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The desktop and the developer

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Re: The desktop and the developer

#61

Post by p4bl0 »

Theodores wrote: post #27
p4bl0 wrote: post #6

I'm not sure what to think of this blog post. Do anyone really recognize himself or herself in the described developers? It's not even about Mac OS X vs GNU/Linux, I'm not using any desktop environment on my computers (no Gnome, KDE, XFCE, …), my graphical environment is composed of a minimal windows manager and a small taskbar. I don't need anything else. I just checked and I don't even have a graphical file browser…

What is that 'minimal windows manager' and what is the benefit of it over Unity (which to me is a few icons down the left and a few icons + notifications in the top right)?

For me it is Openbox, for other people I know it is generally i3wm, dwm, or xmonad.

Speaking for Openbox (since it is what I use) the benefits are numerous: less lost space on screen (UI is customizable to the pixel simply by editing an XML file); extensive and customizable keyboard controls (again, just by editing a simple XML file) for managing windows (resizing, positioning, etc.) but also for launching applications and managing multimedia keys for instance; more lightweight in term of resources (not that important, but always nice); and being compliant with ICCCM and EWMH standards which allows extensive external scripting using tools like wmctrl.

Re: The desktop and the developer

#62

Post by cmiles74 »

frik wrote: post #15
pconner wrote: post #4

At the beginning of the article, the author is too quick to dismiss the aesthetic and functional merits of a modern Linux installation. My < $300 chromebook can currently run two variations of Linux, both with aesthetically pleasing desktops and a comfortable trackpad with great multitouch support. This also didn't require much (if any) messing around with settings to achieve.

A HTML5 based graphical shell based on ChromiumOS/FirefoxOS could be the solution for Linux desktop . KDE 1-3 and Gnome 1 were a good desktop environment. I don't get why some devs prefer to rewrite good things. KDE 4 and Gnome 3 hurt the Linux desktop and users are searching for alternatives ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KDE_4#Reception , http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNOME_2#GNOME_3 )

I don't agree that the later KDE and Gnome releases where steps backwards, in fact I think they've made solid progress towards matching OSX and Windows in terms of ease-of-use. On the other hand, this could be exactly the problem. It does seem that the more the Linux environments pursue the same goals as OSX and Windows, the stronger the backlash.

Re: The desktop and the developer

#63

Post by Swizec »

silverbax88 wrote: post #55
davexunit wrote: post #20

I've used OS X at work for the past 2 years and I completely disagree that OS X is nice for developers. I've had a lot of issues that I wouldn't have had if I was using a GNU/Linux distro like Debian. Major issues with GCC after certain updates, outdated GNU software like bash, brew is barely acceptable as a package manager (can't hold a candle to dpkg/apt), and I have to go to websites to get the installers for most…

I've used Linux, Windows and OS X. I don't consider OS X to be a development environment for serious development. I do consider Linux and Windows to be real dev tools.

Funnily, I have never been able to take developers who use Windows seriously. Must be a remnant from may teenage "Down with M$!!!!!!!11111oneoenoenone" years when I was a diehard opensource fanatic.

Re: The desktop and the developer

#64

Post by kijin »

iaskwhy wrote: post #13
sz4kerto wrote: post #8

I had been using Linux for years before finally buying a rMBP -- and it took another four months to install Windows 8.1 on it. Any OS has it's problems, and the question is how easy it is to overcome them. Windows does not have a nice console interface, but everything else is fast and frictionless, there are practically no driver problems, etc. I can more ore less work around the lack of proper console (learning Powe…

As a Windows user that needs to hack around every now and then, I can't recommend enough having something like cmder (or just Conemu) plus Vagrant (and a Ubuntu VM, for example) or a playground on a cheap VPS like DigitalOcean. You get to use Windows and Linux at the same time without any major cons.

I also use Windows + Linux VM. Virtually all development happens in the VM.

Since I don't need to run anything other than a bunch of terminals in the VM, I can use a lightweight DE that is lightening-fast and very light on resources. A few more tweaks, and you can make LXTerminal feel almost like a native Windows program.

Add a few Windows gizmos to that, like Dexpot for multiple desktops and crazy keyboard shortcuts. Now you've got a top-notch DE that no FOSS offering can rival so far (at least in my opinion).

Re: The desktop and the developer

#65

Post by Touche »

cs02rm0 wrote: post #38
davexunit wrote: post #20

I've used OS X at work for the past 2 years and I completely disagree that OS X is nice for developers. I've had a lot of issues that I wouldn't have had if I was using a GNU/Linux distro like Debian. Major issues with GCC after certain updates, outdated GNU software like bash, brew is barely acceptable as a package manager (can't hold a candle to dpkg/apt), and I have to go to websites to get the installers for most…

I use a macbook, but agree with you. Unfortunately as a piece of hardware it seems to me virtually unrivalled, the latest internal components are available to new machines promptly, they have great displays with loads of real estate, long battery life, very good manufacturer support and the 13" is a superb, thin form factor for travelling with. I run a cluster of Linux VMs on it using vagrant so it's just my browser,…

http://shop.lenovo.com/us/en/laptops/lenovo/yoga-laptop-seri...

