Creating my awesome Windows 10 dev setup

https://chimerical.ca/posts/creating-my-awesome-windows-10-dev-setup/

by indigodaddy • 5 years ago

121 149 5 years ago

chimerical.ca

thereare5lights• 5 years ago

WSL and VSCode have brought my machine pretty much to parity with developing on a macbook.

I'm sure there's more specialized cases where it's not up to par, but for the average use case, it's quite good!

indigodaddy3• 5 years ago

I’ve got a new-to-me (used HP Elitedesk 800 G1 SFF with 16g ram/240g ssd and I5-4590 with win 10 pro for $150) arriving this week. I haven’t built or bought a PC (had a few MacBooks in between) in probably 15 years, so this puppy is going to be well good enough for me and I’m looking forward to having a proper PC and getting a nice WSL and terminal setup and Scoop etc..

Question: any issue with WSL2 and network connectivity to say services such as node running in your wsl2 that you would connect to from your browser? I’ve heard that in wsl2 there could be issues with this and you may have to do some workarounds or extra config magic..

theaustinseven• 5 years ago

I haven't had any trouble. I'm running an elixir project that I'm testing over localhost, and you don't have to do any port magic whatsoever. Just run the app in WSL and go to localhost:port in your browser. The only problem I've had is if you do any of your development in the windows part of the filesystem, you might run into weird file locking issues, but I haven't had many of those.

Also, the WSL extension for VS code makes it hardly noticeable that you're even working in windows.

munchbunny• 5 years ago

I have a setup right now where I have the server (Flask inside a container) running on WSL2 and a browser in Windows pointed at it with no issues.

I believe there are some edge cases but you have to get into stuff that isn’t just “open a port and listen on it”.

firecall• 5 years ago

The biggest issue for is that WSL2 is painfully slow accessing the local Windows file system.

You can mount the WSL2 file system in Windows, but then changes to files arnt communicated to apps. So your code editor wont know about changes made in the WSL2 env.

Not everything works or can with WSL2 either. There are some things you cant build and run.

I use Windows for games.

I also have a need for Adobe SW and MS Office. (requirment of my job).

macOS is great for dev, Adobe and Office. But I cant game on it...

There is no perfect OS for me right now. :-/

petitmiam• 5 years ago

The biggest issue for is that WSL2 is painfully slow accessing the local Windows file system.

This killed me after switching from WSL1 to WSL2. I missed the part in the notes where it said you should no longer store your files outside WSL. Finally figured it out eventually and the speed improvement was huge.

tomnipotent2• 5 years ago

I just did the same yesterday and was pleasantly surprised how far things have come (it's been ~15 years since I've done anything but game on Windows). WSL (both 1 and 2) are both very polished, and configuring VS Code w/Remote WSL setup was very simple (Windows GUI + Linux dev environment). The hardest part for me was getting past the gut-wrenching fear of using Windows Store to install something, but the experience from Windows Store "Install" to Windows Terminal "Debian" shell was actually... enjoyable.

userbinator3• 5 years ago

It's getting easier and easier to create a beautiful and functional dev environment in Windows 10 these days.

Only if you're unaware of all the hidden spyware you have to find and disable... the last time I had to install Win10, there were so many dark patterns everywhere.

mahalol• 5 years ago

Unfortunately, in some organisations the OS on your workstation is not a choice you can make, so for some of us that are stuck in Windowsland it's quite a treat to have all these goodies available.

Windows is probably the best DE for Linux now. ( I'd still use i3 if I had a choice)

tempfs• 5 years ago

Windows is just so slow at most everything though...

I go back and forth between a personal Debian box and Surface laptop all day long and it really just emphasises the amount of bloat and drag that Windows experiences doing even the most basic things like manipulating files and using a web browser.

I can use VS Code on both OS's and everything is faster on Linux. Not sure why I would choose Windows unless I needed the C#/.Net toolchain.

GiorgioG• 5 years ago

Windows unless I needed the C#/.Net toolchain

Unless you're working on a legacy .NET Framework application, .NET Core will happily work on Linux.

rozab• 5 years ago

And now .NET 5.

bhrgunatha• 5 years ago

WPF is really not legacy - since it's included in .NET core but IS Windows only.

dataflow5• 5 years ago

Not sure why I would choose Windows unless I needed the C#/.Net toolchain.

