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Ask HN: is Mac or Linux the choice for a modern web hacker?

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Re: Ask HN: is Mac or Linux the choice for a modern web hacker?

#11

Post by BadassFractal »

signa11 wrote: post #9
BadassFractal wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you ever feel that the Ubuntu VM isn't fast enough and you wish you had a real installation of the OS to work with, is the VM more than enough? Also, what software do you use to manage that VM?

> Also, what software do you use to manage that VM? could you please clarify what you mean by managing a vm ? are you looking at running 100's or even 1000's of vm ? are you running your vm on dedicated h/w (most likely not !) which would most likely involve migrating running vm's across server blades etc. etc. for development needs, a handful of vm's can be very easily 'managed' by your virtualization solution...

Managing is a bit of an overloaded term, I agree that it could be misunderstood.

I was only asking about the software used to boot, save, load and configure one or two VMs on a dev box.

Re: Ask HN: is Mac or Linux the choice for a modern web hacker?

#12

Post by mattbillenstein »

BadassFractal wrote: post #4
mattbillenstein wrote: post #2

Develop on the same platform that you deploy on - which will probably be some flavor of Linux... That being said, I usually develop in a Ubuntu VM running on OSX -- so you get the best of both worlds, a system that just works, and a development environment that's the same as what you'll end up deploying on.

Do you ever feel that the Ubuntu VM isn't fast enough and you wish you had a real installation of the OS to work with, is the VM more than enough? Also, what software do you use to manage that VM?

VirtualBox - free, good features, pretty bulletproof in my experience.

As far as performance, I find it's good enough, but there are times I wish I had an SSD in my laptop to speed up some things...

Re: Ask HN: is Mac or Linux the choice for a modern web hacker?

#14

Post by dextorious »

SamReidHughes wrote: post #5

It doesn't matter. Your life will only be marginally enhanced, no matter which is better.

Yeah. Except if he starts to work with multimedia. Edit video, make professional grade midi/audio sequencing etc. Which with Linux will be a world of pain and/or deadend.

Same if he wants to work with a CMYK design workflow, or in a professional DTP environment etc. A world of pain again and/or deadend.

Re: Ask HN: is Mac or Linux the choice for a modern web hacker?

#15

Post by kls »

BadassFractal wrote: post #4
mattbillenstein wrote: post #2

Develop on the same platform that you deploy on - which will probably be some flavor of Linux... That being said, I usually develop in a Ubuntu VM running on OSX -- so you get the best of both worlds, a system that just works, and a development environment that's the same as what you'll end up deploying on.

Do you ever feel that the Ubuntu VM isn't fast enough and you wish you had a real installation of the OS to work with, is the VM more than enough? Also, what software do you use to manage that VM?

I have the last gen of the core-duo MBP 17, it has the 2.8 GHZ processor, 8 Gigs or RAM and a solid state drive. For me the answer to your question is no. I would imagine that with the new MBP it would be better but with my set up. I really only have waits on VM boot-up and a lag when I have not used a running VM in a while. Other than that it feels just as responsive when I am actively using the VM. I mainly use it for a windows VM though because I do, do .NET development from time to time. I use my desktop VMWare software to virtualize development OS'es for server VM's I have a server box that runs ESX server, which runs server like the Oracle stack, a VM that runs the IBM stack and one that runs the windows stack. Another note about my setup is that I use VMWare Fusion I used several other products and VMware just seemed to be the most responsive under OSX.

Re: Ask HN: is Mac or Linux the choice for a modern web hacker?

#16

Post by kls »

mattbillenstein wrote: post #12
BadassFractal wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you ever feel that the Ubuntu VM isn't fast enough and you wish you had a real installation of the OS to work with, is the VM more than enough? Also, what software do you use to manage that VM?

VirtualBox - free, good features, pretty bulletproof in my experience. As far as performance, I find it's good enough, but there are times I wish I had an SSD in my laptop to speed up some things...

I actually switched back to VMWare Fusion from Virtual Box. I was having a lot of issue with the performance of VirtualBox. I will readily admit that I did not try to optimize it but out of the box, I found that VMWare was far more responsive than VirtualBox on OSX.

