[kermitismyhero]

When I discovered VS Code a few months ago (I'm a hobbyist just getting into coding, not a professional) after many recommendations from friends who code and are die-hard open source true-believers, I did a legitimate doubletake after reading the name of the company that developed it.

I then spent an hour researching it, trying to find out what the catch was. Was the wikipedia page entry a prank? Was I getting some kind of malware masquerading as a pro development tool? Was is a temporary trial before big licensing fees were demanded of me? Does it need some sort expensive companion server that only runs on Windows Server? What's the catch?

But no, no catch. It's free, and it's open, and it works great. But every time I launch it I feel like I've walked into some weird alternate dimension. I have to remind myself that yes, this is reality: I'm using a native-Linux, fast, reliable, extensible, MIT-licensed editor made by freakin' Microsoft. So strange, man. So strange.

[wuschel]

... except perhaps for the Microsoft telemetry that is active in the distributed VScode binaries [1]?

To quote user ilaksh in this thread: "They will set it up so that it will _seem_ like your are developing for Linux, but due to some extensions or technicality it will only work on _Linux inside of Windows_.

So from my perspective it is amazing that people think this is a good thing for Linux."

There are good historic reasons to distrust M$.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18209082

[kermitismyhero]

I did see and disable the telemetry option in the preferences the first time I used it, and so far it seems to behave itself and not quietly re-enable telemetry.