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I am a software developer, and I detest working on my mac laptop. At $lastjob I had a Linux desktop and it is, I believe, the most productive environment I have

by sreque 9y ago

I am a software developer, and I detest working on my mac laptop. At $lastjob I had a Linux desktop and it is, I believe, the most productive environment I have ever developed in. The job before, I had a windows desktop, and I prefer that to mac. You say you want to just "get things done expediently," but in my experience apple software is flat out inferior and OSX is the worst of the 3 major operating systems I have to choose from. Lastly, what does Apple have to gain by switching away from Intel? Not much, at least, not much that benefits me as a customer. Likely they are interested in making their laptops have more in common with their iOS devices, which does little to nothing for me. Apple's behavior towards OSX and macbooks in the past few years should be of great concern for anyone, especially if you actually like the devices.

fastball 9y ago
What exactly does your development workflow look like where Linux was so much better than MacOS?
- garmaine 9y ago
  What was the workflow in which windows was better than anything UNIX based....
  - ratsimihah 9y ago
    I’m missing the logic as well. Linux > Windows > macOS?
  - pjmlp 9y ago
    Desktop software development, graphical debugging tools. The only UNIX based that tops it is macOS.
    - garmaine 9y ago
      But Linux is better for that?
      - pjmlp 9y ago
        Not all all, Linux is the culture of command line, where people improving UI/UX on GNOME/KDE always get bashed as taking the power away doing irrelevant work. There is not a single cohesive stack of desktop technologies, what macOS calls Kits, Android frameworks, Windows UWP and such. Something like Glade still fails short of what XCode or VS Blend are capable of. Sure there is something like Qt QML designer, but that isn't Linux specific anyway.
        garmaine 9y ago
        You are missing context. Grandparent was claiming that Linux was the best OS he’d used for development (fair enough), but that he’d rather have Windows over macOS otherwise. That part I was hoping for clarification on.
- electricslpnsld 9y ago
  Not OP, but the LLVM toolchain provided by Apple is a bit clunky and missing features relative to what you get from a typical Linux distro.
  - chuckdries 9y ago
    Macs ship with outdated versions of common bash commands and tools as well. Homebrew goes a long way to fixing this for me.
    - Lio 9y ago
      I have the same problem on Ubuntu LTS distributions. Eg the ancient version of git in 16.04LTS. You can fix that of course but homebrew does the same job on macOS. Roll on 18.04LTS.
      - figgis 9y ago
        The most enjoyable and productive dev workstations I have used/setup have all used rolling release distro's for this exact reason. It does have the overhead of requiring you actually understand (or know how to google) your system/packages that you use though.
        Lio 9y ago
        It's not just understanding the packages. When I upgraded from 16.04LTS to 17.10 I had to relearn how to compile the kernel because my laptop would no longer boot. Wasn't that hard to do in the end but it's not something I've done for many, many years and doesn't fill me with confidence.
      - sitkack 9y ago
        Homebrew exists on Linux. I like running LTS distros because they just work. For newer per-project exceptions, I put everything into a container (again layered on LTS), it is esp nice for things like specific versions of LLVM which I wouldn't want to pollute my base machine with. My peronal userland gets shipped via, cargo, go, pip, npm, etc. https://github.com/Linuxbrew/brew https://github.com/Linuxbrew/brew
- zeveb 9y ago
  StumpWM & a full GNU userland just like the machines we deploy on are killer.
- jcfrei 9y ago
  Apple frequently introduces changes to its OS that caters to the average user without any hindsight for developers. A good example I had to deal with; I wanted to change the port the SSH daemon listens on. With El Capitan and future versions you have to temporarily disable SIP (System Integrity Protection) - which requires two reboots - in order to make the change to the ssh.plist file. As you can see it's a common problem: https://apple.stackexchange.com/a/208481 https://apple.stackexchange.com/a/208481 It's lots of little things like this that require extra effort on OSX but which are straightforward on a decent Linux distro.
  - voltagex_ 9y ago
    Is there anything stopping you using a separate sshd to run on a different port? Or using one from homebrew instead of Apple's bundled one?
  - no_wizard 9y ago
    Flatly, This isn't true. I can still go into /etc/ssh sudo vim sshd_config, can my values, and they stick. Just to test it, I did it right now, and I'm running 10.13.4, for what its worth. What exactly was the issue with changing the sshd config? This isn't a SIP protected directory, which is the only thing that would prevent such a move. Perhaps the requirement of sudo? I feel like most linux distros force that in the /etc directory too.
    - jcfrei 9y ago
      Changing /etc/ssh/sshd_config was my first attempt as well. But since this is OSX things are a little different, see here: https://serverfault.com/a/67616/ https://serverfault.com/a/67616/
  - fastball 9y ago
    this security feature that is great for the vast majority of Apple's user's isn't convenient for me. Luckily, Apple shipped SIP with the option to disable it, and it's not hard. So you can disable it once and then you never need to deal with issues like that again. It's weird because it sounds like you want the protection of SIP without the inconvenience of SIP, but that's never been possible with pretty much any security measure ever -- more safety means less convenience. That being said, to me Apple has actually been the best when it comest to safety/convenience ratio. Linux distros don't even have the option of SIP or something similar, so I can't say I find your argument compelling.
Myrmornis 9y ago
What apple software do you need to use? Sure, it's annoying not having the GNU command-line utilities. But `brew install coreutils` basically fixes that for me. I admit I don't work heavily with compiled languages on macOS so I can't comment on technical aspects of that. iTerm2 is not inferior to linux terminal emulators. The Apple laptops are quite obviously the best hardware experience out there. I mean obviously iTunes is a complete insult to humanity, and I've no fucking clue how to use Finder etc, but does that matter really?
- FridgeSeal 9y ago
  I mean the laptops are great. Provided you don't need a HDMI port. Or more than 1 spare USB port. Or am ethernet port. You could get the touch-bar version, but I've read literally nothing but bad reviews and stories about that thing, plus tb versions have smaller batteries. Yes, I could get a dock, but here's a better idea: how about apple chills out on their unnecessary-thinness fetish, and givese back some actual functionality in my laptop.
  - stiGGG 9y ago
    With touch bar i agree, it hate it. But the thunderbolt dock thingie totally rocks. It's really nice to only plug in one cable to connect the complete hardware on your desk (multiple screens, ethernet, power, etc).
    - mulmen 9y ago
      In theory the dock is nice but in reality they don't work at all. Does Apple make their own dock? Every time I come back to my desk with my laptop I have to go through some ritual involving opening and closing the laptop lid and connecting cables in a certain order to maintain screen orientations and try to get the thing to even wake up. I power cycle my dock at least three times a week to try and make it all work I used to have a 2014 RMBP with the Apple display and it was fantastic because it was all built by Apple and Just Worked (TM). Hopefully moving to their own chip fab is the start of them going back to owning the entire device solution.
bjoli 9y ago
I have long said that Mac os X is only useful as a way to start Emacs, but since 10.10 I am not even sure about that. Of course it is a matter of taste. I get that. I still have to bite my tongue to not yell profanities whenever I hear anything about productivity and Mac OS. Most of the time I keep my mouth shut. Now I just wanted to tell you that you are not alone. I have to use Mac OS at work. To avoid frustration I have started to let my soul and will leave my body before logging in and let my lobotomized shell I left behind just go with the flow. At least until Emacs is running full screen.
- rootusrootus 9y ago
  I don't suppose it's any consolation, but I feel the same way if I have to use Linux or Windows as a workstation. Different strokes for different folks.
- bb88 9y ago
  It's a trendy way to start Emacs. I used one just to use vim.
