I guess today unless you are coding something very hardware/OS specific, e.g. Games what OS you use its just a matter of personal preference. You can do the same in Linux/Windows/OSX, stability and security is no longer the main worry as all the ecosystems matured and from usability perspective its a matter of what you got used to and your willingness to make an effort on something different.
Ask HN: Have you considered switching from OS X to Linux?
51–60 of 126 posts
Re: Ask HN: Have you considered switching from OS X to Linux?
#52Yes, and I am happy. Life is particularly better for the C and C++ programmer. Valgrind's primary platform is Linux. For many years Mac owners were stuck with a horribly out of date and malfunctioning GCC, and even now with clang there are problems (the clang in xcode 5.0 has some horrible miscompiling bugs which were reported months before release). Is everything perfect in Linux? No. But overall I find it an improv…
Use Beamer for presentations [ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beamer_(LaTeX) ] and never look back!
Do people really find using tex to make presentations worthwhile for things when it's not for academics? Maybe I'm just not good, but I take a lot less time to make something that looks nice with Powerpoint, especially when trying to touch things up (the feedback loop on WYSIWYG software should not be underestimated)/
Re: Ask HN: Have you considered switching from OS X to Linux?
#53I switched from OS X to Windows 8, and I virtualise linux using windows as the host OS. I hate to say it, but I think Windows 8 is pretty good as a host OS (not having used Windows much since 2003). I wouldn't be able to do my job without the virtulisation though, in the end I got so fed up with trying to install stuff naively on OS X with brew and ports and from source and whatever I was virtualising on OS X for abo…
I'm using Windows 8 too and virtualization for server testing. What stops you from going Linux-only? In mine case its Adobe :)
VMware can run Photoshop 3D accelerated now so performance is great even in linux.
Re: Ask HN: Have you considered switching from OS X to Linux?
#54This. +100. I'm growing increasingly uncomfortable with the Apple ecosystem. iProducts, iCloud, etc. I can't transfer this to that cause I'm not allowed, click here to accept this, turn on location services so we can track you - on your laptop. It's getting to be too much. What's the best laptop for running any Ubuntu flavored desktop?
Are you wedded to Ubuntu? If not, Fedora is a pretty nice distro as well...
I use Xubuntu now because every cloud vps has an Ubuntu option, and I like the consistency of developing on the same OS as the servers I later deploy to.
Re: Ask HN: Have you considered switching from OS X to Linux?
#55Unless you're stuck making OSX or iOS applications, I see no reason not to switch. OSX is like my fourth OS of choice behind linux, windows and chromeOS (which is still linux). I had to use osx for 1.5 years at work and going back to using my personal laptop every evening was like changing from a poorly fitting constrictive suit into a comfy bath robe and putting on your favorite slippers.
Re: Ask HN: Have you considered switching from OS X to Linux?
#56Thought about this alot, probably too much. The bottom line is that switching to Linux will be a step back in terms of convenience. It is still true that the closed operating systems are just easier to use as day-to-day one-size-fits-all machines. In my recent tries with Xubuntu i had some sound issues, the machine didnt want to sleep correctly and skype had audio lag issues and didnt show a popup when somebody was c…
Linux is harder to learn and get set up, but it's just spending a bit more time now to be more productive in the long run. Of course, it's not more productive for everybody, but it is for some of us.
Plus we have Docker.io instead of Vagrant. Way nicer.
Re: Ask HN: Have you considered switching from OS X to Linux?
#57Made the switch in 2011, when I needed a new laptop
note: I was already using arch on my desktop for a few years, though.
Re: Ask HN: Have you considered switching from OS X to Linux?
#58Shouldn't this be a poll? Could someone make one?
About the question, I did mostly switch to linux, but there's a few programs that make this transition difficult (ableton live is good, and not available on linux). I do benefit from a strong performance improvement, but I would really like to have a better desktop environment. Moreover, a large part of my work is much simpler to do because I can use containers instead of a VM.
All in all, I have a better experience on Linux, so I'm doing most of my work there, but I would welcome a bit of amelioration here and there. I'm experienced in Linux GUI programming, but this sounds like a good and interesting challenge, maybe even a startup idea.
To anyone considering the switch: Ubuntu is nice but it is not the only solution, I personally use Debian and my friends use Arch. We're all quite happy with our systems, even if the polish of osx is sometimes missed.
Re: Ask HN: Have you considered switching from OS X to Linux?
#59Yes, and I am right now.
I've been using OS X pretty much as my primary OS for 6 years. Lately, because I've been working on a lot of systems programming, I've felt that it's too much of a hassle of constantly running everything on a virtual machine (although vagrant makes it a very nice process) so I switched to elementaryos[1].
It took a lot of tweaking but I'm generally happy with the switch, I still use sublime text as my general editing workhorse and other than some window management tool that I haven't found a easy replacement for I'm all good. It sure made the day to day work easier.
Re: Ask HN: Have you considered switching from OS X to Linux?
#60Nope. Actually convinced one of my colleague to drop ubuntu and switch to a rMBP.
Corporate policies: not really sure what you meant by that.
Lack of hardware choice: am using a rMBP, this is a very beautiful piece of laptop. I can encode video, start a virtual machine, keep PHPStorm running smoothly, and compile java code all at the same time without any stuttering or slowdowns, and it does it in a very stylish manner.
Closed operating system: even when am using linux/ubuntu am not gonna go around modifying the internals. So I don't mind it one bit, if it means having a smoother and better experience am all for the walled garden.
My work usually targets either a redhat/centos server or ubuntu server and I don't have any difficulties with any environment differences between my target deployment server and my local machine. So no reason to rock the boat so to speak.