7 ms·
Ask HN: Have you considered switching from OS X to Linux?
For some time now, I've been growing increasingly weary of the walled gardens I once so enthusiastically embraced. Off the top of my head, some grievances include, forced corporate policies, lack of hardware choice, and closed operating software. For pragmatic reasons, I've stuck it out with OS X for years, but do wonder if it's time to consider OSS desktop alternatives again? Will the conveniences be missed? Tim Oreilly was echoing a similar sentiment a year ago. https://plus.google.com/+TimOReilly/posts/g9WdNt6yVgR
Are you in the same boat? It all just seems so daunting starting over...
- Tsiolkovsky 13y agoI switched back to GNU/Linux about 3 years ago when I started noticing and becoming aware of this ugly trend with Apple. I just couldn't live with myself anymore if I didn't also act according to my belief in digital freedom and empowering people. so after some self-questioning I have decided to switch to GNU/Linux and free software.
- diminoten 13y agoSo you're willfully less productive because you want to have a cleaner conscience?
- mindcrime 13y agoWhere did he say anything about being less productive?
- teddyh 13y agoIf you eliminate some number of products from your universe, random chance alone dictate that some of them must be the best at what they do, and you will be left with, for that program’s purpose, a product which makes you less productive.
- Tsiolkovsky 13y agoActually I'm more productive and happier with desktop (KDE Plasma) and most of the software now: But freedom and rights are far more important to me than little differences in productivity.
- teddyh 13y agoYes. For some people this is not a choice, as such. It’s like wearing slightly uglier, slightly less comfortable clothes because they weren’t made by child slave labor. Is there a true choice what to wear?
- diminoten 13y agoYes, you could wear the clothes that fed that child that day. Stuff isn't so black/white, I guess I'm trying to say.
- teddyh 13y agoIf I’m understanding you correctly, you are implying that it’s OK to buy things produced by child slave labor, because otherwise the slave children would starve. This is… an argument I won’t get into. Suffice it to say, I was merely trying to construct an analogy to demonstrate why, sometimes, using something less than the “best” product is preferable, and why, for some people, it can’t be considered a choice to use the less efficient product.
- diminoten 13y agoYes, and I'm trying to dismantle that analogy by demonstrating that such decisions are made without consideration of the consequences, and that nothing in this world is so simple that simply using or not using a product makes the planet a better or worse place.
- mukundmr 13y agoIt is a personal choice. I personally don't mind OS X as it allows me to do what I want. VMWare Fusion + OS X = freedom of development choice. Bootcamp + Windows = games. The hardware isn't bad either though it is slightly more expensive depending on how you look at it. For Linux, I find that there aren't many good vendors that provide pre-installed Linux on state-of-the-art hardware especially when it comes to laptops.
- stormbrew 13y agoGenerally speaking ultrabooks make great linux laptops, pretty much right out of the box. The more of the functionality of the laptop is provided by Intel stuff the better.
- SkyMarshal 13y agoYou don't really need vendors for desktop Linux, just pick the best hardware you can find that's either on your distro's HCL [1], or uses standard components (Intel/AMD cpu, Intel/AMD/Nvidia graphics, Intel wireless networking chips, etc.). There are good companies out there like XoticPC.com that sell such hardware with or without Windows or other OS, and still provide a warranty and really good support no matter what OS you put on it. Ubuntu and probably most other major Linux distro's work essentially as well Windows if you stick to mainstream hardware (with a few exceptions like multi-monitor support and Nvidia Optimus). [1]: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/HardwareSupport https://wiki.ubuntu.com/HardwareSupport
- hippich 13y agoFrom seeing others dealing with bleeding edge node.js stuff - installing modules and following tutorials become confusing. Sometimes you get weird error and only after couple hours googling you find out that it is because on Mac it is a bit different and you would avoid it if you start with Ubuntu in first place. Yes, Ubuntu, since it is most used OSS desktop right now and most tutorials, docs, etc focus on it from my experience. So it boils down to what you do. If you do mostly client-side html/js/css you probably will be ok with Mac. If you do more server stuff - it might make sense to switch to Ubuntu to make your life easier. Start with Virtualbox with Ubuntu in VM to keep your workflow the same in the beginning.
- ryan-allen 13y agoExactly this! If you are deploying to Ubuntu, it is so much easier on you if you have your dev environment running the same thing. On OS X I found it not to be too different an experience as well, I would run Ubuntu server, open terminal, SSH into the local server, and in the browser just hit the VMs IP, as opposed to open terminal, and hit localhost.
- kayoone 13y agoYou shouldnt pollute your local system with all the dev libs you need anyway. With things like vagrant its very easy to put your projects into containers which run identical enviroments to your target. For these containers it also doesnt reallt matter if you run them from an osx, linux oder even windows host. Another option would be to get some remote Server and do your development there, which has the benefit of being available from anywhere. In that case you will have to use some form of remote editor like vim/emacs though since syncing from local is painful for bigger projects, especially if you work with different branches.
