4 ms·

I am a Windows user but I am seriously considering buying a small mac computer (maybe macbook air but I want more ram) for open-source development. It's no surp

by mitchi 14y ago

I am a Windows user but I am seriously considering buying a small mac computer (maybe macbook air but I want more ram) for open-source development. It's no surprise that today, many tools, many functional languages work best on Linux and MacOS. All the screencasts I watched recently were on MacOSX. I tried many things to have it both ways : VMWARE with Ubuntu : X Server crashes every time when I use the browser VMWARE with Mint/Fedora : Crashes before that VMWARE with MacOSX : The whole thing went into a crashing loop after 10 minutes. Back to my snappy W7 I am.

Already__Taken 14y ago
I'm a big windows user and honestly, quite the fan to. But Linux really does look like it makes a lot of development easier so here's what I've been considering. I'm going to make a vagrant VM with chef, possibly arch but I don't think I'm up to configuring it. Add that VHD to my boot list so i can ssh into the box for a lot of what i want and to really try it out just reboot into it for the full gui environment. It'll be interesting to see if linux will handle changing the hardware back and forth like that.
- gizmo686 14y ago
  It shouldn't run into problems with changing hardware. I keep an Ubuntu install on a thumbdrive, and am able to boot into it on every computer I have tried, without noticing any issues.
fegu 14y ago
Me too, as much as I dislike the half-eaten apple, MacOSX is a great product. It even beat FreeBSD to having DTrace support switched on by default.
dopamean 14y ago
I just bought a Macbook Air. 256GB SSD and 8GB of RAM. Seems snappy enough for me.
- mitchi 14y ago
  How much did you pay?
  - kfir 14y ago
    Why does it matter?
  - kip_ 14y ago
    The 11-inch with 1.7GHz i5 with 8GB RAM and 256GB SSD goes for $1,399. The 13-inch with 1.8GHz i5 and the same RAM/SSD goes for $1,499. Yes, there are cheaper laptops out there. I'm happy with the fit&finish, the operating system and the support I've gotten from Apple, both online and in the store.
  - dopamean 14y ago
    Hey, sorry I just saw this. All together it came to just over $1600. Also, my MBA has an i7 processor.
jlarocco 14y ago
If you're primary use will be OSS development then you're best bet is to buy a cheap PC and throw Debian on it. I'd go with the testing branch, which, despite the name, is very stable. In my experience it's a lot easier to use existing OSS code on Linux than it is on OSX. OSX is a lot better than Windows, but I found I spend a lot of time on OSX debugging weird library problems and trying to get dependencies installed. A common problem is that I'll be trying to build/install a library, but it'll have a prereq that isn't met because Apple included an ancient version of it. Fink and MacPorts help a bit, but at that point it you might as well just install Linux, since they're basically emulating the various Linux package management systems, but they don't integrate with the OS very well. On Debian I "apt-get install" the -dev package for the library I want to use, and everything works. And on the rare occasion a library isn't available through apt-get, building from source is almost always as easy as "./configure && make && sudo make install". Sometimes that'll work on OSX, sometimes it won't. In the meantime you might want to try Linux or OSX in VirtualBox first. Sounds like your VMWare installation might be broken.
- briandear 14y ago
  Mac ports and Fink? Apparently 2008 called and they want their stuff back.
  - jlarocco 14y ago
    Okay, I admit I haven't tried very hard to setup OSX for OSS development lately. But at the same time you're making my point. I don't have to worry about it on Linux - I use my distro's built in package manager and it just works. On OSX you have to figure it out yourself.
  - amock 14y ago
    I use both MacPorts and Fink regularly on all of my Macs and they both work well.
- cpeterso 14y ago
  Homebrew is a much more active and easier to use than MacPorts or Fink. MacPorts, in particular, requires building all dependencies from source, even if equivalent OSX libraries are on your machine. http://mxcl.github.io/homebrew/ http://mxcl.github.io/homebrew/
hp50g 14y ago
Use virtual box and debian stable/testing. Solid as a rock. Forget VMware - its a pain in the arse. Make sure you are on 64 bit windows. I have to remain a windows user as I have a ton of stuff written in visual c++ that is at least 10-16 years old which I need to support (30 year support contracts rock :)) My main workstation is a 5 year old Lenovo T61 with a Samsung 840 pro and its as fast as any new machine at 1/10th of the costs. My experiences with macos x have been disastrous - its just about the hardest thing to get anything to build on and that includes dragging 15 year old c++ stuff onto 64 bit windows.
- mitchi 14y ago
  I followed your advice. I've been working for 1 hour successfully!! I used this and saved a lot of setting up time : http://virtualboxes.org/images/debian/ http://virtualboxes.org/images/debian/
  - trhtrsh 14y ago
    also http://pascalcula.blogspot.com/2011/10/setting-up-linux-on-windows-with.html http://pascalcula.blogspot.com/2011/10/setting-up-linux-on-w...
- georgehaake 14y ago
  Curious to hear more about why VMware is a pain. I go back and myself.
  - hp50g 14y ago
    VMware tools is a pain to recompile every damn kernel drop whereas Debian ships and installs VirtualBox guest stuff automatically. Also it's heavier, more expensive and slower from a UI perspective.
    - georgehaake 14y ago
      Thank you.
profquail 14y ago
You might considering trying PC-BSD (or FreeBSD) under VirtualBox. I'm using FreeBSD 9.1-STABLE (32-bit) with VirtualBox on Windows 7 x64 and found it to be a very good combination, and much "snappier" than Ubuntu. There is also a significant number of Haskell users who develop on FreeBSD -- enough that they maintain their own special ports tree for Cabal packages: https://github.com/freebsd-haskell/freebsd-haskell https://github.com/freebsd-haskell/freebsd-haskell I also recently added F# 3.0 to the FreeBSD ports tree, and have found the F# 3.0 + Mono 3.0.x + FreeBSD to be a very nice development/hosting environment: https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups=#!topic/fsharp-opensource/lKLFxHq4oc8 https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups=#!topic/fsharp-o...

