19 Jul, 2020

Back to Windows

Dirk Fuchs

geekapplewslwindows

2020-19-07 21:42 +1900

Around 2006 I was a Windows user. Back then I felt captured in a closed system with a lot of proprietary frameworks, interfaces etc. That was when I fell in love with macOS. A nice and user-friendly user experience with an unixoide operating system that supported a lot of open standards like OpenGL, CUPS and some years later also OpenCL. When Apple switched to Intel CPUs I bought my first Apple Laptop and also a highly upgradable MacPro. MacOS kept developing further and in my opinion it became the best mobile OS, that’s why I also bought my beloved MacBook Pro Retina in 2012 that still works today! Bravo!

Since a couple of years Apple more and more decided to abandon open standards, for example OpenGL and Vulkan. Instead, they developed their own standards like Metal and also canceled pro apps like Aperture without giving the users an appropriate replacement (NO, PHOTOS IS NOT AN REPLACEMENT, NOT EVEN TODAY).

Newer Macs are not my kind of bag, baby. The touch bar is awkward to use, I prefer keyboards with a greater key travel (not to mention the s***ty butterfly keyboard). The trackpad may be the best in industry but it is too large.

But why the heck Windows when I am talking about openness?

First of all I love Linux but I do not want to spend much time to keep it up and running on a laptop. I want to use it. I tested the Linux integration WSL2 and it works great! I can access files from Windows in my Linux context and vice-versa. Running Docker also works. Yes, there are still some bugs, like time drifts which can be easily corrected with

 sudo ntpdate time.windows.com

I use my XPS for six weeks now and the mobile experience is pretty good. As mentioned before the trackpad is not as good as my macbook´s but Windows supports a lot of shortcuts and I rarely use my mouse or touchpad. The Windows Store does not compete in any way with the Apple Store, but that’s ok for now as my main apps work, either natively or WSL2.

  • PyCharm
  • Visual Code
  • Docker
  • Skype
  • Lightroom

For most of the documents I use Google Docs or Libre Office.

At WWDC2020 Apple also announced the shift to ARM CPUs. That’s technically great but I also suspect that they will further cryptographically shut down possibilities to run other operating systems natively. If any OS is annoying me for whatever reason I want to be able to switch to Linux without changing my hardware.

For now, I am quite ok (or even happy?) with the decision to move away from Apple!