- ryan-allen 13y agoI switched from OS X to Windows 8, and I virtualise linux using windows as the host OS. I hate to say it, but I think Windows 8 is pretty good as a host OS (not having used Windows much since 2003). I wouldn't be able to do my job without the virtulisation though, in the end I got so fed up with trying to install stuff naively on OS X with brew and ports and from source and whatever I was virtualising on OS X for about 2 years before I switched over anyway.
- kyriakos 13y agoI'm using Windows 8 too and virtualization for server testing. What stops you from going Linux-only? In mine case its Adobe :)
- ryan-allen 13y agoYep, Adobe is one, but funnily enough iTunes is another. I have spent thousands on iTunes over the years and with iTunes match I don't have to download everything either. Though iTunes on Windows is pretty rubbish (it's slow and looks pretty bad, doesn't do UI scaling properly). I also want everything to mostly just work, which is why I liked OS X in the first place (it has a Terminal, and everything mostly works!). I dual boot Windows 8 on my Macbook Air, I think Apple still do make the best laptop hardware.
- tmikaeld 13y agoVMware can run Photoshop 3D accelerated now so performance is great even in linux.
- LaSombra 13y agoLightroom :(
- jmspring 13y agoNo. As much as I hate iTunes, having a homogenous infrastructure at home between AppleTV, iPhones, iPads, and an old macbook pro acting as a server, things just work. Our personal laptops are an Air and a Retina MPB. Moving the wife from Windows to Mac was enough of a step (she uses excel and other biz apps), Linux would be a non-starter. Given the i* devices, for me, I couldn't revisit Linux without incurring management headaches I don't care for. There is more to "switching" than just is an OSS option available. I have a number of VMs -- ubuntu and FreeBSD for development. Desktop remains homogenous.
- aragot 13y agoHas anyone tried Google TV and how does it compete within a iEcosystem? http://www.google.com/tv/get.html http://www.google.com/tv/get.html
- garyadamshannon 13y agoI put together a new desktop machine for the first time in 12 years a few weeks ago and decided to run xubuntu on it. The most annoying aspect of it is the discrepancies between applications and keyboard shortcuts. If you're a power user mac who uses keyboard shortcuts a ton then going back to X11 apps can be a little painful. The other downside I had was on install I had no wireless card and had to download a tarball to a usb stick and recompile my device driver just to connect. I kind of expected things to just work by now, it's a shame there's still these little hiccups but I guess I shouldn't have bought cutting edge?
- anirul 13y ago+1 definitly! I have tried many times but, every time I had to go back to OSX for some reason. I am a big FreeBSD fan and for me OSX with the port system was the way to go. Now Apple is more and more getting in the way but FreeBSD not really running on Apple hardware. On the Linux (I tried Ubuntu/Debian/Fedora/Gentoo) point of view you can't really find a distro that is working well enough and have a similar port system. I'm kinda stuck with OSX...
- stormbrew 13y agoI was a somewhat reluctant Mac user for several years (say, 2006 to early 2012). Reluctant because I've never been a fan of apple products in general, but at the time Apple provided the best combination of good desktop environment and unix-like environment that made my life as someone who works on server software much easier. There were always many nitpicks I had to deal with and fix every time I reinstalled or got a new computer, and they piled up and up with every new version. I switched to xubuntu with a toshiba z830 and my life got easier. Then I switched to Mint and things got even better.
- aaronbrethorst 13y ago> Have you considered switching from OS X to Linux? No. > forced corporate policies care to elaborate? I'm not sure what this means. Policies forced by the company you work for? How does Linux solve this? > lack of hardware choice Plus, not a minus. I think the 13" MacBook Air is the best laptop on the market today. Tight integration between hardware and software is key. > closed operating software Don't care, see answer #2. It's also probably worth mentioning that I make my living through iOS (in part through my site: http://www.cocoacontrols.com http://www.cocoacontrols.com)
- sieisteinmodel 13y ago> Plus, not a minus. I think the 13" MacBook Air is the best laptop on the market today. Tight integration between hardware and software is key. Sorry? How is a restriction a plus? Can you use a Lenovo with OS X? No. Can you use a Macbook with Linux? Yes.
- jmduke 13y agoI'll say something that's vaguely awful: what's in it for me? I use Linux at work and it's not bad, but I'm less productive on it with 95% of tasks than I would be with OSX. It looks worse (I recognize this is subjective.) A lot of my friends use Linux and tell me that if I spend the right amount of time tinkering with it -- making it mine -- I'd reap the benefits of a bespoke OS, just like slipping on a suit that's tailored just for me. But what's the point? I lose out on apps and aesthetics for hypothetical yields in productivity -- I don't want to do that. In terms of your points: - forced corporate policies: My employer forces a Linux desktop and either a Mac/Windows laptop. - lack of hardware choice: I will take to my grave the assertion that the MacBook Air is the best laptop on the market. (Or at least the prettiest.) - Closed operating software: This does not bother me.
- galaktor 13y agoI know it's merely your opinion, but you seem to be using the terms "best" and "pretty" interchangeably. I find that very surprising, but maybe it's well-designed UX on Mac that you are referring to when you say "pretty"? Anyway, pretty is one of those things that I learned is worth sacrificing in favour of productivity - be that in code or when I choose my OS or tools.
