Comment by throwa356262
13 hours ago
WSL has been god send for corporate employees who get a windows laptop but need to do real work.
But everyone knows that performance of WSL is nowhere near native linux on the same machine.
13 hours ago
WSL has been god send for corporate employees who get a windows laptop but need to do real work.
But everyone knows that performance of WSL is nowhere near native linux on the same machine.
WSL is getting better, even with minor releases. It's the only reason I didn't switch my most recent corporate provided laptop.
Sadly the rest of Windows 11 suffers from those unasked, opt-out feature drops. Unbearable. So, I'll go pure Linux again.
What is "real work" in this context? I'm guessing from the context it's Linux kernel or driver development? Or perhaps bioinformatics workflows which use linux-only programs in some cases, especially with CLI-driven workflows?
I think that because the majority of people in HN work building SaaS, they tend to do Linux server related work heavily. The ones that dont, do iPhone work, so they are in a worst place (with Windows).
Other than that, I believe the productivity tooling is better on Windows.
I myself fall in the SaaS category, so Windows doesn't give me anything. On the contrary for whatever reason after mainly using Linux/OSX for 15 years, Windows just feels clunky and like it "gets in the way". WSL is a good hack/workaround, but unless I MUST have Windows as OS (because of a work provided Laptop that cannot be Linux), i dont see a point of using WSL.
I wholeheartedly agree that Windows just gets in the way. It’s not designed around user ergonomics. It’s designed to maximize clicks and screen-time, which are exactly the opposite metrics an OS should care about if they want good UX.
Luckily my IT staff allowed me to dual boot windows and debian+cinnamon. Everything was going great until I needed to compile and test a legacy firmware using Keil uVision... Gonna be on windows a while longer unfortunately :(
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Some of us also do real work on Windows, ask Valve.
Interesting take since Valve with Proton has done a lot to increase gaming on Desktop Linux also their console devices.
Except they pay CodeWeavers to do most of the work.
Sure and there are billion dollar systems at every bank that runs entirely on VBA macros in excel doesn't mean its not structurally flawed.
Worse is better, isn't that the UNIX motto?
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And these VBA macros in excel probably don't have any more bugs and issues than all the software written by the HN community. Six of one, half a dozen of the other.
Is the excuse of teenagers every August when they ask for the latest and greatest laptop?
I can provide other examples of real work done on Windows, like Photoshop, DAW, and so on.
Maybe those are interesting as teenager hobbies as well.
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Delightful way to write off an enormous cohort of people and huge variety of work.
Being exactly in GP situation, I would give a more charitable take.
We are not talking about a properly configured Windows workstation. We are talking about corporate PCs configured by an IT department that is completely oblivious to the needs of developers, most likely because developers are not their bosses. WSL is effectively an escape hatch.
Usually the stated reason is "security", and developers tend to do the greatest sin of corporate security: they run arbitrary code, and they even have the nerve to call it "their job"!
I don't work in corp IT, but I am convinced that people there are not stupid and they are fully aware of the "shadow IT" aspect of WSL, but they give it a pass because they are also aware that people have "real work" to do that would be impossible otherwise, given company policies.
> We are talking about corporate PCs configured by an IT department that is completely oblivious to the needs of developers
I definitely agree with that part though I've not used Windows at home for many, many years...and I'm a gamer.
> I don't work in corp IT, but I am convinced that people there are not stupid...
No, not stupid, per se. I generally don't like to blame people for the situations in which they find themselves. But there is something else going on.
I find the folks in such IT departments are generally not very good at their jobs. One potential reading of this is that it is not the people working in the jobs' fault, it's the design of the corporate leadership by not paying well enough for the job to get better people.
But the knock-on effect would be, if corporate paid better, at least my IT department would look completely different. The people we have now would be replaced by much more competent people. These more competent people would also generally be folks who shower and wear clothes that fit, that they don't let one corner of their shirts hang out the waist of their pants, that didn't show up to a service call wreaking of cigarette smoke. I'm not expecting people to spend more money on nicer clothes, I already established they don't have that money. I am expecting people to take care of their basic hygiene and present themselves as best they can. That they don't is a signal they don't really care about their own professional development. If corporate paid better, IT wouldn't be staffed by a bunch of literal slobs.
Though they are in a bad situation, I don't have a lot of respect for the folks in my IT department, because the only job they have, the one they have been sticking to for some time, they are only doing the bare minimum. I've been poor. I've been in jobs I hated. The only way out was to suck it up, present myself well, get better at my job, and go somewhere better. I have a hard time respecting anyone who just gives up.
(To be fair, there actually are a few who do appear to be doing this, but they are few and far between. They also don't last long, because again, they go on to something better. I'm talking about the kind of people who don't put in the effort and then complain they never get anywhere.)
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I spend most of time in meetings and updating excel sheets.
Recently I needed a certain agent to help me automate some Excel stuff. Getting it to work in Windows was significantly harder if not impossible compared to WSL.
Those machines generally come locked down, so you need permission to install stuff like WSL. I had such a machine and asked if they could unlock WSL, and their answer was no, because Security was busy enough keeping the Windows installs reasonably secure. Which makes sense tbf. Would be surprised if that was much different in other places.
Honestly the performance hit of WSl even being alive and running in the background of my XPS was so bad I just ssh into a workstation and do everything on there instead. Trying to get windows to just be usable is such a massive pain in the ass.
Would be ok, except for the fact that I like to run GUI applications on linux as well. Remote access for gui is a pain.
Luckily I'm allowed use Hyper-V for Linux work
Guess where WSL runs on?