You're missing out on Visual Studio... for Python, C++, etc.

loloquwowndueo• 5 years ago

Thanks to jetbrains, no, you’re not.

freeone30004• 5 years ago

Honestly, you're not missing much. Using Visual Studio is always a clunky, slow experience with frustrating UI changes every time I click something.

philliphaydon2• 5 years ago

I’ve spent over a year now 100% in linux. And while I have 0 desire to go back to Windows at all (I do run a VM to do bits of work on .net framework) sometimes the pain of linux can be frustrating. It can be so fiddly and trying to get things working can be hours of hair pulling.

My latest issue is a clean install of Ubuntu 20.04, 20.10, 18.04, all have screen flickering. Which doesn’t occur in other distros. (Not screen tearing)

https://imgur.com/a/Yfs4cXb

But if I try mint, it has random UI freezing. Pop_OS! Has random things that won’t install because the distro name is pop and not ubuntu. Kubuntu runs flawlessly but then I can’t sign into vscode sync out of the box.

But when it works, it’s awesome.

tartoran4• 5 years ago

My ubuntu 20.4 randomly freezes and i have to do a forced reboot. It happens every couple of days while using FF. It is still more pleasant than Windows 10 nonetheless

redisman• 5 years ago

I really want to like desktop Linux but the stability compared to macOS wasn’t there. My latest experiment ended after randomly the OS stopped booting past disk decryption. I’m used to having to spend an hour or two tweaking things on it but after I failed to resolve that on my work machine in a few hours I was done

lupinglade• 5 years ago

Why would you want to dev on a Windows machine though? Unless you're writing Windows code, I see no reason.

com2kid5• 5 years ago

Because I have almost 30 years of experience using Windows, and a complex set of tooling, scripts, and utilities that I have grown accustom to. Heck the sysinternals suite alone is incredible.

Windows has incredibly good keyboard shortcut support. A small example, the context/menu key on keyboards is the equivalent of right clicking wherever the cursor is at, making spellchecking as I type super easy, I'm sure MacOS has some meta-combo that does this, but over 20 years ago Microsoft made this tiny piece of accessibility a first class citizen on their platform by starting a certification process for keyboards that included such a key.

Windows has non-borked external monitor support, unlike a slew of MacOS machines. (See, every thread on HN where some subset of people report problems with external monitors).

Windows has insane hardware support, buy whatever upgrade is on sale today, throw it in your machine, and odds are it'll just work.

Speaking of insane hardware support, my current Windows install has switched motherboards and CPUs multiple times. Pop the SSD into a new computer, boot, wait a few minutes for the OS to setup proper drivers, and off I go.

The UI is a first class citizen, not an afterthought. At no point do I have to wonder if my setup supports screen sharing.

Its media pipeline is pretty darn powerful. Per app volume control rocks, but the entire media stack can be rerouted, split, and merged, in all sorts of fun and cool ways.

The clipboard works. really well. I have actually seen the source code to the clipboard in Windows, a lot of engineering effort has gone into making it work that well.

Apps don't randomly stop working because I upgrade. Major UI utilities that reach deep into the system that I started using on Windows 7 work just fine today.

Do I have complaints about Windows? Of course. IMHO it has gotten way to large, back in Windows 2k and even the Windows 7 days, the # of background processes on a clean install was a fraction of what they are today. My start menu only opens up every other time I click it (...). And as with every other OS, reliability has gone down over the years.

But Windows isn't some half forgotten wasteland. It is the single most popular desktop OS, and for over a decade it was also the single most popular development platform.

Would I do docker based development on bare Windows? No, but I've done Android and Web development quite happily on Windows.

For reference, I have done C/C++ dev on Linux, and right now I use both MacOS and Windows for dev.

monoideism3• 5 years ago

And as with every other OS, reliability has gone down over the years.

I can run Debian or Ubuntu for weeks, even months, without rebooting. I can barely run Windows for a day or two without rebooting.

Others have mentioned the maddening and massive updates that happen frequently, and the weird application crashes and poor performance.

Windows has some cool stuff, like Powershell and .Net, but it’s otherwise too painful to use unless I absolutely must (which happens more often than I’d like these days, despite going 5 years without using windows at one point). Plus, Powershell and .Net are more readily available on Linux.

voldacar• 5 years ago

Windows has incredibly good keyboard shortcut support.

yeah and they are all scarcely documented and basically impossible to discover. you just randomly come across them on obscure 00's era PHP forums, there's no big comprehensive list of them somewhere.

jiggawatts3• 5 years ago

Per app volume control rocks, but the entire media stack can be rerouted, split, and merged, in all sorts of fun and cool ways.