- qq66 13y agoAesthetics does impact functionality. The paint scheme and wall decorations in a room can definitely affect one's productivity in that room, and I'm sure that effect would be dependent both on the person and on the task at hand.
- jmduke 13y agoIf you're referring to the MacBook Air comment: I am very confident that the MBA is the perfect machine for me, but I am more so confident that there are people who have a much deeper understanding of the consumer hardware landscape than I do. Thus the qualifier of 'at least the prettiest': someone could very feasibly change my mind about the MBA, but I haven't seen anything else that looks quite like it. Anyway, pretty is one of those things that I learned is worth sacrificing in favour of productivity - be that in code or when I choose my OS or tools. I agree, but I don't think its so black and white (for me!) When my tools are well-crafted and attractive, I use them more frequently and with more vigor.
- vaidhy 13y agoI want to shift, but I like the macbook pro hardware so much better. Running Linux on macbook pro just kills the battery :(
- john2x 13y agoI would if there was hardware that's as good as the Macbook Air. I know that it can run Ubuntu, but I'm not sure how well the trackpad and battery perform. And with the upcoming Mavericks, that bar is going to get a lot higher.
- CJefferson 13y agoYes, and I am happy. Life is particularly better for the C and C++ programmer. Valgrind's primary platform is Linux. For many years Mac owners were stuck with a horribly out of date and malfunctioning GCC, and even now with clang there are problems (the clang in xcode 5.0 has some horrible miscompiling bugs which were reported months before release). Is everything perfect in Linux? No. But overall I find it an improvement. The only app I miss is keynote, OpenOffice is a poor substitute.
- Stealth- 13y agoHave you tried LibreOffice? It's a significant improvement.
- thex86 13y agoUse Beamer for presentations [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beamer_(LaTeX) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beamer_(LaTeX)] and never look back!
- rtpg 13y agoDo people really find using tex to make presentations worthwhile for things when it's not for academics? Maybe I'm just not good, but I take a lot less time to make something that looks nice with Powerpoint, especially when trying to touch things up (the feedback loop on WYSIWYG software should not be underestimated)/
- onazareth 13y agoCan you actually make something nice with Powerpoint? If so, you should teach my coworkers. I will stick with LaTeX.
- happymellon 13y agoI fixed that with Wine and a copy of Office 2007 I picked up on a Black Friday sale at Office Depot, which resolved any document compatibility issues I had. Libre Office maybe better these days but 6 years ago layout issues were rife.
- siculars 13y agoThis. +100. I'm growing increasingly uncomfortable with the Apple ecosystem. iProducts, iCloud, etc. I can't transfer this to that cause I'm not allowed, click here to accept this, turn on location services so we can track you - on your laptop. It's getting to be too much. What's the best laptop for running any Ubuntu flavored desktop?
- mindcrime 13y agoAre you wedded to Ubuntu? If not, Fedora is a pretty nice distro as well...
- aclevernickname 13y agoMost linux users start on Redhat/Fedora, and quickly leave due to the pain that is RPM. I left to gentoo. Most others take the debian/ubuntu path.
- mindcrime 13y agoThat might have been the received wisdom a decade ago, but YUM/RPM work about as well as apt-get now, and - to be quite honest - I prefer YUM. I like, for example, that I use the same command to search for packages as to install them, instead of having to remember that on Ubuntu it's "apt-cache search FOO" instead. shrug YMMV.
- aclevernickname 13y agoperhaps my previous post was too polite. People that never actually _care_ to learn linux go from Redhat to Ubuntu (or stay right where they are!). People with an interest in the OS itself move to Gentoo/Funtoo/LFS. I still use CentOS to this day (Asterisk), it's painful.
- logn 13y agoI use Xubuntu now because every cloud vps has an Ubuntu option, and I like the consistency of developing on the same OS as the servers I later deploy to.
- mindcrime 13y agoI switched from a combination of OS/2 and Windows 95 / Windows 2000 TO Linux as my primary desktop OS about 13 years ago, and have never looked back. You can have my Fedora Linux desktop when you pry it from my cold, dead, fingers. As for OS X... I'm sure it's nice, but I have no interest in Apple and their locked down, proprietary, closed off, "walled garden" ecosystem. I'm no rms, but I have little to no use for software that isn't OSS or FLOSS. I did just switch from using Gnome as my primary desktop environment, back to KDE - after about 6 or 7 years of Gnome use - and I'm pretty damn happy with the current iteration of KDE. If you haven't tried it, give it a look, you may find that it's much better than you anticipated.
- Tsiolkovsky 13y agoCouldn't agree more about KDE Plasma desktop. I've used most desktops there are and switched to KDE Plasma about a year ago (I used GNOME2 until then, don't like GNOME3 and Unity at all) and boy, KDE Plasma is by far the best desktop I have ever used. Looks great, has awesome usability (once you get used to it) and it is very flexible so you can adapt it almost perfectly to the way you work. Realy awesome.
- aclevernickname 13y agoI've been converting MacOS users to Kubuntu/KXStudio for the last year and a half. Since Lion, MacOS is now less user-friendly than kubuntu overall, and their system is usually more responsive after the update.
- asiekierka 13y agoI switched a few months ago from Linux to OS X. The OSS desktop is not yet ready, but I believe that it can be ready in a matter of two, three years.
