Micah says the M1 is great, but it's WSL that's a real game-changer...

Hi Chris and Mike,

I'm writing regarding the conversation about whether the ship has sailed on Linux on the desktop.

I hate to say this but, in a lot of ways.... I think it has. Coding is a second career for me; I was a lawyer who taught myself JavaScript and switched careers. Before I made the switch I was a dedicated Linux user when it came to software development. I was convinced there was no way anyone would code in Windows unless they hated themselves and the walled-garden approach of macOS has always driven me crazy. It was Linux or bust.

And then I got my first job as a software developer... in a Windows shop. I was skeptical at first but it turns out that development in Windows is actually pretty painless. Between VSCode, Windows Terminal, and WSL (first WSL1 and then WSL2) the Windows developer experience just isn't the horror show that some corners of the internet would have you believe. Hell, even native Windows development is pretty good - PowerShell is pretty powerful if you take the time to learn it and most common Bash commands are aliased these days, so you can ls, cd, and mkdir to your heart's content.

What really amazed me was WSL - it does virtually everything I need Linux for in a development workflow. It's fast, as long as you're in the Linux filesystem, and VSCode and Intellij can seamlessly connect to it. It's a damn-near native experience. And that's the thing - the stuff I need Linux for when writing code... it's just not desktop stuff. There's just nothing that Gnome or Plasma does that I need to do my job. The command line does it all just fine.

There's a lot of talk out there about Apple's M1 being a game changer - and it is, from a hardware point of view - but to me WSL2 is the real desktop Linux killer. That's what we should be talking about. We now live in a world where you can get virtually all the benefits of Linux AND the universal application compatibility of Windows... without dual booting. As a Linux user (at home) I find this both amazing and a little scary at the same time. It's WSL, not the M1, that threatens to make Linux on the desktop totally unnecessary. 

Sure, there have been a few times when I've run into the boundaries of WSL2 but there are workarounds for that, most of which will be unnecessary when WSL2g (or whatever the GUI enabled version is called) hits the mainstream Windows branch.

Other than desktop paradigms that are "not Windows", I'm starting to struggle to see what Linux on the desktop offers over WSL. I would love to be wrong - I'm really cheering for Valve to continue championing gaming on Linux, for example.

But maybe that's OK? Maybe having Linux dominate the server/IoT/mobile (sort of) space is enough? As a Linux user since the early 00s, I have very mixed feelings about all of this. Sorry for the long email - would love to hear more discussion about this topic.

Thanks for all the work you guys do at JB!