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Comment by agorabinary | Hacker News Reader

I don't mean to sound like a prick, I'm just genuinely curious as to why someone would use windows for some CLI work. Are you using some software that isn't available on more developer-friendly operating systems?

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1. Because they prefer Windows.

2. Because their company has standardized on Windows desktops and/or hardware.

3. Because some people might actually believe and have good evidence that Windows is a more "developer friendly" operating system for their needs.

1 and 2 are perfectly legit reasons to use Windows. 3, though seems weird. If you're installing something like Babun to make your windows machine act more like a nix machine, it seems reasonable to assume that a nix box would be better for your development needs, and that you have some other reason for using windows (like #1 or #2).

Well, if you're developing for Windows, or developing for the web and need to test Internet Explorer, or if you're either doing UI design or dealing with other people's UI designs and need access to Photoshop or Illustrator, or if you're using Visual Studio at least some of the time, or if you're working with a MySQL database and want to use something like SQLyog... there's lots of tools on Windows that can be useful for developers, and someone can very reasonably conclude that Windows (through something like this) offers better access to nix tools than nix offers to Windows tools via Wine.

There are those of us who actually enjoy Windows and prefer using Vagrant with zsh when doing Linux devevlopment.

OS X just doesn't cut it when it comes to keyboard shortcuts and window management... Linux is nice but lacking in stuff not related to development.

Keep in mind that it's making the box act MORE like something else, but NOT less than what it currently is. People using cygwin and stuff like babun don't take away from windows, they add to what windows already provides, gaining a more diverse toolbox. On the flipside, adding things windows provides to *nix boxes to gain the same diversity in the toolbox would be very very hard.

My situation is I have a Windows machine I game on and don't like rebooting all the time to get into my arch partition. It'd be nice to have a good shell to do some dev work on if I wanted to fix something really quick without rebooting. Right now I just boot up a vm and work on that. Shells I've used in the past (ConEmu, Console 2, Cmder) have all been good, but not good enough.

I know from personal experience that Steam works slightly better on windows than linux, so I see your point there.

Never mind the plethora of games which are Windows only.

You should try starting your arch partition in virtualbox, I've had success doing that before (you can still boot into it normally as well).

I use Console 2 with Cygwin in conjunction with an Ubuntu VM on my Windows 8 desktop and it works beautifully - best of all worlds.

Yes, compatibility with existing software is a big part of it. Unless you're exclusively developing for _nix environments you'll have to use Windows at some point.

Also, I think Windows has (or had, depending on preference) a great GUI and a dismal CLI, while _nix is mostly the other way around.

OS X has both actually.

Apple makes it hard to run OS X on anything but Apple hardware. For anyone that doesn't want to be bound to Apple hardware, this is not really even a real option.

Why wouldn't you want to be bound to Apple hardware? I've yet to come across a laptop form-factor that even approaches the Macbook Air. The hardware is a strong selling point for Apple devices. Sure, you might be able to put together a more powerful machine for a lower price, if your time isn't worth much to you or you enjoy building computers, but have fun machining an aluminum casing for it and getting it under 3 lbs.

If you have a tight budget? If you want to play games or generally have desktop class hardware without buying a Mac Pro? If you want a higher resolution display than the MacBook Retina ones? Touchscreen?

I prefer Apple hardware, but I'm not exactly a fan of being bound to it.

The Macbook Air has had a pretty embarrassing screen resolution for some time now. There's also a dearth of peripheral connectivity for more advanced setups. That's even assuming I want an ultrabook and not something else entirely.

It seems a little arrogant to assume your specific hardware requirements are everyone's hardware requirements.

You're right, in retrospect that comment was incredibly shortsighted.

For laptops I think Apple makes fine products, but I don't really feel like dropping the money for new desktop just to get OS X

Absolutely agreed. Form factor isn't nearly as important with desktops, especially when you can put any OS you want on it. I'd happily run a Hackintosh on desktop, if I were a fan of desktops at all.

It's trickier to get OS X working on a laptop, but building a Hackintosh desktop is quite easy. A lot of motherboards are entirely compatible, while everything else (CPU, RAM, storage) works anyways.

Aside from the fact this is not strictly legal, my experience has been that this is more effort than it's worth. And if you have any hardware that's a bit non-standard, you can forget about it.

Like I said, building a Hackintosh desktop is as easy as building a Windows one. If you want to install OS X on a random PC that's laying around the house, the outcome will of course be different.

Megacorps. FIRE. Standard Operating Environments.

While I am actively infecting my org with FOSS, those of us working in corp land are often forced to use a Windows box behind an NTLM proxy and are blocked from installing vbox.

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