Why Microsoft needed to make Windows run Linux software

And how it could leapfrog Apple as the dev platform of choice.

Read the whole story

 

[Kefka]

Is it any surprise the guy who gets paid to cover MSFT products is suggesting that a Microsoft product will somehow become a preferred development platform?

As if we needed proof Ars went to pot a long time ago, just look at the number of "readers" who think a down-vote equates to a viable counterargument.

 

[vartec]

sty[/url]":1g69xgli]

vartec[/url]":1g69xgli]

zogus[/url]":1g69xgli]

vartec[/url]":1g69xgli]

zogus[/url]":1g69xgli]

Fast forward to February 2016.
[...]
Well, again, I was surprised that the situation is still the same--the cheap Windows laptops are hobbled with huge 15" chassis coupled with crappy displays, and the nice ones with SSDs and retina-grade displays are as expensive as equivalent Macs. At least the trackpads are much better today. My wife takes one last look at Surface Book, shrugs at the sticker price, and says "At this kind of a price, I'd rather get the Mac."

You must be living in some parallel universe. In my universe MBA 13" has crappy 1440x900 screen, while MB 12" is seriously underpowered and costs $1300 + tax for basic version.

Meanwhile you can get ASUS UX305 with Skylake CPU for $700.

Yeah, I think we do live in different universes, because I clearly wrote my wife was benchmarking machines against the MBP, not MBA or 12" MB (which I had left out of the consideration because they're both overdue for renewals) and you blithely ignored that. Also in my parallel universe, the Skylake ASUS costs $1200 where I live (Japan).

So you're saying that how much is quad-core Skylake i7 MBP in Japan?

Just checked. 2197.8USD with tax, without shipping.

This is the cheap, 2.2GHz version without AMD graphics.

Skylake quad-core i7? Either you're looking at dual-core or you're looking at machine with Haswell (as in 2013) quad-core. Apple doesn't sell quad-core Skylakes yet.

 

[Kefka]

vartec[/url]":2cbfjobo]

sty[/url]":2cbfjobo]

vartec[/url]":2cbfjobo]

zogus[/url]":2cbfjobo]

vartec[/url]":2cbfjobo]

zogus[/url]":2cbfjobo]

Fast forward to February 2016.
[...]
Well, again, I was surprised that the situation is still the same--the cheap Windows laptops are hobbled with huge 15" chassis coupled with crappy displays, and the nice ones with SSDs and retina-grade displays are as expensive as equivalent Macs. At least the trackpads are much better today. My wife takes one last look at Surface Book, shrugs at the sticker price, and says "At this kind of a price, I'd rather get the Mac."

You must be living in some parallel universe. In my universe MBA 13" has crappy 1440x900 screen, while MB 12" is seriously underpowered and costs $1300 + tax for basic version.

Meanwhile you can get ASUS UX305 with Skylake CPU for $700.

Yeah, I think we do live in different universes, because I clearly wrote my wife was benchmarking machines against the MBP, not MBA or 12" MB (which I had left out of the consideration because they're both overdue for renewals) and you blithely ignored that. Also in my parallel universe, the Skylake ASUS costs $1200 where I live (Japan).

So you're saying that how much is quad-core Skylake i7 MBP in Japan?

Just checked. 2197.8USD with tax, without shipping.

This is the cheap, 2.2GHz version without AMD graphics.

Skylake quad-core i7? Either you're looking at dual-core or you're looking at machine with Haswell (as in 2013) quad-core. Apple doesn't sell quad-core Skylakes yet.

Pretty sure I'm typing this on a quad-core Skylake box from Apple.

http://meincmagazine.com/apple/2015/10/ap ... c-refresh/

http://www.everymac.com/systems/apple/i ... specs.html

 

[ampet]

But that's a fucking iMac. Not a Macbook!

EDIT: I've kept the slightly abusive language as your post was obnoxiously sarcastic before you edited it.

 

[Kefka]

Adriano Petrosillo[/url]":2senud71]But that's a fucking iMac. Not a Macbook!

EDIT: I've kept the slightly abusive language as your post was obnoxiously sarcastic before you edited it.

The statement was: "Apple doesn't sell quad-core Skylakes yet."

The statement was false.

You may have wanted the OP's comment to have been restricted to MacBooks, but I don't see the word "MacBook" appear as a qualifier anywhere in said statement.

 

[pusher robot]

Kefka[/url]":22p2ogag]

Adriano Petrosillo[/url]":22p2ogag]But that's a fucking iMac. Not a Macbook!

EDIT: I've kept the slightly abusive language as your post was obnoxiously sarcastic before you edited it.

The statement was: "Apple doesn't sell quad-core Skylakes yet."

The statement was false.

You may have wanted the OP's comment to have been restricted to MacBooks, but I don't see the word "MacBook" appear as a qualifier anywhere in said statement.

He was participating in a conversation about laptops. If you can't or won't read statements in context, that's your problem.

 

[Count Sessine]

maxim615[/url]":wv9jknn1]I'm quite happy to hear this. I really want Windows to be a bit more Unix-y. Linux is great, but hardware incompatibility, very poor battery management and horrendous GPU support are what keeps me away from completely switching to Linux. If this is as good as they say, I can finally get rid of VMs.

