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Hmmm, hate to admit this: Use a Mac for work rather than Linux. The unixness combined with availability of the likes of MS Office, together with the genuinely b

Hmmm, hate to admit this: Use a Mac for work rather than Linux. The unixness combined with availability of the likes of MS Office, together with the genuinely beautiful interface has really increased my throughput. Secondly: Doing 1.5 hrs exercise daily.

bryanlarsen 10y ago
Coding on the same platform that I deploy to has increased my productivity.
grimoald 10y ago
For me, it's using Linux instead of Windows for coding (at least back then when I was learning to coding). It was so much easier to start a quick C++ project using an editor and g++ than fiddling with VisualStudio. Not to mention Python.
- btym 10y ago
  Even just for daily, non-project use, nuking my Windows install was the best thing I've ever done to my computer.
davelnewton 10y ago
So... describe the moment.
- nailer 10y ago
  Not OP, but for me it was purchasing a laptop where every single component had Open Source, in-mainline kernel modules, significantly losing out on performance, and then STILL compositing didn't work on an external monitor. That was 8 years ago, really enjoyed using Macs since. Now Apple quality is going down, and powershell is getting really good, slowly moving to Windows.
  - davelnewton 10y ago
    That's a moment I think a lot of us can relate to. I love Linux/Linux-like OSes. I also like stuff working without having to tinker with it--not that I dislike tinkering (it's great fun) but time is more of a factor now than it used to be.
cookiecaper 10y ago
I've used Linux full-time for 11 years; booted into Windows about once or twice a year to try out a game, and had a Windows VM for photo editing (DxO doesn't work in WINE, and afaik, there are no good replacements for it). Just a couple of months ago I switched to Windows as the host OS and Linux in a VM running in the background 24x7 (off the raw disks, so I am virtualizing the same system that I ran as my host OS, which meant I didn't have to spend time re-installing and re-configuring everything). As a long-time Linux die-hard who passed so many applications by because they didn't work well in WINE and/or virtualized Windows, it pained me to switch, but Linux is much more cooperative as a VM than Windows is (and it also pains me to "reward" Windows's bad behavior with the position of host OS). With appropriate tweaking (Dexpot) and a good terminal (ConEmu+Cygwin for SSH to my VM), Windows is basically just like a DE that can play new games (Overwatch, woot!) and run my photo editing software 5x faster than it ran in VM.
- rconti 10y ago
  Seems like OS X is the perfect solution to this. I used Linux on the desktop exclusively from 1995 to 2002 but haven't run it on the desktop since. (I still manage fleets of Linux servers of course). I simply don't see any value in desktop Linux for my job, and using Windows makes it too hard (like trying to build a ship in a bottle). YMMV, of course, depending on your work.
  - cookiecaper 10y ago
    I've had occasion to use OS X here and there over this time period, and unfortunately I don't think it's a great solution. The first problem is that I'd be locked into Apple hardware, which is not something I'm interested in. Nothing personal against Apple hardware, as there are certainly pleasant things about it, but it's not what I want. For example, one of the only reasons I can do this is because I have a custom x86 build that accommodates it with a lot of disk space and a lot of RAM. The second problem is that I've found OS X kind of inhabits an uncanny valley, where at first glance it looks great, but after using it for a while, you find a lot of small tics that are offputting. It does provide some nice traditional star-nix utilities and has some POSIX compatibility, but many things seem to have a bunch of little problems and incompatibilities that one has to get in there and address if the project doesn't already provide a Mac installer that does this for you. This may not sound like a big deal, but sometimes these "little incompatibilities" are showstoppers and sometimes they just take extra hours to get working. And each year, OS X is getting worse; the compatibility takes a hit, the system gets more and more locked down, and sometimes management scripts have to be totally rewritten. The end result of that is that many of my colleagues that use OS X end up with a very similar setup to mine, where they have a Linux VM running in the background 24x7 to provide those needs. Thirdly, OS X is a neglected middle ground in terms of testing and application compatibility. Devs prefer to work on Linux and users prefer to use Windows. That means that user-oriented applications, like new games, always work on Windows and that most dev-oriented applications work on Linux (and many depend on Linux-specific functionality like the proc subsystem which make it more difficult to port BSDs or OS X). Even if the code is compatible as-is on both Linux and OS X without changes, OS X is often the least-tested platform for relevant applications. I know there are a few vendors that release Mac versions of their games, so there is frequently a bit more availability on OS X than there is on Linux, but it's far less than there are on Windows. I don't really see what I gain by using OS X instead of Windows. With Cygwin, I have star-nix utilities in Windows too, and I get immediate compatibility with practically every user-oriented application out there.

