4 ms·

Out of curiosity, what were you missing from Linux? That's not to say I don't miss things from Linux (/proc, XMonad to name two), just nothing all that much.

weaksauce 15y ago
For me it's a package manager that does not require a compile every time I want to install something. edit: also macports seems fragile too.
- mdwrigh2 15y ago
  Ah, macports is a bit fragile, yes :) I'm pretty happy with homebrew, however (for the most part). Plus writing formulas for homebrew is really easy.
  - Turing_Machine 15y ago
    +1 on Homebrew. I had both fink and MacPorts running at one time. Homebrew is more pleasant in every respect (my opinion, of course).
    - getsat 15y ago
      Homebrew is great. Macports is good, too, if you like seeing which programs will segfault due to the version of OpenSSL it currently includes.
    - montecarl 15y ago
      I liked homebrew until I needed pygtk. I don't know of any good way to install that but with macports and boy is it a pain to install without a package manager. And once I needed macports. I also like to have a recent version of gcc. This also required macports.
    - danieldk 15y ago
      Homebrew is great, but it's quite annoying that one day Apple decides to drop straight gcc from Xcode, making many Formulae uncompilable. Yes, you can install an older Xcode first, or use a 3rd party gcc build. But in Linux distributions such as Debian, they'd just keep 'deprecated' things around for some time
    - jcurbo 15y ago
      I like Homebrew but I wish there was something like porticus for it (a way to browse and install available packages) - unless I am just missing something.
tikhonj 15y ago
Can't you run XMonad on a mac? I'm pretty sure a couple people I know do just that. (There might be some wrangling and virtual machines, but I doubt it.)
- mdwrigh2 15y ago
  You can run XMonad on a Mac, but it will only tile X11 apps, not standard OS X apps, which unfortunately makes it fairly useless for me. And of course, working in a VM with it is always an option (and I have a VM setup with it for when I want to drop back into linux).
  - tikhonj 15y ago
    Does that include Chrome? Because I've definitely seen them use Chrome, and it looked Mac OS-y. Of course, the people I'm thinking of probably have a different outlook on OS X: they like it, but not the UI. (That's a paraphrase from one of them:)).
- jcurbo 15y ago
  I've fiddled with xmonad on the mac, and as someone else said it only tiles X11 apps. This is not totally useless as I primarily like xmonad for controlling terminal windows, so I set it up to manage urxvt instances. I used xmonad.layout.gaps to make it avoid my dock area (I like my dock on the left, and I like to have the dock even when xmonad is around) and it seems to work well but the configuration breaks in subtle ways (doesn't start up sometimes, etc). I haven't put any more time into figuring it out. I might just go the VM route to get my xmonad fix. If Lion's x11.app had true Lion fullscreen support it might work better, but it doesn't yet.
jlarocco 15y ago
I miss Apt from Debian. And I really, really miss being able to get *-dev packages.
billpatrianakos 15y ago
I missed apt-get a teeny tiny bit but Homebrew is amazing. I'm not really into customizing my system all that much either so it wasn't that either. It's Lion that has me a little upset. First off, Lion has replaced GCC with LLVM which for the most part is fine but I was doing some work with Ruby that I started on my Linux machine then when I cloned it on my Mac (which is where I do the majority of my work) I had problems with Rubygems and RVM. This was due to me having the latest Xcode 4.2. I was getting a weird Posix error because some gems needed to be compiled with GCC. So then I had to remove Xcode, get GCC as a standalone install and I'm still stuck with errors. Most things work but the other day I just wanted to deploy a new Octopress blog and rake generate throws a long list of errors at me. So that was the first time I was truly upset with Mac. Then the other little things are: - inability to save or rename files without a name (as in .htaccess). I always have to open my main text editor for that as you can't rename files that way nor does TextEdit allow that - no more "Save as" Showing hidden files got a little harder too and then there were some general quirks that made it seem like the OS was babysitting me and not letting me just do what I knew I wanted to do. For the most part I'm over those and I love my Mac to death but I'm still pissd about how much of a chore it is to get RVM and Runygems working in Lion.
- GeneralMaximus 15y ago
  AFAIK Xcode still ships with gcc, even though llvm-gcc is default. I regularly use "brew install --use-gcc" for things that don't work with llvm-gcc. I believe rake should allow you to specify a C compiler on the command line. Even if it doesn't, you can temporarily change your CC environment variable to point to the gcc binary instead of llvm-gcc and things will probably work. Probably.
  - danieldk 15y ago
    No, it's not included anymore, though you might still have it as a result of upgrading from an older version of Xcode. More information is in the Homebrew issue: https://github.com/mxcl/homebrew/issues/6852 https://github.com/mxcl/homebrew/issues/6852
  - billpatrianakos 15y ago

weaksauce 15y ago

For me it's a package manager that does not require a compile every time I want to install something. edit: also macports seems fragile too.

