8 ms·

Step 1. Install linux

by jug5 12y ago

codemac 12y ago
It worked pretty well on my macbook air once I figured out the marvell ata errors (the sata controller behaves poorly) and the backlight (magical recompilation every boot on a new kernel with dkms solved it).
morganvachon 12y ago
I get the joke, and it was the first thing that popped in my head too. But in all seriousness, OS X is Unix as well, and can do pretty much any Unix based task that GNU/Linux can. Sometimes the best tool for the job is the one you already own.
- moron4hire 12y ago
  Maybe it's less about Unix and more about FOSS for jug5.
- snotrockets 12y ago
  BSD differs from Linux in some important ways. If one of those differences affect your works, than Mac OS X is useless, even if it is Unix (and Linux, some would say, isn't)
  - chc 12y ago
    "Useless" a strong word for a simple difference between two Unices that affects your work. You could just as well say Linux is useless because sysvinit and upstart aren't the same as launchd.
  - morganvachon 12y ago
    I get that, and I wasn't trying to say that GNU/Linux is Unix, either. In fact, what with systemd on most major distros these days, GNU/Linux is less Unix-y than ever (I'm not saying that's good or bad; I have my reservations about systemd but they are irrelevant to this discussion and I'm not being biased either way about it here). That said, for just about any project I've ever worked on within a GNU/Linux ecosystem, I could have easily adapted it to Mac if that was my chosen platform. HTML is HTML, JavaScript is JavaScript, so for today's web-centric projects the OS you're running doesn't matter as much. Even languages like Python don't really care what's under the hood. Of course, if you're doing Linux kernel development, or targeting a GNU/Linux deployment, then a Mac isn't the best idea. :)
  - recursive 12y ago
    So if operating system Z is different from linux in some way, then linux is better in that way? What if the differences positively affect your work?
- davidw 12y ago
  Have the Mac folks got focus-follows-mouse yet? http://steve-yegge.blogspot.it/2008/04/settling-osx-focus-follows-mouse-debate.html http://steve-yegge.blogspot.it/2008/04/settling-osx-focus-fo... In general, I don't think I'd ever give up Linux. It's a hacker's OS, by and for hackers. Being able to pick apart and fiddle with any portion of, from the kernel on up, is a wonderful, empowering feeling, and something that has proved useful both personally and professionally over the years.
  - morganvachon 12y ago
    Indeed, when I'm on GNU/Linux I always set the WM to focus-follows-mouse, click-to-raise. But strictly speaking, that's an X11 thing, not a Mac/BSD/Unix/Linux thing. I didn't mean any slight against GNU/Linux; I use it every day (and I don't mean on a phone or tablet either). But I also have used Macs for stuff that works better on a Mac, and Windows for stuff that works better on Windows. There isn't a "Best OS" period, because every use case is different. There's only "best for the job at hand".
  - 72deluxe 12y ago
    You can enable it for the Terminal only. As the other commenter stated, it's an X11 thing. Despite the prevalence of applications that run under X11 and the XQuartz availability, the native UI under OSX is Quartz which handles everything under OpenGL I believe....?
  - the_gipsy 12y ago
    iOS may be Unix underneath, but on the top it has a terrible WM that simply cannot be changed to behave like anyhting else. I'm using xmonad and while I may come off as pretentious, I do see that my colleagues that use mac constantly fight against the WM, searching for windows, moving them around, resizing etc.
- codemac 12y ago
  The biggest problem I had with Mac OS X was it's user space unix tools. Everything GNU is ancient from before GPL3, everything BSD is crazy ancient from FreeBSD 5.. it's pretty awful. Thus why macports for me was king. HomeBrew tried to hard to not replace your user space, though I haven't looked at it in a long while. I'm on Linux everywhere now.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
- walshemj 12y ago
  Try using cpan to install basic modules like MySQL
  - nknighthb 12y ago
    I've never gotten CPAN to work reliably with any OS's included copy of Perl. As with Python and Ruby, if you want to use things not available via the OS's package manager, you're best off installing a separate copy.
    - marcusramberg 12y ago
      Use cpanm - Easy bootstrapping documentation here http://search.cpan.org/~miyagawa/App-cpanminus-1.7012/lib/App/cpanminus.pm http://search.cpan.org/~miyagawa/App-cpanminus-1.7012/lib/Ap...
    - walshemj 12y ago
      Works out of the box on Ubuntu LTS, Raspberry pi hell it even worked back in 2000 on Cygwin out of the box on win2k.
      - nknighthb 12y ago
        > Works out of the box on Ubuntu LTS Well, that's one I can personally tell you I've had problems with in the past. > even worked back in 2000 on Cygwin out of the box on win2k And also this one. That's even back around the timeframe I was actively doing Perl development while using win2k.
        walshemj 12y ago
        Well I never had problems and the problems I had with mac where with basic stuff like the Perl MySQL DBI. In the end after seeing the complex work arounds and all the warnings about buggering up your mac OS install I gave up and run a VM. After all the nice people that employ me want me to do some nifty Machine learning tools to save a week a month running single adwords account.