- ekun 9y ago
  Nice thing on windows is I can open the command line type >bash and I've got vim, ssh, sftp, bash whatever immediately. I still don't use that because other telnet, x-window setups are better for me. I never found out how to be productive in OSX vs what I can do in Windows.
  - heartbreak 9y ago
    > Nice thing on windows is I can open the command line type >bash and I've got vim, ssh, sftp, bash whatever immediately. Yes, macOS has a terminal emulator as well. > I never found out how to be productive in OSX vs what I can do in Windows. Open Spotlight, type in "Terminal" and hit return.
    - philliphaydon 9y ago
      Unsure how that magically makes OS X productive. Stuff is just easier and faster on windows or linux. And I’m tired of OS X randomly crashing or freezing. It’s like windows 98 now.
npunt 9y ago
2/3s of all PR activity on Github is on a Mac, for what it's worth. Certainly the platform punches above its weight relative to market share. https://developer.apple.com/videos/play/wwdc2017/102/?time=2023 https://developer.apple.com/videos/play/wwdc2017/102/?time=2...
- deathanatos 9y ago
  My last couple of jobs have given me no choice aside from a MBP and OS X. They do this because they don't want to manage multiple kinds of machines from an IT perspective. (I'm not sure I agree with this, but it is what it is.) Depending on how widespread this is, usage may not reflect actual user desire (though I would wager quite a large number of users either don't care what they're using, or care, but a MBP is adequate, but would also be fine on something else.)
  - ggg9990 9y ago
    The managing multiple kinds of machines issues is a real one, speaking from the other end. For uniquely talented software engineers I might let them use what they want but from managing an IT department you definitely want anyone who has no reason to be otherwise on the same exact hardware and software configuration.
    - tetha 9y ago
      Yeah, at my last place, the deal was: First we have to find 5 - 10 devs who want to switch to linux (there were 50 - 100 in total). Then we get a PXE boot image to install linux and, well, DHCP. We get to try it for a couple of month, while producing documentation on how linux works with the infrastructure. That feels like a fair solution.
  - stiGGG 9y ago
    In my second to last company (a web development shop), they had originally the policy that a new developers can choose if he want either a mac, linux or windows machine. When i arrived there it was 75% mac and the rest used linux, not even one had made the choice for windows. After a while some new guys get hired and one of them wanted to use windows. We found out immediately, that this caused a lot of problems, because he had serious problems to get our projects to run under windows, even though we thought this shouldn't be an issue because all the dev environments were running in VMs managed by vagrant. After while ago watching this guy not getting productive, because he ran from one issue into another, cto forced him to install linux on his machine to end this horror show and windows was removed from the new guys choices at least for developers. The company i went after that and my current one are 100% mac environments, for the reasons of homogeneity you mentioned.
derefr 9y ago
You seem to be conflating macOS with Macs. Have you running Linux on Apple hardware?
- szatkus 9y ago
  Not GP, but I'd like to share my perspective. Apple creates their products for a specific customer (which covers most of population looking at its popularity among people, who have enough money to buy their products), but not for me. Using Macs or iThings feels like using devices which aren't design for my workflow. Macbooks are well-built, but they are optimized for Mac OS. Dells and Lenovos are good enough for me and work nice with Linux. I like physical buttons and keyboards which are... well, hard to say what I don't like in Mac's keyboards, but they are not going well with me.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
- danjoc 9y ago
  https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12924051 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12924051
saas_co_de 9y ago
> in my experience apple software is flat out inferior and OSX is the worst It is almost absurdly bad. The only OS that still hangs, freezes, and crashes regularly. It is like Windows 98 quality wise and seems to get worse instead of better. The whole UX is also insane. Every feature is hidden behind some obscure keyboard shortcut that you have to google or you just get used to working with this useless toy os. The terminal is garbage. Everything is slooooow as fk (typing, mouse, etc). It is shocking that the internet industry has standardized on working on this garbage when they run Linux on their servers and would be far better off developing on the software they actually use. It just demonstrates the cult mindset and horrible lack of real technical proficiency in the industry.
- reaperducer 9y ago
  > The only OS that still hangs, freezes, and crashes regularly. Tell that to my Windows 7 box. It crashed last week because I tried to copy a PNG on the desktop into an Outlook e-mail message. (IT still hasn't cleared Win 10 for company-wide deployment)
- FabHK 9y ago
  > some obscure keyboard shortcut FWIW, according to the old Human Interface Guidelines basically everything was supposed to be discoverable via menus, and then has the keyboard shortcut right there in the menu. The keyboard shortcut System Preference pane lists additional keyboard shortcuts, and lets you easily change them system wide. But yes, granted, searching online reveals quite a few more shortcuts. I'm just wondering how Windows or Linux are better in that regard in any way??
quotemstr 9y ago
So why are you sticking with it? Go out and get a nice Linux machine. Expense it. If you're working at a company too square to approve that, install Linux on your Apple laptop. If you're working at a company that won't even allow that, well, you have my condolences. Things to ask before you sign, I guess.
- viraptor 9y ago
  This works, but only for simple environments. Given a work environment where you have a choice of: a) prepared environment with all application dependencies available and a tested-by-everyone, one-click-install/update on a bad system, or b) preferred system, but you have to do all of that from scratch yourself... Sometimes the reasonable answer is "a", even if you're allowed to do "b" (on your own time of course)
  - quotemstr 9y ago
    I've always been a b guy, and it's helped me understand how things work. One time, I joined a company, and two weeks after joining, poking around with a weird custom machine setup, I found that the machine was running a world-writable batch file as SYSTEM upon boot. Who knows how long this huge gaping security hole would have gone unnoticed if I hadn't felt compelled to poke around with Cygwin?
  - Symbiote 9y ago
    I asked for both a and b. I could make do with an older computer for Office and Outlook.
Tijdreiziger 9y ago
> Not much, at least, not much that benefits me as a customer. Why would it matter to you, as a customer, what chip is inside your computer? As long as it can run your programs, why do you care? See also: Microsoft and Windows on ARM
ionforce 9y ago
What parts of your workflow do you think are uniquely enhanced by not being on Mac?
- bb88 9y ago
  For me, 1. Getting packages with apt on ubuntu without installing homebrew. It's vastly simpler and natively supported by ubuntu. I can also update my entire system with sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade. 2. Native docker support. 3. On mac, I always ask the question whether something is ctrl-c or cmd-c, say. On linux it's always ctrl. 4. I don't have to login to the apple store to get the software I need. 5. Linux has always been command-line first. On mac it's always been GUI first. 6. Macbooks are terribly built, and fail for a number of reasons. [1] 7. The Apple brand, while it used to be one of homebrew is now akin to one of fashion. It's kind of like seeing all the kids walk around with their "Hollister" t-shirts on. I could go on I suppose but those are the meat of the issues. 1: Louis Rossmann's macbook repair channel. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sfrYOWlKJ_g https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sfrYOWlKJ_g
  - tjr225 9y ago
    2 - docker works flawlessly on macos 4 - i cant think of a single application, outside of maybe xcode, a developer might need to sign into the app store for 6 - whatever reasons that youtuber might have for not using macbooks, i will never buy a non-mac notebook ever again. this 2013 13" mbp has been the best and most reliable computer I have ever had in 30 years and I bought it used! 7 - sure the apple brand is cool but i don't get your point? doesn't it mean that you care about the branding so much so that you won't use it? do you see where I'm going?
