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DevLorenzo for World In Dev

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Windows or Mac (or Linux😁) for devs?

Hello World! Just wanna do my first #healthydebate to see how it feels to have interactions with other programmers. I bought a week ago a new pc and decided to buy a window. I read some articles on it before deciding and it came out that windows will allow me to have more freedom (and to play videogames 😊). What do you think about that? Do you have a mac or a window / what pc do you have? Why?
I'm very interested in creating a conversation / a debate thinking about which one is the best, particularly for programmers. I also have in mind to write an article on that, maybe using quotes from this post.

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Remember the comment!

PS: You can also comment if you have linux

If you don't want to write a long comment, just say which OS (Windows, MAC or Linux) do you use.

Check this article, my second debate, how programmers love to code?

And this one, why programmers love to code?

Just wanted to add the Stack Overflow results:

Platform devs develop for:

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Oldest comments (75)

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devlorenzo profile image
DevLorenzo • Edited

If you need help to find comments, they're here!

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otumianempire profile image
Michael Otu • Edited

freedom is not decided, on playing video games. I play a game on ubuntu.

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eric23 profile image
Eric

Cool. New hardware is always fun :)
I run Linux Mint on my PC. I also have a Mac Mini 2018 and a laptop running Windows but I really only use those for testing.

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cadams profile image
Chad Adams

Personal preference but Mac. I like Linux too but all the companies I’ve worked for gave me Macs. At least for full stack web development. If you’re a game dev then definitely Windows.

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devlorenzo profile image
DevLorenzo

Yes, it also depends a lot if you're an android or Ios dev. You can't create ios apps on windows but you can do the opposite (even if it isn't common).
I bought a window because I'm not sure of what I will be and I prefer to don't block me any possible road.

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arto20 profile image
Arto20

Personally I use both Win and Mac, I have similar toolset on those (Pycharm and extras mostly).
My feelings: in general, I feel I'm way more productive with Windows, considering all the keyboard shortcuts and, well, years of developing my habits with it.
On the other hand, MacOS provides much more pleasant experience with much better look and the MacBook itself is just such a nice device and it's just a bit more enjoyable per se.
Both are great as long as it fits your personal workflow 🦾

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devlorenzo profile image
DevLorenzo

Thanks for the feedback. I think like you, you have to choose according to your habits and how you feel better. Although the two should be tried first. Windows are free and fast, but a MacBook is so beautiful, and it can be very fast when you know the cords (thanks to its nice UI).

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darkwiiplayer profile image
𒎏Wii 🏳️‍⚧️

MacBook is so beautiful, and it can be very fast when you know the cords

re beautiful: link

re fast: have a look at what some people can do with i3 or awesome. Those systems are optimized for fast user interaction with a steep and long learning curve, so you can keep improving and getting more proficient for a long time. Alternatively, something like cinnamon gives you nice defaults that let you be productive from the start while still letting you customize many aspects so they're more in line with your preferred way of interacting with your PC.

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arto20 profile image
Arto20 • Edited

Oh, don't get me wrong - I was using Arch Linux +i3wm exclusively for a few years of university and I still do use Linux at work.
I really like i3, it's a great and efficient working environment.
There are some major problems with it. It really requires a lot of setup in order to make it usable. Also you need to have quite a good knowledge about Linux in order to be able to set it up correctly.
And one thing I really don't like - UI scaling doesn't work as good as on other systems. In my case it's kind of deal breaker - I use 150% scaling on Windows, and on Linux it's always blurry, no matter if I use Wayland or Xorg. I guess there may be some solution, but I was tired of looking for solutions and just wanted a working environment so I can focus on programming instead of tweaking my OS. :P
But Linux is great, I'd never say it's worse than Win or MacOS - it's just different approach, which just doesn't fit (at this moment!) my work needs.

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darkwiiplayer profile image
𒎏Wii 🏳️‍⚧️

considering all the keyboard shortcuts

Just imagine an OS where you could set all those shortcuts up the way you want them 😝

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rvxlab profile image
RVxLab • Edited

My preference goes to Linux or MacOS. I despise Windows for programming and if I see one more error that I need admin permissions to delete my node_modules folder I'm going to scream.

WSL2 is better but still not for me.

For gaming Windows is still the best option for me so my gaming Rig runs Windows. My laptop runs Linux.

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mardommah profile image
mardommah

Still using linux because don't have enough money for buy windows license or buy mac devices

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brandonwallace profile image
brandon_wallace • Edited

I hear that. Lol. You can get a old computer and install Linux on it and it will be like having a new computer. You will save tons of money. The top of the line Mac Book Pro cost more than $6000 US dollars! Why would I pay that amount when all I want to do is look at pictures of my cat?

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jonrandy profile image
Jon Randy 🎖️

Linux or MacOS. Abandoned Windoze years ago - it's such a PITA in comparison

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thorstenhirsch profile image
Thorsten Hirsch

Work + games = Linux, if you don't mind using Steam. They literally have thousands of Linux games.

