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Discussion on: Differences Between MacOS and Linux Scripting

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jessekphillips profile image
Jesse Phillips

I would preposition you that this in fact shows that they are in fact very similar, but not the same.

Try and do something similar for Windows and your list would not only be longer but have completely different command structures, plus the choice of cmd vs powershell.

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aghost7 profile image
Jonathan Boudreau

Where I currently work this isn't as much the case. For the most part Mac and Windows just run a virtual machine with Linux on it. So you could say that Mac is more similar to Windows than Linux.

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jessekphillips profile image
Jesse Phillips

Mac and Windows are more similar because they are both avoided so that we can use Linux?

Could we not stay with similar comparisons that prompted you article, rather than completely shifting the means of comparison.

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aghost7 profile image
Jonathan Boudreau

I was only replying to your own comparison, it is true that Windows is not relevant to the article.

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jessekphillips profile image
Jesse Phillips

I was responding to your opening statement.

I would like to propose that they are in fact very different.

The article did a great job highlighting the differences between two similar things. It however was not good at showing similar things were very different.

This really isn't that important of a distinction, but it can reinforce a thought against those statements, like this comment.

"I have met so many people who think the using MacOS is like using a Linux distro, since it's based on Unix, which is just simply not true."

I don't utilize Mac myself, so your article was interesting, but I could see the exact same article to make the claim that using Mac is like using Linux.

What would change is the language around the differences. For example

Mac OS has made zsh the default shell. This is actually a better language for scripting and you could with your IT and team to have it installed for every provisioned server allowing for easy sharing of scripts.

This creates more of a "we can have the same things" message over a message that they are hopelessly different.

Now I have tried to have It install a text editor rather than relying on notepad as the standard, that was very adversely opposed. But that is a different challenge from comparing the two operating systems.

Again not really an important point for your article, just feel based on how you responded it might be an important point for you.

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aghost7 profile image
Jonathan Boudreau • Edited

Mac OS has made zsh the default shell. This is actually a better language for scripting and you could with your IT and team to have it installed for every provisioned server allowing for easy sharing of scripts.

Adding zsh to everything is not going to be practical for most medium-sized and up organizations imo. There's a lot more than just the servers running the application. You have the CI server, agents, container images, supporting infra for logging, etc. Last company I worked at had over a thousand VMs.

This creates more of a "we can have the same things" message over a message that they are hopelessly different.

But you can't have the same things, as you point out it doesn't work out that way in practice. If you're entertaining installing additional software to normalize things, why not just use a VM from Windows/MacOs?

But that is a different challenge from comparing the two operating systems.

That will only shift the effort into IT maintaining all these packages. The differences will still be there, its just a different department that is responsible for it.

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jessekphillips profile image
Jesse Phillips

IT tends to have OS snapshots and a selection of standard software and configuration every machine goes through. Yes this shifts the responsibility, to where it belongs.

If you're just running Linux VMs to have standards, why are you bothering with Mac or Windows?

I wasn't trying to claim you could have all the same things, the example was to put a spin of similarity on a difference. When you start talking about practical maintenance of thousands of systems, you've moved the discussion away from similarity and differences to a different problem space.

I am quite happy to discuss those challenges and what might be done about them, I didn't think that was what the article was about.

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aghost7 profile image
Jonathan Boudreau

If you're just running Linux VMs to have standards, why are you bothering with Mac or Windows?

Because we have developers running Windows and Mac on their laptops.

I wasn't trying to claim you could have all the same things, the example was to put a spin of similarity on a difference.

I'm not sure I get your point but you could also say Windows and Linux have a lot of similarities, or MacOS and Windows.

I am quite happy to discuss those challenges and what might be done about them, I didn't think that was what the article was about.

Its not, the article is about differences between Mac and Linux.