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Microsoft's 'Windows Subsystem For Linux' Finally Leaves Beta (microsoft.com)
An anonymous reader quotes Microsoft's Developer blog:
Early adopters on the Windows Insider program will notice that Windows Subsystem for Linux is no longer marked as a beta feature as of Insider build 16251. This will be great news for those who've held-back from employing WSL as a mainline toolset: You'll now be able to leverage WSL as a day-to-day developer toolset, and become ever more productive when building, testing, deploying, and managing your apps and systems on Windows 10... What will change is that you will gain the added advantage of being able to file issues on WSL and its Windows tooling via our normal support mechanisms if you want/need to follow a more formal issue resolution process. You can also provide feedback via Windows 10 Feedback Hub app, which delivers feedback directly to the team.
Microsoft points out that distro-publishers are still responsible for supporting and fixing the internals of their distros -- and they have no plans to support X/GUI apps or desktops. And of course, Linux files are not currently accessible from Windows -- though Microsoft says they're working on a fix.
Microsoft points out that distro-publishers are still responsible for supporting and fixing the internals of their distros -- and they have no plans to support X/GUI apps or desktops. And of course, Linux files are not currently accessible from Windows -- though Microsoft says they're working on a fix.
"Linux files are not currently accessible from Windows"
Except they are.
Now that this is available I'm seriously considering moving back to Windows, after many years of using Linux. I've found that my Linux experience has just been getting worse and worse. Systemd has caused me nothing but headaches. GNOME 3 ruined GNOME, my favorite desktop environment. I still sometimes have problems with PulseAudio. Most of the time I'm using Chrome or VS Code, both of which work on Windows.
Linux used to be worth using back when it was way more stable and reliable than Windows. But those days are long gone. I don't want to have to use a niche distro like Slackware, or Gentoo, or worse, Devuan, just to get rid of the shitty systemd experience. I don't want to have to install MATE just to get a usable desktop environment. I don't want to have to fight with graphics drivers.
If Windows can give me a Linux-compatible command line experience, and if it lets me run Chrome and VS Code, then I'm all set. I don't need Linux. In fact, I'd welcome being able to use a system that's fast, that's responsive, and that just works.
muh gnome thuree
Use MATE of you like Gnome 2 so much. Or XFCE. Gnome 3 has gotten better, but I will always consider it a pile of developer condescenions. Thankfully a shit ton of other DEs are available free and outta the box with many distros.
Shouldn't it be called "Linux Subsystem for Windows", because it is running under Windows and not the other way around?
"We mustn't be caught by surprise by our own advancing technology" -- Aldous Huxley
PARTY LIKE IT'S 1999!
Slackware 0.0.0.1
Not surprising.
I use windows 10 every day and I have not had a single reliability issue.
You're either extremely dumb, a Microsoft shill, or BOTH.
Thanks! Your check is in the mail!!
Billyg
Get a load of this guy! He hasn't used windows 10 yet.
You have no idea just how much you have to rip out to get a spy free windows experience. Mate and GPU drivers are a walk in the park by comparison.
Haven't seen Windows 10 yet, have you.
This looks like a container implementation rather than a VM. Anyone know? If so are they doing their own containers or is this Docker or Kubernetes?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4F4qzPbcFiA
It's a subsystem inside Windows (a Windows subsystem) for running applications that use the Linux ABI. Perhaps "Windows Subsystem for Linux Apps" would have been more honest
On the NT kernel, Windows itself runs in a container called the "Win32 subsystem". WSL is a container that uses the Linux ABI. There used to be an OS/2 subsystem as well.
I switched back to Windows from Linux when 10 came out cause they fixed all the windows 7 fuckups. UI was a pain in the ass to get used to, but that's with any new OS. I'm currently looking to run a Windows fm inside of Linux for gaming, since that's the only special thing I do on Windows that Linux doesn't fully support yet. But over the year that 10 has been out and "stable" they are taking the stability away from it weekly. And not allowing me to do what I want with my system. Not to mention every update resets my privacy settings back to "tell Microsoft every click I make" mode. If you don't notice that shit happening, then you don't actually use Windows you just browse the web. Which you can do on almost any device these days, including refrigerators.
Me either. Windows just works, 100% of the time. I feel so bad for all the people that were suckered into Linux, spent all that time learning obscure command line commands and copycat programs, just to find that when it came time to get a job that the business world runs Windows. It must feel like so much of your life just ... wasted. Literally wasted.
I use windows 10 every day and I have not had a single reliability issue.
if you are using windows 10 EVERY DAY the reliability problems are IN YOUR HEAD
No one really cares. Linux users and developers are not gonna use the Win10 Spy-virus. Most users of the Win10 Spy-virus don't even know that Linux exists, and of those few that do, wouldn't know what to do with a Linux subsystem anyway! After all, either they have to use the Win10 Spy-virus at work, or are too stupid to realize just how horribly rotten the Win10 Spy-virus is, and how much they are being screwed over by using it!!
I do not remember when I had to leverage anything at work. A friend of mine has a garage. They do leverage things every day.
