6 ms·

Why not just run Linux locally? Mac OS X is BSD, not Linux, which means its build tools & environment are subtly incompatible. You're always going to be chafi

by zeveb 11y ago

Why not just run Linux locally? Mac OS X is BSD, not Linux, which means its build tools & environment are subtly incompatible. You're always going to be chafing if you develop anywhere other than in your deployment environment. Linux is superlative for desktop & development use. It supports things like tiling window managers far better than does a Mac. It's free. The hardware is far more affordable. Although this is definitely a matter of taste, I find Linux far more usable than a Mac. I will grant that Mac laptops are lightweight & thin. It just seems weird to me to go through all these contortions to develop software for Linux on a Mac or Windows box when it's far easier IMHO to just … run Linux.

geggam 11y ago
That simply isn't cool enough.
toyg 11y ago
Developers don't exist in a vacuum. A lot of people have to use stuff like Office and Skype; if you do that on Windows, "you're always going to be chafing", the pain just moves from one area to the next.
- crdoconnor 11y ago
  I wouldn't trust skype even in a VM.
lucaspiller 11y ago
I've been using a Mac for 10 years and am thinking of switching back to Linux. I also want to get new hardware as 4GB RAM is really limiting. What would people recommend? I do like the Mac hardware, but considering you can get better for a lot less I don't think I'll stick with it.
- xgbi 11y ago
  I just took a new job in a company that uses Dell and Linux for the main OS, coming back from 4 years in another company where macs were the thing. Let me tell you: it sucks. - Lockscreen disapears when my session is locked, I have to type my password blind.. - Scrolling sucks, plainly. The trackpad registers clicks when I don't want him to, leading to me moving text around when I just want to move the pointer.. it's so unbearable that I brought my old mouse at my job. - The fan is audible and always on. It also sends the heat back on my left hand (I'm left handed and the vents are on the left of the laptop), which sucks. - Debian 8 packages don't include Intel acceleration, so you have to use experimental packages. But using them, it results in Skype being impossible to install.. - Did I talk about the miserable battery life? The laptop is brand new (Latitude E5550). Seriously, you're going to regret it.
  - Keats 11y ago
    You forgot to mention the distribution you're using. I've been running Archlinux myself for the last 2 years and it's relatively painless, some issues with trackpad sometimes but I use a mouse most of the time anyway. For the lock screen, most of the ones I've used don't have a box to type the password so you have no visual input, like in a terminal. There are some that display it like lightdm that you can install
  - msbarnett 11y ago
    Indeed. Went from developing primarily on OS X to Ubuntu Linux for about 6 months before I couldn't take it any longer and switched back to a Mac. Biggest complaint by far was trackpad support in Linux. It's a mess out of the box: weird acceleration curves, bad scrolling, twitchy, overly sensitive clicking, the works. Luckily it's Linux, so it's Configurable™, and with enough tweaking I had a script that would feed a bunch of settings into the userspace synclient synaptics configuration tool, and get a trackpad experience that was mostly bearable. EXCEPT that the damn driver would somehow reset itself randomly every hour or two, and my trackpad would be back to the default mess until the script re-ran. There were the other common problems too: an update broke X config, font rendering was janky, battery life was a joke. The Alfred replacement I was using would forget its keybinding on every startup. Unity/compiz would stop respecting screen hotcorner triggers until I open the config, cleared, saved, reenabled, and resaved them. Etc, etc, et-fucking-cetera. It's more or less the same experience I've had on-and-off with Linux on the desktop since 1999. It mostly "works", but it's inevitably death by a 1000 papercuts and after a few months I'm fed up with it and switch to something less grating.
    - edvinbesic 11y ago
