4 ms·

> Prior to Mac OS X, people would have been laughed out of the building for having a Mac, but now, with Mac OS X and the magic of open source, it was suddenly O

> Prior to Mac OS X, people would have been laughed out of the building for having a Mac, but now, with Mac OS X and the magic of open source, it was suddenly OK or even cool. To push a bit further, a bunch of us switched to OSX not from windows but FreeBSD or linux. Hardware support for open source OSes was abysmal and getting commercial software to run on even linux was death by thousand cuts at best. On the work side, anything "not windows" was also just not an option, and we'd code on windows and remote to unix servers as needed. Introduction of Darwin really created a space where Unix could live in personal and corporate environments.

heywoodlh 4y ago
> Introduction of Darwin really created a space where Unix could live in personal and corporate environments. 100% this. I am a huge Linux lover but also really appreciate having the option at work to use MacOS due to the Unix userspace it provides. That being said, I would pretty much hate MacOS without the open source tooling (Nix, Homebrew, Yabai, SKHD, iTerm, etc.) I can bootstrap onto it.
- hinkley 4y ago
  I get an awful lot of mileage out of the XCode command line tools. Most of the things you need to emulate a CI pipeline locally are there, though the exceptions can occasionally be a bit of a problem.
  - heywoodlh 4y ago
    What tools do you use/find essential that get installed with XCode's command line tools? My experience with XCode's command line tools is pretty much just installing them for Homebrew. I don't think I've taken time to actually dig into the installed tools -- so I'd love to hear what tools increase your mileage! :)
  - rtpg 4y ago
    The insistence on having to install the xcode command line tools (hello "be at 99% installed for 10 hours" bug I have had over 5 different machines") is very annoyin. But I've found that brew has been a major mess as well. Nothing like coming in on a Monday and having to debug 10 coworker's machines cuz suddenly python and postgres were silently upgraded (or some random shared lib was upgraded). "Just use Docker" is also a PITA cuz of the abysmal file system performance stuff... I just want to run software! Or rather, I want my coworkers who might not be as well versed in system software to be able to have working systems. All that being said, it's undeniable that I can daily drive Linux thanks to Mac stuff existing.
    - drunkpotato 4y ago
      I've found that asdf has replaced a lot of my brew installs. It's great to be able to pin tool dependencies per project. I used, and liked, brew for a long time, but my tooling these days is almost entirely MacPorts, asdf-vm, and Docker + docker-compose (I'm also intrigued by podman).
      - hinkley 4y ago
        xcode is enough to make nvm, asdf work. With only a very few exceptions I've found it to be enough to run javascript frontends, and backends of javascript, Ruby, Node...
smeagull 4y ago
It's still a massive pain in the ass. Their UI is inconsistent, their new arch breaks docker builds, and not enough is configurable. Brew even fails at usability, doesn't even put executables on the path for you.
- striking 4y ago
  It does except in cases where it might be dangerous to (e.g. `node@16` doesn't by default as that could conflict with plain unversioned `node`). You can generally `brew link` the package anyway if you need. Or use Nix instead. I've been having a good time with Nix on macOS.
- makeitdouble 4y ago
  Yes, the trend for the last years hasn't been great. With Apple's current market share, it sometimes feels like the unix core is more of an historical artifact, or one of the bullet point in commercial presentations. I don't see them put much efforts in pushing Darwin forward when they could use the same resources for Bridge OS or other parts they see as a differentiating factor. On the bright side, Mac OX coming to enterprise settings also opened the door for linux laptops, and they became a truly viable alternative. Perhaps linux getting better representation and commercial foothold could help keep Darwin competitive and properly evolving, one could hope.
- easton 4y ago
  > their new arch breaks docker builds I’ve seen this complaint quite a bit on HN, and I don’t really understand it. Apple helped Docker port over to arm64 on the Mac (which was one of the first pieces of software to use the new fancy hypervisor APIs), and it’s been working for over a year now. If your docker images can’t build on arm64, I don’t really understand how Apple or Docker can make that any easier. Most of the popular images have arm64 builds now, the only holdout I know of is MySQL due to Oracle being Oracle. If you’re building your own images, GitHub Actions and many other CI providers have had ARM64 agents for a long time (and you can build arm Docker images in QEMU super easy on GHA if you need hosted agents). There’s not much of an excuse anymore, and since arm instances are cheaper on some public clouds, you should be making sure your stuff runs on arm64 now. Especially if it’s a typical Node/.NET/Java/Ruby/Python app, they’ve been arm native for years.
colordrops 4y ago
I've been on Linux at work full time for about 7 years now. It was kinda janky for a while, but in the last couple years it feels as solid, nay, more solid, than my macbook. I did take the plunge with NixOS though, which is a quantum leap in reliability and stability.

