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 ...
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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 When you're doing that on a mac, you have to fiddle a bit, fight against outdated mac os libraries and utilities but you can get there, as you have a terminal and a bsd like system.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 ๐
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.
I agree with Manuel and will also throw in that the new Windows Terminal may give you more of what you may be used to with Linux. Scott Hanselman has some good stuff on Windows Terminal and on using WSL. Start with hanselman.com/blog/ItsTimeForYouTo....
Windows terminal is ridiculously slow and buggy still. I mean it's orders of magnitude slower than a decent terminal from 15 years ago - a simple
catof a file that scrolls for 100 screen heights will take a fraction of a second on a conventional terminal and 30 seconds or more on Windows Terminal. That kind of update rate makes everything laggy and annoying.Also... also it crashes a lot and has a lot of half-written features.
I know it's "alpha", but kids make terminals for a laugh in a weekend that are better than WSL's.
From my point of view is Windows mature enough for quality development environment.
I have come through a lot of different setups beginning by Windows itself, Windows subsystem for Linux (WSL) and Linux itself. I'll start with the WSL version.
WSL is very nice tooling, it brings you the emulation of almost all famous distributions of Linux inside Windows. However, its main disadvantage is in I/O operations which are extremely slow (installing dependencies using npm or yarn takes forever) and I couldn't get over it, so I abandoned the WSL.
Linux itself is perfect for development, I didn't have any terrible issues with it and it's incredibly fast. Possibly it seems like a utopia, but later I've realized that I need a lot of applications and stuff for school based on Windows, so once again I needed to switch to Windows because I couldn't get them working using Wine for Linux.
So finally I stick with Windows and here are reasons why:
Conclusion
If you have a desktop computer and a laptop, I would install Windows on the desktop and some Linux distribution of your choice on the laptop (laptops are less performant in general, so Linux is a great choice).
In general, ask these questions:
Oh, scoop looks more interesting than chocolatey!
Not trying to install everything as admin is a definite plus.
I have switched between all three OS's during the past 20 years. I gave up on OSX a few years ago except for iOS development. Too many bugs/breaking changes with every release.
I am using Kubuntu on my laptop and I love it but battery life is not as good even after proper configuration/tweaks (TLP, etc). KDE is the only DE that does display scaling properly so forget about elementary or gnome. If you are using a mouse, good luck getting scrolling to work properly without trying tons of third party tools and hacking config files. It boggles my mind that linux doesn't let you adjust the scrolling speed at this point. This was the deal breaker for me on desktop.
I'm using windows on desktop with WSL, but over time I have used WSL less and less. With things like chocolatey installation is a breeze. If you have performance issues in WSL, make sure to exclude the linux directories from windows security, the same for dev project files. This will make a HUGE difference.
I have no problem doing development switching between my linux laptop and Windows. cross-platform tools have become mature and it makes no difference. Interesting note: one of my projects is using dotnet core and I use windows for dev, a mac mini for building, and deployment to linux containers!
I reinstall any OS at least once a year and use installer scripts to configure everything. This keeps it fresh and snappy.
If you really need those very specific Windows applications, I'd honestly say, just stay on Windows and use Docker for development purposes. You'll have Linux inside of those containers. At work I use Docker for everything and it works flawlessly between a mix of different operating systems.
Now if you can find great alternatives for those Windows programs, I'd 100% recommend you switch to Linux. I personally don't miss anything that I had in Windows and all programs I did use are also available for Linux. Well except the Adobe products of course, but there are great alternatives.
Pick the workflow and systems that make you most productive and try not to let the Linux enthusiasts (I'm one of them) convince you that you have to switch because it's great and Windows sucks. Your workflow is yours and yours only.
Um...both of those are two different tools and neither of them have anything to do with logging in to anything.
Which Linux developers, exactly? Red Hat? Canonical? The Arch crew? There are hundreds of different distributions. "Linux" isn't a monolith. Without knowing what distro you used or what the actual problem was that you had, your review is pretty much entirely without meaningful context.
For me it all depends on the project.
I tend to use Linux OS 90% of a time but just recently I been using Windows for my personal project due to pure laziness I say and not bothering to add Linux HDD back to boot list after Windows HDD got a fresh install.
Hello,
I'm using Windows with VmWare virtualization of an Ubuntu 18 LTS. I've used wine years ago for M$ stuff on Linux, but it was .. strange and unproductive.
Regarding the WSL (the native Linux emulator Windows), I'm not a fan. Sometimes, I had disk inconsistencies, low speed, etc.
In the end, using a VmWare virtualization for a native Ubuntu was ok.
I'm curious about why you moved away from OS X( Mac)? As you state it, it's a solid Unix environment, with many more free tools than on Windows (cf. the recent Mint language), very similar to Linux.
