So I wanted to create a short post here and get some opinions from the community. Since I have gotten back to the web dev game I have been looking into what was a better OS to make my workflow faster.
I originally used to use a mac and have found that it was great for my development environment. But I have since moved back to windows and have found that well it lacks a lot of stuff. And is a huge pain when it comes to the command line and being able to install things.
Which brings me to my topic I have started using Linux on my laptop as a test. As I have found that the command line and the ability to install things on it is just night and day. For setting up a development environment. But It comes with the drawback of having to go the extra mile of running wine to use certain windows programs ect.
So my question to you all is which do you prefer. Also is there a way of setting up a fast windows environment to get a similar cmd?
Top comments (66)
I wouldn't touch Windows with a stick for anything related to dev.
Only gaming on Windows, that's it.
That's what I really have found at this point as well. The only real-time it is useful is if I am doing game programming.
I'm curious to understand why you have this opinion. What are some pain points you find developing on Windows?
Some of the things I've run into:
Shoddy support for typical command line utilities. This has gotten better in recent years and ostensibly with WSL, but it still feels like "swimming upstream."
Almost no Docker support.
Almost no centralized package/software management. Chocolatey the closest and that requires opening a pretty big hole in PowerShell for relatively limited benefit.
General, overall instability and intrusive updating (I get needing to, and that's fine, but being forced to and forced to restart is a non-starter for me).
Basically, when you're using gnu+linux you feel that everything is made for it. Everything is simple and works out of the box. When you're doing that on a mac, you have to fiddle a bit, fight against outdated mac os libraries and utilities but you can get there, as you have a terminal and a bsd like system. On Windows, you never stop fighting the OS. Line ending? Different. Folder separator? Different. BOM? Different. Let's take git for instance, on Windows, when you install it you have to make choices about the line ending of the local and remote files and other weird options, whereas on linux it's as it should from the start. Also, package management is just not really there for windows. Compiling some software on linux is very easy, on windows you'll have to fight the compiler and other things.... Well, you see the picture...
Well here is my opinion.
I have been doing web development both front and back since 2015. Since then I was using Windows as a main platform without any issue only the boot problem that is having a bad performance over time.
Now that we have Windows 10 and the awesomeness of WSL (docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/w...), you can use a emulated Ubuntu local machine running inside Windows and you can use everything as your OS terminal were Linux instead of Windows.
The main issue with this approach is that with overtime both WSL and Windows performance going badly, in my experience I had my Main PC which is a gaming one with SSD and everything and after few months the performance went really bad.
Of couse you can use mostly of tools nativily (NodeJS, PHP, Git, etc etc) but you can be messing some stuff that only works with Linux and OSX because of UNIX.
At this time i'm running Ubuntu as development enviroment and I don't have no issues. As a personal tip I recommend to you to use any Linux distro of our preference natively instead of having any emulation of any kind (Docker, WSL, etc, etc) The performance it will be really great.
Having used both since they went GA, I have no idea what issues you've seen over time as I do not share that experience. And with WSL2 (currently on insiders), I also do not see slow system resource access anymore either.
I forgot to mentioned why I left Windows definitly. I'm mostly PHP developer (a fullstack dev) so I had Laravel Valet running in WSL and 90% of times had issues of 502 errors from ngnix and the point it was annoying and the best approach was using a native Linux distro.
As I saidm if you are using WSL for JavaScript development it will run smoothly without any issues 👌
What issues did you run into with js? Most anything with node_modules was resolved years ago and the pnp thing with yarn is pretty sweet once tooling support is up-to-date.
With Node and JavaScript none.
My issue were with PHP, I was using Laravel Valet WSL as a virtual machine host to have a local PHP dev env without to much steps.
As I sad, with JS there is no problem using WSL
It's just confusing you conflated WSL with JS when it works just fine on Windows as well.
I found that when I tried to go to linux, my productivity screeched to a halt. Not because I couldn't figure it out or got stuck, but because I had way too much fun customizing every last inch of the desktop environment and my dotfiles. I had to go back to windows for the sake of my productivity.
Luckily with the new Windows Terminal and using WSL, I can get just enough terminal customization and linux command line features that I don't feel like I have to install linux, and I don't waste my whole week trying out new window managers and things.
I used to use Linux exclusively for a couple of years. I had the exact same problem. Change an icon here, switch this theme, move my projects to this folder, try this new distro, etc. When Windows 7 came out, I made the switch back and have been on Windows pretty much ever since. I keep checking out the latest Fedora and Ubuntu releases, but I haven't been able to bring myself to switch back.
WSL is pretty good. As soon as WSL2 is available to me, I'm switching it to for all my web development.
I find it a little funny that I had the absolute opposite experience.
On windows I always installed Clover or something
I always was "fighting" the system. And when the system didn't like it, it changed it itself and everything broke,
It always felt weird.
