Please help beta test calibre 7

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by capink

… which might actually make me switch back to Windows, something I am starting to think about more lately since I am hearing good things about wsl.

I used to hear good things about MS Services for UNIX too (and used it). You might as well run Linux of choice in a VM or run the few Windows programs you need (if you need any) on the SAME VM sw (Vbox) on a native Linux.
WSL is for people that have to run native Windows, often a corporate decision.

WSL used to (and MS SFU before it used to be native using the NT4.0 Posix subsystem) be native, but now WSL 2 uses the "latest and greatest in virtualization technology" to run its Linux kernel inside of a lightweight utility virtual machine (VM). They claim it's faster to load than a full VM. But Win XP (very fast), 7 & 10 are pretty fast to load even from VMs stored on HDD though the VBox sw and my Linux OS is on an SSD.
https://www.makeuseof.com/linux-virtual-machine-or-wsl/
They don't cover should I run Linux native and use Windows in a VM.

I suppose if you want Windows games you need native windows, ironically especially XP as Oracle removed Direct 3D support from their XP driver, so quite ordinary games like Scrabble stopped working. There are so many dependencies that going back to earlier Vbox with Direct 3D on XP on Linux Mint 20.x or 21.x seems nearly impossible.

Running win 3.x in 286 mode can be done on DosBox but I can't see how to run Win9x or Win 3.11 etc with win32s in a VM? My old 386s and 486 are all gone.

[BetterRed]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

Maybe some Windows Update did it.

Nope

The improvements in Word load times have been incremental and apparent after Office updates, 2019 loads faster than 2016, loads faster than 2010, loads faster than 2007. And the improvements to epub-tools have followed suite, it's written in C++ and requires the VS 2010 runtime package.

[BetterRed]

Originally Posted by capink

Microsoft office is probably written in C/C++, so re-writing it in python would make it slower, no matter what improvements they make to python.

My suggestion MS might be rewriting Office in python was deliberately flippant.

Originally Posted by capink

But seeing that python has a strong foothold in data analysis, they are integrating it with office more and more to leverage its capabilities and libraries, which is good move for both.

Hopefully we will reach a point where we can write macros using python, which might actually make me switch back to Windows, something I am starting to think about more lately since I am hearing good things about wsl.

I'm told by people doing it, that Office Addins, as opposed to Office Macros, can be written in Python today.

BR