The GPU support is what really hurts, and it's really only partly NVidia's and ATI's fault.

X11 is a clown-shoes architecture. I'm using a GTX950 with a Core i7-4770. This certainly isn't the very fastest machine you can buy today, but put in a historical perspective, this is a machine with truly epic computational horsepower - more MIPS than any computer I have ever owned in the past.

And yet I still can't drag windows or play back video without tearing under Linux with the nvidia-gl binary drivers. Very subtle tearing, but still tearing. Windows, of course, is perfect in this regard; and it has been with desktop hardware going back 15 years.

I wish I had the time to contribute to the nouveau/wayland projects. These folks really are building a better future. Running Weston on my T520 with a comparatively meager Core i5 and Intel HD 4000 GPU is a noticeably better desktop experience.

 

[Count Sessine]

Danrarbc[/url]":g6iqgl45]

Count Sessine[/url]":g6iqgl45]

Danrarbc[/url]":g6iqgl45]
My ThinkPad T61 cost me $716 when I got it. A T-series is very much NOT a toy thank you very much.

How much is a T-series now?

They currently start at $899.00, which is right about what they started at when I got mine. You can almost always get them for less because they always have some sort of sale. Currently the sale isn't so good, it starts at $809.10 at the moment. They'll definitely have a better discount at other times.

$809.10 for a T-series T460 is pretty damn good, especially if it still has the magnesium skeleton. I guess Peter is right - the PC laptop scene really has changed. If this is the new low-water mark for laptops, perhaps my criticism of sub-$1000 laptops needs updating.

 

[Kefka]

pusher robot[/url]":3uv3unjn]

Kefka[/url]":3uv3unjn]

Adriano Petrosillo[/url]":3uv3unjn]But that's a fucking iMac. Not a Macbook!

EDIT: I've kept the slightly abusive language as your post was obnoxiously sarcastic before you edited it.

The statement was: "Apple doesn't sell quad-core Skylakes yet."

The statement was false.

You may have wanted the OP's comment to have been restricted to MacBooks, but I don't see the word "MacBook" appear as a qualifier anywhere in said statement.

He was participating in a conversation about laptops. If you can't or won't read statements in context, that's your problem.

Context isn't immutable, genius. If you're too simple to see how the context was changed to all Apple systems with the statement: "Apple doesn't sell quad-core Skylakes yet", you might want to brush up on those reading comprehension skills.

I'm not going to read five comments worth of context merely to justify somebody else's patently false statement.

Once again, the statement made, with no qualifiers was: "Apple doesn't sell quad-core Skylakes yet."

The OP could have said: "Apple doesn't sell quad-core Skylake laptops yet.", but that isn't what he said, now is it?

 

[ampet]

Count Sessine[/url]":23mhpija]

maxim615[/url]":23mhpija]I'm quite happy to hear this. I really want Windows to be a bit more Unix-y. Linux is great, but hardware incompatibility, very poor battery management and horrendous GPU support are what keeps me away from completely switching to Linux. If this is as good as they say, I can finally get rid of VMs.

The GPU support is what really hurts, and it's really only partly NVidia's and ATI's fault.

X11 is a clown-shoes architecture. I'm using a GTX950 with a Core i7-4770. This certainly isn't the very fastest machine you can buy today, but put in a historical perspective, this is a machine with truly epic computational horsepower - more MIPS than any computer I have ever owned in the past.

And yet I still can't drag windows or play back video without tearing under Linux with the nvidia-gl binary drivers. Very subtle tearing, but still tearing. Windows, of course, is perfect in this regard; and it has been with desktop hardware going back 15 years.

I wish I had the time to contribute to the nouveau/wayland projects. These folks really are building a better future. Running Weston on my T520 with a comparatively meager Core i5 and Intel HD 4000 GPU is a noticeably better desktop experience.

Apparently, outside of certain accessibility features, Wayland is almost indistinguishable in normal operation from X.org if you use GNOME. It also appears, though, that X won't be completely replaceable because of certain features (or better, intentional lack of features in Wayland). There is a sizeable minority who thinks that Wayland has been botched up and it is a lost opportunity; I'm not technical enough on those aspects so I won't comment on this, but I'm probably the kind of user who can only benefit from Wayland.

 

[s73v3r]

tjukken[/url]":3ow7ybvj]"Indeed, for a number of years, it wasn't a huge exaggeration to say that Apple made the only x86 laptops that were both reasonably affordable and pleasant to use."

THAT really was a huge exaggeration. Windows laptops were no harder to use than Apple's. And they were more affordable, as they didn't command the huge premium Apple took for essentially the same hardware.

They weren't hard to use, but they still sucked ass. The trackpads were absolute shit, and most still are. Keyboards and screens can be found on par, but not on laptops that don't have a comparable price point to the Apple ones.

 

[Statistical]

Bash on Win may make a few people's lives easier, but the developer market was already served by Cygwin, VMware and Virtualbox. Also, Cygwin can run X applications, so the Bash on Win impact will be minimal.

