18 ms·

More developers use Linux than Mac, according to 2022 StackOverflow survey

• DarkmSparks 4y ago
  linux for main dev machine, mac for ms office. never looked back.
• birdymcbird 4y ago
  What percentage of non macos developers use linux or windows because of apple hardware cost? am aware of hackintosh but not sure how well it works for dev productivity.
  • cmrdporcupine 4y ago
    I'd actually prefer to be the other way around; Apple laptops are superior to anything else I can buy, but I hate the operating system. The Macbook Pro I have issued from $work is far superior in comfort speed and usability to my expensive Ryzen Thinkpad that I purchased in the summer. I just don't particularly like developing/working on OS X.
    • kcartlidge 4y ago
      This. I use an M1 Air and the hardware is exceptional (other than the keyboard obviously). Mac OS however is not. You need something like Rectangle installed just to get half-decent window management. Windows 11 wipes the floor with it on accessibility (for things like font tweaks and so forth). And the speed with which you can work under both Windows and Linux (Mint for example), using the keyboard almost exclusively, really puts Mac OS to shame. If a non-Apple laptop maker did Apple-quality hardware with a better keyboard and anything like the Air's battery life then I'd be interested.
• RMPR 4y ago
  Related https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34130894 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34130894
• yamtaddle 4y ago
  > What is the primary operating system in which you work? This implies a single answer ("the") but they clearly allowed multiple (the percentages total way more than 100%) IIRC in prior years they've asked similar questions, but without the multi-select, meaning the this year's survey can't be meaningfully compared with older surveys, for this question. Here's 2021, for example: https://insights.stackoverflow.com/survey/2021 https://insights.stackoverflow.com/survey/2021
  • uncleshelby 4y ago
    Interesting that the 2021 survey already has Linux ranked higher than MacOS. Makes this article's headline not nearly as interesting, IMO.
    • yamtaddle 4y ago
      Unless non-US numbers skew it more than I think, I suspect a whole lot of those respondents had a choice between honestly answering one of two operating systems, given the wording of the question, and picked Linux over the other one for whatever reason, despite not running it on their workstation. I'd be shocked if figures for the US, at least, were over 10% Linux, as far as what developers use on their main pays-the-bills workstation. Students might skew as high as 25% (though that's still higher than I'd expect) but I don't think SO selection-biases so strongly toward students that it'd be enough to push the figure that high all on its own.
      • hyperman1 4y ago
        Who takes the time to fill in the SO questions? Not the 9 out of 10 checked-out corporate devs that do the minimum to collect a paycheck. These are also the people that will tolerate anything central IT gives them, even if the mouse cursor takes 2 seconds to render on screen. I am not at all surprised that the group that cares about more than the job, the job that takes the time to respond to SO, is also the group that cares deeply about what they use for doing their job. So if 25% of them responds Linux, that probably corresponds to 2.5% actual usage. Not that important, BTW: SO selects exactly the kind of people whose opinion I want to hear about their tooling. What's surprising here is how deep windows is sinking. They were at one point famous for their dev tools. The fact that WSL (i.e. it runs Linux stuff) is now considered one of their top selling points for developers is almost too incredible to believe.
• NayamAmarshe 4y ago
  After using both, I honestly don't understand why devs use MacOS over Linux (my favorite: ZorinOS). The advantages of Linux are too many too count and has a lot of customization that can provide some edge. I don't prefer customization anymore, just simplicity but it's a good thing that the options exist. For me, I think these are the main issues with MacOS that ZorinOS doesn't out of the box: > No screen edge tiling, spend more time managing application windows > Inconsistent keyboard shortcuts, cmd and ctrl are used interchangeably for no reason (Biggest issue). Why do I need to do Ctrl+Tab to switch tabs but Cmd+T to create tabs? Why is History not Cmd/Ctrl+H in browsers? I need to memorize more shortcuts on MacOS for no reason, when it could very well just do it all with a single modifier key. > Hidden dock doesn't appear unless I smash my cursor on the bottom edge. Dock Autohide is very finicky, ZorinOS' way is much more graceful and natural. > No HDMI volume control > Maximizing an app takes you to a totally new desktop > Switching desktop animation is a bit too slow > No window closing animations, but has window opening animations. Feels really unpolished > Single click on dock to maximize the app but clicking maximized app doesn't minimize it. Why? > Ctrl + Alt +T doesn't open terminal, it's like oxygen to me. > Can't set VSCode to open with Ctrl + Alt + C. > Can't set custom global shortcuts at all, even windows can to some extent > Can't highlight text in terminal or anywhere to paste with middle click mouse button. > Ctrl + C to cancel a command in terminal but Cmd + C to copy text in terminal. Ok, then why Cmd + T to open a new tab in terminal instead of ctrl? > The shell startup time is too much on MacOS. I have to wait for a second for the shell to load before I start typing my commands. On Linux, pressing Ctrl+Alt+T and writing commands right away feels so good! > No package manager by default, brew is honestly very slow compared to Linux solutions. MacOS isn't unusable of course, I'd prefer it over Windows anyday but it just introduces a lot of UX friction Linux desktop just doesn't.
  • oxfordmale 4y ago
    Usually Infosec forces the use of MacBooks over Linux laptops as they find the latter harder to secure.
    • nix23 4y ago
      >find the latter harder to secure. I hope those "Infosec's" don't have Linux servers to secure ;)
• rickette 4y ago
  Well this is one survey I guess. Anecdotally I see more Macs than Linux.
  • 323 4y ago
    There are two kinds of developers: the ones which change the world, and the ones working 9-5 on form apps. Only the first group uses Macs. Not owning a Mac is a big red-flag for VC funding.
    • ferongr 4y ago
      Is this satire?
    • silisili 4y ago
      Absolutely. I love looking at old pics of Thompson and Richie banging away all night on their Macbook Airs.
• carrja99 4y ago
  It is time
• galleywest200 4y ago
  I use a Mac for a lot of my development because it is Unix based with tons of compatibility for modern software. On my Windows desktop I use WSL for my development because it is Unix based with tons of compatibility for modern software. I do not use Windows to develop (outside of Godot Game Engine sometimes).
  • JoeyBananas 4y ago
    You can certainly do development on MacOS, but I think it's clearly not an _ideal_ set-up.
• i_use_arch_btw 4y ago
  I'm a developer and I use Arch btw
• osrec 4y ago
  Tried using a Mac, hated how the UI got in the way all the time. A few weird quirks with docker were annoying too, including slowness. Now run Linux with LXDE on my 16GB laptop. Everything works well and it's blazingly fast. The UI is simple and functional, but not as beautiful as the MacOS UI. I guess in the beginning we want all the bells and whistles, but with experience, all we want is control. Linux gives me that control to a much greater degree than a Mac.
  • Aperocky 4y ago
    As a mac user, I have no idea what MacOS UI you're referring to is. I live exclusively in terminal or browser, all other apps are opened via terminal and closed with cmd+q. I like macOS because it doesn't get in the way even when I almost never had to interact with Finder (which I still find weird every time I had to use it, for web uploads etc).
    • spike021 4y ago
      Same. I constantly use iTerm (or even just the regular MacOS Terminal). It's easy to have it take up the whole screen and the most "MacOS UI" I'll ever see is the title bar for the window, which yeah can be ugly to look at but really isn't something that keeps me from working or anything. I guess IDE's use a ton of UI, but I wouldn't say that's MacOS cruft on its own.