At the time I moved away from mac because I was using c++ and I wanted a better graphics card. So I had bought a gaming laptop to suit the need.
Makes sense - at least for the graphics part, unless you want to pay a fortune for the high-end macPros.
Then unless your windows programs are unavailable in the UN*X world (e.g. probably related to gaming), you'll be much happier with Linux .
Even that's a non-issue for the most part these days, really.
I mean sort of is considering my mac does not have a 1060 in it and will melt LOL. and my desktop has a 1080 and cost the same amount of a basic mac.
Huh?
If you're replying to me, the non-issue I was referring to was Jean's "Windows programs unavailable in the UNIX world (e.g. probably related to gaming), you'll be much happier with Linux" assertion.
Considering I spent Sunday playing Borderlands 3 on my Manjaro rig, it's literally a non-issue on the gaming front for the vast majority of games these days.
Basically, unless you need something like Photoshop proper, which is notorious for not playing well with Linux (because Adobe), you'd very likely be happy with Linux.
i love linux as it is same as with my server, so I can run the same scripts easily on both local and remote environment but when I need to use graphics software, Adobe has no choice to Linux then I moved to MacOS as it is Linux based and stable than Windows (Win7 and 8.1 at that time). After Microsoft introduced WSL. Here is the reasons why.
ใปใIt can run Linux with less resource, no need to use Virtual Machine like VMware or Virtualbox.
ใปใVisual studio code has extension to connect to WSL very well
marketplace.visualstudio.com/items...
ใปใThere are plenty of graphics and video editing on Windows platform
ใปใWindows10 is very stable, no more BSOD
ใปใCheaper hardware are avaliable to use and customize but be careful with hardware and software compatibilities. You can not blame Microsoft, if you choose not to use a certified ones.
I really like Linux for dev, but didn't want to be stuck dual-booting (I like Windows for gaming and dual-booting Win/Linux from the same drive comes with some caveats).
What I've found is that a package manager + terminal emulator brings Windows most of the way to being as good as Linux.
While you have a few options for both of those, I personally have settled for Scoop (scoop.sh) + Cmder + Git Bash. Works like a charm and would highly recommend them. You might want to check out Chocolatey as an alternative to Scoop, but I haven't found a better terminal emulator than Cmder.
Just my two cents anyways, use whatever feels comfortable :)
WSL I great, I do not do dual-booting anymore.
I use WSL on my gaming Windows PC when I'm working from home, but I use it as a browser and a terminal to connect to a real computer - either my work Mac or a little Arch box under my sofa (don't know why you need that much information but I'm on my second coffee).
It's ok. Tolerable. I'd like to use VSCodium for debugging, but there are a lot of barriers to this kind of remote connection.
I prefer Linux, any day. I don't do Windows- or Mac-specific development, so I don't need to run anything proprietary.
I'm curious to what you're trying to do through Wine though, and what problems you're coming up against?
I think it vastly depends on what you are doing.
While you can do everything in one OS I think they shine in totally different directions.
If you are doing backend or devops linux is the way to go.
Everything is a 'apt install' away and docker support is way better than in windows. (git too?!) As someone else stated WSL2 should fix this issues (especially with big volumes) but is still in beta.
On the other hand if you are doing frontend and ux design I think MacOS and Windows are the way to go.
They just have way more software for this purpose even though I have heard that Photoshop and AdobeIlustrator cross-platform alternatives nowadays are getting better.
Linux ๐๐ฝ
After reading through all of the replies, I'm surprised no one mentioned using a VPS for development. You get all of the goodness of a production environment, with the ability to use any machine I want. Because of my undiagnosed ADHD ๐, I jump between several devices with several different OSes (Windows, Linux, macOS, ChromeOS, Android, and iOS).
With mosh/ssh, I can develop from any machine I have from anywhere, as long as I have internet access. With virtual networking software such as Zerotier, Wireguard, or Nebula, I can access VPSes securely.
Windows Subsystem for Linux :)
Linux.
It can install several programs in one command line and without searching for them.
macOS? ;)
I don't get why some many people say that installing stuff on Linux is a lot easier. I've worked with Node, Rust, Haskell, Java, Python, Julia, C#, Nim and so many other languages with no issues on Windows.
Also, if you want to use a package manager on Windows then chocolatey is a great option. Feels like brew but for Windows
WSL 2 is not a solution! IT IS SLOW! Check this thread:
github.com/microsoft/WSL/issues/4197
Development on the Windows is a painful process, whole Windows is a painful thing, I can recommend it only for Windows app development.
Hi my name is Bogdan, and I was devops in the past and now I'm SE, I have a lot of experience of work with Linux, Windows, MacOS operation systems.
