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Comment by davidw | Hacker News Reader

At heart, I'm a hacker, and I want an environment that I can hack on when I need to.

Also: focus follows mouse is not an optional or an extra.

I've been using a Linux desktop since 1996, and as far as I'm concerned, it's about 100 times easier than it used to be, so whining about things not being 'just right' fall on deaf ears, especially when for me 'just right' means focus follows mouse and other things like that that I have dialed in just how I want them.

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It may be OK for you because you require focus-follows-mouse to be built-in, but "It's better than it was in 1996" is pretty faint praise. If somebody told you he'd clubbed 90% fewer baby seals this year than he did in 1996, would that lead you to think, "Wow, what an upstanding guy"? All operating systems, including Windows, BeOS and Amiga, have improved since 1996.

And I think for most people, a working wireless card is more of an out-of-the-box priority than focus-follows-mouse. (Though personally, I would have liked Linux more if it just didn't cause my keyboard to stop functioning after the computer came out of sleep mode.)

I didn't say 'better', I said a lot better. Better like in this kind of chart:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disruptive_technology#The_theor...

A 90% reduction in some crime stat is also quite drastic. The point is that if you started out behind, you have to go a long way just to get where the other guy was when you started.

I agree that desktop Linux is drastically better than it was in 1996, but unless you like hacking your system's innards or just have an ideological opposition to Apple (both of which are reasonable — don't get me wrong), I can't think of a lot to recommend Linux as it exists today over OS X as it exists today.

I wholeheartedly recommend MacOS for people like my mom, who certainly doesn't need to fire up something like Emacs.

However, for those who like to explore technology in creative ways (hackers, in other words), and want to deeply understand the systems they use, the freedom involved with a system like Linux is still the place to be, IMO.

And for when you're just getting stuff done, I don't think it poses any major challenges these days; or at least it doesn't for me. If you're a graphics guy and need Photoshop, clearly things are different.

Edit:

http://www.intertwingly.net/blog/2011/08/09/Upgrade-Unavaila...

Ok so my basic question is, why can't OSX be a "hacker" os? Or even windows for that matter? Not having source has at times made things more fun to explore. Look at the sheer creativity of virus writers.

Why is having a workstation that you don't need to babysit due to version upgrades a bad thing? Note I've used linux since 1997ish, might have been sooner I can't be arsed to check.

Note: I run with chrome/emacs/iterm/vmware basically, and my "day job" gives me more of the linux kernel and scsi/fibre stack than I'd really like. I've dug through enough of their sources fixing problems we encounter that I hope I at least get the title of honorary hacker.

But complete understanding of everything I run? Meh, there is more to life than that, maybe I'm getting old, but administering my home machines has gotten less appealing as time goes on to the point that I really just want to see things mostly working without me needing to spoon feed things.

I can setup a new mac in about 30 minutes. Course I can do about the same on linux. Mostly just a git clone and run a few scripts and I'm setup. As far as distros, i've had them all blow up in one way or another, debian, gentoo, linux from scratch, arch, ubuntu, opensuse, suse, redhat, fedora, centos, those are all I can remember using at the moment. The one thing I've found is after 6ish+ months of updates something managed to break my xorg config or nvidia driver installs. So far Arch is the only one that makes updates simple enough.

Sorry got on a bit of a rant there. And for that upgrade unavailable, the laptop I'm typing this on just got a new lion install from leopard via a usb drive. Yes I couldn't upgrade it, but to be honest I don't do anything overly too off the wall to care. No need to have snow leopard, just do what I did for friends that bought it after they installed it, get a buddy to burn the dmg to a usb drive, or dvd I guess.

> Ok so my basic question is, why can't OSX be a "hacker" os?

The basic problem is that development and hacking are different use cases for the machine than the general public needs. Apple considers the general public primarily, and the development and hacking public secondarily.

synaptic, opengl 4.x support, lower priced entry points for hardware, consistency with my production environment

I am sorry, but nothing beats needing MySQL, PostgreSQL, some Emacs thingie or a splittable terminal and being able to instantly issue a "sudo aptitude install" on a terminal and have everything taken care for you.

