Notably this article was written based on Windows Terminal 1.18. That was before WT 1.22, which included this PR: [^1] which roughly doubled the terminal's throughput. That combined with a couple of other PRs in 1.22 made some scenarios up to _16x_ faster[^2]
Windows is not really just a gaming OS, at least after WSL was launched.
Development experience using Windows Terminal + WSL has been pretty great when I did it 3 years ago - I can only imagine it being better today.
Also note that the cost of Windows machines is half the price of their Mac counterparts, even with the specs doubled.
For many folks Windows is an all-round multipurpose platform (gaming included) and they wouldn't want to invest in other machines just for doing development work, so they stick to it as their main OS. Yes we know of the horrible bloat, tracking and privacy invasion that the OS does to us, but many people tend to just ignore it and move on.
> Yes we know of the horrible bloat, tracking and privacy invasion that the OS does to us, but many people tend to just ignore it and move on.
Or in the case of enterprises, Windows gets controlled and managed by a (hopefully) competent IT team or enterprise desktop group, and with LTSC versions Microsofts give them the tools to strip the bloat, tracking, and most of the privacy invasions (to then be replaced with corporate privacy invasions in a lot of cases).
Point being, Windows as an enterprise user desktop is a whole different beast from Windows on the laptop mom and dad just bought from Best Buy.
HN lives in a macOS/Linux bubble, but outside of SV it's a Windows world still. So much of the world runs on Windows in places that you wouldn't even expect to see Windows. And with enterprise purchasing agreements, you can get some good deals on bulk laptop purchases that you aren't getting from Apple. $1,000 or less per 32GB of RAM laptop, depending on how many you are buying. I've seen bulk purchases as low as $700/laptop for enterprises that buy thousands at a time for scheduled refreshes. You're not going to be able to buy everyone a MacBook Pro for that pricing.
Windows remains one of the best general purpose OSes for generic office worker productivity, and I don't see that changing anytime soon unless Microsoft really fucks it up with whatever Copilot garbage they are doing.
My work laptop is Windows and IT have removed the bloatware but the desktop is still a shitshow. Clicking on a window in the taskbar doesn't even reliably bring it to the front.
With the amount of work Windows seems to need just to use it - decrapification, bypassing account creation, constant vigilance that your changes aren’t undone by Windows Update.. - it’s also a gamified OS ;)
Well, for one, if you develop games for said gaming OS you’re probably doing it on the gaming OS in question and would like the tools to be nice to use.
Any chance of getting native support for Serial (DB9/RS232) communication in Windows Terminal? Would love to use it but I'm still using PuTTY and HyperTerminal.
Another aspect of this is which pipeline is in use for the GPU accelerated terminals. *WezTerm on Windows for example, specific rendering issues occur with default NVIDIA settings related to DXGI.
You will never interact with this pipeline if using the Web GPU vulkan renderer, which has its own issues. I personally experience some form of memory leak / latency when working in terminals that have been open for a 'good' amount of time.
Does it still pause scrolling and stop whatever's running if you click on the window or press a key? That's one big reason why I still live in a plain old DOS box. It didn't appear that the Windows terminal developers had ever heard of ctrl-s.
Dang, I've never heard of anyone who actually _wanted_ that behavior haha, I've had so much wasted time in school projects where I thought something was running but it wasn't because I had selected text in cmd.exe haha.
Notably this article was written based on Windows Terminal 1.18. That was before WT 1.22, which included this PR: [^1] which roughly doubled the terminal's throughput. That combined with a couple of other PRs in 1.22 made some scenarios up to _16x_ faster[^2]
[^1]: https://github.com/microsoft/terminal/pull/17510
[^2]: https://devblogs.microsoft.com/commandline/windows-terminal-...
whats the point of using the terminal on a gaming OS?
Windows is not really just a gaming OS, at least after WSL was launched. Development experience using Windows Terminal + WSL has been pretty great when I did it 3 years ago - I can only imagine it being better today.