I haven't heard about this! Do you have a reference?

vikinghckr• 5 years ago

Because Windows 10 is the best Operating System in the universe? It seems like HN is full of folks who last used Windows back in 2005 or something and are painfully out of touch with modern Windows.

shrimp_emoji2• 5 years ago

unironically implying modern Windows is better than older Windows
obviously has never used Linux

U+1F923

cameronh903• 5 years ago

Between MacOS and Windows in recent years, I vastly prefer Windows. WSL2 alone beats the pants off anything in MacOS - and MacOS had become a much more frustrating experience over the past few years.

Windows is still, to some extent, full of magic and dragons underneath... and while they're doing an increasingly good job at hiding it, it does occasionally bite you in the arse. But Windows has on the whole become a competent development environment that works very well with almost any kind of development workload - with the exception of native iOS and MacOS. Also GPU accelerated ML on Windows is still kind of sketchy.

For a dedicated backend application development desktop, I still prefer Linux. But hardware support is generally better on Windows, plus you have access to Adobe Creative Suite, better colour management, better graphics drivers, etc. and there are types of development that just aren't practical on Linux, such as 3D games, Excel add-ons, VSTs and lots of proprietary embedded development platforms don't support anything other than Windows.

On the other hand, .NET development nowadays is just as easy on MacOS, Windows and Linux.

procinct• 5 years ago

What do you find is so much better in WSL2 vs Mac? I find when I’m using WSL2 I feel more like I’m using 2 computers since they have the different file systems (you can’t just git clone into your windows file system from WSL for example) Whereas with Mac, it’s all one system and it’s all still Unix. The rest of Mac vs Windows seems like it could be up for debate (last few Mac updates have made it feel a lot less polished) but from a purely terminal experience I’ve found Mac to be so much better since it’s all just one system. I’m switching to Windows soon so I’m really curious, what’s your workflow for dev with WSL? For example, where do you keep your repos? What editor do you use? That sort of thing.

lovetocode• 5 years ago

After more than a decade of developing on Mac and Linux I am moving back to Windows and continue to be quite happy there. Docker solved most of the problems that plagued Windows as a development machine. Mac hardware is incredibly expensive. Linux is great but I don’t enjoy it as a daily driver to do a lot of the administrative and logistical tasks expected of me as a engineering leader without the company.

npteljes2• 5 years ago

Bill made sure in the past that Windows should be The Operating System on PC, and it stuck. I think most of the upsides of current windows usage stem from this achievement. Hardware, software compatibility, and familiarity are often cited as upsides, but these reflect the status quo more than the merits of the system itself.

kaszanka• 5 years ago

  function profile_alias { editor $PROFILE }
  Set-Alias -Name profile -Value profile_alias

Why this instead of `function profile { editor $PROFILE }`?

vsviridov• 5 years ago

My latest fave for windows development is Scoop (https://scoop.sh)

It's basically like homebrew for windows, and all programs are installed into a user folder, so no admin rights are necessary.

quyleanh• 5 years ago

Did you try winget [1]?

[1] https://github.com/microsoft/winget-cli

woodruffw5• 5 years ago

An honest question from someone who hasn't used Windows since the early 2010s: as developers, what's the draw?

I've seen a few blog posts like this one where competent individuals attempt to construct a Linux-like development environment on their Windows install. It's clear that you're still fighting the host environment at the end of the day, and that anything that provides a Linux-like interface is going to suffer from both Windows' lackluster performance and the overhead of virtualization/translation/emulation/whatever approach your layer-of-choice uses. Is it familiarity, presence of other (non-development) applications, or something else?

Edit: I should say that I haven't used Windows since 2012 or so, but I have developed for it (mostly drivers and filesystem work) since then by running VMs. Ironically, my best experience developing for Windows has been entirely on Linux and macOS.

clircle2• 5 years ago

Linux is bad for laptop batteries, 4K screens, other hardware, and most office programs. If you only use vim, stay plugged into an outlet all day, and don't need great video conferencing, then Linux is fine. But that's not most people.

OTOH windows is slower than Linux, but it's a price worth paying for some.

woodruffw5• 5 years ago

Linux is bad for laptop batteries, 4K screens, other hardware, and most office programs. If you only use vim, stay plugged into an outlet all day, and don't need great video conferencing, then Linux is fine. But that's not most people.