      Completely agree. Run Linux on the desktop which mostly "just works" with a few minor tweaks required now and then. Laptops though? Forget about it. Abysmal battery life, constant issues with waking from sleep, driver issues, trackpad support and the list goes on. It truly is death by 1000 papercuts. Every now and again I forget about the mess and try again and usually give up after a few days when I start remembering it all. I'm sure some people thrive in that kind of environment but I just need to get work done and when the OS gets in the way of that, it doesn't matter that "you just need to configure ..."
- eosrei 11y ago
  Dell XPS Developer Edition has i7, 16GB, 1TB and comes with Ubuntu. Probably the most straightforward option right now.
falcolas 11y ago
I love Linux, but saying that the desktop use is "superlative" is a bit, let me don my fire retardant suit, wrong. It's a decent enough desktop system, but it falls markedly behind in terms of tooling. There's simply a large number of high quality tools which are not available for Linux, which means that you have to resort to an open source tool which, while decent (and sometimes even fantastic), are still nowhere near the quality of many closed source tools. I wish this would change, and I do what I can to make it change, but the simple reality is that depending on the tools you want to (or need to) use, Linux is behind the game. That said, I agree wholeheartedly with your very first statement: Why not just run Linux locally? Except, I would recommend a local VM. Best(ish) of both worlds.
- crdoconnor 11y ago
  >There's simply a large number of high quality tools which are not available for Linux Developer tools? Like what?
  - falcolas 11y ago
    Visual Studio, XCode, Adobe <insert product here>, anything by Autodesk... As good as alternatives like GIMP are, they simply can't compete with their Mac/Windows alternatives like Photoshop.
    - Karunamon 11y ago
      I would attach many adjectives to Xcode, but "high quality" is not one of them... (only sort of kidding)
    - cmiles74 11y ago
      Both XCode and VisualStudio are proprietary IDEs designed to support building apps for their respective operating systems. If you're writing a Windows native application, you will find Visual Studio on Windows to work the best, likewise if you're developing a Mac OS X native application then XCode on OS X is the smart choice. In my opinion, neither one is well suited for building a native Linux application nor the sort of applications that would need a Docker container in which to run (web application, etc.)
LoSboccacc 11y ago
> Linux is superlative for desktop unless you have a recent gpu, or want to listen music without tuning configuration files every update, or use input devices that aren't mouse/keyboard, or change multi screen configuration every now and then, or...
- zeveb 11y ago
  FWIW, I: have a recent medium-end graphics card; have listened to music on my desktop for almost twenty years; and change my screen configurations nearly daily. No problems here. I only use mice & keyboards, so I can't say anything about graphics-tablet support.
Keats 11y ago
I agree. Docker is still useful in some cases, ie I'm using it to run separate postgres databases for each project. I could use a nix environment instead but Docker is just easier.
Laaw 11y ago
Linux has never been very good for standard desktop use in the form presented by OS X and Windows. It's still a hobby OS, where your computer itself must become your hobby, rather than whatever it is you want to do on the computer.
Singletoned 11y ago
What if you deploy to Linux and Windows? Do you have to develop on both OS's? Monocultures where you develop and deploy on the same OS are more efficient in the short term, but cause massive problems in the long term when you have to start supporting a different OS and you suddenly realise that you have finely tuned things for one environment at the expense of robustness. It's just like in nature. Monocultures are better in the short term, until the environment changes. Then they struggle to adapt. (I suspect that most mass extinction events have been a failure to adapt to changing environments when overly adapted to a specific environment).

