-_- every time I use windows recently, I'm reminded of why I haven't for years... I swear, the simplest things are so freaking hard to do. It's like, windows doesn't support W, but blog post A references program B, which converts Z into Y, and after spending 3 more hours googling I find programs C and D, which convert Y into X, and then X into W. Were you able to follow along? Yeah, neither can I. The logo comes up and I immediately get PTSD and start falling down Alice's rabbit hole only to realize I've just wasted 5 hours of my life...

Unfortunately, ASUS is horrible and refuses to make even the most basic, minimally-functioning Linux drivers, or provide anybody with the resources to do it themselves, and they put everything on GPIO chips capable of frying the laptop!!! I'm so freaking done...

I feel like an adult locked in a child-safe playroom full of baby toys...

That's why nadella invented WSL. You get to use the good tools, but also keep the safety blanket and binkie 🍭

If it gets the job done, it's a tool=Windows

If it gets the job done and makes the job easier, it's a good tool=Linux

It's all really just up to personal preference.

@dontbeevil Yeah, that was the joke.

Oh no, someone is saying windows sucks! Quick, @dontbeevil to the rescue! Defend microsoft's honor! it isn't microsoft's fault, it's clearly a user problem.

Seriously, this guy must work for microsoft support.

anyway.
I agree. asus sucks for linux support. it probablyisn't worth the effort; my condolences. amusingly, it's easier making linux work on a chromebook. I'd recommend a Dell XPS except for the optimus crap you need to fight with. Thanks, nVidia.

There's always VMs. the added overhead can totally be worthwhile if it gives you a decent environment.

@sodaTab:
@dontbeevil often is the joke 😉. At least when I'm around.

This is a long one...

I got my yubikey a couple days ago, and I now use it as an SSH and git signing key. I got gpg4win and made it work with putty, but not windows openssh. I need it to work with OpenSSH because that's all VSCode's remote extension supports. Scoured the internet for a few hours and found various issues on GitHub, all basically saying "yeah, you can't do that yet." Unfortunately, because Asus has locked me into windows, I can't just dual-boot. I got dual-boot working, but there were a fair number of issues that made the laptop unusable for anything but using it as a desktop. Anyway, back to the topic, I found a Go program that apparently makes it work with WSL from a blog post. Open GitHub and find out it works with WinOpenSSH too. Great! Since M$ is pushing powershell so heavily, that's what I use. It it doesn't work. After a couple hours, I try it in CMD, and it works! Great! So why didn't it work in powershell? There's different kinds of variables. I needed an env variable, but I *still* don't know how to use those in PS. I'm fine using CMD, but why would they change that, and if env variables work in powershell, why is the syntax different than LITERALLY EVERYWHERE ELSE IN THE OS?!?! Anyway, first issue down after 3 hours of research. (This is as simple as a config option and a .bashrc edit in Linux.) Now I want to be able to forward my gpg agent to my server so I can sign commits and connect to my git remote. 2 more hours of research yields nothing. I have a named pipe, but I can't forward it, and windows' path syntax isn't supported in the SSH config.

@sploders101
PS exposes the $env var for environment variables. $env:varname derefs the value, = is assignment.

Now back to your regularly scheduled rant 👍

@dontbeevil
Deeper than syntax. Powershell runs on top of the CLR. The issue he was having is likely related to the execution policy in the runtime configuration.

@dontbeevil Cool your tits. I'm just razzing the windows users.
No need to take offense.

@SortOfTested Awesome, thanks! Don't know when I'll need that again, but I'll commit it to memory.

@dontbeevil My issue isn't that the syntax is different. My issue is that it didn't tell me there was a syntax error. If the set command in CMD sets an env variable, it should either work or throw an error in PS. Not pretend to work and then not. Therein lies my deepest issue with windows. It doesn't tell you when things go wrong, and when it does, there's no useful information for fixing it. "There was a problem." No s*** Sherlock! I can *see* /that/!

Also, I'm in the same court. No personal offense intended, and I'm sorry if it's interpreted that way.

Also @dontbeevil she said before she's just messing with you. Linux users have valid reasons to dislike Windows. I'm sure she's just making double-edged comments like that to bug you :P

My Asus is rocking Arch, why should Asus laptops not work with any linux in general?

@sploders101 Okay, so first you used powershell when guide clearly say to use CMD, that's completely your fault. And since you wouldn't complain about sh / zsh / ash having different syntax than bash, complaining when two Windows shells don't have the same syntax just shows how damn opinionated you are. Second, you must be a shitty researcher to spend 2 hours without finding this https://justyn.io/blog/... (it's literary the first result on Google).

@hitko Sheesh dude! Take a chill pill! I was just venting! No need to hurl personal insults. I found that very quickly. The problem was it didn't solve the issue. I needed to use Microsoft's ssh implementation, not WSL. Also, if you bothered to read the comments below, the complaint was mainly that no error was presented. The difference between Linux shells are usually minimal, and when there is one, it tells you you got it wrong

@hitko Difference between shells... What difference? According to my 14 something years of using exclusively Linux basic POSIX commands work the same in all major shells. Also, there's a shebang. Not arguing, just wondering what you meant in the context of OP's issue.

@cprn fish and bash?

@Omnisus That's actually a valid argument; fish does have the most unique syntax I've seen (as opposed to bash), but just about any system still has bash, and nobody's burying bash more by the day

@sploders101 Usually there is no problem, but to be fair there is shell with different syntax. For me linux could be pain in the ass, but also it is more fun 😃

@Omnisus Fish isn't a major shell. It's niche. It isn't portable on purpose. It's like saying you can't run Windows registry export file in CMD. I've never heard of Fish being a default script shell for any distribution. I'm not even sure it's ever been a default login shell, maybe for some flavour of BSD I've never used. Even if someone have written a runscript in Fish, as I said, there's a shebang so there would be no difference from the point of shell user, it'd just run an instance of another shell before executing a script you've called. And Bash is POSIX compatible, I don't know what's your argument here.

@cprn I am not saying that it is major shell or that it isn't compatible with POSIX, just that linux has shells with different syntax.

Quick update on the situation:

It is by no means automated yet, but I have gotten gpg working via SSH on windows. Because windows does not have the concept of Unix sockets, gpg4win creates socket *descriptor* files, with the port on line 1, followed by a unix-style newline, and a nonce spanning the rest of the file. This nonce is sent first from the client upon connection in order to authenticate, and from there, it functions as a normal socket. Using this, I forward the localhost port that gpg4win is on, open the socket file in a hex editor (or xxd from wsl cause I had that on hand), copy the nonce as hex, and run socat, intercepting traffic to S.gpg-agent so it can run a script which then prepends the nonce onto the beginning, forwarding the data as usual. Need to find an automated solution for this, as it's quite tedious, but it works!