7 ms·

Coders choosing Mac OS over Linux environment

34 points by inshane 15y ago

rbanffy 15y ago
It really depends. The convenience of something like apt for quickly assembling or installing your machine with all software automatically updated is hard to beat. Mac OS also tends to ship with older versions of software and rarely gets newer versions without a full OS update - meaning they will get older and older with time. OTOH, there are many scenarios where a Mac is the only option. Any development for iPhone or Mac is painful on other platforms.
- aeontech 15y ago
  Well, macports/homebrew seem to fill the package manager gap pretty well. I upgraded to Lion the other day - one "port selfupdate && port upgrade" command and an hour of downloads/compiles later I had my dev environment back to normal including fresh compiles of php, postgres, apache, memcache, redis, imagemagick and any number of their dependencies.
  - alexbell 15y ago
    hombrew is awesome! previously my big complaint about os x was the difficulty of installing packages a la linux. you can't really say that any more. perhaps it doesn't quite have the sheer size of packages, but what it does have is much more up to date than linux repos for the most part. it sucks that you have to pull down xcode to develop on mac(huge download, and i understand that many people doing development on a mac will never use it), but i'm doing iOS development anywho.
    - jarin 15y ago
      There's a standalone installer for gcc: https://github.com/kennethreitz/osx-gcc-installer https://github.com/kennethreitz/osx-gcc-installer
  - jarin 15y ago
    With homebrew I didn't even have to do that, since the Lion upgrade leaves /usr/local and launchd alone. The only rough spot I had was installing the App Store version of XCode, because I was a dumbo and installed the beta version of XCode in /Developer (never do this).
- eddieplan9 15y ago
  I use homebrew "for quickly assembling or installing your machine with all software automatically updated" and really have nothing to complain about. Mac OS X ships things like Python and Ruby, not because Apple envisions you will use those things to build custom applications but because there are system tools that depend on them. That's why upgrading these system packages too aggressively is a bad idea, even on Linux (and that's why RHEL is still on Python 2.4). You always have cleaner way to get and use newer versions of almost all packages without breaking the system.
  - div 15y ago
    I was lost without apt for a while too until I discovered homebrew. The list of packages available in homebrew is growing at a pretty crazy rate as well. It's currently the most forked project on github (https://github.com/popular/forked https://github.com/popular/forked).
  - alexis-d 15y ago
    I don't see why upgrading packages (like Python or Ruby) is a bad idea. For instance I have Python 2 & 3 installed on my laptops (Arch Linux) and it just works well.
  - rbanffy 15y ago
    I know I can coerce OSX into being a Unix-developer-friendly OS, but, unless you require the hardware it comes bundled with or some specific feature only OSX provides, why not start with a more server-like OS? Most of the servers I deploy to run Linux. If I develop and test everyday under Linux, I'll have less surprises when I deploy to production.
Mizza 15y ago
I'm a bit of a Linux nut, but I'm seriously considering getting a MacBook Air for my next machine as there doesn't seem to be any comparable non-Apple hardware out there. Does anybody know of any?
- cconstantine 15y ago
  Not sure if it's a direct competitor for the Air, but I've been eyeing the Thinkpad x220.
  - rjbond3rd 15y ago
    A nice choice. Also, the x120E with the dual-core processor (E350 chip), on Ebay starting at $400. On a tight budget, my kids use the much older x60 and x61 (on Ebay for about $150-$200), and even the (quite old) x40 and X41.
    - deleted 15y ago
      [deleted]
- fjh 15y ago
  The Samsung Series 9 is pretty similar. I've got a MacBook Air and I've played around with the Samsung. Build-quality and hardware-wise the Samsung is, in my opinion, at least as nice as the air, but I've heard that it's currently a bit of a pain to get everything working under Linux.