Also note that the cost of Windows machines is half the price of their Mac counterparts, even with the specs doubled.
For many folks Windows is an all-round multipurpose platform (gaming included) and they wouldn't want to invest in other machines just for doing development work, so they stick to it as their main OS. Yes we know of the horrible bloat, tracking and privacy invasion that the OS does to us, but many people tend to just ignore it and move on.
> Yes we know of the horrible bloat, tracking and privacy invasion that the OS does to us, but many people tend to just ignore it and move on.
Or in the case of enterprises, Windows gets controlled and managed by a (hopefully) competent IT team or enterprise desktop group, and with LTSC versions Microsofts give them the tools to strip the bloat, tracking, and most of the privacy invasions (to then be replaced with corporate privacy invasions in a lot of cases).
Point being, Windows as an enterprise user desktop is a whole different beast from Windows on the laptop mom and dad just bought from Best Buy.
HN lives in a macOS/Linux bubble, but outside of SV it's a Windows world still. So much of the world runs on Windows in places that you wouldn't even expect to see Windows. And with enterprise purchasing agreements, you can get some good deals on bulk laptop purchases that you aren't getting from Apple. $1,000 or less per 32GB of RAM laptop, depending on how many you are buying. I've seen bulk purchases as low as $700/laptop for enterprises that buy thousands at a time for scheduled refreshes. You're not going to be able to buy everyone a MacBook Pro for that pricing.
Windows remains one of the best general purpose OSes for generic office worker productivity, and I don't see that changing anytime soon unless Microsoft really fucks it up with whatever Copilot garbage they are doing.
My work laptop is Windows and IT have removed the bloatware but the desktop is still a shitshow. Clicking on a window in the taskbar doesn't even reliably bring it to the front.
> LTSC versions
Microsoft consultants very actively discourage the use of LTSC for... "reasons".
Translation: "It hurts our KPIs if our telemetry starts falling off and we can't push Minecraft and AI updates to as many desktops at will!"
Yeah My company requires Windows. windows Terminal + WSL at least makes development bearable.
You’re right but you’re responding to a troll.
>Also note that the cost of Windows machines is half the price of their Mac counterparts, even with the specs doubled.
Bullshit, MacBooks are one of the cheaper options for usable devices today. Esp in there entry segment.
What’s the point of doing anything ever? Because we can, that’s it. Some people happen to use Windows for things other than gaming (remarkably).
With the amount of work Windows seems to need just to use it - decrapification, bypassing account creation, constant vigilance that your changes aren’t undone by Windows Update.. - it’s also a gamified OS ;)
Well, for one, if you develop games for said gaming OS you’re probably doing it on the gaming OS in question and would like the tools to be nice to use.
Also it’s not just a “gaming OS”.
What's the point on using the terminal on an artist OS?
Well, at least it's beautiful on macOS! (Not really, but that's beyond the point :))
Any chance of getting native support for Serial (DB9/RS232) communication in Windows Terminal? Would love to use it but I'm still using PuTTY and HyperTerminal.
I recommend Tera term. https://github.com/TeraTermProject/teraterm/releases
Another aspect of this is which pipeline is in use for the GPU accelerated terminals. *WezTerm on Windows for example, specific rendering issues occur with default NVIDIA settings related to DXGI.
You will never interact with this pipeline if using the Web GPU vulkan renderer, which has its own issues. I personally experience some form of memory leak / latency when working in terminals that have been open for a 'good' amount of time.
Does it still pause scrolling and stop whatever's running if you click on the window or press a key? That's one big reason why I still live in a plain old DOS box. It didn't appear that the Windows terminal developers had ever heard of ctrl-s.
Dang, I've never heard of anyone who actually _wanted_ that behavior haha, I've had so much wasted time in school projects where I thought something was running but it wasn't because I had selected text in cmd.exe haha.
That's called QuickEdit Mode and you have been able to turn that off for decades (and installing the new terminal fixes that too.)
Otherwise click the top left icon, go to settings, uncheck QuickEdit.
(2024)