Coders choosing Mac OS over Linux environment

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13846_3-20090145-62/coders-choosing-mac-os-over-linux-environment

by inshane • 15 years ago

34 78 15 years ago

news.cnet.com

rbanffy6• 15 years ago

It really depends.

The convenience of something like apt for quickly assembling or installing your machine with all software automatically updated is hard to beat. Mac OS also tends to ship with older versions of software and rarely gets newer versions without a full OS update - meaning they will get older and older with time.

OTOH, there are many scenarios where a Mac is the only option. Any development for iPhone or Mac is painful on other platforms.

aeontech• 15 years ago

Well, macports/homebrew seem to fill the package manager gap pretty well. I upgraded to Lion the other day - one "port selfupdate && port upgrade" command and an hour of downloads/compiles later I had my dev environment back to normal including fresh compiles of php, postgres, apache, memcache, redis, imagemagick and any number of their dependencies.

alexbell• 15 years ago

hombrew is awesome! previously my big complaint about os x was the difficulty of installing packages a la linux. you can't really say that any more. perhaps it doesn't quite have the sheer size of packages, but what it does have is much more up to date than linux repos for the most part. it sucks that you have to pull down xcode to develop on mac(huge download, and i understand that many people doing development on a mac will never use it), but i'm doing iOS development anywho.

jarin3• 15 years ago

With homebrew I didn't even have to do that, since the Lion upgrade leaves /usr/local and launchd alone. The only rough spot I had was installing the App Store version of XCode, because I was a dumbo and installed the beta version of XCode in /Developer (never do this).

eddieplan9• 15 years ago

I use homebrew "for quickly assembling or installing your machine with all software automatically updated" and really have nothing to complain about. Mac OS X ships things like Python and Ruby, not because Apple envisions you will use those things to build custom applications but because there are system tools that depend on them. That's why upgrading these system packages too aggressively is a bad idea, even on Linux (and that's why RHEL is still on Python 2.4). You always have cleaner way to get and use newer versions of almost all packages without breaking the system.

div2• 15 years ago

I was lost without apt for a while too until I discovered homebrew.

The list of packages available in homebrew is growing at a pretty crazy rate as well. It's currently the most forked project on github (https://github.com/popular/forked).

alexis-d• 15 years ago

I don't see why upgrading packages (like Python or Ruby) is a bad idea. For instance I have Python 2 & 3 installed on my laptops (Arch Linux) and it just works well.

rbanffy6• 15 years ago

I know I can coerce OSX into being a Unix-developer-friendly OS, but, unless you require the hardware it comes bundled with or some specific feature only OSX provides, why not start with a more server-like OS? Most of the servers I deploy to run Linux. If I develop and test everyday under Linux, I'll have less surprises when I deploy to production.

Mizza2• 15 years ago

I'm a bit of a Linux nut, but I'm seriously considering getting a MacBook Air for my next machine as there doesn't seem to be any comparable non-Apple hardware out there. Does anybody know of any?

cconstantine• 15 years ago

Not sure if it's a direct competitor for the Air, but I've been eyeing the Thinkpad x220.

rjbond3rd• 15 years ago

A nice choice. Also, the x120E with the dual-core processor (E350 chip), on Ebay starting at $400.

On a tight budget, my kids use the much older x60 and x61 (on Ebay for about $150-$200), and even the (quite old) x40 and X41.

fjh• 15 years ago

The Samsung Series 9 is pretty similar. I've got a MacBook Air and I've played around with the Samsung. Build-quality and hardware-wise the Samsung is, in my opinion, at least as nice as the air, but I've heard that it's currently a bit of a pain to get everything working under Linux.

ews• 15 years ago

I own a lenovo X1, which I don't think it's a direct competitor of the Mac Air, but it's light enough, the keyboard is really really good, and Linux works out of the box.

davidmat• 15 years ago

Not right now, but soon (in a few weeks - months) there will be a whole avalanche of laptops coming out based on Intel's Ultrabook platform; very much 'inspired' by the MacBook Air.

IvarTJ• 15 years ago

After, or in addition to my Thinkpad Edge which I am moderately pleased with, I consider getting an Asus Eee. They seem pretty solid and appear to have good Linux compatibility. They also appear to be one of the most popular notebooks for FreeBSD with extensive guides online.

ukdm2• 15 years ago

Ultrabooks will start appearing soon, and far cheaper than the Air. For example, the Acer Aspire 3951 was just outed. 13.3" display, 13mm thick, Sandy Bridge, 160GB SSD $960, or $770 for the lowest spec which basically means no SSD.

canistr2• 15 years ago

Aren't those still rumors? Considering that the picture that was used was apparently also used for all Macbook Air rumors floating around before it launched.

alextingle4• 15 years ago

Thinkpad X220.

