10 ms·

How I ended up with Mac

126 points by gebe 14y ago

McUsr 14y ago
I just want to add, that once you want packages and such, for a tool chain, you'll at least discover some problems, as there is a package anarchy out there compared to GNU/Linux! But http://macports.org http://macports.org has a solid repository of packages. When it comes to "private packages" packages I have found outside repos, I do install them as "account installs", that is ~/opt/bin, ~/opt/man/man1 .. and so on, so it is easier to upgrade the OS, and less conflicts with the different packet managers. Having said that, most things do work, and people are friendly and easy to reach. Most GNU packages just work, shouldn't you find what you are looking for elsewhere. I think Mac Os X, (or just OS X now adays), is the greatest platform for free software ever! My reason for starting out with a Mac was Applescript (http://macscripter.net http://macscripter.net) and inter application communication IPC. I haven't regretted that a single day.
- chimeracoder 14y ago
  > But http://macports.org http://macports.org has a solid repository of packages. The problem comes when you start wanting to use things that aren't on Macports, and are only on homebrew (or maybe fink). But homebrew won't work with macports! So either you have to install one package or the other manually, or you have to install both macports and homebrew, which means that not only are you dealing with an unsupported setup, but you're also dealing with using two separate package managers for the same operating system. Oh, and don't forget that anything installed via the App Store is completely independent of all of the above. As a Linux user, I find this concept mind-boggling. I don't have time to keep track of a thousand different package managers. I just want one that handles everything.
  - lucian1900 14y ago
    I've found that with Homebrew's very simple recipes, you can find one for pretty much anything. I've been satisfied with some binary vendor-provided packages + app store + homebrew for everything else.
  - simonh 14y ago
    I use the same solution as Miguel. Linux under VirtualBox. So in fact every Mac I've ever owned has also been a Linux machine too. In fact, sometimes several Linux machines!
  - xentronium 14y ago
    It's not that hard, really. You install libraries and console stuff from homebrew, gui applications from app store and forget about macports.
    - McUsr 14y ago
      I'd say the opposite, forget about Homebrew and keep Macports. The whole thing may not be so easy to use at first, but when you have read the docs for the port system, it all makes much more sense.
gaving 14y ago
This wasn't all that interesting until I read the authors name. Wow.
- themstheones 14y ago
  Maybe he would have stuck with linux if gnome hadn't been so terribly managed. Poor bastard.
jug6ernaut 14y ago
I recently switched over to a MBP from using windows exclusively...ever. For the most part it is awesome, really love it. But not everything "just works" as people like to say. The one thing that stands out to me the largest is A2DP, idk if this is exclusive to the MBP(late 2011) but it is simply broken. Works 1/2 the time and when it does the quality is horrible. Another annoyance is theme engine is non existent. My favorite is the trackpad + osx, such a pleasure to use compared to any other laptop. With that said i love both windows & osx, each has there advantages.
- rrouse 14y ago
  What does A2DP stand for? I've likely never used the feature personally.
  - jug6ernaut 14y ago
    Advance Audio Distribution Profile [1]. I actually had to look up the name, but it is a bluetooth profile for passing audio over bluetooth. I personally use it to connect my MBP to my audio system wirelessly. It barely works even when the distance between between the MBP and the receiver is less then 3 feet. [1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bluetooth_profile#Advanced_Audio_Distribution_Profile_.28A2DP.29 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bluetooth_profile#Advanced_Audi...
    - rrouse 14y ago
      Yeah, I've definitely never used it. I barely use any of the bluetooth stuff. That explains why I'v never run across any problems
    - timc3 14y ago
      Can't you just use airplay instead? (yes I use it quite often)
  - Wilya 14y ago
    A2DP is bluetooth audio, in "headphones mode" (high quality). And yeah, I can attest making it work on OSX can be tricky.
chmars 14y ago
Trivia: Miguel de Icaza (born c. 1972) is a Mexican free software programmer, best known for starting the GNOME and Mono projects. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miguel_de_Icaza http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miguel_de_Icaza
Wilya 14y ago
I'm always amused by these posts praising how everything just works on the Mac, and how it's so nice not having to worry about [annoying linux/windows stuff #351]. Am I really the only one blind to this effect ? I've used a mac. It's nice. But it "just works" only until you want to productively use Finder, or you want to connect to a Samba server, or you want to shuffle files with UTF-8 filenames around, or a dozen other things like that. I suppose I'm just not the target market. But I would have expected someone like the author not to be in it either, so.. shrug
- jxc3 14y ago
  I too have switched from Linux to Mac in the last two years. Every OS has its annoyances, but the problems you describe are minor/few compared to the problems I experienced routinely on Linux.
  - niels_olson 14y ago
    I would agree with this, except for my Cr-48, which just keeps trucking along with Ubuntu. My daughter chooses it over a 2008 MacBook with twice the CPU, twice the RAM, the chic of the Apple logo, etc, etc. That and my 2003 Dell tower running SuSE as a home server refuses to die. A chronic problem with any macbook I actually travel with is that various programs seem to dislike waking up in a different network environment. I'm not sure what gives with this, but it seems to have not changed since I started using them in 2007.
- pifflesnort 14y ago
  > I suppose I'm just not the target market. Given that your complaints are Samba and weird file name encodings? Yes, I think your assessment is true. (HFS supports UTF-8 file names, so I'm guessing you're doing something weird with file systems that treat filenames as 8-bit ASCII supersets and hope for the best).
  - Wilya 14y ago
    From what I could understand when this bit me, OSX uses a different normalization form from what Linux uses (I'm not even sure of what that means, but hey). OSX uses NFD, while pretty much everyone else uses NFC (by default). So, if you use scp (Finder and the UI seem to convert things on-the-fly) to move files with UTF-8 filenames (mine where of korean origin), you'll end up puzzled because you're supposed to have some UTF-8 on both sides, but it's not the same UTF-8. I don't disagree that it might be a corner case that doesn't concern a lot of people, but it's not like I was doing black magic.
cooldeal 14y ago
>Once a virus got on your machine, that was pretty much it. And Microsoft wasn't doing much to stop the infestation. For a long time they didn't even see it as their problem. In retrospect, it was the computer equivalent of Three Mile Island or Chernobyl. They want to protect users with Secure Boot, and still they get a lot of crap for it. Remember Palladium? That would've stopped malware in its tracks. It was railed against big time, and later the same people gave rave reviews the iPad/iPhone more even though Apple implemented the Palladium spec pretty much to the letter. Also, wasn't Miguel supposed to be Microsoft's shill or something for introducing Mono for Linux and pushing C# on Linux and Mac? Now here he is, selling a Mac! Maybe he was just a technology lover all along! I am sure the anti-Microsoft folks' heads are exploding with the contradictions!
- rbanffy 14y ago