Cygwin licensing is insanely expensive for non open source project. Pricing is highly variable but I was once on a project that needed it and was quoted $60K for 3 year license with $10K per year after that.

So let's see "free" (included in cost of OS) vs $10K+ per year? Hmm that is a tough one. Of course that assumes WSL does what it needs to do.

 

[crhilton]

DrPizza[/url]":29c7a9vg]
The same Dell XPS series that has to ship with a different Wi-Fi card than the Windows version because of driver support?

That's irrelevant. It's new, you can easily get it, price is comparable, it works out of the box.

Obviously it's still Linux and comes with all the pros and cons, but it's all ready to go and working for you.
No day lost to checking hardware compatibility, and then three days spent trying to get the supposedly compatible wifi to work with the officially unofficial hack.

 

[tumblrfan69]

betam4x[/url]":1qvymywm]Don't know why the author thinks Ruby is hard to install, there is no truth to that. On OS-X, Ruby is preloaded. It is typically an older version, but any real developer is going to install homebrew. From there you install rbenv, then type a single command to install Ruby. On Linux, you can either apt-get (or use your distros package manager) install ruby or rbenv (like OS-X). Not all that hard. Definitely easier than dealing with Java.

I can setup my developer environment in about 10 minutes on Linux or OS X becuase of apt-get or Homebrew.


It's impossible for me to setup my development environment on Windows.

 

[CarlitosLx]

zogus[/url]":35ecjz5o]

tjukken[/url]":35ecjz5o]"Indeed, for a number of years, it wasn't a huge exaggeration to say that Apple made the only x86 laptops that were both reasonably affordable and pleasant to use."

THAT really was a huge exaggeration. Windows laptops were no harder to use than Apple's. And they were more affordable, as they didn't command the huge premium Apple took for essentially the same hardware.

No they weren't, and aren't.

In Christmas 2011 I was looking for a light laptop to take on a trip. Although I have been a Mac user, I wanted a cheap Windows machine because all I was planning to use on the road were web, mail and a couple of small Windows-only apps, and we all know Apple overcharges, right?

Well, Windows laptops turned out to be either too big (15", 2.5kg and a 1366x768 display?), ran on glacial Atoms, or too expensive (comparable to Macs), and all were hobbled with terrible trackpads. In the end, I was surprised to find that an 11" MacBook Air was the only machine that was neither ridiculously expensive, ridiculously slow, nor absurdly large, all at the same time. So I got one of those, with the Windows apps running in a VM. It's still my road machine today.

Fast forward to February 2016. Now my wife wants a laptop of her own, so we go look for a Windows machine because that is what she uses at work. We started by looking at a MacBook Pro 13", which she liked a lot, and decided to find a Windows machine that is approximately equivalent but is cheaper--because we all know Apple overcharges, right?

Well, again, I was surprised that the situation is still the same--the cheap Windows laptops are hobbled with huge 15" chassis coupled with crappy displays, and the nice ones with SSDs and retina-grade displays are as expensive as equivalent Macs. At least the trackpads are much better today. My wife takes one last look at Surface Book, shrugs at the sticker price, and says "At this kind of a price, I'd rather get the Mac."

So once again I find myself enriching Tim Cook by process of elimination, and I can't help asking myself where this urban legend of Apple's "huge premium" comes from.

My guess is from the iPhone. And maybe the iPad.

Their laptops never were that expensive, when you consider what you get for the price.

And while you can get very nice Windows PCs cheaper than that, it's just that they easily get lost in the middle of the deluge of crappy Windows laptops you find in any retail store.

 

[Viewer]

lewax00[/url]":2jfzh7co]
Hey now, I'm under 30 and I play around with native Windows programming when I get the chance. Problem is, no one seems to be hiring for that. So the short summary of my career is "Java, C# and web development", because that's what pays the bills.

By "native windows programming", you mean desktop Windows GUI software? GUI apps are almost completely web or mobile now. Almost no one makes desktop GUI apps for Windows, Mac, or Linux any more, and there's very little hiring accordingly. This shouldn't be a surprise.

 

[s73v3r]

CmdrKeene[/url]":nahryyeb]

BeowulfSchaeffer[/url]":nahryyeb]"Linux for various reasons still may not be the most comfortable desktop platform..."

I've had both Windows and Linux Mint on my computer for about a year I think. I put Mint on to "try it out" and I like it quite a lot. I rarely go back to windows (7 Pro) and whenever I do, I have to update all of the software and restart the machine, sometimes multiple times. I have to say, Linux just... works.

So getting updates you don't see since you're not using it is a detriment? Wouldn't Linux also have pending updates you'd need to install if your usage pattern was reversed for a while?

Linux updates are generally less disruptive than Windows updates, due to not having to reboot constantly.

 

[Viewer]

What is the purpose of Microsoft having their OS be so different from the dominant *nix model?

Why doesn't Microsoft just use a polished Linux? The one thing people complain about on Linux is sporadic driver/hardware support, and Microsoft can fix that.

