Inside the Creation of the Microsoft Surface Book

Re:Inside the Creation of the Microsoft Surface Book by nilkn on Thursday October 08, 2015 @11:23AM (#10353329)

I had to solve this problem when I built a new high-end desktop aimed at gaming a while back.

As it happens, Windows 10 is actually pretty great from a basic UX point of view. In many ways I find it better than OS X now in this regard, which I didn't think I'd ever say.

But the lack of Unix underpinnings was a big loss. My solution was to run Debian in Virtualbox. I set it up with xfce as the default window manager, since it tends to run really well in a VM. But in truth I almost always use xmonad, which runs even better in a VM. For me at least, this has been a nearly perfect solution.

I imagine the same would work on a Surface Book.

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Re:Inside the Creation of the Microsoft Surface Book by ane on Thursday October 08, 2015 @11:44AM (#10353491)

With the addition of virtual desktops to Windows 10 you can keep the full-screen Virtualbox in another desktop. Switching between OSs just by pressing Ctrl+Super-Right/Left is fun.

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Re:Inside the Creation of the Microsoft Surface Book by shermanyo on Friday October 09, 2015 @12:53AM (#10358253)

"With the addition of virtual desktops..."

I heard they're adding SSH soon too. May get a usable workstation out of windows one of these days...

/ducks

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Re:Inside the Creation of the Microsoft Surface Book by yareally on Thursday October 08, 2015 @12:12PM (#10353685)

Hyper-v runs debian fine if you rather avoid virtual box. Also there's cygwin for anything that doesn't require a vm (scripting). I'd always run a dev environment as a vm to simulate a production environment. However, if I'm just writing bash scripts or anything that doesn't require installing a db/web server/etc cygwin is adequate enough.

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Re:Inside the Creation of the Microsoft Surface Book by untog on Thursday October 08, 2015 @11:27AM (#10353367)

My solution was to run Debian in Virtualbox

I think that's what I'd do. I don't have a problem running Sublime etc. in Windows, so I figure I'd only need command line access to the Linux box, so even windowing isn't a problem.

But still, my Macbook Pro is only about a year old. As much as I want to justify that upgrade...

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Re:Inside the Creation of the Microsoft Surface Book by thachmai on Thursday October 08, 2015 @11:39AM (#10353451)

A great thing about Macbook Pro is their high resell value.

I plan to sell my 2014 MBP when I get this. I'd lose around 20-30% for one year of utilisation, good enough for me.

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