  > They want to protect users with Secure Boot, and still they get a lot of crap for it. No. That's only to make it difficult/impossible to boot anything that wasn't signed with a Microsoft key. It protects against one kind of rootkit and that's it. > Apple implemented the Palladium spec pretty much to the letter. Apple wasn't trying to force the PC industry to implement Palladium (or UEFI Secure Boot). If you buy Apple, you are buying Apple. When I buy Dell, I don't expect to be forced to also buy Microsoft (although I often am). > Also, wasn't Miguel supposed to be Microsoft's shill or something for introducing Mono for Linux and pushing C# on Linux and Mac? People change careers. > Maybe he was just a technology lover all along! Maybe I just don't agree with his taste for technologies.
- martinced 14y ago
  He wasn't a technology lover. He tried to poison Linux using Mono and that turned out to be an utter fiasco. So he failed in destroying Linux and he's pissed that he failed. As a result he's now trying to cast some more bad light on Linux: this time Linux isn't an OS whose purpose would be to run CLR app but an inferior desktop/laptop app which shouldn't be used because OS X would be superior. I'm a very long time Linux user (since the Slackware) days and honestly I've got zero love for that person (and, no, I'm not a Gnome user).
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
austenallred 14y ago
The interesting part about this part for me is how subtly differences in software and hardware change what we use. Without noticing, I stopped turning on the screen for my Linux machine during 2012. By the time I moved to a new apartment in October of 2012, I did not even bother plugging the machine back and to this date, I have yet to turn it on. That represents to me exactly how new technology is adapted and how old ones die off. Fascinating.
meaty 14y ago
Perhaps I'm strange. I always seem to be going the opposite way to everyone else. I've fallen in love with Windows again. It just works. Power management rocks, battery life is good (8 hours on my 2007 Lenovo T61!), the hardware is damn cheap, the licenses cost me virtually nothing, literally everything I plug into it works, the tooling is pretty damn good, utils I wrote for Windows NT4 literally 14 years ago still just work flawlessly. My Linux machine is just a VirtualBox VM. Yesterday I bought my second Windows Phone (Lumia 820). This also just works. Email is the same everywhere, all the apps just works, plays any mp3 without complaining (my sodding iPhone never did!), Nokia Drive just works, maps actually work (again something my iPhone shot down), talks to exchange without problems, is exactly the same as my old Windows Phone 7.8 device (no who moved my cheese), opens all my documents nicely, reads any pdf fine. Seriously, it's just all boringly functional and uneventful these days. Bear in mind I am coming from a background on hardcore UNIX machines (big Solaris, HP-UX machines), through FreeBSD to Linux to OS-X. The worst pain I had was with Solaris (on Tadpole SPARCbook) and just about everything Apple, particularly their unreliable hardware (4 Macs returned for repair!), app compatibility problems, piss poor battery life on iPhone 3/4, shit crock of a POSIX environment and shoddy attempt at online services.
- xradionut 14y ago
  "(no who moved my cheese)" Try migrating from Windows 7 to Windows 8. Whole wheels of cheese are moved around and the flavor has changed... :)
  - meaty 14y ago
    Yes I know. I've tried Windows 8 and I don't like it, but thanks to the culture of support and choice, I'm not all that bothered as Windows 7 is good and supported for another 7 years (until 2020). Something (Windows Blue?) may come along and change things by then. I'll deal with it when I get there. I'm on a 2007 built Lenovo T61 which I can actually see lasting until 2020 as well the way it's going.
  - neogodless 14y ago
    I keep hearing that. Fortunately I haven't experienced it. When I used Windows 7 and wanted to open a program, I tapped "Windows" and started typing the app name. That still works in 8. My only complaint is a "go back" problem, where opening something like a media file from the desktop opens a Metro/Modern app, and closing the app takes you to the Start Screen rather than back to your desktop. Otherwise, I spend my time on the dual screen desktop mode, using my programs, just like I did in 7. Only now with improved dual monitor support.
zura 14y ago
If I only could to quit mac apps with a single click...
- glasshead969 14y ago
  Apple knows this has been a issue for users moving from windows. They chose to solve it in a different way though. OS X uses auto-terminate, killing apps which haven't been used in a while. I think the algorithm was too aggressive when lion released but I think they made it a bit saner in mountain lion.
- chc 14y ago
  Do you find that you quit apps so frequently that going through a one-level menu is a hardship? Because I don't know a lot of people who use their computers that way.
  - zura 14y ago
    Yes, I actually do it quite frequently (in Windows and Linux).
- epmatsw 14y ago
  Command+Q?
  - calgaryeng 14y ago
    This. I don't see why you'd spend hours writing a system utility to close apps on a Mac that provides a perfectly easy to use keyboard shortcut.
    - zura 14y ago
      Because I want to close apps with a single [mouse] click with my right hand, without displacing my left hand to press that keyboard shortcut.
- jfb 14y ago
  Why do you want to quit an app so badly?
nohuck13 14y ago
I remember reading the Reddit AMA with Linus Torvalds where someone asked him what his home computer setup was and Linus said MacBook Air. Running Linux of course, but I thought that was interesting. Good hardware can make a huge difference in the experience whatever you are running. I sometimes think people don't give enough credit to Apple for the power of sweet homogenous hardware to make a whole OS/software ecosystem that much smoother. Or maybe they give too much credit to apple for the other parts of the stack. I run a Scientific Linux desktop at work and have a MacBook Pro for personal stuff, with Virtualbox for (mostly) Ubuntu. Granted Ubuntu is pretty easy wherever, but Virtualbox setup for me tends to have fewer kinks. I wonder if it's down to the same environment homogeneity. Props to Miguel de Icaza for writing this. Talk about being transparent. EDIT: typos
- mikeevans 14y ago
  Looks like he might be switching to the Pixel: https://plus.google.com/u/0/102150693225130002912/posts/dk1aiW4JjHd https://plus.google.com/u/0/102150693225130002912/posts/dk1a...
  - nohuck13 14y ago
    Nice. > I despise widescreen displays, but I had gotten resigned to them. Until now. 3:2, baby! Who knew.
kstrauser 14y ago
So after Miguel did everything possible to fragment and screw up Linux desktops, he's now complaining about fragmented and screwed up Linux desktops. Color me surprised.
- jff 14y ago
  Well, and after years of his project slavishly imitating Windows, its latest iteration is slavishly imitating OS X. So, good work all around. Edit: vvvv I stand corrected. Double Edit: What exactly do you mean, anyway? Things like http://www.linuxtoday.com/developer/2002020601120OPGNMS http://www.linuxtoday.com/developer/2002020601120OPGNMS, dated 2010, seem to indicate he's still active within GNOME.
  - elsewhere 14y ago
    He has not been actively involved in what you call "his project" for more than a decade.
  - gebe 14y ago
    That seem to be dated to 2002.
    - jff 14y ago
      What is wrong with my brain I don't even know
- elsewhere 14y ago
  As if the shell was the problem! It wasn't and isn't. The fragmentation that matters happens at a lower level, e.g. library versioning, the centralized software repositories, etc. Which is great on the server. But terrible on the desktop.
  - kstrauser 14y ago
