On Why Open Source Developers run Mac OS X

"And this, I believe, is why great developers tend to move towards OS X (yes, there are plenty of exceptions)"

With all due respect, this reads more like an Apple advertisement than a well-thought conclusion.

First, I find it somewhat strange to declare those who stay with FreeBSD or Debian as "exceptions", thus implying that moving to OS X is the norm. This is not backed by any numbers. There are just some anecdotes of some people switching to OS X.

Also, that statement implies it is meaningful that some great developers switch. However, that detail isn't relevant at all to understand to process. OS X is comparatively new, so of course people are still looking at it and some of them move over. And of course some of those people are great developers, as in any random group.

To make this more clear: Among the people who are switching, there are naturally a lot more mediocre developers than great developers (as in any random group), but the article wouldn't sound nearly as sensational if the author had written: "thousands of mediocre developers switched to OS X".

Also, a lot of people switch from a proprietary system (like OS X or Windows) to Ubuntu, Fedora and many other free software systems. However, those aren't nearly as celebrated as those who switch to OS X. Why is that?

This article is so strongly biased that it is hard not to mistake it for an Apple ad.

I've been pretty happy on the Mac. But I miss Ubuntu's giant repository of binary packages, and I've recently fallen in love with XMonad's automatic window management.

So now I'm running Ubuntu in VirtualBox, and I'm enjoying it greatly. And I've learned my lesson about Linux laptops: I'm going to buy a premium laptop from a high-end Linux vendor, and let somebody _else_ worry about drivers.

Most of the developers I know are using Macs, with only myself and a few others preferring Linux. The Mac guys use the terminal, as it is a necessity. But they are relatively slow at it. Most of them don't even really use tab completion as much as they could, if at all. They also use the mouse very heavily, especially in their web browser, finder, and text editor.

The developers I know that prefer Linux, including myself, freaking fly on the keyboard. We hardly ever touch the mouse. We tab complete like crazy. We use a ton of keyboard shortcuts for everything. Doesn't matter if we are vim or emacs, it's keyboard keyboard keyboard.

I think the explanation is very simple. If you are a mouse using person, and you compare a Linux system to a Mac, the Mac will be more comfortable, especially with that great touchpad. If you are a keyboard person, the Mac will drive you insane and Linux will be happy land. People tend to change their software rather than change themselves, so mouse people end up on Macs.

Personally I'm running Arch w/ stumpwm on vanilla X. All I need is emacs, ff, and a couple terminal windows. No distractions at all; no windows hiding other windows, no tabbing through three or four windows to get to the one I want, nothing popping up in my face, no bloat-ware monitoring useless information. My fingers almost never leave my home row while I work.

I don't really know what this article was trying to get at. I'm sure there are lots of developers who do use OS X, but I don't think that choice really has much to say about open source developers as a whole and probably less to say about developers who do not switch.

It's just an operating system.

I'm not an "open source developer." But I do write code from time to time that I am happy to share with others. I run Debian on a desktop most of the time; essentially the only program I interact with outside of Emacs is a web browser. I do have a Macbook, though, that I use as a second computer when I'm away from home.

I am constantly frustrated by OS X.

The biggest reason is one of the `features' mentioned in the article: the `./configure && make && make install' routine seems to constantly break on OS X. This is a problem for me because much of the software I use (or try to play around with) doesn't specifically target OS X, so there generally aren't pre-compiled binaries available, and often the build instructions do not provide helpful hints for OS X users. I used to work in a lab that ran entirely on OS X. Compiling scientific libraries (e.g. SciPy) was frequently a recursive nightmare of trying to compile or otherwise install various dependencies (in SciPy's case, I remember the lack of gfortran being an issue).

Often, the problem has to do with missing libraries or figuring out how to set CFLAGS to cope with Apple's non-standard paths, both of which are headache enough. But sometimes the errors are just incomprehensible -- at least to someone without serious C knowledge -- and then I'm stuck.

Sometimes, Apple has done the hard work for you of properly configuring and installing popular Free programs (e.g. Emacs, Python) but the versions are Apple modified, can be difficult to get to work with outside libraries, and are often very old.

(I'm venting a bit here because I have been suffering from these sorts of problems fairly acutely in the last couple of days, but it really does seem to be an issue every time I want to use something on OS X: from Emacs to Python to Git to whatever else, something always seems to go wrong, even if it's not a dealbreaker.)

The bottom line is that OS X is a long way away, for me, from being an environment in which I can comfortably use all the software I want to without too much time lost down the rabbit hole of configuration. And I don't even spend most of my time programming! So I'd have to disagree with the sentiment of the article.

The majority of open source users/developers/contributors are pragmatic about the utility of open source software (it does a job they need done and the access to open source code makes it better), but there is a very vocal minority for whom open source/free software is an ideology (there's nothing wrong with that either).

I'm 100% open source on the server. The combo of Ubuntu, Django, Nginx, Gunicorn and Postgresql has made me very productive.

