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I've been programming professionally since 2000, working professionally on a range of operating systems: Windows, Linux, OSX and FreeBSD. I've dabbled with Sola

I've been programming professionally since 2000, working professionally on a range of operating systems: Windows, Linux, OSX and FreeBSD. I've dabbled with Solaris SPARC back in the day, and grew up with AmsDOS and MS DOS. I've never had the pleasure of using a Lisp Machine, but enjoy Common Lisp and have a (jealous / nostalgic) feeling for what a LispM must have been like. I mention all of this to give context to my post; I'm not writing from a position of OS ignorance. Anyhow: I'm continually surprised by the support for proprietary operating systems and hardware amongst IT professionals in general, and programmers specifically. I've been running a mix of Xubuntu devices (older ThinkPads for the children) and FreeBSD (for my personal laptop and the home NAS / Minecraft etc. server) and enjoying ease of deployment (simple shell scripts), low cost, high confugurability and especially high reliability in the case of FreeBSD. Windows users used to tell me that NIX was fine, but to get a job, they needed to program for Windows. That's probably still the case in many fields, but not in the Web dev circles I frequent. OSX users tell me that they want both performance, reliable hardware with out of the box support. These days a good XPS or X1 Carbon will eat most or all Mac systems alive, have (in my experience) better build quality, and work well with Linux out of the box. At the company where I work there is a growing number of users who are eschewing the latest turn of the Apple upgrade merry go round and are switching to Dell and Lenovo systems w/ Linux (and FreeBSD, in my case). Everything we need to do for our client still works, and we get more control, cheaper prices and an escape from the frankly "consumer" attitude Apple has these days (imagine - a pocket computer that won't let you install software of your choice!) So if you're in the market for something better and cheaper than Apple, I suggest you take a look at Linux (maybe Ubuntu to start with?), FreeBSD or one of the many alternatives. You might just like it :) Edited to add: Oh yeah, and don't forget the advantage of being able to continue using devices well past the point their manufacturers wish you'd buy something new (or force you to, in the case of Apple). I recently installed FreeBSD on a 16 year old laptop as an experiment, and it works fine. Slow, sure, but fast enough to run Emacs, Firefox, and Ruby. In a (frustrating) pinch I could probably do around half of my daily work on it.