    I don't know what that means. I'm typing this on a Mint desktop and almost every app I could ever want is available through Software Manager or apt-get. I've also released a cross-platform utility that's packaged for Debian, Ubuntu, Mint, FreeBSD, and Homebrew without any modifications to the utility itself. Linux is the one place I've never been concerned with library versioning, poor centralized software repos, etc. Am I missing something?
trotsky 14y ago
Someone should add (Miguel de Icaza) to the end of the title.
bratao 14y ago
I was always a windows developer. In my internship I was forced to use an Macbook pro and simply hate it. I was doing an TCP stack for blackberry and working with serial/Bluetooth communication for testing was a pain, in the end I just installed Windows on parallels. I really don't understand this cult of Mac. I really think that is a way to be "cool" and follow and wear the "nice start-up guys" mask.
- timc3 14y ago
  Thats because you are used to your environment.
jsvaughan 14y ago
This is ridiculous. The reason that things "didn't just work" in this case is surely that the OS was fiddled with to the extent that the kernel was recompiled more than once every 3 weeks. It is hardly valid to compare that to a bog standard release of an OS. If you are reading this and for some reason have not tried Linux, this experience is not remotely representative. The laptop I am typing this on (Thinkpad, Ubuntu) - sleep works, audio works, camera works, wifi just works, 3g JUST WORKS, printers just work - better than in Windows, DisplayPort just works, USB devices just work - and I have been running and upgrading the OS for several years.
- rodelrod 14y ago
  I have the same setup and the same experience. More importantly, I've had the same setup for many years, so there's no pain, ever. I'm baffled as to why people keep changing OS and setups and repeatedly incurring the cost of change. It's just an OS, it's mostly a solved problem. Spend time fiddling with stuff that can actually make you more productive.
- reidrac 14y ago
  Yes, I agree. In fact I can't see how distro incompatibilities or fragmentation affects a desktop user when you're using one distro. Icaza use case is far for the average desktop use case I think. I'm both Ubuntu (Dell) and Fedora (Dell) user, and I don't have/suffer any of the problems described in the post. I'm a developer and I install new packages/tools from time to time, with no problems.
drewg123 14y ago
I had nearly the opposite experience. In ~2007, after the birth of my first child I had very little time. So I thought to myself "I don't have time to keep up with maintaining a Linux desktop" and I bought a nice iMac, and moved from Linux to Mac. The experience I had was that everything that was a royal PITA on nix at the time (web browsing, audio, skype, video, photo management, suspend/resume, printing) "just worked" on the Mac. Hurray! But the problem I had was that the unixy stuff stuff I needed to do my job (X11 across multiple monitors, emacs, serial console control, local command-line tools, etc) did not just work, and was more a PITA to maintain on MacOSX than the flashy stuff was to maintain on nix. The final straw was when I upgraded to Leopard, and multiple monitor support in X11 was totally hosed. In the end, I wound up giving the iMac to my in-laws, building another whitebox for 1/2 the price of the iMac, and I have been happy ever after.
elsewhere 14y ago
Many open source advocates like Miguel a decade ago have really been motivated by two things: Their love for Open source as a concept; and their love for Unix. This particularly shows in Miguels great essay "Let's make Unix not suck". And the Mac achieves 2/3 of that. It made Unix not suck. It provides most of the open source goodies on top (using something like brew). And it also provides the kind of proprietary software that simply can't be matched by available open source software (like most of the Adobe tools). Although I can sense some bitterness in his recent essays, he simply acknowledges the fact that the classic Linux desktop won't make it. (However I think it may actually succeed even on the desktop in the form of something Android related.) As I see it, there will be a peaceful coexistence of proprietary and free software. Free software succeeds a) where collaboration is needed (Webkit) and b) to provide the kind of pluggable modules that OO programming promised to deliver but never did. Just think of all the stuff on github that you probably pull into your projects all the time.
ishbits 14y ago
I can't believe all the talk about Finder here.. I bet Miguel is more like me than most of you, that is, living in a unix/linux terminal for the last 15 years or more - AND doing file management in that terminal! I've also gone to the Mac from unix/linux as my primary machine as it just works. What I mean by that is suspend/resume, wifi, and all that stuff that you shouldn't think about anymore. Sure, all I use on it is a browser, iTerm, emacs and dev tools installed from MacPorts, but it provides me with a good environment - that just works. Updates have never broken anything for me - not even the OS updates. Can't say the same about Linux.
- wes-exp 14y ago
  Absolutely. I don't use much more than iTerm2, a web browser, emacs + various developer stuff, and Homebrew. The base OS is rock f-ing solid. All my unix stuff works flawlessly. Time spent f'ing around with drivers and random upgrade issues? Zero. It even syncs with my phone (iPhone), which happens to work great! Finder? Who gives a crap? That's what the terminal is for!
  - jff 14y ago
    This is the attitude that puzzles me. I install Debian. I launch X, with no configuration. My WM starts in the optimal resolution. Sound, which has for years been a major pain point, pretty much just works; Pulse and ALSA may suck, but I've used both with great success and no fiddling of drivers As for upgrade issues... I apt-get upgrade weekly because things are getting fixed. OS X is still shipping the same out-of-date copy of BSD tools they've been using for years.
sologoub 14y ago
This story sums up my own experience quite nicely as well. While I really enjoyed using Ubuntu/Debian for almost 6 years, when time came for a new laptop, I just didnt want to deal with yet another issue with nvidia cards or any other oddity. Paying the Apple premium price was a bargain when compared to hours spend getting little issues here and there worked out.
bad_user 14y ago
My main gripe with Novel and now Xamarin is that they don't provide packages for Debian and Ubuntu, arguably the most popular Linux distributions. For instance if you go to Mono's download page to checkout the options, the only Linux distribution supported by them is OpenSuse: http://www.go-mono.com/mono-downloads/download.html http://www.go-mono.com/mono-downloads/download.html Of course one could argue that Debian (and Ubuntu that relies on Debian's repository) has a culture of packaging stuff by themselves and indeed in the case of Mono there are people that do just that. But those packages are always behind the current version and you can't blame the maintainers for that. And lots of software companies, including Google and Mozilla, are providing packages for Debian/Ubuntu for the latest versions by themselves. It's actually the norm with Ubuntu to setup third-party PPAs that provide packages for something missing from the main repository. So Miguel here complains about fragmentation on the Linux desktop. It's funny, because they ignore the largest distributions around. At least if instead of OpenSuse they supported Red Hat, I would understand. Also, my experience with OS X has not be so pleasant. Miguel is a damn good developer, but he must be using a really simple toolchain. When you are working day-in day-out with Java, Ruby, Python, Javascript, Mysql, Postgresql, GCC, Casandra, MongoDB, Memcached and dozens of other technologies, installing that stuff and having it work on OS X is amongst the most frustrating experiences I ever had, no matter if you're doing it by hand or with MacPorts or with Homebrew. All available options on OS X suck. I couldn't give a fuck about binaries of commercial software packages working, as long as I can't manage the toolchain I depend on daily. Another thing with OS X is that it just works, until it doesn't. After that you're in Windows-land again, the preferred option being to just reset/reinstall everything. Linux can be painful sometimes, but for most problems you can find documented fixes. Also, he's a little out of date. Ubuntu has been rock solid for me on my Thinkpad for the last couple of months since I got my current laptop. Of course, I preferred a model with Intel HD 4000 instead of a Geforce, so a little research into hardware may be needed to ensure good compatibility, but on the other hand you can't run OS X on anything else other than a couple of Macbook models. Try building a Hackintosh sometimes and your appreciation for Linux will change.