Just stuff Windows in a VM and carry on. The fact that there are options in the *nix ecosystem spanning from 'unusable' (for your use cases, at least) to 'tolerable', and maybe even on into the realm of 'good', speak volumes in favor of *nix. Far better than the Windows options spanning from 'dark, unpatched back alley' to 'unabashedly spy/adware'. The fact that there are even options to consider means it's not a lost battle yet. You're succumbing to the nostalgia factor here, as setting up Linux on newer hardware used to be a real pain in the ass, and setting up Windows on unusual configurations, while not quite as bad, was still a pain.
Troll troll troll your boat....
Hardly.
The Gnome desktop has become a steaming pile of bloat.
systemd is a shitty, shitty, shitty solution in search of a problem, from the very same sphincter that excreted PulseAudio - one of the same Linux turds that the GP post complained about.
And yeah, Linux has become less stable than Windows. And that's not surprising, given the attitude many in the free software community display towards standards. Hey, if you can't get fork() to be async-signal-safe as the POSIX standard requires, try to get the standards committee to lower the standard so you can meet it.
Because "We don't meet that standard, so would you please lower it even though everyone else does meet the standard?" is not an attitude that leads to stable, robust systems.
I'm in need of a shiny new bridge, the one the last guy sold me never showed up... still shows 'out for delivery' six years later.
There is no XUL, only WebExtensions...
Well, I used Windows 10 for a while and noticed the following things:
1) The window-like Start icon stopped working; no menu anymore for me;
2) Windows tried to use Edge to open pdf files, though Adobe's pdf reader was available; after making it the default associated app, Windows kept using Edge, ignoring my instructions -- until a support guy told me about another way to do it, which worked;
3) An Excel script would take 4 times in Windows 10 as compared to Windows 7 on identical notebooks.
I think it's safe to say we got another Vista (though Windows 7 had its own glitches, like Windows Explorer failing to show all files in a folder).
Everybody can say Windows is easier without knowing any other OS; use a Mac or Linux and that opinion will fade away instantly.
Windows is garbage. Fortunately, Office usually undoes some mistakes -- for instance, offering focus-follow-mouse under certain circumstances.
Finally, now you can run all your favorite Linux server applications on an OS that will run them a bit slower, could BSOD at any moment, needs significant patching regularly which could nuke the whole box! All that uptime with Linux is really boring for the guys in IT! ;)
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
It works, excepting that it doesn't always work quite right. Try administering it in a non-homogeneous hardware environment (in this case, spanning the entirety of the Intel i-series era; I've never used it on anything older). The biggest issues I've faced on it are:
It really, really wants to update. Seems like no less than 4, and often more than 10 man-hours of productivity down the toilet every work week across a couple dozen users.
Unnecessarily frequent hardware driver updates are a scourge; doesn't make the system unusable, but randomly losing peripherals is a nuisance.
Taskbar/startmenu is a buggy mess. It has gotten better, but random disappearance/non-responsiveness of same still persists.
Random bouts of extreme CPU and/or disk usage, especially on older hardware, that should still be highly performant (e.g. high-end Nehalem-era laptops).
None of these things are the end of the world, but Microsoft's inattentiveness to what are clearly common issues (speaking from my own experience, as well as dredging through forums and other resources in search of answers/solutions) is very bothersome.
There is no XUL, only WebExtensions...
Except for that time where I saved my company many, many thousands of dollars by not having to purchase a Windows Server license + CALs to provide high performance network storage.
Considering how they're basically dependent on it for their Azure platform, I'd say you're pretty well mistaken. They might be playing the 'extinguish' bit as their long game, but for now, they're plainly in 'embrace/extend' mode. I think most sane people disregard inferior, overpriced hardware as a good platform to slap Linux on, though it usually becomes possible (eventually) due to the determination of the folks that like to pick it apart.
recursion - stack error.
I was primarily an OSX user, but switched back to Windows earlier this year. I've been using WSL for a while now and it's working very well. I do all my Node/web dev/etc from the shell and use Visual Studio Code for editing. You can easily work with files under C:\ from WSL so basically it feels just like the dev I did on OSX.
Wow.
I use WSL (not linux subsystem for windows) because I like to use bash, especially when programming in python or anything. I work on macs and ubuntu at work and this helps keep everything standard for me when I use my windows stuff at home.
Why still use windows? First, I like to program in C#/WPF simply because it's the most enjoyable and richest feature set for building native GUI applications. Second, I like to play video games, and run them stable at 144 Hz, which for many games, isn't possible on Linux. Third, the MS Office suite of products is best on Windows, and really doesn't have a true competitor in terms of ease of use for someone like me. Fourth, almost every piece of software I use is also available on Windows, but the same can't be said of Linux.
I want to use Linux because I don't want MS to automatically restart my computer when it decides it while I'm using it and them gathering info on me is meh. On the same shake, you give away personal information to Google all day every day. Even if you don't use them as your search engine they're collecting data on you. If Microsoft wants to collect anonymous usage data, which you can tell it only to collect stuff that's pretty basic, in return for using their OS, then I don't see how I have room to complain without getting all up in arms about Google doing it 100x more.
As always, you just use the stuff that's best for you.
