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The $80 web development workstation

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Re: The $80 web development workstation

#141

Post by davidhollander »

danneu wrote: post #129
davidhollander wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To me the most important factor for developing on a laptop mentioned in the article is the use of a tiling window manager. For me an incredibly common task in web development is to have a web browser and 1 or more terminal windows tiled horizontally, side by side, in an [ A | B ] or [ A | [ B | C ]] configuration, where A is a web browser, and B and C are terminals. In order for this to work for me on a screen resolu…

What does a tiling window manager give you that you can't just replicate with keystrokes that resize applications to any quadrant/half of the screen?

In a multi column layout, I might wish to alter the width of the web browser in the primary column somewhere between 30% to 68%, in 2% increments, by simply tapping [Win+L] to increase its width, or [Win+H] to decrease its width, without worrying about whether it is the focused window, and without worrying about having to focus or adjust any other window after the keystroke was made to prevent overlapping.

If you want a layout where a web browser takes up 60% of the width, and two terminals take up 20% of the width, it becomes not only possible but relatively easy.

Re: The $80 web development workstation

#142

Post by dkuntz2 »

kevincrane wrote: post #134
dkuntz2 wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The core of Ubuntu is fine, I just don't really like Unity. While you can technically use regular Ubuntu and install Gnome, I've always had some weird stuff happen because Unity's still around. My typical suggestion for other people is Ubuntu Gnome, because it provides them with the "just working" Linux, and most people I've talked to enjoy Gnome more than Unity. As for regular Ubuntu, I'm not really a fan of their r…

Yeah, I'm kind of the same way. I love Unity and want them to succeed heavily, but I wish they'd jive better with the rest of the Linux world. I haven't used Gnome 3 enough to make a fair comparison, but I loved Gnome 2 and was loathing the transition to Unity with 12.04. After a few days of using it though, I loved most of what it offered me. Realistically, my biggest concerns were screen real estate (13" laptop, mi…

I'm quite fond of Gnome 3. It's gotten a whole lot better since it started (it was kind of a mess when they started).

Every two-ish releases I try out Ubuntu again to see if Unity's better, and each time it seems like they never address my main concern, speed. Unity seems really slow. I've never done benchmarks or tests, but on an i7 machine with 16GB of RAM, I would expect it to be snappy. It's even worse on my netbook.

I like the dock on the side, but the super menu and alt+f2 prompts are really bad in my mind. If I could get the dock, and maybe the global menus (I'm ambivalent on them), with Gnome Shell's activities menu, I'd be happy. Also dynamic workspaces, I really like those.

Re: The $80 web development workstation

#144

Post by tomelders »

tghw wrote: post #124
tinco wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is Unix with no driver problems. It is unix with both all free software and all proprietary software (except games). It is unix with a consistent pretty unobtrusive desktop environment that is easy to use and has sane defaults. It is unix with an accelerated window compositor that's always responsive and has no bugs. Anyway, that was what it was in 10.6. Nowadays Ubuntu does all those things too to a certain exten…

> It is Unix with no driver problems. If you only use Apple hardware, sure. Otherwise, it has the same driver issues as any OS.

That's a nonsense claim. I've yet to come across a peripheral that doesn't work with OS X out of the box.

Re: The $80 web development workstation

#145

Post by dkuntz2 »

wildster wrote: post #44
kevincrane wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's popular to hate on Ubuntu, but I personally love it and its UI. I've used Ubuntu since 11.04 and run 13.04 on my personal laptop (for development and day-to-day stuff). I'm a sucker for pretty things like translucent title bars and snapping windows to full-screen, but I also love how easy it is to develop with Linux (as opposed to Windows). Everything is usually a single command away on the command line (sudo ap…

I agree the hardcore linux folk all seem to hate on Ubuntu, but it does just work.

I wouldn't say they all hate Ubuntu. They just don't prefer it.

Speaking for myself, I think it has a fine core, and recommend the Gnome Remix to most people looking to get into Linux. I just don't really like Unity (mostly because it feels really slow every time I use it), and they're not really being excellent to the rest of the Linux community.

I feel (and I said this recently in this same post) that if they focused on one thing, and stopped trying to do ridiculous and unnecessary things (like Ubuntu for Phones, and Ubuntu for TVs, and even Mir), Ubuntu could return to the nice, quality product it was.