- vsync 14y ago
  > When you are working day-in day-out with Java, Ruby, Python, Javascript, Mysql, Postgresql, GCC, Casandra, MongoDB, Memcached and dozens of other technologies, installing that stuff and having it work on OS X is amongst the most frustrating experiences I ever had, no matter if you're doing it by hand or with MacPorts or with Homebrew. All available options on OS X suck. I couldn't give a fuck about binaries of commercial software packages working, as long as I can't manage the toolchain I depend on daily. As a non-Mac-user (and fellow ThinkPad user!) that occasionally gets roped in to that crazy land, I feel your pain. MacPorts seemed the most useful option before, simply because it seemed a direct port (heh) of the BSD ports system. Honestly the whole thing reminded me of trying to get stuff to work on Solaris 10-15 years ago.... if you can just get your compiler working it works great, just set up /my-usr over here and make sure nothing from the real system ends up in $PATH. Lately I heard that MacPorts isn't cool any more so I didn't use it for my most recent Mac-oriented client project that needed some installs. I am a stubborn goat, but if I've learned one thing it's that when the trendy open source crowd on Mac wanders off, good luck getting anything to work, especially because Apple loves to change things. So I looked around and it seems Fink is a really nice option. So far everything went great. If you are familiar with Debian it's like that, and it carefully segregates everything into /sw, so just make sure /sw/{bin,sbin} are first in $PATH and you'll be good. I was recently reminded of Gentoo Prefix and wish I'd tried that out. Now here is the thing that cracks me up. I am of all things a Gentoo partisan. My workstations? Gentoo. Servers for my business? Gentoo. Client systems? Gentoo. LAN server for a moderately technical friend? Gentoo. And I do get some gentle mockery from friends for how much of my CPU time is spent on compiling. Yet here are the Mac acolytes, with the most consistent hardware and OS platform one could ever hope for, and they always have a fetish for compiling things from source. Are they showing off that they know how to do "./configure && make && make install"? Well congratulations, you got my respect for that, now please make binary packages. I mean shit, the only reason I am into Gentoo is I got tired of that rigmarole and managing $CFLAGS manually on my precious Slackware boxen.
nicholassmith 14y ago
I've had to use Windows again for a work project, it reminded me exactly why I switched to OSX. People have really different needs from their OS, we should be thoroughly glad we have 3 real contenders these days that you can use. Although after using Explorer again I think Finder is no where near as bad.
vicaya 14y ago
I used to be a Mac basher, as my first MBP gave me a lot of trouble (ended with video card recall). Then I got a beefy ThinkPad W520, which gave me even more trouble (random power-offs at least once per week). Now my work laptop is a 16GB RAM 500GB SSD 2.7GHz i7 late 2012 rMBP, I run VMware Fusion with Windows, Ubuntu and CentOS VMs, which feel faster than my w520 running Windows natively! Past lessons have taught me not to use OS X for dev besides for iOS :) Retina display is so much better for reading papers. There is no way I'd use even a 1080p display given a choice! It has only given me minor issues so far (failed to wake up in some external display combination in rare occasions). Knock on wood :)
fredsted 14y ago
Reading this comment thread, it's as if Mac OS X is the most horrible operating system in existence.
- dagw 14y ago
  Well it's probably on the top 5 list of most horrible commonly used desktop operating system in existence.
martinced 14y ago
(Note that I fully expect Mac OS X and Windows fanbois to vote this down for stating unconvenient facts) That developer has always been very controversial in the Linux world amongst serious Linux users. He's been trying to poison Linux with mono and that was a huge lot of energy lost (I'm sure some people will still come here and defend mono and saying how great the CLR is and why C#/F# is the future, etc. But sadly for these the world changed quite a bit since then [cough, iOs, cough, Android]). Now what I find very ironic is that basically he says that in 2005 OS X rocked because it had no virus, while Windows was full of viruses and that this is why he switched to OS X. And what do we have today? A major OS X vulnerability issue due to Java applets which infected a gigantic number of devs, giving access inside major target companies like FaceBook to bad guys. Besides that I can't possibly even begin to understand how OS X would be better than Linux for a developer. On Linux I can install Java in a user account without needing to be root. On Linux I can install a browser in another user account, which has no access to Java at all. On Linux I can display that browser from that other user account to my graphical session if I want to. On Linux I can have several users and two graphical sessions (or more) simultaneously and switch from one to the other if I want to. On Linux I can set per-user ID firewalling rules using nothing else but iptables (or whatever suits you): iptables -I OUTPUT -p tcp --dport 80 -m state --state NEW,RELATED -m user --user-ID 1001 -j ACCEPT Here only one user (the one with the account which only has a web browser installed, no Java, no nothing, just a browser) is allowed to emit trafic to port 80. etc. There are just so many benefits from using Linux as a dev. Security, performances, control, mutliple graphical sessions / mixing windows from several user accounts, KVM, etc. There's simply no way the walled garden that OS X is allows me to trivially do all this. Once again: we're talking about someone who's always been controversial in the Linux community because of its love/hate relationship with Linux. Honestly I don't want of a Linux developer who's telling the world that OS X on the desktop is better for dev than Linux. Thankfully virtually all of the others Linux developers out there are eating their own dog food. And who are these others Linux developers? The ones who didn't try to poison Linux with MS technologies.
- micampe 14y ago
  You didn't answer my question here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5246603 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5246603 Also, OS X can run multiple sessions, install a browser with no root access and Java is not installed by default. But I see you are one of those users that drop their misguided wisdom and ignore all the replies, so I won't expect you to reply here either and keep believing your false facts.
pheo 14y ago
I am very disappointed to see this posted where, when, and how it is. Comparing Linux to Mac is like comparing apples to Lamborghinis. I can get an apple, cheaply if not for totally for free, locally, anywhere at any time. Lamborghinis are very expensive, both in up-front cost and maintenance, and truly don't perform relative to the cost. What i hear is someone moaning about how much effort it takes to choose the best kind of apple, Gala? Granny Smith? Sour Green? Golden? Macintosh? I'd rather have an apple than Apple.

