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Comment by p4bl0 | Hacker News Reader

I'm not sure what to think of this blog post. Do anyone really recognize himself or herself in the described developers?

It's not even about Mac OS X vs GNU/Linux, I'm not using any desktop environment on my computers (no Gnome, KDE, XFCE, …), my graphical environment is composed of a minimal windows manager and a small taskbar. I don't need anything else. I just checked and I don't even have a graphical file browser installed on my laptop which I've been using it for several years now. I spend my time in terminals, Emacs, and my web browser.

I know that this is not the case of every person who's working with computers, but I also know quite a few people in my surroundings who use the same kind of environment (and to my knowledge we're all pretty pleased with our hardware), so I'm convinced that I'm not an exception either.

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My usage is very simiilar to yours and it feels very natural and "right" to me.

I see people who are very productive on Mac OS or Windows, know all the shortcuts, etc. yet when I use my MacBook or a Windows machine I feel disoriented. It's all a matter of being familiar with your tools; nothing really magical here.

my current work laptop is a first-generation lenovo x1 carbon (seriously, best laptop i've ever used, though i hear the new version is a step backwards), running ubuntu and xfce4 with xmonad as the window manager. i'm happy and productive with it. as you say, 99% of the time all i'm using is web browsers and terminals anyway, and the ability to tile and move them around desktops with a few keystrokes is wonderful.

the bit that surprised me though was this comment:

> The thing is that you no longer have to apologize or feel guilty for using an Apple doing linux work. In fact, not using Apple makes you look like an unenlightened fool and a cheapo that is unwilling to pay for decent tools. There is nothing sexy in using a linux desktop and plenty of social pressure for buying a mac.

do people really think that way? i mean, i have no problems with people using macs, but my perception is just the opposite - that they picked a mac because it was there, it worked and it was a convenient, utilitarian option. there's nothing particularly "enlightened" about it.

I think its true in some circles. Go to dev conferences for javascript/rails or other fancy web tech/startups and >90% use macs. If you don't you kind of look like someone who is an apple hater or too cheap to buy a mac. I believe some people would even look down on you if you were using windows for example.

I have been using GUI based OS since the Amiga. And IDEs since Turbo products on MS-DOS.

One of my hobbies on GNU/Linux systems, since the early days (1994) was to get GUI tooling for my work.

Most of them taken from the more mature UNIX systems, back then.

For me the CLI is only for quick and dirty operations file operations, or calling build tools. 90% of my time I live on the GUI.

And what happens when you have to ssh into headless remote Linux servers all day? And for editing scripts and administrative tasks on said servers?

X-Windows/VNC sessions. I only do ssh if no other option is available.

My laptop has a full KDE instalation that I use to launch Konsole.

What is that 'minimal windows manager' and what is the benefit of it over Unity (which to me is a few icons down the left and a few icons + notifications in the top right)?

I cannot speak for gp but I use tiling window managers when I use Linux. Usually they do not work so well with desktop environments, or it to much effort to get them to work properly.

The big advantage of tiling vms is that you always use the whole screen area without having to only use maximized windows. You can easily split the screen into several areas where you can put windows. Another advantage is that they are usually keyboard driven so that it is possible to launch, close and arrange windows without using the mouse.

The one I like best is wmii, which has a brilliant column system combined with tags instead of workspaces(i. e. a window can have several tags instead of only one workspace). Nowadays I use i3 since it is a bit more modern but so far I find that the usability is not quite as good.

"Another advantage is that they are usually keyboard driven so that it is possible to launch, close and arrange windows without using the mouse."

It's strictly possible to do this in most non-tiling window managers. The key difference is that arranging windows with the keyboard is not just possible but significantly more practical.

xmonad works flawlessly with xfce. it's what keeps me from switching to any of the other tiling wms, though some of wmii's features do look pretty attractive.

I don't know about the parent, but I use ratpoison. I still have notifications pop up (with notifications-daemon) but I don't have any screen space taken up with icons. I kind of find icons silly... don't sit around telling me what I can do, I configured my keymap, I know what's there and if I forget I can trivially ask! Speaking of keymaps, the way that ratpoison keys are set up is a huge win - no application can ever be expecting a key combo that I can't deliver, while I still have a deep tree of commands available with very few keystrokes.

What is the benefit of Unity for someone like me?

For me it is Openbox, for other people I know it is generally i3wm, dwm, or xmonad.

Speaking for Openbox (since it is what I use) the benefits are numerous: less lost space on screen (UI is customizable to the pixel simply by editing an XML file); extensive and customizable keyboard controls (again, just by editing a simple XML file) for managing windows (resizing, positioning, etc.) but also for launching applications and managing multimedia keys for instance; more lightweight in term of resources (not that important, but always nice); and being compliant with ICCCM and EWMH standards which allows extensive external scripting using tools like wmctrl.

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