I don't disagree with any of this[1]! But we're talking about developers, not most people, and it looks like this particular author went out of their way to install a CLI editor.

Others have pointed out that Windows is still the right platform if you're a game developer, which makes a lot of sense to me. Are there other specific hobbyist development cases that are best served by a Windows environment?

[1]: Except the 4K and video conferencing. Those actually work quite nicely for me (n=1) on Linux.

ardy42• 5 years ago

An honest question from someone who hasn't used Windows since the early 2010s: as developers, what's the draw?

Corporate standards? Also, if you're in enterprise land, there could be some weird tool you need to use (or is superior to whatever you can get on Linux) that forces/encourages you to use Windows.

Also, there may be some weird little ergonomics thing: I recently switched from Windows to a Mac at work. We use Outlook, and IMHO Mac Outlook sucks compared to the Windows version. It's just missing a bunch of useful little features that I got used to. I was originally planning on using Windows Outlook in a VM, but got thwarted by new policies set by our new desktop support vendor.

woodruffw5• 5 years ago

That makes sense for a Windows development shop, but for a personal development environment? This blog and others I've seen seem geared at hobbyist developers.

olyjohn• 5 years ago

Mac Outlook is so totally neutered compared to the Windows version. I thought Outlook on Windows was a crappy, crashy POS application, then I used it on Mac. It actually hinders my productivity. There's not even an option to manually run mail rules that you create. I guess you just have to wait for that e-mail to come in again to see if you set up your rules properly. No option to rebuild your mailboxes. I have had to remove and recreate my account multiple times already just to keep it functioning.

jjcm2• 5 years ago

Gaming. If you look at the author's posts on twitter, you'll see he's heavy into gaming / game dev. There simply aren't other platforms for this. OSX is atrocious with anything gaming related. Linux is getting there, but it's always a hack and there's a chance you'll be banned by platforms due to anti-hack detection algos often flagging linux/wine as nefarious.

TwoNineA2• 5 years ago

Nothing stops anyone from using a Linux desktop as their workhorse and gaming in a VM with GPU passthrough.

With tools like Looking Glass (https://looking-glass.io/) you don't even have to leave the Ubuntu Desktop environment.

armoredkitten• 5 years ago

Linux is definitely improving when it comes to gaming. A lot more games either support it natively, or they work quite well using Proton. Like you say, anti-hack/cheat algorithms on multiplayer games can be a problem. I dual-boot with Windows for those games that just don't work on Linux, but I find myself booting into Windows less and less....

which does not bother me one bit.

AaronFriel3• 5 years ago

Hardware just works, interface is familiar and understandable, it works with high DPI displays reliably, Hyper-V and Docker and WSL/WSL2 make cross-platform development a breeze.

I'm not aware of any compromises I've had to make, whereas MacOS colleagues have to deal with compatibility issues with userland utils, Docker, running *nix VMs, and so on.

And as of a couple months ago, GPU passthrough with WSL2 enables using an Nvidia GPU for ML tasks using Linux binaries.

jhanschoo• 5 years ago

Another point in favor of Win10: full-disk encryption is easier to set up as Bitlocker on Windows. Together with the TPM, physical access no longer means easy data access, and you don't have to input a passcode for the encryption either.

There is no good story for tpm-secured booting into a full-drive encrypted Linux OS. What I have now still requires a passcode at boot, and it was still a pain to set up.

JeremyNT• 5 years ago

So basically, the claim here is that it's easy to visualize linux in Windows than it is on a Mac?

That's swell, but what advantage do you perceive versus... just running linux? I understand if you're a .net shop, but I'm always confused about the lengths Windows users seem to go through to run Linux tools within Windows rather than just running Linux.

monsieurbanana• 5 years ago

I almost don't want to answer, I'm wary about the replies telling me how I'm doing it wrong or how I'm unlucky with my hardware (with a hint of "I don't believe you") or with guides about setting up stuff.

I'm a linux guy, I've used linux almost exclusively for the past 10 years, but one of my two laptops recently started running Windows10 + WSL2.

Why I use it:

- WSL2 is usable. Looks like a linux, smells like a linux, and performance is way faster than on my linux laptop (purely because the windows laptop hardware is much more beefy, I'm just saying WSL2 performance isn't a bottleneck)

- Games, obviously, and I'm sure you know that. There's a non-negligible overlap between gamers and developers. VR games on linux is a no-go at the moment.