- ews 15y ago
  I own a lenovo X1, which I don't think it's a direct competitor of the Mac Air, but it's light enough, the keyboard is really really good, and Linux works out of the box.
- davidmat 15y ago
  Not right now, but soon (in a few weeks - months) there will be a whole avalanche of laptops coming out based on Intel's Ultrabook platform; very much 'inspired' by the MacBook Air.
- 15y ago
davidw 15y ago
At heart, I'm a hacker, and I want an environment that I can hack on when I need to. Also: focus follows mouse is not an optional or an extra. I've been using a Linux desktop since 1996, and as far as I'm concerned, it's about 100 times easier than it used to be, so whining about things not being 'just right' fall on deaf ears, especially when for me 'just right' means focus follows mouse and other things like that that I have dialed in just how I want them.
- Mizza 15y ago
  Focus follows mouse love! fistbump
- jarin 15y ago
  While I've tried using various distros of Linux as my primary OS (and I used to really love hacking and tweaking my UI like crazy), I'll say that nowadays I want an environment that I can hack on when I need to, but that I rarely need to hack on. OS X fits that role for me. I just feel like there isn't enough time in the day to hack and tweak my OS and write code for clients and my own projects.
  - davidw 15y ago
    I rarely need to hack on Linux these days, but have in the past: 1) I hacked up a patch to make it boot better off of USB keys. Sadly I'm not sure they ever accepted it in the main kernel, despite being way better than their own hacky (wait N seconds for the device to settle) method. 2) I hacked up a nice little environment for a coin-operated internet machine, to stick in the corners of hotels. It was pretty cool, unfortunately the guy running the operation with me screwed up the business side and it never went anywhere.
- chc 15y ago
  It may be OK for you because you require focus-follows-mouse to be built-in, but "It's better than it was in 1996" is pretty faint praise. If somebody told you he'd clubbed 90% fewer baby seals this year than he did in 1996, would that lead you to think, "Wow, what an upstanding guy"? All operating systems, including Windows, BeOS and Amiga, have improved since 1996. And I think for most people, a working wireless card is more of an out-of-the-box priority than focus-follows-mouse. (Though personally, I would have liked Linux more if it just didn't cause my keyboard to stop functioning after the computer came out of sleep mode.)
wildmXranat 15y ago
Yes and No. I like my Air for developing and you would have to pry it from my cold dead fingers, buuuuut: I tried to install python PIL just yesterday and thought easy as pie, not! easy_install complains that gcc is getting the ARCH_FLAGS as ppc not x84_64, plus a couple of other nitpicks. So I used ports, but that means I had to install a new Python interpreter ... and well I have better things to do that replace apt. Apt > (ports,mac,brew) anyday, but rarely is it an issue.
- div 15y ago
  No package manager is perfect though. Installing rubygems through apt for example is a pain because it's a custom version that will install gems to a different directory than vanilla rubygems. Trivial to fix if you know about it, but you have to figure it out which easily wastes as much time as having to install macports.
- canistr 15y ago
  I know exactly what you mean. I tried installing PIL and OpenCV a while back on my MBP and it was completely frustrating with all the different problems I was running into. Finally gave up, installed Ubuntu on a VM, and synced my dev files on OS X with my dev environment with Dropbox. Ran all my code on in my Ubuntu VM just fine. Some things I love OS X for, other things I leave to Linux because they're still much much easier to develop for.
qaexl 15y ago
I run Linux ... virtualized in OSX. Because OSX and MacBooks has wireless that just works. It has networking that just works. And it has suspend/wakeup that just works. But its bundled UNIX toolchain sucks, and Macports, et. al. don't just work. I run the VM headless, sized similarly to a typical Rackspace Cloud server. This setup lets me use the GNU toolchain while being highly mobile.