Have you used Windows 10? The GUI is fucking terrible. I'd say there are no decent desktop systems these days, but really, under the hood, Linux is as solid as ever. I run Debian installs as custom routers that are up 24/7/365 and I'm not seeing any evidence at all of instability. So frankly, your claim is just a load of shit.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Your router is your main desktop? Fantastic.
I don't get Unix people's obsession with fork to begin with, but ok, that's just the way it is.
But why the hell would you need to fork inside a signal handler?!?
Don't use Linux, but do use TrueOS and Windows 10
TrueOS comes w/ Lumina, which is very similar to your standard Windows XP like experience, plus some extra features that make it great. If I had Linux, I'd have gone w/ Razor-qt or LX/QT, rather than GNOME 3 or KDE 4/5
I use Windows 10 w/ Classic Shell, which restores the Windows 7 look to the interface. In fact, I get a wide choice - can make it look like Windows 8, Windows 7, Aero, Windows XP, and have tried out quite a number of them.
I spent a couple of hours last night helping my daughter get the Android SDK working somewhat reliably on her Win10 machine.
From what I can see, Windows 10 is reasonably stable if you leave it as is and only use Microsoft tools. Once you go what they consider "off the reservation", you're on your own and there be monsters.
The end point of the work was resurrecting her old Win7 machine and everything went together fine and quickly.
Mimetics Inc. Twitter
Er ... gmail was beta for 5+ yrs, yet MSFT thinks they can add in an entire OS, dealing with all the necessary security aspects in less than 2 yrs?
B. S.
Blackhat, Defcon, and 50 other security conferences world-wide - go watch the videos of these people using the Linux subsystem to completely pwn Windows if there are any questions.
Typical MSFT - release crap early.
You know, with the features that make Linux better, like stability, performance and security. This is just a crappy Windows kernel with a Linux interface. If I want that, Cygwin gives me that and (of course!) the ability to run X11 applications as well.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Don't be ridiculous. It's nice to have a package manager to install things, such as git, on Windows. My website runs on IIS, and it's nice for my development environment to be the same.
They need to put a Linux subsystem in Windows instead. Their OS is poorly designed and could really use a big change like that.
I've had the same issue with Windows Server doing that. It doesn't happen every time but when it does, the lack of information on what's going on (an unknown error has occurred ffs and a log file that tells you bugger all) you end up having to rebuild the server. I hate both Windows and Linux though. They're both not as good as they could and should be.
Windows is developer hostile? Based on what?
I switched back to Windows from Linux when 10 came out cause they fixed all the windows 7 fuckups. UI was a pain in the ass to get used to, but that's with any new OS
I'd disagree - OSX has been relatively stable across many many releases as far as GUI interaction goes. Linux, on the whole, has kept its GUI more stable than any 2 consecutive releases of windows ever has since XP, possibly with the exception of the 8.0->8.1 point release, which I personally avoided like the steaming pile of shit it was.
The cesspool just got a check and balance.
Me either. Windows just works, 100% of the time. I feel so bad for all the people that were suckered into Linux, spent all that time learning obscure command line commands and copycat programs, just to find that when it came time to get a job that the business world runs Windows. It must feel like so much of your life just ... wasted. Literally wasted.
The business world runs on unix in my world, windows are for desktops, if they're used at all.
You are ready for OSX...
If you have a "couple dozen users", then this is what WSUS is for. If you're not using it, this is your failing, not Microsoft's, as they've provided a solution that solves this problem.
Which Windows 7 fuckups? Windows 7 was pretty decent actually. Windows 8 was the horrible one with the forced transition to that touch screen GUI.
Even if it was just as an optional download. I know there are open source third party ones you can use but it's too much assle to configure.
here's an idea.. you hate systemd so much, you hate gnome so much.. instead of the constant whining and crying.. why not step-up and CONTRIBUTE to the solution instead of being part of the problem.
Linux is completely missing from the implementation, it's only the GNU bits
I use it on multiple machines most of the day, every day. It's fine. Anyone who can't adapt to the minor changes is probably too much an imbecile to be using a computer.
I see, only the contributors to a project are allowed to express any options. Everyone else can go duck themselves.
That's how projects die, chump.
One of those coders will get so,sick of the useless bloat and crap force fed to them via updates mixed with mandatory security patches that they will eventually write something better then your pos project will be tossed and forgotten by everyone else.
You of course will then whine on slashdot how the new thing sucks but not contribute.
Troll troll troll your boat....
Maybe he is trolling, but he's got a point. In a number of ways, Linux is slowly converging toward Windows, while leaving behind the original Unix philosophy. For ordinary users, Linux in the desktop is making less and less sense, when compared to Windows or Mac.
here's an idea.. you hate systemd so much, you hate gnome so much.. instead of the constant whining and crying.. why not step-up and CONTRIBUTE to the solution instead of being part of the problem.
Here is an idea - why don't we put this red herring to bed, once and for all? The vast majority of people out there are interested in using the system, and they do not have the inclination or capability to tinker with it. But they sure can know what they want, and they sure can be pissed off at the many questionable decisions that have been in made in the Linux desktop world in the last ten years. With an attitude like yours, Linux is doomed to remain a non-entity in the desktop - and, in view of what certain people are pushing for, that is a good thing.
