Do You Still Really Need Windows? Switching To Linux in 2022

by Mike Levin

Livecast from last night moved to this morning because my kid showed interest in doing stuff together, yay! Back to the livestreaming… what a great point I left off at. Stay humble getting livestreaming going again. Start simply with .screenrc and see where that goes.

• You’re stuck on a Windows 10 or 11 laptop
• The world is moving to Linux for all things “dev”
  • Particularly true of machine learning models that use your GPUs
  • M$ made sure your WSL2 Linux instance has GPU access (amazing)
• Microsoft made it “easy” to get a (non-graphics) Linux Terminal
• It’s best to use containers under Linux (future-proofing)
  • You don’t want to be tied to particular hardware instances
  • You don’t want to be forced to use cloud services (you have places to run code)
• In those containers, the first skill to learn is controlling Linux Services called daemons (easier than you think).
• The “screen” program is the way to monitor your “python” running services.

Today we talk about “places to run code” and all the stupid labels of what our setup (on our laptop) really is.

• Show how to know you’re in a “gnu screen terminal session” (vs. direct)

When you install WSL you get the unified Windows Terminal installed I believe automatically when you wsl –install. This functionally eliminates the need for 3rd party terminals. The “Unix-like Terminal” is now just a standard part of Windows. This is a huge new reality. This shows us probably:

• Windows as you know it is going away (~5 years)
  • DOS Command Prompt will go away
  • PowerShell 5.x will go away
  • BASH Shell takes over the world (again)
• Show .screenrc “installed” to tell “screen sessions” from not.

What I am not (who I am not targeting):

• “Classing” developer or sysadmin or devops

What I am (who I am targeting):

• People who consider “tech” as just general literacy (like reading, writing & math)

What?

Yes. Since Unix-like OSes won, tech like this is general literacy. Just like knowing English is knowing read/write, knowing *nix is knowing generic pluming of tech for much broader reasons (better life) than being a classic developer, sysamins or devops.

Everyone

Who shouldn’t know “generic” tech. There is generic tech now that the proprietary stuff is on its way out.

You’re going to hear a lot about Docker. Hype.

Why not “just use docker” for this? And why not Docker from Windows for even more simplicity?