After switching to Linux (through a netinstall) I've honestly barely been bothered by any part of it. Yeah, having more games to play would be nice, but half of my steam library is supported, and those that aren't... well actually I couldn't play half of them before anyway. It's the same PC, running a different OS. That's it.
State-of-the-art IDEs are made for Windows. I mean if you are using technologies not obsolete you are happy with Windows. And Linux makes you do a lot of extra stuff to make many tools work.
What dev tools are these? Pretty much most tools just "work" in Linux. And speaking of IDE's I've been using Emacs for over 4 years now and I'd call it "state-of-the-art". All the popular IDE's should also have good support too. What tooling made you dislike Linux(except .NET stuff)?
I use Windows for development on both my desktop and laptop.
I've found that most things are not that bad to work with on Windows, and anything I simply can't get done using Powershell I simply use the Windows Subsystem Linux (WSL) for it; e.g. I simply do not remember the command to delete an entire directory for powershell, but I can just do the following:
Anything beyond that I tend to use Docker (and Docker Compose) for. I installed Ubuntu on a partition of my laptop's mechanical HD and while I don't mind using Linux, I also tend to like to take breaks and play a game here or there, which is just easier for me to do on Windows than it is on Ubuntu.
But really, whatever you find easiest is likely the best option. If you enjoy using linux for your dev setup, well enough people agree with you that Dell offers an Ubuntu based XPS computer (way too expensive imo, but it exists). If I could, I would likely use some Linux distro or another for my work computer as well, but unfortunately they make us use Macbooks.
One caveat I forgot to mention: I use Chocolatey to shortcut some of the usual headaches that come with Windows development. I know people use Scoop, but I found chocolatey first so it's what I default to.
Hey, I use both systems right now and I have more issues with ubuntu than with windows. Anyways both systems have pros and cons. But honestly, windows made a great job to be usable for web development. WSL just works, I don't have any performance issues. I liked this article when I've set up my system the first time: seld.be/notes/developing-on-window...
One thing I don't like but it's a self-made problem:
I've many ways of running a web project: Docker, natively, WSL
And now sometimes I've to search the right place when I didn't touch my project for a long time. :D
In the past few years, Windows has made leaps and bounds improvements and with containerization, I would just say use your preference.
I like Windows since my main hobby is PC gaming; I use WSL2 when I need Linux, and I use Docker and friends when I need to deploy.
My recommendation for getting into things, learn WSL (not very difficult since they've put a lot of effort here) and get Windows Terminal. Also, if package management is your issue, check out Chocolatey.
Terminal and Linux distros for WSL are hosted on the Microsoft Store.
I installed Chocolatey the other day because it's the distribution method for VSCodium.
It's a hassle to install and even following the instructions I couldn't get it to work after closing and opening the terminal. I assume it puts something in the path but doesn't configure the global PATH setting, but that bit's not documented.
Seems pretty rough compared to more mature package managers.
What? It's literally
curl site.com | bashlevel of install from an elevated prompt. They even have a copy/paste option in their docs:chocolatey.org/install
Yeah, it didn't work for me. Rather, it installs, but since it's not in the global path, if I open a new terminal, it's not available. I could fix this easily enough, I guess, but the fact that it doesn't work puts me off.
That's the thing with Windows for me: Everyone is trying to emulate Linux behavior on Windows because it's practical. These tools are fine and I use them too when I quickly need to ssh somewhere for example while I was gaming on my Windows. But why not just use Linux, where one does not have to emulate anything? No one wants to emulate Windows behavior, just sayin'.
Because people want their OS to work. I don't need linux emulation; I have it natively now.
I started on Windows when I first started working with PHP and it was fine. but then little things started nagging me, Ubuntu shines because it's so hackable, you can make it your own, with Gnome tweaks as well.
I do however duel boot Windows and Ubuntu - Windows is only ever used for Steam simply because gaming still isn't there on Ubuntu for me.
Overall, Ubuntu smashes Windows and MacOS out of the water, very comfortable to use.
FWIW Linux 100%.
I had a Windows machine at work and while WSL is headed in the right direction it's still hit or miss IMO. Plus if you are in a corporate environment there may be issues out of your control in regards to antivirus and what version of Windows you are on... (it will probably be awhile before they roll out the latest Windows w/WSL2 in our office)
I then switched to Mac thinking it would be better but it's honestly just a different set of problems :)
At home I have been using Linux for a long time and maybe I'm jaded but I just don't have any issues with the latest distros. Most things run in browser these days, for dev work it's all in Docker and if I need Windows I can easily crank up a VM.
I'm a long Ubuntu user that had no desire to switch to another OS until WSL2. WSL2 is a game-changer. Few minor snags but the overall developer experience is excellent. Windows 10 + Linux Kernel is the sweet spot.
Personally i have both systems on my work pc(2 ssd 2 hard drives). One os has one of each and i think this is the best way for now. I work mainly on Linux (manjaro) and when i have something to do connected with university or office work (we have problem with open office standards on some printers) or image editing.