Matthew Garrett: How-To Drive Developers From OS X To Linux

[wizard69]

The obvious question is... why would somebody choose OS X when Windows is a cheaper solution and far better in just about every way anyway?

You obviously have no idea here. Windows is a broken platform stuck to far in the past to be even meaningful any more.

As for being cheaper that is highly debatable. I have a friend that ran a little computer repair business on the side, I've heard some interesting stories. In the end the vast majority of people that went to him for computer "repairs" would have been far better off with a Mac. Not all of these where totally stupid people either, there are just to many attract vectors and dark corners that create problems on the platform. In a nut shell he has MS to thank for being a bit richer these days as their OS leads the vast majority of users to either "repair" or upgrade their computers. What he found was that he got few if any calls for support on Macs.

[johnc]

You obviously have no idea here. Windows is a broken platform stuck to far in the past to be even meaningful any more.

So how much are you paid to shill Apple crap here? Or were you doing it all for free?

[DanLamb]

The obvious question is... why would somebody choose OS X when Windows is a cheaper solution and far better in just about every way anyway?

Two big reasons to NOT use Windows:

- The Shell. I've experimented with bash shells a lot and PowerShell under Windows and trusty old cmd.exe. None are nearly as good as OS X or Linux. Setting up zsh is super simple on OS X or Linux and works _far_, _far_ better than any solution I've managed to find on Windows. I use the shell for almost everything I do, so this is a big reason.
- Free software repositories. They exist on Windows but they aren't as good as the equivalents on Linux and OS X.

[Cyber Killer]

Frankly if you are really serious about freedom you would avoid GPL which takes away your freedoms for god know what reason. Maintaining freedom requires careful thinking about how you license your software but also how you respect the desire of others.

For all I care the 'others' should write their own code if they want to use it in closed source apps. GPL is all about freedom and maintaining that freedom, the code leechers which only seek to benefit from others work and not give anything back to the community are not welcome.

[Almindor]

That is an old machine, you do realize that right.

Yes I do, but a 2009 laptop which btw. was replaced in 2012 due to a hardware fault with a brand new "same" specs just 2012 made one which was still sold at the time (never happened to me with non-Mac Laptops, I still have an old hp mini 5303 with linux on it). So it's not that old.

Honestly I find this puzzling. Many times, maybe once every two weeks or so, I run a Brew update and a App Store update side by side and have never had an issue. It does slow down disk access but the system is kept up to date that way without issue. If I'm feeling reckless I even use pip at the same time to update my Python 3 installation.

See and python was one of things which screwed up royally when I updated 10.8 to 10.9.

Yes I would agree it is probably you. App integration between the iPhone and the Mac is one reason I would have a hard time leaving the platform.

Different priorities I guess. I don't own an iPhone but I also don't really use my Jolla for any major work related stuff. No syncs needed really.

And you are the judge of what is proper. Further why do they have to give you an explanation?

No, I'm not judging. I never said that they were stupid or anything. I'm saying that when you ask someone why they bought the Asus PC, or the Ferrarri car they usually have an explanation of specs-type or price. Good engine, fast CPU etc. Mac users usually just buy the latest Mac, specs/price notwithstanding, that was my point.

Look at it this way, from the standpoint of a Mac user the rest of the world is in the dark ages. When I break out my iPad the feeling I get is that over 35 years of technology buying, nothing I've ever owned has worked as well as the iPad. That is not stretching the truth either, the machine just keeps on ticking. The experience is similar with the Mac Book, though it is so old it Is becoming frustrating. It is my Mac Pro that broke me of the habit of constantly buying new hardware and doing Linux upgrades in the hopes that nagging issues here and there are finally resolved.

See I'd say Mac is in middle ages. While package dependencies used to be hell in the old days of linux (think 1999-2003), they are now godsend when it comes to system clarity. I know this is usually considered great on a server, but for a developer, you need a "half server" most of the time anyways.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to insult anyone here, just stating my opinion and viewpoint which is different and considers apple products inferior. It all goes up from what people see as important, our priorities are obviously different.

[jrch2k8]

well i agree with many here on both sides since my main dev system at office is an Mac Mini 2012 with Ram/SSD upgrade with OS X and Linux but my custom ALL AMD home gaming PC is full Linux with open drivers.

from my point of view the only distro capable of feel as stable as OS X(in the sense of ease of upgrade and predictable changes) is manjaro(for newbies) or ArchLinux(for more experienced users) aka rolling release distros. Many people have the misconception that rolling distros are unstable or prone to failures but that is completly false this days, specially on manjaro since they make freaking sure all is sound before make updates available from arch.

But in general either manjaro or arch is just a basic routine of pacman -Syu every week and voila you are in the latest stable code available, so no reinstall no upgrades no waiting for backports no outdated software, just install once and enjoy forever(or until your HDD dies) and in the case of a very massive change(like systemd change) you will find a good explanation in archlinux.org and instructions if necessary but 99.9% of the time pacman deal with everything alone without bother you at all and well manjaro even less.

if you like a number to express how low the difference is with your average freezed distro stability, here are some:

i have around 70 arch systems running including my home, my mac, my in-office servers, and around 50 VPS(all different type of server services) around the world with several providers and most have been running for around 3 years give or take and the numbers of breaks or problems with upgrades so far is a flat 0 (all scripted to pacman -Syu every friday and send me a mail with the log and do an automated restart every 1 of the month) except a couple of time of LLVM breakages in the early 3.4 cycle for radeonsi since my home PC use lcarlier(like ubuntu oibaf) repo for graphic stack git code but well is not archs fault since im very well aware im using bleeding edge code but downgrade to arch default stack until the fix hits SVN is very trivial anyway.

anyway my point is rolling distro make you life lot easier and are at least as stable as any other distro, so if you are an fedora/suse/ubuntu kinda guy use arch to avoid wait for the latest software and if you are a debian/centos kind of guy use manjaro.

In the security area normally fixes hit arch/gentoo repos first, then manjaro and then debian and then the rest, in a rolling distro you cut the backport time

[yogi_berra]

Have you tried ArchBSD?

[Luke_Wolf]

anyway my point is rolling distro make you life lot easier and are at least as stable as any other distro, so if you are an fedora/suse/ubuntu kinda guy use arch to avoid wait for the latest software and if you are a debian/centos kind of guy use manjaro.

In the security area normally fixes hit arch/gentoo repos first, then manjaro and then debian and then the rest, in a rolling distro you cut the backport time

Actually with openSUSE due to the OBS and the way zypper works you can basically be as up to date as you want to be in a manner that is close to rolling

[TheOne]

Psss, I installed Ubuntu with Unity on a small information center that has around 10 computers, also I installed Libre Office. They where using WIndows Xp so I told the manager that I could install another operating system for free that doesn't suffers from the huge amount of security vulnerabilities found on Windows.

On each computer I placed the most used application icons on the unity bar. And you know what? Nobody bitched about it, they started working with the computers as usual without even saying shit, web browsing and office applications all they needed. The manager told me, It has passed like 2 years and the information center isn' t having any issues.

So the real problem is getting linux to ship by default on new computers and laptops like system76 and others are doing. People that write articles about how much better MacOSX or WIndows is than linux are just throwing flames. They are just clowns trying to get some attention from the masses.

[Vim_User]

For all I care the 'others' should write their own code if they want to use it in closed source apps. GPL is all about freedom and maintaining that freedom, the code leechers which only seek to benefit from others work and not give anything back to the community are not welcome.

Yes, I can see how Xorg and Wayland are closed source apps and give nothing back to the community. Oh, wait ...