    • superkuh 4y ago
      Using a Windows or any of the Linux Distros as a desktop computer you will find that the GUI programs are designed around the idea of a file system, file paths, and generally creating and opening files. On Mac OS X you can use the terminal and be okay. But if you're doing something in the terminal and want to do now combine that with some GUI program, well, good luck. It probably won't even have a way to open files from a folder. The entire filesystem abstraction is hidden and deprecated. It is the core of the Mac OS intended experience.
      • jitl 4y ago
        Wat? `open -a NameOfAppYouWantToUse fileyouWantToOpen.foo` will reliably open a file with whichever app you want. Just `open path/to/directory` will open a Finder window to that directory. The file open dialog in macOS also exists and works just fine. You can drag file icons from GUI apps into terminal windows to insert their absolute path. You can drag files from Finder onto an app icon to open-with that app. Transitioning between terminal workflow and GUI workflow feels better to me on macOS than either Linux or Windows; although with Listary Windows is decent.
• mfkp 4y ago
  I purchased a Lenovo laptop back when Macbooks switched to the touchbar design and I've been very happy. The latest M2 Macbook Airs are tempting for the longer battery life, but I rarely need long battery life anyway.
• rubyn00bie 4y ago
  Everyone using Docker on a Mac is a Linux user; so, that's not terribly surprising. I personally ditched MacOS in my personal life for Linux a few years ago and haven't looked back. Modern Linux is pretty damn great. I have had nearly zero problems in like 2 years, with the worst being having to restart pulseaudio a few times on one particular update.
  • nvahalik 4y ago
    I built a nice Linux box a few years ago... took the time to work out kinks and get it set up just the way I wanted. But being an iOS dev... you just can't get away from macOS. Even with a lot of the great tooling out there.
  • jesusofnazarath 4y ago
    [dead]
• swalsh 4y ago
  2023 will truly be the year of the linux desktop.
  • CatWChainsaw 4y ago
    As a layperson, I would be very happy if it defied meme status and actually is. I'd like to have an alternative to Microsoft and Apple but only know basic stuff.
• didibus 4y ago
  It's hard not to get a Mac laptop, hardware wise they're really good. Is there a good way to install Linux on a new MacBook for example?
  • mark_l_watson 4y ago
    I am just now experimenting with Parallels on an M1 iMac. Better than when I tried a few years ago. I have been running Linux since the beginning and also have four laptops running Linux.
  • thanatos519 4y ago
    Asahi Linux is making astounding progress in making Linux go on Apple silicon.
  • zamalek 4y ago
    Asahi. Unfortunately things take time to make, and they are still adding/polishing drivers.
• voytec 4y ago
  I have ditched MacBook Pro for whatever-brand with UNIX-like OS as well, due to decreasing user control of OS X which started happening around the time it was renamed to mac OS. MacBook stopped feeling like my (quite expensive) hardware doing what I want and became an (even more expensive) device controlled by Apple often forcing unwanted changes on me. I miss MacBook's touchpad but am happy with the trade-off.
  • andsoitis 4y ago
    > decreasing user control of OS X which started happening around the time it was renamed to mac OS what were you able to control before that you can't anymore?
    • voytec 4y ago
      User interface (can't get examples from the top of my head right now but less and less was configurable), privacy settings (it used to be "set what you want to share" and now it's "learn what is shared") and... a keyboard before the 2016/2017 fiasco. I was increasingly locked out of my computer. Apple is now MacBook's superuser and I'm just the user. Their hardware is too expensive for that.
      • spritefs 4y ago
        > privacy settings (it used to be "set what you want to share" and now it's "learn what is shared") What I like to do with this is have two versions of hosts file and two versions of /etc/pf.conf In one setting, I use https://gitlab.com/intr0/AppleBlock/-/blob/master/AppleBlock.txt https://gitlab.com/intr0/AppleBlock/-/blob/master/AppleBlock... in the hosts file and block the whole 17.X.X.X ip range (Apple's range) in the pf.conf The other setting doesn't have any of these blocks Whenever I need some apple service (e.g. updates or apple developer stuff), I run a script to toggle the blocks The benefit of this approach is you get apple services only when you need them
    • fsflover 4y ago
      https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25074959 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25074959
• xt00 4y ago
  I wonder if Matlab being most hated relates to people being forced to learn it in undergrad and it being poorly taught etc. I’ve found it very useful but it took a fair amount of time to build up the set of tricks to doing things right. I would imagine a good replacement for it now is python but there is a huge reliance upon things like numpy and the various plotting libs — not sure what is being taught these days for the courses that previously used matlab — are they now using python a ton?
  • 323 4y ago
    I vaguely remember that in Matlab some form of chaining wouldn't work: a.b.c. You had to do x=a.b and then x.c. It had all kinds of quirks like that.
    • TylerE 4y ago
      You couldn’t do something like (a.b).c? Still hackt, but a one liner at least Disclaimer: have never touched matlab
      • 323 4y ago
        So I googled that: setdiff(1:3, randi(3))(randi(2)) > One must factor out the resulting list from setdiff into a separate variable first: t = setdiff(1:3, randi(3)); t(randi(2)) > This is so medieval even by 1980s standards... https://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/answers/1684819-why-does-not-matlab-language-support-function-operator-chaining https://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/answers/1684819-why-...
  • TechBro8615 4y ago
    I think you're probably right that most developers only really had exposure to Matlab in undergrad statistics and engineering courses - sometimes simultaneously with Stata *shudder*... But that doesn't mean they're wrong to hate it. It's a proprietary program with origins in the 1970s (that's 50+ years old!) and comes with a lot of cruft. I don't know what university courses are using these days, but a lot of universities have data science majors now, so presumably there is some exposure to Python there. A lot of statistics courses also use R.
• thecrumb 4y ago
  Run Docker on Mac. Wait for something to finish. Keep waiting. Run Docker on Linux. No wait. Decision made.
  • rickreynoldssf 4y ago
    Docker isn't really Docker on MacOS. It's a glorified VM manager.
  • abalashov 4y ago
    I switched to Mac in summer 2021 after 23 years of desktop Linux in all kinds of flavours. I run Docker Desktop on OSX on an M1 Pro and haven't had any issues. Yes, you do need arm64 builds of things; the x86_64 emulation is indeed apocalyptically, unbearably slow. But otherwise, the shift to doing local development in docker-compose has been transparent and seamless.
    • nikau 4y ago
      It kind of defeats the value of docker though - to run and test the same images as you run in production.
      • abalashov 4y ago
        I'm not sure that's my view of the value of local Docker. That's certainly my view of integration environment/CI-CD docker, but running it on my local machine is more about clean administrative separation from the rest of the OS and vaguely mimicking production -- not exactly mocking it.
• californical 4y ago
  I bet a lot of Mac users also use Linux systems jointly — at least in my circle it seems common to have a Linux desktop and a MacBook combo, for the best of both worlds. If you’re used to unix, it’s easy to go between the two. You can run any long-running programs and store your files on the desktop, and still have the nice UI and portability of the mac, with extra stability for all of the non-coding stuff as well
  • bena 4y ago
    Yeah, I use all three major OSes jointly.
  • atty 4y ago
    Similar setup here. I use a Mac laptop for all my general purpose work/programming/leisure, Linux servers I ssh into from the Mac for running jobs (ML stuff), and a windows laptop for playing games. Obviously a luxury to be able to have all three, but I think it allows me to use all three for the things they’re best at.
