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We have to use Windows because tools such as Solidworks, Altium Designer and a gaggle of other FEA, CAM and engineering tools pretty much leave us no options.
by rebootthesystem 11y ago
We have to use Windows because tools such as Solidworks, Altium Designer and a gaggle of other FEA, CAM and engineering tools pretty much leave us no options. For everything else it's a VM running Ubuntu 14.04 LTS.
The combination works really well on beefy development machines with three large monitors, tons of memory and multiple (4 to 5) hard drives.
This actually is a really nice environment to work on because you can seamlessly choose which tools work best on which platform and optimize your process accordingly. For example, I can use Excel under Windows to prepare data to then export into a PostgreSQL database using Python on the Ubuntu virtual machine. Really slick.
- tempestn 11y agoI also use a Windows 7 machine with multiple monitors and Linux VMs for development. I also mount a number of Samba folders from a separate Linux server and generally have an ssh terminal open to it as well. Agreed that it's a nice environment. Basically the polish of Windows without sacrificing the power^ of Linux. ^I'm sure most or all of what I do in Linux could be done in Windows, but like most developers I'm far more familiar with *nix tooling than Windows equivalents.
- rebootthesystem 11y agoFor web development being on linux is just natural. I feel it is the right choice. On HN when someone says "development" it is usually taken to mean "web development". Let's not forget there are worlds outside that domain, like embedded software and hardware where being on Windows makes a lot of sense due to the tools.
- tempestn 11y agoTotally. I did mean web development now, but previously I was an electrical engineer, so I've definitely spent some time with Altium. :)