by zeveb 11y ago

geggam 11y ago

That simply isn't cool enough.

toyg 11y ago

Developers don't exist in a vacuum. A lot of people have to use stuff like Office and Skype; if you do that on Windows, "you're always going to be chafing", the pain just moves from one area to the next.

crdoconnor 11y ago
I wouldn't trust skype even in a VM.

lucaspiller 11y ago

I've been using a Mac for 10 years and am thinking of switching back to Linux. I also want to get new hardware as 4GB RAM is really limiting. What would people recommend? I do like the Mac hardware, but considering you can get better for a lot less I don't think I'll stick with it.

xgbi 11y ago
I just took a new job in a company that uses Dell and Linux for the main OS, coming back from 4 years in another company where macs were the thing. Let me tell you: it sucks. - Lockscreen disapears when my session is locked, I have to type my password blind.. - Scrolling sucks, plainly. The trackpad registers clicks when I don't want him to, leading to me moving text around when I just want to move the pointer.. it's so unbearable that I brought my old mouse at my job. - The fan is audible and always on. It also sends the heat back on my left hand (I'm left handed and the vents are on the left of the laptop), which sucks. - Debian 8 packages don't include Intel acceleration, so you have to use experimental packages. But using them, it results in Skype being impossible to install.. - Did I talk about the miserable battery life? The laptop is brand new (Latitude E5550). Seriously, you're going to regret it.
- Keats 11y ago
  You forgot to mention the distribution you're using. I've been running Archlinux myself for the last 2 years and it's relatively painless, some issues with trackpad sometimes but I use a mouse most of the time anyway. For the lock screen, most of the ones I've used don't have a box to type the password so you have no visual input, like in a terminal. There are some that display it like lightdm that you can install
- msbarnett 11y ago
  Indeed. Went from developing primarily on OS X to Ubuntu Linux for about 6 months before I couldn't take it any longer and switched back to a Mac. Biggest complaint by far was trackpad support in Linux. It's a mess out of the box: weird acceleration curves, bad scrolling, twitchy, overly sensitive clicking, the works. Luckily it's Linux, so it's Configurable™, and with enough tweaking I had a script that would feed a bunch of settings into the userspace synclient synaptics configuration tool, and get a trackpad experience that was mostly bearable. EXCEPT that the damn driver would somehow reset itself randomly every hour or two, and my trackpad would be back to the default mess until the script re-ran. There were the other common problems too: an update broke X config, font rendering was janky, battery life was a joke. The Alfred replacement I was using would forget its keybinding on every startup. Unity/compiz would stop respecting screen hotcorner triggers until I open the config, cleared, saved, reenabled, and resaved them. Etc, etc, et-fucking-cetera. It's more or less the same experience I've had on-and-off with Linux on the desktop since 1999. It mostly "works", but it's inevitably death by a 1000 papercuts and after a few months I'm fed up with it and switch to something less grating.
  - edvinbesic 11y ago
    Completely agree. Run Linux on the desktop which mostly "just works" with a few minor tweaks required now and then. Laptops though? Forget about it. Abysmal battery life, constant issues with waking from sleep, driver issues, trackpad support and the list goes on. It truly is death by 1000 papercuts. Every now and again I forget about the mess and try again and usually give up after a few days when I start remembering it all. I'm sure some people thrive in that kind of environment but I just need to get work done and when the OS gets in the way of that, it doesn't matter that "you just need to configure ..."
eosrei 11y ago
Dell XPS Developer Edition has i7, 16GB, 1TB and comes with Ubuntu. Probably the most straightforward option right now.

falcolas 11y ago

I love Linux, but saying that the desktop use is "superlative" is a bit, let me don my fire retardant suit, wrong. It's a decent enough desktop system, but it falls markedly behind in terms of tooling. There's simply a large number of high quality tools which are not available for Linux, which means that you have to resort to an open source tool which, while decent (and sometimes even fantastic), are still nowhere near the quality of many closed source tools. I wish this would change, and I do what I can to make it change, but the simple reality is that depending on the tools you want to (or need to) use, Linux is behind the game. That said, I agree wholeheartedly with your very first statement: Why not just run Linux locally? Except, I would recommend a local VM. Best(ish) of both worlds.

crdoconnor 11y ago
>There's simply a large number of high quality tools which are not available for Linux Developer tools? Like what?
- falcolas 11y ago
  Visual Studio, XCode, Adobe <insert product here>, anything by Autodesk... As good as alternatives like GIMP are, they simply can't compete with their Mac/Windows alternatives like Photoshop.
  - Karunamon 11y ago
    I would attach many adjectives to Xcode, but "high quality" is not one of them... (only sort of kidding)
  - cmiles74 11y ago
    Both XCode and VisualStudio are proprietary IDEs designed to support building apps for their respective operating systems. If you're writing a Windows native application, you will find Visual Studio on Windows to work the best, likewise if you're developing a Mac OS X native application then XCode on OS X is the smart choice. In my opinion, neither one is well suited for building a native Linux application nor the sort of applications that would need a Docker container in which to run (web application, etc.)

LoSboccacc 11y ago

> Linux is superlative for desktop unless you have a recent gpu, or want to listen music without tuning configuration files every update, or use input devices that aren't mouse/keyboard, or change multi screen configuration every now and then, or...

zeveb 11y ago
FWIW, I: have a recent medium-end graphics card; have listened to music on my desktop for almost twenty years; and change my screen configurations nearly daily. No problems here. I only use mice & keyboards, so I can't say anything about graphics-tablet support.

Keats 11y ago

I agree. Docker is still useful in some cases, ie I'm using it to run separate postgres databases for each project. I could use a nix environment instead but Docker is just easier.

Laaw 11y ago

Linux has never been very good for standard desktop use in the form presented by OS X and Windows. It's still a hobby OS, where your computer itself must become your hobby, rather than whatever it is you want to do on the computer.

Singletoned 11y ago

What if you deploy to Linux and Windows? Do you have to develop on both OS's? Monocultures where you develop and deploy on the same OS are more efficient in the short term, but cause massive problems in the long term when you have to start supporting a different OS and you suddenly realise that you have finely tuned things for one environment at the expense of robustness. It's just like in nature. Monocultures are better in the short term, until the environment changes. Then they struggle to adapt. (I suspect that most mass extinction events have been a failure to adapt to changing environments when overly adapted to a specific environment).