* Posts by ErroneousGiant

3 publicly visible posts • joined 23 Apr 2020

Welcome to life in the Fossa lane: Ubuntu 20.04 let out of cage and Shuttleworth claims Canonical now 'commercially self sustaining'

ErroneousGiant

Re: I still don't see the purpose of WSL

Wow, I'm really happy reading these success stories.

I tried something similar with my parents (Father in his 80's and 70's Mother), my Wife and Daughter and nothing but pushback and complaints. Interestingly, non of the complaints were "X doesn't work" or "Y is doing something stange", it was just this mental barrier they couldn't get past that it "Wasn't Windows" and they defaulted to assuming they didn't know how to do anything.

I may try again if Mint as that good. Although, I've had a lot of mileage from ElementaryOS, maybe that for the Mac loving Wife.

ErroneousGiant

Re: @ErroneousGiant - I still don't see the purpose of WSL

Hi, thanks for the reply, and you're not wrong, but I think you're missing an angle to the reason it exists.

I agree nmap is available on Windows, and I've used it many times; But walk me through the process for installing an using it on Windows, because on WSL all i have to type is "apt install nmap" and then start using it. By doing that, I've pulled it from an approved, monitored and maintained repository. Security checks are done before it's installed, and I know it's going to work. Windows is a bit more.....separated. You have to hunt down the install from the Internet, do the security checks yourself, run through the install process..... it's a lot more manual.

Whats in it for Microsoft? Well, most of Azure is linux based. In fact, Microsoft now have more Linux servers than Windows servers. Can you use PowerShell to manage it? Sure, and I do, especially things like users in Office 365. However, when it comes to managing servers or desktops that are Linux, PowerShell (while wonderful that it is now available on Linux) is still very limited in the Linux space. So yes you could enter a PSSession onto a Linux box, but after that, you will inevitably be using PowerShell to then run other native commands like "zfs list -t snapshots" which PowerShell just doesn't have a module to manage, and the output of which can be more awkward to handle.

So it's possible to manage Linux machines from Windows, and cool that you can do it using PowerShell, but it's an extra layer to the process that doesn't need to be there. I guess the main benefit is removing the barriers to working on a mix of Operating Systems. The easier it is to work on Linux, Mac and Windows from just a Windows machine the better the experience for Windows users.

If I've missed something, or I'm just wrong, let me know and I'll take a seat.

ErroneousGiant

Re: I still don't see the purpose of WSL

First I want to say I'm a Microsoft Fan, so if I accidentally bash them here, it's not because "LiNuX iS tHe BeSt" - they both have a place in home and work environments.

As for WSL, well, it's certainly not for everyone, and I do get where you're coming from, but it does have a use case, and the more we embrace Linux into Microsoft and Microsoft into Linux the better things will be as only the things worth using will survive.

For me, WSL has a few use cases. I deal with a mix of Windows and Linux servers through work. So having bash in my Windows machine helps with that. Secondly, there are some tools, especially in the networking area of my job that are better and easier to use in a Linux terminal than their Windows counterpart. Nmap would be a good example of this.

I don't have to rely on Putty any more, because I can SSH into a switch or router straight from the desktop. From a development standpoint, yes, Visual Studio is still king as far as I'm concerned, but the offerings on Linux are still extremely strong, especially if you're dealing with things like Ansible/Puppet, LXC/Docker or K8's, and even something OS agnostic like Python.

I use Windows all day at work, so for me a Linux desktop is a nice change when I'm at home. I find it more stable, and spend a lot less time doing maintenance on my home desktop. It's much lighter on resources, so the desktop itself doesn't have to be as Power Hungry.

From using both environments constantly, the only things missing from the Linux desktop is Microsoft Office, which has become the defacto office suite, Visual Studio, though I get by with VS Code just fine, and game compatibility. This is just the desktop we're speaking of here, snubbing Linux in the server space is a massive mistake, there are some really impressive, useful and effective tools to help improve Windows environments out there and not using them "because you're a Windows Shop" is cutting your nose to spite your face. Take a look at projects like Grafana, Observium, OpenVAS, Ansible and ZFS (now it's mainstreaming Linux a bit more) just to name a few. Best of all, they're free to use. Zero licensing costs. And as someone who has had to pass Microsoft Licensing quals in the past it makes life soooooo much easier when you don't need to worry about that kind of thing.

The latter is improving massively, especially with Proton, but I don't think that it's worth game dev's time to make games for Linux yet. If MS Office went onto Linux, I think there would be a slow migration away from the Windows Desktop in small businesses and charities that would then make it more appealing to develop games and other software for. Until then, it's just not going to happen.

Is it the year of the Linux Desktop? No, totally not, and I say that as a Linux fan. It's not ready for your average end user at home, with no support other than google; It's so damned close though.