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appsecmonkey profile image
Teo Selenius

See, people say Linux even if you don’t add it as an option (:

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devlorenzo profile image
DevLorenzo

Yes, i didn't think there would be so many on linux. I changed the article title!

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ninofiliu profile image
Nino Filiu

Yes, but I think it's legitimate! Hear me out:

Billions have been invested in marketing by Microsoft and Apple so that people don't even think of any other OS besides theirs. It might sound annoying to hear people bring Linux on the table even if no one asked, but I think most of these interventions come from a genuine desire to tell people about an option they've been conditioned into not even considering

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patarapolw profile image
Pacharapol Withayasakpunt • Edited
  • What kind of software are you developing? Run on remote server? Run on web browser? Run on mobile? Run on client's PC?
  • Do you use Shell or Bash? Basically, I am not adept with Command Prompt and PowerShell. If you are well trained in Windows, you might be the opposite.

macOS is good for installing software, including proprietary ones, until your Mac become older than a few years.

  • The OS keeps updating, until your Mac cannot install anything, nor compile anything; if you don't update. And, it will always bug you to update.
  • Good thing is that, it is quite POSIX compliant. Bad thing is confusing keyboard layout; which will be prevent you from moving to other OSes.

WSL2 is not that good compared to real Linux desktop. Therefore, in the end, I use both Windows machine (which does have WSL2) and Linux machine (which has VirtualBox).

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barelyhuman profile image
Reaper • Edited

I'd say Unix, so basically any derivative of it.
BSD, Mac
Linux

I use windows only to game, never even try to run a dev environment on it.
I've got a macOS device for most of my programming.
A linux device that I run docker and tunnel onto for heavier loading in-terms of storage.

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linhtch90 profile image
Linh Truong Cong Hong • Edited

Windows is still the most popular OS for developers
Personally, I love Linux but it is convenient to move around with a Windows machine

insights.stackoverflow.com/survey/...

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ninofiliu profile image
Nino Filiu

Windows < Mac < Linux

Windows is the worst OS for developers and should be avoided at all cost. It was simply not made with us in mind. Scripting capabilities are limited, PowerShell is badly designed and poorly documented, and WSL2 fails with cryptic errors at any task that is remotely low-level. Windows is a bloatware: there is a huge amount of pre-installed software you don't need which slow down your PC, take a lot of memory and disk space, and that you can't uninstall...

MacOS is already a far better choice but has too many protections, so you can't configure things you'd like to change, and Docker doesn't run properly because of OS permission issues.

Linux is the best dev+gaming option. You get an even better developer experience as with a Mac, a computer with the same specs costs half the price of a Mac and lasts twice as long, and also the OS doesn't spy on you and is built with free software. It was not the case a decade ago but now there are a ton of gaming-oriented distros to chose from (beware of SteamOS which is not that great tho).

If I were you I'd dual boot your Windows PC with 25% of disk space for Windows just for games that don't run elsewhere, and 75% of disk space for Linux that you'd use for everyday computing, developing, and gaming.

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cryphrog profile image
cryphrog

^THIS

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ducaale profile image
Mohamed Dahir

What kind of cryptic errors did you encounter in WSL2?

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marcellothearcane profile image
marcellothearcane

Things like how you can't access network sockets low level, and you can't access USB devices properly for flashing with UF2 (i.e. STM32 devices). That's just two recent issues I've had.

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ninofiliu profile image
Nino Filiu

Plenty of them, I left Windows years ago, but on top of my head:

  • npm install of simple, front-end-only packages, that failed due to node-pre-gyp
  • Docker that crashes
  • ssh that can't connect
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akatsukilevi profile image
Akatsuki Levi

Solo Linux user here.
I literally have a Celeron G3930 with 4GB RAM and Integrated Graphics.
It's already enough to game nicely(War Thunder mainly) and programming is smooth.
XFCE 4 with Manjaro Linux, running Linux 5.10
I've never had my computer so stable in my life before Linux. Already ran Windows on it, barely could use it properly. Tried Hackintosh, was horrible.

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mallockey profile image
Josh Melo

Hard disagree on PowerShell. Its actually quite well documented and the fact it outputs objects instead of texts makes scripting so much easier. Not to mention the direct access to .NET classes/objects.

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catalinradoi profile image
CatalinRadoi

You've lost me in the first sentence.

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peterndomano profile image
Peter Ndomano

I use both linux (ParrotOS) and windows (win10) but most of the time I'm on linux. Windows is good for special programming tasks where tools to accomplish such tasks are only made for windows OS. For example in editing ECU map files(vehicle reprogramming) there are no reliable software packages for that task in linux but for windows you have many.

But for casual programming tasks like app development & web dev linux is the best to me coz I have amdroid studio on both OS's but Android studio on linux seems to perform better than the one on windows10 (with the same hardware and memory). Also Anaconda performs better on my linux than on windows with the same hardware and memory(NB I dualboot 'em)

Lastly I love linux coz you can easily tear it down when things go wrong. To me it's more flexible than windows

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