(His name is Linus.)

As far as portability, I was serious. Python is more portable.

I have a Windows gaming laptop (which almost always only plays Minecraft), and a Linux server. But for daily use I have a couple Macs.

On the topic of Git, Mountain Lion's autosave + Sparkleshare + Github = the most commit granularity I've ever dreamed of. I usually do my writing in Byword, and at least once or twice a minute when I pause it pushes the changes out.

I'm on Fedora. Go ahead and check.

Unrelated:

Tibby, do you play NS2?

No, but I played NS1 for a bit. I only go by "Tibby" on this site.

"I have a motorcycle (which I almost always use to ride out to the mailbox), and a car. But for travelling around I like to crawl on broken glass."

The older I get, the more I hate macs.

The older I get, the more I love macs.
Weird isn't it?

I love you.

Mac is an okay uni

wait why do you have a "couple" macs
and a "gaming laptop" holy lol

I've concluded that a Mac users usually:

a.) Lacks either the time or knowledge to configure Linux or put up with Windows
b.) Only need basic capabilities:
I.) End-users: web browser, Photoshop, iTunes, etc.
II.) Unix programmer: SSH, python/ruby, hg, vim, etc. Serious work like building C++ code is done on remote servers.

But I still hate them. Ubuntu might be good if the student is poor. For the developer fed up with Linux I would recommend BSD to avoid giving money to that evil corporation in Cupertino.

As always, though, gaming is the trump-card here.

What if I install OSX on a pc.
Then what.

Have you actually tried this? Back when I was deluded that hackintosh with Snow Leopard might make an easy/cheap substitute for windows (it was priced as an upgrade but required no previous purchase), I tried doing an install on my Atom-based PC. It was not reliable. Or, at least, the installed was not, since that was all I ever saw. (It always froze before it finished.)

Mac is the closest you can get to a decent Unix workstation right now. The Service contract and certification isn't quite up to the same standard as Windows but it's better than the complete ****ing nothing you get for running Debian or BSD.

I've got 10.6 on an old Core 2 (this is where I did all my experimenting) and 10.7 dual booted with win7 on my laptop. 10.8 is a pain the ass so I don't even try. It takes a LOT of time and work, probably 40 hours per machine. Worth it though, for the sense of accomplishment and learnin'
And also for Cathode, which is just fun as hell to use.

I used to think I was learning by using Gentoo, Linux from Scratch, et al., until I tried NetBSD and discovered that the entire system would almost always build correctly (O.S. and applications) with the official build system, and that most of the gibberish required to keep a bare-bones Linux system going is the result of ad hoc and harebrained open source development with no one in charge and everything constantly changing.

Anyway, from your experiences, I can really only infer that Hackintosh is mostly for masochists.

Basically yes.
I was sick, I had lots of spare time, and wanted to try an OS that I had never tried before.

Hope u enjoy your serious C++ work on a 10 year old release of RHEL or SuSe running Gnome 2 and a customized kernel 2.4 with certified drivers that you can't replace because it will break your support agreement.

it's a pain in the ****ing ass is what it is

"u"
I'm not the only one browsing the 'pos around here am I?

Not that I would know from personal experience, but I can say that at least at Google, the Linux distribution used in the servers is homegrown.

Anyway, you wouldn't run a desktop environment on the server. The Mac just SSH's into it.

Edit: It looks like Google does have desktop Linux based on Ubuntu. I don't think there is an SLA though.

Edi2: It looks like I was wrong again. They did in fact run Red Hat at some point.

Did they grow it in the ballpit?

Also I just noticed you tried to do this on an Atom.
OSX won't work on Atoms or AMD CPUs, you need to switch out some drivers for it to work, so basically it's not gonna work. iatkos has an option to do so on install, but i have no idea if it works.

At the time, Atom was still supported. I think support was removed at some point by Apple.

Anyway, it seemed to me at the time that the failure was due to the USB cd drive I was booting from, which was apparently tripping the installer OS at some point. I probably shouldn't have been using a USB drive, but I had a feeling it was a sign of trouble to come in general, and decided it was a bad road to travel.

They sup.. oh right first gen Macbook Airs.
Ye it's not worth it 100% of the time. I only did it just 'cause. I do use it though, and find it much nicer to use for browsing/taking notes then windows.
I also have absolutely no idea how I made it work, and have long since forgotten the steps to install it. So I really hope this remains stable forever.

