Comment by TACIXAT
5 days ago
I strongly agree on this. I mained Windows for the last few years and got to the point where I was comfortable doing development similarly to how I would on Linux (text editor and command line build tools, cl, ml64, batch, etc.). I did that mostly so I could game and develop on the same machine. I learned a ton doing it but it has just gotten too awful to carry on.
It was faster to rg to search files, drop into WSL and run find for file name searches. The start menu was laggy, explorer was laggy (open up a folder with a couple dozen OGG files and it won't render for a solid minute). Mystery memory usage from privileged processes I had little control over. Once I realized that the one game I play (Overwatch) ran on Linux I decided to swap back.
I installed Linux Mint earlier this year and I've been extremely happy. The memory consumption is stable and low, and if something is broken I have the control to fix it. It just feels so much less hostile. This is largely possible thanks to the work Steam has done with Proton. The last real barrier is kernel level anti-cheat which prevented me from trying out this years Call of Duty. Oh well!
> It was faster to rg to search files, drop into WSL and run find for file name searches.
Fixed via the Everything app - instant search of any file in a nice resizable/sortable table
> if something is broken I have the control to fix it.
Instant search doesn't exist, how do you fix it?
What year are you posting from lol?
>It was faster to rg to search files
This continuously drives me crazy on Windows and macOS. I am befuddled at the number of times where I'm searching for a top level subdirectory that starts with 'foo' but the search bar spins and spins..
Eventually I get fed up and just sort by name and perform an alphabetical visual search in meat-space.
On Windows, just use Everything: https://www.voidtools.com/
Yes, "Everything" is the tool to use, but to be honest, why isn't MS getting the same speed?
I'm a SE for 25 years now, sticking with C#. Microsoft always did great tech platforms and left the missing 20% to the developers. Look at the .net framework (the old one), microsoft windows until win11, office until 2025, and even Excel that can't open csv files because the delimeter is a region setting.
On one side I hated this attitude, on the other side it allowed and enabled developers to get their own business running - see jetbrains resharper functionality - visual studio up until 2024 was a mess without it...
I see this contradiction all the time. Windows is a mess but there are lots of examples of rock solid, performant applications that have been developed and maintained over decades. Everything is one, also one that springs to mind which is much more performant compared to Linux alternatives is WinMerge.
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While Everything is good on Linux you are spoiled with things like fzf or rgfzf (instant fuzzy search on text file content so you can find "TODO" or "ideas to try" in any file instantly).
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