Comment by huginn@feddit.it on Why Linux is better for (most) developers!

And you, what’s your operating system to code ? Me, I use Arch btw

I wish the company I worked for would let us use Linux. Mac dev only. :(

Better than Windows at least

Nah these days with wsl, I prefer windows over Mac. At least you get packages that have been updated in the past decade.

What packages are you missing? With brew you can get most things

True… although using brew to upgrade bash is far from straightforward. Plus you can’t run gdb on a m1 mac.

Ah yeah tbh I only use fish so I’ve never had to bother upgrading bash. And actually yeah the M1 can be annoying. I have an M1 Mac for work and some libraries are a massive pain to get working on it

Bro do you even oh-my-zsh bro?

Bro where are you goingggg…

WSL has been super garbage for me with the WM closing without warning to update and if you don’t limit the ram usage it just takes everything available because it just doesn’t free memory that isn’t using anymore. Two issues that have been open on the repository for a long time.

I care about freedom. In that regard, mac is easily the worst of the three. Also, it kinda combines the downsides of both:

Being proprietary crap that tries to force you into using it a specific way and does shit in the background nobody ever asked for
Not being compatible with some proprietary soft- or hardware

I hate windows with a passion but would take it anytime if mac would be the only other option.

Every windows machine a job has given me has been a hunk of garbage. At least Mac hardware has a floor of quality. Not perfect by any means, but at least the battery lasts and there’s basic horsepower.

Also every windows machine has been with a fossilized company that has tons of IT bloat with tons of spyware authentication shit on it. Hell I had to file (and fight for) wsl privileges on my current windows machine

The Macs I’ve gotten have been brand new, straight from the manufacturer.

I’m sure that’s just luck of the draw but yeah fuck windows shops hah

I’m not talking about companies that use windows vs companies that use mac but about the systems themselves. It’s very possible that most companies that use macs are generally better equipped, treat their devices better, upgrade more often, etc… But that’s a correlation, not a causation. You are right about the quality baseline because apple forces them to buy very specific hardware. But if they’d instead spend the same money for a windows machine and set it up decently, I would prefer that by a lot. MacOS is just terrible. It’s less keyboard friendly, always messy, forces users into a overpriced and shitty proprietary lock-in ecosystem, etc.

I’m not sure how long I’ll say that though since microsoft really manages to make windows so much worse with every version they release, it has also reached a barely usable state to be honest.

In what way does it limit your freedom? When I first tried OSX I was quite surprised at how customizable it actually is, contrary to all the talk I heard about it.

Hell nah. Personally, mac os is the most frustrating of the bunch to use.

I switched over to MacOs about 3 months ago now for dev work and I’ve really been enjoying it so far. Except when there are weird hiccups, but they’ve been getting better as I get more familiar with it

Each to their own! I’m not a dev, but I have to use a mac at work for video editing, and what frustrates me, is the clunky window management and that some keyboard shortcuts (like copying and pasting) make me have to twist my hand in quite unnatural positions, at least on the apple’s own keyboard.

You’ll quickly change your mind once you start using Docker and similar tools a lot.

Not sure what you mean, I use x86 docker on my m2 MacBook no problem. Colima makes this fairly trivial

It doesn’t run natively, it doesn’t perform natively.

i used to have this opinion, i dont after having to use a mac for a few months. id take windows+wsl any day.

Being built on nix doesn’t mean it’s similar, just that they have some commands in common.

I miss my Linux dev machine daily.

They are both UNIXes, that’s quite a lot of similarity and I wouldn’t write it off that fast.

The windows experience has gotten a lot closer to Ubuntu than you’d expect, what with WSL. A developer can do most of the same things you’d do on Ubuntu on Windows now. The same cannot be said for Mac.

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