  • wyager 4y ago
    I use Linux, MacOS, FreeBSD, and Windows. All have their strengths, but for me it's: * MacOS wins for laptops, hands down. Mac laptop hardware is by far my favorite these days (I used to be a Lenovo guy in the thinkpad era, but no more sadly), and hardware support for Mac is of course best on MacOS. There are a lot of things you have to get right in a laptop (touchpad controls, drivers for wireless devices, audio, etc.) and Linux never really nails it for me. * FreeBSD for the majority of "appliances" (routers, storage, servers for running misc. tools like home automation) * Linux for various open-source desktop tools that have poor BSD support, mostly around things that rely on GPU (e.g. Blender rendering) * Windows for desktop media consumption (games, movies, etc.). I'm not happy with it, per se - things like HDR and surround sound have a lot of issues - but it works well enough and I already have it there for games. I should probably try MacOS's surround sound support - I know it handles HDR very well.
    • je42 4y ago
      Proton on linux works quite well for a large selection of games.
• mrtksn 4y ago
  I wonder if the server logs back that claim up. Maybe the devs meant they deploy stuff on Linux?
• blondin 4y ago
  why is WSL considered a separate operating system in this survey?
  • emkoemko 4y ago
    because it is? just happens to run in windows
    • jeremycarter 4y ago
      You are 100% correct. The best kind of correct
• fortym2 4y ago
  I've always found MacOS less productive than any Linux installation with desktop environments like XFCE or KDE, and also even less productive than Windows. The user experience on MacOS is frustrating. NayamAmarshe has already provided some examples in another comment (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34164174 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34164174).
  • onedr0p 4y ago
    I found the complete opposite about using Linux on the desktop for work. - Native MS Outlook and Teams apps are not available on Linux so everything has to be done thru the web browser since MS deprecated the Linux desktop client. Teams crashes in Chrome very often and running it in Edge means every link that is clicked opens in Edge. I do not want to use Edge. - Font scaling issues at 4K, while I have tweaked a lot of apps to support this it is a constant battle to keep the fonts looking crisp thru updates and some apps just don't support great font scaling. - Last week I had to reboot my desktop because a single press of CRTL+V was pasting things twice (this was also happening on right click > paste so it wasn't my keyboard) - Random freezes when I close the laptop lid, which has been solved by some BIOS updates but it still happens.. just not as frequently. - Bluetooth issues, switching between multiple devices isn't flawless. - Package manager sprawl, homebrew maybe slow but it usually has the latest version of CLI apps I need to use. Whereas on Linux apt packages are usually way out of date, flatpak won't do CLI apps, asdf doesn't have enough of the tools I need, aqua is very inconvenient, nix takes a long time to configure. AUR is probably the best but you must run Arch. I run Fedora with Linuxbrew and don't need to spend effort on figuring how to install some random CLI binary I need. Sorry if this sounded a little incoherent. There's more nuances I could go into but overall I do not want to spend days/weeks configuring my desktop OS. There's something to be said about MacOS having very opinionated decisions but for the most part everything just works for my needs and I don't have to struggle reading thru the Arch wiki or blog posts trying to get bluetooth devices to work or whatever is fighting me. I really like seeing System76 building laptops that work smoothly with PopOS but even that there's struggles with certain hardware or software. It feels like using a Linux desktop is a constant game of cat and mouse on debugging odd issues.
    • 4y ago
• TechBro8615 4y ago
  I use Mac because I love the desktop environment. But I do all my development on a linux machine using VSCode Remote. I used to do it on my Mac, but Docker issues got so frustrating - and VSCode Remote got so good - that it became worthwhile to use remote development.
• FpUser 4y ago
  I use Windows and Linux. Windows on desktop only. Linux both as desktop (but less than windows) and as deployment platform for my products. I've dealt with Mac couple of times and did not really have any "this is it" moments never mind inflated price.
• bdcravens 4y ago
  The percentages are over 100%, and it doesn't appear clear to me that they are talking about development machine vs servers vs Docker images etc (for example, I've used all 3 OSes today, on the same physical machine)
• devinprater 4y ago
  Sure wish blind people could jump head-long into Linux. But nope it's only for the abled people. Linux's a11y stack is very old and only now getting tests written for it and such.
  • WesolyKubeczek 4y ago
    It’s a hard problem in FOSS. Either you have a company with resources enough to make it happen on an ongoing basis, or you spend X time scratching your own itch to perfection and then tiredly stop caring about the world moving on. Which may explain some blind Linux users swearing by their setups like they are the best things since sliced bread, while others might be meh. It would be damn nice, though, even for able-bodied folks to be able to use their computers or phones without having to look at them once in a while, and no, voice assistants in their current shape don’t really count. They are still far from being “instant” and understanding you unambigiously every time. I would welcome software UIs that are usable by all people without having to go into some kind of low vision mode where everything is different. Or one-handed mode where everything is different.
• ModernMech 4y ago
  Due to WSL and Windows Terminal, I prefer to use Windows over MacOS. Having a full Ubuntu system inside of Windows actually has a better developer experience than MacOS. Also I've had trouble installing some tools on my M1 Mac, and my students face similar problems (although it's gotten better recently).
• beej71 4y ago
  I use them both. I have an old Lenovo laptop that still works handily with Arch. And I have an old MBP that I purchased for $1 when I left my previous job. And I have an M1 owned by my current employer. The first thing I do with a new machine is clone my settings repo and run my install script. This way the shells, editors, git, gpg, etc. all feel the same. Then the differences are all about the UI. I really like XFCE, and have it configured for really easy use. The Mac just isn't as flexible and you have to do things its way even if they're less efficient than you'd like. "The secret is not caring." I did manage to get the external Mac mouse to not feel like a slug (even with the speed slider maxed out) with some command line trickery. Sometimes the rules can be bent.
• antirez 4y ago
  I use a Mac but have to resort to a Linux VM every time I need Valgrind. Using Valgrind C and C++ are much safer languages. Bugs are fixed in minutes and not hours. Apple not providing a stable port of Valgrind for MacOS is a major problem.
