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Virtualization Cloud Microsoft

Microsoft Dev Box Will Virtualize Your Windows Development PC In a Browser Window (arstechnica.com) 40

Posted by BeauHD from the cloud-powered dept.
Microsoft Dev Box is intended to simplify the process of getting new developer workstations up and running quickly, with all necessary tools and dependencies installed and working out-of-the-box (so to speak), along with access to up-to-date source code and fresh copies of any nightly builds. Ars Technica reports: Dev Box is built on Windows 365, a service that IT admins can use to provide preconfigured virtual PCs to users. Admins can build operating system images and offer hardware configurations with different amounts of CPU power, storage, and RAM based on what particular users (or workloads) need. Windows 365 virtual machines, including but not limited to Dev Box VMs, can be accessed from other Windows PCs, or devices running macOS, iOS, Android, Linux, or ChromeOS.

"Microsoft Dev Box supports any developer IDE, SDK, or internal tool that runs on Windows," writes Microsoft product manager Anthony Cangialosi [in a blog post introducing the service]. "Dev Boxes can target any development workload you can build from a Windows desktop and are particularly well-suited for desktop, mobile, IoT, and gaming. You can even build cross-platform apps using Windows Subsystem for Linux." Dev Box is currently available in a private preview. If you're interested in testing it when the preview goes public, you can sign up to learn more here.
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Microsoft Dev Box Will Virtualize Your Windows Development PC In a Browser Window More

Microsoft Dev Box Will Virtualize Your Windows Development PC In a Browser Window

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  • Customization? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by memory_register ( 6248354 ) on Wednesday May 25, 2022 @10:10PM (#62566674)
    Devs are notoriously picky about our setup. Will we be able to customize down to the metal? This sounds like a beginner toy, not a tool.

    • Lets go beyond that. Let's change the metal too.

    • It just sounds like virtualbox with a browser view

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by ljw1004 ( 764174 )

      Devs are notoriously picky about our setup. Will we be able to customize down to the metal? This sounds like a beginner toy, not a tool.

      Speak for yourself. I've been employed as a developer since 2004, I used to customize a heck of a lot and spent several months building an emacs mode for my preferences, but over the years I've come to *hugely* appreciate just using my dev setup with its default settings. I now appreciate more those dev environments that have good defaults than those that have good customization.

      I do much of my coding in my mind rather than the keyboard -- i.e. planning out how class hierarchies will work, figuring out inva

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      It's a toy. It's usable for a small segment of developers that can work in VS Code and are churning out JavaScript and TypeScript applications but not much else.

      Access to DevBox is provided by an RDPv5 client in a web browser which is why it's "cross platform." There are many tools that don't work properly in RDP/Terminal Services sessions such as code signing provided by SafeNet eTokens. Even Visual Studio (proper) doesn't work well inside RDP/Terminal Services sessions because it needs a (Run-as-)Administ

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      I've noticed that a lot of younger developers are less picky. It might be because the tools are better now, it's not like back in the day where you only had one monitor and customizing was necessary to be productive. It might also be because technologies come and go relatively quickly, and getting too settled just creates inertia when it's time to move on to the latest and greatest.

    • This will be a benifit to many, a serious developer probably not. What this does is cleans up the entry level cruft.
    • According to the announcement [microsoft.com], for whatever that is worth, it is extremely customizable.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by EvilSS ( 557649 )

      Devs are notoriously picky about our setup. Will we be able to customize down to the metal? This sounds like a beginner toy, not a tool.

      In my experience with developers in corporate environments, they take what they are given and don't complain, else they get outsourced.

    • Yes, Devs are notoriously picky. I've been one for decades. I've also led dev teams in companies where the intersection of dev / security / localadmin is problematic. Every time the devs kick and scream about it because they're delicate little snowflakes and every little concession in the name of safety is a world-ending imposition. Sometimes they won that battle... but in the last few years they mostly did not. And after an initial flurry of escalations and help desk calls, the issue would subside into the

  • Regular "Normal" Boxes to be exluded.... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by codebase7 ( 9682010 ) on Wednesday May 25, 2022 @10:34PM (#62566720)
    Can't wait for the Dev Box to be the only Microsoft approved version of Windows for development. When's the special debugger firewall being installed?
    /s

    If anyone is seriously considering using this remember: This uses Windows 365, which means Microsoft gets full copies of any code you write on it. Better not do anything sensitive with it.

    • If anyone is seriously considering using this remember: This uses Windows 365, which means Microsoft gets full copies of any code you write on it. Better not do anything sensitive with it.

      I see you're one of those end users rather than a corporate customer who is actually the market here. If you think your crappy code is of interest to Microsoft then all I can do is laugh. Microsoft's enterprise agreement provides storage, email, products, services, and virtual desktops to oil companies, financial institutions, most of the Fortune 500, and governments all of whom handle actual secret information (and Azure protection services even provides users the opportunity to classify which documents ar

      • MS also owns GitHub

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by xalqor ( 6762950 )
          ... which is why it's only appropriate for public repositories, or private repositories that you don't mind if Microsoft employees see the content. Same guideline applies to Google Drive, iCloud, Dropbox, etc.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by gtall ( 79522 )

      MS should have a Dev Box for their marketing dept. They can all go there and bounce stupid ideas off each other.

  • So, Github Codespaces rebranded as Windows?

    Has anyone seen how EXPENSIVE that service really is? Over a year, it costs more than a higher-spec'd laptop.

