Fun with the Windows Subsystem for Linux

Yeah, hard to take anything you say in your example too seriously because you are talking about a 7 year old OS. A year ago it was 6 years old, and had been succeeded by Windows 8 3 years previous. I know for a fact that a lot of what you’re complaining about was in areas that were improved (the default admin log-in,mfor example).

I bet you don’t install 6-7 year old Debian distros and then complain about how much better the current version of Ubuntu is. This is another disadvantage Microsoft has - users that refuse to upgrade and them pitch an absolute hissy fit if you drop support for an old version or release some software that isn’t compatible with it.

Also, regarding the installer, Windows has Linux beat hands down there. Some distros have gotten very good at this. but there’s not a one of them that supports the breadth of hardware and upgrade configurations that windows does. As far as the installation UI, they are all about the same now.

I will freely admit that Windows has some major flaws, but you haven’t identified any of them here. Get back to me with an Apples to Apples comparison.

I don’t know where my brain was tonght, but for some reason I got the ordering of Windows releases confused. Yes, I would give the Windows 7 version a try. It should create a restore point, so should not mess thngs up unrecoverably even if something goes horribly wrong (which I don’t think will happen).

You do realize that it wouldn’t matter if I was installing a 7 year os unser Linux. It still wouldnt take 5 update and reboot cycles to get it current. The most it could take is 3, and that would be if you were to do a fresh install and then did a dist-upgrade in place.

It is rediculous for windows to have to do the updates in stages the way it does. Fortunately, I only very rarely have to subject myself to the lunacy that is windows.

I didn’t even get into the issues you run into with the registry when attempting to restore systems.

Regarding the hardware support you mentioned, I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen people complaining of fairly new printers and such not being supported after wi dows upgrades. The solution offered often to simply buy a new printer. It makes me laugh.

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You do realize that it wouldn’t matter if I was installing a 7 year os unser Linux. It still wouldnt take 5 update and reboot cycles to get it current. The most it could take is 3, and that would be if you were to do a fresh install and then did a dist-upgrade in place.

Yes, I understand and agree with your point. But my point was that this is a limitation of Windows in which there was a lot of investment since Windows 7. I haven't had an update cause more than 1 reboot cycle in Windows 10 since I installed it. Most updates are no reboot. And over that 7 years, there have been very large improvements in the quality of the initial Linux installion process. This was a real focus for some of the distros because it was lagging badly, and was turning a lot of users off. Similarly, Microsoft has invested in areas where there was user dissatisfaction. So my point still stands; it's unfair to compare a 7 year old version of Windows with a 0 year old version of Linux.

Personally, I'm really glad we have 3 major choices here (Windows, OS-X, and Linux). I use both Windows and Linux daily, and used to use OS-X (love the OS, but am not a big fan of Apple, so when my MBP died, I didn't replace it). I don't want any of them to go away. As an engineer, I have a fondness for Linux, but OTOH, there are Microsoft technologies (PowerShell, and .NET for example) which I love and which don't exist on other platforms.

And as an employee of MS, I can tell you that since Steve Ballmer left, and Satya Nadella took over, the company is way more open and friendly to competing platforms and the open source community. The topic of this thread (Linux subsystem for Windows) is the kind of thing that would have never happened under Ballmer. There are similar developments all over the company, for example Azure supporting "Best of Breed" software services, regardless of what platform or technology stack they are developed on, and award-winning applications developed by Microsoft for non-Windows platforms like iOS and Android. Internal to the division I work in, we're having a big event coming up (called a "Hackathon") where employees will compete to write a working prototype application on Android. The best ideas will get funded and eventually turn into Android apps.

I didn’t even get into the issues you run into with the registry when attempting to restore systems.

I like the "everything's a file" design of *nix, and particularly like human-readable configuration files. However, not everyone does, and there's even been talk in the past from some of the distros of moving to a binary registry like Windows. I never did understand the reasoning for this, but I am sure there is one.

Regarding the hardware support you mentioned, I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen people complaining of fairly new printers and such not being supported after wi dows upgrades. The solution offered often to simply buy a new printer. It makes me laugh.

It's impossible for Microsoft to directly support every piece of hardware out there. The approach that was taken with printers was to create a driver framework (IIRC it's called UniDriver) that makes it relatively simple for a vendor to create a printer driver. However, Microsoft can't force every vendor to upgrade the drivers, or even to spend the minimal effort necessary to mark the driver as compatible with a newer Windows version. That said, the amount of supported hardware on Windows still vastly exceeds Linux and OS-X.