Microsoft contributed money and developer time to node.js to help port it to Windows. The software was rearchitected to accommodate this—node.js relies heavily on asynchronous I/O, and the optimal approach for this is different on every platform—and I think most people would agree that the result is that node.js has become better software (it also turns out that Windows' approach to asynchronous I/O is really good).

Async IO is fine on Windows, but it's perfectly good on every modern OS be it Mac/Win/Linux. There is no major advantage or disadvantage to any OS regarding async IO, so it's almost silly to have different incompatible apis and different weird names (Windows calls it IO completion ports).

So, Windows _can_ run Node and Reddis and memcached all these other popular server technologies, but what's the point of Windows having this completely separate API and requiring customizations for everything? I don't see any.

 

[coca-cola]

Still kinda can't believe this is happening. Windows, soon to be flavorfully Unix-y. Delicious.

(Or... gross...?)

 

[CarlitosLx]

cwsars[/url]":1v9ae65d]

Blue Daisy[/url]":1v9ae65d]

WSL also doesn't include X Windows or any other graphical subsystem

*twitch*

There's no such thing as "X Windows." It's called "The X Window System," or "X11" or just "X" among friends.

Thank you, carry on

Why place any reasonable limits on pedantry?

Please, take this opportunity to also inform folks that they are misusing the terms "client" and "server".

Well, in that case allow me to crank the pedantry to 11 and say that since Linux is just the kernel, and since this is actually a new Windows subsystem, and not the kernel itself, it shouldn't be called Linux On Windows.

 

[s73v3r]

argamond[/url]":c188xa1b]

d4Njv[/url]":c188xa1b]

tjukken[/url]":c188xa1b]"Indeed, for a number of years, it wasn't a huge exaggeration to say that Apple made the only x86 laptops that were both reasonably affordable and pleasant to use."

THAT really was a huge exaggeration. Windows laptops were no harder to use than Apple's. And they were more affordable, as they didn't command the huge premium Apple took for essentially the same hardware.

How many years did it take for Windows laptops to stop shipping with 1366x768 displays or poor trackpads? The display, trackpad, and keyboard are the parts of a laptop that users interact with the most. When those are neglected, nothing else matters much.

You could get windows laptops with greater resolution displays back in 2011, possibly earlier

And those laptops were expensive. Generally on par with the Apple hardware cost. Still are.

 

[dj__jg]

tjukken[/url]":bve8tg4w]"Indeed, for a number of years, it wasn't a huge exaggeration to say that Apple made the only x86 laptops that were both reasonably affordable and pleasant to use."

THAT really was a huge exaggeration. Windows laptops were no harder to use than Apple's. And they were more affordable, as they didn't command the huge premium Apple took for essentially the same hardware.

"pleasant"

 

[CarlitosLx]

Viewer[/url]":zita7fmm]What is the purpose of Microsoft having their OS be so different from the dominant *nix model?
Why doesn't Microsoft just use a polished Linux? The one thing people complain about on Linux is sporadic driver/hardware support, and Microsoft can fix that.

Well, if you want to go back 30 years in time and tell the folks that designed Windows NT that, go right ahead.

And if you think Microsoft can fix the sad state that is driver support in Linux, I want some of that thing you're smoking. They can't fix it in Windows, I mean, they had to wait for Intel to fix their crappy drivers for the Surface Book and the Surface Pro 4, how do you propose they fix it for Linux?

 

[s73v3r]

agrouf[/url]":7rjx5vc3]

Meathim[/url]":7rjx5vc3]

agrouf[/url]":7rjx5vc3]In a way that's a failing of the GPL. Maybe it's time for GPL v4. GNU is technically a good system but many people forget or don't care it's about freedom first and foremost. Running GNU on Windows defeats the purpose of GNU.
I know the Ars community doesn't care about freedom and I fully expect a rain of downvotes but I hope the few with an open mind can still read it before it disappears from view.

It's the forth page, the death by vote stuff happens on the first page.

Couldn't the same be said for anything GNU running on anything proprietary? If yes, I think you have many, many forums to hit. ^^

This is not the first instance where GNU is used for its technical merits at the expense of everything it stands for but this is an important case. There will be a new wave of users and developers that will flock to GNU and erode its ethics by ignoring the philosophy that drove GNU since the start. They already call it Linux even when Linux is not even there. They are not educated about software freedom and will demmand convenience at the expense of freedom and patches will follow for Cortana integration in bash. The FSF has to be vigilant to not let that happen.

So users running some software that's free isn't a good thing? They should either run everything GNU, or nothing?

 

[s73v3r]

BarkingGhostAR[/url]":twyhgcpy]I don't get the need for people to compare apples to oranges. One is free based on volunteers developing the Linux platform and the other is a commercial product based on paid for developers because it is their job.

If the Linux arena had half the development money that Windows had for one year it would probably crush the market from corporate to gamers alike. But criticizing Linux for not having drivers because they ignore the fact that development is mostly free is just silly.

Except the vast majority of Linux contributors are paid for their work, because they work for a company that needs those things done. Red Hat, Novell, Cannonical, etc.

And quite frankly, I don't care who's doing the development, or how much it costs. I care about the end result: Does it do what I want it to do? While it's admirable that some Linux devs are volunteering, it doesn't change the fact that their efforts are not good enough, and not helping me do what I want to do.