- CrankyPants 13y agoIt's been two to three years away for about ten to fifteen years now. You're right, but just don't expect it to be there in two to three years.
- laurenstill 13y agoI spent most of my professional career in windows (healthcare, IE6, etc) but personally switch to ubuntu a couple years ago as I got into development. I do find myself reaching for my work MBP when I have to do video/photo editing stuff, but otherwise, I don't see a huge difference in productivity. Switched a couple of offices to OSS for admin, and that went surprisingly well. My cell/tablet are android, so there was no real incentive to move to Mac from a house-compatibility standpoint.
- rob05c 13y agoI actually just switched from OS X to Linux about 3 months ago. I grew up with Windows, and started using Macs in college. There were 2 big reasons I switched. (1) I wanted to build a desktop; the Mac Mini is underpowered and the Pro is wicked expensive. (2) Apple's competing in the courtroom disgusts me. I was a huge Apple fan, but I don't want to give them any more money. Windows isn't an option to me. I love text and I love the POSIX shell. I find DOS abhorrent. I don't really miss any conveniences. If you really want something pretty and easy, go with Ubuntu. It mostly just works. The only thing I really had trouble with was wireless drivers. I started with Ubuntu, and later switched to Arch with i3 (Tiling WMs are awesome). Again, If you want something that's almost as pretty and almost as easy to set up, I highly recommend Ubuntu. Once you get settled in, I also recommend looking at Arch. Arch is a lot more work and learning to set up, don't start with it. But it's a better system once you have it configured your way. It's been some work, learning Arch and fighting with wireless drivers. But I don't regret it. I'm extremely happy with my Arch+i3 system. It has Chromium, Steam, Minecraft--everything I need. I do wish Steam had more Linux games, but with the Steam Box, I think they're on their way. ps. I don't recommend dual boot. I did dual and triple boot a few years back. It was just a big hassle. Get a machine and dive into Ubuntu. Good luck.
- regecks 13y agoThe desktop experience is pretty close to being "there", but the lack of iTunes or any viable alternative (for syncing) is a bit of a show-stopper if you own an Apple device ... Apparently this is due to Apple making it technically difficult for third-party applications to replace iTunes
- kayoone 13y agoThought about this alot, probably too much. The bottom line is that switching to Linux will be a step back in terms of convenience. It is still true that the closed operating systems are just easier to use as day-to-day one-size-fits-all machines. In my recent tries with Xubuntu i had some sound issues, the machine didnt want to sleep correctly and skype had audio lag issues and didnt show a popup when somebody was calling. Small stuff, but stuff i dont really want to deal with.. Ironically OSX86 on the same machine (older Intel hardware) works perfectly fine and i have none of these issues, it probably even works better than windows. As i do all my development in VMs (vagrant) the host OS doesnt really matter and it just needs to get the day-to-day stuff done, but i still wouldnt choose Linux for that. Id still like to switch back to Windows as the host, just to have more freedom. Sadly vagrant/virtualbox shared folder performance is poor which makes it a bit of a pain to work with. So i have ultimately thought of a system where Windows 8 is the host and id just use a Xubuntu VM (with a GUI) where i do all the development in, but still rely on Windows for skype/office stuff/audio/adobe apps in the background. However that locks me out of iOS development, soo dual booting windows/osx86 + vagrant boxes currently gives me the most flexibility and ability to work on anything and use all 3 OSes for what they are best at...probably need to replace the PC with some form of Apple hardware to be legal but overall its pretty perfect. (In a perfect world Apple would finally adapt the PC keyboard layout, i just hate the mental overhead required when switching systems) I dont like Apple much, but i am pretty sure MS would love to do the same things so it more about choosing the lesser evil because Linux still isnt there yet. Atleast that my opinion right now.
- PLejeck 13y agoLinux is harder to learn and get set up, but it's just spending a bit more time now to be more productive in the long run. Of course, it's not more productive for everybody, but it is for some of us. Plus we have Docker.io instead of Vagrant. Way nicer.
- kayoone 13y agoSadly id still need some form of Windows for game development (Unity3D). Since Unity3D also runs on OSX, thats another benefit in terms of convenience for me using OSX.
- neilk 13y agoIf you mean as a consumer OS, I consider it and then I remember what a miserable experience it has been the last three times I've done that. In my experience, there is no Linux distro that has the staff, organization, or funding to focus on providing a good consumer OS experience. All the successful Linux distros eventually find there's no money in it, and they wander off to do enterprisey stuff or try to make tablets or whatever. As a development OS, I'm already there - most things for me are in virtualized Linux, but inside the Mac OS.
- sitharus 13y agoYes, but it's too much work. Using MacOS, iPhone, Apple TV and a Time Capsule everything integrates pretty well. I get automated network backups, I can mirror video to my TV and I can keep my browser tabs accessible between devices. This has required very little setup on my part. I'd love to not be dependant on Apple, but I trust them more than Google, and there's nothing else that works as seamlessly. Edit: Also the hardware. I've yet to find another company that values build quality as much as Apple. They're trying, any I hope someone else does, but I haven't found a laptop similar spec to my rMBP that feels as nice and has the same battery life. I can go 6 hours using Windows 8 in a VM for development.