- Printers. I've never had a linux laptop that just worked regarding scans and printing. Sometimes I works, sometimes (usually) it doesn't.

- My otherwise well-supported thinkpad has a crappy broadcomm wifi+bluetooth chipset. It's just not well supported on linux. I've had to stay in a hotel for 2 weeks covid quarantine, I'm glad I had my windows laptop with me, as linux didn't want to connect to their wifi at all. Bridging wifi from my android phone is another workaround I use

- Regarding bluetooth, it's bad too. Audio works after a decent amount of manual config (finding the right driver online, the one shipped on ubuntu is the wrong one), but with horrible latency (almost 1sec). My bluetooth mouse is now working without issues, besides a bluetooth systemctl restart from time to time.

The bad things about it:

- A couple of random BSOD. I have no idea where to even start to debug them. Only 2-3 in 6 months of usage though.

- Botched upgrades. This was a bad one, when I bought the laptop, the latest upgrade just didn't work, it would brick the laptop. It seems to be a problem with my ryzen cpu, so the only solution was to reinstall and stop all updates until microsoft fixed it

- Upgrades in general, they're shitty, forced, etc... Nothing new here. I use third-party programs to stop the forced upgrades, so at least I have control over that

- Autohotkey is required for basic customization, like shortcuts. I'm very specific about my shortcuts (I need my bazillion emacs keybindings to work the same as in linux), but ahk makes it work for me.

- Some annoying, but non-critical bugs in WSL2. It might get better with time.

- Virtual workspaces are now shipped with windows, but their keybindings suck in a non-fixable way

There you go. I'm still a linux guy, I prefer linux and will probably dual boot an ubuntu+i3 once I buy a bigger SSD, but WSL2 makes dev on windows quite painless. All I need for my work is a terminal, emacs and a browser after all.

woodruffw5• 5 years ago

Thank you for the detailed response! I was stung badly by the promise of POSIX on Windows back in the Cygwin era, so it's very possible that I don't fully appreciate just how good/seamless WSL2 is.

tiew9Vii• 5 years ago

Interesting you mention WSL2 as a plus.

I've used Linux since early 2000's and OSX on the desktop since 2010+. Before that Windows CE, 95 and think Vista or 7 was the last.

I was curious about what Windows looks like these days as it's been a decade and also curious about WSL2 as it seems online posts are generally positive over WSL. The surface go / surface line of devices looked interesting for a nsmall, stuff in the bag while traveling doing email/browsing/office type of machine. I was tempted to buy one to see what they are about.

At a contracting gig last year I was given a Windows machine. I'm not sure if it was because it wasn't the best and typical corporate laptop specs, or if it was because of the corporate lock-down, installed software, av, and other junk but my eagerness to try modern Windows and WSL2 quickly diapered. I struggled getting docker running, i struggled running docker in the subsystem, i found things where not working in the subsystem, had difficulty with paths etc. In the end the machine went back and I got a mac and was up and running in an hour with full dev environment and everything set up how I like using nix-darwin. Same for the other devs, they where unable to get a working dev environment on windows so sent the machines back for macs.

Some of it will certainly be my unfamiliarity but it just didn't seem compelling enough to overcome. Clicking the start menu and seeing ads instead of finding programs was a blatant yes this is windows moment.Even the UI /UX felt old which seems odd given that Microsoft have quite a lot of material out on user interaction and ux research.

An interesting observation about modern Microsoft is a lot of the onsite Microsoft Azure employees seem to be using Macs and Microsoft give them the option of running Macs.

xnyan• 5 years ago

For servers, I would never consider anything but linux. As a desktop OS, Windows gives me a great experience. I’m lucky enough that I don’t have the performance problems that others describe. Games. Hardware compatibility without configuration or tweaking. Windows subsystem for Linux v2. It all works like I expect and I don’t have to fiddle with it constantly.

Arainach• 5 years ago

My thoughts on this previously: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25425365

I have to fight against Linux to do standard desktop environment GUI things, while Windows just works for the most part. The rough edges of Windows are essentially all covered by the Windows Subsystem for Linux.

jiggawatts3• 5 years ago

This exactly.