That was my original motivation as well.

Large corporations run whatever they want because they have internal resources to deal with the costs of hardware and software failures. What Google gets away with means diddly squat for 99% of the industry.

I also legit like iTunes, I'm weird.

This is getting better tho. Lots of vendors are shipping Ubuntu 12.04 on workstation laptops now.

BSD is out to sea.

Sadly true. Even a proponent like myself can't even be bothered to run it since it offers no real advantage over Linux once all the headaches of Linux are overcome, which is usually necessary anyway.

I think it's fair to say that it's now no more difficult to install & configure Ubuntu (Linux) than it is anything else these days. Granted, one could go with a distribution that's a bit more difficult &/or obscure (gNewSense), but it's quite simple to be a casual Linux user these days & many are. It's easy to stereotype but there are indeed non-casual Mac users that spend their days in Emacs & Terminal, just like there are casual Linux users that spend their days in Firefox, Steam & XBMC (like me).

I use a Mac at work (iMac, retina MacBook Pro) and I have a personal MacBook air, the latter being my favorite computer I've ever owned. Used to have Boot Camp installed, but I never used it so I just deleted the partition.

I got into computers via Macintosh Plus and I really have no interest in partaking in the lousy "Mac v. PC" bickering that will always go on. Nor do I want to get a modern Mac either, really.

Funnily enough it was only yesterday when I started messing around with a Macintosh Plus emulator (to play this obscure game I played 15 years ago), and in the process I ended up playing one of the first (50% chance it might even be the first) games I ever played.



Inventory? Examine? Operate? Hit? Open/Close? Hmm, maybe I was wrong, that doesn't remind me of anything.

G'times.

It can be, theoretically, but in my experience this isn't true. In goddamn 2013 I still have to set modelines in xorg.conf or else I get a black screen.

Ubuntu has got to get rid of xorg. Holy christ it is the worst piece of software ever developed.

Stockholm syndrome. As a younger lad I was rather proud to tweak that XF86Config until the dang thing would start in a sane mode with my video card, mouse, and keyboard. After going through all that trouble, who would want to admit the pointlessness of the affair??

X11 is a graphics subsystem in use in the year 2013, which ships on honest-to-god modern computers, where the only ways to get multiple monitors working are:

1.) The sole standard and compliant way: run a separate server for each monitor. Each monitor lives in its own little universe. The only way to move a window between monitors is to kill the app and restart it with the correct DISPLAY environment variable.

2.) The non-standard but good enough way: run a separate server for each monitor, each of which renders the entire desktop and then clips it down to what is actually visible on that display. Really glitchy, you'll inevitably run into problems like overlapping displays, and it more than doubles the overhead of doing the exact same thing on Windows. But at least it looks like you're dragging windows between monitors, even though that's not what's happening.

3.) Non-standard vendor-specific driver hacks. Tell the server that you're a single screen, tell clients that you're two, and then cross your fingers that the right people are believing the right lies.

I have Debian on my laptop. I never use it. I guess installing it and mucking around with it was... fun? It's a case of "now what?" I just use Windows for everything.

This one worked pretty well for me back in 2005 or so. It was easy to run opengl games like Doom3 and UT2003 at the same time as long as they each had a "run in window" option.

Regardless... it was interesting to google this. The software described in the first hit has Shuttleworth quoted back in 2010 as aiming for integration in Unity.

Switching to Wayland was a top priority for 12.10. It wasn't ready, graphics drivers didn't exist (and vendors had announced that they were not ever going to support it), and Canonical is too busy working on go-nowhere phones to get it done.

Rumor is that Valve is pushing for it. So we'll see how that goes.

Because I have a tiny Macbook Air for shlepping around with me, writing when I'm out, or watching movies in bed or whatever, and a Macbook Pro because it has a much larger screen and the keyboard is an absolute joy to type on.

And then this looming bulwark for Steam purposes: http://rog.asus.com/notebook/17-inch/g73jh/

My friends with Macs actually have frequent complaints, always hacking around with some ****ty package management. They tell me "well, you'd THINK it would be like using Linux with a good UI, but..." maybe it's better for C++ development