126 points by gebe 14y ago

McUsr 14y ago

I just want to add, that once you want packages and such, for a tool chain, you'll at least discover some problems, as there is a package anarchy out there compared to GNU/Linux! But http://macports.org http://macports.org has a solid repository of packages. When it comes to "private packages" packages I have found outside repos, I do install them as "account installs", that is ~/opt/bin, ~/opt/man/man1 .. and so on, so it is easier to upgrade the OS, and less conflicts with the different packet managers. Having said that, most things do work, and people are friendly and easy to reach. Most GNU packages just work, shouldn't you find what you are looking for elsewhere. I think Mac Os X, (or just OS X now adays), is the greatest platform for free software ever! My reason for starting out with a Mac was Applescript (http://macscripter.net http://macscripter.net) and inter application communication IPC. I haven't regretted that a single day.

chimeracoder 14y ago
> But http://macports.org http://macports.org has a solid repository of packages. The problem comes when you start wanting to use things that aren't on Macports, and are only on homebrew (or maybe fink). But homebrew won't work with macports! So either you have to install one package or the other manually, or you have to install both macports and homebrew, which means that not only are you dealing with an unsupported setup, but you're also dealing with using two separate package managers for the same operating system. Oh, and don't forget that anything installed via the App Store is completely independent of all of the above. As a Linux user, I find this concept mind-boggling. I don't have time to keep track of a thousand different package managers. I just want one that handles everything.
- lucian1900 14y ago
  I've found that with Homebrew's very simple recipes, you can find one for pretty much anything. I've been satisfied with some binary vendor-provided packages + app store + homebrew for everything else.
- simonh 14y ago
  I use the same solution as Miguel. Linux under VirtualBox. So in fact every Mac I've ever owned has also been a Linux machine too. In fact, sometimes several Linux machines!
- xentronium 14y ago
  It's not that hard, really. You install libraries and console stuff from homebrew, gui applications from app store and forget about macports.
  - McUsr 14y ago
    I'd say the opposite, forget about Homebrew and keep Macports. The whole thing may not be so easy to use at first, but when you have read the docs for the port system, it all makes much more sense.

gaving 14y ago

This wasn't all that interesting until I read the authors name. Wow.

themstheones 14y ago
Maybe he would have stuck with linux if gnome hadn't been so terribly managed. Poor bastard.

jug6ernaut 14y ago

I recently switched over to a MBP from using windows exclusively...ever. For the most part it is awesome, really love it. But not everything "just works" as people like to say. The one thing that stands out to me the largest is A2DP, idk if this is exclusive to the MBP(late 2011) but it is simply broken. Works 1/2 the time and when it does the quality is horrible. Another annoyance is theme engine is non existent. My favorite is the trackpad + osx, such a pleasure to use compared to any other laptop. With that said i love both windows & osx, each has there advantages.

rrouse 14y ago
What does A2DP stand for? I've likely never used the feature personally.
- jug6ernaut 14y ago
  Advance Audio Distribution Profile [1]. I actually had to look up the name, but it is a bluetooth profile for passing audio over bluetooth. I personally use it to connect my MBP to my audio system wirelessly. It barely works even when the distance between between the MBP and the receiver is less then 3 feet. [1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bluetooth_profile#Advanced_Audio_Distribution_Profile_.28A2DP.29 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bluetooth_profile#Advanced_Audi...
  - rrouse 14y ago
    Yeah, I've definitely never used it. I barely use any of the bluetooth stuff. That explains why I'v never run across any problems
  - timc3 14y ago
    Can't you just use airplay instead? (yes I use it quite often)
- Wilya 14y ago
  A2DP is bluetooth audio, in "headphones mode" (high quality). And yeah, I can attest making it work on OSX can be tricky.

chmars 14y ago

Trivia: Miguel de Icaza (born c. 1972) is a Mexican free software programmer, best known for starting the GNOME and Mono projects. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miguel_de_Icaza http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miguel_de_Icaza

Wilya 14y ago

I'm always amused by these posts praising how everything just works on the Mac, and how it's so nice not having to worry about [annoying linux/windows stuff #351]. Am I really the only one blind to this effect ? I've used a mac. It's nice. But it "just works" only until you want to productively use Finder, or you want to connect to a Samba server, or you want to shuffle files with UTF-8 filenames around, or a dozen other things like that. I suppose I'm just not the target market. But I would have expected someone like the author not to be in it either, so.. shrug

jxc3 14y ago
I too have switched from Linux to Mac in the last two years. Every OS has its annoyances, but the problems you describe are minor/few compared to the problems I experienced routinely on Linux.
- niels_olson 14y ago
  I would agree with this, except for my Cr-48, which just keeps trucking along with Ubuntu. My daughter chooses it over a 2008 MacBook with twice the CPU, twice the RAM, the chic of the Apple logo, etc, etc. That and my 2003 Dell tower running SuSE as a home server refuses to die. A chronic problem with any macbook I actually travel with is that various programs seem to dislike waking up in a different network environment. I'm not sure what gives with this, but it seems to have not changed since I started using them in 2007.
pifflesnort 14y ago
> I suppose I'm just not the target market. Given that your complaints are Samba and weird file name encodings? Yes, I think your assessment is true. (HFS supports UTF-8 file names, so I'm guessing you're doing something weird with file systems that treat filenames as 8-bit ASCII supersets and hope for the best).
- Wilya 14y ago
  From what I could understand when this bit me, OSX uses a different normalization form from what Linux uses (I'm not even sure of what that means, but hey). OSX uses NFD, while pretty much everyone else uses NFC (by default). So, if you use scp (Finder and the UI seem to convert things on-the-fly) to move files with UTF-8 filenames (mine where of korean origin), you'll end up puzzled because you're supposed to have some UTF-8 on both sides, but it's not the same UTF-8. I don't disagree that it might be a corner case that doesn't concern a lot of people, but it's not like I was doing black magic.

cooldeal 14y ago

>Once a virus got on your machine, that was pretty much it. And Microsoft wasn't doing much to stop the infestation. For a long time they didn't even see it as their problem. In retrospect, it was the computer equivalent of Three Mile Island or Chernobyl. They want to protect users with Secure Boot, and still they get a lot of crap for it. Remember Palladium? That would've stopped malware in its tracks. It was railed against big time, and later the same people gave rave reviews the iPad/iPhone more even though Apple implemented the Palladium spec pretty much to the letter. Also, wasn't Miguel supposed to be Microsoft's shill or something for introducing Mono for Linux and pushing C# on Linux and Mac? Now here he is, selling a Mac! Maybe he was just a technology lover all along! I am sure the anti-Microsoft folks' heads are exploding with the contradictions!