What most Linux people say when they say that they want the "Linux development environment" they mean some shell tools. Shell tools that are now available under Windows with better "fidelity" than under MacOS.

dehrmann2• 5 years ago

I've gotten annoyed by some of the Windows bloatware recently, and I realized most of what I do should work fine on Linux. As others have said, I have hardware compatibility concerns, am not sure how a high dpi or external monitor will work, have battery life doubts, and am not looking forward to using Wine.

woodruffw5• 5 years ago

I don’t use a HiDPI laptop but, for what it’s worth, getting a 2x4K setup working on my desktop was nearly painless on Ubuntu 20.04[1]. It would probably have been even easier had I stuck to GNOME instead of switching to i3.

[1] https://blog.yossarian.net/2020/12/24/A-few-HiDPI-tricks-for...

CJefferson• 5 years ago

My answer is, I don't see the problems, and I don't fight windows.

I run WSL2, and when benchmarking performance is almost identical to rebooting into Ubuntu.

I've never had a laptop where everything worked well in Linux (WiFi, Bluetooth, sleeping), even when trying laptops where I was told it would work well, like the Dell XPS.

Also, I work on (open source) desktop software, where the majority of our users use Windows, so I like being able to easily debug their problems. I work in academia and get lots of word and Excel documents I have to edit, and find while open office can view them it often breaks them if I edit and resave.

markjgx• 5 years ago

Proprietary tools that work significantly better/exclusively on Windows 10, plus games... yeah mostly games.

jonny383• 5 years ago

Windows bloat, performance, and telemetry is frankly out of control. I use primarily either macOS or Ubuntu for development work day to day, but need to use Windows for specific builds and testing. I don't enjoy the experience.

I'm not sure if these issues are because I don't use it very frequently, but every time I start it up:

* CPU gets eaten alive by telemetry related services for minutes at a time.

* A barrage of updates I didn't ask for get forced on me (Despite whatever settings I put)

* Anti malware tools cause system to be I/O bound for about a minute

Longer term observations

* The disk usage goes up and up and up, even though I'm putting no data on to it

* I keep getting nagged to use a Microsoft account to sign in

* The default internet browser gets reset to Edge

* Some older applications just stop working for no reason, only to start working again weeks later.

On the plus side, Visual Studio seems to be much improved from what it used to be.

Kaze4044• 5 years ago

Windows defender makes Windows 10 absolutely impossible to use on slow (non-SSD) drives. That would be fine if there was an easy way to disable it, but it's literally impossible without digging through guides online. It's insanity that this is allowed.

geitir• 5 years ago

It's super easy to disable if you have group policy

kiddico• 5 years ago

You might be interested in OOSU10 (https://www.oo-software.com/en/shutup10) which has options to disable just about everything you can think of, including Defender.

tartoran4• 5 years ago

I am in the same boat except that I am forced to use windows 10 for 8 hours a day. I try to not pay too much attention but it is irking me a little every single day. Visual Studio used to be a great product but ever since I started using VS 19 I started having ugly issues every single day. During a day it hits weird bugs such as it simply won’t build, search functionality ocasionally is broken and I get crashes and auto restarts. Looked around for help and others are having the same issues but no solutions. Ms folks close the issues as ‘unable to replicate’. I replaced the machine and did a fresh install but no resolve so I have to live with it unfortunately.

ttt04• 5 years ago

Ms folks close the issues as ‘unable to replicate’.

I'm sorry, but that begs the question - what is even the point of telemetry then?

fortran77• 5 years ago

Well then, this setup isn't for you. Why not read some of the other articles on Hacker News?

userbinator3• 5 years ago

For me, the first hour or so after doing a clean install of any recent version of Windows is spent carefully going through all the settings (not just both(!) control panels, but everywhere else including the services, task scheduler, group policy, etc.) and turning off everything unwanted. It feels like cleaning an infected machine: you're never sure whether you got it all, or something is going to make an unpleasant appearance later.

indigodaddy3• 5 years ago

You would think there would or should exist some script that could do all this? I’ll look for something online..

LeoPanthera2• 5 years ago

There's a free tool called ShutUp10 that makes this process very fast. It even warns you if Windows reverts a setting you changed - which happens all the time.

temporallobe3• 5 years ago

Yes you can do that, but it requires lots of time and dedication, and sometimes special knowledge. It’s sad that Windows comes out of the box like this.

dehrmann2• 5 years ago

A barrage of updates I didn't ask for get forced on me (Despite whatever settings I put)

Let me just reboot for you when you're afk without asking.

jiggawatts3• 5 years ago

What kills me is that Windows will forcefully power on a sleeping laptop and update it no matter what you do. There is no "off" switch for this.