- aftbit 12y ago
  Unfortunately, it has terrible filesystem support. How do I read/write ext4 volumes!?
  - nknighthb 12y ago
    Have you tried "brew install ext4fuse" ? Edit: Seems it's still read-only. If you need write support that badly (why?), there's always Paragon: http://www.paragon-software.com/home/extfs-mac/ http://www.paragon-software.com/home/extfs-mac/
    - aftbit 12y ago
      That's a larger problem I have with the Mac (and Windows, although less so) platform as a developer environment: all the cool tools are closed-source and paid. That's a serious barrier to innovation.
      - nknighthb 12y ago
        "Cool tools"? Needing ext#fs write support on OS X is a pretty niche application and I'm honestly surprised it's continued to be a viable business for Paragon all these years, especially with the rise of mainstream virtualization. I wasn't expecting to find them still selling it at all. It probably wouldn't be there except I'm sure most of the expertise and code had to be developed for their imaging and partitioning products. I think the only things I run frequently for development that don't come with OS X and aren't free or open source are Sublime Text and Paw. You can certainly use vim/emacs/TM2 and curl scripts if you want. Were I using Linux, I'd be using Sublime Text, and, well, curl scripts again. I'd also be jumping off a cliff after about two days of dealing with desktop Linux's horrific regressions over the past decade. OS X's native development tools (Xcode, llvm/clang) are free, and most of the tools you use in Linux are either already there, or a "brew install" away.
pbreit 12y ago
Linux on the desktop is painful. Bad, bad advice.
Igglyboo 12y ago
I love linux as much as the next guy, especially on the server, but definitely not as my daily driver. It's too unpolished, especially UI/UX wise. I'm hoping the year of the linux desktop will come eventually however.
- habitue 12y ago
  The UX is amazing if you ignore gnome/kde etc, which are just imitations of windows and mac. I'd say the true linux UX is in tiling window managers. Just like the terminal and vim/emacs, tiling WMs have a steep learning curve and an amazing payoff where the computer becomes an extension of your will, rather than something you fight. I really recommend you try them. That being said, they don't look pretty, but they make me so productive I just can't go back to anything else.
  - oftenwrong 12y ago
    I disagree that tiling WMs necessarily have a steep learning curve. From experience I claim: Anybody can learn to use a WM like xmonad in its stock configuration in about 30 minutes, and be proficient enough to have a significant boost in productivity in a day or two.
    - habitue 12y ago
      You're right that it's not necessarily steep if you're used to using keyboard commands. But if you're used to doing everything with a mouse it might take some adjusting
  - wz1000 12y ago
    Well, they can look extremely pretty. Just take a look at some of the submissions on reddit.com/r/unixporn
    - habitue 12y ago
      You and I think they're pretty, but we're weird by most standards. If you're coming from the mac version of pretty, tiling WMs are a turn-off visually
habitue 12y ago
It's just, look at all this fighting you have to do to get linux tools on your mac. It's not a hacker OS by default, it's a pretty, user-friendly OS by default, and you can use homebrew and these other tools to replicate many of the features you'd get on the actual hacker OS: linux. Unless you're developing for Mac, I just don't get why it's so popular with developers. (OK, that's not true, I get it. It's very cool looking. But I'd think more developers would get past that and see how hard they're working to turn their cool looking OS into a poor linux imitation).
- alayne 12y ago
  It's popular because it's Unixy without all the bullshit. I stopped running desktop Linux/FreeBSD years ago because the UI and system management tools in that world were such a clusterfuck. Now I can run commercial applications and not have to deal with all that configuration file nonsense. Honestly, it's quite insulting when you presume that people who use OS X haven't considered the alternatives, or are unfamiliar with Linux.
  - 72deluxe 12y ago
    Linux WM development follows the CADT model, it seems.
- orangecat 12y ago
  Unless you're developing for Mac, I just don't get why it's so popular with developers. 1. Excellent laptop displays (16:10, high-DPI that actually works). 2. Reliable networking and graphics drivers. 3. Battery life.
- 72deluxe 12y ago
  Why try to get Linux tools on your Mac in the first place? You don't see guys fighting to get Mac tools on Linux, so why does it happen the other way around? Perhaps they picked the wrong hardware and OS? I don't understand what you mean by "hacker OS" though? If you mean an OS that I can write code on, all mainstream OSes apply. If you mean an OS that I can constantly fight to get hardware working on and where the windowing paradigm shifts according to the whims of the incoming teenage developers (see the CADT model), then OSX doesn't fit in. (I use Linux, just not any recent WM thanks). But I agree with you otherwise; not trying to pick a fight.
_superposition_ 12y ago
^ this. Oxymoron was the first word that came to mind on reading the title. [ducks]