I think the thread has been hijacked by the NSA to tell people how great Windows is, and make people switch to it. Windows has been a pile of crap since they introduced their "telemetry", which is in fact a "report all my activity to the governments please" feature. I have switched to CentOS for my main desktop, and even though there are actually some stability problems with KDE Plasma and some apps that I compiled and installed, the OS itself is pretty stable.
.exe version. Disgusting.
However, I would never put a Linux in the hands of my mom.
That being said, to get back to the main subject, it is a plain shame to see that bash has its
You have an unusual definition of the word 'fact.'
And, no, I use Linux and don't work for the government.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
Here's an idea ... stop posting as an AC.
posted in wrong place sorry. /. does not always put stuff where I want it
But, you sold your company to the government. Can't be trusted. ;)
I don't get Unix people's obsession with fork to begin with, but ok, that's just the way it is.
But why the hell would you need to fork inside a signal handler?!?
It was just an example of how Linux is losing stability over the years. I could have just used Linux's broken pwrite() or Linux's AUTH_SYS violating the max-number-of-groups standard. Nothing like having intermittent access to network file systems with inconsistent error because a crappy AUTH_SYS client doesn't adhere to the standard...
As far as fork() is concerned, fork() has been async-signal-safe for ages. It's been required to be async-signal-safe for ages. Then glibc added some functionality that involved the use of pthread_atfork() signal handlers that were not async-signal-safe, making fork() async-signal-unsafeLOWERED?!?!?!
Again - that's not the actions of a group interested in producing a stable, robust environment.
Troll troll troll your boat....
Maybe he is trolling, but he's got a point. In a number of ways, Linux is slowly converging toward Windows, while leaving behind the original Unix philosophy. For ordinary users, Linux in the desktop is making less and less sense, when compared to Windows or Mac.
Do you even know what Unix philosophy is?
Take a look at Free/OpenBSD, HP-UX, Solaris and AIX they are all Unix and they all do things differently. Things change over time get used to it.
As for Linux converging towards Microsoft Windows, I think it is the other way around since what I was doing in the early 1980's is not much different from what I do today when using Linux and I was using Windows on Unix (all types) before Microsoft thought it was a good idea. Also having tested Microsoft Windows 10 in a virtual machine I doubt I would trust it with my personal data.
There ain't no such thing as proprietary standards only proprietary formats. Standards are by definition open.
IOW we should continue this entitled whining shit instead of using the reason free software (and open software, freeware etc.) exists in the first place?
There are alternatives. Use them if you don't like something in your current system _and_ can't be bothered to do something to fix that. Even if you can't code you sure as fuck can start a website and try to collect like minded hopefully attracting those that can code. Whining is a losers game.
I am starting to be increasingly irritated in the direction Windows is moving. Do I whine? Nope. I consider what alternative would be the best system to switch to as a replacement if that is what it comes to, I also try to remove/reduce those things that are irritating. Much better than flailing and posting (mostly) uninformed shit on online forums.
Been there. Do a thorough hardware checkup before blaming MS (or the driver vendors), in all cases I've seen it have been caused by failing hardware (HDD, RAM). Once the failing component was exchanged the system installed correctly. YMMV of course.
However, I would never put a Linux in the hands of my mom.
My wife uses Fedora 26 (ie. latest release - took about an hour to install from 25) and she does not have any problems with it.
Yes, I do know that there are people that you should not let within two meters of any electronic device but most people are very capable of running most applications under a Linux distribution although to be proficient in any application you still have to learn it and even if you use Microsoft Windows you still have to learn a particular application either by teaching yourself or getting someone to train you.
The main reason why people use Microsoft Windows is the fact that most PC's (laptops and desktops) are shipped with it (ie. The Microsoft Tax) and most people don't know or care that there are alternatives since it usually is either too hard to grasp or they have locked themselves into a Microsoft ecosystem.
There ain't no such thing as proprietary standards only proprietary formats. Standards are by definition open.
Have you used windows 10? If not I suggest you try before you buy: linux is not the only OS that is going backwards, nor even the OS accelerating fastest in a reverse direction.
will they add linux bonding and bridgeing to windows?
can you add your own repos for an package manger or even let people put Linux software in the windows store?
I've only run the beta version of WSL so take this post with a grain of salt. I was rather excited to finally be able to get secure shell access to my dev and test boxes without jumping through hoops to install Cygwin or MinGW but that excitement ended as soon as I connected my first SSH session. WSL had me locked down tightly into a sandboxed environment no better than running Linux in a virtual box session. If you w to party as root on your Windows box it seems like 3rd party solutions are still the best bet, and you are stuck with the same patching headaches those solutions have always caused.
Honestly I was talking about windows in that aspect, I dont use anything apple except for the iphone, and i will as of now not upgrade from my jailbroken 6S. With linux its implied that you can keep what ever UI you prefer as there is many desktop environments to choose from, versions included on almost every linux distro. And things like Enlightenment allow you to roll your own DE
I am no MS shill, I prefer Linux, but with a shitty GPU at the time and the stability and performance upgrade of the windows version of the game I play, I ended up jumping on win10 after using it. Which means to me that MS can make a decent OS they just prefer to ruin it once its adopted. By decent I don't mean secure, they seem to think that's completely an end user issue.