lispm 9y ago
> a pocket computer that won't let you install software of your choice! My Ubuntu tablet did not let me either. It was a major disappointment. Anyway, the OS is no longer maintained and the best thing to do is to use it as a large clock. I'm now using a large iPad Pro, probably the best piece of personal computer hardware I've seen so far... 500GB SSD, fast ARM processor, 120Hz screen with fantastic colors and brightness, LTE, four speakers with excellent sound, ... I cannot program Lisp on it, but I could not do that on the Ubuntu tablet either and the Ubuntu UI/UX was lacking. I always liked SUN's hardware, incl. the SPARC machines. Solaris was nothing I would run on my machine. I never liked it. Not its UI, not the OS APIs, not the documentation, it's like food one does not like. > I recently installed FreeBSD on a 16 year old laptop as an experiment, and it works fine. My Macbook runs nicely a 4k screen with full scaling UI support. That's more important to me, than trying to use old hardware. I have old laptops around, but nothing is compelling to use. The new machines with fast/large SSDs, low-power CPUs, high-res screens, external 4k screens, are more interesting to me. 2018 again won't be the year of the Linux desktop - it is just not there for people who value UI/UX more than low-level configurability.
- duncan_bayne 9y ago
  Okay, serious question: what is the UI / UX experience you get from your OSX system that you think is lacking on Ubuntu? Or one of the other free OSs? Perhaps my requirements are different. Firefox, Emacs, SLIME, CCL, Roswell, Ruby, Node, RubyMine, and SyncThing run pretty much identically on all OSs I've tried. Spotify still doesn't support FreeBSD (no Widevine), so I run that in a Linux VM. Kerbal Space Program I haven't tried on FreeBSD, only Linux and OSX (I do have an old MBP I keep around as a gaming and movie machine, as it has a 15" screen and DVD drive). I found Ubuntu configuration easier than Windows last I tried (Vista) and file based configuration in FreeBSD is the easiest of all, especially courtesy the excellent FreeBSD Handbook. Also I run a tiling window manager (StumpWM) to avoid unnecessary window chrome, and also to avoid using the mouse. The last time I used OSX extensively was back in 2011 or so, at Lonely Planet, where we had a fleet of iMac pairing stations. They were ludicrously hard to set up identically; all our attempts at the time to create a "pairing environment setup script" failed to varying degrees. And the screens, as large and beautiful as they were, were the devil in our weirdly lit office because they weren't available in matte options. Possibly it comes back to your description of "food you don't like", but I really didn't enjoy my time on Apple devices.
spronkey 9y ago
I am the first to criticise Apple for absurd decisions with their newer hardware, and the declining quality of their software. But, 2016 MBP keyboard and touchpad aside, the build quality of Macs is a good step above the best ThinkPad or Dell XPS, and has been for many years. Apple's machines are far less likely to exhibit issues like coil whine, interference on audio outputs, creaks and squeaks, physically broken connectors, electrical noise on USB bus, unstable network cards, poor battery life or longevity, display flickering, poor display uniformity, backlight bleed etc etc etc. Dell's XPS range has had massive issues with Killer wireless dropouts, crackling audio jacks, mysterious battery drain, flickering screens, and a bunch of other stuff I can't remember right now. Lenovo's ThinkPads are consistently equipped with sub-par LCD panels (caveat: I have not tried their OLED models yet). I haven't yet met a ThinkPad that didn't have coil whine coming from either itself or its power adaptor. I haven't yet met a ThinkPad that didn't either have or develop some kind of creaking panel. Until the last couple of years, Apple was about the only manufacturer that cared about making their laptops near-silent, whereas Dell and Lenovo were content putting in stock standard high-RPM fans and running them conservatively. I still find Apple machines superior in this regard. These might seem like petty little things, but they are the sorts of things that drive me absolutely nuts over the ownership life of a machine. I'd also posit that neither the high end ThinkPads, nor Dell's XPS, are actually really any cheaper than Apple's machines when you consider like for like.
- duncan_bayne 9y ago
  I've had friends w/ swelling batteries destroying their MBPs, keyboard issues (dust causing problems), repeated breaking of cables (that was a few years ago, mind you), fragility to liquid spills (MacBook Air destroyed by a spilled drink that would most probably have been saved by a ThinkPad drip tray). I'll grant you the screen on my 2011-era X220 is inferior in almost every way to the current Mac screens (except that it's matte, which makes a big deal when working while commuting). But everything else is just fine. That said I've owned a much more recent ThinkPad - a cheaper 'consumer'-class e550 that was a pile of crap. Keys wore flat, screen market, whole thing flexed ... just not up to traditional ThinkPad standards. Unsurprising at the price I guess. Perhaps you've had bad experiences with lower-end ThinkPads?
- 9y ago

lispm 9y ago

> a pocket computer that won't let you install software of your choice! My Ubuntu tablet did not let me either. It was a major disappointment. Anyway, the OS is no longer maintained and the best thing to do is to use it as a large clock. I'm now using a large iPad Pro, probably the best piece of personal computer hardware I've seen so far... 500GB SSD, fast ARM processor, 120Hz screen with fantastic colors and brightness, LTE, four speakers with excellent sound, ... I cannot program Lisp on it, but I could not do that on the Ubuntu tablet either and the Ubuntu UI/UX was lacking. I always liked SUN's hardware, incl. the SPARC machines. Solaris was nothing I would run on my machine. I never liked it. Not its UI, not the OS APIs, not the documentation, it's like food one does not like. > I recently installed FreeBSD on a 16 year old laptop as an experiment, and it works fine. My Macbook runs nicely a 4k screen with full scaling UI support. That's more important to me, than trying to use old hardware. I have old laptops around, but nothing is compelling to use. The new machines with fast/large SSDs, low-power CPUs, high-res screens, external 4k screens, are more interesting to me. 2018 again won't be the year of the Linux desktop - it is just not there for people who value UI/UX more than low-level configurability.