- wissler 13y agoSwitching? I use all three major OS's. Linux is best for software development, Windows is best for games, OSX is best for laptops. It sucks but that's the state of things.
- PLejeck 13y agoI see everybody with the view that OSX is so much more productive, but I'll give a different view, as an OS X user turned Linux user. I switched entirely about 6 months ago, and it just sort of happened once Linux was set up to my liking. Positives: * Tiling WMs - I have always found myself working primarily in fullscreen applications like in OSX, but it's nice to have a small status bar at the top still and splitscreen capabilities. My WM of choice, AwesomeWM, provides this, and does it really well. * Docker.io - Docker is infinitely better than Vagrant. It starts faster, it's thinner, and it's easier to interact with. And it only runs on Linux (at least for now, but it'd be hard to add OSX support probably, due to the use of cgroups and other Linux APIs) * Better Package Management - Yes, OS X has homebrew, and it's great, but it has to compile from source, which takes a while and spins up your fans usually. It's just troublesome. And on Linux, if we want to compile, we can usually use distcc to distribute that load to a cluster. I do, and I know many others do as well. * Choice of Workflow - OS X has a wonderful workflow, but it's not perfect. Sometimes it's nice to be able to pick the workflow that is almost exactly perfect for you, and tweak it until it's ideal. That's what I did, and it's been a huge boon for my productivity. * Homogeneity with Deployment - this is a lesser positive, but it's still nice in many cases. Most of the good distros will teach you at least basic sysadmin skills over a shot period of time, through immersion. This means you can spend less money on sysadmins and do it yourself as long as possible, assuming you deploy on bare EC2 Negatives: * More downtime - this is an issue with distros like Arch and Gentoo, and it does get to be a problem from time to time. I mean, it's hard to work when X11 won't start or a driver is broken (I'm looking at you, Broadcom) * Learning curve - Linux really is as hard as it seems to learn, I'm not gonna lie. It's not perfect. * You look like an "Engineer" not a "Hacker" - Lots of people will view the fact that you spent time customizing your work environment as you playing around with your OS. It's not really that way (unless you're a Gentoo user) but it gives that view to some people. * Lack of support for multitouch trackpads - I'm sure this is less of an issue for other people, but it really was a dealbreaker early on for me. It killed all the ways I interacted with OS X. It was terrible for a while, then I got over it. Honestly, I dual booted Arch and OS X for about 8 months before I ended up tipping over to Arch. It took me setting up a shared partition and AwesomeWM before I could convince myself to use it daily. But it's the best decision I've ever made, because I find myself being infinitely more productive with my new workflow. I'm done with OSX entirely, I only use it for Photoshop now.
- ohazi 13y agoI first experimented with Linux around 2001-2003 (kernel 2.4.x). I tried many of the popular distributions at the time (RedHat, Mandrake, Slackware, Debian, SuSE), but concluded that while it was useful as a server if you set it up carefully, it really wasn't ready for the Desktop. In particular, I had issues with hardware support (graphics and USB), unreliable filesystems (ext2 after a crash), browser compatibility, video playback, office suite compatibility, and anti-aliased text. I made the switch from Windows XP to Mac OS X around the same time, and for several years it filled the role of a "usable desktop unix" OS quite well. A few years later (2005?) I put Ubuntu on some spare hardware I had lying around and ended up keeping it as a personal server for the next five years or so. My last Mac laptop (MBP, 2 GHz core duo, Leopard) died around 2010. I had originally planned to get a new Mac at the end of that summer, but in the meantime I put the latest Ubuntu on an old Thinkpad my dad had lying around (T60, 1.83 GHz core duo). It ran circles around my old Mac despite the slightly slower CPU, and many of the issues I had with Linux the first time around had been solved. I was impressed enough to skip the Mac upgrade and continued using the T60 for the next two years. I was happy enough with Linux by then that I knew I wasn't going back to OS X, but some personal issues with the Ubuntu upgrade cycle and where Canonical was headed eventually led me to switch to a rolling release of Debian unstable. I've since upgraded to a T520, and see myself staying with Linux for the foreseeable future. It might be useful to mention that I'm primarily a C/C++/embedded developer. I spend most of my time with a terminal, a text editor, and a browser. I really like having proper "out of the box" support for the standard open source developer tools without having to hack them onto my system with third party OS X package managers. I don't have to worry about Mac specific quirks, or old/forked versions when some library doesn't get ported properly or in a timely manner. ---- As a side note, for anyone considering a rolling release, I'd probably recommend Debian testing over unstable. I've used both continuously over the past year, and while I haven't had any serious showstoppers with unstable, testing has had a perfect track record as far as distribution stability is concerned, while unstable has had a few minor kinks (usually just dependency issues immediately after updates are made available, but there have been occasional crashes).
- pimeys 13y agoI used OS X exclusively for many years from 2003 to 2009. I always thought that I'm the most productive with macs, until I first started to learn vim and then had a employer who forced either a Windows or Ubuntu laptop for me. When I installed Ubuntu to my work laptop I tried this tiling window manager my friend recomended called Xmonad. It was hard. Nowadays I'm a happy Gentoo user and when our television computer, which is an iMac, breaks, it's going to be my last Mac.