mdwrigh2 15y ago
Ah, macports is a bit fragile, yes :) I'm pretty happy with homebrew, however (for the most part). Plus writing formulas for homebrew is really easy.
- Turing_Machine 15y ago
  +1 on Homebrew. I had both fink and MacPorts running at one time. Homebrew is more pleasant in every respect (my opinion, of course).
  - getsat 15y ago
    Homebrew is great. Macports is good, too, if you like seeing which programs will segfault due to the version of OpenSSL it currently includes.
  - montecarl 15y ago
    I liked homebrew until I needed pygtk. I don't know of any good way to install that but with macports and boy is it a pain to install without a package manager. And once I needed macports. I also like to have a recent version of gcc. This also required macports.
  - danieldk 15y ago
    Homebrew is great, but it's quite annoying that one day Apple decides to drop straight gcc from Xcode, making many Formulae uncompilable. Yes, you can install an older Xcode first, or use a 3rd party gcc build. But in Linux distributions such as Debian, they'd just keep 'deprecated' things around for some time
  - jcurbo 15y ago
    I like Homebrew but I wish there was something like porticus for it (a way to browse and install available packages) - unless I am just missing something.

tikhonj 15y ago

Can't you run XMonad on a mac? I'm pretty sure a couple people I know do just that. (There might be some wrangling and virtual machines, but I doubt it.)

mdwrigh2 15y ago
You can run XMonad on a Mac, but it will only tile X11 apps, not standard OS X apps, which unfortunately makes it fairly useless for me. And of course, working in a VM with it is always an option (and I have a VM setup with it for when I want to drop back into linux).
- tikhonj 15y ago
  Does that include Chrome? Because I've definitely seen them use Chrome, and it looked Mac OS-y. Of course, the people I'm thinking of probably have a different outlook on OS X: they like it, but not the UI. (That's a paraphrase from one of them:)).
jcurbo 15y ago
I've fiddled with xmonad on the mac, and as someone else said it only tiles X11 apps. This is not totally useless as I primarily like xmonad for controlling terminal windows, so I set it up to manage urxvt instances. I used xmonad.layout.gaps to make it avoid my dock area (I like my dock on the left, and I like to have the dock even when xmonad is around) and it seems to work well but the configuration breaks in subtle ways (doesn't start up sometimes, etc). I haven't put any more time into figuring it out. I might just go the VM route to get my xmonad fix. If Lion's x11.app had true Lion fullscreen support it might work better, but it doesn't yet.

jlarocco 15y ago

I miss Apt from Debian. And I really, really miss being able to get *-dev packages.

billpatrianakos 15y ago

I missed apt-get a teeny tiny bit but Homebrew is amazing. I'm not really into customizing my system all that much either so it wasn't that either. It's Lion that has me a little upset. First off, Lion has replaced GCC with LLVM which for the most part is fine but I was doing some work with Ruby that I started on my Linux machine then when I cloned it on my Mac (which is where I do the majority of my work) I had problems with Rubygems and RVM. This was due to me having the latest Xcode 4.2. I was getting a weird Posix error because some gems needed to be compiled with GCC. So then I had to remove Xcode, get GCC as a standalone install and I'm still stuck with errors. Most things work but the other day I just wanted to deploy a new Octopress blog and rake generate throws a long list of errors at me. So that was the first time I was truly upset with Mac. Then the other little things are: - inability to save or rename files without a name (as in .htaccess). I always have to open my main text editor for that as you can't rename files that way nor does TextEdit allow that - no more "Save as" Showing hidden files got a little harder too and then there were some general quirks that made it seem like the OS was babysitting me and not letting me just do what I knew I wanted to do. For the most part I'm over those and I love my Mac to death but I'm still pissd about how much of a chore it is to get RVM and Runygems working in Lion.

GeneralMaximus 15y ago
AFAIK Xcode still ships with gcc, even though llvm-gcc is default. I regularly use "brew install --use-gcc" for things that don't work with llvm-gcc. I believe rake should allow you to specify a C compiler on the command line. Even if it doesn't, you can temporarily change your CC environment variable to point to the gcc binary instead of llvm-gcc and things will probably work. Probably.
- danieldk 15y ago
  No, it's not included anymore, though you might still have it as a result of upgrading from an older version of Xcode. More information is in the Homebrew issue: https://github.com/mxcl/homebrew/issues/6852 https://github.com/mxcl/homebrew/issues/6852
- billpatrianakos 15y ago