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Poll HN: What operating system do you primarily develop on?

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Re: Poll HN: What operating system do you primarily develop on?

#101

Post by giobox »

Old enough to remember when work place mandated Windows machines were common place - now it feels like things have flipped in software dev, and macOS has become the "workOS". While no fan of Windows, I now find in my older age I am much less inclined to run Macs for personal/home use than I was 20 years ago - it feels too much like being at work now!

While I of course agree modern Mac laptops are great and Apple's silicon efforts have been superb, just seeing one makes me think of work and not pleasure now, somewhat ironically how I also felt about beige IBM boxes in the early 90s...

Re: Poll HN: What operating system do you primarily develop on?

#102

Post by mrkstu »

giobox wrote: post #101

Old enough to remember when work place mandated Windows machines were common place - now it feels like things have flipped in software dev, and macOS has become the "workOS". While no fan of Windows, I now find in my older age I am much less inclined to run Macs for personal/home use than I was 20 years ago - it feels too much like being at work now! While I of course agree modern Mac laptops are great and Apple's si…

Job’s aversion to making a ‘gaming machine’ has paid off these decades later…

Re: Poll HN: What operating system do you primarily develop on?

#103

Post by marginalia_nu »

lysace wrote: post #30
marginalia_nu wrote: post #11

Linux personally, and professionally last time I wasn't self-employed. Mac is too expensive, Windows 11 is cruel and unusual.

Mac Mini M4 or Macbook Air M4 is not expensive. Just bought the latter (extensive rebates at the moment) to replace my Intel-based 2019 MPB. Wow! It's pretty much the perfect laptop, at that price. My primary complaint so far: The green color LED on the magsafe connector is not the same green as the LED on the caps lock key. This wouldn't have passed the Steve Jobs approval.

Honestly I'm not much of a laptop stan. They're IMO overpriced or crap, or the case of HP, overpriced and crap.

Re: Poll HN: What operating system do you primarily develop on?

#104

Post by commandersaki »

QuiEgo wrote: post #85

I think laptop of your choice as a thin client to Linux box in a data center is super common. Most people seem to pick a Mac as their thin client, since ssh works well natively on it, it runs MS office, and the Windows laptop options are never the “nice” Windows options for some reason, but various flavors of plastic hate boxes that get 1/2 the battery life of the Macs IT offers.

I'm happy to do this as all I need is a vi-like, but I don't really see this happening from people in the IDE camp. I understand that VS Code does support development in a target linux host or container, but I just don't really see people doing it.

Re: Poll HN: What operating system do you primarily develop on?

#107

Post by lysace »

marginalia_nu wrote: post #103
lysace wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mac Mini M4 or Macbook Air M4 is not expensive. Just bought the latter (extensive rebates at the moment) to replace my Intel-based 2019 MPB. Wow! It's pretty much the perfect laptop, at that price. My primary complaint so far: The green color LED on the magsafe connector is not the same green as the LED on the caps lock key. This wouldn't have passed the Steve Jobs approval.

Honestly I'm not much of a laptop stan. They're IMO overpriced or crap, or the case of HP, overpriced and crap.

Wintel laptops certainly are.

I bet you would love the Mac Mini M4 though. (I've spent some time perusing your site during the numerous times it's been posted here.)

Use MacOS Sequoia (15.x) for at least the next year though.

Re: Poll HN: What operating system do you primarily develop on?

#108

Post by maratc »

epolanski wrote: post #71
maratc wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On my work Mac, I'm not even logged into iCloud so there's no Apple ID there.

You still need it if you need to format and restart your machine if it was registered with that id.

I have never had an Apple ID on this Mac either, having restarted it successfully many times.

And if I need to format it, it's not even my problem.

Re: Poll HN: What operating system do you primarily develop on?

#109

Post by marssaxman »

petcat wrote: post #14

I never found anything better than the latest macOS machines. I ran ubuntu for years and then switched back to mac just because I don't have the time to tinker and fiddle with stuff in Linux that just randomly makes the computer run hot, or a monitor to not work, or fonts looking awful. MacOS is just the sweet spot of great desktop + great unix-style devbox.

I ran MacOS for decades and then switched to Linux, because I no longer have the patience to deal with an OS which cannot be tinkered and fiddled into the shape I prefer it in, its makers believing that they know better than I do what I ought to be doing with my own hardware. I cannot stand the paternalism. Linux has its quirks, but at least I can be sure that in the end, it can always be made to do what I want.

Re: Poll HN: What operating system do you primarily develop on?

#110

Post by Leftium »

winecamera wrote: post #70

I'd love to use macOS, but macOS's font rendering on low DPI monitors (2560x1440) looks awful compared to Windows's font rendering. It's to the point that it's unusable for coding, so I just use Windows with WSL.

My 30-inch 2560x1440 external monitor looked fuzzy/blurry on MacOS until I forced HiDPI. (Mac mini)

MacOS only offers HiDPI for certain resolutions. There is a free OSS program that unlocks HiDPI for other resolutions: https://github.com/waydabber/BetterDisplay

I just tried disabling HiDPI at 2560x1440, and it looks quite bad! With HiDPI, I'd say it looks similar (if not better) than Windows.

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