wsl

Microsoft is just using Linux to make the moat around Windows deeper

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I’ve also slowly become convinced of something else. Elegant though they may be, grand, over-arching theories of human-computer interactions are just not very useful. The devil is in the details, and accounting for the quirky details of quirky real-life processes often just results in quirky interfaces. Thing is, if you don’t understand the real life process (IC design, neurosurgery procedures, operation scheduling, whatever), you look at the GUIs and you think they’re overcomplicated and intimidating, and you want to make them simpler. If you do understand the process, they actually make a lot of sense, and the simpler interfaces are actually hard to use, because they make you work harder to get all the details right.

Source: Perhaps WSL2 Should be a Wake-up Call | Lobsters

As someone who has railed elsewhere about the evils of point of sale systems created by people who have never, in their little sad developer lives, worked in food service, I feel this comment in my bones. For people who know what they want to accomplish, a complicated interface will let you your job once you learn it, and it will let you do magic once you master it.

People bitch about Windows— including myself. But we’re still using it. I personally keep thinking of switching back to Linux but I find myself dreading the inevitable UI churn of GNOME and KDE; it is one of the reasons why I prefer XFCE. But even it suffers from churn under it in the form of libraries and modules that are tossed aside and rewritten in an inane race towards “modernity”.

As for WSL, the classic Borg assimilation quote comes to mind.*

We are the Borg. Existence, as you know it, is over. We will add your biological and technological distinctivensess to our own. Resistance is futile.

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Accessorize your Windows toys with WSL

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Normally I would consider this a bug. However over the years I’ve come to the conclusion that Windows is a pretty toy. It works wonderfully “in the small”. But it isn’t useful for significant programmer workloads (like typing :-) ).

Source: WSL Isn’t Linux | Hacker News

Your mistake was considering Windows suitable for anything but media consumption. It will phone home, it will reboot when it feels like it, and it won’t resume state when it does reboot or resume from sleep.

The best use for WSL is to use it to shell into a proper Linux host. Only way you can guarantee you won’t lose your work when the OS decides to do something.

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Thinking Tools: July 2020

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It’s been a long while since that last post I did and my setup has changed a lot:

Web services

  • This site, which I’m trying to update more often with links and blog posts I find interesting. It’s going much better after I installed the WP Editor.md plugin to enhance the plain editor. The gutenberg editor sucks ass.
  • Nextcloud. I’m running my own instance to replace Dropbox, which I didn’t like the last time. Got the desktop client installed and it’s working quite nicely.
  • Twitter is still my social media network of choice. I’m using tweetdeck on the desktop
  • Feedly is still my RSS reader of choice but I’m looking around for a replacement that works across all my devices and it’s pretty to look at. Now that people are starting to move away from centralized social networks again there should be some movement in this space.
  • I’m running my own wiki using Wiki.js, which I’ve blogged about. This will probably merit another couple blog posts of their own specially now that I found vimwiki which could potentially run inside my Nextcloud instance.

Actual applications installed on my desktops and laptops

  • For messaging I’m now using Ferdi, a fork of Franz, to run most of my instant messaging needs. The great exceptions are Slack, Discord, and Signal; I discovered I work better when they have their own app instances running but when Signal offers a web interface I’ll probably fold it into Franz.
  • Spotify. Thinking of replacing it with a self-hosted option. I miss my graded playlists.
  • KeePass is still my password manager of choice.
  • Firefox. Mozilla keeps trying its best to kill all low-level functionality. This is easily the program I fuck around with the most, going from extensions to custom userChrome files.
  • Windows Subsystem for Linux. Much less of a pain in the ass than running a VirtualBox VM depending on what you’re doing. Using wsltty as its terminal.

There are some single-purpose utilities I’ve discovered in the interim that are extremely useful for working in Windows 10.

Mobile applications (Android)

  • The usual instant messaging slash social networking suspects minus TikTok, which is spyware.
  • Firefox mobile. Firefox needs to do better at syncing preferences into it.
  • Fenix twitter client. Twitter Co keeps fucking around with their API and preventing third party clients from achieving the excellence they used to have years ago.
  • Nextcloud mobile client for my Nextcloud instance. Needs a lot of work to compare with Dropbox, but it does its job well.
  • Moon+ Reader for ebooks. This one took me a long while to find, most ebook readers have utterly crazy skeuomorphic defaults.
  • Photoshop Express. This one was annoying but you’d be surprised how many image editors are missing features you’d consider basic (like cropping and image resizing), opting instead to overload with photo filters you’ll never use. This one has all the filters but at least lets you crop and resize. It replaced Snapseed. I’ve still to wade through open source editors but my hopes are dim on that front.

There are some things that underpin all of these applications but I think I’ll leave it as-is. It’s pretty fun to see how my workflow changes over time.

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