
Everything it does or doesn’t do is my responsibility.
No, there are good reasons developers are on Windows. Industrial and embedded systems are very often Windows-based, for better or worse. Heaps of games are developed on Windows. Windows-based software itself is developed on Windows.
Being ~2 weeks into migrating from Windows to Linux for my dev machine, there are a lot of good reasons why people use Windows, and I keep learning more each and every day!
From a lock screen that appears ~3 seconds after my desktop does (during which time I can interact with my desktop...) to getting Nvidia GPU passthrough working in Docker being harder running on Linux natively than what it was making it work on WLS (...) to absurd amount of time it takes my machine to come out of sleep.
Oh also the popping and clicking over my BT headset every time someone speaks in a meeting. That was wonderful.
Despite using an older model MB, I needed to install some kernel extensions to get system temperatures working.
Also if I want to develop desktop software, I'm going to be writing against Windows anyway because at least that is somewhat documented, vs the ever changing landscape of Linux desktop software development. (Windows used to be the OS for desktop software, but Microsoft shot themselves in that foot, then removed the entire leg, long ago, by constantly changing and deprecating frameworks, ugh, 20+ years of API stability down the drain...)
Or why you don't insist in using Khronos stuff on Windows, when most OEMs only care about the native API, DirectX.
Lets recap that this lesson has been learned by Godot developers, regarding their backends as well.
The ICD mechanism is a kind of escape hatch leftover due to backwards compatibility, and even user mode drivers build on top of DirectX runtime infrastructure.
Is it Khronos? The 3 issues they linked were:
1. ARM support missing for one of their Cargo crates.
2. An issue with RemoteDesktop
3. The team required dynamic_rendering, and it wasn't available for user with an old machine on Windows 10.
It really depends how you define scope, but I don't think I would've taken on another GPU backend for that.
In the sense that OpenGL and Vulkan are paper standards that OEMs might implement, whereas they tend to design their DirectX drivers alongside Microsoft, and then their OpenGL/Vulkan drivers are mostly an afterthought.
This is especially visible when buying random asian cards that aren't the reference designs from AMD and NVidia. Intel was never great regardless of the API.
Additionally we have the usual extension spaghetti, which is one thing that has beaten them here.
Require too many of them, and coding around their inexistence becomes like using yet another API, that is similar but not quite.
The FOSS community has become full of ideological landmines, with projects now including clauses in their requirements, often vague and ill defined, about how those who build upon their projects must act and believe. As a result, some are now finding it less risky to roll their own base dependencies instead of using someone else's project that could at any time become problematic for non-technical reasons.
While I doubt this had anything to do with the decision by the Zed team to make their own toolkit, it is something becoming more common. Hopefully it doesn't start happening in the encryption space.
I can see "ill defined" causing problems. But isn't an explicit code of conduct more defined than none? (Assuming I'm reading that correctly from your comment.)
There aren't too many epithets floating around that offend me specifically. And I haven't heard anyone say I shouldn't/don't exist. So it's hard for me personally to feel the need for CoC and the like. But I'm all for policy that protects everyone against that kind of abuse -- which seems to be on the rise. Are there better alternatives?
while I would agree in general, there could theoretically be SOME applications where the range of UI controls (and systems) is small enough where it could pay off. But things tend to expand in surface area...
So with that, this presents a HUGE opportunity for someone to build something akin to Zed, but not with the baggage that their technical strategy brings.
> So with that, this presents a HUGE opportunity for someone to build something akin to Zed, but not with the baggage that their technical strategy brings.
Not sure it’s so clean-cut. More than avoiding baggage, you’re just shifting it elsewhere. The question is if you want to own (and can handle) the baggage and benefit from the control that brings.
You'd rather see another crappy, slow editor packaging an entire browser? Because that seems like what people are using for "cross platform toolkits" these days. I'm glad Zed is being ambitious, it's truly a joy to use because it feels native. And to be honest, it's Windows, who cares. If you are a developer you should have switched to Linux years ago anyway.
> If you are a developer you should have switched to Linux years ago anyway.
This is so often repeated, but I genuinely don't understand why. Could you try selling me on it? I ended up going the sysadmin/devops route instead after college, but the more I learn about Linux, the less I understand why anyone would choose it for personal, active manual use.
I can understand server deployments, it works well enough. It's available at no cost, Windows Server is way out in the far other end in terms of current desired behavior, and whatever pains it has you get paid to make up for. None of which applies on a personal device level.
The most common selling points I see are more performance and less "spying". I find neither of these very persuasive, and I'm not interested in ideological rationales either (supporting free software). If you have anything else, I'm all ears.
Not selling you on it, as I find that, if you're using IDEs, OSes don't really matter. And windows can be actually beneficial as you'll get prime support from most vendors. Where Unix shine is adhoc automation. Almost everything is fully hackable and that makes some solution easier to implement.
As in case for the desktop, you can switch out your audio stack, alter the display of any element and many other things. Using windows is borrowing some shoes while Linux can be your favorite slipper.
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Well, the thing I absolutely love about my linux setup, is that I can literally leave my computer running for a year, come back after that one year, and find it in exactly the state I left it. The system will never attempt to do anything for my own protection. No updates without me confirming them, never suddenly having it shut down because there’s a “critical” vulnerability. When it updates it never magically reverts a setting I had set.