• apayan 4y ago
  Direct link to the section of the Stack Overflow survey with OS preferences: https://survey.stackoverflow.co/2022/#operating-system https://survey.stackoverflow.co/2022/#operating-system
• jchw 4y ago
  I'm currently using a Mac for work because I don't have a choice. I know it's going to be flippant, but I'm genuinely surprised people like using Macs for development anymore. Hardware wise: Apple Silicon is very nice, but my enthusiasm is greatly tempered by a horrible experience with docks. So-called USB 4 docks and even plain USB-C docks work far less reliably on my MacBook Pro M1 Max than they do on PC laptops I have laying around. I can't even get a single monitor to 4k 60hz... Unless I plug any of my adapters into a non-Apple laptop. Weirdly, most of these docks don't seem to work at ALL on the M1 Mac Mini, or only sometimes. I'm genuinely puzzled. Software wise: Window management on macOS is extremely annoying. I'd try to run one of those i3 style tools, but... Full setup requires disabling SIP. Color me and my company's compliance team very unimpressed. I'm also on two kernel panics, apparently in some Bluetooth related module. Dude, I don't even USE Bluetooth on my work MacBook. I've sent reports to Apple... But I assume they're directed to the circular file. That's as much transparency as I get anyways. Major updates break XCode every time. Bazel runs slower than dirt. Sometimes I get stuck "verifying" binaries I just built. Why do we need to phone home to Apple for ad-hoc signed binaries we just built? Feels more like a Microsoft move. OTOH, I do get why people don't like Windows and Linux. Linux is unfriendly and requires a large time investment to really take advantage of. It's buggy, and hardware support is poor unless you carefully select it (of course, You Can.) But the real kicker is this: with Linux, I have the power to fix things. With Windows and macOS, it feels like I'm only renting my computer. Will this problem ever be fixed? "Maybe some day. Probably not." I hate that. There's no transparency and there's nothing I can do about it. Average users definitely shouldn't go and mess with patching their kernels. But me? I'm happy to. My Surface Laptop 4 is running an unmerged PR to the Surface Linux project kernel right now. And since I'm doing it declaratively with NixOS, I can always boot to before I applied that patch. It's only one line of Nix code, that automatically fetches the PR diff from GitHub and applies it. I upstream rarely, but the fact that I can triage, report, follow and help along with bugs that matter to me is a huge boost in confidence. If you've used a graphics tablet in Wine, you may have benefited from a couple of my patches. I understand that it's not for everyone, and I wouldn't recommend it to anyone who doesn't really feel this kind of sales pitch. But: if you already have to invest a large amount of time into programming, I think suffering your way into Linux proficiency is not a bad time investment at all. Even if there's a lot of potential pain, there's even more potential learning and growth. As far as I'm concerned, I'll be computing on Linux until it's pryed from my cold dead hands, remote attestation and other dystopian bullshit be damned.
• The_Colonel 4y ago
  I've recently got a MacBook at work (after years of Windows/Linux usage) and was amazed by one feature. When I close the lid of the laptop and leave it for 2 days, its battery is not drained to 0, yet all the apps are still open when I open it again. Magic. I wonder if non-Apple manufacturers will some day in the future add this killer feature to their offering.
  • gabrielgio 4y ago
    > leave it for 2 days, its battery is not drained to 0, yet all the apps are still open Isn’t that normal behaviour? Mine thinkpad T14 still has battery after a couple days sleeping.
    • The_Colonel 4y ago
      Unfortunately, it's not normal these days. How old is your T14? It seems like it's becoming increasingly a problem for Thinkpads as well (e.g. https://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?t=134241 https://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?t=134241 )
      • 411111111111111 4y ago
        It's a windows bug with S3 sleep. Microsoft is supposedly currently trying to fix it since LTT made a video about it
        • The_Colonel 4y ago
          I doubt MS is honestly trying to fix it, since it was MS who introduced Connected Standby as a replacement for S3 And I don't think it's just a software bug - many laptops now don't offer S3 at all, some only after toggling a BIOS option. Even then, it's often buggy on Linux as well.
        • OJFord 4y ago
          > Microsoft is supposedly currently trying to fix it since LTT made a video about it Certainly not because, if that's the implication. Maybe since then in time.
• stusmall 4y ago
  The docker situation on MacOS is so painful. That's the number 1 factor keeping me off it. It's such a fundamental tool to development in this day and age and Docker Desktop doesn't cut it at all. I used to run into mysterious lock ups of the VM when running decently complex workloads. It would happen maybe 2 or 3 times a week and I would have to blow away all state and set everything back up. Recently I've seen issues where it can't even build some non-trivial images on machines using M-series processors. I've tried Rancher Desktop too but also ran into similar issues. Neither of them can make it past building a decent sized rust project while emulating x86. This doesn't even take in account the performance of these builds that do finish. I'd be happier with slow builds if they at least worked. Aside from build and stability issues, I've also hit not-so-subtle bugs in MITM proxies they add for connections on some ports. I get why building Docker on MacOS, especially with the x86 emulation twist, is such a difficult problem. I don't envy the engineers working on this. But I don't get a developer who knows they need Docker would pick a mac for their main machine.
  • infotogivenm 4y ago
    I haven’t noticed locks/hangups but I have noticed that running/building on x86_64 images on ARM macOS (through Rosetta) is excruciatingly slow. I ended up having to switch us to cross compiling, which works okay but changing all our builds over will be a pain. For greenfield images I have not had much issue anecdotally.
  • jakear 4y ago
    Have you had much luck with Podman? I used to do QA for tooling to integrate VSCode with Docker and also couldn't stand the MacOS experience. But from what I understand podman works without the daemon and is generally more stable-ish, while being CLI/API-compatible (at least based on the issue reports I've fielded)
    • ollien 4y ago
      The reason I hated Docker Desktop was simply that I needed to spin up a VM which used up a bunch of memory (yes it's configurable, but I don't want to mess with that. I don't have to on Linux!). I don't believe the podman Mac client solves this problem (nor can it, given it just simply isn't running on a Linux kernel) On Linux, I quite like Podman! It has a couple of gaps, but for simple things it works great
• mknapper1 4y ago
  I think the headline is a little misleading. The way the question in the survey was worded, implied (to me at least) that I should check the box if I host any services on linux servers/containers.
• oblib 4y ago
  I use a Mac for development and maintaining web apps I've made. BBEdit is awesome and I spend most of my time using it. I rarely use Safari to test my work though. I loaded it last week to do some testing and it won't let my app open a new window to display a document a user creates and wants to print from the app. Apparently Apple felt that feature is so misused or dangerous they had to prevent users and websites from using it. It's the only web browser I am aware of that does that. I'll likely be moving to Linux as well at some point in the next few years.
• sergiotapia 4y ago
  Been using a Linux Mint in vmware for the last two years and it works flawlessly on desktop. Literally zero issues, even clipboards are shared between host windows and guest linux mint. It's crazy. I get to use my keyboard of choice and not bother with apple's weird hardware choices.
• locusofself 4y ago
  I've spent most of my career using a mac to deploy software to Linux. 3 years ago, I started working at Microsoft. I have to use a lot of tools that only work in Windows. A lot of Microsoft stuff is becoming more and more cross-platform, and there are probably a lot of teams that could get away with using Linux or even Mac as a daily driver. So my far on the teams I've worked on this hasn't been practical though. I find the Windows O.S. to be just fine for development, and tools like Visual Studio are very, very good. I've grown to like Windows Terminal nearly as much as Iterm2. Finding a Windows laptop that is good as Macbook is a real challenge though. I've been considering buying my own Dell XPS 17" 12th gen intel w/4k screen. My Macbook air M1 is such a good machine, I wish I could do my work on it.
  • drdec 4y ago
    > I've grown to like Windows Terminal nearly as much as Iterm2 Linux guy here wondering if that means Windows terminal is much better than it used to be or that Iterm2 is much worse than the average Apple product...
    • pram 4y ago
      Windows Terminal is a new-ish application. It does command line, powershell, and the console to your WSL instance automatically in different tabs. It's pretty slick!
      • locusofself 4y ago
        yep. It's pretty great actually. https://github.com/microsoft/terminal https://github.com/microsoft/terminal
        • nikau 4y ago
          Its getting there, but still has a lot of small annoying bugs. eg. Title/tab settings have a lot of permutations where things break.
• deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
• neoromantique 4y ago
  I've recently been completely sold on thin clients. So I use Mac and an iPad now as my primary development devices, but as far as my code is concerned it is running on a beefy Linux machine and I always pick up where I left off no matter the device I use.
  • smoldesu 4y ago
    Isn't it at least slightly concerning that all of that code could run locally if Apple let you?
    • neoromantique 4y ago
      It can very well run locally, I see no need for it however, I get to enjoy very long battery life and don't have to care about any ARM quirks.