“I know you remember 2003 when Ballmer declared Linux a “cancer”... “

OR

That other feller who said-—Who needs more than 640K?

Personally, I'm really glad we have 3 major choices here (Windows, OS-X, and Linux).

Absolutely agree. If any of them didn't have someone in the rear-view mirror, they'd stagnate. We saw that with windows for a while when it had such absolute dominance of the personal computing world, and linux was something where you actually did have to compile your kernel by hand. (Thankfully that's something I haven't done in many years.)

I'd also agree that Microsoft has woken up a bit since Ballmer left. Time was, interoperability seemed to be a dirty word at microsoft.Caused me many, many headaches trying to deal with the purposeful incompatibilities that microsoft brought to the mix.(one of the reason I despise the company as much as I do.)

Yes, I understand and agree with your point. But my point was that this is a limitation of Windows in which there was a lot of investment since Windows 7. I haven't had an update cause more than 1 reboot cycle in Windows 10 since I installed it.

OK, so if you were to download the ISOs for windows 10 today, how many download/reboot cycles would you suffer through? I'd bet 3 or 4.

I like the "everything's a file" design of *nix, and particularly like human-readable configuration files. However, not everyone does, and there's even been talk in the past from some of the distros of moving to a binary registry like Windows. I never did understand the reasoning for this, but I am sure there is one.

'Everything is a file' is a particularly powerful concept to someone who really understands it. We're starting to see creeping binary crap in the mess that systemd has become. I don't understand the concept of binary logs, other than the minimal security benefits it obtains. All it does is slow down troubleshooting in my world. Hate it. Would hate a registry worse though. I'm sure they thought it was a neat concept when they first came up with it, but the registry has been the source of more issues in windows than just about anything. At this point, it's etched in stone, and MS is too wedded to it to escape even if they wanted to. To me, one of the biggest drawbacks of a monolithic binary configuration, is that it makes system restoral problematic at best. Yeah, you can restore your data, but suppose you've made a lot of customization to your desktop, in the way it is organized and presented. If you have a hard disk crash, even if you have good backups for your data, you're going to have issues getting your environment back the way you like it. In the linux world, you restore $HOME, and you're pretty much good to go. I recently upgraded a fellow from Fedora 12 to Mint 17. Once I restored his home directory and files, as far as his desktop and stuff, it was like nothing had changed. Can't beat that with a stick.

It's impossible for Microsoft to directly support every piece of hardware out there.

Similar to Linux. Not everything is supported, but these days, especially with older hardware Linux has better support than windows in many ways. Sometimes Linux is ahead of the hardware curve. I recall when the I7 chips were announced. You could run Linux on them before you could run Windows.

That said, the amount of supported hardware on Windows still vastly exceeds Linux and OS-X.

I'd question that assertion with the exception of some really low-volume hardware that has stuff specifically written for windows, and only windows to work, like CNC machines and the like. Even with those, good luck upgrading to windows 10 without spending a lot of money, if it is possible at all.

> That other feller who said-—Who needs more than 640K?

In truth, neither Bill Gates nor anyone at Microsoft ever said that. The 640KB limit on addressable RAM in the IBM PC was a result of IBM's hardware design, not Microsoft's software -- it was a function of the upper-memory range being used for I/O and other system functions.

Bill Gates was a software guy, and any sort of hardware-imposed limit was anathema to him. Of course, the Intel 8088's limit of 1MB wasn't that much higher than 640KB. But Microsoft worked very hard to circumvent those limits, with expanded and extended memory.

He did make a few comments about the 640KB limit, but not the misattributed one above. https://en.m.wikiquote.org/wiki/Bill_Gates

Bill Gates did and said many, many stupid and regrettable things, but that particular one is not his.

That’s an interesting feature. I’m impressed.

Hello! Please put me on your ping list. Thank you kindly.

OK, so if you were to download the ISOs for windows 10 today, how many download/reboot cycles would you suffer through? I'd bet 3 or 4.

I bought my son a Dell laptop recently (graduation present). After booting the laptop, we ran Windows update. There was one reboot required to update to the latest everything from Microsoft. However, afterwards we went to the Dell web site, which has its own utility to scan and update drivers. When we ran that, it did install some drivers and trigger a second reboot.

Love the laptop, btw. It's a Dell XPS-13.

Okay, you’re on... welcome!