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Comment by chrischen | Hacker News Reader

Why? Are you a Microsoft programmer?

No, but OS X does not work for me. It powers a computer under my TV that I use for watching movies, but it doesn't even do well for that task. (OSX's VLC often crashes, NicePlayer can't play partial AVI files, the built-in DVD player doesn't let you skip the ads at the beginning, etc.)

For development, I could never use OS X. I rarely use the mouse, and I need a package manager for installing random libraries. I tried this on OS X and it just doesn't work as well as Debian. Emacs also doesn't work right.

A unique monitor with generic Intel hardware running Linux is a great computer. That with OS X and it's just a paperweight. Your mileage may vary, but I have to say that my eyebrow raises itself a bit when I hear a developer say they use OS X.

Not wishing to get into an argument or stray off-topic too far, but Emacs (Carbon Emacs, at least), works absolutely fine on Mac OS. I've had no problems with it, and I use lots of extra libraries.

I agree, if you're on 10.6 and you value your time, just use Carbon Emacs and stay away from Cocoa Emacs until more than 2 people start committing regularly. It's old but it Just Works.

http://git.savannah.gnu.org/gitweb/?p=emacs.git;a=history;f=...

Or run Emacs the way it was meant to be used: in a terminal window. I've been doing that for, oh, about a decade now and haven't seen much cause to switch.

So you use OS X for the nice UI and yet you are willing to use Emacs with an inferior UI?

No thanks. I will stick to Linux.

There's also Aquamacs. Seems to work quite fine.

Indeed. But it's not like using Emacs on any other platform.

OK. I do not use it myself. But my fiancee has a Mac and seems quite happy with Aquamacs. (She used Emacs on Ubuntu before for some time, to do LaTeX with.)

My memories of Aquamacs are full of fighting with the thing to do what I wanted. It was overriding everything I customized in my .emacs.

About the only positive thing I found about it was the ability to run in full-screen mode (something that ntemacs is still unable to do).

I use an in-terminal editor all the time on OSX, what I like about OSX is that I get the Sexy UI with a lot of the things I have come to love in Linux(at least in a terminal, where I spend much of my time anyway)

I use OS X because I can keep my dev workflow while getting much nicer applications for everything else.

That's what I did when I used to us OS X. Then I realized, if I'm just using a terminal anyway, I might as well actually use linux and get a real package manager back.

(Edit: I do miss spotlight. But not as much as I missed apt+dpkg.)

It was probably "meant to be used" (or at least originally written) on a physical terminal rather than a terminal emulator.

Nothing wrong with moving with the times. A graphical emacs session does offer plenty of benefits, not least having less hassle with keybindings, and much greater flexibility with fonts and colours.

Cocoa Emacs works great for me, I've never had a problem with it.

Cocoa Emacs has a number of issues with code quality. Feeling lucky?

  (set-foreground-color "rgb:aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa")

FWIW, this is true of all of Emacs outside of the "core" that has the most users. It's written in C and the parts that only have a few maintainers don't get read very often. The result is flakiness.

(I spent a lot of time reading the font/face handling code to make eslide auto-resize text. I couldn't figure out how to do it cleanly, as the API did not work as documented or coded (!). Eventually I hacked around it, and my hack works fine. Welcome to Emacs Lisp programming...)

It's not clear when you last made a serious effort to try OS X, but you may want to consider taking another look. A lot of the stuff you mention (emacs problems, inability to install packages, VLC crashing) doesn't reflect the current state of the OS.

Unless something changed in the last 5 minutes, that is not true.

I developed for several years solely on a Linux laptop - it was my personal laptop too. Then I switched to OSX, and damn what an awesome breath of UI fresh air.

I would never deploy anything on any platform besides good-old Linux, but for a personal computer, I'm sold on OSX.

I hate to turn this into an OS debate, but it looks like it has become one. I have used OS X. I have written software for OS X. I had a job that was to support OS X.

I don't like it; I don't think it works well. It doesn't do what I want and it's not particularly stable. Problems I have with OS X are nonexistent with Linux, so that's what I use.

I have used Linux since 1994. I have written software for Linux. I had a job that was to support Linux. I still run Linux on servers where there's no other option.