If you have a gaming or pro laptop in a bag, this is a fire hazard and could kill people.

I don't know how this was ever approved within Microsoft, but it is outright criminal negligence that should see them sued into the ground. Better yet, I'd like to see executives jailed if anyone every dies because of this arrogance.

Microsoft employees, get this through your thick heads: Your updates do not matter as much as my life!

manexploitsman• 5 years ago

There's a bunch of nice tools that make most of that stuff go away in matter of few clicks https://github.com/search?q=Windows+10+telemetry&type=

temporallobe3• 5 years ago

Windows Enterprise has none of these issues (I use for a development project). It’s a perfect, smooth experience and I love it. Of course you’ll have to shell out something like $1100 for a license, which is highly impractical for most hone users.

mdaniel• 5 years ago

A common refrain is that if you're not paying, you are the product, but does Microsoft still charge for Win10? My last contact with it was that I was offered a free upgrade from 8, and I don't recall 8 having these issues, so maybe that's why it was free.

Anyway, when I saw the monster price tag for Enterprise, I suspected that is what they determined was the cost of loss of analytics

m463• 5 years ago

- macos is taking away more control. I hope apple reverses course. I would like them to nanny less and think about making their platform less inward and more outward.

- ubuntu still does a lot of silly stuff.

(I remove or neutralize motd, appport, snapd, ubuntu-report, unattended-upgrades, ubuntu-advantage, whoopsie and more)

cosmotic• 5 years ago

I use a handful of Windows machines regularly and don't experience most of these problems.

Your disk space issue may be related to automated backups, system restore service, and LAN caching of Windows updates. You can disable these. Disk cleanup wizard can help here too.

Edge hijack has never happened to me, although a handful of links inside windows apps/services/docs do force edge to launch (which itself causes a confirmation to make it default, which I decline)

Windows is famous for backward compatibility, especially compared to Linux or MacOS, so I'm not sure what issues you're running into there. There are some strange system dependencies that I've seen cause issues; cortana search powering the start menu search feature and disabling the swap file causing numerous invisible failures come to mind.

Faulting anti-malware is frustrating because on windows you basically have to run it, and the default one is pretty okay. Most commercial options like symantec, norton, mcafee, etc are absolutely terrible.

tumblewit• 5 years ago

My thoughts: Windows 10 isn't that bad in fact I prefer the standard windows UI than most of the weird linux desktops. They call them modern but none are simple enough such that they get it out of the way. Eventually on linux only i3 makes sense for dev work but otherwise for the common desktop user windows 10 UI makes sense (once you remove the search and cortana and turn it into XP style UI) even over macOS. Sadly the telemetry the bloat makes it quite unusable. It just keeps reinstalling things though there are antispy tools disabling (or limiting i'm guessing) telemetry.

Also i've tried WSL2 and Debian is much better than ubuntu. the ubuntu and snap fiasco is quite annoying. i know you can just uninstall snaps but i think a simple debian install is enough for most dev testing if you plan to go WSL2 because it's extremely lightweight and fast inside wsl2. Also vscodium is an option as open source without telemetry but wsl2 can't be accessed through it because it's apis i believe are closed source.

Shared4043• 5 years ago

I don't think it's that Win10's UI is actually "More simple". Everything I've seen suggests that it's just what people are used to.

I put some small kids in front of some Windows and some Linux machines running GNOME 3. They had an easier time with GNOME.

selfhoster113• 5 years ago

Though it hurts to admit, I agree with this. Linux UIs have taken a great leap backward with Gnome 3. As a great fan of Windows XP, pre-Unity Ubuntu, and even Unity era Ubuntu, a de-Cortanized Windows 10 is far more usable day-to-day than an equivalent Linux UI (as long as you don't scratch the surface and try to update any settings).

jjcm2• 5 years ago

On a daily basis I use Windows/OSX/Ubuntu interchangeably depending on what type of computer I'm on (desktop/laptop/server, respectively).

