Posts by BNBRox

Author of infamous Google diversity manifesto drops lawsuit against web giant

Re: Ran out of money...

That would be a very likely explanation, but I've also read that he dropped this case as part of an agreement with Google, which sounds more like an out-of-court settlement.

Windows 10 Linux Distribution Overload? We have just the thing

WSL Everyday

It's interesting seeing people say, "this will never be useful" this far into 2018. You obviously aren't the target audience - and that's okay - but that doesn't mean there isn't a large one out there. WSL has been active in the wild for at least a year (to my knowledge), and in that time rarely a day goes by where I'm not using it. Every time I do, I'm thankful (and amazed) that it even exists.

Think about it this way - running a GUI remotely is not enjoyable compared to running it native. Nobody enjoys using Excel over an RDP or TeamViewer session. On the other hand, accessing the shell of another system remotely is largely the same experience as running it locally. So it makes a lot of sense to run the GUI native on the hardware with incidental access to a terminal window. MacOS really got a leg up with the unix switch and this pattern of "GUI native with incidental shell use" is carried over to a better GUI than GNOME or Unity (sorry!). Many loved it! Windows 10 Pro, regardless of hatred towards Microsoft, is arguably a stronger workhorse in the business world than MacOS with a broader toolset, more hardware options, etc. Having the WSL brings this "GUI native/terminal incidental" model over to Windows. At least to the functional tune of 80%.

When the non-technical tasks depend on so many Windows-only or Windows-best tool sets (Office, S4B, etc), this model is far more elegant than running a VM, using a dual-boot system, carrying around multiple systems, or using WINE or MacOS/parallels.

That's why WSL is useful to a great many people.