 

[Count Sessine]

Adriano Petrosillo[/url]":dmfnwv59]

Count Sessine[/url]":dmfnwv59]

maxim615[/url]":dmfnwv59]I'm quite happy to hear this. I really want Windows to be a bit more Unix-y. Linux is great, but hardware incompatibility, very poor battery management and horrendous GPU support are what keeps me away from completely switching to Linux. If this is as good as they say, I can finally get rid of VMs.

The GPU support is what really hurts, and it's really only partly NVidia's and ATI's fault.

X11 is a clown-shoes architecture. I'm using a GTX950 with a Core i7-4770. This certainly isn't the very fastest machine you can buy today, but put in a historical perspective, this is a machine with truly epic computational horsepower - more MIPS than any computer I have ever owned in the past.

And yet I still can't drag windows or play back video without tearing under Linux with the nvidia-gl binary drivers. Very subtle tearing, but still tearing. Windows, of course, is perfect in this regard; and it has been with desktop hardware going back 15 years.

I wish I had the time to contribute to the nouveau/wayland projects. These folks really are building a better future. Running Weston on my T520 with a comparatively meager Core i5 and Intel HD 4000 GPU is a noticeably better desktop experience.

Apparently, outside of certain accessibility features, Wayland is almost indistinguishable in normal operation from X.org if you use GNOME. It also appears, though, that X won't be completely replaceable because of certain features (or better, intentional lack of features in Wayland). There is a sizeable minority who thinks that Wayland has been botched up and it is a lost opportunity; I'm not technical enough on those aspects so I won't comment on this, but I'm probably the kind of user who can only benefit from Wayland.

I can't speak to GNOME on Wayland - I haven't tried it. I'm just waiting for the 4.6 kernel to reach Arch so I can switch to nouveau; Wayland requires KMS (on x86 at least) and nvidia don't really support KMS in their binary driver (actually they apparently do now, but I don't know whether this would satisfy all the prerequisites for running Wayland on the nvidia binary drivers). Soon...soon...

Wayland has a compatibility shim in place - Xwayland - that translates xlib/xcb protocol requests into wayland operations. That's really the first step - get the base compositing out of X11's shaky hands and into something that doesn't have to cross process boundaries a dozen times to process mouse and keyboard events.

But I don't think that we'll ever be rid of X11 - there's so much software out there that will never move to GTK 3.0 or Qt 5, or some other framework that doesn't in some way call down to xlib/xcb. My guess is that 10 years from now I'll be running a wayland desktop, but probably a good third of the software I use will still need to link to xlib/xcb/xwayland.

 

[cliveb.github.io]

"Hackindows" for under a grand. Very well thought through dev perspective.

 

[Viewer]

CarlitosLx[/url]":ajlg22ca]

Viewer[/url]":ajlg22ca]What is the purpose of Microsoft having their OS be so different from the dominant *nix model?
Why doesn't Microsoft just use a polished Linux? The one thing people complain about on Linux is sporadic driver/hardware support, and Microsoft can fix that.

Well, if you want to go back 30 years in time and tell the folks that designed Windows NT that, go right ahead.

If the glory days of Windows NT are over, switch over to something else. There is no need to travel back in time and stop it from being created in the first place.

CarlitosLx[/url]":ajlg22ca]
And if you think Microsoft can fix the sad state that is driver support in Linux, I want some of that thing you're smoking. They can't fix it in Windows, I mean, they had to wait for Intel to fix their crappy drivers for the Surface Book and the Surface Pro 4, how do you propose they fix it for Linux?

Good point. Often my Linux laptops connect to printers or scanners more easily and successfully than Windows. And usually, basic stuff like WiFi and audio works right out of the box with recent hardware and recent Linux, but often, say with the Dell XPS 13, their trackpad uses some fancy new internal trackpad standard, and it takes months for the Linux crowd to have basic functionality working. Where that stuff is designed for Windows and works with Windows on day one.

 

[vartec]

Kefka[/url]"51uzd5g]

Adriano Petrosillo[/url]"51uzd5g]But that's a fucking iMac. Not a Macbook!

EDIT: I've kept the slightly abusive language as your post was obnoxiously sarcastic before you edited it.

The statement was: "Apple doesn't sell quad-core Skylakes yet."

The statement was false.

You may have wanted the OP's comment to have been restricted to MacBooks, but I don't see the word "MacBook" appear as a qualifier anywhere in said statement.

iMac 21" comes with Broadwell, Mini is still on Haswell, Mac Pro haven't seen update in 4 years and still runs on 2010 Westmere. The only quad-core Skylake Apple has is 27" iMac, which uses desktop processor, which is hardly relevant when talking about laptops.

 

[Viewer]

Count Sessine[/url]":17ec2rkm]
But I don't think that we'll ever be rid of X11 - there's so much software out there that will never move to GTK 3.0 or Qt 5, or some other framework that doesn't in some way call down to xlib/xcb.