I used a Mac laptop for years (PowerBook 12") and, although the OS was pretty good (that's high praise from me) from a user perspective, the hardware was awful.

Aluminium is not an appropriate shell material for a mobile device. Being able to swap the hard-drive is essential, unless you want to buy a new device each time you drop it.

The Thinkpad is so much better than the Apple in every way. I run Ubuntu on mine, and it works perfectly.

The Thinkpad even looks better than a Mac. Not immediately out of the box of course (new Macs look lovely), but after a few months of use, the Thinkpad's magnesium alloy shell still looks pretty good, while a Mac's aluminium is scuffed and scratched.

mitchty2• 15 years ago

Gonna have to disagree here. My 15" mbp has survived a motorcycle crash (long story short, it ended up as back armor). Only thing that isn't working is the dvd drive, and thats more due to me being too lazy to bend the aluminum back into place.

No real scratches on it of huge amount, but aluminium as shell works quite nice thank you very much. I've had this laptop for almost 3 years now, outside of the whole case being warped around due to impact its pretty much same as it ever was.

alexdias• 15 years ago

I'm in a similar position: I use Linux (Ubuntu) for my development needs (I'm a computer engineering student), but I'm thinking of getting a Macbook Pro 13'' on a future trip to the U.S. (I'm from Europe, so buying it in the U.S. would save me money due to the current dollar value). However, I'm not sure if it's worth it, as I might work in security when I finish my degree next year, which might mean that I would mostly run Windows... Any laptops have very similar specs? I've heard that the newest Vaio SB overheats sometimes...

streetFights• 15 years ago

I'll be moving to a MBP when the next refresh hits from Ubuntu as well, and I plan on running Windows in a VM if I ever need to. I'm sick of having to deal with Linux's shitty support for iDevices, as well as the awful battery life.

davidw4• 15 years ago

At heart, I'm a hacker, and I want an environment that I can hack on when I need to.

Also: focus follows mouse is not an optional or an extra.

I've been using a Linux desktop since 1996, and as far as I'm concerned, it's about 100 times easier than it used to be, so whining about things not being 'just right' fall on deaf ears, especially when for me 'just right' means focus follows mouse and other things like that that I have dialed in just how I want them.

Mizza2• 15 years ago

Focus follows mouse love! fistbump

jarin3• 15 years ago

While I've tried using various distros of Linux as my primary OS (and I used to really love hacking and tweaking my UI like crazy), I'll say that nowadays I want an environment that I can hack on when I need to, but that I rarely need to hack on.

OS X fits that role for me. I just feel like there isn't enough time in the day to hack and tweak my OS and write code for clients and my own projects.

davidw4• 15 years ago

I rarely need to hack on Linux these days, but have in the past:

1) I hacked up a patch to make it boot better off of USB keys. Sadly I'm not sure they ever accepted it in the main kernel, despite being way better than their own hacky (wait N seconds for the device to settle) method.

2) I hacked up a nice little environment for a coin-operated internet machine, to stick in the corners of hotels. It was pretty cool, unfortunately the guy running the operation with me screwed up the business side and it never went anywhere.

chc3• 15 years ago

It may be OK for you because you require focus-follows-mouse to be built-in, but "It's better than it was in 1996" is pretty faint praise. If somebody told you he'd clubbed 90% fewer baby seals this year than he did in 1996, would that lead you to think, "Wow, what an upstanding guy"? All operating systems, including Windows, BeOS and Amiga, have improved since 1996.

And I think for most people, a working wireless card is more of an out-of-the-box priority than focus-follows-mouse. (Though personally, I would have liked Linux more if it just didn't cause my keyboard to stop functioning after the computer came out of sleep mode.)

davidw4• 15 years ago

I didn't say 'better', I said a lot better. Better like in this kind of chart:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disruptive_technology#The_theor...

rbanffy6• 15 years ago

I am sorry, but nothing beats needing MySQL, PostgreSQL, some Emacs thingie or a splittable terminal and being able to instantly issue a "sudo aptitude install" on a terminal and have everything taken care for you.

Some developers adapt to OSX, but, if you read TFA, you'll realize this is not a cross section of the hard-core hacker types: 80% of the sample prefers Windows.

OSX is quite acceptable in roles traditionally reserved to Windows PCs in the corporate world. It runs Office, Outlook, talks nicely to Exchange and runs Eclipse just fine. Many corporate Java developers (a bunch that traditionally used Windows) can use Macs for work and enjoy some advantages in relation to those who use Windows.

