I'm currently a Mac user. I'm writing a web application that I want to run on a Kubernetes managed VM or container platform. This would be Internet facing but it's for developing and testing right now, not yet a production system. I'm going to mostly interact with the server on the command line using ssh (or whatever equivalent Windows uses.) My background is mostly unix.
To be clear, my question is not about a production system, but about my testing platform, and I'm installing and maintaining it myself. My time is at a premium here, so I'm looking for the least trouble possible setting up and using the system.
I'm in a dilemma. I don't know whether to go with Linux or Windows. Linux is much closer to home in terms of being unix. I feel at home in Linux and know what to do, say, on the command line. But I've tried Linux on and off for about 25 years, and the system does not seem to me to be well maintained. It progresses painfully slowly, is missing much functionality, and seems to have a disorganized and broken ecosystem. In particular, I find that when I install new software on Linux, the installation fails during installation, or when I tried to use the software, in what seems to be about 50 - 75% of the time. I have to search for solutions online, which is hit or miss. That's an enormous cost to me.
This is why I am considering Windows at all. Windows is in many ways a quite alien system to me. But perhaps less so now that it has the Linux subsystem, which I presume gives it genuine Unix capabilities. Microsoft is also a large, highly competent company, which I hope means good documentation and reliability. (This is my hope, but I don't know for sure ...)
I just bought a PC with Windows 10 (home edition) pre-installed.
I'd greatly appreciate advice on how to proceed. A few specific questions.
- Is there anything that Windows 10 can't do for serving a web app on Kubernetes? (In other words, do I need to get Windows Server? Note that I don't need anything pertaining to managing an internal Windows network.)
- Is there anything that Windows 10 with the Linux subsystem installed can't do on the command line (remotely) that Linux can?
Needless to say, this is not an "advocacy" post. I have no interest in anyone promoting one OS versus another in general. I'm hoping for an objective answer from someone with experience using both Linux and Windows, or who at least has used Windows for what I want, and can advise me how easy it is.
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