It really isn't any more. I play a lot of games and only one so far has refused to work well on Linux, and that's one which is emulated on Windows so I can't blame Linux too much for it. And that's on a laptop with nvidia's power-saving shit thrown into the mix. As for entertainment, aside from Firefox having issues with hardware acceleration, most of which have either been fixed or are being fixed, I haven't faced any in Linux that I haven't on Windows. That said, I don't use HDR, so I can't vouch for that.
On the other hand, I've had significant performance issues with WSL, especially on disk use, and I don't really care for windows update bugging me all the time and the telemetry. I jumped on board Linux with Pop!_OS and it's been a delight. I used to be just as negative on Linux, but I have been so, so happy I've been proven wrong.
I think this hasn't been true for some time for studio games. Most (big budget) games are ported to windows from consoles, except for indie titles
But at least now it works! (Unless it doesn't because some retarded anti-cheat software which doesn't actually prevents cheating, gets me banned after a few minutes. Looking at you Apex Legends)
But they went down the navel-gazing path - everything pointing inwards to their ecosystem and picking off the useful interoperability stuff little by little until almost nothing is left.
wsl -u root /usr/sbin/service <daemon-name> start
wsl -u root /etc/init.d/<daemon-name> start
Note that, for my case, WSL 2 requires an additional command to map a TCP port from external adapters to the VM's "host-only" interface, e.g.,
powershell.exe -NoProfile -NoLogo -Command
netsh interface portproxy add v4tov4
listenport=2022 listenaddress=0.0.0.0
connectport=2022 "connectaddress=$(
wsl -u root -e perl -e '
print qq{$1}
if qx{ip -br addr show eth0}
=~ m{ ([0-9.]+)/}')"
You could have already been doing that for years[0].
Just because you don't like linux desktop environments, doesn't mean everyone doesn't. I've used several linux desktop environments, and I prefer all of them to Windows (my current favorite is i3/sway). Of course that is a personal preference. I know some people prefer the windows (or mac) desktop experience to linux's, and that's fine. Just don't say that my preference is invalid.
> Scared of what?
That they will try to pull off the "Extinguish" phase of their infamous "Embrace, Extend, Extinguish". I am doubtful that they would be successful extinguish linux at this point, but whatever they do to attempt such a feat could very well cause some pain for desktop linux users.
For C++ and C# windows has the best IDE for it. For C++ CLion is the next best IDE but it's nowhere near as fast or snappy as windows visual studio IDE.
Also keep in mind most developers use visual studio code nowadays which is a microsoft creation.
To admit, it has one of the best debuggers though. But CLion seems to have catched up in that department, and seems to have way better CMake integration than VS does. CLion still needs more work on performance (as well as support for other build systems), but it’s still the editor that I’m optimistic about.
VS2019 frequently freezes for multiple seconds. When project files change (e.g. because you check out a different branch) VS often fails to load the modified projects and I need to restart the IDE.
Then there's the fact that the refactoring tools in VS2019, despite improving significantly since older versions, are still way behind ReSharper or IntelliJ.
I also generally dislike the UI I'm VS2019. The Git integration works, but it's cumbersome to use. You can't easily have multiple run configurations. The error/warning list pops up seemingly at random.
I use Rider now. It's not perfect, but I am just much more productive in that environment.
I wouldn't want to try to directly deliver anything from such an environment that I would ask other people to run. Even my more-trusted development laptop feels scary at times, especially when I'm operating in environments where I have to do about the same thing as above with installing a dozen dependencies from who-knows-whom. I generally use separate build UIDs for some measure of separation in these cases, but we still have Linux and X being potential emmentaler attack surfaces, and I haven't yet arranged my workflow to the point that spinning up new virtual machines is trivial, especially because then you have a lot more friction with testing GUI software, sharing existing files, etc. etc.—most of the easier solutions to which seem to be very cloud-oriented and “when your Internet connection goes down, so does everything else”, which is something I insist on pushing back against in this context, including because “someone upstream did something unexpected and now everything is instantly broken in a way I have no real leverage over” is its own massive trust hazard.
My dedicated low-sensitivity machine isn't very powerful, so the cost wasn't as much of an issue as it could have been; it was a midrange laptop several years ago which I'm still using. If your workplace environment comes with its own hardware, then that's a thing too.
It would certainly be nice to have better, though, and the desire for less redundancy of costly hardware is legitimate. My desired setup from a while ago, which I never managed thus far, is to have more powerful hardware with multiple boot configurations, but not all of them persistently present like most multi-boot machines: instead, I would physically attach and detach system and user disks, assuming that firmware-level attack persistence is rare, and then rely on power-down flushing any lower-trust code before attaching a higher-trust disk. It'd be hard to ask most people to do this, though.
Somehow I just don't see the same demand for people on macs/linux and WINE. It seems like a niche interest to actively want to combine the two worlds and I am VERY interested if any significant number of people use this who are not driven by gaming needs.
I don't see how. I pretty much think anyone should do whatever they want with their computers. Windows is acceptable for some, and not for others. I can't see the point of getting mad about what software other people are running.
I have never used WSL, but if I ever do, it definitely won't be for gaming.
First of all, because I've seen many a PC game anti-cheat software cause system-wide issues.
Second, because I don't even do those things in the same room.
Third, because for your common web developer a 2nd PC is cheap. You can get a refurbished i5/i7 machine, add a new 32GB of RAM and a 512GB SSD for less than $500. [0] This will last you for 5 years, easy.
I'm also in my 40s and I like things simple, clear-cut and easy. Mixing Windows with Linux is none of those. Dealing with one work OS is by far easier than dealing with two of them. Also, XFCE runs circles around the Windows GUI while providing better features liked a tabbed file browser and a taskbar that natively supports all the features that I used to have to hack into Windows with 7+ taskbar tweaker.
Until one day, this part wasn’t true any more:
> Third, because for your common web developer a 2nd PC is cheap. You can get a refurbished i5/i7 machine, add a new 32GB of RAM and a 512GB SSD for less than $500. [0] This will last you for 5 years, easy.
Unfortunately not all types of dev work can be done on a middle-of-the-road machine.
Scared of what?
I have spent years either in Window's inferior environment for development or having to dual boot or running something like VMWare workstation. I do that because linux is inferior for gaming/entertainment. I have never "enjoyed" a single linux desktop environment, I spend the majority of my time coding or running stuff on terminal.
I'm in my 40s and tired of going back and forth between the two. WSL has been a godsend
Linux has as much to be scared about from Microsoft as Microsoft has to be scared of Linux gaming