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Comment by nebulous1 | Hacker News Reader

Elementary doesn't strike me as a particularly good distro for dev. It's not that I've anything against it, but other than your personal preference in the DE (and Pantheon isn't without its charms) it doesn't seem to have much that's going to lift it over any other linux distro. Perhaps I'm missing something.

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I've tried Elementary a couple of times for dev and it isn't suited for that at all. I understand they've been getting a spike in traffic since the new macbook pro release, but I don't see how that would be a great choice for developers, cause most of the similarities with macOS will stop with the design.

As much as I wanted to enjoy the distro since its DE looks more well-thought than other DE's around, you're going to get more problems than if you simply switch to Ubuntu with outdated packages, poor documentation to solve problems and it's easy to realize it's not made for devs.

I would say Ubuntu or Fedora are better distros for developers to switch from macOS if they don't want to spend a long time setting things up, or maybe even Arch Linux if they are experienced with Linux. After a while, I couldn't even recommend Elementary for friends since I knew the amount of problems that would come with it.

+ I'd like to add that xubuntu DE is xfce and by default with some small tweaks it looks very much like macOS/os x, but with the added benefit of ubuntu base behind it. once ubuntu ditched gnome DE i adopted xfce. https://goo.gl/zQcuGU

https://xubuntu.org/

https://xubuntu.org/screenshots/

for screenshots (of any DE) there's also /r/unixporn

(https://www.reddit.com/r/unixporn/search?q=xfce&restrict_sr=...)

Thank you so much for that link. I didn't know it existed, and it's a lot of fun looking over all of those different designs.

The thing is, Apple took care of my basic laptop needs very well, but at a price. I had to put up with all of their little, annoying decisions (a finder lacking so many obvious file-management features but will NEVER be improved, a ridiculous emphasis on trivia like "flat design" instead of substantial things like RAM & SSD, social media nonsense built into everything, features that are more about Apple's agenda than mine ("this new version gives you more ways than ever before to buy stuff from Apple!"), a pathetic range of preferences because "we know better than you, and we've decided for you", and so on.)

But if they won't make the hardware I want and won't allow anyone else to make it for me (meaning licensing OSX to companies who still care about serious computer users), then the basics are no longer covered, either. I'm really not looking forward to having to fight to get basic stuff working right for myself, but if I give up and conclude that Apple has moved on and I should, too, then I'm going to go all the way with the others stuff as well. I'm getting rid of all the "you'll get used to it eventually" compromises I had to put up with from Apple and doing it the way I want. I'd like to see what other looks are available (the looks aren't a trivial issue if I get to choose them, right?) and it doesn't have to look anything like OSX. In fact, I'm sure I would prefer a design that is very unique to ME over Jony Ive's design that is best for everyone.

> flat design

I do not mean to nitpick - I enjoyed your comment - but isn't that more the preserve of Windows (post-8)?

SiVal might be referring to the iterative thinning and weight reduction of the machines.

No, I'm referring to all the recent hubbub about Ive's declaration that he had decided that the "skeuomorphic" look was no longer his fashion preference, so the flat, featureless, cartoonish rectangles for UI elements that he considered more fashionable would be enforced on all developers wherever it could be enforced (App Store, Mac App Store).

I don't really care either way, and yes, other makers are doing flat-look fashion makeovers, too, but this is about Apple as a pro computing platform. I just wish that if Apple couldn't stay ahead in both fashion and practical usefulness to people who need serious computers, that they would let the former languish instead of the latter.

OK, completely misunderstood you there, then; thanks for the clarification!

Thanks!

to be fair, the SSDs in the new MBPs and also in the last 2 generations have been among the best of their class when released. They went with PCIE really early and the new MBPs SSDs reach insane (sequential speeds). Also i believe the RAM is limited to 16GB by Intel for some reason (maybe chipset or CPUs), not by Apple.

I used Xfce for a while but I still prefer vanilla Ubuntu, Unity feels more polished to me. It's the little stuff like vsync being enabled by default (no screen tearing when you move a window or scroll a web page).

The compositor included with Xfce is really terrible. I installed compton[1] and all those polish issues magically disappeared.

