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Ask HN: Linux vs. Mac for Developer

23 pointsby ruairidhwmabout 6 years ago
So I&#x27;m planning on picking up a new laptop reasonably soon since I&#x27;m on a 2014 MBA which is showing its age.<p>I really like my Mac and I&#x27;m somewhat tied into the ecosystem as I have an iPhone as well. I enjoy the availability of software, and the good screen quality.<p>On the other hand, I&#x27;m concerned about the build quality issues which seem to be plaguing Apple&#x27;s products. I&#x27;m a full-time dev who works from home and don&#x27;t have a company provided machine so reliability is a big deal to me.<p>I&#x27;ve used linux in the past and primarily used Ubuntu before moving on to Elementary OS as a distro.<p>So what&#x27;s your opinion? Should I pick up a regular laptop and just install linux on it? Or take a chance on a macbook?<p>Budget is probably £2000 GBP - enough to buy a well-specced MBP 13&quot; or with a stretch, a regular 15&quot;.

13 comments

charlesdanielsabout 6 years ago
As someone who has tried various Linux distros, switched to Mac, switched back to Linux, and finally settled on OpenBSD, I will weigh in.<p>I moved away from Mac due to issues with hardware quality, and also the poor quality of recent macOS release.<p>That said, I would rate macOS highly on it&#x27;s usability for office tasks -- managing emails and calendar events, coordinating across different messaging platforms (iMessage is very useful), and so on. It&#x27;s also best among all the platforms, in my view, with respect to consistency of UI across different applications.<p>If you&#x27;re expecting tight integration and consistent UI design across a variety of (GUI) applications, you will likely find Linux (and BSD, for that matter) to be disappointing.<p>On the other hand, Linux is generally more pleasant to develop code on in my experience. This somewhat depends on your language of choice, but lots of tools are written for Linux first and ported to other platforms like macOS later (case in point: Docker).<p>Linux hardware support is much better than it once was. With a careful choice of laptop, you can get a fairly recent machine that will have working 3d acceleration, wifi, and suspend&#x2F;resume out of the box under modern Linux. In many cases, I have found the hardware support of Linux to be better than that of macOS (I had a lot of trouble with suspend and resume on my last Mac, as an example).<p>I would suggest running Linux in some capacity (VM, dual boot, etc.) for a while to see if you like it and if you can make it work for your use case before dropping a lot of money on it.<p>I will say, having once owned (and now sold) a touchbar MBP, I would not recommend any of the models in that family at any price point.
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z0mbie42about 6 years ago
New MBP user here, I won&#x27;t recommend it!<p>The OS for development is really less powerful than Linux (like Docker consuming a lot of resources&#x2F;battery, brew feels far from secure...).<p>A friend of mine use a Dell xps13 woth ubuntu fo development and it&#x27;s far more enjoyable.<p>The only + for a MBP is the touchpad
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dmanabout 6 years ago
Dont get a macbook, apple is increasingly locking the OS down and bringing it closer to iOS. For a comparable laptop get a thinkpad X1 extreme, lenovo x1, dell xps 13 or dell precision 5530.
dhruvkarabout 6 years ago
I&#x27;ve been on a 2012 MacBook Pro for ~7 years.<p>The build quality is fantastic. The keyboard is punchy. The display is pre-retina, so not great, but I&#x27;m used to it. It&#x27;s only noticeable when I see someone else&#x27;s newer laptop display. Battery life is only ~1.5-2 hours, but I&#x27;m plugged in mostly.<p>First 5.5 years, I had macOS installed. However, with OS updates, starting around Sierra (10.12), the machine became unusably slow.<p>Last 1.5 years, I&#x27;ve been running a mostly vanilla Lubuntu 16.04, upgraded to 18.04 recently. Most things worked out of the box, it was still an adjustment. A few notes:<p>- Drag-and-drop isn&#x27;t as nice. So I use an external mouse now.<p>- External displays have to be manually added after plugging in.<p>- It was hard to do without Spotlight for a while. Linux alternatives were too heavy for my machine.<p>- Mostly I deploy Python to Ubuntu Server, so keeping a similar dev environment is a breeze.<p>- Have not gotten bluetooth to work yet, but haven&#x27;t tried very hard either.<p>- At the moment, I wouldn&#x27;t go back to macOS or Windows. I&#x27;d keep making small dives into the linux ecosystem to solve my problems.<p>If I needed to buy a new laptop and didn&#x27;t need any heavy-lifting, I&#x27;d look for one of these older, linux-tested, macbooks and install a lightweight linux distro.
mrdependableabout 6 years ago
I&#x27;ve used all 3 for development. Using macOS right now, but want to try switching back to Windows when I have some free time. The reason I want to switch is because I&#x27;ve been having a lot of trouble with my 2018 MBP. Aside from keyboard issues, since updating to Mojave it no longer works well with my external monitors which is really annoying. On top of that, the kernal_task keeps slowing it down because it&#x27;s too hot. I haven&#x27;t been able to find the source of that issue, but it affects productivity quite a bit.<p>Linux is really great when it works, but as a general use computer, it is no match for Mac or Windows. If it&#x27;s just for work, sure. If it&#x27;s also your main computer it can be a bit of a bummer as far as software support.<p>That leaves Windows. My Windows desktop has been really solid, it&#x27;s cheaper, more powerful, tons of software, and it has the Linux subsystem. I generally prefer the tools for development on the Mac, and would prefer if I didn&#x27;t feel the need to switch. Not that you would want this feature either, but Windows supports MST no problem. I don&#x27;t know that my Mac ever will.
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honkycatabout 6 years ago
Personally like Linux a lot. It is worth it for the first-class docker support.<p>James Turnbull had an article reviewing the XPS 13 last year. It is what I would recommend: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.kartar.net&#x2F;2018&#x2F;03&#x2F;dell-xps-13-aka-2018-is-the-year-of-linux-on-the-desktop&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.kartar.net&#x2F;2018&#x2F;03&#x2F;dell-xps-13-aka-2018-is-the-y...</a>
lukaszkupsabout 6 years ago
Was a linux user for ~5years, moved to OSX for 2years, then switched back to linux for some time. Now I work on Windows with WSL (bash on windows) - first time ever initial setup can be a little (really little!) pain, but then it just works like on linux, but with all Windows apps available as well.
askafriendabout 6 years ago
I absolutely love my MacBook Pro and highly recommend it. It&#x27;s the best machine for mixing both development and personal use.<p>The hardware quality is also among the best.
swahabout 6 years ago
I&#x27;m working on Linux every day but also wishing I could use Windows or a Macbook since I hate everything about Linux as a desktop. But HN seems quite anti-Apple...
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kevinherronabout 6 years ago
I&#x27;m really happy with my 2018 MBP. The keyboard quality lottery is real though, so there&#x27;s a chance you get a bad one. Mine has been fine.
stephenrabout 6 years ago
Some context would help; what sort of projects&#x2F;languages&#x2F;“stack” do you develop for&#x2F;using?<p>What is your current developer environment on macOS?
tuananhabout 6 years ago
at the current state, i would suggest avoiding macbook because of the keyboard.<p>things may change in macbook 2019 though
darpa_escapeeabout 6 years ago
The only reason I use macOS is battery life. I pine for Linux, it made development a breeze.