I saw "Microsoft open sources windows..." on the front page and almost had a heart attack.
The UI looks like something from the 80s/Early 90s.
Dayum, about time windows gets a decent terminal emulator by default.
Why is Microsoft so bipolar about being good and bad?
I'd be hesitant to call this pure good. The terminal going open source is good, the Calculator was just a gesture.
My hesitance comes from their Windows Subsytem Linux stuff. They aren't trying to boost Linux, they want to absorb it. Why would anyone need to switch from Windows when you can do Windows and Linux development all on your Windows machine? Until there starts to become some level of parallelism with Linux and Windows binaries, I'm going to stay under the assumption they want to basically capture the Linux desktop market.
I was hoping it was along the lines of open sourcing windows 3.x or 9x. That'd be one hell of a gordian knot to analyze.
Microsoft has had a good attitude towards open source software since they got their new CEO a few years ago
https://youtu.be/8gw0rXPMMPE
The terminal is cool but I can't say I'd ever associate it with the type of emotions this promo video's going for.
I love how even a terminal ad needs pre-rendered footage
All I want from them is to just release XP and all of the Operating Systems before it their website with the warning "We don't support these Operating Systems any more" attached to it so It makes using older software and games easier.
nice, now some nerds will try to use vim on windows
It's not hard to find reputable third-party sources for old software (as opposed to games, those are hit and miss) but I'd like it if Microsoft released their deprecated stuff as freeware. Considering how much of their work is iterative, though, maybe they think it's too insecure. Personally, I don't think there's any vulnerability in old Windows that's relevant to newer Windows and even if there was, I don't think Windows NT or ME would be the places where these flaws would be discovered over 7 or 10.
Setting up Emacs binds on Emacs for Windows to launch Windows Subsystem for Linux to launch Emacs in Debian.
I already do with git commit thanks
i want microsoft to open source windows 98, but there's probably too many licensing issues to make that feasible
I am extremely offended that in the history segment they have XP and 2000 in the wrong order and XP terminal use classic theme instead of luna.
Windows XP's terminal was forced classic theme afaik
The WSL2 part they announced is huge! It means being able to do stuff like running Docker natively!
I gotta give MS credit, their ads especially for their hardware are really well made.
The current subsystem is pretty nice. I got a full Rails stack with postgres and redis going in less than a few hours with minimal tweaks. Pretty powerful and excited to see it go forward
Except the Linux Desktop market doesn't exist outside of developers, and I'd argue a good chunk of them probably don't actively make the choice to use Linux.
I've seen people actively upset about this because it's the "death of the linux desktop" since people now have a choice to avoid all the jank that comes along with a Linux desktop and develop how they want on Windows. Yeah, Linux desktops aren't going to improve without users, but very few people were willing to swap because it just isn't worth it.
This may be a negative to the linux desktop crowd, but it's a net positive to Linux as a whole since it makes it so much more accessible.
now i can finally start using a real terminal at work instead of putty
I hope they keep the ability that Escape just clears the current line
the one thing I always miss when using bash
I always end up enabling the key repeater on my keyboard and holding down backspace. It helps a lot if there's like 300 characters in the input, for some reason...
I'm also pretty sure the people who use Linux don't want to deal with all the jank that comes with using a Windows system either. The only reason I started exploring Linux was because of how crap Windows was in the first place. Windows search is absolute shit, command prompt is garbage to use, package management isn't there, theming and UI design is all over the place, etc etc.
When I'm talking about jank I am talking about stuff that actually prevents you from actively using your system. I'm not a fan of my computer downright not booting after I try to update the GPU drivers or swap over to be Nvidia ones because the noveau ones are trash.
Windows isn't flawless by any means, but I'm not going to prevent my computer from booting when trying to set a basic piece of software up.
With your complaints, you have external program such as Everything for search you have Chocolatey if you want to use a full-fledged package manager and programs such as patchmypc for when you don't. They don't have the same coverage that yum and apt do, but package managers aren't everything people like to make them out to be. There have been numerous cases where the package manager just completely failed me or made things worse because I need a specific version and it's not hosted in the official Repository anymore because it's too old. Good luck either tracking down a repository that has it hosted, hope you can find a compiled binary (which you usually can't), or compile it from source.
I've personally haven't had driver issues but I won't deny that they exsist and I would hope that such issues wouldn't be able to hard lock your system. I don't have much experience here so I'll take your word that such issues are common on Linux then Windows.
I'm aware of issues with packages, espically with stable distros where packages are frozen but I must admit I've never needed a older package. You always have the flexibility however to donwload compiled binaries or compile the code from source like you've said, however doing those actions are par the course for getting software on Windows anyway so I don't really see that as a problem with the package system.
I also know of alternatives such as Chocolately but a lot of these programs are proprietary software where I would much prefer using FOSS programs like KDE and apt.
Personally I have still had more trouble with Windows then I have had with Linux and the freedom I'm able to get from using such a system is to me worth editing a few config files to make a program work now and then.
My point with the package manager thing is that on Windows you're far more likely to find a compiled binary for whatever version you want than on Linux. Distributing binaries outside of the package manager just isn't the Linux way. Building from source can also be much harder when you're in the situation I'm talking about because you probably also need old dependencies so you have to track those down as well. It's a compounding problem. That's not to say you can't be in the same situation on Windows, since binary distribution is the norm on Windows, you are far less likely to get into the situation where you need to build dependencies of dependencies to get your stuff built.
On the driver thing, I'll just leave this.
Google
Obviously Windows has its fair share of driver issues but recovering there tends to be significantly easier in my experience.
It's a personal choice, and people can do what they want. I just don't like some of the elitism I've seen around the situation from avid Linux desktop users getting upset that Microsoft is taking the kernel without contributing to the desktop space. The entire point of FOSS is its everyone's to use and contribute to. Suddenly when Microsoft wants to start using the full Linux kernel people are mad that they are utilizing FOSS software wrong and are poaching Linux devs.
That's clearly not ther reason, as there's no correlation between being open source and being less secure, it's the other way around actually, there's probably things in windows that they don't want us to see (backdoors I guess).
Even if it's a Nvidia issue, it's a blocking factor.
Sorry, you need to Log In to post a reply to this thread.
