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Comment by Doctor_Fegg | Hacker News Reader

> As a developer, I spend almost 80% of the time in my terminal

In which case then sure, pretty much anything will suit you fine. It's not a universal rule though - I spend the vast majority of my time in TextMate or an IDE and probably 10% of time in my terminal, so the comfort of the Mac UI is a more significant factor.

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I think the problem is the vague use of the word "developer."

Some people develop programming languages. For them, a GUI-less environment may be ideal.

I do web development. So I need the GUI, not just for testing, but for dealing with image and video assets that come in from the art department, or creating mockups, or presentations, or maps, etc.

It's still "development," but unsuited for a 100% command line experience.

As is often the case, it's easy for someone in one field of "development" to forget that it's a broad category of experiences.

It sounds like you do web design, at least in part.

No, we have an art department for that. But if a map needs to be replaced on the site or a new director headshot or making documentation or training people how to use the site I built for them, those are all better assisted or accomplished with the UI than from the command line.

My preference for Linux over macOS is actually the UI. I like having a real package manager and such, but it’s not like I care much about kernel subsystem differences. I have used macs a lot and I just find their UI cumbersome.

And this is from someone who loves the iPhone.

To each his own. For me, I appreciate the way most applications interoperable and the consistency of the experience.

Lately, for me, the killer app has been the ability to cut and paste content between machines and devices automatically and seamlessly. I once I started using it in my workflow, it became indispensable.

If you're talking about universal clipboard, I believe that KDE has also supported that for a while via KDE Connect. Other DEs also support it.

Between machines, but not devices. I can't copy something on my boss' iPad and paste it into KDE.

How do you do this on macOS/iOS?

I'm not really sure I see the distinction between machines and devices.

I can't copy something from my Android phone to a Mac, but I can copy something from my Android phone into KDE.

For some strange reason being a developer seems to only mean doing UNIX GUI-less for some people.

Except the author uses i3.

If you enjoy the tiling window, with nearly everything driven by the keyboard way of working, then Mac OS can’t come close from a UI perspective.

Really no OS can. Tiling window managers are Linux's (and the BSDs) killer exclusive. I've been using Linux full time for 3 years now and it's been a struggle at times. i3 is the sole reason why.

Oberon used a tiling window manager, never found it that great experience.

The other stuff that the OS featured was great and still missing on UNIX clones.

Try Spectacle on osx. I much prefer it over forced tiling WMs like i3. Been looking to replicate it on linux.

All the people I've seen who praise i3 and tiling managers seem to spend way more time finding the proper windows between dozens of tiles on half a dozen desktops than I do on a very minimal setup with Divvy on one desktop.

If you set up your workspaces for different modes, then this rarely becomes an issue.

While some spaces I use are more flexible for their use, certain spaces are designated for specific tasks. I use a space for communication/chatting, a space for my music/email, a space for my calendar/task planning, etc. These don't deviate so for these common tasks it becomes second nature.

>> As a developer, I spend almost 80% of the time in my terminal

>In which case then sure, pretty much anything will suit you fine.

I thought the same. I’m married to Photoshop. How good is graphic acceleration support inside a VM these days?

I need to run the latest version, fast and glitch free. Wine will never be a solution unfortunately, unless Adobe supports it officially.

Also, even if I would spend 100% of my time in a terminal, iTerm offers such a better experience than Linux terminals (that’s just my personal experience, I used various Linux distributions for ~6 years)

I use iTerm2 when I'm on MacOS, but I basically use it like I use a Linux terminal. I just don't need so many features from the terminal itself... I do need Unicode, with RTL, and colors, and a nice scrollback buffer.

For example, I don't use tabs in the terminal. I usually open a new window and use the WM from outside the terminal, or use tmux inside the terminal. Tabs in the terminal itself are not that useful in my workflow.

My current favorite Linux terminal is kitty (https://sw.kovidgoyal.net/kitty/), and before that I used rxvt-unicode.

Wait, you use iTerm2 on macOS, but you need RTL support? Is there a way of making that work? I’ve long wanted to switch to iTerm2, but its treatment of Arabic script is so janky, I just can’t do it. I’m still using the default Terminal app as a result.

I don't have a solution for you, sorry... I need RTL on Linux, on macos I just avoid it.

There's a proposed patch in the bug tracker: https://gitlab.com/gnachman/iterm2/issues/1611#note_10740636...

Maybe you can give it a try.

Thanks, I’ll check that out!

He's getting that experience through the window manager. i3 offers the features like tabs or horizontal/vertical splitting.

I believe you mean "she's" as the author of this article is a woman.

This. I love iTerm2 and hadnt found an acceptable replacement on Linux until I installed Terminator, which I would say is 70% there.

Other than that I use Linux (Mint) for my main Desktop OS, but I still deal with plenty of rough edges. The latest ones:

- Wifi doesn't work after suspend wakeup. - After upgrading OS to next version using recommended UI method, PC us unable to start graphics mode bc it doesn't find some random UI package... i had to login in TTY and manually install it. - CS:GG, a game with Linux native port suddenly decided to get choppy lagged sound. Same game works well in Windows in same PC - Connecting bluetooth headphones sometimes works, sometimes doesn't

So yeah, plenty of rough edges. Still I use it because I love the programming workflow and use docker with Linux containers.

I recently switched from using a Mac professionally for 8 years to Ubuntu and used iTerm on the Mac, and I honestly have no idea what you're talking about. iTerm was good, but I miss nothing about it. The default terminal with Ubuntu 18 is just as good. Well, better, because it has Ubuntu underneath it all ;)

I had colleagues who returned their company-issued X1 Carbons and bought a Mac with out-of-pocket money, so they could use iTerm2. Some of its features are indispensable and not found anywhere in Linux, although YMMV of course.

I use iTerm to connect to Ubuntu and I feel like I have the best of both worlds, a great terminal emulator and Ubuntu beneath it.

What features? (Honestly asking)

- Auto-summon of the Password Manager on password prompts

- Grep for things that look like IP address and color them in blue, or MAC address in green, or errors in red

- Auto-Complete based on the text in terminal (this leaves people watching me `docker rmi f7<Cmd-;>` breathless)

- Broadcast same keypresses into several panes (having SSH sessions to several servers)

- Making an icon jump when a long running command just finished

- etc.etc.etc.

Funny thing, given all the emphasis on doing things via terminal in Linux community, is that I cannot find a decent Linux application to manage SSH conections. My work laptop is a Windows 10 machine, where I installed pro version of MobaXTerm (used to access/manage about 50 linux servers), and I fell in love with it. No Linux application that I know of comes close. Any suggestions?

Why would you not just use the ssh command?

.ssh/config is awesome, and together with a decent shell (with tab-completion for ssh command, e.g. host completion based on your known_hosts file) I find it hard to understand why these applications even exist.

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