I spent this past week only using my loaner Surface Book instead of my trusty MacBook Air for doing my work at the day job. If there is a better of test for figuring out if I can do my regular work in it, I can't think of one.

It Has Linux Under The Hood

In the previous post I talked about how you could get a Bash shell using Ubuntu 14 (I think) running natively on Windows. Well, it absolutely 100% works except for one problem that I had. I was trying to debug a problem with an API using curl and it just wouldn't return anything at all. A quick pop back to macOS and everything was just fine. Still no idea what the issue is, but I think I need to try and reproduce it. I do know that the lead developer for curl works at Mozilla so maybe I can get some help that way.

Otherwise, everything I normally do in the macOS terminal (well, iTerm2) I was able to do just fine in the Bash shell in Windows 10. I was pleasantly surprised.

All the other tools I used for work were just fine:

• The Atom editor behaved just fine
• Firefox is cross-platform, everything was just fine
• I didn't like how our video chat client looked (fonts way too small) but it worked

In other words, I could easily see myself using a Surface Book every day for work. To be honest, if I didn't have access to the Bash shell I wouldn't even have bothered trying to do this.

So what are the last few things I have to try out?

• need a HTTP client similar to Paw
• connected to external monitor and keyboard
• better hosts file management -- Gas Mask is just so good
• haven't fired up Skype in it yet
• haven't looked at screencasting software

Next week I should have another update on putting the last touches onto the experience.