Have you used Windows 10? The GUI is fucking terrible. I'd say there are no decent desktop systems these days, but really, under the hood, Linux is as solid as ever. I run Debian installs as custom routers that are up 24/7/365 and I'm not seeing any evidence at all of instability. So frankly, your claim is just a load of shit.
Why is the gui bad? Compared to 8 it is wonderful. Is it too flat? Are the tiles weird? How old are you if you do not mind me asking? I am not saying you are an old but as we get older change does become harder. I am 40 and noticed I am already resistant to some changes and video games where 15 years ago I would be playing and learning new things I do not get a quick now as reaction time and fast paced learning is too much.
Good news is in 2017 Windows is not the POS it once was based on DOS back in the 1990s. We also have virtualizers and lots of cores and cheap ram and SSDs. Run what you like and run another OS in a VM. I do this too as I wanted to learn some web development work and I always fuck up my host and end up reinstalling last decade. Now I just download a www.turnkeylinux.com appliance for simple stuff so the host never gets screwed. I did this for Linux and now I do it for Windows 10 in Hyper-V.
Linux has KMS which is also a type 1 hypervisor that uses the drivers of Hyper-V. No need to buy that expensive POS known as VMWare Workstation today in 2017.
http://saveie6.com/
I just cursed at TrueOS again this afternoon as I tried to get it to work in a VM. It is based off of FreeBSD 12 current and is alpha grade and not worthy for production.
http://saveie6.com/
I just cussed at TrueOS and Chrome wouldn't install either in a VM with Xubuntu until I did some hacks all this afternoon.
Linux is buggy too but in it's own little ways. Xorg and the lack of a kernel ABI means things break when you do updates. This problem doesn't exist for Windows as you can use closed source drives which are a plus. You click on them and after an install it works. Done. Still waiting for this on Linux but the GNU zealots are black listing this. Windows 10 so far as a desktop is the most reliable OS I have besides FreeBSD. FreeBSD I use for other purposes besides a desktop.
http://saveie6.com/
I switched back to Windows from Linux when 10 came out cause they fixed all the windows 7 fuckups. UI was a pain in the ass to get used to, but that's with any new OS
I'd disagree - OSX has been relatively stable across many many releases as far as GUI interaction goes. Linux, on the whole, has kept its GUI more stable than any 2 consecutive releases of windows ever has since XP, possibly with the exception of the 8.0->8.1 point release, which I personally avoided like the steaming pile of shit it was.
?? XP? Does the term Winrot bring any memories of the past? I was going to say Windows is supperior in the fact it doesn't break between releases because it has an ABI compared to Linux. Hairyfeet on here has the hairyfeet challenge. Get any Linux distro in a VM and run more than 2 updates and see if it will still work? Really try it. Graphics drivers will always break and Xorg is a whole mess unto itself which breaks itself all the time.
If you think OSX is stable you must not have used mountain lion or used wifi with yosemite. Safari sometimes can work with Office 365. Every other browser works fine with it. When you uninstall something on MacOSX it leaves part of its traces on the system which become a nightmare to troubleshoot. Apple in it's wisdom wants to make sure you can't read hidden files in your ~libraries to find the cryptic containers to rid of the broken app that sticks around after an uninstall.
Linux might have a GUI that changed little but it is unusable. I do not want a cell phone my desktop with Gnome3.
http://saveie6.com/
It's not about age. I'm still very open to new interfaces and new OS'es (I use the latest iOS *and* Android with no issues), new software (tons of new versions of everything all the time), and in general I'm about as technical as it gets.
However, the Windows 10 UI is both terrible in terms of eye candy (so flat and monochromatic -- and not in a good way! It makes you hope for EGA-era graphics almost!) and in terms of usability. It's introduced a lot of non-intuitiveness (no cues that stuff is a button like just text in a flat colored area), is less functional at starting software (tiles suck, the new search is terrible at finding relevant things, and of course no folders in the new "start menu"!), getting to many things just requires a bunch more clicks, settings are all over the place (crappy app-style settings, and control panel + MMC and what not) and overall it just gets in the way of you doing work. The new "appy apps" replacing the classic stuff is appalling too.
It's NOT gonna get better either. MS gave up on the desktop/workstation market because they know they just can't survive selling licenses just for that. They want to be that "cool" high volume mobile thing (like Android) and are pushing "appy apps" (everything else is "legacy"!), the app store, cloud accounts and services hopelessly. This way they can make people pay for cloud services forever (rent seeking) and make a 30% cut on everything (zero effort, right?) Too bad that the people who can live with such basic stuff have no use for Windows in the first place. These people are already happily using their iOS/Android devices as their only "computer" today, and they won't switch to this new disaster anytime soon. Meanwhile, power users are left to suffer this atrocity. I expect this train wreck to continue for years. MS is very much helping to kill the PC market, and understandably it's in decline for the 11th quarter straight.
Sorry, Windows 10 is just a HUGE regression over Windows 7 and that's got nothing to do with his age.