rbanffy 14y ago
> They want to protect users with Secure Boot, and still they get a lot of crap for it. No. That's only to make it difficult/impossible to boot anything that wasn't signed with a Microsoft key. It protects against one kind of rootkit and that's it. > Apple implemented the Palladium spec pretty much to the letter. Apple wasn't trying to force the PC industry to implement Palladium (or UEFI Secure Boot). If you buy Apple, you are buying Apple. When I buy Dell, I don't expect to be forced to also buy Microsoft (although I often am). > Also, wasn't Miguel supposed to be Microsoft's shill or something for introducing Mono for Linux and pushing C# on Linux and Mac? People change careers. > Maybe he was just a technology lover all along! Maybe I just don't agree with his taste for technologies.
martinced 14y ago
He wasn't a technology lover. He tried to poison Linux using Mono and that turned out to be an utter fiasco. So he failed in destroying Linux and he's pissed that he failed. As a result he's now trying to cast some more bad light on Linux: this time Linux isn't an OS whose purpose would be to run CLR app but an inferior desktop/laptop app which shouldn't be used because OS X would be superior. I'm a very long time Linux user (since the Slackware) days and honestly I've got zero love for that person (and, no, I'm not a Gnome user).

deleted 14y ago

[deleted]

austenallred 14y ago

The interesting part about this part for me is how subtly differences in software and hardware change what we use. Without noticing, I stopped turning on the screen for my Linux machine during 2012. By the time I moved to a new apartment in October of 2012, I did not even bother plugging the machine back and to this date, I have yet to turn it on. That represents to me exactly how new technology is adapted and how old ones die off. Fascinating.

meaty 14y ago

Perhaps I'm strange. I always seem to be going the opposite way to everyone else. I've fallen in love with Windows again. It just works. Power management rocks, battery life is good (8 hours on my 2007 Lenovo T61!), the hardware is damn cheap, the licenses cost me virtually nothing, literally everything I plug into it works, the tooling is pretty damn good, utils I wrote for Windows NT4 literally 14 years ago still just work flawlessly. My Linux machine is just a VirtualBox VM. Yesterday I bought my second Windows Phone (Lumia 820). This also just works. Email is the same everywhere, all the apps just works, plays any mp3 without complaining (my sodding iPhone never did!), Nokia Drive just works, maps actually work (again something my iPhone shot down), talks to exchange without problems, is exactly the same as my old Windows Phone 7.8 device (no who moved my cheese), opens all my documents nicely, reads any pdf fine. Seriously, it's just all boringly functional and uneventful these days. Bear in mind I am coming from a background on hardcore UNIX machines (big Solaris, HP-UX machines), through FreeBSD to Linux to OS-X. The worst pain I had was with Solaris (on Tadpole SPARCbook) and just about everything Apple, particularly their unreliable hardware (4 Macs returned for repair!), app compatibility problems, piss poor battery life on iPhone 3/4, shit crock of a POSIX environment and shoddy attempt at online services.

xradionut 14y ago
"(no who moved my cheese)" Try migrating from Windows 7 to Windows 8. Whole wheels of cheese are moved around and the flavor has changed... :)
- meaty 14y ago
  Yes I know. I've tried Windows 8 and I don't like it, but thanks to the culture of support and choice, I'm not all that bothered as Windows 7 is good and supported for another 7 years (until 2020). Something (Windows Blue?) may come along and change things by then. I'll deal with it when I get there. I'm on a 2007 built Lenovo T61 which I can actually see lasting until 2020 as well the way it's going.
- neogodless 14y ago
  I keep hearing that. Fortunately I haven't experienced it. When I used Windows 7 and wanted to open a program, I tapped "Windows" and started typing the app name. That still works in 8. My only complaint is a "go back" problem, where opening something like a media file from the desktop opens a Metro/Modern app, and closing the app takes you to the Start Screen rather than back to your desktop. Otherwise, I spend my time on the dual screen desktop mode, using my programs, just like I did in 7. Only now with improved dual monitor support.

zura 14y ago

If I only could to quit mac apps with a single click...

glasshead969 14y ago
Apple knows this has been a issue for users moving from windows. They chose to solve it in a different way though. OS X uses auto-terminate, killing apps which haven't been used in a while. I think the algorithm was too aggressive when lion released but I think they made it a bit saner in mountain lion.
chc 14y ago
Do you find that you quit apps so frequently that going through a one-level menu is a hardship? Because I don't know a lot of people who use their computers that way.
- zura 14y ago
  Yes, I actually do it quite frequently (in Windows and Linux).
epmatsw 14y ago
Command+Q?
- calgaryeng 14y ago
  This. I don't see why you'd spend hours writing a system utility to close apps on a Mac that provides a perfectly easy to use keyboard shortcut.
  - zura 14y ago
    Because I want to close apps with a single [mouse] click with my right hand, without displacing my left hand to press that keyboard shortcut.
jfb 14y ago
Why do you want to quit an app so badly?

nohuck13 14y ago

I remember reading the Reddit AMA with Linus Torvalds where someone asked him what his home computer setup was and Linus said MacBook Air. Running Linux of course, but I thought that was interesting. Good hardware can make a huge difference in the experience whatever you are running. I sometimes think people don't give enough credit to Apple for the power of sweet homogenous hardware to make a whole OS/software ecosystem that much smoother. Or maybe they give too much credit to apple for the other parts of the stack. I run a Scientific Linux desktop at work and have a MacBook Pro for personal stuff, with Virtualbox for (mostly) Ubuntu. Granted Ubuntu is pretty easy wherever, but Virtualbox setup for me tends to have fewer kinks. I wonder if it's down to the same environment homogeneity. Props to Miguel de Icaza for writing this. Talk about being transparent. EDIT: typos

mikeevans 14y ago
Looks like he might be switching to the Pixel: https://plus.google.com/u/0/102150693225130002912/posts/dk1aiW4JjHd https://plus.google.com/u/0/102150693225130002912/posts/dk1a...
- nohuck13 14y ago
  Nice. > I despise widescreen displays, but I had gotten resigned to them. Until now. 3:2, baby! Who knew.

kstrauser 14y ago

So after Miguel did everything possible to fragment and screw up Linux desktops, he's now complaining about fragmented and screwed up Linux desktops. Color me surprised.

jff 14y ago
Well, and after years of his project slavishly imitating Windows, its latest iteration is slavishly imitating OS X. So, good work all around. Edit: vvvv I stand corrected. Double Edit: What exactly do you mean, anyway? Things like http://www.linuxtoday.com/developer/2002020601120OPGNMS http://www.linuxtoday.com/developer/2002020601120OPGNMS, dated 2010, seem to indicate he's still active within GNOME.
- elsewhere 14y ago
  He has not been actively involved in what you call "his project" for more than a decade.
- gebe 14y ago
  That seem to be dated to 2002.
  - jff 14y ago
    What is wrong with my brain I don't even know
elsewhere 14y ago
As if the shell was the problem! It wasn't and isn't. The fragmentation that matters happens at a lower level, e.g. library versioning, the centralized software repositories, etc. Which is great on the server. But terrible on the desktop.
- kstrauser 14y ago
  I don't know what that means. I'm typing this on a Mint desktop and almost every app I could ever want is available through Software Manager or apt-get. I've also released a cross-platform utility that's packaged for Debian, Ubuntu, Mint, FreeBSD, and Homebrew without any modifications to the utility itself. Linux is the one place I've never been concerned with library versioning, poor centralized software repos, etc. Am I missing something?