Most of desktop Linux GUI software is junk anyway. Most users just want a terminal GUI for bash, a web browser, and basic system GUI stuff like user login and Wifi selection. I think getting rid of X11 will be easier than that.

However, I don't fully grasp the benefits of Wayland or Mir. The tech demos are underwhelming to put it mildly.

 

[nzod]

zogus[/url]":2g0kto9e]

tjukken[/url]":2g0kto9e]"Indeed, for a number of years, it wasn't a huge exaggeration to say that Apple made the only x86 laptops that were both reasonably affordable and pleasant to use."

THAT really was a huge exaggeration. Windows laptops were no harder to use than Apple's. And they were more affordable, as they didn't command the huge premium Apple took for essentially the same hardware.

No they weren't, and aren't.

In Christmas 2011 I was looking for a light laptop to take on a trip. Although I have been a Mac user, I wanted a cheap Windows machine because all I was planning to use on the road were web, mail and a couple of small Windows-only apps, and we all know Apple overcharges, right?

Well, Windows laptops turned out to be either too big (15", 2.5kg and a 1366x768 display?), ran on glacial Atoms, or too expensive (comparable to Macs), and all were hobbled with terrible trackpads. In the end, I was surprised to find that an 11" MacBook Air was the only machine that was neither ridiculously expensive, ridiculously slow, nor absurdly large, all at the same time. So I got one of those, with the Windows apps running in a VM. It's still my road machine today.

Fast forward to February 2016. Now my wife wants a laptop of her own, so we go look for a Windows machine because that is what she uses at work. We started by looking at a MacBook Pro 13", which she liked a lot, and decided to find a Windows machine that is approximately equivalent but is cheaper--because we all know Apple overcharges, right?

Well, again, I was surprised that the situation is still the same--the cheap Windows laptops are hobbled with huge 15" chassis coupled with crappy displays, and the nice ones with SSDs and retina-grade displays are as expensive as equivalent Macs. At least the trackpads are much better today. My wife takes one last look at Surface Book, shrugs at the sticker price, and says "At this kind of a price, I'd rather get the Mac."

So once again I find myself enriching Tim Cook by process of elimination, and I can't help asking myself where this urban legend of Apple's "huge premium" comes from.

Maybe it originates outside the US; where I live, Apple machines are *ridiculously* expensive compared to the rest.

 

[brian.reiter]

James Markon[/url]":2bvp4mya]Totally agree with the article. I have asked friends doing security and IT who use Macs: Why a Mac?
Their answer: the terminal.

The only thing I have not seen in the demo is the ability to do "code . " (code dot) and open Visual Studio Code with the current directory you are in.

They have said you can't start any Windows process from the Subsystem for Linux, so this won't work. I think the situation is that they are making no attempt to map a pty to your current window station. This was also an issue in Interix if you used a pty session instead of the special psxss session in the Windows console to start your shell.

 

[fro]

Until Microsoft, Dell, HP, and the like begin producing interesting consumer electronics products their mindshare will continue to suffer. They will need to address that issue before we see smart college students switching platforms in droves.

 

[ChrisSD]

Viewer[/url]":1siyksjd]

Count Sessine[/url]":1siyksjd]
But I don't think that we'll ever be rid of X11 - there's so much software out there that will never move to GTK 3.0 or Qt 5, or some other framework that doesn't in some way call down to xlib/xcb.

Most of desktop Linux GUI software is junk anyway. Most users just want a terminal GUI for bash, a web browser, and basic system GUI stuff like user login and Wifi selection. I think getting rid of X11 will be easier than that.

However, I don't fully grasp the benefits of Wayland or Mir. The tech demos are underwhelming to put it mildly.

Display server protocols aren't sexy. One big benefit of moving to Wayland is that we can ditch and heck of a lot of legacy cruft that had been building up since the 80's.

 

[vartec]

Kefka[/url]":295oycoj]

vartec[/url]":295oycoj]

sty[/url]":295oycoj]

vartec[/url]":295oycoj]

zogus[/url]":295oycoj]

vartec[/url]":295oycoj]

Yeah, I think we do live in different universes, because I clearly wrote my wife was benchmarking machines against the MBP, not MBA or 12" MB (which I had left out of the consideration because they're both overdue for renewals) and you blithely ignored that. Also in my parallel universe, the Skylake ASUS costs $1200 where I live (Japan).

So you're saying that how much is quad-core Skylake i7 MBP in Japan?

Just checked. 2197.8USD with tax, without shipping.

This is the cheap, 2.2GHz version without AMD graphics.

Skylake quad-core i7? Either you're looking at dual-core or you're looking at machine with Haswell (as in 2013) quad-core. Apple doesn't sell quad-core Skylakes yet.

Pretty sure I'm typing this on a quad-core Skylake box from Apple.

http://meincmagazine.com/apple/2015/10/ap ... c-refresh/

http://www.everymac.com/systems/apple/i ... specs.html

27" iMac is a laptop... OK

 

[s73v3r]

enduzzer[/url]":20j7ex3l]

auxilio[/url]":20j7ex3l]
I like Linux - I like the ideas it stands for and I'm comfortable using Bash etc to get things done. But that doesn't mean I'm blind to its shortcomings.

