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Linux subsystem is there on windows. You don't have to use linux for majority of cases. Conda is pretty decent.

But I want to know what specific things they use that can't work on linux subsystem?

Maybe there are some and I don't know about them.



There‘s a simple reason: speed. Have you ever tried to use WSL 1 with npm? I doubt do, because it just takes 10 times more time than on „real“ linux.

Also, it‘s way easier to work with multiple desktops and windows position better than on Windows where it seems that they are opening always there where you don‘t look.

There are also quite a lot of others, IMHO.


I have. It wasn't called wsl but bash on windows back then. You had to disable bunch of services related to scanning files (windows defender?) to make it barely usable but since v2, they are using a lightweight vm so the speeds are significantly better compared to what you got on bash on windows or wsl 1.

I don't have anything to say about your other nitpick.

A good reason to use windows is games, Adobe and office. Games using anti-cheat will not be available on linux and if you can get them to work, good luck not getting banned.


I agree, gaming and Office are major bonuses for Windows.

And IMHO, the discussion about which OS one should use is probably older than any OS at all. It comes down to personal preferences and experiences. I would not for any longer time want to use only Windows for a couple of reasons. I use it for some office stuff (we have SharePoint and OneDrive for Businsess does not exist for Linux).

I did a quick search and here are two references about the WSL speed:

[1] https://vxlabs.com/2019/12/06/wsl2-io-measurements/ [2] https://github.com/microsoft/WSL/issues/4197

It seems that they already improved a lot bur are still nowhere near native FS speed because of some technical limiations on how to embed the FS.


FWIW I tried Windows as a desktop two weeks ago, and gave up on it precisely _because_ the implementation of window snapping and positioning was so bad. I have a very wide monitor and need a way of splitting the screen into thirds, which Windows seems to lack.


You might try the PowerToys. With FancyZones you can either use one of the presets or freely define your window snap zones:

> https://github.com/microsoft/PowerToys




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