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I've been increasingly feeling the same way, especially about OS X, but what's the alternative for a developer-friendly desktop operating system that looks and

I've been increasingly feeling the same way, especially about OS X, but what's the alternative for a developer-friendly desktop operating system that looks and works beautifully (almost) out of the box?

flavor8 11y ago
Ubuntu.
iamd3vil 11y ago
Linux Mint is working for me pretty well for the past 1 year. Check it out.
- at-fates-hands 11y ago
  I would second Mint. I made the switch a while back and am in the process of dumping Windows altogether so I can do all my development with Linux.
yellowapple 11y ago
Slackware. Before everyone here laughs at me, let's start with some disclaimers: * While not as involved as with some other distros (like Arch or Gentoo), Slackware's install process is still a bit involved; namely, you have to manually setup partitions before starting the install program (the Slackware install environment provides `fdisk` and `parted` for this, and details are well-documented). * You have to make a single edit in `/etc/inittab` in order to get Slackware to boot into a graphical environment by default. Once you get past those hurdles, Slackware is pretty much what you're asking for: * Ships with multiple desktop environments / window managers, including KDE, Xfce, Window Maker, and Openbox (in order from most to least pretty/easy-to-use by default), among others. Even more are available on Slackbuilds.org (see below). * Most (if not all) Slackware software packages include development headers (unlike most GNU/Linux distributions which have separate `-dev` packages for development headers), making it very convenient if you need to develop against some library. * The underlying system is simple and easy to troubleshoot; no plethora of fragile moving parts like you see in OS X or Ubuntu. * Ships with the full GCC suite. * Fast. * Things "just work". * Compatible with a lot of different language runtimes/compilers/etc. (for me, I've seen Erlang/Elixir, Ruby (w/ RVM), Perl, Rust, Julia, and assorted other LLVM-oriented languages work out-of-the-box without needing to deviate from `./configure && make && sudo make install`; not that you have to even `./configure && make && sudo make install`, though (see below)). * Plethora of third-party software packages available on Slackbuilds.org (installation of which is automatable if you download/install `sbopkg`). It's not for everyone, of course, but it's worked well for me over the last several years.

flavor8 11y ago

Ubuntu.

iamd3vil 11y ago

Linux Mint is working for me pretty well for the past 1 year. Check it out.

at-fates-hands 11y ago
I would second Mint. I made the switch a while back and am in the process of dumping Windows altogether so I can do all my development with Linux.

yellowapple 11y ago

Slackware. Before everyone here laughs at me, let's start with some disclaimers: * While not as involved as with some other distros (like Arch or Gentoo), Slackware's install process is still a bit involved; namely, you have to manually setup partitions before starting the install program (the Slackware install environment provides `fdisk` and `parted` for this, and details are well-documented). * You have to make a single edit in `/etc/inittab` in order to get Slackware to boot into a graphical environment by default. Once you get past those hurdles, Slackware is pretty much what you're asking for: * Ships with multiple desktop environments / window managers, including KDE, Xfce, Window Maker, and Openbox (in order from most to least pretty/easy-to-use by default), among others. Even more are available on Slackbuilds.org (see below). * Most (if not all) Slackware software packages include development headers (unlike most GNU/Linux distributions which have separate `-dev` packages for development headers), making it very convenient if you need to develop against some library. * The underlying system is simple and easy to troubleshoot; no plethora of fragile moving parts like you see in OS X or Ubuntu. * Ships with the full GCC suite. * Fast. * Things "just work". * Compatible with a lot of different language runtimes/compilers/etc. (for me, I've seen Erlang/Elixir, Ruby (w/ RVM), Perl, Rust, Julia, and assorted other LLVM-oriented languages work out-of-the-box without needing to deviate from `./configure && make && sudo make install`; not that you have to even `./configure && make && sudo make install`, though (see below)). * Plethora of third-party software packages available on Slackbuilds.org (installation of which is automatable if you download/install `sbopkg`). It's not for everyone, of course, but it's worked well for me over the last several years.