Re: The desktop and the developer

#66

Post by eyko »

Swizec wrote: post #25
davexunit wrote: post #20

I've used OS X at work for the past 2 years and I completely disagree that OS X is nice for developers. I've had a lot of issues that I wouldn't have had if I was using a GNU/Linux distro like Debian. Major issues with GCC after certain updates, outdated GNU software like bash, brew is barely acceptable as a package manager (can't hold a candle to dpkg/apt), and I have to go to websites to get the installers for most…

As someone who's been using OSX full-time for the past two years, and using it in conjuction with a Linux-based desktop computer for the previous ~5. Yes. Linux is insanely better for development. But OSX is just passable enough that the form-factor of an Apple laptop wins out and I can work. I don't want to go back to using two computers and OSX is _much_ better at everyday non-developer stuff than any Linux I've ev…

> Pray god that I never have to wipe my hard drive though. Getting all the random libraries and whatnot that I've accumulated over the years would be a pain in the arse.

Something there doesn't sound right (and brings up questions about how do you even manage so many random libraries and whatnot).

Dependency and package management isn't that difficult and when I wipe my hdd/ssd it usually takes me some 30 minutes to get my generic environment bootstrapped and up to date (with a mixture of shell scripts and brew install `my-package-list.txt`). After that, each project takes few minutes to download all deps/libs with some dependency management tool.

Just the same way I would imagine that you've got your oh-my-zsh config version controlled (speaking of oh-my-zsh, I'd like to also mention prezto[0]!)

0: https://github.com/sorin-ionescu/prezto

Re: The desktop and the developer

#67

Post by vojant »

tirant wrote: post #28
vojant wrote: post #22

I use OS X since 2 years but only for Skype, Spotify, Browser etc because apps looks much nicer on OS X than Linux. My whole dev environment is on linux based virtual machine. This way I have nice looking laptop but my dev environment is really close to production environment.

Precisely, Skype, Spotify and the browser (Chrome/Firefox) look practically the same on all operating systems.

Skype looks ugly under Ubuntu and there is no new version of Spotify on ubuntu.

Re: The desktop and the developer

#68

Post by neverminder »

jrajav wrote: post #53

Missing a killer feature here, at least for me: High-DPI support. No environment on Linux deals with high-DPI adequately yet. Between that and the other big one mentioned in the article, multitouch trackpad support, there is simply no way I can compromise. There isn't really anything else tying me down to OS X, but those two are huge. They're the only major changes I've seen in my workflow and desktop experience in t…

I think missing high dpi support is no longer the case: http://www.pcworld.com/article/2145722/ubuntu-14-04-lands-wi...

Re: The desktop and the developer

#69

Post by gooseyard »

I like OSX on a laptop because it's the only portable machine I've ever used where everything works correctly when I am constantly opening and closing the lid of the machine. At work I will leave my desk several times per day for meetings in conference rooms, then I take the machine home and I may open and close it a dozen more times in the evening.

I've probably had 50 laptops over the last 20 years, and the only one I've had that approached the number of successful suspend resume cycles with Windows or Linux were Thinkpads, although even with Windows, there's a whole world of pathological resume behavior. Sometimes they'll just sit there, sometimes they never wake up. Sometimes you close it and then reopen it a second time and then it magically wakes up. The worst cases are when the video comes back but the sound doesn't, and you're faced with living without the sound for a while or enduring a reboot. I feel like this is the fundamental thing that a laptop is supposed to do and it is disheartening to have used these machines this long and to still have endless problems with it.

That being said, all I use the MBP for is to ssh into my Linux desktop machine (Debian), where my tools are. Occasionally people suggest to me that the linux distros are pretty good on the MBP, but I've had such a bad history with Linux on laptops and I'm getting to be an old fart now and I lack the enthusiasm for fiddling around with the machine for several weeks to get everything working right, so OSX is a (albeit outrageously expensive, at the treat of my employer) compromise :)

Re: The desktop and the developer

#70

Post by Swizec »

eyko wrote: post #66
Swizec wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who's been using OSX full-time for the past two years, and using it in conjuction with a Linux-based desktop computer for the previous ~5. Yes. Linux is insanely better for development. But OSX is just passable enough that the form-factor of an Apple laptop wins out and I can work. I don't want to go back to using two computers and OSX is _much_ better at everyday non-developer stuff than any Linux I've ev…

> Pray god that I never have to wipe my hard drive though. Getting all the random libraries and whatnot that I've accumulated over the years would be a pain in the arse. Something there doesn't sound right (and brings up questions about how do you even manage so many random libraries and whatnot). Dependency and package management isn't that difficult and when I wipe my hdd/ssd it usually takes me some 30 minutes to…

It's more about superstition. My laptop works right now ... mostly ... I don't want to poke at it unless I have a very good reason.

Because something always breaks and then you are in a world of pain as in this XKCD about setting up dual-booting with BSD http://xkcd.com/349/

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