The reason why WSL is a thing is because developers in corps needed a way to run Linux. IT support and techs doesn't know anything about Linux typically and don't want to deal with supporting it. WSL fixes this problem.
Most developers don't want to use Linux at all. Many developers don't even really know how to user a terminal and rely on GUI tools.
> Most developers don't want to use Linux at all. Many developers don't even really know how to user a terminal and rely on GUI tools.
First of all, I disagree with this comment.
However, lets assume you are right.. that the average "Windows Developer" has little to zero skills in GNU/Linux.
If that is the case, it proves my point EVEN MORE that Micrsofot missed out creating a Microsoft Linux Distro... designed to have Powershell, Visual Studio Code, Edit, and potentially Edge, SQL Server, etc.
It would still be Linux but keeping to what they know in Windows -- and would have given Microsoft more power in the linux world.
You can disagree all you want. It is simply the truth. I've contracted in the UK and Europe. Most devs don't even know you can tab complete most commands in modern shells (IIRC cmd.exe supports this). This is both Microsoft Shops and shops that use opensource stacks e.g. LAMP and similar.
I was in a large company in the NW and I knew two developers in a team of 30 that knew basic bash and vim.
There is a reason why "how I exit from vim" is a meme. Most people have no idea how to do it.
> If that is the case, it proves my point EVEN MORE that Micrsofot missed out creating a Microsoft Linux Distro... designed to have Powershell, Visual Studio Code, Edit, and potentially Edge, SQL Server, etc.
Respectfully you seem to have never worked with the people I describe. You listed PowerShell as if they would use it. A former colleague of mine was quizzed why he would use PowerShell to write a script that would run on a Windows Server. They had expected him to write a C# program.
> I was in a large company in the NW and I knew two developers in a team of 30 that knew basic bash and vim.
I have worked for various companies as well, UK, Netherlands, etc.
Yes, from my experience, working for jobs in a Windows environment (Windows development) will have less knowledge of bash or linux in general if they simply are not using it. These are developers using Windows, SQL Server, .NET, and other Microsoft-focused products.
I would agree that Windows developers have less skills with a shell, even CMD.. or much less Powershell. However, if we are going to FOCUS on this userbase, they are likely to be accepting to using a WSL Linux distro created by Microsoft bundled with powershell, .net, etc.. than to use Ubuntu with bash, vim/nano or variants.
Also, I have worked for Companies that focused on LAMP development and their linux skills were decent to pro. The only time someone would struggle is likely because their are junior level.. and coming from a Windows background.
> Respectfully you seem to have never worked with the people I describe. You listed PowerShell as if they would use it. A former colleague of mine was quizzed why he would use PowerShell to write a script that would run on a Windows Server. They had expected him to write a C# program.
Powershell... C#... both of which are Microsoft. Powershell is .NET under the hood. Doesn't change my comment.
> Most developers don't want to use Linux at all.
I don't know if this is necessarily true. Many of the develops I know prefer GUI applications to cli tooling, which I can get behind. That has nothing to do with Linux vs Windows though.
But my struggles with Windows are plentiful and the same goes for all my colleagues. I have a hard time believing that we are the outliers and not the rule.
> Sorry for the snarky comment, but then those devs are simply bad
Yes. That is the majority of developers. I had to explain to a dev today (nice enough guy) that he has to actually run the tests.
> Windows is legacy, the future is in open source.
You can claim the future is opensource but the industry has moved towards SAAS, PAAS, IAAS which is even more lock in than using a proprietary OS such as Windows.
So while you might have an opensource OS, many of the programs you use will be proprietary in the worst way possible.
You needn't use your real name, of course, but for HN to be a community, users need some identity for other users to relate to. Otherwise we may as well have no usernames and no community, and that would be a different kind of forum. https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme...
Your snark at my comments is completely unwarranted.
I really shouldn't have to explain what follows. But I will.
Installing any dev tooling that is third party is done on the command line. Look up the instructions for installing Node LTS on Debian, or .NET, or Golang. You need to use the command line. Even on easier to use Distros they have the same procedure. Depending on the tooling you may need to set additional environment variables which are normally done in your .bashrc or similar.
What normally happens is people blindly copy and paste things into the terminal and don't read the documentation. This has been a problem on Linux since before Ubuntu was released. This isn't just limited to newbies either.
The state of GUIs BTW isn't great. Many of them look nice, and work reasonably well most of the time, *until they don't* e.g. If I double click a deb to install it, sometimes it will install. Other times it won't. So I don't even bother anymore and just use dpkg/apt. BTW it isn't any better with other distros. So I have to drop to the command line to fix the issue anyway.
