Comment by jrockway | Hacker News Reader

Comment by jrockway | Hacker News Reader

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Not true, Apple breaks core features in minor security releases all the time. Most recently, they broke the system Perl. I don't use OS X for anything important anymore (only for watching videos on my TV), but back when I did use a Mac for work, things randomly broke for no reason all the time. (That doesn't even include the nightmare that is ports / fink / whatever, required to get modern versions of UNIX programs.) I use Debian unstable now, and it is a lot more reliable than OS X, for me anyway.

Also, the whole getting wifi to work thing is mostly solved now. All the wireless cards are Intel, and Intel pours a lot of money into making them work really well with Linux. So you pop in your Ubuntu or Moblin CD, install, and right click the little icon, just like on any other OS.

Basically, OS X sucks, Linux sucks, and Windows sucks. So there is no real reason to get super-excited about any of them -- they are all basically the same, with Linux marginally better in a few cases.

> Most recently, they broke the system Perl.

Incorrect. Security Update 2009-001 replaced a Perl component which some users had (inappropriately) upgraded themselves, causing breakage for those users. The "system Perl" worked fine as long as you hadn't touched it, though.

: The inappropriate part was touching the Perl install in /System. You don't do that.

What if you need the upgraded functionality?

Then you should have placed the updated copy in your home directory, or in /usr/local, rather than replacing the one in /System. This is really no different than if you'd updated the Perl install in /usr on a Linux system, and the package manager later replaced that with an updated copy - in both cases, the vendor's supposed to be the only one touching those files.

>> "Apple breaks core features in minor security releases all the time."

I've used OS X for 2 1/2 years now, and can't remember anything breaking :/

Before that I used linux on the desktop for maybe 8 years, and things broke every week. (Redhat, mandrake, gentoo, ubuntu)

(Redhat, mandrake, gentoo, ubuntu)

Well there's your problem :)

Try Debian stable, and let me know if it ever breaks. (Debian unstable definitely does break, but not very often, and it's usually easy to fix. It works for me.)

If it aint broke...

As I say, 2 1/2 years on OS X, and I don't miss linux on the desktop one bit.

I had one of those without beeing a dev even. Civ4 stopped working after a Quicktime update.

I agree with this. All three operating systems have their flaws, so it basically boils down to preference and ease of development. If you are developing a Windows application, you should develop in Windows; for Apple applications, use OS X; Linux applications, use Linux. One advantage of Apple platforms, which the article mentions, is that that they allow running of all 3 operating systems.

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