    - meddlepal 9y ago
      > docker works flawlessly on macos He said nothing about "fine". Docker on Mac is through a VM and thus not native. Containerization in MacOS is impossible without a VM.
      - 9y ago
reaperducer 9y ago
You're lucky that you get to have just one dev environment. I have 2 Windows, 1 Mac, 2 iOS and 1 Android device on my work desk and I have to constantly switch between them. That said, I do most of my heavy lifting on the Mac, and all primary dev on a Mac. Doing the equivalent tasks is a chore in Windows. I used to be all-Windows, but once I understood that MacOS is file-oriented and not program-oriented, it helped a lot.
- squiggleblaz 9y ago
  Really? I've always found Mac OS unpleasant, because it seems to me very program oriented. I typically work in a task oriented way (a collection of windows, probably from different apps, on one virtual desktop, referring to related files; another virtual desktop has windows from the same apps for another task). This has always seemed to me to be a species of "file oriented" working, and I prefer apps that run in a file oriented way. For instance, a graphical file manager that shows a folder in a window, and you click to get open an item in the folder you so always get a new window - even if it happens that the item in folder is just another folder that is opened by the graphical file manager. Or office apps which always open each document in a new window, and when I close the current document, the only thing I notice is that the current document is closed - it doesn't try to focus some other window from the same app. But Mac OS has always seemed an almost perfectly application-based interface with its fully application-based dock and it's application-based global menu (close a window for a file that was loaded by Cool App, and Cool App's menu still shows). I think it's Finder is a bit confused: it used to be mostly file based, at some point in the OS X years it got more and more application based but perhaps it's swung back - it's been a few years since I've bothered trying Mac OS. It had some of the most appalling virtual desktop support when I last used it, that made me think "the people who have implemented this only work in an application-based way". I can only imagine that's got better. But it seems that Mac OS is always: application-based workflow is prioritised, file-based workflow is secondary. I have found that Linux can[1] excel in this workflow, Windows is ambivalent to all workflows, supporting all of them badly because it supports none at all, and Mac OS prefers you to think "what tool am I using", not "what task am I doing". Is my experience entirely unique? [1] i.e. it depends on what particular tooling you're using - it's possible a default setup is appalling.
potta_coffee 9y ago
I like Linux better than Mac which I like better than Windows. I don't use Linux for work right now because HiDPI support just isn't there for a lot of Linux software.
- Symbiote 9y ago
  What has given you HIDPI trouble? I have Kubuntu at home and a 4k screen, and also at work with a "3k" screen. I don't do development at home, but the general desktop works fine.
ratsimihah 9y ago
What does Linux give you that macOS doesn’t? I use both a Mac and an Arch Linux running i3/awesomewm, and to me macOS is like any Linux distro with a user-friendly desktop environment. I guess it doesn’t have an « official » package manager, but homebrew has most packages anyway?
- wiiner 9y ago
  Uniform platform support for multiple architectures. I have Linux desktops on i686, x86_64, arm and aarch64. Same desktop environment, same programs, same easily mirrorable configuration, same firewall system, wireguard, same or fairly equivalent package management between systems.
- astrodust 9y ago
  You can run things like the Adobe Suite without any ridiculous overhead. Where Xcode is important you've also got that. For a lot of people that don't care the differences are largely subjective and the difference between Ubuntu, for example, and macOS are largely academic and aesthetic.
  - Insanity 9y ago
    With academic, I'm not sure if you also include 'philosophic'. Personally, I'd rather develop on mac than on windows but I'm the happiest on Linux. A large factor in this is that I like to contribute to FOSS and find that 'ideology' to be a match with my beliefs regarding software.
    - astrodust 9y ago
      For work I prefer the macOS environment partially for the software, but mostly because the machines are standardized and interchangeable. If one machine dies I can swap it for another without any fuss. Restore from Time Machine and get on with life, something that takes about an hour or so. This is really not the case with Windows or Linux. These require a lot of tinkering and tuning. A recent swap from one Windows 7 machine to a Windows 10 one took days, the migration procedure is basically garbage. I've never had much luck with desktop Linux even though I use it all the time on servers but those get rebuilt with a new OS when they're out of date. Upgrading them is just too much of a fuss. If you've got a workflow for keeping desktop Linux up to date and rolling over from one machine to another as you upgrade hardware, that's worth sharing.
lr4444lr 9y ago
I can concede Linux might be superior, but were you comparing apples to apples with OSX vs. Windows? Most Windows development seems to be on MS-based development stacks. A lot more of platform-independent development happens on OSX, I'd be willing to bet, and that iOS development on OSX would be commensurately productive as .NET development on a Windows machine.
- pjmlp 9y ago
  The issue seems to be many equate developer == UNIX developer, as if there wasn't anything else. Also UNIX underpinnings on macOS, just like on NeXTSTEP, was just a mere convenience, the OS culture was never about crufty CLI programming, and many that only jumped into Apple after OS X have not yet grasped it.
adamsea 9y ago
It's sort of apples and oranges .... I'd thought the parent was talking about day-to-day consumer stuff (which even computer scientists and programmers do) like managing music, photos, various online accounts, and so on. Very different from all the stuff that software engineers specifically do. Of course there is some overlap but overall its two vastly different sets of user experiences.
maxharris 9y ago
This is contrary to my experience. I've been on various Macs for years, tried to switch to a Surface Pro (i7 model) + WSL. Nice machine, but it didn't work. I ended up running Ubuntu in a VM just to get `npm install` to work reliably. And that was horrible and slow, even with VMWare. Installing Linux on that thing looks like a lot of work (there's a whole SurfaceLinux subreddit...) You know what I ended up doing after nine months of this crap? I switched back to my trusty old 15" MacBook Pro. The backlight is dying, but it works a lot better for me than Windows or Linux!
jmagoon 9y ago
Find me a 15" 16:10 or 4:3 laptop with a *nix based OS, 4 cores, and 16GB of RAM and I'll switch any day. Unfortunately, there's only one choice for all those requirements right now.
- trothamel 9y ago
  The Dell 7520 DE?
- herbst 9y ago
  Think pads?
- jdbernard 9y ago
  https://www.maingear.com/custom/notebooks/pulse15/index.php https://www.maingear.com/custom/notebooks/pulse15/index.php This is what I have is used since 2016 as my personal machine. Comparable in price to a MacBook Pro and easily outperforms a MPB. Specs on mine: Intel CoreT i7 6700HQ (4 core s, 3.5GHz) 16GB RAM 15" 4K Display (1080p is standard, I upgraded. No regrets). GTX 970M 256 GB SSD (system drive) + 1TB hard drive Installing and running Ubuntu has been a breeze. Like a MBP it has an aluminum body and weighs less than 4lbs.
- theelous3 9y ago
  Xps 15, aero 15 are v nix compat. Think the xps comes in a developer edition that's default ubuntu
zarkov99 9y ago
I was with you until the "I preferred Windows" part. Windows right now is the most infuriating piece of software I can imagine for a developer. Forced upgrades? Forced advertisement? Gigantic, expensive SDKs with incomprehensible versioning and install times measured in hours, no standard library installation facilities, no standard build facilities, a default compiler that is markedly inferior to the alternatives, it just goes on on and on.
- edwinyzh 9y ago
  I don't understand you guys, it significantly depends on the programming language you use, what you said would apply to certain languages only, for example we use Delphi and Delphi runs only on Windows, I believe c# programmers are in a similar boat too.
  - Cthulhu_ 9y ago
    For C# there's .NET Core nowadays, which iirc is a crossplatform JVM / JDK-like thing, runs on linux and everything too.
- pjmlp 9y ago
