Poll HN: What operating system do you primarily develop on? • Hacker News Board

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

#51

Post by SunshineTheCat » Fri, Nov 28, 2025, 6:27 PM UTC

I have to develop on Windows for work and then code on a Mac for my own projects at home. Going from a project on my Mac Studio at home to my Windows PC at work makes me want to tear my eyes out.

There are so many things that are just plain worse on Windows when it comes to coding: messing with WSL, constant driver updates, every Windows link opening in Edge etc.

Haven't tried Linux for a while but maybe it's time.

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

#52

Post by nextos » Fri, Nov 28, 2025, 6:27 PM UTC

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.

This is a valid concern. Perhaps, if you are still interested in giving Linux a chance, you should consider immutable distributions like Fedora Silverblue or even going one step further with NixOS.

NixOS has a declarative configuration that is simply key=value for most use cases. Whatever you configure stays configured, and you can also rollback when doing dramatic changes e.g, migrating from Xorg to Wayland takes 2 min and changing 1 LOC in your configuration.

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

#53

Post by dbg31415 » Fri, Nov 28, 2025, 6:27 PM UTC

macOS, but mostly for the hardware. The operating system matters less to me than having a good screen and a machine that isn’t made of crappy plastic. After nearly 20 years years on a MacBook Pro, it’s hard to go back to anything that feels cheap. =P

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

#54

Post by _joel » Fri, Nov 28, 2025, 6:28 PM UTC

palata wrote: post #23

_joel wrote: post #2

What about cloud based IDEs?

You probably run your browser on some OS, don't you?

I do, some may will the bits into existence, but then again, they're probably not using a cloud based IDE :)

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

#55

Post by qq99 » Fri, Nov 28, 2025, 6:28 PM UTC

Win11, editor runs on Win11, all development happens inside WSL2 (Ubuntu)

Basically all the bonuses of Windows re: gaming, with a great developer experience (like Linux/OSX).

The prime annoyances are:

- exposing a port to the entire LAN (for local phone debug) is non-trivial

- I imagine Android or phone dev might be a bit harder re: simulator, luckily I don't do this

- dev that spawns native windows would by default spawn through some WM layer with X11 or something (and they are laggy)

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

#56

Post by epolanski » Fri, Nov 28, 2025, 6:28 PM UTC

dal wrote: post #26

jsk2600 wrote: post #12

Windows options should be Windows (no WSL) or Windows (+WSL)

Why? The computer is booted to windows, then you choose windows.

Because you realistically barely interact with windows for development purposes.

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

#57

Post by alecsm » Fri, Nov 28, 2025, 6:28 PM UTC

Linux at home, MacOS at work.

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

#58

Post by shwaj » Fri, Nov 28, 2025, 6:28 PM UTC

I use VSCode on a Mac, using remote SSH to edit code on a remote Linux machine. So I voted twice

I’ve never been able to get used to default Linux key bindings, and never been able to customize them to feel quite right.

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

#59

Post by howdyhowdy123 » Fri, Nov 28, 2025, 6:29 PM UTC

[flagged]

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

#60

Post by vntok » Fri, Nov 28, 2025, 6:29 PM UTC

petcat wrote: post #38

epolanski wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But he's de facto developing on a Linux machine.

It's not a linux machine. The computer is booted and managed by Windows. Linux is an application running on the Windows machine.

The question is not about booting, it's about which OS is running the environment where development happens (writing code, compiling code, testing code, etc).

> Clarification: the operating system where e.g. your IDE runs on

If you're developing on a Linux VM that you connect to via a browser tab opened from your Windows laptop, you're developing on Linux for all intents and purposes.

That is, Windows was not doing enough for you so you switched to Linux for dev tasks.

By the same token, if your IDE is running in WSL, for all intents and purposes you're developing on Linux. A virtual machine, sure, but the virtualized OS is a Linux variant. Because installing the IDE on Windows itself was not doing enough for you.