Lest all the Mac people tilt this playing field, I'll weigh in and say I have a Windows laptop and desktop. I run a VM on each for Ubuntu when I can, and use Cygwin when I can't (I'm looking at you, Oracle, and shaming you for your USB device support under VirtualBox).
I'd run Linux all the time if the driver support was there for my POS laptop, but it's not and I doubt it ever will be: I simply need the optimized Windows drivers for the display and battery.
You can get A LOT of mileage out of Cygwin and the ilk - plenty for my needs. As a desktop/web developer, bash/vim/make/python, etc. are but a click away.
I'd only get a Mac for iOS development, and even then I would hate my life under XCode.
Ask HN: What is your primary development machine?
11–20 of 60 posts
Re: Ask HN: What is your primary development machine?
#12iMac 21"(with second monitor) and MacBook 13"
Re: Ask HN: What is your primary development machine?
#1315" i7 mbp, ssd, 20" external. my one and only machine. I expect it to last at least two more years with a 8gb ram upgrade.
Re: Ask HN: What is your primary development machine?
#14I want to say my MBP since I can also get a VM of Windows, Linux, and FreeBSD. But since I spend most of my day at work, that unfortunately means Windows Desktop.
Re: Ask HN: What is your primary development machine?
#1515" Early 2011 MBP, 8GB Ram, SSD, 27" Apple LED. I also have an 8-core Mac Pro, but find myself rarely using since getting the latest MBP (which is crazy fast, and with the SSD, feels faster than the Mac Pro in daily use)
Re: Ask HN: What is your primary development machine?
#16Macbook Air. Really hoping the rumors of core i7 versions come true in the next couple weeks, and hopefully with more ram. That would make it a really killer machine, especially if something like that new Vaio's power dock came out to bolster it. http://www.engadget.com/2011/06/28/sonys-new-vaio-z-ultrapor...
Yeah, if I could get the Air with 8 GB of RAM it would be REALLY tempting... (Oracle + Eclipse + JBoss etc... eats a lot of RAM).
Especially with one of those crazy little power docks - that thing has a GPU that can power a pair of additional monitors = 4 in total on Sony's laptop!
Re: Ask HN: What is your primary development machine?
#17At work, I use a SPARC Ultra 45 with Solaris 10. It's a POS.
5+ year old hardware generally is, unless you have modest requirements.
Going forward can probably run OpenIndiana or OpenBSD on it, as Solaris 11 doesn't support non-T or -M class Sparc hardware.
Re: Ask HN: What is your primary development machine?
#18Well, I chose "Windows Laptop", since I primarily use a Win 7 laptop physically. My actual development, however, happens inside a VNC window on a remote Linux box.
Re: Ask HN: What is your primary development machine?
#19Re: Ask HN: What is your primary development machine?
#20I'm always really surprised to see the large representation of Macs in the hacker community.
Apple seems to be loved by consumers, which no doubt makes people want to target things like the iPhone. But I admit I haven't bought anything from them because from my perspective their policies seem to be generally hostile to developers, and they seem to advocate the most-walled garden that they can get away with.
I'm guessing though that my views are perhaps either way off kilter, or people just don't mind as much as I do about these sort of things?