This is my last comment in the discussion because I don’t think I am gaining anything from this interaction.
But I want to be clear that we already put a huge amount of effort into the Windows experience every week in. We make sure all features are Windows compatible, run multiple CI environments on Windows, discuss security efforts, etc.
Elixir v1.9 included support for releases and we have written all of the integration code with Windows, spending dozens of hours in development, writing batch files, and testing all of the different integrations (WSL, console, powershell, cygwin, etc). We put more effort developing this feature on Windows than on all other platforms combined.
Have you maybe considered that improving the “Windows experience” is too much for a small team of people that is already developing and maintaining the language for multiple platforms (including Windows)?
I will gladly accept that the work we have done is not enough, but saying “if there is a real interest” or “otherwise Elixir could just drop Windows support for good” is a slap on the face while we are actively working on it. How do you think the installer came to be?!
Ironically, all Linux distributions work on their own packaging for Elixir, without zero input from the Elixir team. Recently, we even made improvements to our process based on pull requests from SUSE users.
For the Elixir team, I can say with 100% confidence that there is no “us vs them” view on Windows. It is always considered in our development and maintenance discussions. I suspect there is no separation for the Erlang team either. But it is extremely unrealistic to expect the Elixir team to address the whole Windows experience, especially when this is handled on other platforms by interested groups, without our input. Still, I have made myself available multiple times and in multiple occasions to anyone who is interested in pushing this forward. If this is not real interest in your opinion, then you should probably come to terms your expectations won’t be met.
@josevalim Even though you are not responding to this thread anymore, I want to clarify one thing from the reader perspective (even though my comments are not targeted on the work being done by the core team)…
When you say this:
And then, this (I also have read similar responses on problems with Windows terminal regarding iex coloring and history/ completion and other stuff, so it got me wondering):
It’s confusing, because from the previous context, it does suggest that the team is coming short regarding Windows support and may sound like nothing is/ will be done about it. It’s nice to hear otherwise and that the core team is doing everything you have mentioned, this reassures the commitment you already have made by supporting Windows.
I just want to make myself clear for people reading this that my comment is a general perception about some aspects of the community as a whole, not about the work the core team has been doing per se, so please don’t take this personally - actually, forgive me if by any means what I’ve said can be interpreted like this - was not the intention, it’s just a report on one’s perspective.
The way I see it, this kind of discussion tends to get blurry because a lot of people, coming from different backgrounds will take it differently. That’s why I tried to make myself clear about this beeing my perception, experience and therefore opinions - do take it with a huge grain of salt. Every input has it’s merit, even if it’s to be completely discarded.
I guess part of the confusion might be in the different use-cases. I guess the core teams focus is that elixir can run on, be used on and especially be compiled for windows. With releases in core this task probably even became a lot more work than before. This is a completely separate expectation to “providing (a great) developer experience”, which additionally includes installers, editor support and further tooling. The latter wouldn’t even be needed if the first part is not handled properly.
I’ve been running it as my full time dev environment since 17.09 (about 2’ish years now) and didn’t come across any issues in all of the releases from then until the latest stable release.
Are you running something like Shut Up 10 or another tool that might try to black hole certain Microsoft web addresses? You don’t need to confirm or deny that publicly, but you may or may not need to loosen the chains on such a tool to get the MS store working.
Proton isn’t a fork, it’s a prebuilt collection of wine, DXVK, and a lot of other little addons (which most wine front-ends also setup for you). You can still use the platform wine or any custom built thing as well, but Proton was built to ‘have everything’.
Linux doesn’t typically have any relevance to a desktop end-user unless they are Microsoft-haters. Most desktop end-users just want to do their “computer stuff” (to which the desktop PC is becoming increasingly less relevant) and get on with their life.
Because watching the cursor flushing itself in its toilet hole gets old… When I get on a windows 10 machine its like going back to floppy disk days compared to linux…
There are non-developer/programmer/IT Linux users out there - I’m simply not aware of any particular Linux distro that caters to that particular group as much as Windows/MacOS does.
As I stated Android seems to be the biggest Windows competition - but that I wouldn’t classify that as a desktop OS.
Perhaps Microsoft-hater was a bit strong. I was referring to the fact that most desktop systems come or are even designed for Windows - and the mainstream consumer behaviour is to stick with that. You have to go out of your way to get Linux on a desktop system - which isn’t mainstream consumer behaviour.
I think the popular one is Ubuntu. I freelance as a computer repair guy, and from time to time I see a Linux box and most of the time, it has Ubuntu (or one of its derivatives like UbuntuStudio, or Xubuntu). The only time I’ve been called to fix one of those was because of a hardware failure. The windows machines on the other hand, are spyware/malware based repairs.
The Windows 10 experience sucked, flaky os, malware preinstalled, background operations and internet communications that are hidden.
Windows 2016 Server with desktop experience installed is much better. Clean and not preloaded with junk I will never use.
Linux is for users that want to see what is under the hood and also is very customizable. You can even build your own linux from scratch.
Thanks to @OvermindDL1 in another topic we discussed a problem of mine. Regarding Linux performance, i ended up using a KDE based Ubuntu known as KUBUNTU , which uses very little memory and is user friendly.
Also if anyone has any questions regarding this you can pm me or we can create another topic to discuss this.
My wife, many friends in real life, all are heavy gamers. They like Linux because the games run faster and they just don’t have any issues, ever. I’m “on call” for them if they need help but so far they never have, and they’ve discovered a lot on their own that they like to show off to me. They don’t dev, don’t program, aren’t IT by any stretch. They all use Kubuntu.
Well it’s a lot to talk about if you like we can create another topic. Where i can describe the experience and also run some tests for comparison against my old Bodhi Linux.
At your encouragement and with your support no doubt.
Most people just stick to what the vendor hands them and/or what they can find support with from their peer group - which in most cases is Windows. Few people are fortunate enough to have somebody like you around to help them explore alternatives (apart from the it’s just too much like work aspect).