    And companies still have to provide the laptop anyways.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Locutus ( 9039 )
      If you throw enough shit at a wall eventually something will stick. Microsoft, the forever follower of technology, keeps throwing stinky stuff and the only users of this kind of stuff is usually just their hardcore fanbois who's offices are filled with Microsoft swag. Or those companies they pay to use it and then do marketing ads showing how well it's doing.

      LoB
  • a service like this was, i guess, kind of the inevitable consequence of inventing good VMs, but i canâ(TM)t help but find it kinda dystopian for some reason. i canâ(TM)t put my finger on it but it just weirds me out.

  • MS invents the pre-configured VM image (Score:3)

    by Locutus ( 9039 ) on Wednesday May 25, 2022 @11:43PM (#62566794)
    Wow, those people are leading the world in software development ideas. Who would have thought a pre-configured virtual machine image on a remote high-powered server could be used like this? For software development! Wow. Really thinking outside of the box there at One Microsoft Way.

    LoB
    • Ayup, true to form, MS is about 25 years late to the party.

    • I read the summary and immediately thought, "thin client".

      It's all dressed up but your workstation is essentially just peripherals to something somewhere in the cloud.

      Good luck getting that product working with your organization's office or factory floor equipment - unless, of course, they are all also just thin clients. Do you really want your production line robots controlled by software somewhere in the cloud?

      No wonder Microsoft is pushing this.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by narcc ( 412956 )

        This won't work for you? Oh, no! We'll toss it out immediately. There's no need for anything to exist if it doesn't specifically work for you, after all.

  • How did this make the front page of Slashdot? People have been doing dev on VMs for many, many years.

    But on Windows? I guess if you are doing game programming, or MS Dynamics, then it can't be helped.

    My Windows dev experience was like being trapped in one of those dreams where you can only run in slow motion as something horrible pursues you.

  • If Microsoft developers found a way of enabling Docker and Linux shell on windows without breaking existing virtualization setups. Anybody knows a successor/alternative to Docker machine and WSL1?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Malc ( 1751 )

      Docker on Windows is so damned slow. The only purpose I can see is for running Windows container (slowly), but you said WSL. I'm pretty happy running a Linux VM in VMWare Fusion on my Mac and running Docker Linux containers in that - maybe Linux containers on Windows will perform better in a dedicate Linux VM based on something else?

      • My reasons for running Linux containers on Windows is that I develop in Windows because of accessibility ( let's face it, in Linux it is still not good and I have found no sufficient alternative to Dragon naturally speaking/Dragonfly yet). I will probably revert to using a VM as well, the Docker machine also does it (Virtual Box) when I do not need to deal with ports and the inside of the VM, sadly it is not supported anymore and just recently it has stopped working for me. The slowness does not matter that

  • Doesn't work in practice (Score:5, Informative)

    by devslash0 ( 4203435 ) on Thursday May 26, 2022 @03:55AM (#62567042)

    I've been forced to use Cloud9 on our internal projects. Downsides, just to name a few:
    - Horribly slow.
    - Heavily network dependent. If your network/VPN drops you've got re reauthenticate again.
    - Again due to network, no ability to work offline, for example when commuting on a train.
    - No customisation.
    - Certain changes within the environment do nor persist across reboots since, when fully stopped, your environment needs to be rebuilt from scratch.
    - No way to choose your own IDE or other tools within the environment. You are locked down to a very specific tools provided/built by your vendor.
    - Browser windows do not work work well with multi-display setups. Even though you can open additional "IDE" tabs, because they are windows within windows, alignment, IDE tabs around or even key shortcuts don't work across all monitors.
    - Restrictions on what versions of software/dependencies you can install within the environment. You are restricted to whatver comes with the IDE/image.

    As someome said before - this is more of a gimmic, a toy for newbies who don't care about their productivity, than a real environment. Unfortunately companies will jump on this because in their mind is all about money and they can now get away with providing a low-grade laptop.

  • Access to resources? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by bradley13 ( 1118935 ) on Thursday May 26, 2022 @04:36AM (#62567098) Homepage

    Aside from the problems mention in other comments, it strikes me that access to resources is going to be difficult, unless you have everything in the same cloud. Running a DB server? A test instance of a customers systems? If you have those set up locally, or perhaps on customer hardware, just how are you going to access them from a cloud development environment.

    Don't get me wrong: for final deployment of things like web services, commercial clouds are great. However, for development and internal testing and deployment, I want my own hardware. I may well run a VMs or containers, or whatever, but I want local control.

  • So you need a computer with a working operating system, plus a browser (to make things slower and network connectivity dependent), in addition to the "virtual development machine" you pay for.

    Now tell me why I would want to pay for and maintain two operating systems for something that can be done on one computer and operating system even better, without requiring fast network access in addition?

    If a developer cannot be trusted to keep a development environment on his physical machine in a useful state, w

    • Now tell me why I would want to pay for and maintain two operating systems for something that can be done on one computer and operating system even better, without requiring fast network access in addition?

      Well, if we look at the actual quotation without an edit we can see the reason, and also that you're full of shit.

      Windows 365 virtual machines, including but not limited to Dev Box VMs, can be accessed from other Windows PCs, or devices running macOS, iOS, Android, Linux, or ChromeOS.

      You can access your dev VM not just from a "paid system" but also from Linux. You can access it not only from a Windows PC, but also from a tablet or Chromebook. It means that you can do development from anywhere in the world

  • Virtualize Windows development in a browser? That sounds even worse than VMs. Our company forced everyone to use VMs for a while and it was a horrible experience. There was just enough lag to make any kind of graphical design a massive challenge. Customization was very limited. And multiple window support was buggy. Developers were the first group allowed to have real laptops. Eventually they gave everyone a laptop and scrapped the VMs.

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