You may argue that Linux is not as polished a Unix as OSX (I disagree, but smart people believe it), but no serious hacker thinks Windows is acceptable for development unless they are also targeting Windows for deployment.

BonsaiDen• 15 years ago

Completely agree. OSX hides so many things away from me. It would take days of configuration of a fresh OSX install to get to a state where I could work with. Having to install 10 payed 3rd party programs to make the system itself usable(SFTP, File manager, KEEP A WINDOW A TOP(!)) is ridiculous. Also, having a Unix where half of the stuff was moved around is not a good starting point in case you're working with a ton of Linux Servers.

2muchcoffeeman2• 15 years ago

It sounds like you did this before. In which case you should have restored from a TimeMachine backup. Your restored account is pretty much identical to your old one. The only reason you can tell it's not your old machine is because you have a physically different machine. Takes maybe 1-1.5 hours.

The Lion updates will soon (devs need to update their software) make things even better for users. Auto save and built in versioning.

pyre• 15 years ago

If you like focus-follows-mouse don't upgrade to a newer version of Compiz[1] (assuming that you actually use Compiz).

[1] https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/compiz/+bug/755156

wildmXranat• 15 years ago

Yes and No. I like my Air for developing and you would have to pry it from my cold dead fingers, buuuuut: I tried to install python PIL just yesterday and thought easy as pie, not! easy_install complains that gcc is getting the ARCH_FLAGS as ppc not x84_64, plus a couple of other nitpicks. So I used ports, but that means I had to install a new Python interpreter ... and well I have better things to do that replace apt.

Apt > (ports,mac,brew) anyday, but rarely is it an issue.

div2• 15 years ago

No package manager is perfect though. Installing rubygems through apt for example is a pain because it's a custom version that will install gems to a different directory than vanilla rubygems.

Trivial to fix if you know about it, but you have to figure it out which easily wastes as much time as having to install macports.

canistr2• 15 years ago

I know exactly what you mean. I tried installing PIL and OpenCV a while back on my MBP and it was completely frustrating with all the different problems I was running into.

Finally gave up, installed Ubuntu on a VM, and synced my dev files on OS X with my dev environment with Dropbox. Ran all my code on in my Ubuntu VM just fine.

Some things I love OS X for, other things I leave to Linux because they're still much much easier to develop for.

qaexl5• 15 years ago

I run Linux ... virtualized in OSX. Because OSX and MacBooks has wireless that just works. It has networking that just works. And it has suspend/wakeup that just works. But its bundled UNIX toolchain sucks, and Macports, et. al. don't just work.

I run the VM headless, sized similarly to a typical Rackspace Cloud server. This setup lets me use the GNU toolchain while being highly mobile.

marchdown• 15 years ago

Care to elaborate on your setup? Which VM platform do you use? Doesn't it take up too much resources when idle?

kree102• 15 years ago

I don't know what qaexl's using but I'm going to guess VirtualBox with http://vagrantup.com/ - it's a setup that's worked well for me.

Activity Monitor tells me my single VM running in the background is taking up less CPU time than Skype (which is also idling in the background).

waivej• 15 years ago

Personally I use Parallels with PC and Linux VMs on OSX. It's not perfect...but good enough to cover the bases.

qaexl5• 15 years ago

Some context. I started this current gig 18 months ago. I develop on Ruby on Rails (of course), and ultimately deploy it into the Rackspace Cloud. I also wanted to mess around with Opscode Chef. I had also watched friends and business partners struggle with MacPort for years, and watched them struggle with bundler and rvm more recently. I wanted to skip that.

I'm actually using VMWare Fusion. My employer had an extra copy. I run VirtualBox at home. The platforms are not exactly the same, but my beefier gaming box running (now older version) of VirtualBox seem slower. For the purpose of developing in a VM, I don't think it really matters between VirtualBox or VMWare technology-wise, as long as you have some sort of command-line tool to bring up new VMs.

I wrote some bash scripts to clone VMWare images, including filters to search name references and rename them to the image. You can use Vagrant to do the same with VirtualBox, and from the demos I've seen, it is a easy way to get into this setup on your MBP.

I built out a template with 256M + 10 GB slices, just like on Rackspace Cloud. On the i5 MBP, I allocated a single core to each slice. On my current i7/8GB setup, I'm allocating two cores. I've also had to beef up two of the slices from 256M to 512M and 1G so that I could run the full rspec against the apps. I have tried allocating all 8 hyperthreaded cores, but I guess VMWare Fusion isn't quite like Xen. I generally run no more than two slices at a time. VMWare Fusion makes it relatively easy to suspend VMs, and I don't jump around on a number of projects so I have not needed to hot-potato things much.