I don't like it; I don't think it works well. It doesn't do what I want -- the desktop software options are incredibly lacking, getting anything working is like pulling teeth, and relying on a distributor like Debian or Ubuntu for all my software means that I get stuck either using outdated software or running against an unstable release of the OS -- either way, I spend way more time thinking about the OS than doing my job.

In terms of stability, the lack of stable releases, poor code quality of the kernel, and reliance on distributors to patch and maintain their own kernels really shows through in the number of kernel panics and other issues I see. I can't recall the last time one of my FreeBSD servers or Mac OS X desktops crashed.

Problems I have with Linux are nonexistent with OS X, so that's what I use.

Yes, the Linux kernel code quality is low, and things often regress. C + no unit tests + opinionated dictator with very little computer science experience = very, very bad. But it works well enough. As long as you are on the beaten path, with Intel hardware and Nothing Too Weird, you will be fine. On OS X, you don't even have the choice to even try anything else.

As for the distribution issue, it's true that you are either out of date or slightly unstable. But on OS X, you can't get any packages at all. So you manage everything yourself, or rely on a third party to package everything for you. Then you are out of date or unstable, and the various package managers conflict with each other and with Apple's stuff. There is no magic fix there, it's the same set of problems.

So anyway, I don't care what OS you use... but OS X is not objectively better. (I have noticed that OS X users prefer no way to do something over a flaky way to do something. Linux has a lot of flaky ways to do a lot of things; OS X just doesn't do much. Tradeoffs.)

Why would your eyebrow raise a bit when you hear a developer say they use any particular OS?

What do you gain by having such rigors? Why do you assume your opinion is absolute? (Which is must be for you to cock an eyebrow in what I'm assuming is disgust or mistrust).

What do you do when someone tells you they develop on Windows? I'm imagining a groin pull, or something of that magnitude.

Maybe it's just involuntary reflex.

I met someone who said he works as admin and complained he can't find a job in the town he lives (he commutes more than 4 hours a day). I couldn't understand that, but later in conversation I learned that he's a windows admin. Then I had the eyebrow rising involuntary reflex and everything became clear to me. Windows admin skills are kinda useless in town where most companies can't afford to use MS solutions where good open source alternatives exists, let alone employ many windows admins.

Small-town businesses usually do use Windows, except where they're hoping their ancient DOS solution doesn't die.

Not in my country. And if they do they don't have money to hire administrator. Son in law of the owner can usually take care of things well enough.

I am just surprised. I remember how much stress I went through to get basic things working, and I am surprised that other people were willing to waste so much time. (Example: installing libxml2 for XML::LibXML and the system perl.)

So it's not disgust at all, it's just shock. I keep hearing how nice of a development platform it is, but I couldn't get even the simplest things to work. (I used OS X for 2 or 3 years about 4 years ago. I still use it for my under-TV computer, as I am too lazy to configure Ubuntu there. But I am close to not being too lazy...)

Anyway, Linux is broken for many users, but not those that use conkeror, emacs, urxvt, xmonad and has Intel wireless and video. I am the user that Linux is best for.

That makes more sense :)

Why raise an eyebrow? Developers use whatever gets the job done. This goes for Linux, Windows or OSX. I write Windows software on a Mac. I also use the same Mac for deployment on Linux and Windows servers.

I sympathize with your point even though everyone wants you to switch to OSX for some reason. I run Linux in a VM -- rarely touch MacPorts or DarwinPorts or whatever is popular these days. They've never met my expectations. Packages out of date or simply don't build correctly. Just seems easier to me to go the VM route or run Linux natively if that's your thing. One big advantage for VMs to me is being able to snapshot the system before library upgrades or dist-upgrades. Very easy to revert back if you encounter problems. (which in my experience is far too common in the Linux world even though it's the year 2009 and Linux is fairly mainstream)

One good reason to run OS X is that there are several decent outliners (OmniOutliner, etc.). There are no good outliners for Windows, and I know of none for Linux either. There's the cross-platform JOE (Java Outline Editor), but it's not as good as OmniOutliner or the old Mac OS outliners (MORE, ThinkTank, Acta, INControl, etc.).

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