Step 1. Install linux

by jug5 12y ago

Step 1. Install linux

It worked pretty well on my macbook air once I figured out the marvell ata errors (the sata controller behaves poorly) and the backlight (magical recompilation every boot on a new kernel with dkms solved it).

morganvachon 12y ago

I get the joke, and it was the first thing that popped in my head too. But in all seriousness, OS X is Unix as well, and can do pretty much any Unix based task that GNU/Linux can. Sometimes the best tool for the job is the one you already own.

moron4hire 12y ago
Maybe it's less about Unix and more about FOSS for jug5.
snotrockets 12y ago
BSD differs from Linux in some important ways. If one of those differences affect your works, than Mac OS X is useless, even if it is Unix (and Linux, some would say, isn't)
- chc 12y ago
  "Useless" a strong word for a simple difference between two Unices that affects your work. You could just as well say Linux is useless because sysvinit and upstart aren't the same as launchd.
- morganvachon 12y ago
  I get that, and I wasn't trying to say that GNU/Linux is Unix, either. In fact, what with systemd on most major distros these days, GNU/Linux is less Unix-y than ever (I'm not saying that's good or bad; I have my reservations about systemd but they are irrelevant to this discussion and I'm not being biased either way about it here). That said, for just about any project I've ever worked on within a GNU/Linux ecosystem, I could have easily adapted it to Mac if that was my chosen platform. HTML is HTML, JavaScript is JavaScript, so for today's web-centric projects the OS you're running doesn't matter as much. Even languages like Python don't really care what's under the hood. Of course, if you're doing Linux kernel development, or targeting a GNU/Linux deployment, then a Mac isn't the best idea. :)
- recursive 12y ago
  So if operating system Z is different from linux in some way, then linux is better in that way? What if the differences positively affect your work?
davidw 12y ago
Have the Mac folks got focus-follows-mouse yet? http://steve-yegge.blogspot.it/2008/04/settling-osx-focus-follows-mouse-debate.html http://steve-yegge.blogspot.it/2008/04/settling-osx-focus-fo... In general, I don't think I'd ever give up Linux. It's a hacker's OS, by and for hackers. Being able to pick apart and fiddle with any portion of, from the kernel on up, is a wonderful, empowering feeling, and something that has proved useful both personally and professionally over the years.
- morganvachon 12y ago
  Indeed, when I'm on GNU/Linux I always set the WM to focus-follows-mouse, click-to-raise. But strictly speaking, that's an X11 thing, not a Mac/BSD/Unix/Linux thing. I didn't mean any slight against GNU/Linux; I use it every day (and I don't mean on a phone or tablet either). But I also have used Macs for stuff that works better on a Mac, and Windows for stuff that works better on Windows. There isn't a "Best OS" period, because every use case is different. There's only "best for the job at hand".
- 72deluxe 12y ago
  You can enable it for the Terminal only. As the other commenter stated, it's an X11 thing. Despite the prevalence of applications that run under X11 and the XQuartz availability, the native UI under OSX is Quartz which handles everything under OpenGL I believe....?
- the_gipsy 12y ago
  iOS may be Unix underneath, but on the top it has a terrible WM that simply cannot be changed to behave like anyhting else. I'm using xmonad and while I may come off as pretentious, I do see that my colleagues that use mac constantly fight against the WM, searching for windows, moving them around, resizing etc.