I had not had problems with VMWare with regards to idling. Both VMWare Fusion and VirtualBox are now using Xen-style paravirtualization, so when it is idle, it sits idle. When it does eat up computing cycles when idle, it has more to do with Rails (or Merb) polling inappropriately. With this setup, I've had problems on the i7 MBP kicking up the fan for no apparent reason and I suspect it is Chrome or Flash.

Wakeup/suspend by closing the lid works on the VMs. Linux doesn't even know the VMs have been suspended, so I don't mess with any kernel settings for that. On the downside, these VMs currently run on an independent wall clock which means resetting the clock if I want accurate timestamps on commit logs. There's probably a setting to fix that.

I'm using Gentoo for the distro, but that doesn't matter as much as using the distro you like or better yet, using the distro you are deploying against.

Editor-wise, I am shelling in with ssh and using vim + Rails.vim against screen. (I'm also using Terminal.app + Visor and iterm2 w/ visor mode). I have a customized /etc/hosts file with shortnames for the VMs so I can shell in fast on the occasions I do shell in. (I have flirted with shelling in and using Emacs -- it works wonderfully well, if I wanted to abandon VI modal editing).

Each slice is configured with two virtual ethernet devices, one going to physical ethernet device (bridged) and one going to the virtual LAN (no NAT). Since I sometimes go use free wifi and they require IP authentication, I don't see the point of exposing the internal slices to the world. Instead, I installed Nylon through MacPorts and have it turned on to accept SOCKS5 requests from anything inside the virtual LAN. On the VM side, I have proxychains set to talk to Nylon on the outside. This way, I only have to web-authenticate once on the free wifi and prepend my git pushes with proxychain. With the virtual LAN, the intent was so I can always shell into my vm on my laptop regardless of my external network connectivity.

One nice thing about this setup: at some point, when the Gems start accumulating and start bogging down load time for Ruby and Rails, I can drop it and clone a new VM.

Due to some circumstances, I'm going to be getting an i7 Air by the end of this month and I'll replicate the setup. I may use Homebrew or Gentoo Prefix on the host side, but I'll still continue to use some sort of virtualization of Linux. I'm skeptical about drinking the 'brew ...

I have a friend with a similar setup. The friend has to run Windows to do proper browser testing so he has different requirements. He also has FUSE running with a Samba shared folder so he can use TextMate on the host side and run things on the Linux side. I've only had a few occasions where I wished I could do that, virtual DropBox-style, but it hasn't reached the level of scratching-itch yet.

pugnusferreus• 15 years ago

tried http://mxcl.github.com/homebrew/ ? Tried brew with ffmpeg and image magick and it works

qaexl5• 15 years ago

Gentoo can be a pain in the ass, but the occasions when I need package masking and using precise, specific library versions, there's nothing else that does it.

Ultimately, I think Homebrew will win out because:

(1) It is on github (http://redmonk.com/sogrady/2010/04/01/github/)

(2) The Homebrew DSL is far, far easier to work with than Gentoo ebuilds

(3) From what I've seen, you don't need root privs to develop Homebrew formula, but setting up fakeroot to develop Gentoo ebuilds is a pain.

Homebrew or not, VM'd Linux hosted under OSX is a sweet spot for what I'm working on.

pnathan• 15 years ago

Of course, it's a 'works out of the box' system that requires very little configuration, as well as having a very nice posixy environment.

Of course, it's not as good as Linux for some things, and in those cases, it's not hard to get Linux access.

OSX is great.

sophacles• 15 years ago

Yes, and here is why:

When sitting in very long, boring meetings, or very long train/airplane rides, I can still hack away on vim (or occasionally eclipse) for hours despite the complete lack of power outlets. The fact it's bash/posix means that I can run most of my tools locally as is necessary when I cant ssh to my real development servers.

So basically its not that I prefer OSX as a dev environment, it that OSX provides the same dev environment with a much, much longer battery life.

(oh also good Exchange integration via ical and mail.app don't hurt).

alextingle4• 15 years ago

Mac's battery life is not exactly stellar. It used to be pretty good in the PPC days, but now?

salem2• 15 years ago

And how was performances in the good old PPC days?

