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Discussion on: Why I'm sort of leaving Linux

 
mmikowski profile image
Michael S. Mikowski • Edited

The best Linux subsystem is provided by a Linux computer. It is amazing the days and weeks Mac users spend working around these incompatibilities. Any guess why DHH didn't compare the MBP to a recent Linux developer laptop? My guess is it is Linux would win objectively, but works lose emotionally due to the affinity to MBP trophy status.

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shaunagordon profile image
Shauna Gordon

As someone who uses both Mac and Linux extensively, I don't really know what incompatibilities you're referring to with regard to Mac, given that it's a BSD based system.

And did you read the article? It had nothing to do with "trophy status" (whatever that's supposed to mean in DHH's case). He wanted to switch away from Mac because of the drop in build quality and the disaster that is the butterfly switch keyboard.

Instead of judgementally speculating on his reasons for not choosing Linux, you could ask him. There is a comments section.

Given that he was looking into it for his company as much as himself, my guess is that compatibility with mission critical tools and availability of business agreements played more of a part in his decisions than "trophy status."

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mmikowski profile image
Michael S. Mikowski

Shauna, have you looked at the version of the bash shell shipped with Mac OS? It is 6 years old. And those BSD tools are NOT the same as the GNU tools on Linux and have numerous incompatibilities. At my last gig I spent weeks retrofitting scripts to work on the outdated and incompatible MacOS, an OS we will never deploy to. The alternative was to get the Mac users to upgrade bash and use GNU utils. And most of them weren't capable of that.

As for DHH, I'd like him to try a system 76 solution and compare.

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heytimapple profile image
Tim Apple

Don’t tell anyone, but I’m running Windows on a System76 galago...

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shaunagordon profile image
Shauna Gordon

Mac's version is where it's at, because they froze it at the latest GPL-2 version, probably for legal reasons, which is a whole other discussion, but it is a fair criticism.

That said, the incompatibilities you're referring to would really only apply if you're trying to switch between a Linux and Mac system. Since DHH has never (or almost never) switched between those two (at least not for the host system), there are no incompatibilities to work around, because there's nothing to be incompatible with.

I run a Docker workflow, too, and it's literally never been an issue going between the Mac host and the Docker containers for me, largely because they serve totally different purposes and therefore rarely have crossover in scripts that I would use with any regularity.

I think it's also worth pointing out that BSD predates Linux by nearly 15 years. If you want to bitch about incompatibilities between GNU Utils and their BSD counterparts, you might want to take it up with the GNU Utils people, instead of the BSD people, because it was the former who implemented the utils differently. In other words, it's Linux that's incompatible with BSD and, by your own logic, you're the one spending a bunch of times on workarounds.

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shaunagordon profile image
Shauna Gordon

Don’t tell anyone, but I’m running Windows on a System76 galago...

::gasp!:: Blasphemy! ;)