  As mainly a Windows developer, with UNIX experience going back all the way to Xenix I can enumerate similar complaints about developing on UNIX. Expensive SDKs? You should have seen UNIX compiler prices before GNU and BSD actually mattered. Don't try to use non-UNIX OS as if they are UNIX and the experience will be much better.
- uiri 9y ago
  Developers really should be using Windows Server for Windows development, particularly if the software is going to be running on Windows Server in production. That solves at least some of the issues you mentioned.
  - dbsvsv 9y ago
    Good point. But the license cost would be too much. I don't think there's an upgrade path to server from consumer. You have any helpful tips?
matt_wulfeck 9y ago
I wish I could agree. Half of the time I spent on my last linux laptop was spent frustratingly trying to get things to work. The screen font was too small for some stuff, too big for others. It didn't wake up from sleep properly. sometimes it didn't GO to sleep properly. It was death by a thousand cuts.
- Milner08 9y ago
  This has been my experience too. I love Linux, but its just too buggy (And I had all these issues on a ThinkPad that was marked as 'Linux Ready'). It really does give me a nice environment for development but the lost hours and days to fixing problems made it a total time sink. MacOS on the other hand has all the tools I need and works incredibly well. I also cannot stand Windows, its a total mess and drives me mad. So I am stuck with MacOS and for now I couldn't be happier.
  - vvillena 9y ago
    As a counterpoint, I installed Arch Linux on a Lenovo gaming laptop and I'm delighted with the result. Arch being Arch, I had to configure lots of things manually, but there are no bugs to speak of. Maybe you mean weird behavior instead of bugs? That would make more sense.
  - herbst 9y ago
    Thing is. I could honestly say the exact same but change Linux to Mac and otherwise around. I had so many issues with Mac and all my Linux devices just work flawlessly for years without issues.
nunez 9y ago
Couldn't agree more. Finder is garbage compared to Windows Explorer. OS hotkey navigation is much better on Windows and GNOME/KDE/Fluxbox/xmonad. (I actually miss using xmonad; it was soooo good at this.) Office applications (still very real in a lot of environments) are mostly awful on the Mac. iTerm2 is fine, but I prefer PuTTY. Starting applications by their binary name with WIN + R is better (for me) than trying to find them within Spotlight. There are other little enhancements that I prefer Windows over to OS X, but I'm not remembering them right now. I also hate the new MacBook keyboards. They take "getting used to," i.e. typing "lighter" than I'm accustomed to. Also, not having USB-A ports and requiring a 90W USB-C to USB-C power brick (i.e. not being able to charge the thing from common chargers, the most lucrative reason for using USB-C, for me) is garbage. The one thing I like about OS X is that it's a BSD with GNU utilities built in. The thing that I don't like is that it's not a Linux and many of the dev environments I've worked in run on Linux, especially now in the age of Docker. While that's good news in that it forces me to do almost everything within Docker, it's bad whenever I need to maintain parity for whatever reason.
- jernfrost 9y ago
  Odd I find hotkeys much better on Mac. They follow a more logical predictable pattern and are much more standarized. E.g. what is the standard windows hotkey for getting info/properties of an object. Never found one. Also if an app doesn’t have configuration of hotkeys you are screwed. On Mac hotkey config is OS wide. The command console experience on windows is horrible. Office apps are better on Mac. Pages, numbers and keynote offer me a totally superior experience. The ribbon interface on Windows is a disaster. You spend too much tome hunt around among a zillion incompethensible icons. In fact I do GUI design at work and use MS Office as an example of how to NOT design a UI. Not sure why you complain about Finder. You got plenty of alternatives on Mac. I use Terminal and Finder a lot in combination and they interact with each other a lot better than on Windows. E.g. does windows have an “open” command yet?
  - 05 9y ago
    On your last point: START "title" [/D path] [options] "command" [parameters] It's been there since forever (Win95?). start (without parameters) - open a new CMD window start . - open an Explorer window of $PWD start <DPATH> - open an explorer window of DPATH dir
jernfrost 9y ago
Strange, I have the complete reverse experience. Mac is by far the best. Windows is worst. I use Linux at work daily but miss my mac. It is much more unstable and unpolished. The app selection is really weak and the integration between gui and console is weak although better than on windows. Windows is an utter mess these days as Microsoft is jumping between so many different UI paradigms.
- Symbiote 9y ago
  Can you give examples of the GUI and CLI integration? I have a mac, but mostly use a Linux desktop, so I don't know what I'm missing.
  - wongma 9y ago
    Drag and drop an item from Finder to the terminal and it expands to its full path. Not sure if Linux does something similar as I'm not a regular user.
    - Voyl 9y ago
      It does, under modern DE, KDE/Plasma does this.
      - machinehermit 9y ago
        No comparison is fair if someone hasn't used Plasma. I could not care less about "freedom" or these other philosophical aspects of Linux. Plasma is just straight up amazing on every level.
    - mercer 9y ago
      I also quite like the 'open' command to do the opposite.
      - Symbiote 9y ago
        The Linux equivalent of this one is "see", an alias to the run-mailcap program, which on Ubuntu is in the "mime-support" package, which is probably installed by default.
xab9 9y ago
My hero. Pretty much I'm the only one in the whole webdev team who prefers linux over mac :D Fortunately now that we have figma, nothing ties me to win or mac.
vbezhenar 9y ago
Windows is good, but getting hardware working is a lottery. I recently built a PC with pretty standard components (Asus MB, i5 CPU, Asus GTX 1060 GPU), installed Windows 10, it worked fine until I enabled Hyper-V. With Hyper-V enabled it BSODs few times a day because of buggy NVidia driver.. I had to disable it because of that. While macOS is pretty buggy and I experienced crashes, they are not that often, may be few times a month or less.
- romanovcode 9y ago
  I must be very lucky. Didn't saw BSOD in 5+ years now while using Windows nearly every day
  - vbezhenar 9y ago
    May be I'm unlucky, I don't know. Hardware seems to work fine, because with disabled Hyper-V long stress test performs just fine. I'm trying to prepare a bug report, but NVidia doesn't seem to even have a proper Bugzilla, so I'm not sure if it'll go anywhere. I hate to interact with corporations.
knowThySelfx 9y ago
Maybe they also have an unpublicized reason to build their own - the backdoors on Intel/AMD/Qualcom/IBM chips. But building their own isn't a guarantee that they won't put one for "concerned" parties.
ozim 9y ago
Aww this thread is such a waste of time and space. Bunch of totally subjective thoughts without any specific examples.
bayindirh 9y ago
I'm also a software developer and I also have a Linux/Mac mixed environment, and I feel no difference between the two. To be honest, Mac does many things really differently. Yes it feels and sounds like double-think, but I do everything differently from my Linux desktop, and I can do the same things at the same speed, if not faster. On the average, I use them equally, and can do the same thing on both. One footnote is, I do not install anything via homebrew or anything massive which installs into depth of the macOS. For these stuff I have a Linux VM, which is fired up rarely.
hpen 9y ago
I'm a fan of using a Mac and a Linux VM. I use "Spaces" to switch between macOS and Linux.
LatencyKills 9y ago
I'm a software developer too. I've held senior engineering roles at Microsoft, Apple, and Intel (in that order). I grew up loving Windows but soon after getting really deep into development that love vanished. Anything I do today (everything from Intel microcode, x86 assembly to C/C++) happens on macOS simply because I can do every single thing I need to in one place. Most devs I bump into that really hate macOS have no idea it is really just (open source) BSD with Apple's oddly unique visual facade. There is literally nothing I can't do on my Mac even during the times I run Visual Studio, VTune, etc. I also find it amusing when devs tell me that macOS isn't as customizable as Windows. Sure... sure... ;-)
- jitbit 9y ago
  That's the question. Will you be able to continue developing for non-Apple CPU on a Mac??? That's not what Apple wants.
LatencyKills 9y ago
https://stratechery.com/2018/the-end-of-windows/ https://stratechery.com/2018/the-end-of-windows/

