[8456523]

> You can spend a year (seriously) just drilling down the source tree, more than a half million folders

I would be more inclined to switch to Windows if its source tree were smaller.

My guess is that a big reason I prefer MacOS over Windows is that Apple has been much more willing to drop support for legacy hardware and old applications to keep the source code more manageable.

[MagicPropmaker]

Oh come on. Be honest. I can tell just from the tone of this post that you'd _never_ switch to Windows.

[8456523]

That's not true.

It is difficult for humans to estimate how they spend their time, but my guess is that I've spent at least 35 hours recently exploring Windows 10: Changing various settings, installing software, asking Windows-specific questions of Google Search.

And I'm writing this on Windows. (Except for the Windows-specific questions, I'm not counting web use in the estimated 35 hours because of course the web mostly works the same way across the desktop OSes.)

I think computer users vary drastically in how much they value predictability in the software-based systems (or "environments") they use, and that I value predictability much more than the average user does.

I realize that it is unreasonable to hope never to be surprised at the response the system makes to an action of mine. But my response to being surprised is to try to understand how I could correctly predict similar responses in the future. For example, I might try to understand the reasoning of the designer of the part of the system in question. Or I might search for ways that I might have misinterpreted the situation. And I don't like it when I never reach an understanding of the surprising response.

Its source code's having half a million folders is a sign that Windows will never stop surprising me, which, all other things being equal, makes me less hopeful that spending time getting to know Windows will pay off for me.

Life of course will never stop surprising me. But to have any hope of getting anywhere in life or achieving any goal whatsoever, my brain must be sufficiently reliable and predictable. I see my computer as an extension of my brain that helps my brain be more reliable in the ways that will help me to succeed.

If you see your computer or the web site you are interacting with as a potential friend with agency of its own, then I can see where you might be offended by my original comment. I see computers and web sites as tools. Levers, if you will.

[shaklee3]

Windows 10 with WSL has enough Ubuntu features built in now that there's really no reason to use a Mac, since the "it has a Unix shell" comment doesn't work anymore. Your choices for applications are much larger on Windows.

[pickle-wizard]

With the new ConPTY they also one of fix my last gripes about Windows. That the console sucks.

With all the changes that Microsoft is making lately I really wonder how long until Windows becomes free as in beer. With their revenue from services growing, they don't need the Windows licensing revenue as much. Making Windows free would also allow them to making Windows cloud servers cheaper. Allowing them to grow the ecosystem.

[MagicPropmaker]

I switched from Apple to Windows 10 when Apple stopped offering decent "Pro" platforms. I need NVIDIA cards for the CUDA number crunching I do. (The Mac faithful say "b.b.but you can run an Nvidia externally over Thunderbolt." Ha!)

I even used to be an Apple employee.

Windows 10 is just fine. With a tiny amount of care to choose hardware that is all "happy path" (I run dual Intel Xeons, with a SuperMicro MoBo, and now dual Nvidia 2080 Ti for scientific processing), everything works fine. (Also, don't run third-party virus scanners. Just use what's built in to Windows!)

And things that don't quite work right on Macs, like 30-bit color, etc, work great.

I run Linux and FreeBSD in VMs. I don't use WSL much, I just build many things on Windows under Powershell if I don't need Centos or FreeBSD. I find that a lot of FOSS stuff works great on Linux and native Windows and not so well on MacOS because of "non-standard" choices about directory locations, etc.

It's best to give up your prejudices and give Windows 10 a try. Microsoft really did solve almost everything.

[pickle-wizard]

My $dayjob gave us all Macs for workstations. Which is fine and dandy, but I spend all day in an RDP session as my job is automating Windows. Honestly Windows is fine and is getting better. I'm running the Windows 10 Insiders Preview so sometimes things get a little funky but still it pretty much just works.

[machinecoffee]

As an end user, what difference does the size of the source tree make?

So long as the OS is stable, performant and has a pleasant GUI that you can interact with (or cmdline if that's your thing), was does it matter?

I'm pretty sure no user in the history of users ever cared about such a thing.

[saagarjha]

I wouldn’t be surprised if macOS consisted of a similar number of lines of code.

[8456523]

This comment sits at -4. Can someone who thinks it should be downvoted explain why? I ask because I want to learn (not to argue).