What you call shortcomings are hardware manufacturers' shortcomings. Blame them for their decisions not to support Linux on their hardware.

Doesn't work that way, kiddo. At the end of the day, I want to get my stuff done. So while it sucks that the manufacturers aren't supporting Linux, whoever's fault it is doesn't matter to me. I care about getting my stuff done. And if that means I can't use Linux, then that's a problem with Linux.

 

[jeffrey_jeff_de]

HeadlessRoland[/url]":2ogr9ax6]

BeowulfSchaeffer[/url]":2ogr9ax6]"Linux for various reasons still may not be the most comfortable desktop platform..."

Linux would be my full-timer if all of the web-video providers other than You-Tube would make make their products accessible. Having to resort to kludge-y and unreliable work-abounds just to get products (Netflix, HBONow, Hulu, Amazon Prime Video) that I have paid for gets tiresome.

Amazon Prime Video works fine with Google Chrome on Ubuntu 14.04.

I'd actually be surprised if the same weren't the case for the other streaming platforms you mentioned......

 

[aexcorp]

s73v3r[/url]":2vhqxciw]

argamond[/url]":2vhqxciw]

d4Njv[/url]":2vhqxciw]

tjukken[/url]":2vhqxciw]"Indeed, for a number of years, it wasn't a huge exaggeration to say that Apple made the only x86 laptops that were both reasonably affordable and pleasant to use."

THAT really was a huge exaggeration. Windows laptops were no harder to use than Apple's. And they were more affordable, as they didn't command the huge premium Apple took for essentially the same hardware.

How many years did it take for Windows laptops to stop shipping with 1366x768 displays or poor trackpads? The display, trackpad, and keyboard are the parts of a laptop that users interact with the most. When those are neglected, nothing else matters much.

You could get windows laptops with greater resolution displays back in 2011, possibly earlier

And those laptops were expensive. Generally on par with the Apple hardware cost. Still are.

It's hard to make such generalizations, "PC" laptops have always covered such a wide gamut.

In early 2009, I purchased a Lenovo T500 with a 1600x1050 MATTE screen (a must in my book) and a bunch of bells and whistles (Radeon Mobility 3650M 256MB, 3G adapter I never used, WiFi/WiMAX Intel card, etc.) for slightly under a grand. Dropped another ~$150 to get a total of 8GB of RAM and a nicer, 7.2k RPM HDD, so make it slightly above a grand, which was around $400 less than a similarly configured MBP at the time.

The touchpad was fine, though a smaller size than what Apple offered, but it had the nipple, which I much much prefer. And the keyboard was and remains a dream to this day.

BTW, that computer is still going strong despite grad school abuse, extensive gaming, and lots of international travel. my girlfriend is using it right now at home (it's a bit too heavy for her to carry around, but I'm a big guy so even with the extended battery, it wasn't an issue) as a replacement for a 2008 MBP which has been having issues left and right since 20012 (replaced mobo and optical drive, battery lasts about 30 min top right now).

 

[DKlimax]

darknerd[/url]":5fr2tod7]On Ruby in particular, Ruby ran fine for me, but problems, I have heard about have to do with gems popular with Rails, which have a "works on my laptop" mentality. We got gems that works on Mac OS X and Linux, but failed and no one cared on Windows. Ruby Version Manager (RVM) never really worked well on Windows, especially wish MSYS that came with Git-Bash as bash version was just too old.

Python always seemed to work well on Windows and other platforms. I got NodeJS applications to work (sequelize and express modules), and they worked once Python and VisualStudio Express 2013 (for C++) was installed. I could never say the same with Ruby apps, with gems like charlock_holmes...

Thanks. This might explain some of issues. (Was wondering what exactly would be causing problems)

Avi Sawyer[/url]":5fr2tod7]Windows needs to stop it with the C drive crap. Would be much easier if it would use named volumes like Linux (or even Mac) indeed. I wouldn't have to worry about Drive D renaming itself to Drive H for no apparent reason, and then some other drive becoming drive D all the while an application is trying to access data from it.

It's stupid, it's dumb, it's so 80's, get over it.

First, it is bit newer then Unix-style path and the only component which cares about it is Windows subsystem (backwards compatibility and users accustomed to it)
The only component in kernel which encouters it is Object manager which translates the path into object tree used by kernel-space. (Like file is basic type in Unix, object is basic type in NT Kernel for everything) Kernel doesn't know what this "C:" is. No driver involved in stack knows either.

As for your "renaming problem", that was present ONLY in Windows 9x. NT series kept it consistent. There is no such thin as suddenly renaming. (Unless you change HW obviously)

maxim615[/url]":5fr2tod7]I'm quite happy to hear this. I really want Windows to be a bit more Unix-y. Linux is great, but hardware incompatibility, very poor battery management and horrendous GPU support are what keeps me away from completely switching to Linux. If this is as good as they say, I can finally get rid of VMs.