My second favorite desktop setup was with 10.04 and 10.10, the switch to Unity is what ultimately pushed me away from Ubuntu.

Re: The $80 web development workstation

#146

Post by welly »

icelancer wrote: post #35
morgante wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Hence the reason for your need to put quotes around "full control over the system." Or maybe I put quotes around it because I don't agree with that assertion and it's a quote from the article... > And problems I've solved in the past on Linux are still problems to this day on OS X. Can you give me an example? I'm genuinely curious... > This ignores people starting out, or in different locations. Yet the author cert…

>Can you give me an example? I'm genuinely curious... Try getting connectors to MSSQL working properly (in various languages) on either OS. It's annoying as hell on Linux, damn near impossible on OSX (without cheating using ODBC instead of native drivers).

If I was working as a Microsoft developer, I wouldn't be using OS X.

Re: The $80 web development workstation

#147

Post by welly »

PommeDeTerre wrote: post #16
morgante wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 soft…

> 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.

Do you think? I'd be interested to see statistics on this (I'm not doubting you in saying that!). Being as web development (in my experience as a web developer and occasional software developer) is the entry level for software development, I'd have thought web developers easily make up the majority of overall software developers. Everyone is a PHP developer these days, it seems.

Perhaps you're right though (having just read your second paragraph).

Re: The $80 web development workstation

#148

Post by welly »

quaunaut wrote: post #21

Honest question here: Why would anyone ever think OS X has "world-class interface design"? It's missing basic interface features that have been bog standard in Ubuntu/Windows for years, like any sort of proper window management. Hell, the maximize button actually doesn't work - it has such inconsistent use that you have almost no hope of actually getting what you want out of it. To get even decent window management,…

> it has such inconsistent use that you have almost no hope of actually getting what you want out of it

I disagree wholeheartedly. It does everything I want and I get out of OS X exactly what I want - namely, it gets out of the way. It's uncluttered and I don't have anything distracting me. All I see on my desktop is my currently running application and the dock (with icons set to tiny). I don't want system profiling tools flashing and dancing away. I know if my system isn't performing at its peak - it runs slowly.

You say it's inconsistent - I couldn't disagree more with this. It's absolutely consistent. I have never been caught out with unexpected behaviour because it just doesn't happen. There is so little to the UI that it couldn't possibly be inconsistent.

Re: The $80 web development workstation

#149

Post by welly »

kyzyl wrote: post #83
cytzol wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple's thoughts on the matter (and on many other matters) is that the user shouldn't ever have to learn to do anything complicated, and rather than risk them not knowing how to do something, they'd rather remove the feature entirely. This is reflected in their window and file management: you get the bare minimum you need to do the job done. The worst example of where this doesn't help is the Zoom button. Not the max…

This is true, and after much frustration I did finally deduce the intended behavior. However, it still isn't quite consistent (or rather, wasn't the last time I worked on a mac, circa 2008) and still seems to be lacking in functionality that the user actually wants . In all my years of working with text editors, I don't think I've ever found myself thinking "This viewport is too small. I wish I could quickly resize i…

> In all my years of working with text editors, I don't think I've ever found myself thinking "This viewport is too small. I wish I could quickly resize it to just the width of the text, and maybe the height of the screen, or maybe something else, depending on what I'm doing." When my window is too narrow or whatever, I usually just (a) maximize it (which you can't to on osx)

I use Sublime Text 2 on OS X. When I click on the zoom button, it maximises the editor window to the entire width and height of the screen.

Re: The $80 web development workstation

#150

Post by welly »

zhemao wrote: post #103
mosselman wrote: post #28

Yes switching workspaces is such a pain on OSX... come on, you just swipe with your fingers. Sure you can do pretty much the same on any linux distro, but that doesn't mean it is not 'seamless' in OSX. We can all agree that windows is just not suited for Rails development, but whatever floats your boat is fine of course. I like crunchbang linux a lot, it is very fast and makes you feel smart. But when it comes to som…

Workspaces? What workspaces? No, having a bunch of full screen apps does not count.

The four workspaces that I switch to using Ctrl-1, 2, 3 or 4. Those workspaces.
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