- kyriakos 13y agoI guess today unless you are coding something very hardware/OS specific, e.g. Games what OS you use its just a matter of personal preference. You can do the same in Linux/Windows/OSX, stability and security is no longer the main worry as all the ecosystems matured and from usability perspective its a matter of what you got used to and your willingness to make an effort on something different.
- 10098 13y agoUnless you're stuck making OSX or iOS applications, I see no reason not to switch. OSX is like my fourth OS of choice behind linux, windows and chromeOS (which is still linux). I had to use osx for 1.5 years at work and going back to using my personal laptop every evening was like changing from a poorly fitting constrictive suit into a comfy bath robe and putting on your favorite slippers.
- presty 13y agoMade the switch in 2011, when I needed a new laptop note: I was already using arch on my desktop for a few years, though.
- uniclaude 13y agoShouldn't this be a poll? Could someone make one? About the question, I did mostly switch to linux, but there's a few programs that make this transition difficult (ableton live is good, and not available on linux). I do benefit from a strong performance improvement, but I would really like to have a better desktop environment. Moreover, a large part of my work is much simpler to do because I can use containers instead of a VM. All in all, I have a better experience on Linux, so I'm doing most of my work there, but I would welcome a bit of amelioration here and there. I'm experienced in Linux GUI programming, but this sounds like a good and interesting challenge, maybe even a startup idea. To anyone considering the switch: Ubuntu is nice but it is not the only solution, I personally use Debian and my friends use Arch. We're all quite happy with our systems, even if the polish of osx is sometimes missed.
- karlherler 13y agoYes, and I am right now. I've been using OS X pretty much as my primary OS for 6 years. Lately, because I've been working on a lot of systems programming, I've felt that it's too much of a hassle of constantly running everything on a virtual machine (although vagrant makes it a very nice process) so I switched to elementaryos[1]. It took a lot of tweaking but I'm generally happy with the switch, I still use sublime text as my general editing workhorse and other than some window management tool that I haven't found a easy replacement for I'm all good. It sure made the day to day work easier. [1] http://elementaryos.org/ http://elementaryos.org/
- jmgtan 13y agoNope. Actually convinced one of my colleague to drop ubuntu and switch to a rMBP. Corporate policies: not really sure what you meant by that. Lack of hardware choice: am using a rMBP, this is a very beautiful piece of laptop. I can encode video, start a virtual machine, keep PHPStorm running smoothly, and compile java code all at the same time without any stuttering or slowdowns, and it does it in a very stylish manner. Closed operating system: even when am using linux/ubuntu am not gonna go around modifying the internals. So I don't mind it one bit, if it means having a smoother and better experience am all for the walled garden. My work usually targets either a redhat/centos server or ubuntu server and I don't have any difficulties with any environment differences between my target deployment server and my local machine. So no reason to rock the boat so to speak.
- aragot 13y agoGone from Ubuntu to Mac OSX six months ago: - No IT support for Ubuntu: I upgraded to Ubuntu 13.04 at home, then at work. And they had a bug in the network authentification. Life is sad, when you suddently can't connect to the network... something that worked well in 12.12. I lost 2 days at work, the IT support only wanted to support Macs, I worked the following 3 nights to recover a high-pressure project, yes, Ubuntu failed me. - On Ubuntu, I was missing Keynote, and IntelliJ is so annoying (have to remap keyboard shortcuts, but then you can't work on your colleagues' machines). Fortunately, we don't use Word or Excel at work. - Everything my company designs uses the Mac UX language: icons, UI patterns, if you don't use a Mac, you don't understand how design decisions make sense. So using a Mac is a way to keep posted about the fashion.
- bowlofpetunias 13y agoI've used Linux for years. I've even used Linux on the first Macs I ever had. In the end, I found it just cost me too much time, especially if I wanted to keep it running on the hardware of my choice, which will most likely remain Apple. And I'm not compromising my hardware choice, as long as other manufacturers can't be bothered to invest as much in excellent product design. Also, having so much freedom to choose and configure is not always productive, and I really don't like the defaults most distro's come with. This is where the difference between OSX and Linux desktops becomes painfully clear. I'll consider switching back if OSX becomes too restrictive or the Linux desktop eco-system (including hardware) dramatically improves.
- kayoone 13y agoI agree. Id say the Linux desktop will probably never drastically improve because of this massive NIH-syndrome. So much development resources go into maintaining dozens of forks of popular Desktop enviroments (Unity, Gnome3, Mate, Cinnamon, GnomeShell, KDE, XFCE etc) that its not even funny anymore. Choice isnt always good. The sheer flexibility and number of choices for each and every part of the linux desktop world makes the whole experience chaotic, inconsistent, buggy and complex to setup and maintain. And as thats the DNA of Linux and Open-Source, it probably wont change. And while awesome, that DNA makes it nearly impossible to have a Linux Desktop experience that will ever rival the closed ones in terms of day-to-day usability.
- anko 13y ago> The sheer flexibility and number of choices for each and every part of the linux desktop world makes the whole experience chaotic, inconsistent, buggy and complex to setup and maintain. I think that's what vendors like ubuntu should be for. They should focus on stability and planning. Instead they just keep doing their own thing for a audience that might very well not exist.
