Comment by thomastjeffery | Hacker News Reader

Comment by thomastjeffery | Hacker News Reader

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Except in order to succeed, they have to do the embrace part.

The primary factors for me using Linux right now, in order of importance:

1. Tiling Window Manager

2. Functional Declarative System-wide package manager (NixOS)

3. Cleanliness/simplicity (This is vague, but I have exactly the software I asked for and nothing else).

4. Configurability (I can adjust quirky in-the-middle software like my file manager, taskbar/clock, etc. No immutable one-size-fits-all UI/UX)

5. Repairability (Given time and patience, I can fix Linux problems. Fixing Windows is black magic, and I'm very often reminded, simultaneously, how much of an expert and how much of a novice I am on the CR/LF hand path.)

6. Auditability (Open source is more trustworthy, since source code can be freely audited by anyone at any time. Active free software projects accept security patches quickly and cleanly.)

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Windows' design is diametrically opposed to all of these, and I can scarcely imagine a version that would allow a true tiling window manager (as opposed to the contemporary explorer.exe hacks).

Give me these features, and I will be truly impressed.

Do all that, then do the extinguish step, and you will really blow my mind.

Well of course you're inoculated from the embrace but a ton of people aren't. If enough of the Linux people around you are embraced by WSL, there might come unforeseen consequences.

You should be scared.

Most of the casual windows users I've talked to have complained to me, unprovoked, about how bad windows is for them.

Microsoft has a long way to go, even for the average user, and they are still moving clearly in the opposite direction.

The casual Linux users I know feel the same, but more stubbornly.

Windows getting better is, for me, a fantasy, not a fear. At least then I would have fewer people begging me for the kinds of tech support needs that should have been factored out in 2008 (or much sooner), that Windows has instead kept alive into 2023.

Of course Linux offers tons of features people like me or you might like (I'm a KDE dev), but there is also a vast amount of Linux user who for example discovered Linux by installing a VM for an uni project or have to use a POSIX environment for a programming project and then decided to stick with Linux because they liked it. There is a serious risk that people won't be tempted to try the Linux desktop anymore and instead will just use WSL. This is bad as it means less potential new contributors and enforce even more the dominance of Windows on the desktop.

MS can't grok functional software (in every sense of the word) so something like Nix is off the table.

Currently working on writing native uis for a small service I'm writing .. gtk, at, swiftui, ios and android are easy. Windows is a nightmare.

Depends on which stack you're picking on Windows side, just like there are two major APIs on iOS and Android, three on macOS,...

The last useful Gtk in comparison with what is there on Windows was version 3, they even killed their designer for version 4, and version 5 roadmap was recently announced at FOSDEM.

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