Some developers adapt to OSX, but, if you read TFA, you'll realize this is not a cross section of the hard-core hacker types: 80% of the sample prefers Windows.

OSX is quite acceptable in roles traditionally reserved to Windows PCs in the corporate world. It runs Office, Outlook, talks nicely to Exchange and runs Eclipse just fine. Many corporate Java developers (a bunch that traditionally used Windows) can use Macs for work and enjoy some advantages in relation to those who use Windows.

You may argue that Linux is not as polished a Unix as OSX (I disagree, but smart people believe it), but no serious hacker thinks Windows is acceptable for development unless they are also targeting Windows for deployment.

I use Linux from 1997 and OSX from 2005.

Indeed installing mysql on ubuntu is simpler and faster then on OSX. But installing major packages only happens that often.

What happens much more often is having to constantly fiddling with your Linux machine for it to continue working flawlessly. Upgrades tend to break things, external devices not being supported, etc, etc, etc. You need to constantly invest time in keeping it going. Much less so on OSX.

For me OSX is a Unix that just works and has a beautiful GUI.

It's not just major packages: minor things like screen, tree, zsh, libraries, tools, extras and plugins. I don't care how often I have to install stuff, the hassle OSX causes for that is not worth the beautiful GUI that still doesn't maximize windows properly. Anything complicated is painful on a Mac and I do complicated stuff everyday.

And it's more likely your fiddling is breaking your Linux box than the other way around. Either that or 1995 wants its Linux back.

Note that many casual users do not know that shift click to maximize will "properly" maximize many, but not all, OS X apps.

> many, but not all, OS X apps

I rest my case

And the "fullscreen" button in the top right will "properly" maximize every app that sports it.

And it only took them what? 24 years? The not-quite-maximize buttons were introduced on System 5. I may be wrong, but I believe NeXT did that right.

>constantly fiddling with your Linux machine for it to continue working flawlessly. Upgrades tend to break things,

Eh? I've run Slackware for years and it works fine, including upgrades. No fiddling either.

Maybe you're thinking of Ubuntu and extrapolating that to all Linuxes.

Completely agree. OSX hides so many things away from me. It would take days of configuration of a fresh OSX install to get to a state where I could work with. Having to install 10 payed 3rd party programs to make the system itself usable(SFTP, File manager, KEEP A WINDOW A TOP(!)) is ridiculous. Also, having a Unix where half of the stuff was moved around is not a good starting point in case you're working with a ton of Linux Servers.

It sounds like you did this before. In which case you should have restored from a TimeMachine backup. Your restored account is pretty much identical to your old one. The only reason you can tell it's not your old machine is because you have a physically different machine. Takes maybe 1-1.5 hours.

The Lion updates will soon (devs need to update their software) make things even better for users. Auto save and built in versioning.

While I've tried using various distros of Linux as my primary OS (and I used to really love hacking and tweaking my UI like crazy), I'll say that nowadays I want an environment that I can hack on when I need to, but that I rarely need to hack on.

OS X fits that role for me. I just feel like there isn't enough time in the day to hack and tweak my OS and write code for clients and my own projects.

I rarely need to hack on Linux these days, but have in the past:

1) I hacked up a patch to make it boot better off of USB keys. Sadly I'm not sure they ever accepted it in the main kernel, despite being way better than their own hacky (wait N seconds for the device to settle) method.

2) I hacked up a nice little environment for a coin-operated internet machine, to stick in the corners of hotels. It was pretty cool, unfortunately the guy running the operation with me screwed up the business side and it never went anywhere.

Focus follows mouse love! fistbump

If you like focus-follows-mouse don't upgrade to a newer version of Compiz[1] (assuming that you actually use Compiz).

[1] https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/compiz/+bug/755156

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