- kayoone 13y agoExactly. Ubuntu started out to be the mainstream distro that just makes the linux desktop experience smooth and free of worries, but instead they now build just another desktop experience on their own. Even for Ubuntu you have Ubuntu, Kubuntu, Xubuntu, Mint and-i-dont-know-what else...thats just the wrong approach imo.
- tsomctl 13y agoI love Linux. The year was 2005, I was 14. I had dialup, and I wanted to try out this Linux thing. I bought a 20 disc set of cds for Debian, and installed it on my computer. I had to install it several times before I figured out to press the space bar to select to install a graphical environment. I also got a free disc in the mail for another thing called Ubuntu. Installed that too. Rather ugly brown. I spent hours trying to get it to talk to my modem to connect to the internet. I never could get the gui to work, I had to run it through the cli. I once decided to compile my own kernel because I could. There was a thrill in seeing it boot. I also finally figured out how to get opengl working with my radeon. Messing with esoteric xorg settings. Eventually I completely stopped booting into Windows XP. (Actually I spilled soy sauce on my video card. It would never work in Windows again, only Linux.) I tried a number of distros over the years. Gentoo is excellent, if you're an asocial computer nerd that enjoys compiling programs. I also did Linux From Scratch. Huge amount of fun. Learned a lot. I still remember the thrill of seeing Gnome finally start up. I set up a tiling window manager (can't even remember what it was). Most sparse desktop ever. Always had xine running on the left most desktop (started from the command line of course.) The development environment was excellent, (except for the lack of IDE). Huge number of libraries. Easily write a c program that could access the internet, parse video files, etc. And all of these libraries were easily installed. Valgrind was excellent, too. The last distro I extensively used was Fedora. Finally, though, I had enough. I grew tired of constantly having to fiddle with little shit. The final straw was I was just doing a generic update, and wifi stopped working. I couldn't figure it out, so I just wiped the drive and installed windows 7. It's nice to have things work, mostly. I miss the environment. Cygwin/mingw don't quite make it up, and powershell is a heaping sack of shit. I tried Linux Mint about a year ago. It was atrocious. I don't remember all of the details, but it was the little details that didn't work. The multimedia keys didn't work, this was a known bug that had been around for a while. The start menu was annoying to use, Windows 7 was actually better in this regard. I don't need to say anything about Gnome 3. I just bought a Macbook on Friday. I'm actually pretty excited, this will be my first modern Mac. I'm hoping that I'll get the awesome development environment of Linux/Unix and the polished interface of a commercial operating system. I once very strongly believed in support the FSF, but I want a computer that works. I don't have the time anymore to tinker with esoteric xorg settings.
- 13y ago
- nrser 13y agoi would love to. i came from linux to OSX. and for exactly those reasons i can't leave: - Photoshop (nope, Gimp won't do, sorry) - Word (nope, OpenOffice etc. won't do... had it fuck up the section headings on a legal doc the other day. no bueno.) - music software (Ableton, Maschine, etc.) i'm also addicted to the trackpad. some Apple hardware guys told me it's all software, but i don't remember any Windows or linux laptop ever coming close... i'm amazed how bad they are every time i need to jump on one for a minute.
- _jb 13y agoI've been toying with the idea, yeah. Then I got my MacBook Pro stolen and used an old laptop replacement with Ubuntu while I was in the process of replacing it. Long story short, there are a few things that I couldn't get over within a week: - CTRL-C rather than CMD-C is now a weird contorsion for my hand. - CTRL-C and CTRL-V can't be used for copying and pasting in the terminal. I understand why, but really couldn't get over it. - I think the UI is not polished enough to my likings. It's good, but still lacking. Visual differences and missing proper exposé are at the top of this list. - iPhone integration (disclaimer: I didn't try that hard.) So I went back to OS X.
- abrowne 13y agoThis bothered me too, so I 1. Rebound control to the command key 2. Changed the terminal shortcuts to control-c, etc. (from control-shift-). 3. Set the terminal to use control-j instead of control-c for sigint: $ stty intr ^j (I'm slowly transitioning from OS X to Linux.)
- rimantas 13y agoThe only think I am growing increaslingly weary of are those moaning about the walled gardens, "rms told so", and some perverted understanding of freedom. The answer is no. Actually I switched from Windows/Linux to OS X. I love linux on the servers, I don't hate Windows, but I don't like preachers, especially misinformed ones. It would be interesting to know, what share of oss is actually written on OS X compared to Linux…
- Beltiras 13y agoI'd be happy to bring all my office desktops to Linux but there are two insurmountable problems (I am one out of 2 desktops on Linux, out of roughly 40 office computers). We are a newspaper publishing company, Adobe CS suite is a must. Our accountant uses software only delivered with Remote Desktop and that stinkymud uses a security variant not offered by the OSS variants of RDP clients. As it stands I plan to migrate as fast away from Windows as possible. This means all new machines are either Ubuntu or OsX. Layout and Graphics machines OsX, others Ubuntu. At least Microsoft is getting kicked to the curb, but Jobs's ghost will be around till Adobe realizes their mistake and offers a native suite for Linux.