by sreque 9y ago

fastball 9y ago

What exactly does your development workflow look like where Linux was so much better than MacOS?

garmaine 9y ago
What was the workflow in which windows was better than anything UNIX based....
- ratsimihah 9y ago
  I’m missing the logic as well. Linux > Windows > macOS?
- pjmlp 9y ago
  Desktop software development, graphical debugging tools. The only UNIX based that tops it is macOS.
  - garmaine 9y ago
    But Linux is better for that?
    - pjmlp 9y ago
      Not all all, Linux is the culture of command line, where people improving UI/UX on GNOME/KDE always get bashed as taking the power away doing irrelevant work. There is not a single cohesive stack of desktop technologies, what macOS calls Kits, Android frameworks, Windows UWP and such. Something like Glade still fails short of what XCode or VS Blend are capable of. Sure there is something like Qt QML designer, but that isn't Linux specific anyway.
      - garmaine 9y ago
        You are missing context. Grandparent was claiming that Linux was the best OS he’d used for development (fair enough), but that he’d rather have Windows over macOS otherwise. That part I was hoping for clarification on.
electricslpnsld 9y ago
Not OP, but the LLVM toolchain provided by Apple is a bit clunky and missing features relative to what you get from a typical Linux distro.
- chuckdries 9y ago
  Macs ship with outdated versions of common bash commands and tools as well. Homebrew goes a long way to fixing this for me.
  - Lio 9y ago
    I have the same problem on Ubuntu LTS distributions. Eg the ancient version of git in 16.04LTS. You can fix that of course but homebrew does the same job on macOS. Roll on 18.04LTS.
    - figgis 9y ago
      The most enjoyable and productive dev workstations I have used/setup have all used rolling release distro's for this exact reason. It does have the overhead of requiring you actually understand (or know how to google) your system/packages that you use though.
      - Lio 9y ago
        It's not just understanding the packages. When I upgraded from 16.04LTS to 17.10 I had to relearn how to compile the kernel because my laptop would no longer boot. Wasn't that hard to do in the end but it's not something I've done for many, many years and doesn't fill me with confidence.
    - sitkack 9y ago
      Homebrew exists on Linux. I like running LTS distros because they just work. For newer per-project exceptions, I put everything into a container (again layered on LTS), it is esp nice for things like specific versions of LLVM which I wouldn't want to pollute my base machine with. My peronal userland gets shipped via, cargo, go, pip, npm, etc. https://github.com/Linuxbrew/brew https://github.com/Linuxbrew/brew
zeveb 9y ago
StumpWM & a full GNU userland just like the machines we deploy on are killer.
jcfrei 9y ago
Apple frequently introduces changes to its OS that caters to the average user without any hindsight for developers. A good example I had to deal with; I wanted to change the port the SSH daemon listens on. With El Capitan and future versions you have to temporarily disable SIP (System Integrity Protection) - which requires two reboots - in order to make the change to the ssh.plist file. As you can see it's a common problem: https://apple.stackexchange.com/a/208481 https://apple.stackexchange.com/a/208481 It's lots of little things like this that require extra effort on OSX but which are straightforward on a decent Linux distro.
- voltagex_ 9y ago
  Is there anything stopping you using a separate sshd to run on a different port? Or using one from homebrew instead of Apple's bundled one?
- no_wizard 9y ago
  Flatly, This isn't true. I can still go into /etc/ssh sudo vim sshd_config, can my values, and they stick. Just to test it, I did it right now, and I'm running 10.13.4, for what its worth. What exactly was the issue with changing the sshd config? This isn't a SIP protected directory, which is the only thing that would prevent such a move. Perhaps the requirement of sudo? I feel like most linux distros force that in the /etc directory too.
  - jcfrei 9y ago
    Changing /etc/ssh/sshd_config was my first attempt as well. But since this is OSX things are a little different, see here: https://serverfault.com/a/67616/ https://serverfault.com/a/67616/
- fastball 9y ago
  this security feature that is great for the vast majority of Apple's user's isn't convenient for me. Luckily, Apple shipped SIP with the option to disable it, and it's not hard. So you can disable it once and then you never need to deal with issues like that again. It's weird because it sounds like you want the protection of SIP without the inconvenience of SIP, but that's never been possible with pretty much any security measure ever -- more safety means less convenience. That being said, to me Apple has actually been the best when it comest to safety/convenience ratio. Linux distros don't even have the option of SIP or something similar, so I can't say I find your argument compelling.

Myrmornis 9y ago

What apple software do you need to use? Sure, it's annoying not having the GNU command-line utilities. But `brew install coreutils` basically fixes that for me. I admit I don't work heavily with compiled languages on macOS so I can't comment on technical aspects of that. iTerm2 is not inferior to linux terminal emulators. The Apple laptops are quite obviously the best hardware experience out there. I mean obviously iTunes is a complete insult to humanity, and I've no fucking clue how to use Finder etc, but does that matter really?

FridgeSeal 9y ago
I mean the laptops are great. Provided you don't need a HDMI port. Or more than 1 spare USB port. Or am ethernet port. You could get the touch-bar version, but I've read literally nothing but bad reviews and stories about that thing, plus tb versions have smaller batteries. Yes, I could get a dock, but here's a better idea: how about apple chills out on their unnecessary-thinness fetish, and givese back some actual functionality in my laptop.
- stiGGG 9y ago
  With touch bar i agree, it hate it. But the thunderbolt dock thingie totally rocks. It's really nice to only plug in one cable to connect the complete hardware on your desk (multiple screens, ethernet, power, etc).
  - mulmen 9y ago
    In theory the dock is nice but in reality they don't work at all. Does Apple make their own dock? Every time I come back to my desk with my laptop I have to go through some ritual involving opening and closing the laptop lid and connecting cables in a certain order to maintain screen orientations and try to get the thing to even wake up. I power cycle my dock at least three times a week to try and make it all work I used to have a 2014 RMBP with the Apple display and it was fantastic because it was all built by Apple and Just Worked (TM). Hopefully moving to their own chip fab is the start of them going back to owning the entire device solution.

bjoli 9y ago

I have long said that Mac os X is only useful as a way to start Emacs, but since 10.10 I am not even sure about that. Of course it is a matter of taste. I get that. I still have to bite my tongue to not yell profanities whenever I hear anything about productivity and Mac OS. Most of the time I keep my mouth shut. Now I just wanted to tell you that you are not alone. I have to use Mac OS at work. To avoid frustration I have started to let my soul and will leave my body before logging in and let my lobotomized shell I left behind just go with the flow. At least until Emacs is running full screen.

