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Because the alternatives are to spend twice as much on Apple devices, or to spend countless hours wrestling with Linux doing things like finding a driver for yo

Because the alternatives are to spend twice as much on Apple devices, or to spend countless hours wrestling with Linux doing things like finding a driver for your wireless card.

alexjplant 3y ago
These are contrivances. MacBook Airs cost roughly as much as similarly-configured Ultrabooks (or whatever higher-end laptops are now referred to as) and wireless networking has "just worked" on the last two dozen devices I've installed Linux on in the past decade.
- SoftTalker 3y ago
  Linux itself pretty much "just works" on any mainstream hardware these days, but the same cannot be said about many enterprise software products. Then you're dealing with trying to run them in a Windows VM which adds complexity, may not be supported, or may not work at all.
- fkyoureadthedoc 3y ago
  > MacBook Airs cost roughly as much as similarly-configured Ultrabooks My job is not buying fancy ultra-books for the vast majority of employees. The tooling for admins seems to be much better for them on the windows side vs Mac too.
olyjohn 3y ago
This is such a tired old trope. Nobody who runs a business is going to just throw random Linux distros on random laptops. You buy a laptop that is supported with the OS that comes on it. You get the laptop, turn it on and it works. You must also think that businesses are building their own custom PCs too. Also the fact that you think business laptops are half the price of Apples shows your full ignorance. Enterprise laptops are rarely cheaper than Macs. Yeah you can go buy some POS Acer at BestBuy for $150, but no business worth working for is going to stick their employees with that trash.
- ProjectArcturis 3y ago
  Where were we talking exclusively about enterprise?
thomastjeffery 3y ago
I haven't had to find a Linux Wi-Fi driver for a single piece of hardware made in the last decade. The hardest thing about running Linux is video drivers, and AMD's are in the kennel now, and Nvidia's are nearly always up-to-date and in the package repository.
- greggsy 3y ago
  It’s a tired meme, but I thought the same until I came across a wireless card that was a slight variant of the norm. Four hours wasted one afternoon.
- nuancebydefault 3y ago
  I use Windows, wsl and native Linux as a software dev. Linux gives me more problems than wsl, gives me more problems than Windows. I must say Windows is the slowest (especially booting and the file system), but the tools, drivers and user interface are much more stable. Just a few days ago I managed to brick the Gnome terminal by upgrading python in Linux. Bing AI to the rescue to ctrl-alt-f7 / vim / i / :wq me out of that situation. And some more symlink re-patching. Dll's versus shared objects: linking I find a true maze in Linux land. Anybody else needed rpath (hard code search paths in binaries) to make sure the shared objects were found? I once got an unconfigured Windows terminal because of a windows upgrade over a duration of 7 years or so. It at least gave me a terminal window to work with. That said, I don't trust fully the auto synchronization of SharePoint and friends. Most important stuff is checked in into a server that hosts git.
  - justinclift 3y ago
    > Anybody else needed rpath (hard code search paths in binaries) to make sure the shared objects were found? What the heck are you doing, that the binaries coming with your system aren't finding their libraries in the default system dirs?
    - nuancebydefault 3y ago
      I have to say this was for linking against a third party driver and there appeared no other way around. But my point is that at link time there is knowledge needed about the location of the shared object itself. https://tldp.org/HOWTO/Program-Library-HOWTO/shared-libraries.html https://tldp.org/HOWTO/Program-Library-HOWTO/shared-librarie...

Because the alternatives are to spend twice as much on Apple devices, or to spend countless hours wrestling with Linux doing things like finding a driver for your wireless card.

alexjplant 3y ago

These are contrivances. MacBook Airs cost roughly as much as similarly-configured Ultrabooks (or whatever higher-end laptops are now referred to as) and wireless networking has "just worked" on the last two dozen devices I've installed Linux on in the past decade.

SoftTalker 3y ago
Linux itself pretty much "just works" on any mainstream hardware these days, but the same cannot be said about many enterprise software products. Then you're dealing with trying to run them in a Windows VM which adds complexity, may not be supported, or may not work at all.
fkyoureadthedoc 3y ago
> MacBook Airs cost roughly as much as similarly-configured Ultrabooks My job is not buying fancy ultra-books for the vast majority of employees. The tooling for admins seems to be much better for them on the windows side vs Mac too.

olyjohn 3y ago

This is such a tired old trope. Nobody who runs a business is going to just throw random Linux distros on random laptops. You buy a laptop that is supported with the OS that comes on it. You get the laptop, turn it on and it works. You must also think that businesses are building their own custom PCs too. Also the fact that you think business laptops are half the price of Apples shows your full ignorance. Enterprise laptops are rarely cheaper than Macs. Yeah you can go buy some POS Acer at BestBuy for $150, but no business worth working for is going to stick their employees with that trash.

ProjectArcturis 3y ago
Where were we talking exclusively about enterprise?

thomastjeffery 3y ago

I haven't had to find a Linux Wi-Fi driver for a single piece of hardware made in the last decade. The hardest thing about running Linux is video drivers, and AMD's are in the kennel now, and Nvidia's are nearly always up-to-date and in the package repository.

greggsy 3y ago
It’s a tired meme, but I thought the same until I came across a wireless card that was a slight variant of the norm. Four hours wasted one afternoon.
nuancebydefault 3y ago
I use Windows, wsl and native Linux as a software dev. Linux gives me more problems than wsl, gives me more problems than Windows. I must say Windows is the slowest (especially booting and the file system), but the tools, drivers and user interface are much more stable. Just a few days ago I managed to brick the Gnome terminal by upgrading python in Linux. Bing AI to the rescue to ctrl-alt-f7 / vim / i / :wq me out of that situation. And some more symlink re-patching. Dll's versus shared objects: linking I find a true maze in Linux land. Anybody else needed rpath (hard code search paths in binaries) to make sure the shared objects were found? I once got an unconfigured Windows terminal because of a windows upgrade over a duration of 7 years or so. It at least gave me a terminal window to work with. That said, I don't trust fully the auto synchronization of SharePoint and friends. Most important stuff is checked in into a server that hosts git.
- justinclift 3y ago
  > Anybody else needed rpath (hard code search paths in binaries) to make sure the shared objects were found? What the heck are you doing, that the binaries coming with your system aren't finding their libraries in the default system dirs?
  - nuancebydefault 3y ago
    I have to say this was for linking against a third party driver and there appeared no other way around. But my point is that at link time there is knowledge needed about the location of the shared object itself. https://tldp.org/HOWTO/Program-Library-HOWTO/shared-libraries.html https://tldp.org/HOWTO/Program-Library-HOWTO/shared-librarie...