Live data from Hacker News

Poll: What is your primary operating system

news.ycombinator.com

221–230 of 472 posts

Re: Poll: What is your primary operating system

#221

OSX is the only operating system that can run iTunes, Office, Photoshop/Fireworks, Ruby, Python, bash scripts, Apache, Mysql without virtualization or any weird and unfun hacks (yeah, cygwin, I'm looking at you!).

You seem to imply that running iTunes and Office are good things. That seems...odd.

Re: Poll: What is your primary operating system

#222

OS X has software by third parties that take design and UI seriously. That does not seem to generally be the case on Windows or especially Linux. If OS X disappeared, I'd probably spend a huge amount of time tweaking an Arch Linux install and would use less GUI software.

Couldn't agree more. The whole mentality in the OS X developer world glows of such a strong focus on usability and UI design, while, for some reason I cannot understand, the Windows and Linux world is mostly the diametrical opposite. This was the first thing that I noticed when I moved over to OS X; the difference was incredibly clear, and it struck with great impact. I think people in general gravely underestimate how much in good software lies in a good interface connecting the user with said software.

Re: Poll: What is your primary operating system

#224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would just like to add that there is a valid reason why Linux or the *BSDs are superior to Windows or OS X - they are Free. As in Speech. And I'm sad this doesn't even warrant a mention.

Freedom also carries a cost. At the end of the day, the best OS for any given individual is the one that gives them the largest net increase in utility, for their personal utility function. My experience suggests that a Free OS isn't worth it to me, but it's been about six years since I gave it a go full-time. The last time I gave Linux a good go round (as in using it as my primary OS for everything I did), I still h…

You would hope that on a site like Hacker News, there would be a good percentage of users who would get a lot of utility out of being able to tinker with their operating system in ways not sanctioned by the creator of said OS.

Re: Poll: What is your primary operating system

#225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would just like to add that there is a valid reason why Linux or the *BSDs are superior to Windows or OS X - they are Free. As in Speech. And I'm sad this doesn't even warrant a mention.

One more thing: A terminal as a first class citizen. Definitely not on Windows, and while the OSX one is orders of magnitude better, I seem to recall it's still a bit lacking. What ruins OSX for me isn't the terminal, though, it's that X apps aren't first class.

Regarding the Terminal - I never really got what people meant when they said the terminal was lacking. Maybe it's lacking some obscure features, but it absolutely nails the core features. The OSX terminal is, in my opinion, the single best terminal I've ever used (and I split my time fairly equally between OSX and Linux as my main desktop OSes and have tried pretty much every Linux terminal app I can get my hands on).

Unlimited scrollback, the ability to copy and paste using the keyboard, key bindings to clear scrollback, change font size, etc., separate keybindings to scroll the buffer vs. send scrolling commands to the terminal, double-click on parens/etc. selects a range from there to the corresponding other one, and I could probably go on listing more-or-less unmatched _usability_ features for quite a long time. On the other hand, if it's functionality people are referring to then I guess I just don't know what I'm missing because I've never found it lacking in that department either.

As the cultists say, it "just works".

Re: Poll: What is your primary operating system

#226
post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only thing the market backs up, is that decades of lock-in, billions of dollars in advertising, pre-installation of the OS and lobby-ism make the difference when the competition has no such resources. The reason people don't switch may very well be that noone except tech-aware people has ever heard of Linux (I'm pretty sure my parents don't). And as this poll suggests, for people that know Linux, it is a very ver…

Sure, for programming linux (any unix, really) is superior (personally I use OSX). But, for just desktop usage (browsing, e-mail, video, music) I much prefer Windows to linux. OSX vs Windows is a bit of a toss-up, I prefer OSX because of the unix environment for programming, but I still keep windows around for games. Since XP the instability issues have Windows have been a thing of the past and the Windows 7 user exp…

I'd argue that specifically for the standard tasks Internet, Mail, Video, Music, Linux is just as fine from a usability point of view. Of course the user doesn't have a benefit of using Linux if his Laptop comes preinstalled with Windows/MacOSX. But that was my point ;)

Re: Poll: What is your primary operating system

#227
post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Aren't the macbooks over-priced ? Personally I'd rather buy a laptop and a tablet (something like the transformer) rather than get something that costs twice as much or offers lower return on hardware for the same price. Disclaimer: I am from a parallel programming background, so I am biased towards performance rather than form factor or battery life.

> Aren't the macbooks over-priced ? No? I mean is a Panasonic Toughbook C1 "overpriced"? It'll always depend on what you value and what your qualitative and quantitative metrics are.

[deleted]
Post reply on HN