rootusrootus 9y ago
I don't suppose it's any consolation, but I feel the same way if I have to use Linux or Windows as a workstation. Different strokes for different folks.
bb88 9y ago
It's a trendy way to start Emacs. I used one just to use vim.
ekun 9y ago
Nice thing on windows is I can open the command line type >bash and I've got vim, ssh, sftp, bash whatever immediately. I still don't use that because other telnet, x-window setups are better for me. I never found out how to be productive in OSX vs what I can do in Windows.
- heartbreak 9y ago
  > Nice thing on windows is I can open the command line type >bash and I've got vim, ssh, sftp, bash whatever immediately. Yes, macOS has a terminal emulator as well. > I never found out how to be productive in OSX vs what I can do in Windows. Open Spotlight, type in "Terminal" and hit return.
  - philliphaydon 9y ago
    Unsure how that magically makes OS X productive. Stuff is just easier and faster on windows or linux. And I’m tired of OS X randomly crashing or freezing. It’s like windows 98 now.

npunt 9y ago

2/3s of all PR activity on Github is on a Mac, for what it's worth. Certainly the platform punches above its weight relative to market share. https://developer.apple.com/videos/play/wwdc2017/102/?time=2023 https://developer.apple.com/videos/play/wwdc2017/102/?time=2...

deathanatos 9y ago
My last couple of jobs have given me no choice aside from a MBP and OS X. They do this because they don't want to manage multiple kinds of machines from an IT perspective. (I'm not sure I agree with this, but it is what it is.) Depending on how widespread this is, usage may not reflect actual user desire (though I would wager quite a large number of users either don't care what they're using, or care, but a MBP is adequate, but would also be fine on something else.)
- ggg9990 9y ago
  The managing multiple kinds of machines issues is a real one, speaking from the other end. For uniquely talented software engineers I might let them use what they want but from managing an IT department you definitely want anyone who has no reason to be otherwise on the same exact hardware and software configuration.
  - tetha 9y ago
    Yeah, at my last place, the deal was: First we have to find 5 - 10 devs who want to switch to linux (there were 50 - 100 in total). Then we get a PXE boot image to install linux and, well, DHCP. We get to try it for a couple of month, while producing documentation on how linux works with the infrastructure. That feels like a fair solution.
- stiGGG 9y ago
  In my second to last company (a web development shop), they had originally the policy that a new developers can choose if he want either a mac, linux or windows machine. When i arrived there it was 75% mac and the rest used linux, not even one had made the choice for windows. After a while some new guys get hired and one of them wanted to use windows. We found out immediately, that this caused a lot of problems, because he had serious problems to get our projects to run under windows, even though we thought this shouldn't be an issue because all the dev environments were running in VMs managed by vagrant. After while ago watching this guy not getting productive, because he ran from one issue into another, cto forced him to install linux on his machine to end this horror show and windows was removed from the new guys choices at least for developers. The company i went after that and my current one are 100% mac environments, for the reasons of homogeneity you mentioned.

derefr 9y ago

You seem to be conflating macOS with Macs. Have you running Linux on Apple hardware?

szatkus 9y ago
Not GP, but I'd like to share my perspective. Apple creates their products for a specific customer (which covers most of population looking at its popularity among people, who have enough money to buy their products), but not for me. Using Macs or iThings feels like using devices which aren't design for my workflow. Macbooks are well-built, but they are optimized for Mac OS. Dells and Lenovos are good enough for me and work nice with Linux. I like physical buttons and keyboards which are... well, hard to say what I don't like in Mac's keyboards, but they are not going well with me.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
danjoc 9y ago
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12924051 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12924051

saas_co_de 9y ago

> in my experience apple software is flat out inferior and OSX is the worst It is almost absurdly bad. The only OS that still hangs, freezes, and crashes regularly. It is like Windows 98 quality wise and seems to get worse instead of better. The whole UX is also insane. Every feature is hidden behind some obscure keyboard shortcut that you have to google or you just get used to working with this useless toy os. The terminal is garbage. Everything is slooooow as fk (typing, mouse, etc). It is shocking that the internet industry has standardized on working on this garbage when they run Linux on their servers and would be far better off developing on the software they actually use. It just demonstrates the cult mindset and horrible lack of real technical proficiency in the industry.

reaperducer 9y ago
> The only OS that still hangs, freezes, and crashes regularly. Tell that to my Windows 7 box. It crashed last week because I tried to copy a PNG on the desktop into an Outlook e-mail message. (IT still hasn't cleared Win 10 for company-wide deployment)
FabHK 9y ago
> some obscure keyboard shortcut FWIW, according to the old Human Interface Guidelines basically everything was supposed to be discoverable via menus, and then has the keyboard shortcut right there in the menu. The keyboard shortcut System Preference pane lists additional keyboard shortcuts, and lets you easily change them system wide. But yes, granted, searching online reveals quite a few more shortcuts. I'm just wondering how Windows or Linux are better in that regard in any way??

quotemstr 9y ago

So why are you sticking with it? Go out and get a nice Linux machine. Expense it. If you're working at a company too square to approve that, install Linux on your Apple laptop. If you're working at a company that won't even allow that, well, you have my condolences. Things to ask before you sign, I guess.

viraptor 9y ago
This works, but only for simple environments. Given a work environment where you have a choice of: a) prepared environment with all application dependencies available and a tested-by-everyone, one-click-install/update on a bad system, or b) preferred system, but you have to do all of that from scratch yourself... Sometimes the reasonable answer is "a", even if you're allowed to do "b" (on your own time of course)
- quotemstr 9y ago
  I've always been a b guy, and it's helped me understand how things work. One time, I joined a company, and two weeks after joining, poking around with a weird custom machine setup, I found that the machine was running a world-writable batch file as SYSTEM upon boot. Who knows how long this huge gaping security hole would have gone unnoticed if I hadn't felt compelled to poke around with Cygwin?
- Symbiote 9y ago
  I asked for both a and b. I could make do with an older computer for Office and Outlook.

Tijdreiziger 9y ago

> Not much, at least, not much that benefits me as a customer. Why would it matter to you, as a customer, what chip is inside your computer? As long as it can run your programs, why do you care? See also: Microsoft and Windows on ARM

ionforce 9y ago

What parts of your workflow do you think are uniquely enhanced by not being on Mac?

bb88 9y ago
For me, 1. Getting packages with apt on ubuntu without installing homebrew. It's vastly simpler and natively supported by ubuntu. I can also update my entire system with sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade. 2. Native docker support. 3. On mac, I always ask the question whether something is ctrl-c or cmd-c, say. On linux it's always ctrl. 4. I don't have to login to the apple store to get the software I need. 5. Linux has always been command-line first. On mac it's always been GUI first. 6. Macbooks are terribly built, and fail for a number of reasons. [1] 7. The Apple brand, while it used to be one of homebrew is now akin to one of fashion. It's kind of like seeing all the kids walk around with their "Hollister" t-shirts on. I could go on I suppose but those are the meat of the issues. 1: Louis Rossmann's macbook repair channel. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sfrYOWlKJ_g https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sfrYOWlKJ_g
- tjr225 9y ago
  2 - docker works flawlessly on macos 4 - i cant think of a single application, outside of maybe xcode, a developer might need to sign into the app store for 6 - whatever reasons that youtuber might have for not using macbooks, i will never buy a non-mac notebook ever again. this 2013 13" mbp has been the best and most reliable computer I have ever had in 30 years and I bought it used! 7 - sure the apple brand is cool but i don't get your point? doesn't it mean that you care about the branding so much so that you won't use it? do you see where I'm going?
  - meddlepal 9y ago
    > docker works flawlessly on macos He said nothing about "fine". Docker on Mac is through a VM and thus not native. Containerization in MacOS is impossible without a VM.
    - 9y ago

reaperducer 9y ago

You're lucky that you get to have just one dev environment. I have 2 Windows, 1 Mac, 2 iOS and 1 Android device on my work desk and I have to constantly switch between them. That said, I do most of my heavy lifting on the Mac, and all primary dev on a Mac. Doing the equivalent tasks is a chore in Windows. I used to be all-Windows, but once I understood that MacOS is file-oriented and not program-oriented, it helped a lot.