That is not happening. Otherwise that would be bad idea.

tumblrfan69[/url]":5fr2tod7]

betam4x[/url]":5fr2tod7]Don't know why the author thinks Ruby is hard to install, there is no truth to that. On OS-X, Ruby is preloaded. It is typically an older version, but any real developer is going to install homebrew. From there you install rbenv, then type a single command to install Ruby. On Linux, you can either apt-get (or use your distros package manager) install ruby or rbenv (like OS-X). Not all that hard. Definitely easier than dealing with Java.

I can setup my developer environment in about 10 minutes on Linux or OS X becuase of apt-get or Homebrew.


It's impossible for me to setup my development environment on Windows.

Huh? Unix-style development is easy with Cygwin and Msys. (Installer will setup things correctly), another option is obviously Visual Studio (Community edition has most of the functionality) and with NuGet you get goin (reminder: NuGet now distributes packages for C/C++ too - including experimental C++ compiler from MS team). Hardest would be command line VS-less compilation, but not impossible. (Got it going too with Mingw...)

Viewer[/url]":5fr2tod7]What is the purpose of Microsoft having their OS be so different from the dominant *nix model?

Why doesn't Microsoft just use a polished Linux? The one thing people complain about on Linux is sporadic driver/hardware support, and Microsoft can fix that.

Because dominant model is not good? Look up David Cutler. Unix model may "work". but it is not best. I don't think it is even comparable to NT model. There is no point to use Linux. NUmber of regressions and missing features, while losing existing WinAPI apps.

Stupid suggestion betraying terminal lack of knowledge. Aka born out of servere ignorance.

Microsoft contributed money and developer time to node.js to help port it to Windows. The software was rearchitected to accommodate this—node.js relies heavily on asynchronous I/O, and the optimal approach for this is different on every platform—and I think most people would agree that the result is that node.js has become better software (it also turns out that Windows' approach to asynchronous I/O is really good).

Async IO is fine on Windows, but it's perfectly good on every modern OS be it Mac/Win/Linux. There is no major advantage or disadvantage to any OS regarding async IO, so it's almost silly to have different incompatible apis and different weird names (Windows calls it IO completion ports).

So, Windows _can_ run Node and Reddis and memcached all these other popular server technologies, but what's the point of Windows having this completely separate API and requiring customizations for everything? I don't see any.

Evidence about async? Most recent article I saw was still blasting state of async on Unix-based systems. And another showcase of ignorance. Completion I/O is not the only thing in WinAPI. (APC,event signaling)
Does any of Unix-based OS finally have fully asynchronous kernel or do they still "fake" it through multiple threads and synchronization objects? Windows were there before POSIX got unused standard or attempts at implementations got created. So Microsoft updated existing WinAPI functions to be async able when running on NT kernel. And NT Kernel is fully async and the only reason default functions are not async by default, is due to developers being caught of guard. (Finally fixed with WinRT and UWA)

Synchronous and Asynchronous I/O

What happens if you forget to pass an OVERLAPPED structure on an asynchronous handle?

The case of the asynchronous copy and delete

And there is very interesting note:

Every so often, the NT file system folks dream of changing the deletion model to be more Unix-like, but then they wonder if that would end up breaking more things than it fixes.

All I/O on a synchronous file handle is serialized; that’s why it’s called a synchronous file handle

Recall that all I/O in the kernel internally follows the asynchronous programming model. Synchronous file handles are a convenience provided by the kernel which converts operations on synchronous handles into the equivalent asynchronous operation, followed by a wait for the operation to complete; and all of these operations are serialized.

And ultimate:
I know that an overlapped file handle requires an lpOverlapped, but why does it (sometimes) work if I omit it?

The Read­File function doesn’t know whether the handle you passed was opened for overlapped or synchronous access. It just trusts that you’re calling it correctly and builds an asynchronous call to pass into the kernel. If you passed a synchronous handle, well, it just issues the I/O request into the kernel anyway, and you get what you get.

This quirk traces its history all the way back to the Microsoft Windows NT OS/2 Design Workbook. As originally designed, Windows NT had a fully asynchronous kernel. There was no such thing as a blocking read. If you wanted a blocking read, you had to issue an asynchronous read (the only kind available), and then block on it.

coca-cola[/url]":5fr2tod7]Still kinda can't believe this is happening. Windows, soon to be flavorfully Unix-y. Delicious.

(Or... gross...?)

Your post reminds me of dichotomy many POSIX proponents had, when they discovered that Windows NT had POSIX subsystem. Funny reactions, where they tried hard to come up with "something" why it is not "real" POSIX-compliant system...

 

[lewax00]

lewax00[/url]":17dsyams]
Hey now, I'm under 30 and I play around with native Windows programming when I get the chance. Problem is, no one seems to be hiring for that. So the short summary of my career is "Java, C# and web development", because that's what pays the bills.

By "native windows programming", you mean desktop Windows GUI software? GUI apps are almost completely web or mobile now. Almost no one makes desktop GUI apps for Windows, Mac, or Linux any more, and there's very little hiring accordingly. This shouldn't be a surprise.

I mean writing C++ against the Windows APIs. Sometimes with a GUI, sometimes without. It's a broader category than just GUIs (which can be done without directly using the Windows APIs anyways, often more easily, as well as without writing a native compiled program).