Poll HN: What operating system do you primarily develop on?

pixelpoet · 2 months ago

Finally bailed Windows this year after a lifetime of MSVC, couldn't be happier with the decision. I'm actually kind of grateful for Windows 11 being so impossibly shit and forcing so many people to finally make the switch! Now I use Arch, btw.

technothrasher · 2 months ago

I recently moved from many many years on Windows to full time on Linux for my bare metal embedded development, largely because of ST Micro's good Linux support with their tools.

user432678 · 2 months ago

Mind me asking what do you use instead of MSVC?

pixelpoet · 2 months ago

Somewhat reluctantly, VS Code; but I'm checking out CLion as well and not hating it as much as I did last time.

I find CMake intensely offensive, just the whole worldview of every tool demanding you learn some DSL to do basic things when I have a 4K monitor and just want to select a bunch of cpp and h files to build, but I've since been forced to swallow this bitter pill for work reasons, and I guess it's time to give tools based on it another go.

petcat · 2 months ago

I never found anything better than the latest macOS machines. I ran ubuntu for years and then switched back to mac just because I don't have the time to tinker and fiddle with stuff in Linux that just randomly makes the computer run hot, or a monitor to not work, or fonts looking awful.

MacOS is just the sweet spot of great desktop + great unix-style devbox.

ryandrake · 2 months ago

I agree with this in general, but the major downside of macOS is it obsoletes itself quickly unless you are willing to keep spending money and staying on Apple's hardware/OS/Xcode treadmill.

On my Debian or Ubuntu dev systems, even with 10+ year old hardware, I'm always one apt dist-upgrade away from having one of the best development environments in the world. On macOS, once my hardware gets "old enough" (as defined by Apple), I'm left in the dust. No more OS updates, no more Xcode versions, no more SDKs. I can shore up some development capabilities using Homebrew, but Homebrew itself perpetuates[1] the treadmill.

1: https://docs.brew.sh/Support-Tiers

netllama · 2 months ago

Every time I'm forced to use MacOS again, its worse than the last time. Everything feels like a bolted on afterthought in an OS that forces Apple's opinions on everything. My productivtiy is ruined trying to do things the Apple way, instead of the way that works best for me.

No thanks, I'll stick with Linux, where I can tinker to have the OS work the way that is best for me, instead of what Apple thinks is best for me.

marssaxman · 2 months ago

I ran MacOS for decades and then switched to Linux, because I no longer have the patience to deal with an OS which cannot be tinkered and fiddled into the shape I prefer it in, its makers believing that they know better than I do what I ought to be doing with my own hardware. I cannot stand the paternalism. Linux has its quirks, but at least I can be sure that in the end, it can always be made to do what I want.

woleium · 2 months ago

except sleep then hibernate on lid close of most laptops, it seems.

nextos · 2 months ago

This is a valid concern. Perhaps, if you are still interested in giving Linux a chance, you should consider immutable distributions like Fedora Silverblue or even going one step further with NixOS.

NixOS has a declarative configuration that is simply key=value for most use cases. Whatever you configure stays configured, and you can also rollback when doing dramatic changes e.g, migrating from Xorg to Wayland takes 2 min and changing 1 LOC in your configuration.

reddalo · 2 months ago

>I never found anything better than the latest macOS machines.

Me too, but Tahoe is hideous. I hope they revert back to something sensible, or I'm going to move to Linux full time.

submain · 2 months ago

Yeah, I run macos for the same reason.

However, I went back to linux on my personal laptop (nixos on my case) and I am pleasantly surprised how many things now just work.

The only thing that still annoys me is the laptop not sleeping properly and therefore using too much battery power when idle.

It has made great strides on the last two or so years.

epolanski · 2 months ago

UX' been degrading on MacOS for ages.

On top of that I've been locked out of my machine and Apple ID and they just kept sending me emails that in some weeks they were going to reset my password, and they sent me those emails for 2 months before I got access to my apple id and machine again, proof[1].

They just kept not obliging the "2 weeks" (which is already mad when I've given you my secret password and I've verified my email and phone already).

And they did not respect the two weeks 3 times in a row!

That is beyond disgusting and Apple has never got a single $ from me since, I only own a MBP I use on the move because a client has sent me an M3 Max with 48 GBs so it made no sense to at least not use it.

[1] https://i.imgur.com/9OYvKu5.png

maratc · 2 months ago

On my work Mac, I'm not even logged into iCloud so there's no Apple ID there.

Dead Comment

Zigurd · 2 months ago

My current project uses a cross-platform SDK. My most comfortable development platform is macOS, and that's what I use 90% of the time on this project. Occasionally I work on embedded android systems. For that I use Linux. If I'm on a consulting job and the client has everyone using Windows, I go with the flow, but my impression is that Windows has become end-user hostile, and it's getting worse. Maybe that's just because my permissions and network access are never set right on the first try when a client needs a machine set up for an outside consultant. Subjectively, Windows is the itchy sweater of development platforms.

winecamera · 2 months ago

I'd love to use macOS, but macOS's font rendering on low DPI monitors (2560x1440) looks awful compared to Windows's font rendering. It's to the point that it's unusable for coding, so I just use Windows with WSL.

Leftium · 2 months ago

My 30-inch 2560x1440 external monitor looked fuzzy/blurry on MacOS until I forced HiDPI. (Mac mini)

MacOS only offers HiDPI for certain resolutions. There is a free OSS program that unlocks HiDPI for other resolutions: https://github.com/waydabber/BetterDisplay

I just tried disabling HiDPI at 2560x1440, and it looks quite bad! With HiDPI, I'd say it looks similar (if not better) than Windows.

winecamera · 2 months ago

I'll have to give this a shot. Does it reduce your overall desktop working area?

baq · 2 months ago

BetterDisplay is $15 or so and it changes the equation from ’horrible’ to ‘good enough’. Still not as good as other OSes but at least you don’t have to buy an expensive monitor.

Why Apple decided to not support low dpi is beyond me.

beAbU · 2 months ago

Every time someone complains about some rough edge or papercut on MacOS, someone always chimes in woth "there's this app that fixes it for $10".

I find it astounding that this has somehow been normalized.

mellosouls · 2 months ago

Not sure this covers popular mixes, eg WSL or considers AI clients.

My IDE is Windows (VSCode or Cursor); but I'm also using ChatGPT in the browser and various Linux command line tools (connecting through Windows Terminal to WSL Redhat).

There should probably be a fully hybrid option in the poll.

dal · 2 months ago

It does, if you use WSL you're OS is Windows.

epolanski · 2 months ago

But he's de facto developing on a Linux machine.

petabyt · 2 months ago

I can't even imagine doing development in Windows without WSL anymore. I think Microsoft even requires it for some of their stuff.

Lerc · 2 months ago

I think I'd count WSL as Linux.

Cloud based development and browser hosted environments would certainly be worth measuring. I imagine the numbers are tiny compared to other platforms.

Arduino IDE probably counts as something with decent numbers. Wokwi also makes for an interesting candidate in that area.

Mabusto · 2 months ago

Surprised this is apparently the less popular stack. IDE (VS Code) on windows working out of WSL has been so good for a long time now.

jbv027 · 2 months ago

Linux for many years. Windows and Mac feels the same to me: they are not configurable enough. You just use almost default setup or you are out of luck.

jgb1984 · 2 months ago

Debian: The Universal Operating System, same as the past 25 years.

Anonyneko · 2 months ago

Used to be Windows, but Linux being able to run Docker containers without emulation is a killer feature for me (I am primarily developing backends that also run on Linux). Even if the driver issues are still really annoying.