trotsky 14y ago

Someone should add (Miguel de Icaza) to the end of the title.

bratao 14y ago

I was always a windows developer. In my internship I was forced to use an Macbook pro and simply hate it. I was doing an TCP stack for blackberry and working with serial/Bluetooth communication for testing was a pain, in the end I just installed Windows on parallels. I really don't understand this cult of Mac. I really think that is a way to be "cool" and follow and wear the "nice start-up guys" mask.

timc3 14y ago
Thats because you are used to your environment.

jsvaughan 14y ago

This is ridiculous. The reason that things "didn't just work" in this case is surely that the OS was fiddled with to the extent that the kernel was recompiled more than once every 3 weeks. It is hardly valid to compare that to a bog standard release of an OS. If you are reading this and for some reason have not tried Linux, this experience is not remotely representative. The laptop I am typing this on (Thinkpad, Ubuntu) - sleep works, audio works, camera works, wifi just works, 3g JUST WORKS, printers just work - better than in Windows, DisplayPort just works, USB devices just work - and I have been running and upgrading the OS for several years.

rodelrod 14y ago
I have the same setup and the same experience. More importantly, I've had the same setup for many years, so there's no pain, ever. I'm baffled as to why people keep changing OS and setups and repeatedly incurring the cost of change. It's just an OS, it's mostly a solved problem. Spend time fiddling with stuff that can actually make you more productive.
reidrac 14y ago
Yes, I agree. In fact I can't see how distro incompatibilities or fragmentation affects a desktop user when you're using one distro. Icaza use case is far for the average desktop use case I think. I'm both Ubuntu (Dell) and Fedora (Dell) user, and I don't have/suffer any of the problems described in the post. I'm a developer and I install new packages/tools from time to time, with no problems.

drewg123 14y ago

I had nearly the opposite experience. In ~2007, after the birth of my first child I had very little time. So I thought to myself "I don't have time to keep up with maintaining a Linux desktop" and I bought a nice iMac, and moved from Linux to Mac. The experience I had was that everything that was a royal PITA on nix at the time (web browsing, audio, skype, video, photo management, suspend/resume, printing) "just worked" on the Mac. Hurray! But the problem I had was that the unixy stuff stuff I needed to do my job (X11 across multiple monitors, emacs, serial console control, local command-line tools, etc) did not just work, and was more a PITA to maintain on MacOSX than the flashy stuff was to maintain on nix. The final straw was when I upgraded to Leopard, and multiple monitor support in X11 was totally hosed. In the end, I wound up giving the iMac to my in-laws, building another whitebox for 1/2 the price of the iMac, and I have been happy ever after.

elsewhere 14y ago

Many open source advocates like Miguel a decade ago have really been motivated by two things: Their love for Open source as a concept; and their love for Unix. This particularly shows in Miguels great essay "Let's make Unix not suck". And the Mac achieves 2/3 of that. It made Unix not suck. It provides most of the open source goodies on top (using something like brew). And it also provides the kind of proprietary software that simply can't be matched by available open source software (like most of the Adobe tools). Although I can sense some bitterness in his recent essays, he simply acknowledges the fact that the classic Linux desktop won't make it. (However I think it may actually succeed even on the desktop in the form of something Android related.) As I see it, there will be a peaceful coexistence of proprietary and free software. Free software succeeds a) where collaboration is needed (Webkit) and b) to provide the kind of pluggable modules that OO programming promised to deliver but never did. Just think of all the stuff on github that you probably pull into your projects all the time.

ishbits 14y ago

I can't believe all the talk about Finder here.. I bet Miguel is more like me than most of you, that is, living in a unix/linux terminal for the last 15 years or more - AND doing file management in that terminal! I've also gone to the Mac from unix/linux as my primary machine as it just works. What I mean by that is suspend/resume, wifi, and all that stuff that you shouldn't think about anymore. Sure, all I use on it is a browser, iTerm, emacs and dev tools installed from MacPorts, but it provides me with a good environment - that just works. Updates have never broken anything for me - not even the OS updates. Can't say the same about Linux.

wes-exp 14y ago
Absolutely. I don't use much more than iTerm2, a web browser, emacs + various developer stuff, and Homebrew. The base OS is rock f-ing solid. All my unix stuff works flawlessly. Time spent f'ing around with drivers and random upgrade issues? Zero. It even syncs with my phone (iPhone), which happens to work great! Finder? Who gives a crap? That's what the terminal is for!
- jff 14y ago
  This is the attitude that puzzles me. I install Debian. I launch X, with no configuration. My WM starts in the optimal resolution. Sound, which has for years been a major pain point, pretty much just works; Pulse and ALSA may suck, but I've used both with great success and no fiddling of drivers As for upgrade issues... I apt-get upgrade weekly because things are getting fixed. OS X is still shipping the same out-of-date copy of BSD tools they've been using for years.

sologoub 14y ago

This story sums up my own experience quite nicely as well. While I really enjoyed using Ubuntu/Debian for almost 6 years, when time came for a new laptop, I just didnt want to deal with yet another issue with nvidia cards or any other oddity. Paying the Apple premium price was a bargain when compared to hours spend getting little issues here and there worked out.

bad_user 14y ago

My main gripe with Novel and now Xamarin is that they don't provide packages for Debian and Ubuntu, arguably the most popular Linux distributions. For instance if you go to Mono's download page to checkout the options, the only Linux distribution supported by them is OpenSuse: http://www.go-mono.com/mono-downloads/download.html http://www.go-mono.com/mono-downloads/download.html Of course one could argue that Debian (and Ubuntu that relies on Debian's repository) has a culture of packaging stuff by themselves and indeed in the case of Mono there are people that do just that. But those packages are always behind the current version and you can't blame the maintainers for that. And lots of software companies, including Google and Mozilla, are providing packages for Debian/Ubuntu for the latest versions by themselves. It's actually the norm with Ubuntu to setup third-party PPAs that provide packages for something missing from the main repository. So Miguel here complains about fragmentation on the Linux desktop. It's funny, because they ignore the largest distributions around. At least if instead of OpenSuse they supported Red Hat, I would understand. Also, my experience with OS X has not be so pleasant. Miguel is a damn good developer, but he must be using a really simple toolchain. When you are working day-in day-out with Java, Ruby, Python, Javascript, Mysql, Postgresql, GCC, Casandra, MongoDB, Memcached and dozens of other technologies, installing that stuff and having it work on OS X is amongst the most frustrating experiences I ever had, no matter if you're doing it by hand or with MacPorts or with Homebrew. All available options on OS X suck. I couldn't give a fuck about binaries of commercial software packages working, as long as I can't manage the toolchain I depend on daily. Another thing with OS X is that it just works, until it doesn't. After that you're in Windows-land again, the preferred option being to just reset/reinstall everything. Linux can be painful sometimes, but for most problems you can find documented fixes. Also, he's a little out of date. Ubuntu has been rock solid for me on my Thinkpad for the last couple of months since I got my current laptop. Of course, I preferred a model with Intel HD 4000 instead of a Geforce, so a little research into hardware may be needed to ensure good compatibility, but on the other hand you can't run OS X on anything else other than a couple of Macbook models. Try building a Hackintosh sometimes and your appreciation for Linux will change.