- marchdown 15y ago
  Care to elaborate on your setup? Which VM platform do you use? Doesn't it take up too much resources when idle?
  - kree10 15y ago
    I don't know what qaexl's using but I'm going to guess VirtualBox with http://vagrantup.com/ http://vagrantup.com/ - it's a setup that's worked well for me. Activity Monitor tells me my single VM running in the background is taking up less CPU time than Skype (which is also idling in the background).
    - qaexl 15y ago
      Oh yeah, Vagrant. That is the name of it. If I had to use VirtualBox, that would be what I would be using to manage the VMs.
    - qaexl 15y ago
      kree10, thanks for bringing up Vagrant. I might use it in my next laptop, though I'd have to make some improvements to it.
    - rpwilcox 15y ago
      Absolutely. I love Vagrant. Last night one of my virtual machines flaked out, and because everything was managed with Puppet, I just deleted the VM and told vagrant to recreate. 10 minutes later I was back in business like nothing happened. Had a physical machine of mine failed it would have been a fun few hours of machine debugging, instead of "oh, I'll just destroy and recreate the VM, no biggy"
pnathan 15y ago
Of course, it's a 'works out of the box' system that requires very little configuration, as well as having a very nice posixy environment. Of course, it's not as good as Linux for some things, and in those cases, it's not hard to get Linux access. OSX is great.
sophacles 15y ago
Yes, and here is why: When sitting in very long, boring meetings, or very long train/airplane rides, I can still hack away on vim (or occasionally eclipse) for hours despite the complete lack of power outlets. The fact it's bash/posix means that I can run most of my tools locally as is necessary when I cant ssh to my real development servers. So basically its not that I prefer OSX as a dev environment, it that OSX provides the same dev environment with a much, much longer battery life. (oh also good Exchange integration via ical and mail.app don't hurt).
- alextingle 15y ago
  Mac's battery life is not exactly stellar. It used to be pretty good in the PPC days, but now?
  - salem 15y ago
    And how was performances in the good old PPC days?
    - alextingle 15y ago
      My 12" Powerbook got about 5-6 hours. That's about the bare minimum of what I consider acceptable.
  - 2muchcoffeeman 15y ago
    It's way better. I have a 2 year old MBP 13". Replaced the optical with another HD. Still gets 4 hours battery life. Little more if I am seriously doing work and not messing around.
    - alextingle 15y ago
      Erm no. My 12" Powerbook lasted for about 5-6 hours. 4 hours is a definite step backwards from that. My current laptop is a Thinkpad x200, which goes for at least 8 hours of real use (the manufacturer rates it at about 11 hours).
deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
runjake 15y ago
It would be fair to mention that in the survey, 80% of the coders chose Windows, Mac OS 7.9%, and Linux 5.6%.
wiredfool 15y ago
My old setup was a Mac, with keyboard and big screens, with an xemacs window open to a linux box. Then, I lost a hard drive on the mac (while time machine was in self borking mode). Migration ensues. (some of which was planned) So then, I've got 2 ubuntu boxes, and a mac that needs rebuilding. Dev stuff has been moved from hw linux to a redundant array of cheap virtual machines. One of the HW linux consoles is repurposed to run vms, run the vm generator, and also do some ui stuff, since Xemacs and chrome are pretty much the same anywhere. All well and good. So, linux box #2 doesn't like to have a keyboard plugged into it for any length of time. It starts to ignore it. (Why, I don't know). But it runs VMs like a champ, so there it is. Linux box #1 does fine for months, until this morning, when Xorg fubars itself, and then proceeds to do it every 15-20 minutes. So, now, I guess, I'm back to the mac. Since it's hd has been rebuilt in the intervening time. Though I'm still getting used to the terminals in Lion. But that's not what I came here for, The real point of the story is: emacs --daemon and emacsclient -c. So now, in the dev vm start up emacs in daemon mode. Then, you can connect to that process from any tty or xserver. With all your state. I like state.
