Earlier quoted context omitted.
> If your decision is based purely on aesthetics, given enough time, I'm sure you can find a GUI for Linux that you like more than OSX. People choose OS X because of its design though, not because of its aesthetics. "You can't put lipstick on a pig" and all that. The trouble with Linux is that there's no consistency in UIs between various apps, and skinning just makes things even less consistent. I'm in your scientif…
In all seriousness, if it's just an occasional missing package, consider adding it to Homebrew. It's a relatively painless process and adds a tool to everyone's working palette. This is a mitzvah. If that was a polite way of saying "many missing packages", that's a different story.
Poll: What is your primary desktop OS?
51–60 of 85 posts
Re: Poll: What is your primary desktop OS?
#52Re: Poll: What is your primary desktop OS?
#53I am a lifelong Mac OS user (started with System 6), and currently use OSX on a MacBook Air, but my next purchase will be a non-ultrabook form-factor generic PC, possibly a ThinkPad, running Arch Linux.
:3 that's going to be a lot of fun to set up. Enjoy that!
The ease of use and mostly-open-source aspects of OSX are great, but recently, Apple (and Google, and...) has been doing enough bad stuff that I need to swing back to as much open source as possible.
The most recent situation: Apple still ships Ruby 1.8.7 by default, which is no longer receiving security patches as of June. And in order to compile Ruby 2.0, a new OpenSSL must be compiled because that is old. And in order to compile them, you need the compiler tools or XCode.
And if you want to use eliptic key crypto, you need to install homebrew, install a tap, and then recompile OpenSSH...
Going back to my XMonad will be pretty enjoyable.
Re: Poll: What is your primary desktop OS?
#541. OS X is the clear choice for a desktop system that just works and has all the power of Unix underneath. I've used various Unix desktops in the past and they all had one thing in common: You had to spend a lot of time to get things working to some kind of acceptable level, you had to spend more time keeping them that way and in the end you often get "you cannot do that" or "Software X isn't available, you have to use Wine/a VM/an inferior clone". I also use Skype, despite it's security issues and uglified Mac client, because it's the easiest to explain to clients[1]. I haven't tried using Skype on Linux myself, but I've heard things like "Sure, lemme just swap audio drivers and reboot real quick". Err, really?
2. Applications. On OS X you get some standard things that you may need, like Photoshop and Skype and a mail client along with a great choice of text editors. You also get Pages and Keynote[2], both of which are fantastic when you need to write documentation or a presentation and have them look effortlessly pretty and export to all kinds of file formats. On top of that, there are some pretty awesome apps from small and mid-size developers than you can get only on OS X. First and foremost of these is OmniGraffle, which has not only saved me tons of time but earnt me several "wow, I didn't know Visio can do that" comments (It can't). Oh, and if you can't avoid dealing with BigCorp clients, you can get Microsoft Office for those pesky .doc files they insist on sending you that always look a bit wonky in LubricateOffice.
3. You still have X11 for Wireshark (that's all I ever use it for anymore).
4. Time machine is a convenient zero-setup-required backup that will save you time when you screwed up and need that file back. It's seriously fun to restore a file with it compared to any other backup software I've ever used ("please insert tape labeled .. into slot 7").
5. Same for FileVault (full disk encryption).
6. I don't know what you do, but if you ever decide to pick up OS X or IOS development, you already have everything you need.
7. The font rendering is oh so very pretty.
8. If you happen to have any iDevices, they'll shut up and sync.
9. The hardware looks nice, is well designed (in practical terms) and when it breaks you get pretty good service. And Retina is awesome.
I guess it all boils down to how much time you want to spend fucking around with your system instead of getting work done. Note that you still can fuck around with OS X to a great extent (GeekTool), it's just you don't have to. Same reason I use FreeBSD (instead of OS X or Linux) for servers and Windows for gaming. You can certainly get some Windows games to run in Wine or learn how to navigate GNU info to read docs, but that's time and frustration I'd rather not inflict on myself.
[1] "Just give me your Skype username. Don't have one? Click that." is a lot less trouble than "Install this SIP client and then open a port in your firewall and follow this 35 page instruction manual". I wish it wasn't so, but it is.
[2] iWork costs a few extra coins but is well worth it.
Re: Poll: What is your primary desktop OS?
#55Why would you follow our recommendations? Just try for yourself and make an opinion.
I'd love to try all out but OS X with a MBP is a rather expensive for just trying out. Borrowing for a weekend is out of question, it takes more time to see if one can settle and hate to see the face of my friend after returning his reconfigured MBP :-)
Re: Poll: What is your primary desktop OS?
#56It depends a lot on what you do for work, I bet. I'm in sort of a similar situation as you--Windows at work, Linux at home, but I also have a mac. I run a pretty bare-bones setup on my Linux desktop (#!: an OS for those who got frustrated trying to learn Arch and still like APT). The lack of extra stuff makes me less prone to messing around, so it's great as a GSD system and when I want to dedicate my CPU and memory…
Re: Poll: What is your primary desktop OS?
#57Re: Poll: What is your primary desktop OS?
#58What is a general opinion about hackintoshes?
Re: Poll: What is your primary desktop OS?
#59It depends a lot on what you do for work, I bet. I'm in sort of a similar situation as you--Windows at work, Linux at home, but I also have a mac. I run a pretty bare-bones setup on my Linux desktop (#!: an OS for those who got frustrated trying to learn Arch and still like APT). The lack of extra stuff makes me less prone to messing around, so it's great as a GSD system and when I want to dedicate my CPU and memory…
Sorry, '#!' is basically un-searchable. Which distro is this? I like Arch, but I wouldn't mind something even more bare-bones.
And agreed--this is a silly name for an OS, but it looks pretty cool at least! Though sadly it seems like they don't have a non-Bittorrent download option, so I can't try it out -- if anyone knows of a mirror, that'd be great.
Re: Poll: What is your primary desktop OS?
#60I've been jumping between the big three every other year now over the last decade (OSX when I was into MacBookPros, Linux or Win when I was into other hardware vendors). They all have their own unique little annoying-quirks and favourable strengths. I've found that when your environment is say, Sublime Text + a browser + a command line, the outer OS matters surprisingly little.
Really curious (I only have second-hand experience with it) - you made cmd.exe or cygwin work for you? I keep hearing from people who tried it that they gave up after a while, switching to an OS with native bash/zsh.
cmd.exe in its turn lacks a portion of basic functionality, like tabs, for example. A 3rd party apps, like Console, can help solve this problem, but in its turn, they have their own issues. Console, for example can have noticeable delays when rendering output.