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On headless servers, yeah Linux is king. From our helpdesk stats at $work, OS X is stabler than Linux for (developer) laptops/desktops. The graphics drivers, wh

On headless servers, yeah Linux is king. From our helpdesk stats at $work, OS X is stabler than Linux for (developer) laptops/desktops. The graphics drivers, while better than they used to be still suck. Apt-get still breaks stuff. Taking into account the larger number of tickets from Linux machines plus not having a single vendor for hardware + software means it can actually be cheaper to support Apple MacBooks vs. Thinkpads + RHEL (not to mention that most of the devs don't want to use RHEL).

rbanffy 10y ago
I really don't know what you are doing, but I can tell you apt hasn't broken anything here since the mid-2000's and all machines in my office are multi-headed and all of them use their GPUs. Even the laptops connect to big monitors when used on the desk. Graphics card drivers are reasonable these days, even though manufacturers still tend to drag their feet. You have to understand these are computers, not gaming consoles. If I wanted to play games, I'd buy a Playstation. Few developers want to use RHEL as their desktops, but that's what VMs and containers are for. My Mac development relies on VMs running Linux.
- guitarbill 10y ago
  I suspect it's highly hardware dependant. Most of the time laptops are made to run Windows or Mac OS, and Linux is an afterthought. So to me it's a miracle that it even works. But quite frankly, half of the problem is people telling others that it's somehow their fault when it doesn't work. It's not, e.g. NVIDIA Optimus [0] [1]. There are even jokes about ACPI support on Linux [2]. It only takes a few bad experiences for people to shy away from a platform, which is a shame. [0] http://www.thelinuxrain.com/articles/the-state-of-nvidia-optimus-on-linux http://www.thelinuxrain.com/articles/the-state-of-nvidia-opt... [1] https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/NVIDIA_Optimus https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/NVIDIA_Optimus [2] https://twitter.com/sadserver/status/721134795938357248 https://twitter.com/sadserver/status/721134795938357248

rbanffy 10y ago

I really don't know what you are doing, but I can tell you apt hasn't broken anything here since the mid-2000's and all machines in my office are multi-headed and all of them use their GPUs. Even the laptops connect to big monitors when used on the desk. Graphics card drivers are reasonable these days, even though manufacturers still tend to drag their feet. You have to understand these are computers, not gaming consoles. If I wanted to play games, I'd buy a Playstation. Few developers want to use RHEL as their desktops, but that's what VMs and containers are for. My Mac development relies on VMs running Linux.

guitarbill 10y ago
I suspect it's highly hardware dependant. Most of the time laptops are made to run Windows or Mac OS, and Linux is an afterthought. So to me it's a miracle that it even works. But quite frankly, half of the problem is people telling others that it's somehow their fault when it doesn't work. It's not, e.g. NVIDIA Optimus [0] [1]. There are even jokes about ACPI support on Linux [2]. It only takes a few bad experiences for people to shy away from a platform, which is a shame. [0] http://www.thelinuxrain.com/articles/the-state-of-nvidia-optimus-on-linux http://www.thelinuxrain.com/articles/the-state-of-nvidia-opt... [1] https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/NVIDIA_Optimus https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/NVIDIA_Optimus [2] https://twitter.com/sadserver/status/721134795938357248 https://twitter.com/sadserver/status/721134795938357248