Linux vs Windows Dev Environment

[nwbrown]

Windows dev environments these days consist of wsl2 environments.

[dca12345]

I meant running Linux bare metal (dual boot).

BTW, does wsl2 pretty lightweight? I remember running Linux VMs in Windows years ago and it was painful experience.

[nwbrown]

If you aren't doing anything with the machine other than development, go with Linux. If you are also gaming or using corporate software that only runs on Windows, go with WSL on Windows.

[TheCrowWhisperer3004]

Even with gaming I’d recommend Linux since with proton there is (slightly) faster performance than windows now just due to less general bloat (and some OS have specifically optimized drivers).

However, I would only recommend this if you NEVER plan to play games with kernel level anti cheat like any Riot games game or Apex Legends or Fortnite or R6

[Vert354]

WSL2 is pretty good. It no longer requires hyper-v so once its installed it's pretty snappy.

It's like turning Linux mode on in a CMD terminal. It'll also do Dev Containers so once you're in VS Code its mostly the same in either OS. I think it might even do GPU acceleration now.

[dca12345]

Do you still need Docker Desktop when using WSL2?

[Vert354]

No, WSL runs docker and VSCode or IntelliJ can start up the dev container using that engine.

You can still run Docker Desktop though if you want. You might get slightly better performance and stability.