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Comment by mbell | Hacker News Reader

I completely disagree within the confines of developers. I'm not really sure what the comments about consumers have to do with this topic.

I used linux for 5 years as a desktop OS, skipped in between windows occasionally. Just recently switched to a mac. It has nothing to do with being hip. OS X is an OS which runs all the *nix tools I need, has a reasonable well thought out UI and above all it __just works__. Its what I wish linux on a desktop could have been but never was and I doubt ever will be.

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If by just works you mean that you have to deal with abominations like MacPorts or Homebrew, then yeah, but personally I cannot deal with all that crap, so Ubuntu is the one that just works for me.

I agree. It really is a pain to build OSS on the Mac, and it's not like you'd ever deploy server software to a Mac.

Not such a pain once you figure it out... And for any of us compiling stuff... seriously, are we pretending we don't all use remote linux slices/machines/whatever all over the place?

My laptops are just workstations to do day-to-day life stuff and a portal into my virtual computer world, where I'm working with remote displays, browser windows, command lines all over, and all that jazz. If it's anything remotely server related that needs to be on all the time, I'm likely not running it on my laptop anyway - it'll be on a linux box somewhere.

Or, if I'm on the move and it's really important to get a project done, a local VM on the little macbook.

How is Homebrew any different from than apt? Both are package managers. Neither OS provides all of the tools a dev needs, so regardless of your OS choice, you will using a package manager to acquire your complete toolset. So, why do you recoil at Homebrew, and not apt?

I recoil at Homebrew because it fails to successfully install relatively mainstream software that it claims to support (mysql, in my case). I do not recoil from apt because it regularly and repeatedly both cleanly installs and removes any software it claims to support.

You are an exception to the rule is my point. For every developer that buys a Mac based on taste, there are at least a dozen kids buying them not for tangible reasons but for the Apple brand, at least where I live and through what I have experienced. Different areas might produce different results, but there was only one other guy in my CS track that used a mac for development, but tons of my out of major peers had them as hip facebook machines.

at least where I live and through what I have experienced

Please just stop now. Take untog's advice and stop making arguments based on your anecdotal experience.

I was seduced by OS X for awhile at work. But getting all the GNU stuff running is not easy or complete. I'm sure if you are writing ios apps it is smooth.

I did like being able to open a shell and kill -9 a hung app.

But in the end it just felt slow.

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