Web Dev — Windows(Native/WSL), Mac-OSX or Linux?
Recently at Auquan, I had to make a choice between Windows, OSX and Linux operating systems. It took me a few weeks to try out all the operating systems and and there were quite a few factors that went into the final decision. In this article, I will break down my experiences, the decision making process and how we finally arrived at Windows(WSL) as the operating system of choice.
Context
Auquan is currently a team of 5 engineers and the number is expected to grow to 10+. We have a MERN(Mongo-Express-React-Node) stack and so far as a seed stage startup we were able to get away with everyone working on their personal laptops. However, it was becoming clear that we need to get our engineers work machines so that the team can have a standard dev environment. Our current state was: 2 of us were on OSX, 1 on Windows(native) and 2 on Linux. So started the long debate of which OS should we go with.
How To Decide?
First things first, I decided to give each one a fair shot. I was actively working in OSX and I had a native windows environment as well that I had used on and off over the past year. For a linux environment I fired up an AWS machine as it would serve well for purposes of evaluating. It was around this time that I remembered something like WSL exists and had enjoyed quite the hype when it first arrived. For the uninitiated, WSL is Windows Subsystem For Linux and it lets you have bash support without having to install linux as a separate partition. I added WSL to the mix of contenders and now we had 4 environments to evaluate. Following are the factors we were considering:
Ease of Setup
Before you can start using an environment you have to set it up so it is important the setup is easy and smooth. For each of the factors I will talk about my experience.
Windows(Native): I did the setup through installers and it was fairly simple to get the environment up and running. I did not install a local version of MongoDB so I cannot speak to simplicity of that.
Mac-OSX/Linux: Absolutely simple once you have xcode/brew setup. Just run a bunch of commands in terminal, clone your repository and you are good to go.
WSL: Getting WSL setup is the added cost here, but you can pick up any guide and you will be set up in ~30 mins 25 of which will be the download time, i.e. its super simple to set up WSL. Afterwards installing node is just like linux but setting up mongoDb required a bit more research as WSL is still very new. It took me exponentially more time than either of the other OS’s to set this configuration up but once I figured out the steps the complexity becomes same as the Windows(native) set up. I will make another post with a full rundown of how to set up a web env on WSL.
Ease of Use / Support Issues
This factor was to do with how good is the tooling around our environment. Will we need to repeatedly deal with unsupported libraries or minor issues that make the development process harder.
Windows(Native): The support framework leaves a lot to be desired. Most new things have to be installed separately and the cmd line just feels lacking. Powershell has improved upon that but for our use case it did not seem to deliver. However considering office/excel is also a part of our workflow windows had the clear edge there and the GUI exploration is just better.
Mac-OSX: Great command line and tools around it. iterm has to be the best terminal app and everything you need is a command away. The rest of the OS however did not feel as powerful as windows for our use case of exploring big data sets using GUI or general tooling.
Linux: Once again great command line and tooling. The GUI has improved over the years but compared to other 2 it is still lagging behind.
WSL: This is where WSL shone, we could get the linux command line while keeping the windows GUI. What’s there to lose? Well, possibly quite a bit. WSL is new and does not have extensive support documentation so you may find yourself on wild goose chases every once in a while. However, most of the issues I dealt with had solutions that were applicable for linux and more importantly there always WAS a solution even if it was not officially supported.
Learning Curve
If people have to switch OS’s it always comes with an added cost of learning the new OS/env. It slows you down from getting to the bits that actually matter. I am yet to meet a person who has not used a windows machine ever. Possibly the younger engineers have not but people in their 20’s have all grown up with windows and the OS is very familiar to everyone. So windows was a clear winner here over OSX or Linux.
Associated Hardware
Macs are expensive, the quality of hardware justifies some of that cost but a entry level 15 inch Macbook Pro will still cost you ~$2600 with taxes. To top it the current generation Macbook keyboard is just lackluster and the touch bar is one of the worst gimmicks I have ever experienced. You can easily obtain out performing and great looking hardware from HP/Dell for sub $1500 range. And if you want absolutely beautiful looking hardware just look at HP Spectre or Dell Xps but they will run you a little more.
Final Conclusion
After working with WSL for over a month I could not find any reasons to not choose it as my environment of choice. Once I installed cmder I got close to having an iterm like experience and all my everyday commands in WSL just seemed to work. There were a couple gotchas here and there, mostly to do with how the file system operates but a quick google search always gave me answers I needed. My experience, coupled with the linux command line, windows interface and ~$1500 saving on every machine we got led us to choose Windows + WSL as our environment. Next, I will be doing a detailed post on how to set up a MERN environment on WSL but in the meantime let me know your thoughts.
