Mark Shuttleworth sees increased demand for enterprise Ubuntu Linux desktop
zdnet.com
zdnet.com
You haven't been able to buy a Mac/Macbook Pro with an Nvidia chip for many years now, and using one in an external enclosure is iffy. So data scientists are increasingly using Linux to do their work.
Almost all my work requiring a GPU is done by either ssh'ing into my desktop with a GTX 1080 or on AWS. And in that scenario, Linux has less friction (I can migrate setups between home and AWS) and is significantly cheaper than a MacPro.
Those engineers would be coming from Macbooks due to weakened support for Nvidia CUDA applications.
Are AI devs (Data Scientists?) really regarded that much higher by the management compared to the regular devs?
Do you think this is special or is it just the current fad that is large enough to reach the management?
This is pleasantly surprising to read. Many were happy to see Canonical drop their homegrown Unity for GNOME, and GNOME has received quite a few performance improvements from Ubuntu devs as a result.
In the context it was written it sounds like “this other shadow IT usage can be under the table because it’s deemed unimportant to the business but now that our business is all-in on AI we can use that momentum to get better servers”.
In our case I convinced that it's a design flaw in the MacBook Pro.
Granted, I think if you're building native mobile apps and web front-ends, your life is easier on a Mac just by virtue of having access to the same tooling as your design team. But for everything else, it just feels easier to get stuff done on Linux.
Complicating matters is the declining quality of Apple Macbook Pros and their propensity to thermally throttle. They are quite beautiful though! Still, as a 2018 15" MBP user at work, I often regret not getting a T or P-series Lenovo which carry with them their own flaws.
There is also the X1 Extreme.
Can in a pinch do everything on the laptop I can do on my dev desktops.
With iOS, Apple has it so that you more or less need a MacOS running XCode. While the Mac I use has Android Studio on it, I find myself switching back to Ubuntu Linux to program Android. It is just an easier workflow for me.
What we'll often do is use a small dataset locally on our desktop to confirm that something works, and then ship it to a multi-GPU setup in our cluster to train things for real-world uses. It's much easier to do this when you're developing on the same OS that is running in the cluster, hence Ubuntu desktop.
I guess I rarely run into ubuntu vs macos compatibility issues while I do notice the lack of QOL features on ubuntu. I would rather stay on macos
Another major factor is CUDA - all the frameworks use CUDA and Nvidia cards, which MacOS doesn't support. OpenCL is way slower and undersupported. AMD has been working on ROCm but it doesn't feel like it's going anywhere fast enough. Everyone uses CUDA.
Tbh I'd miss Teams and Outlook (though both are well supported in the browser), I avoid Excel like the plaque anyway because it messes with gene names (sept1 anyone?) and Word/PowerPoint is also ok in the cloud (though the latter gets tedious with animations and complex slides I find).
I highly recommend uBlock Origin [0].
When are you going to believe me!