bryanlarsen 10y ago

Coding on the same platform that I deploy to has increased my productivity.

grimoald 10y ago

For me, it's using Linux instead of Windows for coding (at least back then when I was learning to coding). It was so much easier to start a quick C++ project using an editor and g++ than fiddling with VisualStudio. Not to mention Python.

btym 10y ago
Even just for daily, non-project use, nuking my Windows install was the best thing I've ever done to my computer.

davelnewton 10y ago

So... describe the moment.

nailer 10y ago
Not OP, but for me it was purchasing a laptop where every single component had Open Source, in-mainline kernel modules, significantly losing out on performance, and then STILL compositing didn't work on an external monitor. That was 8 years ago, really enjoyed using Macs since. Now Apple quality is going down, and powershell is getting really good, slowly moving to Windows.
- davelnewton 10y ago
  That's a moment I think a lot of us can relate to. I love Linux/Linux-like OSes. I also like stuff working without having to tinker with it--not that I dislike tinkering (it's great fun) but time is more of a factor now than it used to be.

cookiecaper 10y ago

I've used Linux full-time for 11 years; booted into Windows about once or twice a year to try out a game, and had a Windows VM for photo editing (DxO doesn't work in WINE, and afaik, there are no good replacements for it). Just a couple of months ago I switched to Windows as the host OS and Linux in a VM running in the background 24x7 (off the raw disks, so I am virtualizing the same system that I ran as my host OS, which meant I didn't have to spend time re-installing and re-configuring everything). As a long-time Linux die-hard who passed so many applications by because they didn't work well in WINE and/or virtualized Windows, it pained me to switch, but Linux is much more cooperative as a VM than Windows is (and it also pains me to "reward" Windows's bad behavior with the position of host OS). With appropriate tweaking (Dexpot) and a good terminal (ConEmu+Cygwin for SSH to my VM), Windows is basically just like a DE that can play new games (Overwatch, woot!) and run my photo editing software 5x faster than it ran in VM.

rconti 10y ago
Seems like OS X is the perfect solution to this. I used Linux on the desktop exclusively from 1995 to 2002 but haven't run it on the desktop since. (I still manage fleets of Linux servers of course). I simply don't see any value in desktop Linux for my job, and using Windows makes it too hard (like trying to build a ship in a bottle). YMMV, of course, depending on your work.
- cookiecaper 10y ago
  I've had occasion to use OS X here and there over this time period, and unfortunately I don't think it's a great solution. The first problem is that I'd be locked into Apple hardware, which is not something I'm interested in. Nothing personal against Apple hardware, as there are certainly pleasant things about it, but it's not what I want. For example, one of the only reasons I can do this is because I have a custom x86 build that accommodates it with a lot of disk space and a lot of RAM. The second problem is that I've found OS X kind of inhabits an uncanny valley, where at first glance it looks great, but after using it for a while, you find a lot of small tics that are offputting. It does provide some nice traditional star-nix utilities and has some POSIX compatibility, but many things seem to have a bunch of little problems and incompatibilities that one has to get in there and address if the project doesn't already provide a Mac installer that does this for you. This may not sound like a big deal, but sometimes these "little incompatibilities" are showstoppers and sometimes they just take extra hours to get working. And each year, OS X is getting worse; the compatibility takes a hit, the system gets more and more locked down, and sometimes management scripts have to be totally rewritten. The end result of that is that many of my colleagues that use OS X end up with a very similar setup to mine, where they have a Linux VM running in the background 24x7 to provide those needs. Thirdly, OS X is a neglected middle ground in terms of testing and application compatibility. Devs prefer to work on Linux and users prefer to use Windows. That means that user-oriented applications, like new games, always work on Windows and that most dev-oriented applications work on Linux (and many depend on Linux-specific functionality like the proc subsystem which make it more difficult to port BSDs or OS X). Even if the code is compatible as-is on both Linux and OS X without changes, OS X is often the least-tested platform for relevant applications. I know there are a few vendors that release Mac versions of their games, so there is frequently a bit more availability on OS X than there is on Linux, but it's far less than there are on Windows. I don't really see what I gain by using OS X instead of Windows. With Cygwin, I have star-nix utilities in Windows too, and I get immediate compatibility with practically every user-oriented application out there.