What type of computer do Linux Developers use?

I always hear people talking about how great Linux is to use for development but I am curious what computers do you use? Is it a Mac or Windows machine with multiple boot options or do you buy something custom?

Comments

[Minh Nguyen (he/him)]

My development laptop runs Linux, and I found the experience much better than my work laptop running Windows despite the dev machine having much less RAM and CPU power. The reason why it works for me is mainly because most of the tools I use are built around the Linux environment—Docker, MariaDB and NPM/Yarn are much quicker than in Windows.

I've also customised my workspace to strip out most of the unnecessary interactions that come with other desktop environments (I use i3 as my environment):

• All my programs open maximised.
• I can use keyboard shortcuts for almost everything, like manipulating and moving between program windows.
• I can effectively use virtual workspaces to segment the things I'm working on. Firefox is on desktop 1, terminal is on desktop 2, and the code editor is on desktop 3.

[Andrew Baisden]

Seems to me that a lot of developers enjoy working in Linux you all have such nice cool setups. And there are so many nice flavours of Linux to play around with. I have noticed that many have migrated away from Windows to Linux but what about from macOS?

Doing iOS development is best on a mac and Windows is probably the best for gaming. So what's a better combo. Linux + macOS or Linux + Windows?

[Minh Nguyen (he/him)]

I couldn't tell you about people moving from macOS to Linux, but your point is definitely valid that you do need macOS to develop apps for it and iOS.

[Dwayne Bradley]

Currently a Windows Surface Laptop 3 with Ubuntu 20.04 in WSL2. 😉

[Ivan Jeremic]

I use WSL on windows, all my code/IDE/Git is installed there

[kyawshwe]

nice

[Darshak Parikh]

I have a modest Dell Vostro from seven years ago. It came with Ubuntu, but it's not one of their Developer Edition models. I wrote about it last month.

Seeing a lot of low-end entries here, I find I'm not the only one. Good to know!

[Annie Taylor Chen]

I have a discussion here:
dev.to/annietaylorchen/which-compu...

[Stephan B. R. Langenau]

I use since over 10 years Linux on my daily driver. I use from Ubuntu over Debian and Fedora mostly every common distribution. M all time favourite is openSUSE, and Debian. I know a lot of Kernel Developers who use distributions like Debian or Fedora. Also the founder of Linux Linus Torvald use Fedora.

[Do Hoang]

Im using thinkpad x1, it's great for both work and study, just a very small issue with sound, but they was fixed in kernel 4.8 and pulseaudio 13+ :v
btw I use Arch

[jay@つくもがみ ~ $]

I use Linux on my main development desktop PC (an old i3 with 12GB RAM + dual monitors), and my laptop (lenovo i7 + 8GB RAM), both works very well for my work (mainly web development in PHP, Python, React, Express, eventually some VMs in local).
Also have a Raspberry Pi 1 and a Raspberry Pi 3 on my LAN running some services.

[Konstantin Klima]

I run a dual boot setup with Manjaro Linux for development and other work and Windows for gaming, media and image editing.
I have both OSs on separate SSDs and share a NTFS partitioned HDD between them for storage.

I built the PC myself (ryzen 1600x, 16gb HyperX ram, 1060 6gb).

I used to run Manjaro on my laptoo as well (though it died on me a few days ago). :)