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Poll: What is your primary operating system

news.ycombinator.com

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Re: Poll: What is your primary operating system

#61

Post by adamkhrona »

Spyro7 wrote: post #11

Every day, I start up a computer running OS X. Then, I proceed to fire up virtual machines for two Linux distributions, Windows XP, and Windows 7. I occasionally play around with a headless system that I have running FreeBSD. Then I may power up my iPod Touch to test recent changes to my mobile site. I also do a significant quantity of work while I am logged into a remote debian server via ssh. I doubt that I am the…

Same here, as a developer of a cross-platform library, this is the only configuration that works for us. By restricting virtualization of OSX, Apple has effectively forced most developers to use this configuration.

Re: Poll: What is your primary operating system

#63

Post by zheng »

cageface wrote: post #53
zheng wrote: post #18

I run windows, but always run a Linux VM in which I do all of my dev work, and have an OS X laptop which would be a linux laptop, but Logic/Final Cut Pro keep it that way. Right tool for the right job, IMO.

The two apps keeping me from running Linux full time are Ableton Live and Adobe Fireworks. Unfortunately it doesn't seem likely that the high-end proprietary content creation tools or anything comparable from the OSS world are likely to come to Linux any time soon.

Never used Ableton, but I've been dabbling in Reaper[0]. I can't make a full switch yet, but am hoping to be able to at some point in time. From the little I've seen it isn't missing anything major.

Final Cut Pro is another story, but I really don't use it very often anymore, and I'm well-versed enough in Adobe Premier that I could probably drop it.

I'm not holding my breath either, but I do dream of a world where most software is OS-independent. I guess we're closer now than we have been for a while.

EDIT: I just remembered that Reaper is Win/Mac. I hear it runs under Wine, but I'd be worried about latency there. Alas, we are captive to our tools.

---

[0] - http://reaper.fm/

Re: Poll: What is your primary operating system

#65

Post by pavanky »

bobobo1618 wrote: post #59
cperciva wrote: post #10

FreeBSD. Only desktop I've used since 2004.

I'm curious, how difficult is it to set one up? Do you encounter many issues performing your day to day work? I've been eyeing it for a while and I had it running on my home server for a time but I didn't think it was quite ready to be my primary OS. I generally use Arch Linux at the moment, mainly because I like the configurability and frequent package updates.

I tried out pcbsd, which I think is based off FreeBSD. The only issue I had was everything being built from source. Considering that userspace is pretty much the same for BSD and Linux, I am guessing there wont be many issues. Coming from an Arch Linux back certainly helps I think.

The drawbacks have to be the lack of certain binary driver blobs available in Linux. Some may call it a feature though.

Re: Poll: What is your primary operating system

#66

Post by justincormack »

stanleydrew wrote: post #40
hasenj wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I highly doubt this. Not even tablets will run on top of browsers. Developers will never give up a real operating system. You just can't develop on consumer devices like the iPad; these are designed for consumers, they come with many limitations to make the consumer's experience easy and smooth, but at the cost of hackability.

"Developers will never give up a real operating system." I always hesitate to use the word never. Things can change very rapidly. What developers need now may not be anything like what we need in 5 years. But more importantly, what a "real operating system" is will probably change in the next 5 years.

It has not really changed in the last 40 years or so though. I would be surprised about a radical change in 5. I don't see replace the OS companies at YC yet either.

Re: Poll: What is your primary operating system

#67

Post by cperciva »

bobobo1618 wrote: post #59
cperciva wrote: post #10

FreeBSD. Only desktop I've used since 2004.

I'm curious, how difficult is it to set one up? Do you encounter many issues performing your day to day work? I've been eyeing it for a while and I had it running on my home server for a time but I didn't think it was quite ready to be my primary OS. I generally use Arch Linux at the moment, mainly because I like the configurability and frequent package updates.

There's a few glitches -- I don't have the latest Intel graphics drivers, and as a result the video doesn't work when I resume from S3, for example -- but aside from those, it's really quite straightforward. For a long time there were problems with flash, but with linux emulation enabled it "just works" under Chromium; it's been years since I had OpenOffice fail to open a Microsoft Office document. Java is a bit of a nuisance to build, but for licensing reasons, not technical reasons.

Obviously you need to be comfortable at a command line -- the most common "maintenance" you'll be doing is updating ports, and every couple of months you'll find that /usr/ports/UPDATING says "the foo port has [done something weird] and you need to run the following commands before/after updating" (often it's a matter of deleting a port because its contents got merged into something else) -- but if you've got Arch Linux experience I can't imagine that you'll find much difficulty using FreeBSD.

Re: Poll: What is your primary operating system

#68

Post by nkassis »

hasenj wrote: post #51
stanleydrew wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Developers will never give up a real operating system." I always hesitate to use the word never. Things can change very rapidly. What developers need now may not be anything like what we need in 5 years. But more importantly, what a "real operating system" is will probably change in the next 5 years.

Right, but whatever directions things go towards, do you really think that developers will use "browsers" as the operating system? Look at photographers. Despite all the consumer level digital cameras that have flooded the market, professional photographers (and even hobbyists) still buy the more expensive (and more complicated) cameras that a consumer would probably never buy.

Looking at the direction Windows 8 is making or what HP tried with WebOS. Where the browser starts and the OS begins is starting to become very fuzzy.

Some people use to cling to assembly instead of using C. Now days it's rare to find someone who will use Assembly over C.

Re: Poll: What is your primary operating system

#69

Post by jchughes »

Use OSX, Debian Linux and Windows 7. OSX for work, debian for my testing server/some programming and windows 7 for everyday use but that is slowly changing as I use my mb pro more and more.

In the past I have had several windows laptops and none of them hold a torch to the mb pro. size, weight, hardware & battery life are all far supperior than anything I have ever experience on a windows based laptop. The price in my eyes is justified.

Re: Poll: What is your primary operating system

#70

Post by dfc »

bobobo1618 wrote: post #59
cperciva wrote: post #10

FreeBSD. Only desktop I've used since 2004.

I'm curious, how difficult is it to set one up? Do you encounter many issues performing your day to day work? I've been eyeing it for a while and I had it running on my home server for a time but I didn't think it was quite ready to be my primary OS. I generally use Arch Linux at the moment, mainly because I like the configurability and frequent package updates.

Colin is the security officer for FreeBSD. I doubt he encountered many problems setting it up;)
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