Ask HN: Have you considered switching from OS X to Linux?

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.

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.

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.

If you do things like change your keyboard layout to Dvorak/Colemak, go for it. It really is a more productive environment once you're used to it, but the trade-offs are similar. Yes, you can tailor everything the way you want, but it can be very time consuming and you lose out on the ability of having anybody else know how to use your computer.

Anecdote: I came from Arch Linux to OSX. I find the tight integration between hardware and software on my 2012 Air to be a breathe of fresh air from the hacking it takes to get basic hardware support sometimes on Linux. IMO, tools like vagrant make native OS matter much less nowadays as long as you are working in some kind of *nix environment.

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.