heywoodlh 4y ago

> Introduction of Darwin really created a space where Unix could live in personal and corporate environments. 100% this. I am a huge Linux lover but also really appreciate having the option at work to use MacOS due to the Unix userspace it provides. That being said, I would pretty much hate MacOS without the open source tooling (Nix, Homebrew, Yabai, SKHD, iTerm, etc.) I can bootstrap onto it.

hinkley 4y ago
I get an awful lot of mileage out of the XCode command line tools. Most of the things you need to emulate a CI pipeline locally are there, though the exceptions can occasionally be a bit of a problem.
- heywoodlh 4y ago
  What tools do you use/find essential that get installed with XCode's command line tools? My experience with XCode's command line tools is pretty much just installing them for Homebrew. I don't think I've taken time to actually dig into the installed tools -- so I'd love to hear what tools increase your mileage! :)
- rtpg 4y ago
  The insistence on having to install the xcode command line tools (hello "be at 99% installed for 10 hours" bug I have had over 5 different machines") is very annoyin. But I've found that brew has been a major mess as well. Nothing like coming in on a Monday and having to debug 10 coworker's machines cuz suddenly python and postgres were silently upgraded (or some random shared lib was upgraded). "Just use Docker" is also a PITA cuz of the abysmal file system performance stuff... I just want to run software! Or rather, I want my coworkers who might not be as well versed in system software to be able to have working systems. All that being said, it's undeniable that I can daily drive Linux thanks to Mac stuff existing.
  - drunkpotato 4y ago
    I've found that asdf has replaced a lot of my brew installs. It's great to be able to pin tool dependencies per project. I used, and liked, brew for a long time, but my tooling these days is almost entirely MacPorts, asdf-vm, and Docker + docker-compose (I'm also intrigued by podman).
    - hinkley 4y ago
      xcode is enough to make nvm, asdf work. With only a very few exceptions I've found it to be enough to run javascript frontends, and backends of javascript, Ruby, Node...

smeagull 4y ago

It's still a massive pain in the ass. Their UI is inconsistent, their new arch breaks docker builds, and not enough is configurable. Brew even fails at usability, doesn't even put executables on the path for you.

striking 4y ago
It does except in cases where it might be dangerous to (e.g. `node@16` doesn't by default as that could conflict with plain unversioned `node`). You can generally `brew link` the package anyway if you need. Or use Nix instead. I've been having a good time with Nix on macOS.
makeitdouble 4y ago
Yes, the trend for the last years hasn't been great. With Apple's current market share, it sometimes feels like the unix core is more of an historical artifact, or one of the bullet point in commercial presentations. I don't see them put much efforts in pushing Darwin forward when they could use the same resources for Bridge OS or other parts they see as a differentiating factor. On the bright side, Mac OX coming to enterprise settings also opened the door for linux laptops, and they became a truly viable alternative. Perhaps linux getting better representation and commercial foothold could help keep Darwin competitive and properly evolving, one could hope.
easton 4y ago
> their new arch breaks docker builds I’ve seen this complaint quite a bit on HN, and I don’t really understand it. Apple helped Docker port over to arm64 on the Mac (which was one of the first pieces of software to use the new fancy hypervisor APIs), and it’s been working for over a year now. If your docker images can’t build on arm64, I don’t really understand how Apple or Docker can make that any easier. Most of the popular images have arm64 builds now, the only holdout I know of is MySQL due to Oracle being Oracle. If you’re building your own images, GitHub Actions and many other CI providers have had ARM64 agents for a long time (and you can build arm Docker images in QEMU super easy on GHA if you need hosted agents). There’s not much of an excuse anymore, and since arm instances are cheaper on some public clouds, you should be making sure your stuff runs on arm64 now. Especially if it’s a typical Node/.NET/Java/Ruby/Python app, they’ve been arm native for years.

colordrops 4y ago

I've been on Linux at work full time for about 7 years now. It was kinda janky for a while, but in the last couple years it feels as solid, nay, more solid, than my macbook. I did take the plunge with NixOS though, which is a quantum leap in reliability and stability.