doe88 15y ago
I used Linux (Slackware, Debian then Ubuntu) since 2000, and as my main OS since 2002. Last year I had to switch to Mac OS in order to develop for iOS, I have several issues with Mac OS, mainly I don't like their window management at all (when I close a window I want the app to be closed, I don't like the menu bad not integrated with the windows, I don't like how works the resizing,...). But when I see what is gnome on Ubuntu 11.04, I don't really know if I would like to switch back know. I don't know how to put it, but my desktop pc is _not_ a touchscreen, I don't understand why they changed everything as if it everything was an iPad... Moreover it seems to me that the state of Firefox (yeah I'm still rooting for FF) on Linux is largely lagging behind win/mac at least for its UI. And worst of all, I'm feeling that a lot of skilled developers have switched to Mac OS recently and putting their skills to develop .app instead of .deb now. I'm actually a bit sad because I love Linux more than anything.
- mblakele 15y ago
  For window resizing, I can recommend http://irradiatedsoftware.com/sizeup/ http://irradiatedsoftware.com/sizeup/ - there's a free demo, and a full license is cheap. No affiliation with the author: just a happy user.
wiredfool 15y ago
My old setup was a Mac, with keyboard and big screens, with an xemacs window open to a linux box. Then, I lost a hard drive on the mac (while time machine was in self borking mode). Migration ensues. (some of which was planned) So then, I've got 2 ubuntu boxes, and a mac that needs rebuilding. Dev stuff has been moved from hw linux to a redundant array of cheap virtual machines. One of the HW linux consoles is repurposed to run vms, run the vm generator, and also do some ui stuff, since Xemacs and chrome are pretty much the same anywhere. All well and good. So, linux box #2 doesn't like to have a keyboard plugged into it for any length of time. It starts to ignore it. (Why, I don't know). But it runs VMs like a champ, so there it is. Linux box #1 does fine for months, until this morning, when Xorg fubars itself, and then proceeds to do it every 15-20 minutes. So, now, I guess, I'm back to the mac. Since it's hd has been rebuilt in the intervening time. Though I'm still getting used to the terminals in Lion. But that's not what I came here for, The real point of the story is: emacs --daemon and emacsclient -c. So now, in the dev vm start up emacs in daemon mode. Then, you can connect to that process from any tty or xserver. With all your state. I like state.
BerislavLopac 15y ago
I'm using Windows and Ubuntu. Why? Because where I live (Croatia) a Mac Mini 2.5GHz costs the equivalent of $1300, which is almost twice the $799 price tag on Apple Store. Nuff said.
siculars 15y ago
In other news - lots of people put pants on one leg at a time and don't forget to walk the dog in the morning!
salem 15y ago
Macs as the preferred dev machine has been the trend at my last four workplaces, including two startups, one 'tween', and one corporate.
rdl 15y ago
I use Linux and BSD servers (hardware and virtualized), and Macs for laptops and some desktops. I use Linux desktops for serious sysadmin tasks, due to focus follows mouse, but I really like having CS5.5, iWork, etc. even on a desktop. I'm also a lot happier with OSX for mobile devices due to power management, device drivers, etc. And, I love the iPad and iPhone, and the Mac is a much better host for those. Really, mac ports covers 95% of what I need on a machine. Being able to scroll in a non-focused window really covers most of my need for pointer-focus too.
jinushaun 15y ago
I pick OSX over Linux because why can't my dev box also be my everyday box? I have access to all the GNU/open source dev tools I need on OSX, so why give up Photoshop, Office, iTunes, etc just to say I'm using Linux? I have a dedicated Windows machine and at the end of the day, I'm still using Windows in Parallels over a dedicated Windows box.