Up until I set up a similar environment to the author, dev on Windows was always a nightmare. Typically I'd just ssh into a server and use vim when I was on windows as it was a better experience. WSL has been a game changer. Code... just works. It's actually impressive how well integrated they've made it. I no longer have to do strange hacks or worry about different line endings on windows. It all just works now. If you're on a decently powerful PC, I'd recommend trying it out. It's more resource heavy than a native Linux install for sure, but it means you no longer have to dual boot for gaming. That's a big win in my book.

nabaraz2• 5 years ago

Anyone figured out how to complete disable Windows Updates and Windows account? I don't care if I am missing critical updates and an online Windows account, i just want my computer to run without any interference.

freeone30004• 5 years ago

A windows account can be disabled by not creating one - hitting back, then forward, then forgot, then back, then forward, then "create offline account" will appear as a hidden option.

Disabling Windows updates is not possible.

ttt04• 5 years ago

hitting back, then forward, then forgot, then back, then forward, then "create offline account" will appear as a hidden option.

You're joking, right?

nabaraz2• 5 years ago

I have an offline account but it shows me a dialog about fixing my Windows account every day.

sitzkrieg2• 5 years ago

https://archive.org/details/windows-10-ameliorated-1903

i think this is older version (i ran oct update)

you can also run the scripts on existing install but be warned its uh, very opinionated

nichos• 5 years ago

This is the only thing that worked for me, been running like this with no issues for about 2 years:

Browse to C:\Windows\SoftwareDistribution, right click on the Downloads folder, click properties. Security Tab, Advanced, Change Permissions, Disable Inheritance, Remove all inherited permissions from this object, Apply.

To enable windows updates, reverse this process. You may have to stop the service or go to safe mode to this, though I don't remember doing that.

littleweep• 5 years ago

This truly has me excited to set up a dev environment on Windows 10. Thanks for the post.

CTOSian• 5 years ago

"awesome" and windoze10 does not mix

sitzkrieg2• 5 years ago

good one! truly

temporallobe3• 5 years ago

I will never willingly use Windows 10 as my primary OS. Forced updates killed it for me. Don’t get me wrong, I actually prefer Windows as an OS over macOS in some ways, but the update policies do not leave you in control of your own system. The nail in the coffin was around 3 years ago when right in the middle of a recording session, Windows forced an update despite my best attempts at delaying and stopping it. The next day I backed up all my data and installed Mint and never looked back. Perhaps this was an overreaction, but I don’t regret it. I am glad I did this because I bought a macbook and discovered the word of mac-based DAWs and I am extremely thrilled, though I am fearful that one day macOS will become Windows-like in its system policies. And then life will suck.

pacamara619• 5 years ago

Inb4 "you can disable automatic updates with these simple 4327 registry hacks and 322 group policies"

doublerabbit• 5 years ago

Until that one update you do install reverts all those changes...

temeritatis• 5 years ago

Best thing i ever did; https://udse.de/reboot-blocker The website is in German, but it really works, in contrast to a hundred other hacks to achieve this. Truthfully tho, Windows 10 is IMHO a joke. They could just have continued polishing windows 7 and i would personally have been pretty happy. I suspect i'm not alone in thinking this way.

dirtnugget• 5 years ago

Windows for development for me is not a question for the filesystem alone.

Deleting a large folder like node_modules seems to take ages on windows as compared to macOS or Linux.

ttoocs• 5 years ago

I'm a crazy poweruser, who uses linux. I use the fact it's scheduler priorities actually do something, and that there's different tiers of it. The fact I can change how cpu/mem/disk/etc is limited per apps (cgroups), or globally to use less power... (I get +20FPS to reliability and stability hit 60Fps in OverWatch cause of this, I don't think this PC could run OW on windows nicely at all) I use xdotool to automate all the things... I play with filesystems, audio (I still haven't seen any other system as good as mine for making my ears never bleed). It also handles faulty HW perfectly fine, I can reload it, restart it, etc, isolated to just that component. It handles old HW very well. Drivers for everything I've ever tried always without any hassle (Albeit windows seems to have improved this.) I can also disable the CPU mitigations and get a bunch of performance back... as my desktop PC doesn't run untrusted code.. nor have services accessible.

Windows goes bizzerk within a week every week and somehow just maxes out my work laptop/desktops CPU for no apparent reason... needing reboots to fix it. Windows updates ruin all long-running tasks (like, unittests).. and unitTests cannot be run at low priority, cause they still effect normal priority apps way too much... If you start playing with low level systems in it, it'll just start blue screening . MS telemetry... Ad's on desktop... A LOT of crap I don't care about comes with it and runs by default.. vs ~32Mb of ram usage by the time I hit desktop.

Creating my awesome Windows 10 dev setup

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