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Poll: What OS do you use everyday, or most often?

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Re: Poll: What OS do you use everyday, or most often?

#121

Post by zimbabwe »

Tichy wrote: post #120
zimbabwe wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even if you read the license the first time (and I don't), how many more times are you going to read it? So Apple can put in the license whatver they want? It really isn't about that. I just don't want to tie myself to proprietary software. And something like apt is fundamentally impossible with proprietary software, unless you go the App store route (let Apple control everything). Both of these are issues of trust.…

"other people don't care enough about design to ever notice, and that's completely fine too." Or maybe they just have different tastes and preferences. Apple Design is not the only possible design, and it has it's downsides.

That's essentially what I said, but you're nitpicking my use of the word "design". I hold that by how I define "design", Apple's design is the best out there, by several orders of magnitude. There is no user experience more painstakingly crafted. Apple makes it into an art form.

Re: Poll: What OS do you use everyday, or most often?

#122

Post by chewbranca »

kashif wrote: post #106
antirez wrote: post #27

I've two laptops, one with Mac OS X and one with Linux. I use both for development but as a client I prefer Mac OS X that Just Works. It was fun years ago to hack on config files and even to write my own device drivers when it was needed, it was a game with the benefit of learning a lot of stuff, but seriously, I expected Linux to be mature enough after a few years... instead it's the same problems again and again. A…

What rubbish, a Mac doesnt 'just work'. Dont't get me wrong - Macs are good but this high ground is BS. @antirez what device driver did you have to write for linux, can you point me to your source code? And seriously, linux has matured significantly, what distribution have you tried? And how about quoting specific stuff instead of the some general gyaan.

Fact of the matter is OSX 'just works' better than anything else _I_ have personally used. Less hassles, less issues, less crashes than linux or windows. And when you have lots of people saying the same thing, its not 'high ground' its a result of having a unix based OS that you don't have to waste your time to have it work.

I switched to OSX after using linux as my primary OS for about 5 or 6 years, and the big difference for me was that I didn't have to spend valuable time actually getting osx to work. Linux is amazingly customizable which can be great, but when it comes to getting work done all I care about is having a terminal, vim, and being able to run a local server to test my work. Anything else that I have to configure is just getting in my way.

Edit: As much as I like OSX, there is only only app that I actually require that is OSX specific, and that is quicksilver, which for me completely changes my workflow and allows me to productively use a 13" laptop as my primary development machine without the need for an external monitor. I think also goes to show my point, that OSX doesn't necessarily have any spectacular features or applications that draw me too it, but really its the fact that it is a unix based OS that I can use without hassle.

Re: Poll: What OS do you use everyday, or most often?

#123

Post by andrewljohnson »

jhickner wrote: post #82
andrewljohnson wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You might not have enough memory allocated for VirtualBox. That would make it jerky. I give it 1 gig of my 4. I'm not sure about CPU performance differences between VB and anything else, but it's never been a problem for me.

Thanks, I'll definitely give that a try. I have 2g of ram on my macbook, and usually only allocate 512 mb to my XP VMs.

Jeez, you really need to add another 2GB. It costs like $60 and takes 5 minutes.

Re: Poll: What OS do you use everyday, or most often?

#124

Post by chewbranca »

mixmax wrote: post #59
dtf wrote: post #30

Question for Mac/Windows users: I develop on Linux, but occasionally on Mac or Windows. To be honest I'm pretty happy with a text editor and a few terminals on any platform, but one thing I miss is fast window management. Specifically: * Focus follows mouse * Alt+LMB drag to move whole window * Alt+MMB drag to move nearest corner (ie resize) The default Mac interface in particular I find difficult, as there's just on…

Related question for Mac users: Don't you ever view windows in fullscreen? It seems there's no easy way to get windows to fullscreen, except for laboriously resizing and dragging to make it fit with the screen. This is one of the things that threw me off Mac (I bought one that I used as my main OS for about half a year, but I just never really liked it) So do Mac users simply not like fullscreen windows, do they all…

You can definitely get some windows in full screen. There is a program called megazoomer which will allow you get fullscreen for a lot of OSX apps. I use it all the time to have a full screen terminal. I also use full screen in Mac Vim which I believe is a built in feature, not added in by megazoomer.

Edit: typo

Re: Poll: What OS do you use everyday, or most often?