34 points by inshane 15y ago

It really depends. The convenience of something like apt for quickly assembling or installing your machine with all software automatically updated is hard to beat. Mac OS also tends to ship with older versions of software and rarely gets newer versions without a full OS update - meaning they will get older and older with time. OTOH, there are many scenarios where a Mac is the only option. Any development for iPhone or Mac is painful on other platforms.

aeontech 15y ago
Well, macports/homebrew seem to fill the package manager gap pretty well. I upgraded to Lion the other day - one "port selfupdate && port upgrade" command and an hour of downloads/compiles later I had my dev environment back to normal including fresh compiles of php, postgres, apache, memcache, redis, imagemagick and any number of their dependencies.
- alexbell 15y ago
  hombrew is awesome! previously my big complaint about os x was the difficulty of installing packages a la linux. you can't really say that any more. perhaps it doesn't quite have the sheer size of packages, but what it does have is much more up to date than linux repos for the most part. it sucks that you have to pull down xcode to develop on mac(huge download, and i understand that many people doing development on a mac will never use it), but i'm doing iOS development anywho.
  - jarin 15y ago
    There's a standalone installer for gcc: https://github.com/kennethreitz/osx-gcc-installer https://github.com/kennethreitz/osx-gcc-installer
- jarin 15y ago
  With homebrew I didn't even have to do that, since the Lion upgrade leaves /usr/local and launchd alone. The only rough spot I had was installing the App Store version of XCode, because I was a dumbo and installed the beta version of XCode in /Developer (never do this).
eddieplan9 15y ago
I use homebrew "for quickly assembling or installing your machine with all software automatically updated" and really have nothing to complain about. Mac OS X ships things like Python and Ruby, not because Apple envisions you will use those things to build custom applications but because there are system tools that depend on them. That's why upgrading these system packages too aggressively is a bad idea, even on Linux (and that's why RHEL is still on Python 2.4). You always have cleaner way to get and use newer versions of almost all packages without breaking the system.
- div 15y ago
  I was lost without apt for a while too until I discovered homebrew. The list of packages available in homebrew is growing at a pretty crazy rate as well. It's currently the most forked project on github (https://github.com/popular/forked https://github.com/popular/forked).
- alexis-d 15y ago
  I don't see why upgrading packages (like Python or Ruby) is a bad idea. For instance I have Python 2 & 3 installed on my laptops (Arch Linux) and it just works well.
- rbanffy 15y ago
  I know I can coerce OSX into being a Unix-developer-friendly OS, but, unless you require the hardware it comes bundled with or some specific feature only OSX provides, why not start with a more server-like OS? Most of the servers I deploy to run Linux. If I develop and test everyday under Linux, I'll have less surprises when I deploy to production.

Mizza 15y ago

I'm a bit of a Linux nut, but I'm seriously considering getting a MacBook Air for my next machine as there doesn't seem to be any comparable non-Apple hardware out there. Does anybody know of any?

cconstantine 15y ago
Not sure if it's a direct competitor for the Air, but I've been eyeing the Thinkpad x220.
- rjbond3rd 15y ago
  A nice choice. Also, the x120E with the dual-core processor (E350 chip), on Ebay starting at $400. On a tight budget, my kids use the much older x60 and x61 (on Ebay for about $150-$200), and even the (quite old) x40 and X41.
  - deleted 15y ago
    [deleted]
fjh 15y ago
The Samsung Series 9 is pretty similar. I've got a MacBook Air and I've played around with the Samsung. Build-quality and hardware-wise the Samsung is, in my opinion, at least as nice as the air, but I've heard that it's currently a bit of a pain to get everything working under Linux.
ews 15y ago
I own a lenovo X1, which I don't think it's a direct competitor of the Mac Air, but it's light enough, the keyboard is really really good, and Linux works out of the box.
davidmat 15y ago
Not right now, but soon (in a few weeks - months) there will be a whole avalanche of laptops coming out based on Intel's Ultrabook platform; very much 'inspired' by the MacBook Air.
15y ago

davidw 15y ago

At heart, I'm a hacker, and I want an environment that I can hack on when I need to. Also: focus follows mouse is not an optional or an extra. I've been using a Linux desktop since 1996, and as far as I'm concerned, it's about 100 times easier than it used to be, so whining about things not being 'just right' fall on deaf ears, especially when for me 'just right' means focus follows mouse and other things like that that I have dialed in just how I want them.

Mizza 15y ago
Focus follows mouse love! fistbump
jarin 15y ago
While I've tried using various distros of Linux as my primary OS (and I used to really love hacking and tweaking my UI like crazy), I'll say that nowadays I want an environment that I can hack on when I need to, but that I rarely need to hack on. OS X fits that role for me. I just feel like there isn't enough time in the day to hack and tweak my OS and write code for clients and my own projects.
- davidw 15y ago
  I rarely need to hack on Linux these days, but have in the past: 1) I hacked up a patch to make it boot better off of USB keys. Sadly I'm not sure they ever accepted it in the main kernel, despite being way better than their own hacky (wait N seconds for the device to settle) method. 2) I hacked up a nice little environment for a coin-operated internet machine, to stick in the corners of hotels. It was pretty cool, unfortunately the guy running the operation with me screwed up the business side and it never went anywhere.
chc 15y ago
It may be OK for you because you require focus-follows-mouse to be built-in, but "It's better than it was in 1996" is pretty faint praise. If somebody told you he'd clubbed 90% fewer baby seals this year than he did in 1996, would that lead you to think, "Wow, what an upstanding guy"? All operating systems, including Windows, BeOS and Amiga, have improved since 1996. And I think for most people, a working wireless card is more of an out-of-the-box priority than focus-follows-mouse. (Though personally, I would have liked Linux more if it just didn't cause my keyboard to stop functioning after the computer came out of sleep mode.)