• jesusofnazarath 4y ago
  [dead]
• tejtm 4y ago
  Over eighty comments at this point, none mentioning developing on the same OS you deploy. Non-rhetorically, Is this no longer even a consideration?
  • smoldesu 4y ago
    There are a lot of shops that bend over backwards for MacOS support. In the past, I've seen substantial internal teams get made just to ensure the product runs on MacOS. Mind you, MacOS was not a supported client target, it was just the OS everyone wanted to use for development. Logic like that just sends my mind reeling. I don't really know what software development looks like anymore, but sadly the build/deploy homogeneity is lost on a new generation of developers.
    • tensor 4y ago
      It's not lost, it's just not relevant. Build is generally done in CI/CD often on the same OS as arch as deploy. But even then, with the rise of languages that can trivially cross compile it's just not as important as it used to be.
      • smoldesu 4y ago
        You're right, at least in my experience. That being said, it's a sad sentiment that all of our development is moving off-machine to computers that could just as well be our local device.
  • TillE 4y ago
    What's to consider? Obviously I write Windows software on Windows, there's no realistic alternative. For software that runs on all of Windows/Mac/Linux, I...still generally use Windows, because Visual Studio is really good for C++ and C#. I do like macOS for embedded development, though.
  • tester756 4y ago
    but why? I develop C# on Windows and deploy on Linux without problems
• tick_tock_tick 4y ago
  Biggest issue with dev on a mac is docker is just so damn slow. You're better off with a few year old linux laptop then one of the fancy M1s just because of docker.
  • dlivingston 4y ago
    Just on x86 containers? Or do you find native ARM containers slow too?
  • MichaelMoser123 4y ago
    i think it is a bit faster if the image has been compiled for arm64. An x86_64 image is running in an emulator, that doesn't make it faster.
• jkmcf 4y ago
  I want to love Linux, but somewhere in the 2000s I just got sick and tired of trying to tweak things to just work. There was no going back when Apple released the first Intel laptop. Sure, there's an "Apple Tax" which basically means very well constructed hardware (except for keyboard-gate), free OS and generally awesome support at the Genius Bar (and profits of course). A few years ago I tried switching to Linux (RH) for work (Java) on a laptop (Dell, not my choice), and the experience was massively frustrating beginning with the touchpad. I can't hold the different keyboard shortcuts against the desktop, but my 13 years of OSX muscle memory were hard to give up. In the end, the quality and interoperability of non-IDE software was missing. I don't mind paying for good software. Docker speed was amazing, though.
  • chasd00 4y ago
    same thing happened to me. In college and my first couple jobs I used Linux everywhere. Eventually, i just got fed up. Now i use a mac and linux on servers/vms. Happy to pay for good software.
• jlpcsl 4y ago
  After all the hype I convinced my previous employer to buy me a MBP about 7 years ago and I was using it for about 3 years. Even then the macOS was quite bad, so inflexible and with irritating barriers found to often. Even for the non-development work it was just lacking or it was just very expensive to bring it to the same level. And during those 3 years the stability also suffered a lot. So in the end I was glad to be back to GNU/Linux and KDE Plasma desktop on Lenovo X1 Carbon laptop. So much more powerful, flexible experience and also cheaper. And I had to use some MBP a couple of months ago at current job and macOS is even worse than it was back then, even more limited and dumbed down (more and more like iOS) and also there is a lot of tendency to bring in more surveillance tech just like thre is in Windows. I would choose GNU/Linux with KDE Plasma any day as it currently is, for both development and free time use. This also works much better with other devices which are not from Apple it is just a much more interoperable/open system.
  • xiande04 4y ago
    Could you try providing at least 1 specific example of how MacOS is bad in your experience?
    • sofixa 4y ago
      Not OP, and I've already mentioned this a few times here on HN, but any OS that has two separate menus to configure mice and trackpads, and has two toggles for the scroll direction of each, which modify the same setting and toggle each other one way or the other is just bad. That's a stupid limitation with terrible UX. Then you can add the utter undebuggability of the OS, the total lack of feedback on anything, magic buttons appearing only if you've filled all prerequisites, thus giving you no way of knowing what is missing, etc. etc. etc. I have no idea where this cult of Apple's UX comes from, it's just not great.
    • ric2b 4y ago
      I can't even easily split the monitor to have two windows side by side without installing third party applications. I thought this was supposed to be the pinnacle of UX?
• pkos98 4y ago
  Window management. Or lack thereof in MacOS. Having experienced Window management in Windows and I3/herbstluftwm, I am still confused by the terrible window management in MacOS and glad to have switched to Linux and Windows.
• TheCowboy 4y ago
  A year ago I bought my first Macbook after using Linux as my default for years. I was tired of declining hardware quality from Thinkpad and I kept having to replace them. I also was interested in the M1's battery life and bright screen for doing more work outside. There was also a shortage of builds using new Ryzens that were competitive at the time, so the Apple premium wasn't really that much more. I just really haven't used it much beyond casual use cases (streaming/web). The main, and maybe dumb, reason is that it's been a lot of work to get the keymap to function. I still use Windows/Linux, and relearning everything after having used Emacs layouts for 10+ years just isn't going to work for me. Some of the desktop/windows management stuff also feels clunky as well. I like the hardware quality and everything looks nice, but it might be my last.
• davidw 4y ago
  I've been a happy Linux user since about 1995. I was forced to use a Mac at my last company and I loathed every minute of it. Indeed, I've started using that as a way to see how flexible companies are. "Can I use a Linux laptop?". Some are like "sure, as long as you get your work done!". Those are better places to work, IMO.
  • gabrielgio 4y ago
    I agree. Also fortunately, I’m in position where I can refuse to work for a company which forbids me for using Linux. There is no point to me to work on anything else.
  • dmix 4y ago
    Why would company doing software force you to use MacOS these days? Security/enterprise management? Some unique software stack?
    • davidw 4y ago
      Security reasons related to handling money, put vaguely. It's not a terrible reason, but I was still grumpy using that machine. Some companies are just "that's the standard and what everyone uses and that's just the way things are" and they aren't great places to work.
  • deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
• awesomegoat_com 4y ago
  2 years ago, I have joined company that required me to use MacOS. Seeing all the cool kids of 2014-2016 use MacOS, I have been optimistic and kinda looking forward to learn new things. Boy, what a surprise. Today, I try to spend all 8 hours hiding in emacs, so I don't have to walk this walled garden that does not even allow me to customize all the keybinds. It is clearly not an environment for power users and that's why they have a success with it.
  • robertoandred 4y ago
    > does not even allow me to customize all the keybinds System Settings -> Keyboard -> Keyboard Shortcuts
    • awesomegoat_com 4y ago
      Oh, yeah, but then there is about a dozen keybindings that could not be re-mapped.
• ChrisMarshallNY 4y ago
  That's not surprising, since the lions' share of dev, these days, are variations and implementations of various SaaS/CRUD services. Linux is definitely better for that. Me, I'm an Apple developer. I think there may be ways to write Mac/iOS software on non-Mac machines, but not natively.
• spritefs 4y ago
  The one thing that macbooks do exceptionally well are the trackpad gestures and accuracy. This is the one thing that I can think of off the top of my head where I'd be surprised to see any match from any other machine/OS combo. Even after dual booting with my mbp, the Linux trackpad driver just doesn't work as well This and the linux wifi driver annoyingness are the two things that keep me from just ditching apple software completely
• the_cat_kittles 4y ago
  another simple reason- linux stays fucking put. mac constantly bothering you to update, fuck completely off!