Everything it does or doesn’t do is my responsibility.
Try compiling anything in C
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No, there are good reasons developers are on Windows. Industrial and embedded systems are very often Windows-based, for better or worse. Heaps of games are developed on Windows. Windows-based software itself is developed on Windows.
Being ~2 weeks into migrating from Windows to Linux for my dev machine, there are a lot of good reasons why people use Windows, and I keep learning more each and every day!
From a lock screen that appears ~3 seconds after my desktop does (during which time I can interact with my desktop...) to getting Nvidia GPU passthrough working in Docker being harder running on Linux natively than what it was making it work on WLS (...) to absurd amount of time it takes my machine to come out of sleep.
Oh also the popping and clicking over my BT headset every time someone speaks in a meeting. That was wonderful.
Despite using an older model MB, I needed to install some kernel extensions to get system temperatures working.
Also if I want to develop desktop software, I'm going to be writing against Windows anyway because at least that is somewhat documented, vs the ever changing landscape of Linux desktop software development. (Windows used to be the OS for desktop software, but Microsoft shot themselves in that foot, then removed the entire leg, long ago, by constantly changing and deprecating frameworks, ugh, 20+ years of API stability down the drain...)
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> Industrial and embedded systems are very often Windows-based
I find Windows to be the outlier against a sea of embedded Linux devices.
> Heaps of games are developed on Windows
Inertia.
> Windows-based software itself is developed on Windows.
Plenty of Windows-based software is developed on Linux with Wine.
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As someone who's ambivalent about the experience, I'd say "because that's what my employer issued to me" is perfectly acceptable.
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Was a windows dev for 20 years-but then I got a job where I didn’t have to use that ad infested joke of an operating system.
Never going back.
I use computers since 1986, UNIX variants since 1992, and yet Windows is where I spend most of my time.
I find hilarious this FOSS concept that developers only use Linux, I wonder who writes software for all other operating systems in the world.
> You'd rather see another crappy, slow editor packaging an entire browser?
Windows still offers other options, even if MS itself tend to ignore them.
> If you are a developer you should have switched to Linux years ago anyway.
Developers is much broader set than web developers, and even then advantages of Linux escape me.
>If you are a developer you should have switched to Linux years ago anyway.
These days, WSL2 effectively eliminates a need for that for most developers.
And cheaper than VM Workstation, or easier than Virtual Vox, my solutions since 2010, I never dual booted again in 15 years.
If you write a very narrow category of high level server software or command line utilities.
Otherwise no.
Some people work for large corporations and can’t just use whatever computer they want.
Or why you don't insist in using Khronos stuff on Windows, when most OEMs only care about the native API, DirectX.
Lets recap that this lesson has been learned by Godot developers, regarding their backends as well.
The ICD mechanism is a kind of escape hatch leftover due to backwards compatibility, and even user mode drivers build on top of DirectX runtime infrastructure.
Is it Khronos? The 3 issues they linked were: 1. ARM support missing for one of their Cargo crates. 2. An issue with RemoteDesktop 3. The team required dynamic_rendering, and it wasn't available for user with an old machine on Windows 10.
It really depends how you define scope, but I don't think I would've taken on another GPU backend for that.
In the sense that OpenGL and Vulkan are paper standards that OEMs might implement, whereas they tend to design their DirectX drivers alongside Microsoft, and then their OpenGL/Vulkan drivers are mostly an afterthought.
This is especially visible when buying random asian cards that aren't the reference designs from AMD and NVidia. Intel was never great regardless of the API.
Additionally we have the usual extension spaghetti, which is one thing that has beaten them here.
Require too many of them, and coding around their inexistence becomes like using yet another API, that is similar but not quite.
The FOSS community has become full of ideological landmines, with projects now including clauses in their requirements, often vague and ill defined, about how those who build upon their projects must act and believe. As a result, some are now finding it less risky to roll their own base dependencies instead of using someone else's project that could at any time become problematic for non-technical reasons.
While I doubt this had anything to do with the decision by the Zed team to make their own toolkit, it is something becoming more common. Hopefully it doesn't start happening in the encryption space.
I can see "ill defined" causing problems. But isn't an explicit code of conduct more defined than none? (Assuming I'm reading that correctly from your comment.)
There aren't too many epithets floating around that offend me specifically. And I haven't heard anyone say I shouldn't/don't exist. So it's hard for me personally to feel the need for CoC and the like. But I'm all for policy that protects everyone against that kind of abuse -- which seems to be on the rise. Are there better alternatives?
while I would agree in general, there could theoretically be SOME applications where the range of UI controls (and systems) is small enough where it could pay off. But things tend to expand in surface area...
So with that, this presents a HUGE opportunity for someone to build something akin to Zed, but not with the baggage that their technical strategy brings.
> So with that, this presents a HUGE opportunity for someone to build something akin to Zed, but not with the baggage that their technical strategy brings.
Not sure it’s so clean-cut. More than avoiding baggage, you’re just shifting it elsewhere. The question is if you want to own (and can handle) the baggage and benefit from the control that brings.
What should they have used instead?
As mentioned here... Probably Skia, which would've saved them the effort of writing any GPU backend, let alone three.
Isn't Skia controlled by Google?
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