Beg to differ here, I've been on Linux Desktop for 10 years now and used a ton of "major distros" like KDE Neon, Manjaro, Mint, and Zorin etc. All of them were incredibly solid with full driver support (AMD CPU) and stable on my PC.
That's the point. Little to no users have the interest in wasting time distro-hopping for 10 years just to use a computer to get work done and it has nothing to do with 'full driver support' which that is a given and is the bare minimum.
Windows and macOS have full integration, high consistency and developers support one type of OS for their apps to test and that is it. Now with WSL2, there is no need to dual boot or format, re-install a Linux Desktop after a failed distro upgrade / conflict and this fully works inside of Windows.
Also, 1 anecdote from 1 user isn't remotely sufficient evidence.
> Both Windows and macOS are good, the Linux desktop in 2022 however is just woeful.
[ ...one comment later... ]
> 1 anecdote from 1 user isn't remotely sufficient evidence.
I hope I don't need to point out the hypocrisy here.
I'd also tear apart the idea that MacOS/Windows present "one target" to build for, but I don't need to. You already concede that WSL2 is needed to make Windows a viable development environment, at which point you can cut out Windows altogether and just use the development environment side of things. Same goes for MacOS, if you're only relying on the development toolchain, then there's no reason to use the poorly-supported Darwin kernel in the first place. Linux is a terrible desktop, but as an operating system it's purely magnificent. It's become the industry standard for good reason.
> I hope I don't need to point out the hypocrisy here.
I don't think you have finished reading all the comments around this whole 'Ask HN' post with more comments here recommending either 'Windows', and 'macOS' over 'Linux' as their 'main desktop' to develop 'on'.
> You already concede that WSL2 is needed to make Windows a viable development environment.
Now where did I say that?
WSL2 isn't used for targeting desktop apps for Windows, it is used for developers that want to easily target Linux or testing their apps on Linux by NOT going through the process of clean installing, dual booting, migrating files to an entire separate Linux desktop environment to do that, which that is the use-case to run both Windows as the main system and Linux as the guest.
With this one can easily develop or test and target typical desktop apps on a Windows machine without switching, dual booting, etc which is what I am talking about and the same is true for macOS which developers use to target for macOS desktop apps.
So you have a more integrated consistent developer / desktop experience where the desktop works with the developer rather than the developer wasting time fighting with their computer and they end up distro-hopping for years rather than getting work done.
> Linux is a terrible desktop...
That is all the OP needs to know. Everything else beyond that sentence is irrelevant.
If they cannot use the desktop then it is pointless to recommend it as a 'developer-friendly environment' or even begin clean installing it just for a worse desktop experience for the developer, which for GUI desktop apps, there are little to no users to target compared to the likes of macOS and Windows.
> I don't think you have finished reading all the comments
I wasn't responding to all of the comments. I was responding to you.
> With this one can easily develop or test and target typical desktop apps on a Windows machine without switching, dual booting, etc
That was totally possible before. VM passthrough works fine, (even "natively" with VMWare's software), and mingw is perfectly capable of native cross-compilation. WSL is neat, but it's not any more advanced than what Chromebooks have had for years. Hell, it's barely more impressive than MacOS' POSIX compliance.
> there are little to no users to target compared to the likes of macOS and Windows.
You can cross-compile MacOS and Windows apps on Linux just fine (done it many times before). Of course, you can also target webdev and mobile devices, as well as Docker, Kubernetes and other service-oriented software. But you're right, writing Fart Simulator for iOS is where all the real money is. I'll defer to your opinion rather than the thousands of people on this very site making money off headless Linux servers.
> That is all the OP needs to know.
Sure, if they don't want to write system services, self-hosted websites, self-custody backends, databases, Kubernetes clusters, CI/CD pipelines, Docker containers or test DevOps services locally, then that is all they need to know about Linux. They should focus on the actual breadwinners, like getting their 70% from the App Store.
> I wasn't responding to all of the comments. I was responding to you.
Yeah. Responding back to point out the fact why 'Linux is a terrible desktop' hence the reason why even the majority of respondents here use a Windows (with WSL) or macOS desktop do to development ON it and NOT doing a clean install of a full Linux distro to just target Linux. That is the point of the 'Ask HN' question here.
> WSL is neat, but it's not any more advanced than what Chromebooks have had for years. Hell, it's barely more impressive than MacOS' POSIX compliance.
Yet when asked here, I see the majority of people here not interested in running desktop Linux distros as their dev environment and instead are using either MacBooks (running macOS) or using a typical Windows desktop.
With WSL2 there is little to no configuration or installation that requires an involved setup contraption that you have just described. No need for a clean install and they can keep their Windows desktop, run, develop their Windows desktop apps / games without fail or any migration of existing files. So even with the additional use cases you mentioned:
> But you're right, writing Fart Simulator for iOS is where all the real money is. I'll defer to your opinion rather than the thousands of people on this very site making money off headless Linux servers.
> Sure, if they don't want to write system services, self-hosted websites...
Either way, they are still 'targeting' Linux through the comfort of their Windows (WSL2) and macOS desktop environment. As I said before, with WSL2, there is ZERO NEED for a clean install of a Linux distro to even test any of that. macOS already has the sufficient environment to do the same use-cases you mentioned anyway, hence why installing Desktop Linux wasn't even mentioned and was just ruled out.
> They should focus on the actual breadwinners, like getting their 70% from the App Store.
Yeah, even with both uses no developer should be wasting time troubleshooting and playing around with their Linux desktop because the desktop environment crashed or Wayland failed to run an app or some other cryptic Linux Desktop issue.
My point still stands: 'If they cannot use the desktop then it is pointless to recommend it as a 'developer-friendly environment' or even begin clean installing it just for a worse desktop experience for the developer' and it also includes both Linux as a general target and for desktop GUI apps where it is always targeted last hence as you already admitted that it is 'a terrible desktop' which explains why little to no normal users are using it AND developers here are still recommending either 'macOS' or 'Windows' for their dev environment.
I wouldn't assume so about others. Those 10 years were super productive for me actually. I switched distros merely because I wanted to experience others out of my own will. My Desktop had no problems with any distro but my laptop does seem to have driver issues.
I am only looking to know how good the Wsl part inside the new Windows is. I use a Mac at work and it never impressed me but I can get my work done on it