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The $80 web development workstation

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Re: The $80 web development workstation

#11

Post by morgante »

pessimizer wrote: post #8
morgante wrote: post #3

Really? Are we still talking about how OS X doesn't give you "full control over the system?" Given the popularity of Macs in the developer community, it's pretty clear that you have as much control as you desire—Unix has incredible power. And if you still somehow feel that OS X is actually constricting you (rather than just hiding advanced settings in the command line), you'd never be able to run Linux on a Mac. No,…

>Given the popularity of Macs in the developer community I haven't noticed this. I've noticed that popularity in the web developer community, but almost every non-web developer I've seen with a Mac has torn out OS X and put Linux or BSD on it.

That's not a counter to my point. Even if they're running Linux, it's more and more on a Mac. (And yes, I do see plenty of those.)

And let's be honest here: more and more developers are web/app developers.

Re: The $80 web development workstation

#12

Post by DougWebb »

jurassic wrote: post #6

The T42 was a really solid pre-Lenovo ThinkPad that had significant mindshare among tech nerds when I arrived at MIT. It was my machine in college and the keyboard was amazing. I'd probably still be using it if one of the fans hadn't died around year 4. Pretty as Macs are, and awesome as the glass touchpad is, I still miss that ThinkPad keyboard.

Lenovo made the T42 too, they were just the silent manufacturer at the time with IBM putting on the branding. I'm not sure of the distribution between IBM and Lenovo for the design and QA aspects, but IBM definitely controlled much of that too.

Re: The $80 web development workstation

#13

Post by [deleted] »

lambdaloop wrote: post #4
morgante wrote: post #3

Really? Are we still talking about how OS X doesn't give you "full control over the system?" Given the popularity of Macs in the developer community, it's pretty clear that you have as much control as you desire—Unix has incredible power. And if you still somehow feel that OS X is actually constricting you (rather than just hiding advanced settings in the command line), you'd never be able to run Linux on a Mac. No,…

Last time I checked, OS X did not let you replace the main window system or the OS status bar. The theme of the interface is also not as easily changeable as a KDE or GTK+ theme. If there's a way to completely remove the graphical interface, it's definitely harder than in Linux, and not as usable afterwards. You might argue that these options are not needed for a typical OS X user, and perhaps you're right. But you c…

[deleted]

Re: The $80 web development workstation

#15

Post by TheRealDunkirk »

I ran Linux on the desktop for almost 20 years, till recently taking a Rails job where EVERYONE used Macs, and finally bought a MBP. This refrain, "OSX is Unix," seems to be very common, but I'm not feeling it. As I just tweeted today: "How much 'Unix' is in OS X when I can't use CTRL-s to freeze the terminal? Pfft." For something that's supposedly got all the power of Unix, it sure doesn't seem to expose much of it to me.

Most things are pretty locked down. That's not Unix-y. Yes, most defaults are pretty descent, but if you want more flexibility in your environment, there MIGHT be a 3rd-party tool for it, and it may even work, but if it does, it'll cost $20. It's like the world of Windows about a dozen years ago. Maybe in a few more years, this situation will improve.

I miss Linux. And, yeah, I know I can supposedly run it on a MBP, but I know that there will be nothing like the (nearly) flawless power management and screen switching capabilities of just running OS X, so I make do.

Re: The $80 web development workstation

#16

Post by PommeDeTerre »

morgante wrote: post #11
pessimizer wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Given the popularity of Macs in the developer community I haven't noticed this. I've noticed that popularity in the web developer community, but almost every non-web developer I've seen with a Mac has torn out OS X and put Linux or BSD on it.

That's not a counter to my point. Even if they're running Linux, it's more and more on a Mac. (And yes, I do see plenty of those.) And let's be honest here: more and more developers are web/app developers.

I think that you may be vastly overestimating the number of web and mobile app developers. They're still a relatively small proportion of all software developers.

While web developers may be more vocal and have more content on the web (this isn't unexpected, since they are web developers, after all), you shouldn't forget about the numerous other developers out there. They're working on systems software, embedded software, industrial control software, accounting and billing software, various other kinds of business software, scientific software, and so forth.

These days, these kinds of developers generally use Windows or Linux systems, running on non-Mac PC hardware of some sort. And there are a whole lot of these developers.

Re: The $80 web development workstation

#17

Post by klibertp »

[deleted] wrote: post #13
lambdaloop wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Last time I checked, OS X did not let you replace the main window system or the OS status bar. The theme of the interface is also not as easily changeable as a KDE or GTK+ theme. If there's a way to completely remove the graphical interface, it's definitely harder than in Linux, and not as usable afterwards. You might argue that these options are not needed for a typical OS X user, and perhaps you're right. But you c…

[deleted]

Neither is paying $1000 (from the article) a prerequisite for it.

If you like the experience of OS X then buying MacBook is completely justified choice. Buying one just to install another OS on it is pure stupidity - you could have the same hardware for much cheaper from other vendors.

Re: The $80 web development workstation

#19

Post by jonbaer »

The Thinkpad 701 series needs to be brought back somehow. It was ahead of it's time, including the butterfly keyboard. The T42 was my next step and probably most productive during it's time. The only thing we need to do is apply today's battery technology to those older laptops and call it a day ...

Re: The $80 web development workstation

#20

Post by 14113 »

The author mentioned using "Chromium with Vimium". For someone wanting easy keyboard shortcuts (like Vim) for a browser, I'd recommend luakit.

It's a webkit based browser, scriptable (or written with?) lua, along with vim style navigation (eg, ":open www.google.com" to go to google).

afaik, it's also available in the arch core (or extra possibly) repositorys, which means no fiddling about with the aur! (good news)

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