I think a lot of technical mac users would be better off at least trying a switch to Ubuntu or one of the minimalist variations thereof (xubuntu). A lot of the reasons those people switched to OSX are evaporating and Linux as a desktop or laptop development environment has improved hugely. If you're using vim or sublime you don't even need to change your editor.
I don't think Linux has gotten any better on the desktop since 2007 or so. Hardware support still isn't perfect, sleep/wakeup still isn't perfect, battery life is still lower than on OS X/Windows, 3D acceleration is still iffy. It's a total disaster.
I agree, but some brand new laptops are fully supported out of the box.
I have a brand new Lenovo ThinkPad T530 and it's running Fedora 18 flawlessly. Wi-Fi, headphone plugged-in sensor, OSD, media keys, dual-monitor support, webcam, 3D acceleration, sleep/wakeup, all working since day 1 out of box.
I think the more business oriented laptops are safe to run Linux and the new XPS 13 doesn't look bad at all except for the pricing.
EDIT: My biggest issue with Linux is font rendering, which, out of the box, sucks. The day I discovered http://www.infinality.net/blog/ I was the happiest man at the office.
If you want it to work well you do have to be picky about hardware still, but there are absolutely entire systems that, out of the box, are well supported by linux now. My Toshiba z830 was nearly perfect out of the box for linux. Basically is most of the stuff in your computer is made by Intel you're probably golden.
This isn't really any different from OSX in that there is literally only one hardware platform on which that OS is supported out of the box.
It's very different. The difference is OSX is only trying to target one hardware platform (and succeeding) while Linux is trying to target the whole range of IBM PCs (and failing).
Before the era of the Linux on the desktop comes, we need an actual Linux desktop. Trying to target a whole host of hardware is too hard and unnecessary anyway - just copy Apple's strategy and let's move on to problems that are actually worth solving.
Well, someone is certainly free to do that even if no one has yet. But the fact that I can buy a machine from a major vendor now that, without even advertising that fact, can run linux perfectly out of the box is a clear step-up over 2007.
My experience is somewhere in between - I still use OSX often, but have a laptop with Ubuntu on it. There are some things that I miss, but for most purposes Ubuntu is fine. Hardware support is not bad, and this on an ultrabook that shipped with Win8. Ubuntu lacks a little of the polish of OSX (or even Win7), but it is perfectly usable for most of what I need (most of the apps I use are the same anyhow, FF and Chrome, Sublime, VLC, etc.)
My ThinkPad X1 Carbon worked perfectly out of the box, including wifi, bluetooth, sleep/wake, media keys, 3d acceleration, external displays, webcam, mic, etc. It also gained an hour over its Windows 7 battery life.
I've never had problems with sleep/wakeup (except bugs in the firmware). Battery life is equal if not better than under windows. Developers rarely need 3D acceleration, and for most webgl demos and games the intel open source driver does just fine.
All have irritating bugs, hibernation and sleep problems, random crashes despite being absolutely bog standard Intel hardware across the board supposedly fully supported by Linux. The same kit doesn't exhibit any problems under Windows.
The Timeline series machines under Windows 7 got a whopping 8-10 hours battery life of average load OUT OF THE BOX. Under Ubuntu, even with all the powertop tweaks etc, 3 hours was pushing it.
Current Ubuntu, CentOS and Debian were tried on each machine at the time.
Just can't be bothered any more. Linux (Debian) sits inside a VirtualBox VM on Windows on my T61 where ironically the battery lasts longer when it's in a VM than on bare metal...
Sorry, but it sounds like you just haven't used Linux on a desktop since 2007. Honestly, I can't remember having any hardware support issues since around 2009, and I've been through a lot of machines.
For me, the matter of deciding between OS X and Linux is one of responsibility. When I buy an Apple laptop, Apple accepts responsibility for things like making sure that the hardware and the operating system work well together. Apple also makes sure that updates are (generally) compatible with existing hardware, up to a point at which they no longer support the hardware, but that line in the sand is clear. It's easy for me to understand where support ends.
Apple is very good at this. Yes, you will hear gripes from people about issues with Apple hardware/software, but relative to the rest of the industry (which is the pragmatic measure), they're way ahead of the game.
Contrast this with Linux. Yes, I can get a laptop that has good Linux support, but ultimately, I'm responsible for compatibility between hardware and software. I can pay for Canonical for support, but I believe a large part of Apple's success in building great compters has to do with the fact that they own responsiblity for both the hardware and the software.
At the end of the day, OS X is unixy enough (it was "UNIX certified", at least at one point) to make it a suitable development environment for Unix-like software. Combine this with the opportunity to not have to think about hardware and software compatibility, and the combination keeps a significatn number of users from making the switch to Linux.
I use ubuntu at work and osx at home. Ubuntu used to be amazing, and I still think it's good open source development platform, but the amount of time I've spent fixing drivers or fighting with unity has meant that it has cost me a lot more than osx.
Then there is the abomination that is unity. They really hit the mark there, making a window manager for netbooks. Cause everyone in their target market uses a netbook, right?
I think they should have stuck with gnome 2, polished it, and targeted programmers as their core users.
Here's the problem. This morning I applied some updates (yum update) to my Fedora workstation (not a laptop) and now Gnome is failing to start due to a video driver issue. I can fix this, I've been using Linux on the desktop since 1996. But I don't want to fix this.