wildmXranat 15y ago

Yes and No. I like my Air for developing and you would have to pry it from my cold dead fingers, buuuuut: I tried to install python PIL just yesterday and thought easy as pie, not! easy_install complains that gcc is getting the ARCH_FLAGS as ppc not x84_64, plus a couple of other nitpicks. So I used ports, but that means I had to install a new Python interpreter ... and well I have better things to do that replace apt. Apt > (ports,mac,brew) anyday, but rarely is it an issue.

div 15y ago
No package manager is perfect though. Installing rubygems through apt for example is a pain because it's a custom version that will install gems to a different directory than vanilla rubygems. Trivial to fix if you know about it, but you have to figure it out which easily wastes as much time as having to install macports.
canistr 15y ago
I know exactly what you mean. I tried installing PIL and OpenCV a while back on my MBP and it was completely frustrating with all the different problems I was running into. Finally gave up, installed Ubuntu on a VM, and synced my dev files on OS X with my dev environment with Dropbox. Ran all my code on in my Ubuntu VM just fine. Some things I love OS X for, other things I leave to Linux because they're still much much easier to develop for.

qaexl 15y ago

I run Linux ... virtualized in OSX. Because OSX and MacBooks has wireless that just works. It has networking that just works. And it has suspend/wakeup that just works. But its bundled UNIX toolchain sucks, and Macports, et. al. don't just work. I run the VM headless, sized similarly to a typical Rackspace Cloud server. This setup lets me use the GNU toolchain while being highly mobile.

marchdown 15y ago
Care to elaborate on your setup? Which VM platform do you use? Doesn't it take up too much resources when idle?
- kree10 15y ago
  I don't know what qaexl's using but I'm going to guess VirtualBox with http://vagrantup.com/ http://vagrantup.com/ - it's a setup that's worked well for me. Activity Monitor tells me my single VM running in the background is taking up less CPU time than Skype (which is also idling in the background).
  - qaexl 15y ago
    Oh yeah, Vagrant. That is the name of it. If I had to use VirtualBox, that would be what I would be using to manage the VMs.
  - qaexl 15y ago
    kree10, thanks for bringing up Vagrant. I might use it in my next laptop, though I'd have to make some improvements to it.
  - rpwilcox 15y ago
    Absolutely. I love Vagrant. Last night one of my virtual machines flaked out, and because everything was managed with Puppet, I just deleted the VM and told vagrant to recreate. 10 minutes later I was back in business like nothing happened. Had a physical machine of mine failed it would have been a fun few hours of machine debugging, instead of "oh, I'll just destroy and recreate the VM, no biggy"

pnathan 15y ago

Of course, it's a 'works out of the box' system that requires very little configuration, as well as having a very nice posixy environment. Of course, it's not as good as Linux for some things, and in those cases, it's not hard to get Linux access. OSX is great.

sophacles 15y ago

Yes, and here is why: When sitting in very long, boring meetings, or very long train/airplane rides, I can still hack away on vim (or occasionally eclipse) for hours despite the complete lack of power outlets. The fact it's bash/posix means that I can run most of my tools locally as is necessary when I cant ssh to my real development servers. So basically its not that I prefer OSX as a dev environment, it that OSX provides the same dev environment with a much, much longer battery life. (oh also good Exchange integration via ical and mail.app don't hurt).

alextingle 15y ago
Mac's battery life is not exactly stellar. It used to be pretty good in the PPC days, but now?
- salem 15y ago
  And how was performances in the good old PPC days?
  - alextingle 15y ago
    My 12" Powerbook got about 5-6 hours. That's about the bare minimum of what I consider acceptable.
- 2muchcoffeeman 15y ago
  It's way better. I have a 2 year old MBP 13". Replaced the optical with another HD. Still gets 4 hours battery life. Little more if I am seriously doing work and not messing around.
  - alextingle 15y ago
    Erm no. My 12" Powerbook lasted for about 5-6 hours. 4 hours is a definite step backwards from that. My current laptop is a Thinkpad x200, which goes for at least 8 hours of real use (the manufacturer rates it at about 11 hours).