Don't be ridiculous. It's nice to have a package manager to install things, such as git, on Windows. My website runs on IIS, and it's nice for my development environment to be the same.
Microsoft oddly has contributed to GIT with GITFS which Microsoft uses internally for Office development. :-) Nice to see them use open source stuff.
Git comes with visual studio and you do not WSL. Last I looked WSL looked like a fun cool hack but lacked networking and Xorg needed work to even run headless. Has this changed?
http://saveie6.com/
Windows just works, 100% of the time
... for small values of 100.
?? XP? Does the term Winrot bring any memories of the past?
I have a feeling that would be more than 1 story to properly cover it. What do you mean by Winrot? The guaranteed self-destruction of NTFS via fragmentation? The guaranteed corruption of the registry? Or the guaranteed library DLL hell after a few months of updates and running various programs? Or something else entirely? There's so many things that term can apply to, all negative, and all requiring a reinstall.
I was going to say Windows is supperior in the fact it doesn't break between releases because it has an ABI compared to Linux. Hairyfeet on here has the hairyfeet challenge. Get any Linux distro in a VM and run more than 2 updates and see if it will still work?
I had no issues with Linux Debian 8->11. Then again, I don't use it for my fulltime desktop. So a plain vanilla install probably has fewer gotchas.
If you think OSX is stable you must not have used mountain lion or used wifi with yosemite.
I ran yosemite until I had to upgrade to macOS Sierra on my laptop. I had exactly 0 issues with 10.10, and, it being a laptop frequently moved, I guess I would have seen a wifi issue. Now, granted, I don't search automatically for wifi connections. I had 10.8 on my HTPC until just last month. Rock solid compared to any windows install I ever owned. Compared to 10.6 or 10.10? Not quite as good. However, 10.12 is running better than the previous 10.8, we'll see how it continues.
Safari sometimes can work with Office 365. Every other browser works fine with it.
MS product doesn't work 100% with Safari? Color me shocked.
When you uninstall something on MacOSX it leaves part of its traces on the system which become a nightmare to troubleshoot. Apple in it's wisdom wants to make sure you can't read hidden files in your ~libraries to find the cryptic containers to rid of the broken app that sticks around after an uninstall.
I don't seem to have a problem with reading any of those "hidden" files. Now, does the ~/Library file show up in Finder? It sure does, if you alter the preferences. (I had to look, admittedly, because I use Finder so seldom for Library file access)
Linux might have a GUI that changed little but it is unusable. I do not want a cell phone my desktop with Gnome3.
I'm not sure what that means. If it changed little, it's a functional clone of XP. Otherwise it changed a lot, and it looks like a cell phone. It can't be both. Personally, Gnome is dead to me. Systemd is not something I want on my systems.
The cesspool just got a check and balance.
Not a fan of Windows per say. I am just frustrated with the lack of progress with Linux and hate each OS like a bitter old man for different reasons. Thank God at for vms. I want a FreeBSD based stable OS with the GUI and ease of use of Ubuntu of 2006 with compviz and the app and development ecosystem of Windows.
If they DOJ split MS we would have a cool office suite, SharePoint, visual studio and cloud services on all platforms. Oddly the new MS is moving in this direction as it cares about clouds azure and software rentals. But the Windows kernel is not bad today and like what vs code and visual studio are today.
http://saveie6.com/
Why aren't you going w/ the version that comes w/ FreeBSD 11 or even 10? Who's asking you to use the bleeding edge versions? Is there something major that's there on FreeBSD 12 that's not yet there on 11 that's listed in the above summary?
I'm kind of with you. For most of my working life, I've needed to use Windows there. Almost all that time, I've used some Unix variant (usually Linux) at home.
I've loved and hated both Windows and Linux depending on what nuisance "feature" I was having to work around. I've had problems with both, and also with the BSD variants, AIX, SCO, and even Xenix. All that I ask of an OS really is that it does the basics without too much trouble and that it gets out of my way.
Windows 10 gets in my way a bit, but most of the time it's fine, better than its predecessors and not much worse than Ubuntu. It's not as good for that as many of the *nix variants, but it goes a long way toward the "just works" principle most of the time.
Can I run the software I want? Yes. Does it support the programming languages I use? Yes. Does it support my preferred shell? No, at least not well. Not until recently. I like bash. I'm good with DOS, functionally literate with PowerShell (not great,) but I missed bash when working with Windows and the dozens of tools like sed, nl, wc, awk and similar whenever I was in Windows. There are so many little things that I want to do from time to time which were just a pain to do in Windows, so much so that usually I have to put time into importing some poor substitute versions of the tools I missed. Finally, Windows gives me the tools that make daily work easier in a way that is actually supported. I can't help but be ecstatic about that.
I see the holy war of Unix/Linux/BSD vs Apple/Microsoft still makes tolerance of the "enemy" a crime. Be that as it may, I'm happy that the OS that I'm forced to use on a daily basis finally has the tools that make my life easier.
I use Linux every single day and I have not had a single reliability issue. Meh. Talk is cheap.
There has been a 'Windows Subsystem for Linux' for years now, and we call it Wine (www.winehq.org)
What Microsoft is providing is a Linux compatibility subsystem for Windows. Something Cygwin has been doing for decades, granted the Microsoft solution seems to be more polished.