by mitchi 14y ago

Already__Taken 14y ago

I'm a big windows user and honestly, quite the fan to. But Linux really does look like it makes a lot of development easier so here's what I've been considering. I'm going to make a vagrant VM with chef, possibly arch but I don't think I'm up to configuring it. Add that VHD to my boot list so i can ssh into the box for a lot of what i want and to really try it out just reboot into it for the full gui environment. It'll be interesting to see if linux will handle changing the hardware back and forth like that.

gizmo686 14y ago
It shouldn't run into problems with changing hardware. I keep an Ubuntu install on a thumbdrive, and am able to boot into it on every computer I have tried, without noticing any issues.

fegu 14y ago

Me too, as much as I dislike the half-eaten apple, MacOSX is a great product. It even beat FreeBSD to having DTrace support switched on by default.

dopamean 14y ago

I just bought a Macbook Air. 256GB SSD and 8GB of RAM. Seems snappy enough for me.

mitchi 14y ago
How much did you pay?
- kfir 14y ago
  Why does it matter?
- kip_ 14y ago
  The 11-inch with 1.7GHz i5 with 8GB RAM and 256GB SSD goes for $1,399. The 13-inch with 1.8GHz i5 and the same RAM/SSD goes for $1,499. Yes, there are cheaper laptops out there. I'm happy with the fit&finish, the operating system and the support I've gotten from Apple, both online and in the store.
- dopamean 14y ago
  Hey, sorry I just saw this. All together it came to just over $1600. Also, my MBA has an i7 processor.

jlarocco 14y ago

If you're primary use will be OSS development then you're best bet is to buy a cheap PC and throw Debian on it. I'd go with the testing branch, which, despite the name, is very stable. In my experience it's a lot easier to use existing OSS code on Linux than it is on OSX. OSX is a lot better than Windows, but I found I spend a lot of time on OSX debugging weird library problems and trying to get dependencies installed. A common problem is that I'll be trying to build/install a library, but it'll have a prereq that isn't met because Apple included an ancient version of it. Fink and MacPorts help a bit, but at that point it you might as well just install Linux, since they're basically emulating the various Linux package management systems, but they don't integrate with the OS very well. On Debian I "apt-get install" the -dev package for the library I want to use, and everything works. And on the rare occasion a library isn't available through apt-get, building from source is almost always as easy as "./configure && make && sudo make install". Sometimes that'll work on OSX, sometimes it won't. In the meantime you might want to try Linux or OSX in VirtualBox first. Sounds like your VMWare installation might be broken.

briandear 14y ago
Mac ports and Fink? Apparently 2008 called and they want their stuff back.
- jlarocco 14y ago
  Okay, I admit I haven't tried very hard to setup OSX for OSS development lately. But at the same time you're making my point. I don't have to worry about it on Linux - I use my distro's built in package manager and it just works. On OSX you have to figure it out yourself.
- amock 14y ago
  I use both MacPorts and Fink regularly on all of my Macs and they both work well.
cpeterso 14y ago
Homebrew is a much more active and easier to use than MacPorts or Fink. MacPorts, in particular, requires building all dependencies from source, even if equivalent OSX libraries are on your machine. http://mxcl.github.io/homebrew/ http://mxcl.github.io/homebrew/

hp50g 14y ago

Use virtual box and debian stable/testing. Solid as a rock. Forget VMware - its a pain in the arse. Make sure you are on 64 bit windows. I have to remain a windows user as I have a ton of stuff written in visual c++ that is at least 10-16 years old which I need to support (30 year support contracts rock :)) My main workstation is a 5 year old Lenovo T61 with a Samsung 840 pro and its as fast as any new machine at 1/10th of the costs. My experiences with macos x have been disastrous - its just about the hardest thing to get anything to build on and that includes dragging 15 year old c++ stuff onto 64 bit windows.

mitchi 14y ago
I followed your advice. I've been working for 1 hour successfully!! I used this and saved a lot of setting up time : http://virtualboxes.org/images/debian/ http://virtualboxes.org/images/debian/
- trhtrsh 14y ago
  also http://pascalcula.blogspot.com/2011/10/setting-up-linux-on-windows-with.html http://pascalcula.blogspot.com/2011/10/setting-up-linux-on-w...
georgehaake 14y ago
Curious to hear more about why VMware is a pain. I go back and myself.
- hp50g 14y ago
  VMware tools is a pain to recompile every damn kernel drop whereas Debian ships and installs VirtualBox guest stuff automatically. Also it's heavier, more expensive and slower from a UI perspective.
  - georgehaake 14y ago
    Thank you.

profquail 14y ago

You might considering trying PC-BSD (or FreeBSD) under VirtualBox. I'm using FreeBSD 9.1-STABLE (32-bit) with VirtualBox on Windows 7 x64 and found it to be a very good combination, and much "snappier" than Ubuntu. There is also a significant number of Haskell users who develop on FreeBSD -- enough that they maintain their own special ports tree for Cabal packages: https://github.com/freebsd-haskell/freebsd-haskell https://github.com/freebsd-haskell/freebsd-haskell I also recently added F# 3.0 to the FreeBSD ports tree, and have found the F# 3.0 + Mono 3.0.x + FreeBSD to be a very nice development/hosting environment: https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups=#!topic/fsharp-opensource/lKLFxHq4oc8 https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups=#!topic/fsharp-o...