[1]: https://github.com/chjj/compton

As far as I can see, the meat of your argument is 'outdated packages, poor documentation to solve problems', but in those terms Elementary is almost identical to Ubuntu LTS. In fact, under the hood, Elementary is essentially an Ubuntu LTS flavour with their own default apps, running a customized toolkit.

For any problem not related to those apps, or the desktop environment, you look up information for the associated Ubuntu release. I imagine in that sense it's very similar to any of the flavours, which you are suggesting as a better alternative.

For some developers LTS is no good, because they need the latest packages, for others it's not an issue. That's a fine point to make, but I don't see how you get from that to 'Elementary is no good for developers'.

I agree. Elementary is ubuntu and they are reccomending ubuntu as an alt?

While not a full time dev, I would always classify Elementary as an OSX "experience" rather than a work platform.

It's elegant, it works, it has almost nothing you do not directly need, and honestly even compared to Ubuntu it's user friendly.

If you don't use many apps on OSX beyond the basic / apple ones (excluding video/media editing) you'll likely never feel the difference since even the UI is rather similar.

Especially because a lot of the standard dev libraries are outdated or get outdated quick

Well. One problem with development for Linux is that the libraries get outdated pretty quickly forcing you to chase the dependencies. I think programming against the LTS releases is not that bad of an idea. And there is always an option to go bleeding edge and just pull dependencies from sources.

I use stock ubuntu with i3 on a Dell XPS 13, with no issue. Once I moved to i3 I realised I just don't care about the DM of the day. Dependencies go in their docker containers, where they belong.

OK that's not true: I can only use 2.4G wireless, and sometimes I have to unmute system audio after using headphones.

I have not yet had the time to look into containers, but from what I understand it does indeed look like a solution to this problem.

Can you give more details on this? I've been using Debian, Ubuntu and Fedora (as well as OSX/macOS) for ages now without any issues like the one you describe.

If you wish to distribute binaries rather than source for users to compile, you can not rely on the system libraries because that can get updated in a non compatible manner any time. Thus you need to package all of them all the way up from libc with your application (basically what windows and macOS apps do). So in regards to the original criticism of elementary not being updated often enough, I do not think it is an issue for development because it gives you a longer living target. As long as you get the security updates.

Usually distros don't change libraries in dangerous ways within a major release. For Debian, "stable" remains as it is for a very long time and even "testing" doesn't change much. Red Hat also maintains the environment stable to a fault. If you want to package for Ubuntu and Fedora, you'll have to probably build for every six-month/one-year release.

We agree. That is why I think that elementary not having the latest greatest libraries (it is an ubuntu lts under the hood) is not a problem and more of a benefit.

Let's say you write an app in Qt, Ubuntu 14.04 (LTS) has Qt version 5.3 but you want to use this cool new feature from Qt 5.7, you can pull the Sources and build Qt 5.7 on your computer and get it working. But obviously when you distribute it, other people who don't have Qt 5.7 installed yet because they are on a LTS distro will not be able to use it.

I have had a decent experience using KDE. It is not as beautiful as GNOME or MacOS but it sure is productive.

Well, for people who were using another OS not especially great for dev-work (there's nothing special about OS X in that regard) it seems like a fine recommendation. The biggest reason to run OS X apart from the obvious "you should do it because you want to develop for Apple stuff" is that it's a clean experience that mostly gets out of your way and you won't have to tinker all that much.

The macbooks are well tailored for dev work because the hardware itself hits most of the points that people want and care about.

There are arguably more options for dev work on any linux distro and Arch, for example, will do a better job with its repositories and the AUR in giving you easy access to devtools (and all other apps) of all kinds.

elementary is a fine system, but nothing special for developers. As a developer I would always use an Arch based distro (Manjaro, Antergos, etc.) or Arch itself - of course.

Everything a developer needs is in the repos, no fiddeling with ppa's or downloading packages from websites.

Yeah.

I haven't tried it but Elementary has always seen like a clone of OS X. And like most clones likely to be a bad clone.

Gnome is a bit crazy these days, I'd recommend kde.

Elementary is fine, it doesn't strike me as a bad clone of macOS, but I recommend kde too. For a tech savvy person by far the best DE right now.

Would disagree. Using Gnome with Fedora and it's rock solid and does everything I need as well as looking good.

Have they stopped removing menus from everything?

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