The biggest problem with WSL is that the mount performance is unusable for every day web development.
There's been a pending issue on GitHub for a year at https://github.com/Microsoft/B....
The TL;DR is, a real world web application might be able to load and get updated in 5 seconds in development on native Linux (imagine a large Rails app with hundreds of assets), but the same exact app ran through WSL takes 32 seconds before you can see your changes. That's straight up unusable.
Personally, I just run VMWare in Unity mode. At the end of the day it lets me run graphical Linux apps with floating windows that feel and act as if they were running in Windows. The performance is excellent (it feels nearly identical to a native Linux experience with none of the WSL downsides). If anyone is interested, I put together a screencast and have a few screenshots showing how to do it at https://nickjanetakis.com/blog....
I have been running only Linux for the last 20 years. There are some media programs that only run in Windows. I do not trust Windows privacy at all. I would love to see Microsoft create a container that runs programs that Wine can not run.
LOL It was a good choice, I think. The person who moderated my post down also has a strange definition for "fact."
They can mod this one down too. I've got karma to burn.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
TrueOS is based off of current which is why I always had problems. If it were based off of stable it would be different
http://saveie6.com/
"Windows 10 is just a HUGE regression over Windows 7." Agreed. Fortunately, I've been able to get rid of some of the regression using Classic Start Menu and WinAero Tweaker, including most importantly for me the stupid way that the top bar on apps doesn't change color to tell whether it has keyboard focus. (I don't think it works for MsOffice, but I don't have that installed, so I can't tell.)
Does anyone know why the top bar on an app has to be so big? It used to be much smaller (i.e. not take up so much screen real estate) under Win7. It's one Win10 annoyance that I haven't been able to get rid of.
I thought the Linux (ok, not Unix...) philosophy was this: http://dilbert.com/strip/1995-...
Adobe Acrobat (which I'm assuming looks the same as Adobe's reader, maybe bad assumption) is the one piece of software that makes Edge look good. Sort of like ISIS making Al Qaeda look good--but I digress... Each iteration of Acrobat has gotten a worse UI. Huge icons that you can't get rid of, everything is flat so you can't tell what is turned on or off, menu no longer makes sense, and so on and on. At home, I use the free version of PDF-XChange Editor for reading (and annotating) PDFs; highly recommended.
Contact me directly, I'll sell you one!
Is it time to start calling this 'GNU/Windows' yet ?
I want a FreeBSD based stable OS with the GUI and ease of use of Ubuntu of 2006 with compviz and the app and development ecosystem of Windows.
NetBSD would be better ;) But, I do admit the Ubuntu circa 2006-2011 or so were pretty easy, but why not go with Mint as of 2014 or 2015? I never used compviz, so can't comment.
Regarding the app and development ecosystem of windows? Are you kidding me? The apps are generally terrible, the development ecosystem seriously blows donkey turds. And yes, I have done windows system development recently enough to have a real opinion about how badly the entire windows system sucks, internally. I don't believe win10 made any improvements.
If they DOJ split MS we would have a cool office suite, SharePoint, visual studio and cloud services on all platforms. Oddly the new MS is moving in this direction as it cares about clouds azure and software rentals. But the Windows kernel is not bad today and like what vs code and visual studio are today.
MS Office sucks ass. Always has. It didn't "win" because it was best. It won because MS leveraged their OS monopoly to kill all competition.
Sharepoint, let me count the ways it sucks. You can start with having to write code for every little function and....never mind, I'll never finish this post.
The windows kernel is a pile of moldy swiss cheese as far as security goes. It's a fundamental failure at the base architectural level. I don't expect this to ever get fixed until the kernel is replaced.
While Visual Studio is sucky, so is Xcode. Android Studio isn't absolutely terrible, I'm still getting used to it. Eclipse works pretty well for what I use it for, IntelliJ seems adequate as well, I just don't prefer it (No choice with Android Studio, obviously) There's a host of other IDEs I've used in the past, all are pretty much subsets of VS/Xcode functionality, with some being significantly less capable.
The cesspool just got a check and balance.
I want a FreeBSD based stable OS with the GUI and ease of use of Ubuntu of 2006 with compviz and the app and development ecosystem of Windows.
NetBSD would be better ;) But, I do admit the Ubuntu circa 2006-2011 or so were pretty easy, but why not go with Mint as of 2014 or 2015? I never used compviz, so can't comment.
Regarding the app and development ecosystem of windows? Are you kidding me? The apps are generally terrible, the development ecosystem seriously blows donkey turds. And yes, I have done windows system development recently enough to have a real opinion about how badly the entire windows system sucks, internally. I don't believe win10 made any improvements.
If they DOJ split MS we would have a cool office suite, SharePoint, visual studio and cloud services on all platforms. Oddly the new MS is moving in this direction as it cares about clouds azure and software rentals. But the Windows kernel is not bad today and like what vs code and visual studio are today.
MS Office sucks ass. Always has. It didn't "win" because it was best. It won because MS leveraged their OS monopoly to kill all competition.