This is on a fairly modern desktop built with Linux in mind and a slightly older NVidia card. It should just work.
I also have a Mac laptop and am more and more leaning that way, as it removes many of the issues that get in my way in the Linux world. Sure it introduces a few more, like using MacPorts or something to get my tools installed. Perhaps jumping into a VM when I'm working on that 5-10% of the code that is Linux specific. But overall that is less time taken away from my day than a broken update (and I'm not even talking about a release update).
I'm pretty sure that in a few months my workstation will be Mac as well, with a powerful headless Linux box in the closet or something like that - where Linux works best. I never, ever have issues with my non-graphical linux installs.
Oh I don't know about that. One of the great things about using a Mac is that you get a POSIX compliant operating system without having to mess with things too much. At the very least Ubuntu is not the way you want to go. The Linux environment has certainly improved, but the reasons people picked OS X haven't exactly evaporated.
+ I think going to a cloud IDE is the future. I've been experimenting with www.action.io - it's pretty awesome to just open that up in a browser on any OS and get coding without local configurations.
That's fine but for some of us, connectivity is not ubiquitous and it isn't necessarily legal to ship our code or data somewhere else unknown on the Internet...
I personally think this is a good thing. The worst thing is when someone (developer, OS manufacturer, etc) takes forever to fix a bug or deliver better performance through a kernel update for example.
- Image installers (.dmg files) and complete installers (.pkg files, that bring dependencies with them). I have never seen either of those fail, ever. I have seen installations from .tar.gz -> ./configure && make && make install fail countless times. This is the number one reason for me, and it's so much more important than anything else that I have trouble thinking of other reasons. I absolutely dislike the model that linux package managers use to handle dependencies and I do believe in bringing all libraries/dependencies needed with the installer and compiling them with disable-shared on. To do otherwise is to suffer a whole day trying to install ImageMagick when it should be a one-click task.
- Any other reasons pale in comparison to the first reason. I guess it's nice to have decent trackpad gestures... but I'd forgo everything for easy installers that bring dependencies with them.
What the heck are you doing messing with ./configure && make && make install? Are we back to 1998? apt/yum/emerge/[random package manager] are there for a reason.
Hey sergio - I missed the memo saying that's an outdated way of installing stuff. Must be because I keep coming across instructions that have me doing that. :)
Anyway, my point is that the very existence of a package manager is already misguided. Applications should be standalone (even the ones I install from source should just bring the libraries they depend on with them, instead of relying on a third-party program (the pkg manager) to make their application installable).
If programmers would package their applications like Ruby Enterprise Edition packaged itself, there would be no need for a package manager, and everything would install without fail every time.
REE's installer is interactive; if all installers were interactive (with a fallback flags system for non-interactive execution) then you would be able to customize them without needing a third-party program (homebrew).
Thew fewer third-party programs necessary to install an application, the easier it is to install and the less likely there will be errors. That is empirically true (based on my experience installing things on all 3 major OSs).
One of the reasons I switched to Ubuntu was the fact that they streamlined third party packages in a way that integrated them into the update stream through the PPA system.
The fact that I can get an up-to-date version of Wine, for example, and be notified when there's a new version, is fantastic and easily beats chasing down installers from vendors themselves, or having each of them run their own updater.
> To do otherwise is to suffer a whole day trying to install ImageMagick
Sure, you could do that, or issue [pkg-manager] install imagemagick. It took me yesterday around 15 seconds to install imagemagick without even leaving iTerm. Even brew knows that.
The main advantage of standalone packages is I can choose whatever version of package XYZ I want and push it out rather than being stuck with the package version the repository ships with until either the maintainer updates it or you patch it yourself or argue with some shoddy backport.
To me the main advantage of standalone packages (thanks for reminding me of what they're called) is that they just work (to borrow a phrase from Apple's fan club).
Having to solve installation/compilation/dependency issues is just a waste of time, when those problem don't need to exist at all (things can just be packaged with all dependencies and dumped onto another machine).
I also like the fact that .dmg files are self-contained installers that don't touch any files outside of the ApplicationName.app folder they install to. So that to uninstall something installed from a .dmg file all you need to do is delete the ApplicationName.app "file"/folder.
There's nothing advanced that Mac OS X is doing here. See the Ruby Enterprise Edition installer for how nice the world could be if only there were a change in the way most people think about distributing software in the Linux world. REE installs to its own folder and doesn't touch any system files; it also needs very little from the system besides the compiler (so no dependencies afaik). That's why it just works every time I install it. Now contrast that with ImageMagick.
> to uninstall something installed from a .dmg file all you need to do is delete the ApplicationName.app "file"/folder.
AppCleaner / AppZapper / AppDelete / CleanApp / etc beg to differ. A lot of packages leave a lot of crap behind that doesn't get removed with the .app directory itself.
If Apple needs a better filesystem, they should consider HAMMER from DragonflyBSD. It's BSD-licensed, unencumbered by patents, and way more sophisticated than HFS+.
oh, the irony. one line he says that he's a clever user that understands business, the other line suggests that what apple should do is change the filesytem. can you picture it? tim saying "one more thing to excite you" and announce a new filesytem instead of, say "Siri on your desktop"? I image 95% of the user base thinking "you updated the WHAT?!"