codemac 12y ago
The biggest problem I had with Mac OS X was it's user space unix tools. Everything GNU is ancient from before GPL3, everything BSD is crazy ancient from FreeBSD 5.. it's pretty awful. Thus why macports for me was king. HomeBrew tried to hard to not replace your user space, though I haven't looked at it in a long while. I'm on Linux everywhere now.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
walshemj 12y ago
Try using cpan to install basic modules like MySQL
- nknighthb 12y ago
  I've never gotten CPAN to work reliably with any OS's included copy of Perl. As with Python and Ruby, if you want to use things not available via the OS's package manager, you're best off installing a separate copy.
  - marcusramberg 12y ago
    Use cpanm - Easy bootstrapping documentation here http://search.cpan.org/~miyagawa/App-cpanminus-1.7012/lib/App/cpanminus.pm http://search.cpan.org/~miyagawa/App-cpanminus-1.7012/lib/Ap...
  - walshemj 12y ago
    Works out of the box on Ubuntu LTS, Raspberry pi hell it even worked back in 2000 on Cygwin out of the box on win2k.
    - nknighthb 12y ago
      > Works out of the box on Ubuntu LTS Well, that's one I can personally tell you I've had problems with in the past. > even worked back in 2000 on Cygwin out of the box on win2k And also this one. That's even back around the timeframe I was actively doing Perl development while using win2k.
      - walshemj 12y ago
        Well I never had problems and the problems I had with mac where with basic stuff like the Perl MySQL DBI. In the end after seeing the complex work arounds and all the warnings about buggering up your mac OS install I gave up and run a VM. After all the nice people that employ me want me to do some nifty Machine learning tools to save a week a month running single adwords account.
aftbit 12y ago
Unfortunately, it has terrible filesystem support. How do I read/write ext4 volumes!?
- nknighthb 12y ago
  Have you tried "brew install ext4fuse" ? Edit: Seems it's still read-only. If you need write support that badly (why?), there's always Paragon: http://www.paragon-software.com/home/extfs-mac/ http://www.paragon-software.com/home/extfs-mac/
  - aftbit 12y ago
    That's a larger problem I have with the Mac (and Windows, although less so) platform as a developer environment: all the cool tools are closed-source and paid. That's a serious barrier to innovation.
    - nknighthb 12y ago
      "Cool tools"? Needing ext#fs write support on OS X is a pretty niche application and I'm honestly surprised it's continued to be a viable business for Paragon all these years, especially with the rise of mainstream virtualization. I wasn't expecting to find them still selling it at all. It probably wouldn't be there except I'm sure most of the expertise and code had to be developed for their imaging and partitioning products. I think the only things I run frequently for development that don't come with OS X and aren't free or open source are Sublime Text and Paw. You can certainly use vim/emacs/TM2 and curl scripts if you want. Were I using Linux, I'd be using Sublime Text, and, well, curl scripts again. I'd also be jumping off a cliff after about two days of dealing with desktop Linux's horrific regressions over the past decade. OS X's native development tools (Xcode, llvm/clang) are free, and most of the tools you use in Linux are either already there, or a "brew install" away.