Sharepoint, let me count the ways it sucks. You can start with having to write code for every little function and....never mind, I'll never finish this post.
The windows kernel is a pile of moldy swiss cheese as far as security goes. It's a fundamental failure at the base architectural level. I don't expect this to ever get fixed until the kernel is replaced.
While Visual Studio is sucky, so is Xcode. Android Studio isn't absolutely terrible, I'm still getting used to it. Eclipse works pretty well for what I use it for, IntelliJ seems adequate as well, I just don't prefer it (No choice with Android Studio, obviously) There's a host of other IDEs I've used in the past, all are pretty much subsets of VS/Xcode functionality, with some being significantly less capable.
Exactly they all suck in their own little ways :-)
As old farts as we are you can whine about Microsoft Office but I do not see much is better these days. It won for a reason. Sure WordPerfect was better and some law firms stuck around with it and a few enterprises used Lotus Notes over Exchange because it was better at the time. However, overall with Excel and PowerPoint and Outlook with the PHB must have free/busy and conference room availability it won. Libreoffice is plain ugly and the included spreadsheet program is no Excel. It reminds me of office 97. Actually, I think Microsoft has a history of making mediocre operating systems or buying them I should say. But make decent developer tools and office productivity programs. That is their strength.
You may hate me but I am getting used to Office 365 with SharePoint, Dwelve, Dynamics, teams, and bookings besides the standard office suite it includes. They are web based so check them out? I disagree with Eclipse. But if I had a gun to my head and had to choose Apple or Windows. I would pick Windows in a heart beat.
The good news is Microsoft is going pro opensource and multiplatform now as people are moving to mobile and clouds and do not care about Windows like they once did. It is a different company now as Gates and Balmer have both left and competition changed them
http://saveie6.com/
Exactly they all suck in their own little ways :-)
As old farts as we are you can whine about Microsoft Office but I do not see much is better these days. It won for a reason.
Maybe that's because:
Libreoffice is plain ugly and the included spreadsheet program is no Excel. It reminds me of office 97.
That's interesting. Because that's the last usable interface of Office, IMNSHO. (Office 2000/2003 etc used the same interface, more or less, it wasn't until the horrible ribbon in 2010 that things really went south - yeah, that's a great idea - let's make context sensitive menus where 70% of the things you'd need to look up through the menu system are hidden by default - make it a game of hide and seek instead, because, you know, there's nothing more productive than that.)
But make decent developer tools and office productivity programs. That is their strength.
You may hate me but I am getting used to Office 365 with SharePoint, Dwelve, Dynamics, teams, and bookings besides the standard office suite it includes. They are web based so check them out?
Why would I hate you? The fact that they're web-based is the first reason I dislike them. I'm often moving about and not connected to the internet when I need to use office software. Their offline functionality just isn't there yet. Sharepoint as a consumer isn't overly terrible, I guess. It's when you need to customize it you wind up having to write code for everything, no matter how small a change to the basic flow Sharepoint provides out of the box. That sucks. Their development tools are mediocre at best, and their documentation, well, used toilet paper is sometimes a better source of information.
I disagree with Eclipse. But if I had a gun to my head and had to choose Apple or Windows. I would pick Windows in a heart beat.
Eclipse is a system you have to use enough to like, much like IntelliJ. Although, having used the latest iterations of both quite a bit recently, IntelliJ appears to be lacking some significant ease of use features I leverage in Eclipse. Nothing too terrible, but it does require thinking and typing more. On the plus side, it does handle method completions a little better when looking up a new name with arguments, but fails in loading args for a new reference.
As for having to choose windows or something else, it would almost always be something else. It would always be something else if the choice is win10, as that's not a choice, but something you wish on your enemies. Given Apple's relatively stable OS since 10.9 more than 3 years ago, I wonder at your Apple hatred. They certainly make good hardware, although I'm no fan of the latest touchbar MBPs. Note that OSX overall has been pretty decent, the instability introduced in 10.7/10.8 will wind up being for a good reason that will become evident in another 3-5 years. That's when MS will figure out that massively multi-core CPUs are the future and scramble to cobble together some sort of OS that works on it while Apple's OSX will just work, because that's what the fundamental change under the covers was all about. I'm amazed on the one hand they pulled it off with so little negative effects. OTOH, I would have preferred that it didn't come out until at least 10.9. iOS is also benefiting from those changes, and also has experienced some of the pain, since iOS 9 and later.
The good news is Microsoft is going pro opensource and multiplatform now as people are moving to mobile and clouds and do not care about Windows like they once did. It is a different company now as Gates and Balmer have both left and competition changed them
They're moving to cloud because if they don't, their business will b
The cesspool just got a check and balance.
Sadly we're stuck with the results of the previous management's purchasing decisions ("whatever's cheap at BestBuy"). I think we have 4 machines that have 'pro' versions of Windows now, so we're getting there. I guess it's my failing for not being able to implement the solution for lack of a time machine.
There is no XUL, only WebExtensions...
Also, having followed the totally problem free release of Windows 10 fairly closely, I've seen a large number of threads detailing random issues and breakage with WSUS. Hopefully all fixed, it would be very nice to have.
There is no XUL, only WebExtensions...