vsync 14y ago
> When you are working day-in day-out with Java, Ruby, Python, Javascript, Mysql, Postgresql, GCC, Casandra, MongoDB, Memcached and dozens of other technologies, installing that stuff and having it work on OS X is amongst the most frustrating experiences I ever had, no matter if you're doing it by hand or with MacPorts or with Homebrew. All available options on OS X suck. I couldn't give a fuck about binaries of commercial software packages working, as long as I can't manage the toolchain I depend on daily. As a non-Mac-user (and fellow ThinkPad user!) that occasionally gets roped in to that crazy land, I feel your pain. MacPorts seemed the most useful option before, simply because it seemed a direct port (heh) of the BSD ports system. Honestly the whole thing reminded me of trying to get stuff to work on Solaris 10-15 years ago.... if you can just get your compiler working it works great, just set up /my-usr over here and make sure nothing from the real system ends up in $PATH. Lately I heard that MacPorts isn't cool any more so I didn't use it for my most recent Mac-oriented client project that needed some installs. I am a stubborn goat, but if I've learned one thing it's that when the trendy open source crowd on Mac wanders off, good luck getting anything to work, especially because Apple loves to change things. So I looked around and it seems Fink is a really nice option. So far everything went great. If you are familiar with Debian it's like that, and it carefully segregates everything into /sw, so just make sure /sw/{bin,sbin} are first in $PATH and you'll be good. I was recently reminded of Gentoo Prefix and wish I'd tried that out. Now here is the thing that cracks me up. I am of all things a Gentoo partisan. My workstations? Gentoo. Servers for my business? Gentoo. Client systems? Gentoo. LAN server for a moderately technical friend? Gentoo. And I do get some gentle mockery from friends for how much of my CPU time is spent on compiling. Yet here are the Mac acolytes, with the most consistent hardware and OS platform one could ever hope for, and they always have a fetish for compiling things from source. Are they showing off that they know how to do "./configure && make && make install"? Well congratulations, you got my respect for that, now please make binary packages. I mean shit, the only reason I am into Gentoo is I got tired of that rigmarole and managing $CFLAGS manually on my precious Slackware boxen.

nicholassmith 14y ago

I've had to use Windows again for a work project, it reminded me exactly why I switched to OSX. People have really different needs from their OS, we should be thoroughly glad we have 3 real contenders these days that you can use. Although after using Explorer again I think Finder is no where near as bad.

vicaya 14y ago

I used to be a Mac basher, as my first MBP gave me a lot of trouble (ended with video card recall). Then I got a beefy ThinkPad W520, which gave me even more trouble (random power-offs at least once per week). Now my work laptop is a 16GB RAM 500GB SSD 2.7GHz i7 late 2012 rMBP, I run VMware Fusion with Windows, Ubuntu and CentOS VMs, which feel faster than my w520 running Windows natively! Past lessons have taught me not to use OS X for dev besides for iOS :) Retina display is so much better for reading papers. There is no way I'd use even a 1080p display given a choice! It has only given me minor issues so far (failed to wake up in some external display combination in rare occasions). Knock on wood :)

fredsted 14y ago

Reading this comment thread, it's as if Mac OS X is the most horrible operating system in existence.

dagw 14y ago
Well it's probably on the top 5 list of most horrible commonly used desktop operating system in existence.

martinced 14y ago

(Note that I fully expect Mac OS X and Windows fanbois to vote this down for stating unconvenient facts) That developer has always been very controversial in the Linux world amongst serious Linux users. He's been trying to poison Linux with mono and that was a huge lot of energy lost (I'm sure some people will still come here and defend mono and saying how great the CLR is and why C#/F# is the future, etc. But sadly for these the world changed quite a bit since then [cough, iOs, cough, Android]). Now what I find very ironic is that basically he says that in 2005 OS X rocked because it had no virus, while Windows was full of viruses and that this is why he switched to OS X. And what do we have today? A major OS X vulnerability issue due to Java applets which infected a gigantic number of devs, giving access inside major target companies like FaceBook to bad guys. Besides that I can't possibly even begin to understand how OS X would be better than Linux for a developer. On Linux I can install Java in a user account without needing to be root. On Linux I can install a browser in another user account, which has no access to Java at all. On Linux I can display that browser from that other user account to my graphical session if I want to. On Linux I can have several users and two graphical sessions (or more) simultaneously and switch from one to the other if I want to. On Linux I can set per-user ID firewalling rules using nothing else but iptables (or whatever suits you): iptables -I OUTPUT -p tcp --dport 80 -m state --state NEW,RELATED -m user --user-ID 1001 -j ACCEPT Here only one user (the one with the account which only has a web browser installed, no Java, no nothing, just a browser) is allowed to emit trafic to port 80. etc. There are just so many benefits from using Linux as a dev. Security, performances, control, mutliple graphical sessions / mixing windows from several user accounts, KVM, etc. There's simply no way the walled garden that OS X is allows me to trivially do all this. Once again: we're talking about someone who's always been controversial in the Linux community because of its love/hate relationship with Linux. Honestly I don't want of a Linux developer who's telling the world that OS X on the desktop is better for dev than Linux. Thankfully virtually all of the others Linux developers out there are eating their own dog food. And who are these others Linux developers? The ones who didn't try to poison Linux with MS technologies.

micampe 14y ago
You didn't answer my question here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5246603 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5246603 Also, OS X can run multiple sessions, install a browser with no root access and Java is not installed by default. But I see you are one of those users that drop their misguided wisdom and ignore all the replies, so I won't expect you to reply here either and keep believing your false facts.

pheo 14y ago

I am very disappointed to see this posted where, when, and how it is. Comparing Linux to Mac is like comparing apples to Lamborghinis. I can get an apple, cheaply if not for totally for free, locally, anywhere at any time. Lamborghinis are very expensive, both in up-front cost and maintenance, and truly don't perform relative to the cost. What i hear is someone moaning about how much effort it takes to choose the best kind of apple, Gala? Granny Smith? Sour Green? Golden? Macintosh? I'd rather have an apple than Apple.