pbreit 12y ago

Linux on the desktop is painful. Bad, bad advice.

Igglyboo 12y ago

I love linux as much as the next guy, especially on the server, but definitely not as my daily driver. It's too unpolished, especially UI/UX wise. I'm hoping the year of the linux desktop will come eventually however.

habitue 12y ago
The UX is amazing if you ignore gnome/kde etc, which are just imitations of windows and mac. I'd say the true linux UX is in tiling window managers. Just like the terminal and vim/emacs, tiling WMs have a steep learning curve and an amazing payoff where the computer becomes an extension of your will, rather than something you fight. I really recommend you try them. That being said, they don't look pretty, but they make me so productive I just can't go back to anything else.
- oftenwrong 12y ago
  I disagree that tiling WMs necessarily have a steep learning curve. From experience I claim: Anybody can learn to use a WM like xmonad in its stock configuration in about 30 minutes, and be proficient enough to have a significant boost in productivity in a day or two.
  - habitue 12y ago
    You're right that it's not necessarily steep if you're used to using keyboard commands. But if you're used to doing everything with a mouse it might take some adjusting
- wz1000 12y ago
  Well, they can look extremely pretty. Just take a look at some of the submissions on reddit.com/r/unixporn
  - habitue 12y ago
    You and I think they're pretty, but we're weird by most standards. If you're coming from the mac version of pretty, tiling WMs are a turn-off visually

habitue 12y ago

It's just, look at all this fighting you have to do to get linux tools on your mac. It's not a hacker OS by default, it's a pretty, user-friendly OS by default, and you can use homebrew and these other tools to replicate many of the features you'd get on the actual hacker OS: linux. Unless you're developing for Mac, I just don't get why it's so popular with developers. (OK, that's not true, I get it. It's very cool looking. But I'd think more developers would get past that and see how hard they're working to turn their cool looking OS into a poor linux imitation).

alayne 12y ago
It's popular because it's Unixy without all the bullshit. I stopped running desktop Linux/FreeBSD years ago because the UI and system management tools in that world were such a clusterfuck. Now I can run commercial applications and not have to deal with all that configuration file nonsense. Honestly, it's quite insulting when you presume that people who use OS X haven't considered the alternatives, or are unfamiliar with Linux.
- 72deluxe 12y ago
  Linux WM development follows the CADT model, it seems.
orangecat 12y ago
Unless you're developing for Mac, I just don't get why it's so popular with developers. 1. Excellent laptop displays (16:10, high-DPI that actually works). 2. Reliable networking and graphics drivers. 3. Battery life.
72deluxe 12y ago
Why try to get Linux tools on your Mac in the first place? You don't see guys fighting to get Mac tools on Linux, so why does it happen the other way around? Perhaps they picked the wrong hardware and OS? I don't understand what you mean by "hacker OS" though? If you mean an OS that I can write code on, all mainstream OSes apply. If you mean an OS that I can constantly fight to get hardware working on and where the windowing paradigm shifts according to the whims of the incoming teenage developers (see the CADT model), then OSX doesn't fit in. (I use Linux, just not any recent WM thanks). But I agree with you otherwise; not trying to pick a fight.

_superposition_ 12y ago

^ this. Oxymoron was the first word that came to mind on reading the title. [ducks]