squiggleblaz 9y ago
Really? I've always found Mac OS unpleasant, because it seems to me very program oriented. I typically work in a task oriented way (a collection of windows, probably from different apps, on one virtual desktop, referring to related files; another virtual desktop has windows from the same apps for another task). This has always seemed to me to be a species of "file oriented" working, and I prefer apps that run in a file oriented way. For instance, a graphical file manager that shows a folder in a window, and you click to get open an item in the folder you so always get a new window - even if it happens that the item in folder is just another folder that is opened by the graphical file manager. Or office apps which always open each document in a new window, and when I close the current document, the only thing I notice is that the current document is closed - it doesn't try to focus some other window from the same app. But Mac OS has always seemed an almost perfectly application-based interface with its fully application-based dock and it's application-based global menu (close a window for a file that was loaded by Cool App, and Cool App's menu still shows). I think it's Finder is a bit confused: it used to be mostly file based, at some point in the OS X years it got more and more application based but perhaps it's swung back - it's been a few years since I've bothered trying Mac OS. It had some of the most appalling virtual desktop support when I last used it, that made me think "the people who have implemented this only work in an application-based way". I can only imagine that's got better. But it seems that Mac OS is always: application-based workflow is prioritised, file-based workflow is secondary. I have found that Linux can[1] excel in this workflow, Windows is ambivalent to all workflows, supporting all of them badly because it supports none at all, and Mac OS prefers you to think "what tool am I using", not "what task am I doing". Is my experience entirely unique? [1] i.e. it depends on what particular tooling you're using - it's possible a default setup is appalling.

potta_coffee 9y ago

I like Linux better than Mac which I like better than Windows. I don't use Linux for work right now because HiDPI support just isn't there for a lot of Linux software.

Symbiote 9y ago
What has given you HIDPI trouble? I have Kubuntu at home and a 4k screen, and also at work with a "3k" screen. I don't do development at home, but the general desktop works fine.

ratsimihah 9y ago

What does Linux give you that macOS doesn’t? I use both a Mac and an Arch Linux running i3/awesomewm, and to me macOS is like any Linux distro with a user-friendly desktop environment. I guess it doesn’t have an « official » package manager, but homebrew has most packages anyway?

wiiner 9y ago
Uniform platform support for multiple architectures. I have Linux desktops on i686, x86_64, arm and aarch64. Same desktop environment, same programs, same easily mirrorable configuration, same firewall system, wireguard, same or fairly equivalent package management between systems.
astrodust 9y ago
You can run things like the Adobe Suite without any ridiculous overhead. Where Xcode is important you've also got that. For a lot of people that don't care the differences are largely subjective and the difference between Ubuntu, for example, and macOS are largely academic and aesthetic.
- Insanity 9y ago
  With academic, I'm not sure if you also include 'philosophic'. Personally, I'd rather develop on mac than on windows but I'm the happiest on Linux. A large factor in this is that I like to contribute to FOSS and find that 'ideology' to be a match with my beliefs regarding software.
  - astrodust 9y ago
    For work I prefer the macOS environment partially for the software, but mostly because the machines are standardized and interchangeable. If one machine dies I can swap it for another without any fuss. Restore from Time Machine and get on with life, something that takes about an hour or so. This is really not the case with Windows or Linux. These require a lot of tinkering and tuning. A recent swap from one Windows 7 machine to a Windows 10 one took days, the migration procedure is basically garbage. I've never had much luck with desktop Linux even though I use it all the time on servers but those get rebuilt with a new OS when they're out of date. Upgrading them is just too much of a fuss. If you've got a workflow for keeping desktop Linux up to date and rolling over from one machine to another as you upgrade hardware, that's worth sharing.

lr4444lr 9y ago

I can concede Linux might be superior, but were you comparing apples to apples with OSX vs. Windows? Most Windows development seems to be on MS-based development stacks. A lot more of platform-independent development happens on OSX, I'd be willing to bet, and that iOS development on OSX would be commensurately productive as .NET development on a Windows machine.

pjmlp 9y ago
The issue seems to be many equate developer == UNIX developer, as if there wasn't anything else. Also UNIX underpinnings on macOS, just like on NeXTSTEP, was just a mere convenience, the OS culture was never about crufty CLI programming, and many that only jumped into Apple after OS X have not yet grasped it.

adamsea 9y ago

It's sort of apples and oranges .... I'd thought the parent was talking about day-to-day consumer stuff (which even computer scientists and programmers do) like managing music, photos, various online accounts, and so on. Very different from all the stuff that software engineers specifically do. Of course there is some overlap but overall its two vastly different sets of user experiences.

maxharris 9y ago

This is contrary to my experience. I've been on various Macs for years, tried to switch to a Surface Pro (i7 model) + WSL. Nice machine, but it didn't work. I ended up running Ubuntu in a VM just to get `npm install` to work reliably. And that was horrible and slow, even with VMWare. Installing Linux on that thing looks like a lot of work (there's a whole SurfaceLinux subreddit...) You know what I ended up doing after nine months of this crap? I switched back to my trusty old 15" MacBook Pro. The backlight is dying, but it works a lot better for me than Windows or Linux!

jmagoon 9y ago

Find me a 15" 16:10 or 4:3 laptop with a *nix based OS, 4 cores, and 16GB of RAM and I'll switch any day. Unfortunately, there's only one choice for all those requirements right now.

trothamel 9y ago
The Dell 7520 DE?
herbst 9y ago
Think pads?
jdbernard 9y ago
https://www.maingear.com/custom/notebooks/pulse15/index.php https://www.maingear.com/custom/notebooks/pulse15/index.php This is what I have is used since 2016 as my personal machine. Comparable in price to a MacBook Pro and easily outperforms a MPB. Specs on mine: Intel CoreT i7 6700HQ (4 core s, 3.5GHz) 16GB RAM 15" 4K Display (1080p is standard, I upgraded. No regrets). GTX 970M 256 GB SSD (system drive) + 1TB hard drive Installing and running Ubuntu has been a breeze. Like a MBP it has an aluminum body and weighs less than 4lbs.
theelous3 9y ago
Xps 15, aero 15 are v nix compat. Think the xps comes in a developer edition that's default ubuntu

zarkov99 9y ago

I was with you until the "I preferred Windows" part. Windows right now is the most infuriating piece of software I can imagine for a developer. Forced upgrades? Forced advertisement? Gigantic, expensive SDKs with incomprehensible versioning and install times measured in hours, no standard library installation facilities, no standard build facilities, a default compiler that is markedly inferior to the alternatives, it just goes on on and on.

edwinyzh 9y ago
I don't understand you guys, it significantly depends on the programming language you use, what you said would apply to certain languages only, for example we use Delphi and Delphi runs only on Windows, I believe c# programmers are in a similar boat too.
- Cthulhu_ 9y ago
  For C# there's .NET Core nowadays, which iirc is a crossplatform JVM / JDK-like thing, runs on linux and everything too.
pjmlp 9y ago
As mainly a Windows developer, with UNIX experience going back all the way to Xenix I can enumerate similar complaints about developing on UNIX. Expensive SDKs? You should have seen UNIX compiler prices before GNU and BSD actually mattered. Don't try to use non-UNIX OS as if they are UNIX and the experience will be much better.
uiri 9y ago
Developers really should be using Windows Server for Windows development, particularly if the software is going to be running on Windows Server in production. That solves at least some of the issues you mentioned.
- dbsvsv 9y ago
  Good point. But the license cost would be too much. I don't think there's an upgrade path to server from consumer. You have any helpful tips?

matt_wulfeck 9y ago

I wish I could agree. Half of the time I spent on my last linux laptop was spent frustratingly trying to get things to work. The screen font was too small for some stuff, too big for others. It didn't wake up from sleep properly. sometimes it didn't GO to sleep properly. It was death by a thousand cuts.

