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Hacker's Guide to Setting Up Your Mac

lapwinglabs.com

201–210 of 267 posts

Re: Hacker's Guide to Setting Up Your Mac

#201

If you are a hacker would you be running a Mac? I'll stick to Linux and OSS, thanks.

Good hardware, consistent experience, lots of development tools. I moved from Linux to Mac simply because it lets me focus on work and less on fiddling around.

I would obviously have liked to use a completely open OS as well, but it's not like there's a lack of community on OS X.

Re: Hacker's Guide to Setting Up Your Mac

#202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just enjoy the control.

That''s quite witty! Do you also make all of your bread from the base ingredients too? :-)

For example, I like running the latest version of Vim (OS X is often behind). Compiling from the source, I can control what the binary is named (to avoid a name collision with the built in Vim), I can control the features (--with-features), and I can have it install to a directory of my choosing (~/Applications, where I also have scrypt install).I also install Lame and FLAC this way.

As for bread, no, I am horrible at cooking!

Re: Hacker's Guide to Setting Up Your Mac

#203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That''s quite witty! Do you also make all of your bread from the base ingredients too? :-)

For example, I like running the latest version of Vim (OS X is often behind). Compiling from the source, I can control what the binary is named (to avoid a name collision with the built in Vim), I can control the features (--with-features), and I can have it install to a directory of my choosing (~/Applications, where I also have scrypt install).I also install Lame and FLAC this way. As for bread, no, I am horrible a…

That's quite wise, particularly regarding the feature selection. Such joy from having the source!

I suppose I never run into this problem because I don't use the software to its full extent and therefore don't miss any features! I must be lazy.

Re: Hacker's Guide to Setting Up Your Mac

#204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why? Did you know that you can write code under Mac OSX too?

Hacker ethos to me is supposed to be about free computing, sharing, open sourcing you code, building communities etc. Closed source platforms like OSX and Windows are in conflict with that ethos in my opinion. Nothing to do with writing code, more to do with sharing it.

Ah OK that makes sense. I suppose there is an argument about how open the hardware you build on is (do you have access to Intel's CPU designs? etc.), but that's another argument...

I would be careful dismissing all users of OSX/Windows as not hackers though. I make my living writing software for both (it means I can eat if I don't share my code), and also use Linux outside work; does this make me not a hacker when I write under OSX?

Regarding communities, there also appears to be rather significantly large communities associated with both Windows and OSX development platforms. It would be naive to believe otherwise.

Re: Hacker's Guide to Setting Up Your Mac

#205
This just screwed up with my settings. I was lucky that I had almost everything backed up.

The problem was with Mackup, in the sense, for it to 'backup' (which I assumed would just copy/paste the files) had actually moved the contents to Dropbox and created the symlinks in place. Therefore not a true backup!! :(

I guess what I am trying to say is that please be VERY SURE of what the 3rd party tool/script does before you use it, cause sometimes you might just 'rm -rf' the seemingly useless artefacts.

Screwing up your work environment is NEVER fun!

Re: Hacker's Guide to Setting Up Your Mac

#206

If you are a hacker would you be running a Mac? I'll stick to Linux and OSS, thanks.

Macs have by far the best build quality for the price, with great displays and hardware as well. They can run most all of the dev tools that you can run on Linux(yeah there is always going to be that one person yelling about X specific thing that doesn't work as it should).

Recently I'm doing iOS dev and you have to use a Mac unless you plan on emulating. iOS strikes me as a platform that so-called hackers would like, seeing as how mobile is a fairly new frontier with unique and undiscovered uses, and Apple is always putting out new iPhones with interesting new hardware and APIs, unlike boring old CRUD webapps and desktop apps which have been stale for years. I was just blown away this week with the amount of insane stuff you can do using GPU hardware acceleration on the newer (5+) iPhones, its like everyone is carrying these little powerhouses around in their pockets. Though I guess you could also say that the closedness of the platform and ecosystem would be repellent to hackers, I personally don't get my panties in a bunch about this, I just like making cool stuff.

Re: Hacker's Guide to Setting Up Your Mac

#207
post #42

I do not wants to flame, but is there a reason people dislike Macports so much. I tried Homebrew when it was 1-2 years old, but stuck with ports bc it was so stable, compiles from source, and I never heard a serious problem. I heard the opposite complaint on the net, but almost all Macports hate was from many years before. I am the only one who chose not to rely on Homebrew!?

I don't use either. I build my stuff manually, and that way I also contribute upstream if there is a problem with some software not building on Mac OS X out of the box.

Macports was perhaps necessary a while back, when most people didn't realize Mac OS X was just another BSD based UNIX. Now that the word is out, most software builds without a hitch.

And honestly if you can't download a source tar archive and compile it yourself with your own customizations, then don't call yourself a hacker.

Re: Hacker's Guide to Setting Up Your Mac

#208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with you 100%. I bought a new mac book pro 2 weeks ago and it took me about 2 hours to get up and running. Because OS X is linux based (BSD but the difference is not relevant here), a lot already exists to make these kind of things work out of the box. Personally, I need two things to have my setup working: - Homebrew (OS X only but it's a given to anyone used to ruby) - dotfiles My dotfiles are on github and…

> Because OS X is linux based Wait... what? > (BSD but the difference is not relevant here) Still, "Linux-based" is a funny way of saying "Unix-like". Is HP-UX also "Linux-based (System V but the difference is not relevant here)"? ;)

[deleted]

Re: Hacker's Guide to Setting Up Your Mac

#209
post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I recently received a new MBPr from a work laptop and I would totally agree it takes days to setup from scratch. * It takes hours to download Xcode * It takes hours to download OSX Updates * Setting up Homebrew, Zsh, Vim, Browsers, GitHub, Dropbox, Mail, Rbenv, Rubies, Cloning work repos * Getting those other smaller things you were tinkering with, Z, Go Everyones dev setup is different. So I'd agree it takes days to…

But the speed to download xcode + updates is related to your Internet speed, surely? Nobody says Linux takes days to set up and then reference their Internet connection...? I've got fibre, so perhaps I'm biased. Also, I avoid Homebrew/MacPorts etc. because the apps don't fit in with the window manager properly.

Yes but the parent comment is about installing in minutes vs hours vs days. I proposed my story where it took hours to download Xcode and eventually days to fully get my system setup.

I also once had Fibre then moved to a bigger city without Fibre.

Who doesn't say linux doesn't take days to setup?

I say my OSX took days to setup, if you have a counter anecdote then elaborate.

Re: Hacker's Guide to Setting Up Your Mac

#210

This "cool hacker settings for your Mac" script turns off your laptop's power saving features (sleep, display dimming, hibernation even though sleep was off(?)), removes at least three kinds of backups for data loss (MobileTimeMachine, Resume, hibernation file), and changes AppKit settings in a way your customers will never be using (by turning off Automatic Termination, which is pretty harmless). Please don't run sc…

I agree with you 100%. I bought a new mac book pro 2 weeks ago and it took me about 2 hours to get up and running. Because OS X is linux based (BSD but the difference is not relevant here), a lot already exists to make these kind of things work out of the box. Personally, I need two things to have my setup working: - Homebrew (OS X only but it's a given to anyone used to ruby) - dotfiles My dotfiles are on github and…

Oh dear... Its not even BSD-based... Its Mach based(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mach_(kernel)) with a BSD userland. (Read BSD-API). So its "BSD-based" in the same way as Windows is Posix-based (as it too can have a Posix userland API).

Linux != UNIX. BSD != OSX

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