#125

Post by Tichy »

zimbabwe wrote: post #121
Tichy wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"other people don't care enough about design to ever notice, and that's completely fine too." Or maybe they just have different tastes and preferences. Apple Design is not the only possible design, and it has it's downsides.

That's essentially what I said, but you're nitpicking my use of the word "design". I hold that by how I define "design", Apple's design is the best out there, by several orders of magnitude. There is no user experience more painstakingly crafted. Apple makes it into an art form.

They certainly look the fanciest, and I admit to the quality of their recent hardware (but really only the recent one). But I'd argue that they also sacrificed some usability to the fanciness. I must even hand it to Microsoft that in some cases they added features that make it easier for power users, even if they don't look as pretty.

Re: Poll: What OS do you use everyday, or most often?

#126

Post by jhickner »

andrewljohnson wrote: post #123
jhickner wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks, I'll definitely give that a try. I have 2g of ram on my macbook, and usually only allocate 512 mb to my XP VMs.

Jeez, you really need to add another 2GB. It costs like $60 and takes 5 minutes.

Yeah, I definitely should. I didn't realize the price had dropped so low.

Re: Poll: What OS do you use everyday, or most often?

#127

Post by CyberFonic »

chops wrote: post #13

My desktop OS is Windows, but all my servers run Linux and OpenBSD, and I ALWAYS have a handful of terminals open.

My desktop and all servers run Linux (Ubuntu) the notebook is Mac OS/X and the home PC is Windows (the wife can't get her head around Ubuntu nor OS/X). All the applications I write run on all three platforms and I spend more time in a browser (FireFox/Chrome/Chromium/Safari) than any other program. Oh yes, I use both OpenOffice and iWorks. Write complex documents using Latex / Lyx which in turn run on all three OS.

Does the OS really matter that much these days? I use OS/X on the notebook because everything works! Could only get 90% of stuff to work reliably on a HP notebook (C700) with Ubuntu. The Mac Book Pro cost three times the HP, but it's worth every dollar in saved time. Don't get me started on how much Vista kept getting in the way as originally shipped on the HP.

Re: Poll: What OS do you use everyday, or most often?

#128

Post by ulvund »

minus1 wrote: post #77
ratsbane wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's a breakdown based on referrals from YC to a short essay I wrote about a month ago comparing Bing Travel and Kayak. There were 2382 uniques from YC over two days to that page: 45.5% Windows 37.6% Mac 15.1% Linux Comparing that with an e-commerce site I work with which has a less geek-centric audience, during the same two days: 84.94% Windows 12.46% Mac 1.55% Linux

Thanks for the information. These numbers seem more plausible given my own anecdotal evidence. Now compare this to the poll percentages: 21.37% Windows (199) 40.28% Mac (375) 35.12% Linux (327) My conclusion is that a Linux user is far more motivated than a Mac or Windows user to respond to this poll, making the results interesting, but not accurate.

Surely some people are in possesion of more than one computer.

I for one browse hn on my Macintosh, play tf2 and warsow on my windoze xp machine and have wholesome programming fun on my Linux box.

Re: Poll: What OS do you use everyday, or most often?

#129

Post by stewiecat »

path wrote: post #88
jamesbritt wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a Mac mini and Linux laptop, and use both for development, but prefer Linux Kubuntu that Just Works. Not sure what your specific issues are, but I've been finding development on Linux to be much more accommodating for me.

Linux seems to be a development "Just Works" environment, e.g. apt just works, and getting dependencies is simple, or at least reliable. On the mac getting libraries can be painful with MacPorts (I don't use Fink, does anyone know if it's better?)

Why bother with macports? I installed XCode and just download the source and do the ./configure;make;sudo make install dance.

Re: Poll: What OS do you use everyday, or most often?

#130

Post by thenduks »

cpr wrote: post #86
thenduks wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Put your windows where you want them at the size you want them and don't ever touch them again... that's what I do, anyway. Expose to get at things that are hidden. I also use hiding apps in general a lot, cmd+h to hide and then either click the dock, use opt+tab or use a launcher like quicksilver or launchbar to get those apps back. Personally I don't use the mouse much at all so I don't need focus follows mouse, an…

Also, note that you can use Spotlight to do fast app switching, just like Launchbar or Quicksilver: just type your Spotlight search shortcut (mine is control-space), type the first few letters of the app name, and hit return. It's good enough I gave up on Quicksilver. I never used the fancier features.

I'd hardly call it fast, but true. The only 'fancy feature' I use in LaunchBar is it's speed :)
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