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Comment by hellcow | Hacker News Reader

I've been using Macs for years and recently switched to Windows 10 as my primary dev device. Bash on Windows is almost as good as running on a Linux kernel, and it's not finished yet. Truly the only thing I miss is Sketch.

Recent changes have made Windows very approachable/usable for a Linux and Mac power user.

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Thanks for your feedback. Let me ask you a few more questions about your experience.

The _nix commands/tools you're used to don't just start and end with Bash, right? What about the other commands/tools you used that still aren't in Windows? Do you spend a majority of your time in the command line in Win10 and you still don't feel limited by it?

What about the horrible registry hell? Don't you sometimes need to go into the magical world of #RANDOMWORD1>#RANDOMWORD2>#RANDOMWORD3>... in the registry editor to make Windows behave the way you want to?

Does Windows still automatically reboot for security updates, ignoring whatever else you might have running on the machine?

In my personal experience regarding your last question, the security updates on my Surface Pro 4 have always asked me if I wanted to restart my machine or delay it til off hours (anywhere from 12-5am). I've also been offered to schedule when restarts occur.

Seconded. I was a fairly early adopter of Windows 10, and the updates have never been an issue for me. I changed the update setting to 'notify to schedule restarts' and it's always prompted me to schedule it myself, rather than just doing it when it thinks I won't be using the computer.

It's that simple.

The only windows thing I changed is to use Classic Shell instead of the new start menu - other than that, it's fantastic, and a good evolution to windows 7. Going back feels like going back to XP.

With the new Anniversary Update you can set Active Hours when Windows 10 won't attempt any updates at all....

> The _nix commands/tools you're used to don't just start and end with Bash, right? What about the other commands/tools you used that still aren't in Windows?

bash on Windows is a full distro wrapped in lxrun. tmux works, nginx works, most things you apt-get from the Ubuntu repos Just Work. That alone places is far ahead of fucking around with ports or homebrew or whichever unholy combination you're trying on OS X.

And, if you use Ubuntu on the server (or are prepared to hack around replacing Ubuntu on Windows with your preferred distro) is a much better match for your runtime.

> What about the horrible registry hell?

The last time I had to care about the registry was Windows 2000.

I haven't edited a Windows registry for a decade at least. It's just not a problem anymore. I suppose if you develop Windows native apps, you might have to deal with it.

Between Bash, Powershell (which is awesome), and Cygwin/MinGW, you can get access to most of the Unix commands and tools you are used to.

I highly recommend learning Powershell, which is really nice. Instead of forcing Windows to be like Unix, it's better to learn to live with Powershell for a while, and then bring in the Unix utilities if you really need them. If you give Powershell a chance, you may find that you don't want to use Bash anymore.

The main hurdle to development on Windows is application support, not command line tools. For example, there is no official Redis build for Windows. Installing Python and Ruby can be a little bit difficult on Windows compared to other platforms. But lots of other languages, including Java, are perfectly functional.

> Installing Python and Ruby can…

Huh, like next, next, finish?

Yeah, and then some of this stuff: https://docs.python.org/2/using/windows.html

None of that is required, and newer installers can set your path with a checkbox.

I have tried Powershell recently. While the language itself is nice enough (if a bit verbose), getting a script to run is such a hassle. The security model is both overzealous and unpredictable. I finally get it running without questions for a while, but then it starts throwing up security prompts at random.

"Bash for Windows" is pretty much Ubuntu for Windows -- you can apt-get other commands/tools.

I actually edit the registry on first install to clean stuff up. But there are the same magic elements to OS X as well if you want to get that custom. For most people, it's completely unnecessary.

As for security updates, Windows does what you tell it to do. I've always had it set to download and not install them.

To answer your question, I haven't edited the Windows registry since XP. Reboots are still far too frequent but are at least scheduled at night. "Bash for Windows" is a bad name for Ubuntu apps running natively on the Windows kernel. You have all Ubuntu tools available to you natively--it's honestly a remarkable engineering feat, and once they implement SA_RESTART for Golang it'll be everything I need. You can even access your standard Windows files via Bash via /mnt/c. Cat, tmux, awk and more all work brilliantly.

Adobe's XD is coming to Windows within a month or two. It appears to be a good alternative clone of Sketch. http://www.adobe.com/products/experience-design.html

(As a primary Windows person, Sketch is one of the things I do envy about having an OS X computer!)

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