Re: Ask HN: is Mac or Linux the choice for a modern web hacker?

#17

Post by achompas »

jemeshsu wrote: post #13

No difference. OS X has Unix underpinning so its close to Linux. Choose the one that makes you happy. If you're looking for excuses to buy a Mac, don't, just go out and buy.

I disagree. Package management is a nightmare on Mac--bad enough that I work on a Mint VM at home for my OSS contributions and on a Ubuntu VM at work. This is a significant consideration for any dev.

Note: I know MacPorts exists, and I'm not a fan.

Re: Ask HN: is Mac or Linux the choice for a modern web hacker?

#18

Post by andrewjshults »

achompas wrote: post #17
jemeshsu wrote: post #13

No difference. OS X has Unix underpinning so its close to Linux. Choose the one that makes you happy. If you're looking for excuses to buy a Mac, don't, just go out and buy.

I disagree. Package management is a nightmare on Mac--bad enough that I work on a Mint VM at home for my OSS contributions and on a Ubuntu VM at work. This is a significant consideration for any dev. Note: I know MacPorts exists, and I'm not a fan.

Homebrew (http://mxcl.github.com/homebrew/) is a significant improvement over MacPorts. The formulas also seem to be updated much quicker as well, as far as I can remember from when I last used MacPorts.

Re: Ask HN: is Mac or Linux the choice for a modern web hacker?

#19

Post by dextorious »

dextorious wrote: post #14
SamReidHughes wrote: post #5

It doesn't matter. Your life will only be marginally enhanced, no matter which is better.

Yeah. Except if he starts to work with multimedia. Edit video, make professional grade midi/audio sequencing etc. Which with Linux will be a world of pain and/or deadend. Same if he wants to work with a CMYK design workflow, or in a professional DTP environment etc. A world of pain again and/or deadend.

Downvotes, really?

I can understand "religious" flames, but people at HN also disagree with statements of fact?

Fact: Linux/OSS has bad/lacking/non-existent support for video editing. The fact that you can point to 2-3 half-finished NLE projects that no professional uses doesn't change this. There are the plugins, the drivers for capture options, other supporting software, etc missing.

Fact: Linux/OSS had bad/lacking/non-existent support for MIDI/Audio sequencing. The fact that you can point to 2-3 half-finished DAW projects that no professional uses doesn't change this. There are the plugins, the drivers for capture options, other supporting software, etc missing. No, some semi-abandoned VST wrapper is not a solution.

Fact: Linux/OSS has bad/lacking/non-existent DTP/CMYK support. No Scribus doesn't exactly cut it professionally, and the fact that GIMP got CMYK doesn't change the lack of other parts of the CMYK workflow much.

Re: Ask HN: is Mac or Linux the choice for a modern web hacker?

#20

Post by SamReidHughes »

dextorious wrote: post #19
dextorious wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah. Except if he starts to work with multimedia. Edit video, make professional grade midi/audio sequencing etc. Which with Linux will be a world of pain and/or deadend. Same if he wants to work with a CMYK design workflow, or in a professional DTP environment etc. A world of pain again and/or deadend.

Downvotes, really? I can understand "religious" flames, but people at HN also disagree with statements of fact ? Fact: Linux/OSS has bad/lacking/non-existent support for video editing. The fact that you can point to 2-3 half-finished NLE projects that no professional uses doesn't change this. There are the plugins, the drivers for capture options, other supporting software, etc missing. Fact: Linux/OSS had bad/lackin…

While it's true that that's a reason for some people not to use Linux, it's not a reason for him not to use Linux, and it doesn't discount the point which you replied to, that this decision probably doesn't matter. Everybody already knows that you can only do some things on some operating systems. Also, since we've established that listing statements of fact cannot be downvoted...

Fact: Yo momma/guardian is so fat/obese/lardful, she added two and two and got four!

Fact: Yo momma/guardian is so fat/obese/lardful, strip had a stack overflow!

Fact: Yo momma/guardian is so fat/obese/lardful, she crushes ants when she steps on them!

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