Milner08 9y ago
This has been my experience too. I love Linux, but its just too buggy (And I had all these issues on a ThinkPad that was marked as 'Linux Ready'). It really does give me a nice environment for development but the lost hours and days to fixing problems made it a total time sink. MacOS on the other hand has all the tools I need and works incredibly well. I also cannot stand Windows, its a total mess and drives me mad. So I am stuck with MacOS and for now I couldn't be happier.
- vvillena 9y ago
  As a counterpoint, I installed Arch Linux on a Lenovo gaming laptop and I'm delighted with the result. Arch being Arch, I had to configure lots of things manually, but there are no bugs to speak of. Maybe you mean weird behavior instead of bugs? That would make more sense.
- herbst 9y ago
  Thing is. I could honestly say the exact same but change Linux to Mac and otherwise around. I had so many issues with Mac and all my Linux devices just work flawlessly for years without issues.

nunez 9y ago

Couldn't agree more. Finder is garbage compared to Windows Explorer. OS hotkey navigation is much better on Windows and GNOME/KDE/Fluxbox/xmonad. (I actually miss using xmonad; it was soooo good at this.) Office applications (still very real in a lot of environments) are mostly awful on the Mac. iTerm2 is fine, but I prefer PuTTY. Starting applications by their binary name with WIN + R is better (for me) than trying to find them within Spotlight. There are other little enhancements that I prefer Windows over to OS X, but I'm not remembering them right now. I also hate the new MacBook keyboards. They take "getting used to," i.e. typing "lighter" than I'm accustomed to. Also, not having USB-A ports and requiring a 90W USB-C to USB-C power brick (i.e. not being able to charge the thing from common chargers, the most lucrative reason for using USB-C, for me) is garbage. The one thing I like about OS X is that it's a BSD with GNU utilities built in. The thing that I don't like is that it's not a Linux and many of the dev environments I've worked in run on Linux, especially now in the age of Docker. While that's good news in that it forces me to do almost everything within Docker, it's bad whenever I need to maintain parity for whatever reason.

jernfrost 9y ago
Odd I find hotkeys much better on Mac. They follow a more logical predictable pattern and are much more standarized. E.g. what is the standard windows hotkey for getting info/properties of an object. Never found one. Also if an app doesn’t have configuration of hotkeys you are screwed. On Mac hotkey config is OS wide. The command console experience on windows is horrible. Office apps are better on Mac. Pages, numbers and keynote offer me a totally superior experience. The ribbon interface on Windows is a disaster. You spend too much tome hunt around among a zillion incompethensible icons. In fact I do GUI design at work and use MS Office as an example of how to NOT design a UI. Not sure why you complain about Finder. You got plenty of alternatives on Mac. I use Terminal and Finder a lot in combination and they interact with each other a lot better than on Windows. E.g. does windows have an “open” command yet?
- 05 9y ago
  On your last point: START "title" [/D path] [options] "command" [parameters] It's been there since forever (Win95?). start (without parameters) - open a new CMD window start . - open an Explorer window of $PWD start <DPATH> - open an explorer window of DPATH dir

jernfrost 9y ago

Strange, I have the complete reverse experience. Mac is by far the best. Windows is worst. I use Linux at work daily but miss my mac. It is much more unstable and unpolished. The app selection is really weak and the integration between gui and console is weak although better than on windows. Windows is an utter mess these days as Microsoft is jumping between so many different UI paradigms.

Symbiote 9y ago
Can you give examples of the GUI and CLI integration? I have a mac, but mostly use a Linux desktop, so I don't know what I'm missing.
- wongma 9y ago
  Drag and drop an item from Finder to the terminal and it expands to its full path. Not sure if Linux does something similar as I'm not a regular user.
  - Voyl 9y ago
    It does, under modern DE, KDE/Plasma does this.
    - machinehermit 9y ago
      No comparison is fair if someone hasn't used Plasma. I could not care less about "freedom" or these other philosophical aspects of Linux. Plasma is just straight up amazing on every level.
  - mercer 9y ago
    I also quite like the 'open' command to do the opposite.
    - Symbiote 9y ago
      The Linux equivalent of this one is "see", an alias to the run-mailcap program, which on Ubuntu is in the "mime-support" package, which is probably installed by default.

xab9 9y ago

My hero. Pretty much I'm the only one in the whole webdev team who prefers linux over mac :D Fortunately now that we have figma, nothing ties me to win or mac.

vbezhenar 9y ago

Windows is good, but getting hardware working is a lottery. I recently built a PC with pretty standard components (Asus MB, i5 CPU, Asus GTX 1060 GPU), installed Windows 10, it worked fine until I enabled Hyper-V. With Hyper-V enabled it BSODs few times a day because of buggy NVidia driver.. I had to disable it because of that. While macOS is pretty buggy and I experienced crashes, they are not that often, may be few times a month or less.

romanovcode 9y ago
I must be very lucky. Didn't saw BSOD in 5+ years now while using Windows nearly every day
- vbezhenar 9y ago
  May be I'm unlucky, I don't know. Hardware seems to work fine, because with disabled Hyper-V long stress test performs just fine. I'm trying to prepare a bug report, but NVidia doesn't seem to even have a proper Bugzilla, so I'm not sure if it'll go anywhere. I hate to interact with corporations.

knowThySelfx 9y ago

Maybe they also have an unpublicized reason to build their own - the backdoors on Intel/AMD/Qualcom/IBM chips. But building their own isn't a guarantee that they won't put one for "concerned" parties.

ozim 9y ago

Aww this thread is such a waste of time and space. Bunch of totally subjective thoughts without any specific examples.

bayindirh 9y ago

I'm also a software developer and I also have a Linux/Mac mixed environment, and I feel no difference between the two. To be honest, Mac does many things really differently. Yes it feels and sounds like double-think, but I do everything differently from my Linux desktop, and I can do the same things at the same speed, if not faster. On the average, I use them equally, and can do the same thing on both. One footnote is, I do not install anything via homebrew or anything massive which installs into depth of the macOS. For these stuff I have a Linux VM, which is fired up rarely.

hpen 9y ago

I'm a fan of using a Mac and a Linux VM. I use "Spaces" to switch between macOS and Linux.

LatencyKills 9y ago

I'm a software developer too. I've held senior engineering roles at Microsoft, Apple, and Intel (in that order). I grew up loving Windows but soon after getting really deep into development that love vanished. Anything I do today (everything from Intel microcode, x86 assembly to C/C++) happens on macOS simply because I can do every single thing I need to in one place. Most devs I bump into that really hate macOS have no idea it is really just (open source) BSD with Apple's oddly unique visual facade. There is literally nothing I can't do on my Mac even during the times I run Visual Studio, VTune, etc. I also find it amusing when devs tell me that macOS isn't as customizable as Windows. Sure... sure... ;-)

jitbit 9y ago
That's the question. Will you be able to continue developing for non-Apple CPU on a Mac??? That's not what Apple wants.

LatencyKills 9y ago

https://stratechery.com/2018/the-end-of-windows/ https://stratechery.com/2018/the-end-of-windows/