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Ask HN - Which OS do you prefer for programming?

• factorialboy 15y ago
  To answer the question myself, I'm on an Xubuntu (Ubuntu but with XFCE)
• smountcastle 15y ago
  Mac OS X 10.7.2 It has all of my favorite Unix tools as well as the best Mac apps for development.
• nitinkhanna 15y ago
  Depends on the project. I use windows, Mac and Ubuntu off and on. Tool wise Mac and Linux are most flexible
• joshmanders 15y ago
  Unix based. So basically OS X, or Linux. I currently use Ubuntu 10.04 LTS but will be switching to Mac OS X Lion here in the coming months on all 3 of my development machines.
• mindcrime 15y ago
  Fedora Linux for me.
• Jem 15y ago
  I'm a PHP developer (if you count that as programming) so can easily develop on anything with a text editor. Unfortunately I also do a lot of PSD->HTML stuff which writes linux out of the equation (GIMP just isn't good enough.) At the minute I'm running WinXP at work and Win7 at home. If Photoshop were not part of the equation I'd be running xubuntu again.
• drcode 15y ago
  Ubuntu with XMonad is the best way I know of of running a web browser, browser console, emacs, and a terminal on-screen simultaneously on a notebook (with a large screen.)
• Spoygg 15y ago
  Ubuntu 11.04 on work and Ubuntu 11.10 at home.
• skykooler 15y ago
  Mac OSX Snow Leopard at work, Ubuntu 10.04 at home. Unfortunately I can't use Lion because I have a 32-bit computer. I've tried extending my dev environment to include Windows, but it's such a hassle making it play nice (line endings, shell scripts etc.) that I've pretty much given that up.
• SlipperySlope 15y ago
  Lubuntu - Ubuntu rich debian repositories without annoying Unity desktop. LXDE is a familiar menu-driven desktop - and fast. I am a Java 7 AI developer running a multi-monitor development desktop, a server for svn / jenkins continuous integration, an alpha production server, and two linux laptops. I also have a Windows 7 desktop and laptop for testing, and network everything with Samba. Computers range from single core 512MB RAM to four-core 16GB RAM. I use cron jobs and rsync for cross-server backups and also replicate the most important files on Ubuntu One - the cloud backup service. Lubuntu is fastest for my Java development. I keep 7 virtual desktops on dual monitors and like the familiar menus and taskbars for application switching and monitoring. Years ago I was a Windows NT developer but Linux is much cheaper and much easier to debug via open source. In the last decade I have used Red Hat, SUSE, KDE, Gnome and Ubuntu. I have only one machine left to convert from Ubuntu to Lubuntu with a new install.
• sandipagr 15y ago
  Windows XP/7 at work and Ubuntu at home I use Windows 7 for everything beside programming even at home.
• mcrittenden 15y ago
  Arch Linux + Scrotwm as the window manager and desktop environment. Arch because: - It's simple, you only install what you need - Don't have to upgrade ever 6 months - Software in the repos is always up to date - The wiki is extremely helpful and the community is smart Scrotwm because: - Tiling WMs are just more productive to me - It is configured with a plain text file - It has vim-like keybindings by default - It behaves the way my mind works (much like XMonad but without the Haskell) This setup is fast and nimble and super productive to me, someone who tries to avoid the mouse as much as possible. I wrote a more detailed post about my setup here: http://mikethecoder.com/post/10563094906/my-minimalist-setup http://mikethecoder.com/post/10563094906/my-minimalist-setup
• kgutteridge 15y ago
  iPhone developer so don't have that much choice really, but would probably still use OSX or Ubuntu given the freedom to choose