So at some point you will need to learn bash, learn to read the man pages, and manually edit configuration file. It is unavoidable on Linux.
> To summarise, the downsides are that it requires more memory, and that it reduces throughput and adds latency (except when there’s already a compositor or a vblank-synced fullscreen display).
I think the extra requirements aren't a problem on modern cards. However on lower end devices e.g. the older intel iGPUs, I could see this becoming an issue.
It depends on the game/application and what you are running and your distro may have enabled TearFree for you. I use Debian and it isn't enabled by default.
If I was to play Dark Souls 3 and/or Elden ring on Linux without tearfree. There is significant screen tearing and the game feels very choppy when playing.
To enable TearFree on Xorg. You typically make a new configuration file that sits in /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/ and append to the X configuration
I've never noticed these downsides personally and everything seems to work great.
I don't like Wayland. It still seems very buggy and I am running Debian Trixie and would prefer to keep using X11.
But IME Wayland does have higher performance on older hardware it seems than X. My old laptop could barely play Youtube with X11 (it is the video itself not YouTube being a resource hog, I checked), Wayland performance is much better.
> (it is the video itself not YouTube being a resource hog, I checked)
Did you check by downloading the video and playing it with a good standalone video player like mplayer, vlc, or mpv? If you didn't, then you didn't disentangle the web browser from the video playback.
I've spent a lot of time in my career working on weird rendering issues on websites/devices. Believe me when I said "I checked", I know WTF I am talking about.
The only thing that was different was Wayland vs X11. Same browser, same browser settings, same OS and same plugins.
> Same browser, same browser settings, same OS and same plugins.
Neat. Did you test outside of the browser? Based on your report, it sounds like you didn't. As you must know, the renderers in web browsers are very, very complex. I suggest you test with a standalone video player before you go blaming the underlying windowing system for performance issues.
> Neat. Did you test outside of the browser? Based on your report, it sounds like you didn't
I don't appreciate your snark.
Yes. Generally performance of the whole of machine felt more responsive under Wayland. I was actually stunned at how much of a difference it made. The machine went to sluggish and painful to use, to being reasonably decent.
Even if that wasn't the case that I saw a general performance uplift on this hardware. You have to explain to me how it couldn't have been the window system giving me the uplift in video playback in the browser because I will remind you.
- I was using the same browser (and version)
- I was using the same DE
- I was using the same hardware.
- I was using the same OS (I hadn't updated it between testing).
- I was using the same video.
The only thing that changed was that before I was using X11 and afterwards I was using Wayland.
> I suggest you test with a standalone video player before you go blaming the underlying windowing system for performance issues.
I will re-iterate, the only difference in the machine configuration was using Wayland over X11. So maybe stop being a condescending prick with your "Neat, but have you considered some BS that isn't relevant", because that was already eliminated. It is dismissive and rude and now I gave you a reply same vain.
> You have to explain to me how it couldn't have been the window system giving me the uplift in video playback in the browser...
My instance of Firefox has been configured to use only software rendering. This YouTube video <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tO01J-M3g0U> runs fine in both Firefox and mpv. This YouTube video <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WjoplqS1u18> drops many frames when played at 8K in Firefox (making it choppy and sluggish), but zero when played at 8K in mpv.
There are a great many variables in play when playing something through a web browser. That's why I suggested you re-run the test without the web browser.
Speaking of "a great many variables"...
> The machine went to sluggish and painful to use, to being reasonably decent.
Then something seems to be wrong with your Xorg config. Whether it's the drivers, the configuration of the system, or both, I don't have enough information to know. Are you running Xorg on an ARM Apple machine? That's apparently known to work very, very poorly because Apple's graphics hardware is "special". Are you running an un-accelerated Xorg video driver (like the VESA or fbdev drivers) or are perhaps using the nouveau driver on Nvidia hardware? The former would certainly be very slow. The latter is known to work fine for some folks and work really, really poorly for others.
> I don't appreciate your snark.
It's not snark. It's an earnest request to reduce the number of moving parts to make troubleshooting easier. And (as we've discovered from further testimony) the web browser wasn't even involved in the slowness... the problem is a misconfiguration of your Xorg install. We would have discovered this if you'd run the requested test, but incidental self-report works just as well.
Most developers don't want to use Linux at all. Many developers don't even really know how to user a terminal and rely on GUI tools.