Reinstalling Windows

Date:

During the Christmas break, I have installed and set up Windows on my Lenovo X1 Extreme laptop. That might sound slightly stupid as it came installed with Windows, but as with every other non-Mac laptop I’ve owned/used over the last 20 years, I wiped the disk and installed Linux on it. Now it was the other way around.

I now do development on Ubuntu using Windows Terminal, editing in VS Code on Windows or IntelliJ in Ubuntu using X410.

The last time I had Windows installed on a development machine was way back in 2000. Since then, I’ve been on Linux for a brief break for MacOS between 2005 and 2009. The reason I broke this streak is, of course, WSL 2. It was reasonably painless to setup, and the development experience is Linux as I am used to it.

At the same time, I have to hesitantly admit that it is comfortable using a widely supported OS - I can use software from say Adobe and the fingerprint scanner on my laptop, which is still not supported on Linux.

All in all, it is a smaller change than I expected, and I have so far not had any reason to regret my choice.