deleted 15y ago

[deleted]

runjake 15y ago

It would be fair to mention that in the survey, 80% of the coders chose Windows, Mac OS 7.9%, and Linux 5.6%.

wiredfool 15y ago

My old setup was a Mac, with keyboard and big screens, with an xemacs window open to a linux box. Then, I lost a hard drive on the mac (while time machine was in self borking mode). Migration ensues. (some of which was planned) So then, I've got 2 ubuntu boxes, and a mac that needs rebuilding. Dev stuff has been moved from hw linux to a redundant array of cheap virtual machines. One of the HW linux consoles is repurposed to run vms, run the vm generator, and also do some ui stuff, since Xemacs and chrome are pretty much the same anywhere. All well and good. So, linux box #2 doesn't like to have a keyboard plugged into it for any length of time. It starts to ignore it. (Why, I don't know). But it runs VMs like a champ, so there it is. Linux box #1 does fine for months, until this morning, when Xorg fubars itself, and then proceeds to do it every 15-20 minutes. So, now, I guess, I'm back to the mac. Since it's hd has been rebuilt in the intervening time. Though I'm still getting used to the terminals in Lion. But that's not what I came here for, The real point of the story is: emacs --daemon and emacsclient -c. So now, in the dev vm start up emacs in daemon mode. Then, you can connect to that process from any tty or xserver. With all your state. I like state.

doe88 15y ago

I used Linux (Slackware, Debian then Ubuntu) since 2000, and as my main OS since 2002. Last year I had to switch to Mac OS in order to develop for iOS, I have several issues with Mac OS, mainly I don't like their window management at all (when I close a window I want the app to be closed, I don't like the menu bad not integrated with the windows, I don't like how works the resizing,...). But when I see what is gnome on Ubuntu 11.04, I don't really know if I would like to switch back know. I don't know how to put it, but my desktop pc is _not_ a touchscreen, I don't understand why they changed everything as if it everything was an iPad... Moreover it seems to me that the state of Firefox (yeah I'm still rooting for FF) on Linux is largely lagging behind win/mac at least for its UI. And worst of all, I'm feeling that a lot of skilled developers have switched to Mac OS recently and putting their skills to develop .app instead of .deb now. I'm actually a bit sad because I love Linux more than anything.

mblakele 15y ago
For window resizing, I can recommend http://irradiatedsoftware.com/sizeup/ http://irradiatedsoftware.com/sizeup/ - there's a free demo, and a full license is cheap. No affiliation with the author: just a happy user.

wiredfool 15y ago

BerislavLopac 15y ago

I'm using Windows and Ubuntu. Why? Because where I live (Croatia) a Mac Mini 2.5GHz costs the equivalent of $1300, which is almost twice the $799 price tag on Apple Store. Nuff said.

siculars 15y ago

In other news - lots of people put pants on one leg at a time and don't forget to walk the dog in the morning!

salem 15y ago

Macs as the preferred dev machine has been the trend at my last four workplaces, including two startups, one 'tween', and one corporate.

rdl 15y ago

I use Linux and BSD servers (hardware and virtualized), and Macs for laptops and some desktops. I use Linux desktops for serious sysadmin tasks, due to focus follows mouse, but I really like having CS5.5, iWork, etc. even on a desktop. I'm also a lot happier with OSX for mobile devices due to power management, device drivers, etc. And, I love the iPad and iPhone, and the Mac is a much better host for those. Really, mac ports covers 95% of what I need on a machine. Being able to scroll in a non-focused window really covers most of my need for pointer-focus too.

jinushaun 15y ago

I pick OSX over Linux because why can't my dev box also be my everyday box? I have access to all the GNU/open source dev tools I need on OSX, so why give up Photoshop, Office, iTunes, etc just to say I'm using Linux? I have a dedicated Windows machine and at the end of the day, I'm still using Windows in Parallels over a dedicated Windows box.