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Comment by quickthrower2 | Hacker News Reader

I am glad open software is eating the world. GNU/Linux, Python, JS, Postgres

Me too. You know what's another good sign times are changing? A fortune 500 company gave me a Linux laptop to WFH. Even a decade ago this would be extremely improbable.

Surprisingly, even though a relatively at a relatively big public company my teams and eng managers get some pressure to get macs instead of linux machines. And at some point I thought we're past that...

There's a lot of developers who like macs because they do not value control, access or freedom to use their hardware the way they want.

If it weren't coming at the cost of everyone else in the industry, i wouldn't mind this preference, not everyone has to be a hacker. As is, apple's existence is a net negative.

Alternative take as a dev that only uses Apple products for work, the local hardware doesn't matter that much. We've almost circled back to dumb terminals with everything running on a network connected server.

That's kind of an expensive dumb terminal ;).

Dumb terminals weren't exactly cheap. The vt220 released in 1983 was about $4000 USD (adjusted for inflation to today).

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VT220

...and this is why it shouldn't really matter.

I real life, though, having a proper Linux kernel at hand is useful.

To some extent I agree, but it really depends on what you do and for whom. When I asked why this company decided to swap windows for linux (for certain teams) I was told their tools (terraform, python, ssh via cygwin, helm, kubectl etc) would break very frequently with windows updates. So they had to do everything via ssh which isn't that convenient.

I've used windows machines for years doing the same thing elsewhere and I had none of these problems. I run cygwin,wsl or a Linux VM and I had everything I wanted locally run on a Windows laptop.

Now having a Linux laptop (based on rhel9) many things are really nice. For example: I cun run gui apps via x11 over LAN on my desktop, I can share many dotfiles from my desktop to have the laptop configured exactly how I like it. But there is a price to pay. Unsurprisingly having to use outlook and ms teams via a browser is a pain.

Peoples preferences are not holding back the industry. If there was a linux laptop with the same hardware and software quality as the recent MBP's I'd get one in an instant. I run linux servers, I'm not unaware of how to set them up but I don't want to deal with the quirks of most linux daily drivers, so I don't.

Many linux users seem very bitter that people value Apple's offerings over linux based solutions. That this preference is somehow taking something away from them. I don't think anyone should be looked down upon because they don't value the same things that someone with a hacker/tinkerer mentality values. I think that attitude is partly what puts a lot of people off who are half in/half out of the ecosystem. I personally find it a bit tiring, and in general I'm supportive of open source and related things.

There are very few people that think this way, but this opinion is often project on people. Bicyclists are bitter, environmentalists are bitter, islamist are bitter, Luther was bitter. That kind of projection is just your and their resistant for change.

What is common though is having to use tools you are not used to or tools that are subpar e.g. a Mac. You as a Mac user might call that being bitter. It is like forcing an Excel jockey to only use OpenOffice. Those people turn bitter fast.

It could be the battery life aspect of things. Apple Silicon based mac's seem to vastly outperform their x86_64 alternatives.

If those same mac-using developers were allowed to use Asahi Linux (or one of the other up-and-coming ones like Fedora on Apple Silicon), it'd be interesting to see how many make that choice.

For small companies the value of standardizing on MacBooks is high. But a big company should be able to handle two operating systems.

Obviously, IT people would like everybody to just use a single os. Windows, preferably, as they have the best enterprise integration suite.

Either way, it's usually much easier to negotiate hardware in smaller companies: they don't have stock, hardware policies, security software to support, b2b contracts to handle.

It's the bigger guys that want unification.

Wow. Now that's a very special event indeed. Cheers on not having to run a docker or work exclusively from a VM because of office politics.

That's nice. Netflix does the same and actually beyond what I would expected. You can bring your own laptop (or desktop) or expense one from the company and install an off the shelf distro of your choice and after going through a browser based registration of your Netflix corp account, you can use it as your daily driver. All internal sites and tools work seamlessly.

is JS eating the world due to being "open" or because we are forced by browsers?

at least until wasm gets more and more traction

You mean, open collaboration from people who care about what they are doing often leads to better projects faster? Careful now, someone might call ya a commie or worse an anarchist.

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