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Comment by devjab | Hacker News Reader

It’s still easy to setup, it’s all the commands that are different in powershell. So if you’re doing a lot of Google programming it’s not going to be easy to actually use Python if you’re running things from a command line.

That being said Microsoft know windows is terrible for software development which is why it’s so easy to use Linux inside Windows with WSL2. Since Docker Desktop for Windows requires WSL2 it’s very common for any developer AD account to have it locally as admin.

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It isn't easy for folks that see UNIX everywhere, and nowadays a Linux VM makes more sense than the old POSIX subsystem, that is all.

For better or worse, UNIX has won on embedded and server room.

Despite my UNIX experience across all known vendors, I only use WSL for Linux containers.

    For better or worse, UNIX has won on embedded and server room.

I think this is the HN bubble at work. Maybe you mean something qualitatively or quantitatively different than I do when you say server room but every client I've worked with in my extremely conservative industry in the past ten years has been running on site, coloc, or cloud "server rooms" on windows.

No, this the cloud speaking, where Microsoft themselves acknowledge Azure has > 60% workloads on Linux.

On embedded most RTOS support some variation of POSIX, even if not fully compliant.

Windows servers seem to be left to Microsoft shops, running a mix of .NET Framework with IIS, SQL Server, Sitecore, Sharepoint, Dynamics, AD.

I’ve spent a long time in non tech enterprise and I think unix won. 15 years ago you would hire someone and they would be proficient in Windows and Microsoft office. Now people have grown up with Macbooks, Chromebooks and mobile/tablets. It’s not a major issue yet, but it’s increasingly becoming one as the generations in the workplace are slowly shifting.

> That being said Microsoft know windows is terrible for software development which is why it’s so easy to use Linux inside Windows with WSL2.

What are you smoking man? Don't impose your beliefs as facts upon Microsoft.

I don't think Microsoft is stupid, they know that they have the lions share of developers- they're also aware that they are losing to linux in a big way when it comes to service deployment environments. I even heard Azure itself does not run Hyper-V on Windows anymore (though, who can be sure).

It's a smart play for them to have WSL- it means less friction to target Linux and will keep people writing software on Windows (which increases the likelihood of making software for Windows- especially developer tooling).

I think the parent is wrong that developing software on Windows is hard, my original comment up-thread was largely regarding the fact that in the late-90's and early-00's internet access was not common and getting your hands on a Microsoft Development environment was the furthest thing from easy. Linux, ironically, was easier as it came with all kinds of documentation and interpreters and compilers out of the box.

It certainly still does run on a Windows flavour,

https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/blog/windowsosplatform/a...

However they have been working on something else for specific workloads,

https://opensource.microsoft.com/blog/2024/11/07/introducing...

Huh? Then why WSL2 if not because Windows sucks?

(This latter, Windows sucking, is not necessarily meant in isolation but as part of our world: Windows is not supported by many modern tools.)

It’s possible to accept there are many dev tasks that can only really be achieved on Linux without accepting Windows sucks. The first is pretty much inarguable, the second is emotive and imprecise.

Lots of tools are only built to run on Linux and are ported over in ways that just about run to windows. Wsl was an enormous step up from Cygwin in allowing windows developers to use those tools and wsl2 is another huge leap in that direction.

I don’t think windows sucks, I think that a lot of people outright refuse to use windows and design their tools to run on Linux only, making choices that are optimal for Linux but not for windows. two examples are processes vs threads and opening/closing lots of files. Ironically the Linux first approach of processes over threads doesn’t really scale to the level we want. Postgres is a great example of trying very hard to be multithreaded as it’s hit the multiprocess limit, and struggling to do so.

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