Linux is very fast and it is the best OS for the backend development and for the docker. But I do not recommend it for the laptops! Linux don't have a good support for the laptops driver, do not have a good Resolution Upscaling and do not have any support of the gestures on the touchpad! :D But it is a good OS for the PC.
Laptops = MacOS. It is good for development, a bit slow with the file syncing on docker, but still better than en Windows or WSL2.
Windows....if you need to create something for it, use it. If you're working on backend or frontend or mobile development, forget about it! 1 Billion of users and Microsoft cannot even fix their update problems.
Linux don't have a good support for the laptops. That is a wild overstatement, if you have a bleeding edge machine chances are this maybe true, otherwise you're probably good to go.
Upscaling, again if you came in the bleeding edge, you probably have to wait. Blame the manufactures
Libinput provides touchpad gestures.
I use linux, on desktop, laptop, servers. Just recently got a machine with windows, and it is a lost cause honestly.
Linux.
This should not even be a question.
Windows is for profit and closed source, if you are a coder you need access to the real stuff behind your code. Also your code is more likely to run on a Linux server. (depends on what you do but...)
And then you got Mac OS.... If you want to be told what to do and how to do. (Sheeple ๐คฎ)
I use a five-year-old windows laptop. The only hardware upgrade is replacing the DVD drive with an SSD. I write example code for a living, using VS Code and emacs. I also have cygwin installed, as I have a plethora of bash scripts I've written over the years and am loathe to have to rewrite them in PowerShell.
Everything works. That and MS Office tools are so much smoother than the alternatives. I also have a Mac Pro I use infrequently, and an EC2 instance on AWS I use for things that take a while to build, so I don't slow my Windows laptop down.
Horses for courses. If the only tool you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail.
I have not used Windows since Vista. Used MacOS for several years until I had to buy a new computer. A few months ago bought a ThinkPad X1 Carbon, twice the memory, twice the SSD and a better CPU than a Mac of the same price. The first day with the X1 I booted the preinstalled Windows 10 Pro, checked that all the hardware was working fine and then deleted Windows 10 Pro and installed Ubuntu. Yesterday I upgraded to Ubuntu 20.04 (pre-release). Love it!
I use Linux as my primary OS. That being said, I use VMs to do all my development. This saves my primary machine from catastrophic events (I live to experiment), and allows me to use different OS for different development projects. I have found this method has worked really well for me.
I'm definitely biased toward Linux for everyday use.
Nevertheless I believe that it's possible (as long as using "outside packagesi" is allowed) for any of these platforms.
If you don't have what you want, OS X is probably the most limited in flexibility, but again source code is available for all of the platforms and binary images are available too.
Most of my professional career involved using Windows, but I actually began my career programming mainframe legacy development in PL/1, Cobol, and occasionally Fortran.
Once I moved to UNIX systems, C programs and shell scripts became the common toois. Moving to Linux was similar in experience to my early use of microcomputer systems and the first PCs.
I found a new sense of speed and enjoyment.
Windows hasn't stayed static. Many of the objections to the early systems have been improving, though Linux has more flexibility than the other systems, at the cost of a learning curve to figure out what makes sense for each person and environment.
So when we're honest there are features and limitations in each system and the choice to do what works best for both individuals and their employers is usually the deciding factor.
A lot of good opinions here, and here are my two cents.
I've given up on Windows but for gaming, I still use it. Everytime I boot it up, it's bad, and it feels bad. The performance is bad, access management is bad, if I have to do a quick tinkering on a server it's bad, opening anything while a process is running is bad. I don't understand why some of Windows' own widgets and windows are laggy. I mean, why would settings program be laggy? Why does task manager sometimes just hang?
I appreciate the amount of field specific softwares on it but I think we are not in the age of "Linux is hard, Windows is easy and has all the good apps".
Linux has great applications, very easy to use. It's much, much faster and really the much better options in a lot of cases.
Currently I'm learning how to create pixel art (I've been programming almost half my life now, never done anything art) and found a lot of fantastic applications readily available for Linux.
I'm the kind of person who likes to customize their environment to their liking and Linux is just amazing for that kind of thing. Doing so makes my opinions seem biased to my friends. Most of the time I get "I just want something that works". Well, does Windows really work? How many times has a software crashed and you had to wait a few minutes before continuing your work? Or how many times you started your computer and you had to wait for an update to finish? Or how many times something froze and you couldn't close it because task manager froze as well?
All in all, I prefer something that gives me the control when I want it and controls everything with reasonable defaults and with responsibility. Something that frankly, Windows doesn't provide.
I hope this wall of text is useful to you.
I spent years resisting Linux based on "Windows does the job".
Finally started using Linux last year to see how it felt in comparison.
Result = I now do 90% of my work on Ubuntu.
Linux (OpenSUSE) all day.
If you want to use windows programs, then use windows.