• truth_seeker 4y ago
  Kernel versions 6.0, 6.1 and 6.2 when they make to mainstream distributions will give developers many more reasons to choose Linux over MacOS.
  • vips7L 4y ago
    Why? The kernel has never mattered in any programming I’ve done except device drivers.
    • guenthert 4y ago
      Don't know which features of the Linux kernel OP expects to be of importance to developers, but (historic perhaps) to us it (painfully) mattered that Linux kernels before 3.10 didn't support docker fully. Every now and then, there is a feature that matters to userland.
• mk89 4y ago
  Not an Apple fanboy but wow I read a lot of criticism here. I love macbooks since the 2013 model until the newest one (skipping the 2017 model with the weird keyboard, if I recall right). Not sure what issues with Docker many of you are experiencing, but I have been using docker for Desktop quite extensively and it works. The only bad issue I had so far after so many years of use, to be really honest, is that since I upgraded to Ventura my laptop crashed 3 times after opening Xcode or various IDEs. Never happened before, and that’s kind of annoying but I can live with that for now.
• lapcat 4y ago
  I wonder what the stats would be from 15-20 years ago. It's sad how Apple has squandered the UNIX/NeXTSTEP/Mac OS X heritage of macOS. They continue to rip those components out of the OS with no replacement. As a university student, I was very attracted to Mac OS X because of UNIX. It was huge selling point for me over Windows. Now, the tables have almost turned.
  • fexecve 4y ago
    Specifically which UNIX/NeXTSTEP/OSX components are you missing in the current MacOS? It seems like everything is still there to me.
• mikedelago 4y ago
  I strongly prefer linux. my company-provided workstation is MacOS, and I find that it's good enough but not great, but it doesn't get in my way. Previously, I had to use Windows on a workstation, and that was simply awful. Slow, inconsistent for configuration, and WSL was barely an improvement over a proper Unix/Unix-like system.
  • mikedelago 4y ago
    "was barely an improvement over a proper Unix/Unix-like system." should be "was barely a usable alternative compared to a proper Unix/Unix-like system"
• welder 4y ago
  The data [0] shows different. Most devs use Windows as a primary operating system, then Mac, then Linux last. I'm sure devs use Linux servers, but they don't use Linux as their primary OS. StackOverflow should ask the question differently. Their own survey contradicts itself, saying the top 5 IDEs used include Visual Studio (32%) and Notepad++ (28%) which don't even run on Linux. How does that add up? [0] https://wakatime.com/blog/51-wakatime-2021-programming-stats https://wakatime.com/blog/51-wakatime-2021-programming-stats
  • athorax 4y ago
    Yeah... "More Developers Use Linux than Mac, Report Shows" is a pretty disingenuous take. "More developers use some combination of linux/macos/windows more than macos" maybe
  • tester756 4y ago
    What is this?
    • pie_flavor 4y ago
      Time tracking software to ensure you're not browsing HN. I like seeing it because it cuts out all the guesswork of whether you should work there, turning it into a flat 'no, run away quickly'.
  • darzu 4y ago
    The sampling biases are _really_ important here, stated another way: Of developers who use WakaTime, most use Windows. Of developers who answer StackOverflow surveys, most use Linux. These aren't contradictions.
    • welder 4y ago
      Sure, but "Of devs who answer StackOverflow surveys, most use Linux" is just wrong. To prove it, add up some top IDEs used that don't even run on Linux [0]: + Visual Studio (32.15%) + Notepad++ (27.71%) + Xcode (10.53%) = 70.39% That leaves only 29% left for Linux, but they claim Linux usage is 40% [1]. Unfortunately, Linux is still 3rd in primary OS usage and this survey question is flawed. [0] https://survey.stackoverflow.co/2022/#section-most-popular-technologies-integrated-development-environment https://survey.stackoverflow.co/2022/#section-most-popular-t... [1] https://survey.stackoverflow.co/2022/#section-most-popular-technologies-operating-system https://survey.stackoverflow.co/2022/#section-most-popular-t...
• xrayarx 4y ago
  This was news already a few days ago https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34130894 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34130894
• giancarlostoro 4y ago
  Windows 11 is more than just an OS its an OS with a bunch of crap bundled on top. This is why I opt for POP OS instead for my personal box, and all my Steam games just work to boot. I just want an OS that isnt shoveling products or getting in my way.
• dawnerd 4y ago
  Ya I highly doubt this. Basically every dev I know either uses a MBP or some Windows computer. None use any version of Linux as their desktop. But we all use Linux as a dev environment in some manner.
• snickerbockers 4y ago
  I had to use a macbook at a previous employer. It didn't live up to its reputation of being user-friendly. The alt-key didn't work by default on the terminal emulator and I had to enable it in some menu after googling the problem. The infamous command key was just annoying and i wish i had a real control key. I also hate how they stubbornly refuse to put a second button on any of their trackpads/mouses (mice?); the fact that they implemented a version of right-click by clicking with two fingers shows that it's needed and that they abstain from it out of pure stubbornness. The one saving grace for this is that they let you plug in a USB mouse, and the right-click will work as intended but I'd still prefer it if it was build into the system. In addition to being counter-intuitive, the double-click would also prevent problems for users with disabilities. Also could prevent problems for gamers since FPS games generally assume you have at least two mouse buttons, although to be fair touchpads don't work well for gaming in any case so you'd probably still need a USB mouse for gaming even if they did have the right click. I also found the lack of ethernet frustrating; I had to use a stupid over-priced thunderbolt/ethernet adapter to get online. Since this was a laptop, that meant I had one more thing to carry around and one more thing to plug in every time I used it. The touchpad also had some durability issues; after a couple years it stopped clicking when I pressed it. It still worked somehow but it didn't have that crisp "click" feeling that you get from tact switches and it stopped making noise when i pressed it. Still usable but it felt uncomfortable. I also wish they had something similar to that desk dock that lenovo thinkpads have. I wouldn't really fault them for not having this since most PC laptops don't have it either (in fact, I think I've only ever seen it on thinkpads and I'm not sure if they all have it either) but it's an amazing convenience when you work in a cubicle to just be able to drop your laptop into the dock and have your monitor, keyboard, mouse, power, speakers, and ethernet all connect through that one bus. One last problem is their batshit insane decision to deprecate OpenGL while not supporting Vulkan either. This is less of a usability problem than a general platform problem, but I develop an open-source application which has 3D graphics, and the lack of any cross-platform graphics API is a dealbreaker for me, both as a user and as a developer. I just can't work without OpenGL/Vulkan. I could port my program to Metal if I really wanted to put in the extra effort to support apple, but even then I wouldn't be able to use a macintosh as my primary development platform because I wouldn't be able to test the OpenGL backend that my program relies on for every other platform. Their decision to deprecate this absolutely unprecedented; even M$ at the height of their monopoly in the late 90s still supported OpenGL; they could have dropped it and only supported DirectX if they wanted to lock developers into their platform but they chose not to. Apple seems to want to lock customers in to their platform at every level, and at this point they're worse than M$ ever was.
