> It always seemed strange to me that people would rather use WSL than the real thing when Windows doesn't bring much advantage.
Windows brings lots of advantage to some things (including interfacing with the large number of people who rely on people having software that works only or best on Windows; in anything other than very tech-focussed firms this probably includes your employer, and even in such firms it often includes your customers, which can matter a lot even in tech roles), and not switching between physical machines or rebooting between different tasks brings advantages.
My team has to support both windows and Linux builds of our product. WSL1 was a godsend for this - I no longer had to ssh into a VM and could build both the Linux and windows versions from the same source, which was amazing. I hit one issue with wsl2 and then I reverted because I learned that this scenario (different builds from same source) would always be slower on wsl2.
I tried to revert from WSL2 to WSL1 and just cannot. I think it is due to Windows Defender which I cannot disable due to a corporate GPO. I gave up and just use both Cygwin and a VMWare image again.
I'm one of those people who is forced to keep Windows around because of my employer. Our VPN only works in Windows.
Some people have made Juniper Pulse Client work in Linux, even a co-worker has posted some instructions. But I already have a setup where I start the VPN client in a Windows VM and tunnel through it.
I feel like any Linux solution would take a lot of time to setup and might not be as robust.
Another reason I still need Windows around is we only support S/MIME encryption in the Outlook client. Part of this is because of how our internal IT configures the cert, there is a way to make it work in the webmail but our IT guys have either opted out of that or not gotten around to it.
That's pretty much it though. I can happily use Linux for 99.99% of my time.
My comment was really only about Outlook itself (using the web vs the desktop version, I prefer the web version).
that said, I hate Adobe products with a passion. When I build identical computers for my wife and I, the moment I install the Abode shit on hers, it becomes noticeably slower at everything. I don't truly understand it.
The web version does work until you need to sign into more than 2 accounts per day (1 in regular, 1 in private). If you need more than 2 accounts, it does not work anymore.
Edit: it does work, but it will sign you out from all M365 services which requires a lot of logins for nothing.
The desktop experience Windows offers is often a lot better than the desktop experience of Linux. Then there's also the issue of Linux hardware support which often is not optimal. Also a lot of people need to use Windows for work and don't have a choice. And then there's the possibility people actually like using Windows. Having a full Linux terminal in your Windows desktop environment is the best of both worlds for a lot of people.
>The desktop experience Windows offers is often a lot better than the desktop experience of Linux.
Shockingly, this is untrue if using KDE. Almost everything in it is better than a multi-billion-dollar company's monopolistic OS shell somehow, from the taskbar customization to the features (disable compositing, deep customization of effects and behavior, have windows remember size/position, etc.) to the file manager, Dolphin, which has split views, tabs, had a dark theme a dozen years ago, more file metadata to show optionally like date modified and size, thumbnails for even text files, terminal integration, and more (although technically that's an independent package available on any DE). The exceptions are how "smoothly" windows glide around the screen when dragged and that the Windows taskbar looks slightly better.
Linux support for touchscreen is measly, and it's a really nice feature of many Windows laptops. IMO Windows GUI has the best out-of-box features, OSX second and Linux third. Now, if you like working from the terminal, that order is reversed.
I'm pretty sure they could recoup the cost if they made sure their installer could install on ChromeOS's Linux container. The number of Chromebooks out there is staggering, and is starving for great graphics software. This would also be a great way to get ahead of Adobe in the education space, as it appears Chromebooks have taken over education (at least k-12 in the US).
Games and MS Office are a big draw but the deal killer app for me is OneNote because unlike Note-taking options on Linux, it syncs to iOS and screenshots go straight into my current note (no need to copy and paste)
You should look into Zotero. Syncs to WebDAV and Git. Enables snagging text, video, pdf, images. Has exporters to common bibliography managers. Really amazing and not tied to any particular operating system().
It's quite obvious actually.
What people want from Unix is the terminal. The GUI experience on Linux is subpar. Random strange bugs and driver issue are still rife in 2021.
Windows has the opposite issue.
WSL promises to solve this by giving you the best of both worlds.
Just compatiblity. I was Linux for a long while for work and gaming. Constant compatibility and hardware issues.
Even something like Zoom worked like shit on Linux half the time. Or was missing features.
Audio/Video hardware had issues too. Something as simple as a webcam became this giant problem. Configuring mice and keyboards was a nightmare.
This is a lot to do with companies not supporting Linux and having to use community created reverse-engineered stuff, so it's not all Linux's fault, but at the same time, it just became a pain in the ass to maintain and fix constantly.
Also games, as much as Steam/Photon/Wine have improved, there are just some things that don't work.
So, I switched back to Windows, and even if I prefer linux, I just can't have it as my daily driver. so WSL2 is great for me.
I need to use Windows for Visual Studio, Unity Editor and other things targeting Windows, but I've been a Linux person for 14 years now and would like to still do as much as possible via the tools I'm used to.
This is why I like macOS so much. I understand that it's not the same as having Ubuntu in WSL, but using the Mac terminal is so close to the experience I have when I SSH into my Ubuntu box that it's nearly 1:1 for me.
macOS is not perfect. Brew is inferior to apt-get (which WSL2 offers), and Docker needs virtualization in macOS as well. Windows + WSL2 is a strong competitor for the Unix experience on Mac, and sometimes even better (because it is actual Linux and not just a POSIX-compliant Unix terminal).
Oh, blessed are those who never had to deal with the assumption that every shell is bash despite using /bin/sh in shebangs of their scripts, or with the assumption that all core utilities (like find or grep) are of the GNU flavor.
Ignorant they are, yet their ignorance is a bliss.
It always seemed strange to me that people would rather use WSL than the real thing when Windows doesn't bring much advantage. What am I missing ?