I like futzing with servers, I hate doing it with notebooks. OS X might not always "just work" but it does for most cases that matter to me.

Other people might own consoles or use Microsoft Office (or Google Docs) or other stuff which isn't open source, but that shouldn't affect their support for open source in the areas that matter to them.

Hardly. On the surface, sure; that's part of the appeal. Underneath? GCC's a couple keystrokes away. There's even http://www.opensource.apple.com/ which has kernels[1] and lots of low-level code you can hack away at. Less than an OSS Unix distro? Absolutely. But not by all that far.

[1]: http://www.opensource.apple.com/source/xnu/xnu-1504.9.17/

Opensource web oriented platforms (i.e web developers who commit code to web based projects in accordance to open source code licenses) use OSX in my experience by overwhelming majority.

Lower OS Level developers tend to stick with Linux or BSD

In some instances it didn't make any sense at all, the pains I saw developers trying to install couchDB on their OSX platform (i think it is a easier now), it was far easier to do this on ubuntu.

Developers also have aesthetic impulses, and OSX looks good and feels good, for most people, better then any X based GUI other platforms have. This is also an issue with the relative comfort different developers have with the Terminal.

Much can be said about this practice, no dog fooding might make open source less viable in the long run.

Upon encountering OS X I went out and bought a 12" PowerBook. I thought it would be a nice machine to run Debian/PPC on. Instead, I so enjoyed having a functional laptop, that I never left OS X. Being firmly in the open source world, I described it as a crisis of faith. I'm on my second MacBook Pro now.

Having instantaneous suspend/resume is the biggest deal for me. Having wireless just work and being able to plug into a random printer and print a boarding pass is really nice. Plugging into a random projector or monitor and being able to do a demo or presentation without debugging the latest configuration mechanism to X is nice.

I still use Debian for servers and some workstations. Basically, if I only have to configure it once, it is worth the hassle. But with a laptop, I am essentially reconfiguring multiple times per day moving between locations, networks, and peripherals. OS X makes this so much less painful.

People like to talk about Apple as a software company or a hardware company. They are a systems company. Because they control the OS and the hardware, there isn't the enormous problems getting suspend/resume to work like there is in the Windows and Linux world where you have to get multiple vendors to cooperate to get something done.

Ubuntu does a mostly good job at that, at least for me.

I think that really gets the point across. While Ubuntu and a few others have made great strides in getting things to "just work", OS X is still the king in that regard.

1) Apple switched to x86

2) The MacBook Pro unibody line is just a solid laptop with a great design.

3) The iOS "bubble", where iOS developers are in high demand.

I prefer Linux. Actually, I would be happy with any Unix-like OS with proper system-wide binary package management and a modern GUI. I can live with the occasional quirk when some part of the computer cannot function properly because it was never properly documented. I know that, by the next OS release (right now, that will be in about 4 months), it will.

Also, BtrFS is very interesting (although it doesn't compare to ZFS, but that's another can of worms)

edit: I really wish I could read the article.

edit 2: Now that I am able to read it:

> When a problem solver uses a Linux desktop, they are immediately confronted with the possibility of being able to modify every part of their system

Yes, but some of them never do it. They modify it once to tailor it to their needs (I check-out my Emacs configuration) and never touch it again. When I moved to Linux in 2002 or so, I spent some time trying skins and desktops and so on. Now all my computers use the default look and feel provided by Ubuntu. The last 4 years have been like that.

I guess I'm always trying to make OS X a bit more usable to a primarily Linux/Windows person.

When I go down to that dock or activate expose I feel like I am losing precious time watching those animations (probably just me), Quicksilver does help but if I could just turn off the animations (like in Windows / YouNameIt Linux Distro) it would feel much nicer.

I tend to use Windows (design, production and games) and Ubuntu (programming, server related tasks) primarily and I have them set up very similar, using "Expose with no animation" (switcher and compiz), Launchy, very simple grey themes, a "Windows 7-like dock" for Ubuntu, and using the same fonts and Firefox/Thunderbird profiles, it is almost seamless other than the restarting part.

This works quite well and allows me to get real work done without flashy stuff going on all over the place or processes running in the background eating up precious CPU cycles that I can't seem to disable without breaking something.

It could be I'm just a hacker/tinkerer by nature, and when a system like OS X says I can't do something it makes me want to do it even more.

So, Apple.. Where is that option to disable all animations, or to show folders at the top of the finder (without totalfinder, or organizing by type)? </rant>

I switched to a MBP in 2007 since I was due an upgrade on the giant Toshiba I was lugging around. By then, most of the PC options were on offering Vista. By then, I had grown into a significant 'frenemy' arrangement with Windows XP and just did not want to put in anoter x number of years learning another Windows version and get it to behave to my liking. So I went with the MBP and after a week or so I was quite happy and settled with it.

I switched to a Macbook after that (left the job and hated the abysmal battery life on the MBP) and it has been my main work/dev machine ever since.

The reasons why I love the Macs:

1. It stays out of your way. I don't often reboot for 30+ days. Between the Finder, Terminal, Chromium & Textmate I get more work done and less time is spent on understanding the innards of some inane bug.