• totalhack 4y ago
  I just switched back to Linux. The main reason was the arm arch software headaches and my heavy use of docker, but it didn't hurt that I got something that costs half the price of a similarly spec'd MacBook. I almost got the M2 Air until I saw the surprising pricing. My main headaches have been quick to get over, mostly around keyboard shortcuts and clipboard behavior, but the only really concerning one is the laptop trying to cook itself during sleep. This has happened maybe 3 or 4 times in a few months of regular use. Kernel updates and bios settings have made no difference yet. After stepping away from Linux for about 5 years I'm mostly pleasantly surprised with the progress though. It's really not far from there being no reason to even consider wasting money on a Mac unless you have some very specific creative software needs (or you need mega battery life, which is never fully utilized for me).
  • dmix 4y ago
    > It's really not far from there being no reason to even consider wasting money on a Mac unless you have some very specific creative software needs Most software devs get their Macbooks paid for by their work. If I had to buy my own laptop I'd also seriously consider a Linux box.
  • deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
• vb-8448 4y ago
  So many comments and no one saying that a linux laptop is far more affordable? I guess the main reason is that with $1200 you can get a high end linux laptop while for the same amount of money you get a M1 Air.
• nu11ptr 4y ago
  No specialized hw, everything open source, very simple to use sw repos, GNU-style tools by default, docker... honestly never understood why macs were preferred to linux. I like both but always prefer linux.
• LAC-Tech 4y ago
  I'm mostly happy with desktop Linux. I won't pretend it's perfect - but people wildly overstate how allegedly complicated and unusual it is. I definitely find it over all slightly easier to maintain and administrate that Windows. Have limited experience with OSX, but I remember it looking quite pretty and being very clunky to use.
• dang 4y ago
  Related: Stack Overflow Developer Survey 2022 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31836974 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31836974 - June 2022 (364 comments)
• rebeccaskinner 4y ago
  I gave macOS a shot for a few years, but for me the benefits just never outweighed the costs. I never found that macOS "just worked" any better than Linux- the underlying OS was just as flaky and prone to weird errors, and a lot of open source software that I used was objectively worse. These days the only things I really miss about macOS are consistent keyboard shortcuts, and omnigraffle- and those two things aren't anywhere near enough to get me to switch back.
  • askonomm 4y ago
    That's odd to me to hear when on Linux half the updates crash the entire window manager, and once crashed, the only way to fix is to dig deep into CLI because that's the only thing you can even see anymore. Not to mention if you install a wrong GPU driver, which is much easier to do on Linux that one would want, same happens. There's no defaulting back to fallback when a failure occurs. Nothing. Just death. Not to mention the infinite problems with Nvidia GPU's, Wayland-specific issues, or X11 specific issues. Makes it seem as if there's no hardware that fully supports Linux. You have to be a Linux expert to use Linux even remotely well. And that's pretty stupid if you ask me.
    • rebeccaskinner 4y ago
      > That's odd to me to hear when on Linux half the updates crash the entire window manager, and once crashed, the only way to fix is to dig deep into CLI because that's the only thing you can even see anymore. That's not my experience. I can't remember the last time an update broke my window manager. I won't say it doesn't happen, but I don't think very common at all these days. > Not to mention if you install a wrong GPU driver, which is much easier to do on Linux that one would want, same happens. Again, I don't think this is really the risk that you're making it out to be. Most distributions are going to default to a reasonable driver for the hardware. There might be some knowledge required if you're using an old enough nvidia GPU but don't want to use the open source drivers, but that's an edge case that isn't going to impact a lot of people. > There's no defaulting back to fallback when a failure occurs. Nothing. Just death. macOS and Windows can both brick your machine with a bad update. I use NixOS and I think the situation is much better on average because I can always roll back to exactly any previous state of my system. > Not to mention the infinite problems with Nvidia GPU's, Wayland-specific issues, or X11 specific issues. Nvidia is a bit of a pain, but it _mostly_ just works these days. X11 and Wayland both have their issues, I don't feel like the overall state of things is worse than the alternative though. Sure, you don't have the particular bugs in Windows or macOS that you have to deal with using X or Wayland, but you have a whole different set of problems. I find the Linux problems generally more pleasant to live with. > Makes it seem as if there's no hardware that fully supports Linux. Most hardware works pretty well with Linux these days, and you can buy machines that ship with Linux if you want to guarantee support. > You have to be a Linux expert to use Linux even remotely well. And that's pretty stupid if you ask me. Linux great for beginners and people who don't demand a lot from their machines, and it's great for people who are willing to invest a bit of time into learning the system (and I think that investment has a pretty high return). You don't _have_ to be an expert to use Linux. Where I think most Linux distributions have struggled historically has been with the power user segment- people who either know Windows or macOS well and expect the same level of competency in Linux without spending the time learning another OS, or people who have strongly adapted to the quirks of other OSes and find Linux's different set of quirks more grating. That isn't "stupid" - it would be great if Linux worked better for that group of people, but power users of any system are always the hardest to transition over.
• alanwreath 4y ago
  Don’t forget there are many of us who would have picked Linux over Windows if IT supported it. And to those who say “but WSL..” you have more patience than I when dealing with a windows specific bug when inside a Linux environment.
• abalashov 4y ago
  I switched to Mac in summer of 2021--right to an M1, never had an x86 Mac--after running desktop Linux in various flavours for the previous 23 years: RedHat 4.0, then Mandrake, Debian, Ubuntu, Arch. It's fair to say I've been a developer for that long, too, if you take seriously the notion of a 10 year-old mucking around with C socket code on a 486. Pluses and minuses, but overall very happy with the switch. - Biggest con: I miss the raw efficiency, unparalleled speed and superior ergonomics of my i3wm bushido, and will never match that in any conceivable fashion on OSX (yes, I've gone through the whole Yabai/Amethyst/etc journey, and ended up ditching it all and just going back to vanilla. Those half-hearted efforts at a tiling window manager just kept hard things hard and made easy things hard, too.) - Biggest pro: better hardware (which I realise isn't an OS attribute), never having to care about how my computer works or fix much of anything, lots of seamless and turn-key behaviours that just make sense (particularly vis-a-vis suspend and multi-monitor stuff), and (surprisingly to some), it's refreshing to be able to inhabit a common universe with other computer users and talk about the same sorts of stuff. Nobody really ever understood my Linux gibberish while I had only a distant idea of what a 'Finder' was that went back to System 7.5.5. It's nice to have more friends. - Biggest misconception going into OSX: that one actually has to use GUI stuff for much of anything. Nah. The browser, iTerm2, VS Code, and Mail is where I live, same as under Linux. Mostly just the first two. - Biggest misconception about desktop Linux from Mac users: that it requires so much care and feeding. I ran Arch, of all things, with its continuous rolling releases, from 2016-2021 and although the initial setup had a long tail and was ultimately an investment of a few days, nothing I can remember ever broke for me afterward -- not on desktop, not on laptop. Mac users tell me they're sure things did break for me, and that I just internalised my Linux trauma. No, they really didn't. It was shockingly stable. It was just kind of mediocre in other ways that start to have more meaning only after you've spent enough of your life tweaking your desktop experience. Edit: I didn't look at the survey in detail, but I hope they make a distinction between desktop use and server use. Sure, I use Linux for development. I'd even say predominantly. I think of my MacBook as a nicer GUI for all my Linux work.
  • jamesbfb 4y ago
    > I miss the raw efficiency, unparalleled speed and superior ergonomics of my i3wm bushido I'm in the same vein as you. I tried to be productive on my m1, but as a 10+ year rusted on i3 user, I cannot for the life of me ween myself off it.
