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I went down this route once. It's not worth it. You'll spend so. much. *time. troubleshooting the smallest of details at seemingly random intervals. Frankly, i

I went down this route once. It's not worth it. You'll spend so. much. *time. troubleshooting the smallest of details at seemingly random intervals. Frankly, if Linux is an option, try that first. It's less work and more fun (IMO). I've been strongly considering actually running Windows with the Linux subsystem turned on. If you think about it, that solves the same kinds of problems that a Mac does: you get nice Unix-y functionality, a wide variety of shells/cli utilities that just work, and you can run commercial applications (Photoshop and the like come to mind, but also games if you're into that). Of course, it's not a Mac and you get all of the nastiness that comes with Windows (viruses, having to reload every 6 months to keep things snappy, etc), but I'm beginning to see it as a more economical option than a Mac and potentially easier to deal with than Linux (as someone that has been using a Mac for a workstation for years + Linux on servers and other workstations).

joshstrange 10y ago
> You'll spend so. much. *time. troubleshooting the smallest of details at seemingly random intervals. > Frankly, if Linux is an option, try that first. I don't doubt the time sink from hackintosh (I did it some 6-7 years ago and it worked 90% of the way but that was on hardware that I just had and didn't buy the recommendations). That said linux, for me at least, was a huge timesink as a desktop. I love it and will only use it for servers but for a desktop/laptop I'll probably not stray from Mac (or Hackintosh) and MacOS. Edit: For those downvoting I am only talking about desktops. I work in an environment where nearly all the developers use linux as their desktop OS as it's that or windows (or BYOC) and anytime someone decides to update their distro or switch they will inevitably spend a day messing with graphics card drivers, odd errors/issues, or tweaking an ungodly number of low level configs to get it to work. After all of that they have a semi-stable desktop with a handful of annoyances "Oh it just does that and I haven't have to time to track down the cause". While you might deal with some of that on homebuilt computer with MacOS I'd pick a hackintosh any day of the week due to the higher quality apps.
- prophet_ 10y ago
  I did just that. Mac > Hackintosh > Linux. but.... In the end I found out it was far worse having to deal with the crappy alpha version apps for linux than fixing the hackintosh. If you are used to the quality of mac apps you will certainly miss them once on linux. I did. This was until the day the Hackintosh died with an unknown freaky kernel issue and I made the best decision I ever made: bought a second-hand quad core mac mini. I never want to hear about hackintoshes ever since.
- cweagans 10y ago
  For me, the amount of time I've spent troubleshooting/configuring/whatever linux has been directly proportionate to the amount of customization I attempt to do. The vast majority of my work is Docker, Vim, a web browser, and a handful of other CLI utilities. Sure, I have a handful of shell aliases and the like, but I'm not going in and tweaking kernel-level stuff or messing with system services (for the most part). Use the stock config and only change things if you really, really need to. Just like you would on a server. Applying that same rule to desktop - for me at least - produces exactly the same stability on my desktop that I expect from my servers.
zeveb 10y ago
> Of course, it's not a Mac and you get all of the nastiness that comes with Windows (viruses, having to reload every 6 months to keep things snappy, etc), but I'm beginning to see it as a more economical option than a Mac and potentially easier to deal with than Linux FWIW, I've found modern Linux to be very easy to deal with, with the exception of some one-time install issues. They are annoying, but nowhere near the annoyance of the ongoing issues one has with Windows or macOS.

joshstrange 10y ago

> You'll spend so. much. *time. troubleshooting the smallest of details at seemingly random intervals. > Frankly, if Linux is an option, try that first. I don't doubt the time sink from hackintosh (I did it some 6-7 years ago and it worked 90% of the way but that was on hardware that I just had and didn't buy the recommendations). That said linux, for me at least, was a huge timesink as a desktop. I love it and will only use it for servers but for a desktop/laptop I'll probably not stray from Mac (or Hackintosh) and MacOS. Edit: For those downvoting I am only talking about desktops. I work in an environment where nearly all the developers use linux as their desktop OS as it's that or windows (or BYOC) and anytime someone decides to update their distro or switch they will inevitably spend a day messing with graphics card drivers, odd errors/issues, or tweaking an ungodly number of low level configs to get it to work. After all of that they have a semi-stable desktop with a handful of annoyances "Oh it just does that and I haven't have to time to track down the cause". While you might deal with some of that on homebuilt computer with MacOS I'd pick a hackintosh any day of the week due to the higher quality apps.

prophet_ 10y ago
I did just that. Mac > Hackintosh > Linux. but.... In the end I found out it was far worse having to deal with the crappy alpha version apps for linux than fixing the hackintosh. If you are used to the quality of mac apps you will certainly miss them once on linux. I did. This was until the day the Hackintosh died with an unknown freaky kernel issue and I made the best decision I ever made: bought a second-hand quad core mac mini. I never want to hear about hackintoshes ever since.
cweagans 10y ago
For me, the amount of time I've spent troubleshooting/configuring/whatever linux has been directly proportionate to the amount of customization I attempt to do. The vast majority of my work is Docker, Vim, a web browser, and a handful of other CLI utilities. Sure, I have a handful of shell aliases and the like, but I'm not going in and tweaking kernel-level stuff or messing with system services (for the most part). Use the stock config and only change things if you really, really need to. Just like you would on a server. Applying that same rule to desktop - for me at least - produces exactly the same stability on my desktop that I expect from my servers.

zeveb 10y ago

> Of course, it's not a Mac and you get all of the nastiness that comes with Windows (viruses, having to reload every 6 months to keep things snappy, etc), but I'm beginning to see it as a more economical option than a Mac and potentially easier to deal with than Linux FWIW, I've found modern Linux to be very easy to deal with, with the exception of some one-time install issues. They are annoying, but nowhere near the annoyance of the ongoing issues one has with Windows or macOS.