duncan_bayne 9y ago
Okay, serious question: what is the UI / UX experience you get from your OSX system that you think is lacking on Ubuntu? Or one of the other free OSs? Perhaps my requirements are different. Firefox, Emacs, SLIME, CCL, Roswell, Ruby, Node, RubyMine, and SyncThing run pretty much identically on all OSs I've tried. Spotify still doesn't support FreeBSD (no Widevine), so I run that in a Linux VM. Kerbal Space Program I haven't tried on FreeBSD, only Linux and OSX (I do have an old MBP I keep around as a gaming and movie machine, as it has a 15" screen and DVD drive). I found Ubuntu configuration easier than Windows last I tried (Vista) and file based configuration in FreeBSD is the easiest of all, especially courtesy the excellent FreeBSD Handbook. Also I run a tiling window manager (StumpWM) to avoid unnecessary window chrome, and also to avoid using the mouse. The last time I used OSX extensively was back in 2011 or so, at Lonely Planet, where we had a fleet of iMac pairing stations. They were ludicrously hard to set up identically; all our attempts at the time to create a "pairing environment setup script" failed to varying degrees. And the screens, as large and beautiful as they were, were the devil in our weirdly lit office because they weren't available in matte options. Possibly it comes back to your description of "food you don't like", but I really didn't enjoy my time on Apple devices.

spronkey 9y ago

I am the first to criticise Apple for absurd decisions with their newer hardware, and the declining quality of their software. But, 2016 MBP keyboard and touchpad aside, the build quality of Macs is a good step above the best ThinkPad or Dell XPS, and has been for many years. Apple's machines are far less likely to exhibit issues like coil whine, interference on audio outputs, creaks and squeaks, physically broken connectors, electrical noise on USB bus, unstable network cards, poor battery life or longevity, display flickering, poor display uniformity, backlight bleed etc etc etc. Dell's XPS range has had massive issues with Killer wireless dropouts, crackling audio jacks, mysterious battery drain, flickering screens, and a bunch of other stuff I can't remember right now. Lenovo's ThinkPads are consistently equipped with sub-par LCD panels (caveat: I have not tried their OLED models yet). I haven't yet met a ThinkPad that didn't have coil whine coming from either itself or its power adaptor. I haven't yet met a ThinkPad that didn't either have or develop some kind of creaking panel. Until the last couple of years, Apple was about the only manufacturer that cared about making their laptops near-silent, whereas Dell and Lenovo were content putting in stock standard high-RPM fans and running them conservatively. I still find Apple machines superior in this regard. These might seem like petty little things, but they are the sorts of things that drive me absolutely nuts over the ownership life of a machine. I'd also posit that neither the high end ThinkPads, nor Dell's XPS, are actually really any cheaper than Apple's machines when you consider like for like.

duncan_bayne 9y ago
I've had friends w/ swelling batteries destroying their MBPs, keyboard issues (dust causing problems), repeated breaking of cables (that was a few years ago, mind you), fragility to liquid spills (MacBook Air destroyed by a spilled drink that would most probably have been saved by a ThinkPad drip tray). I'll grant you the screen on my 2011-era X220 is inferior in almost every way to the current Mac screens (except that it's matte, which makes a big deal when working while commuting). But everything else is just fine. That said I've owned a much more recent ThinkPad - a cheaper 'consumer'-class e550 that was a pile of crap. Keys wore flat, screen market, whole thing flexed ... just not up to traditional ThinkPad standards. Unsurprising at the price I guess. Perhaps you've had bad experiences with lower-end ThinkPads?
9y ago