• 734129837261 4y ago
  I'd imagine that, as people in poorer regions in the world get access to laptops, we'll see a big increase in free operating systems. Sure, you could crack Windows, but why would you? Windows 11 isn't really good, and cracked software gets no support. Might as well go for a legal Ubuntu with lots of community support and decades of online help for all possible issues. It's a modern OS nowadays. The real question should be: would most developers WANT to use a Mac, if given the choice? Personally, I think OSX is the superior of the two simply because it's stable as can be, takes no (and allows almost no) tinkering to get working. Controversial opinion, I'm sure.
  • PartiallyTyped 4y ago
    > The real question should be: would most developers WANT to use a Mac, if given the choice? If the decision is between Ubuntu and Mac, they will go with Mac because it usually means better hardware and build quality. I don't think that non-mac laptops have screens that can compete with XDR displays. > (and allows almost no) tinkering to get working I think that we tend to overlook or dismiss the amount of tinkering we do in MacOS. Installing certain toolchains can be a real PITA, we have to deal with homebrew, outdated utilities (thank god for coreutils in homebrew), and so on.
    • bee_rider 4y ago
      Apple makes perfectly decent devices, but I’d be shocked if there was a metric, maybe other than CPU power with good efficiency inside the envelope that they target, where one couldn’t find something where non-Mac laptops “can’t compete” with a Mac. The XDR display is nice I’m sure, but there are laptops out there with 4K OLED displays… I dunno. From what I’ve observed, Apple products are mostly nice due to the attention to detail and the fact that the purchaser can be pretty sure that nothing will be truly deficient. Other than that one time with the MacBook keyboards. So many products are like: fantastic but here‘s some crippling issue. Apple skips that.
      • PartiallyTyped 4y ago
        - speakers - chassis flex / build quality - battery life Just because a panel is oled and 4k doesn’t mean that it is a good panel. I have a 4k oled tv and its contrast ratios are garbage compared to the laptop. The panel in the 16inch mbp has variable refresh rate, 10k dimming zones due to the 10k mini leds, 1600 nits peak brightness, 1000 sustained.
• poulsbohemian 4y ago
  Maybe this is heresy, but I really have never understood the move to Docker in the context of development environment. You wanna use containers in production environments, great, go for it. I suppose someone will say that then necessitates Docker in dev because we want dev to mirror production in some form - but that's seldom a reality. Some talk too about how Docker made it easy to bring up new development environments / onboard new developers, but in practice I've never seen this as a "Docker" thing - there were plenty of other ways to accomplish this goal, and Docker in some of my experience just added yet another tool. As for why I continue to use a Mac for development - it works, my fingers are mapped to the keyboard commands, and it's the best combo of hardware+software that I've found so far.
  • Szpadel 4y ago
    if you are preparing your own env, then I agree, but if you want whole team/company to share the same env then it's useful tool even with all complications it introduces. its even more useful when your dev env need to be updated fairly often.
    • poulsbohemian 4y ago
      Yeah, I get that’s the idea… I’ve just never seen it work, and any context for me has turned into a “what is docker actually doing for me in this context?” When I worked with specialized hardware / OS dependent things, we needed to bring up full VMs with our config. When I worked in shops with lots of microservices, it was better to actually run against the current integration environment rather than try to bring them all up locally. For so many apps, package management is the important part in terms of consistency from one machine to the next. So - I get what other people tell me about docker, I’ve just never been able to make sense of it as useful in my dev environments and teams. In fact, the one team I saw that really committed to it hard, it was a cluster (and maybe that’s why I have a trauma response toward it).
      • nikau 4y ago
        Its just a rehash what devs did in the 90s, ie. have a zip or tar file of an installation directory of dev tools and utilities. We used to do it back then with everything statically linked or libs put into a folder with a LD_PRELOAD variant for whichever unix os they were on. And it makes sense - if you have ever had to support a large team of developers you find out that a lot of them are totally siloed into their development niche and most have no idea around how to debug a bash script or troubleshoot issues when they encounter a simple deviation from the onboarding instructions. Then you have fun things like there being 2 conflicting versions of yq out in the wild and conflicting utilities if someone has installed GNU tools in preference of the mac versions and a docker image makes a lot of sense.
• bsnnkv 4y ago
  It would be interesting to have a further breakdown showing how many developers using Linux are using Linux via WSL.
• baka367 4y ago
  I tried to migrate to linux (from windows) four times his year, but after spending multiple days at a time I could never get to a single baseline working environment… I can’t believe that the barrier of entry in 2022 is still as high as 10 years ago.. Redhead broken here, Ubuntu doesn’t support that, popos randomly freezes to death, while Garuda pukes blood after getting stuck in the middle of setting face login up, etc. and this is after hours of googling and entering specific bash voodoo. Damn I don’t want a hyper-specialized deployment… I just want a base installation with gpu and laptop hardware feature support that I could then build on
• stevefan1999 4y ago
  I beg to differ: most of us are _carnivores_ in terms of operating system choices. I still personally use Windows because of its stability. I tried Arch 5 years ago and was lucky enough to hit the dreaded Linux 4.19 EXT4 bug that lost everything I invested in Linux. After that I almost never use Linux desktop again out of the fear of losing valuable source code. However this does not stop me from adopting Proxmox and Alpine into my homelab stack though. I recently started to evaluate into Fedora because it is pretty stable. At least much better than Arch in terms of stability while still offering a great amount of customization ability above Debian and its derivatives. --- The more interesting thing is I actually learned more about Linux internals since the last time I got the ext4 bug that erased my Manjaro. I then understood how lost+found works and how to scavenge data from the bitmap mess created by that bug and tried to find alternative file system to work around the caveats and inefficiency of ext4. That's how I came across ZFS and eventually Proxmox. And even the general concept of copy-on-write and influenced my data structure of choice by knowing things like append-only file and persistent data structure. Because of one Linux ext4 bug, I have lost valuable source code that not committed, but at the same time learnt a lot. This is bad and good at the same time, but still bad in the end logically speaking (because "bad and not bad" still equals bad)
  • juniperplant 4y ago
    Your comment sparked my curiosity about this bug, which I vaguely remember reading about a few years ago. Apparently, it wasn't a bug in the EXT4 filesystem, but rather in a kernel component called blk-mq. Source: https://www.phoronix.com/news/Linux-4.19-4.20-BLK-MQ-Fix https://www.phoronix.com/news/Linux-4.19-4.20-BLK-MQ-Fix
• gloosx 4y ago
  I'm personally forced to use Mac like many others in order to account for 28% iOS mobile market share. There are two truths which kinda make this unpreventable You can only build iOS apps in XCode You can only do USB-debugging for iOS Safari on Mac, and they made it so buggy so you HAVE to debug all these inconsistencies with WebKit. Apparently good job from Apple to secure Mac's positions, but generally each year MacOS feels more and more "abadonware", a lot of stuff doesn't get fixed for years while new touch-y features come in. It certainly feels that they don't make as much money from it as from iOS, and ideally they wanna merge this stuff removing the line between iPads and MacBooks
• pnt12 4y ago
  Windows, docker and WSL are my favorite combo. Windows is a user friendly platform, WSL brings a good CLI, docker is a great way to distribute software. So I guess the uptick in Linux has been due to containers and WSL. In my circle, still few people run it natively in their work computer.
• cphelps01 4y ago
  Not even remotely surprising.
• fexecve 4y ago
  If anyone from StackExchange is reading this, please actually ask the question in 2023! You know the one. The one the headlines keep implying. "What OS do you write most of your code on?"