- kuebelreiter 13y agoOSX has a big plus: It's reliability, I've used it for 10 years as primary OS and it never lost a piece of data or ceased to work when I needed it most (as the deadline approaches). As long as Apple doesn't switch to AppStore-only and I have a CLI to compile what I want I will stay on OSX as a primary OS. Being a Linux user since the 90s I always have Linux Desktop machines around. Switching to Ubuntu will be a loss in reliability for you coming from OSX. I used it since Dapper Drake, in the last years every half year upgrade broke something, especially in Unity and Gnome. Obviously Ubuntu are more into making strange things on their own then providing a reliable linux. Ubuntu is the "odd man out" in Linux and you won't gain anything but upgrade pain two times a year from switching to Ubuntu. It isn't "real Linux" anymore. So if you're going to switch to Linux, don't use Ubuntu, instead use Debian Stable or Arch. If you're on a reliable distribution Linux will work fine. That is true of course only if your hardware is supported without "just compile a sweet little kernel module and it works fine". No, don't do this. Don't rely on such hardware or be prepared to spent the weekends fiddling around to make your graphics adapter or wifi work. If it works you will find more or less everything you need for your computing needs as a developer. But you're going to miss the nice small apps you learned to love in the OSX indie developer ecosystem. You even won't find a nice client for Twitter in the Linux Repos (most of them haven't seen an update since Twitter switched to OAuth and the API and won't work anymore but are still in the repos), if you're into ADN there isn't anything but an ugly cross-platform client. Regarding such small things like clients for social networks you will switch the OSX culture of "it has to be nice and working or nobody won't use or buy it" against "somebody made something that works somehow but looks ugly and hey if you don't like it make it better it's open source".
- dimkar 13y agoI was considering moving to Linux myself till I found out that gotomeeting or gotowebinar doesn't function on one, and I use it too often to not consider it a key feature.
- khanio 13y agoI made the switch, and I am pretty much in content. My affair with Linux started in 1991 and in 2000, I made a switch to OSX, primarily for the hardware and for good 12 years, my MacBook Pro served me well. Last year, I wanted to buy a new machine, considering the fact the new Retina MacBook Pro's RAM couldn't be upgraded (as much of it is hard wired), I decided to go with ThinkPad W530 with Linux on it. The reason to switch was also because of nature of my work, most of which involved testing distributed architectures. Since my switch to Ubuntu, I feel more at home these days.
- xipher 13y agoThe only thing keeping me from it is a couple of app's that I use regularly, and am not willing to give it up. With the decline in Apple's quality both in their OS/Flagship products as well as their hardware (my MBPr has had more problems than any Apple laptop before it). I'm pretty sure this will be my last purchase from Apple, and i'll be moving to a new laptop running some flavour of linux as soon as a suitable replacement laptop comes on the market.
- shapeshed 13y agoIf you run Linux in a VM on VirtualBox on OSX you get the best of both worlds. If you are curious it is a great way to experiment. The other point to make is that if you use terminal POSIX compliant tools (vim, mutt, tmux) and favour web applications over native ones you can create a highly portable environment so the choice of underlying OS becomes a subjective question of taste.
- tmikaeld 13y agoOne large reason keeps me from switching to Linux. Software maintenance, features and updates. Without financial backing, the apps for linux will never be as good as on either OS X or Windows. I donate a lot, but my money can only reach so far - it seems as too few donate, though i'm sure many donate their time and that is also a way of donating - but still, the fact is that someone has to pay to keep software developed and updated.
- rajacombinator 13y agoyes I've thought about it because 1) I've felt that the last few OS X iterations have been steps in the wrong direction, bloating the OS with crap "features" that are useless and add overhead. It's slower, more pinwheels, crashes, etc. 2) A lot of dev and computational tools run natively on Linux and you have to deal with 2nd best ports on Mac. 3) The absurdly high cost of Macs. For instance I'm about to upgrade my mbp when they finally update them next week and I expect it will run about $2700. for #1, I'm hoping that 10.9 is an improvement since it seems to have a performance focus. i think all Mac users are dreading that Apple will slap iOS on our laptops. if they do, #1 will become a bigger factor. #2 usually is not a huge problem. of course, when it is, it's enormously frustrating. for #3, when I've looked, the cost of getting a similarly spec'ed non Mac is still around $2000 so the savings aren't that huge. ultimately, the reasons for switching do not outweigh my perceived costs of switching. i don't want to tinker with my OS or evaluate which of the many Linux options is best. and for my typical consumer laptop use, the Apple ecosystem is just convenient. (syncs w my phone, etc.)
- dagw 13y agoSeveral times. Then I look at the hardware options available to me, what they cost, how much work I need to get everything working and compare it all to my MBA. After having done that I decide to stick with OS X for a bit longer.
- frou_dh 13y agoIf I used nothing but CLI programs, I would happily switch to Linux or FreeBSD. But with GUI a consideration then, after becoming accustomed to the fit and finish of OS X and the quality 3rd party apps it attracts, it's too depressing to spend time in stuff that's at best amateur. Becoming a fancy-pants appreciator of particular attributes is its own kind of lock-in...