2muchcoffeeman2• 15 years ago

It's way better. I have a 2 year old MBP 13". Replaced the optical with another HD. Still gets 4 hours battery life. Little more if I am seriously doing work and not messing around.

runjake• 15 years ago

It would be fair to mention that in the survey, 80% of the coders chose Windows, Mac OS 7.9%, and Linux 5.6%.

wiredfool2• 15 years ago

My old setup was a Mac, with keyboard and big screens, with an xemacs window open to a linux box. Then, I lost a hard drive on the mac (while time machine was in self borking mode). Migration ensues. (some of which was planned)

So then, I've got 2 ubuntu boxes, and a mac that needs rebuilding. Dev stuff has been moved from hw linux to a redundant array of cheap virtual machines. One of the HW linux consoles is repurposed to run vms, run the vm generator, and also do some ui stuff, since Xemacs and chrome are pretty much the same anywhere. All well and good.

So, linux box #2 doesn't like to have a keyboard plugged into it for any length of time. It starts to ignore it. (Why, I don't know). But it runs VMs like a champ, so there it is.

Linux box #1 does fine for months, until this morning, when Xorg fubars itself, and then proceeds to do it every 15-20 minutes.

So, now, I guess, I'm back to the mac. Since it's hd has been rebuilt in the intervening time. Though I'm still getting used to the terminals in Lion.

But that's not what I came here for, The real point of the story is:

emacs --daemon

and emacsclient -c.

So now, in the dev vm start up emacs in daemon mode. Then, you can connect to that process from any tty or xserver. With all your state. I like state.

doe88• 15 years ago

I used Linux (Slackware, Debian then Ubuntu) since 2000, and as my main OS since 2002. Last year I had to switch to Mac OS in order to develop for iOS, I have several issues with Mac OS, mainly I don't like their window management at all (when I close a window I want the app to be closed, I don't like the menu bad not integrated with the windows, I don't like how works the resizing,...).

But when I see what is gnome on Ubuntu 11.04, I don't really know if I would like to switch back know. I don't know how to put it, but my desktop pc is _not_ a touchscreen, I don't understand why they changed everything as if it everything was an iPad... Moreover it seems to me that the state of Firefox (yeah I'm still rooting for FF) on Linux is largely lagging behind win/mac at least for its UI. And worst of all, I'm feeling that a lot of skilled developers have switched to Mac OS recently and putting their skills to develop .app instead of .deb now.

I'm actually a bit sad because I love Linux more than anything.

mblakele• 15 years ago

For window resizing, I can recommend http://irradiatedsoftware.com/sizeup/ - there's a free demo, and a full license is cheap. No affiliation with the author: just a happy user.

wiredfool2• 15 years ago

So, linux box #2 doesn't like to have a keyboard plugged into it for any length of time. It starts to ignore it. (Why, I don't know). But it runs VMs like a champ, so there it is.

Linux box #1 does fine for months, until this morning, when Xorg fubars itself, and then proceeds to do it every 15-20 minutes.

So, now, I guess, I'm back to the mac. Since it's hd has been rebuilt in the intervening time. Though I'm still getting used to the terminals in Lion.

But that's not what I came here for, The real point of the story is:

emacs --daemon

and emacsclient -c.

So now, in the dev vm start up emacs in daemon mode. Then, you can connect to that process from any tty or xserver. With all your state. I like state.

BerislavLopac• 15 years ago

I'm using Windows and Ubuntu. Why? Because where I live (Croatia) a Mac Mini 2.5GHz costs the equivalent of $1300, which is almost twice the $799 price tag on Apple Store. Nuff said.

siculars• 15 years ago

In other news - lots of people put pants on one leg at a time and don't forget to walk the dog in the morning!

salem2• 15 years ago

Macs as the preferred dev machine has been the trend at my last four workplaces, including two startups, one 'tween', and one corporate.

rdl• 15 years ago

I use Linux and BSD servers (hardware and virtualized), and Macs for laptops and some desktops.

I use Linux desktops for serious sysadmin tasks, due to focus follows mouse, but I really like having CS5.5, iWork, etc. even on a desktop. I'm also a lot happier with OSX for mobile devices due to power management, device drivers, etc. And, I love the iPad and iPhone, and the Mac is a much better host for those.

Really, mac ports covers 95% of what I need on a machine. Being able to scroll in a non-focused window really covers most of my need for pointer-focus too.

jinushaun• 15 years ago

I pick OSX over Linux because why can't my dev box also be my everyday box? I have access to all the GNU/open source dev tools I need on OSX, so why give up Photoshop, Office, iTunes, etc just to say I'm using Linux? I have a dedicated Windows machine and at the end of the day, I'm still using Windows in Parallels over a dedicated Windows box.

Coders choosing Mac OS over Linux environment

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