2. Ability to compile stuff has improved a lot. In 2007 it was a pain to get most of the OSS stuff compiled on it, it is a different story now. But this is also because the people who manage the products are doing a better job of targeting the Darwin as an architecture.

I was a pretty involved Linux user in the day. There was a time when I would get my kicks out of the fact that you had to work hard to get a video driver going. I don't have the time for that now. On a recent Netbook I bought, I tried the Ubuntu Netbook Remix. It worked, but with a lot of glitches and plenty of inconsistencies. Made an effort for 2-days, installed XP on it and been happy ever since.

I find it's interface to be, hands down, the best I've ever used. Since I work, essentially, two full time jobs (my day job, followed by Appleseed at night), I frankly don't want to have to wrestle with my operating system, even just a little bit.

I used Linux for years, haven't really used Windows since XP was released, and switched to Mac OS X about three years ago, and I'm not really interested in going back. I'm a fan of picking and choosing your battles, as opposed to adopting an approach of total purity, so right now my focus is building open source social networking, and if a closed system helps me do that without tearing my hair out, then I find that to be an acceptable compromise.

Laptop (though admittedly non-coding) - Macbook Pro.

'nuff said.

I've tried Linux every couple of years since at least 1998 -- I really want to use it -- but I always end up searching forums for the fix to a broken Makefile for a printer driver. Or maybe it's sound, wireless, graphics, whatever. Still. After all these years. I HATE dealing with that stuff. So Linux is out.

OSX is the only man left standing.

copypasta:

A common trend among many of the best developers is to see them posting screenshots running OS X. Many of the best developers, some my personal ‘developer heroes’, have made the switch to OS X.

It’s All About the Mentality

I respect and admire programmers like @migueldeicaza, @mitsuhiko, mandrake, @dhh for all they have accomplished. One thing they all have in common, present day, is running OS X. Mandrake cowrote Enlightenment (which is the original really cool window manager for Linux), Miguel started Gnome, and the majority of code both Mitsuhiko (wrote almost every useful Python library ever) and DHH (Ruby on Rails) write run on Linux backends to say the least.

What are they most known for? Problem solving skills mixed with actually producing / releasing.

Linux is Open Source

And this, I believe, is why great developers tend to move towards OS X (yes, there are plenty of exceptions). A critical piece of writing software is focus. When a problem solver uses a Linux desktop, they are immediately confronted with the possibility of being able to modify every part of their system. When a problem solver runs OS X, their options are severely limited, by design.

I think all of us are guilty for hunting down PPAs to get a backported browser, or running ‘./configure && make && make install’ at some point. And when you have programming skills, source code can turn into a detriment to productivity when you start modifying projects outside of what you intended to accomplish. All of a sudden you start hacking a project for a few minutes, and wake up days later in a coding haze with all of that time lost.

Personally I have had experience with this while using old Linux distributions. We have SLES 9 systems and SLES 10 systems here at work, and in the past year I have spent countless hours hacking Sprint 3G wireless drivers, USB over IP, Firefox 3 and countless others to work on these older systems. Why? Not because they are the primary goal, but because I could, which in turn took up time from things I actually “wanted” to do.

Time is Valuable

Watching one of Miguel’s presentations, he mentions that he does not have enough years left to “worry about memory management” and that they leave that to the younger folks. This is the crux of the argument. For programmers, there is far too much opportunity for distraction at every avenue. We don’t know how long we will be here for, but certainly we know that nothing we care about will get done as long as our focus is spread so thin across the spectrum of Linux.

Summary

This is all just food for thought, not a judgement against any form of desktop or usage pattern. For reference, I am still running Ubuntu on my desktop, and being wildly unproductive on the tasks I want to finish.

Now, the lure of an OS X machine for an OSS hacker, is that besides the system "just running", with minimal hunting and improvising, they also need/want/like to have several apps not available as Open Source, or with sub par replacements. Stuff from running Photoshop or Omnigraffle to connecting their mobile phones and being able to see and edit their video captures with a minimum of fuss.

Of course, this only holds true for OSS hackers that are "pragmatic" and just use what they think is best for their needs, not for hardcore "Libre Software" types.

Miguel de Icaza for one might have Macbook, but I am sure it at least dual boots to Windows. It would not be possible otherwise, since he needs to run .NET non-stop and copy/paste code from Reflector to his Mono implementation, or whatever they are doing to clone .NET to Mono.

And I am pretty sure Apple Software has nothing to do with how they really win their bucks. So no need to look for logic here - they just like the shiny hardware cause they are geeks. That's it. No rocket science or philosophy here.

Saying that Miguel de Icaza represents open source developers is just wrong. I respect the guy very much. But he's a completely different beast than the average open source programmer joe

Now most of the ones in academia do use mac (and used SGI workstations before that) just because they have a fat allowance for gear and they have no idea how to waste. so mac is the obvious way to go if what you need is to waste money.