> Not any more. I've owned MBA for 3 years now and have been using Ubuntu on the 2012 model for the last three months. I get every bit of battery life in Linux that I do in OS X. This wasn't true a year ago, but it is now.> Not any more. Certainly not during day to day tasks. Certainly not during routine development. Certainly not while watching Flash videos. Certainly not while playing TF2.
That doesn't square with my experiences with my 2011 Air or my 2012 retina MBP, each running 12.04 (I avoid non-LTS releases on machines I need to work everyday). I'm glad it works for you. It did not for me, and I am disinclined to spend time fiddling with it when OS X works out of the box.
I already have a really nice Unix that works on the hardware without me doing anything (and lets me run Linux in a VM if I really need it)--I think it is understandable that switching is going to require being really impressed by the challenger to switch from the incumbent.
> Linux is getting switching support. It's already useable.
The closed-source nVidia drivers are a pain in the ass to use, though, and nouveau isn't up to snuff. Multi-monitor support is also simply not good enoughl the baseline isn't "usable", it's "as good as OS X", and, for me, I don't find TwinView (is there a different hack for 3+ monitors now?) as don't-have-to-care-about-it as OS X.
> I don't use a titling window manager. Besides, "I don't need those features" is a pretty sad arguing point.
Why? That makes no sense. If I don't need feature A, that feature A is available means it is not a plus for my use case.
> KWin, Compiz and Mutter ALL have support for Expose. KWin's implementation is actually nearly identical to the Mac implementation. In fact, they've had it for as long or longer than OS X has had it.
I realize that. I'm not referring to Expose, I'm referring to the dynamic workspace allocation (which, after using it, I prefer to the "4 virtual workspaces" approach) and the really very nice gesture support that doesn't exist out-of-the-box in Ubuntu. (While it may exist in some other form, if I have to do anything beyond "turn it on" I'm basically uninterested.)
If your OS doesn't do the little things I want, investing time into the bigger things doesn't make a lot of sense. This may be a recurring theme here.
> As someone who pays for an uses IntelliJ, I don't even know what the hell that means.
IntelliJ's font rendering was/is hosed in Ubuntu 12.04 out of the box and looked absolutely terrible. There may be a fix for it, but I didn't bother to look because the benefits to Ubuntu over OS X were not, for me, significant enough to invest time into solving the problem.
> [re: Xcode] And that's a good thing.
See, there you go. Your priorities do not mesh with mine or with others'. Why would you expect that they use your OS of choice if the tools of their choice do not exist?
I like Xcode. I like it more than Eclipse or QtCreator or KDevelop and I like it much more than vim+ctags. If the tools I like do not exist on a platform, that platform had better provide a big enough benefit to make me want to switch--and, your rageposting notwithstanding, Linux does not. Sorry?
> LOL. Is this even a serious point? Hello? VMWare Workstation? KVM+QEMU? Xen?
Yes, it's quite serious. KVM+QEMU does not (AFAIK--I may be wrong) have one-click out-of-the-box support for accelerated graphics. I did not examine Xen, but a cursory Google looks like more work than it's worth unless the OS otherwise makes a switch worthwhile (which it did not).
VMware Workstation did not have VMware Fusion-level support for accelerated graphics last I looked; maybe Workstation 9 is better, but I have not checked. I play games through VMware Fusion; just played XCOM on my flight today from Boston to Nashville. Having good graphics acceleration in my virtual machine matters to me.
> [re: MacVim/GVim] Are you fucking kidding me?
No, I'm quite serious. MacVim solves my biggest beef with GVim (the lack of good windowed-environment shortcuts) by melding in the OS X shortcuts--which also happen to be out-of-band keystrokes that Vim can't misinterpret. (This is also a plus to terminal usage on OS X; I often find myself highlighting something--I don't like copy on highlight--and reflexively pressing Ctrl-C on Linux or a Windows SSH session. I often find myself regretting it. I used to think OS X's Command key was stupid...but after a while using it, I vastly prefer it to the alternative.)
> Oh you're cute. I shouldn't have wasted my time replying to an obvious troll.
Even among developers, Linux on the desktop is a small minority. Maybe "niche" was understating it a little, but...not by much.
Anyway, different priorities does not imply trolling. I'm glad your solution works for you. I assumed you asked in good faith why someone would choose not to use Linux. I answered. You are not going to win either converts or e-points by judging my needs based on your preferences.