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Why do web developers choose OS X instead of Linux?
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Comments (9)
First of all, I'd like to thank Jim for these articles -- I appreciate him going out and finding this stuff.
Second, it still can be difficult to get all of the hardware working with a given Linux distribution, especially when the hardware is new. And for the most part, people buy new hardware. And probably 98 percent of the time we buy Windows machines and then put Linux on them.
With my current laptop, a cheap HP model, it took more than 6 months for me to get everything working, and a year to get suspend with the open Radeon driver. Unless Linux is, to some extent, your hobby, you are not going to enjoy the process. Me? I'm driven like many on this site to make everything work. It is more compulsion than anything.
Having six months, or even six hours of hardware not fully supported is too much for most people,
For people who just want to be able to code, a fully baked laptop from the manufacturer is a slam dunk. These developers' companies probably refresh the hardware every two years, so Apple screwing its users with os upgrades isn't as much of a factor.
I'm surprised to see Dell sticking with Ubuntu on one developer laptop. If they could offer five different laptops and maybe two desktops, all with support for the hardware in Linux, then we could move the needle.
Given the Ubuntu Phone situation, Canonical hasn't cared much about desktops for far too long, and GNOME 3 isn't setting even the Linux world on fire.
If Red Hat made an effort to get RHEL on laptops, then maybe we'd be getting somewhere.
The only thing that can turn this around is companies like Dell offering more preloaded hardware and maybe even promoting it. Linux has many advantages, and taking care of its rough edges would go a long way toward drawing no developers who are non-Linux hobbyists to the platform.
Read the whole commentSecond, it still can be difficult to get all of the hardware working with a given Linux distribution, especially when the hardware is new. And for the most part, people buy new hardware. And probably 98 percent of the time we buy Windows machines and then put Linux on them.
With my current laptop, a cheap HP model, it took more than 6 months for me to get everything working, and a year to get suspend with the open Radeon driver. Unless Linux is, to some extent, your hobby, you are not going to enjoy the process. Me? I'm driven like many on this site to make everything work. It is more compulsion than anything.
Having six months, or even six hours of hardware not fully supported is too much for most people,
For people who just want to be able to code, a fully baked laptop from the manufacturer is a slam dunk. These developers' companies probably refresh the hardware every two years, so Apple screwing its users with os upgrades isn't as much of a factor.
I'm surprised to see Dell sticking with Ubuntu on one developer laptop. If they could offer five different laptops and maybe two desktops, all with support for the hardware in Linux, then we could move the needle.
Given the Ubuntu Phone situation, Canonical hasn't cared much about desktops for far too long, and GNOME 3 isn't setting even the Linux world on fire.
If Red Hat made an effort to get RHEL on laptops, then maybe we'd be getting somewhere.
The only thing that can turn this around is companies like Dell offering more preloaded hardware and maybe even promoting it. Linux has many advantages, and taking care of its rough edges would go a long way toward drawing no developers who are non-Linux hobbyists to the platform.
The Mac is 10.0% of the desktop market: http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_os.asp
Of that 10% let us say that 1% of the users are Web developers, just for the sake of argument.
Linux is 5.4%. So let's steal that 1% away from the Mac and give it to Linux.
Linux would be 6.4% of the market and the Mac would be 9% of the market.
It's hardly worth worrying about.
Of that 10% let us say that 1% of the users are Web developers, just for the sake of argument.
Linux is 5.4%. So let's steal that 1% away from the Mac and give it to Linux.
Linux would be 6.4% of the market and the Mac would be 9% of the market.
It's hardly worth worrying about.
linux runs fine on a mac, except for the wifi driver not working out of the box, the touchpad needing extra manual config to get three buttons, and the high resolution messing up the layout of widgets in some places. haven't looked into keyboard backlighting, or camera and mic...
it works ok'ish.
i am also coming from a lenovo machine with the red button in the middle, and i am not really used to a touchpad, so that throws me off occasionally.
i kept oxs on dualboot, but i doubt i'll use it much because osx won't let me boot linux while hibernating. that's quite irritating. on another laptop i can dual-boot between windows and linux perfectly fine while hibernating each OS before switching. saves a lot of boot-up time.
greetings, eMBee.
it works ok'ish.
i am also coming from a lenovo machine with the red button in the middle, and i am not really used to a touchpad, so that throws me off occasionally.
i kept oxs on dualboot, but i doubt i'll use it much because osx won't let me boot linux while hibernating. that's quite irritating. on another laptop i can dual-boot between windows and linux perfectly fine while hibernating each OS before switching. saves a lot of boot-up time.
greetings, eMBee.
Steven, you are very welcome. I'm glad that you found the discussion interesting. Makes me feel good. :)
the_doctor wrote:The Mac is 10.0% of the desktop market: http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_os.asp
Of that 10% let us say that 1% of the users are Web developers, just for the sake of argument.
1% of 10% = 0.1%
0.01 * 0.1 = 0.001
the_doctor wrote:Linux is 5.4%. So let's steal that 1% away from the Mac and give it to Linux.
Linux would be 6.4% of the market and the Mac would be 9% of the market.
5.4% + 0.1% = 5.5% <> 6.4%
0.054 + 0.001 = 0.055 <> 0.064
10.0% - 0.1% = 9.9% <> 9.0%
0.1 - 0.01 = 0.099 <> 0.09
Math is hard.
Edit: Apparently, so are newlines in these posts.
I always use "Preview" when there's anything beyond simple text in my comments.
Quoting:Steven, you are very welcome. I'm glad that you found the discussion interesting. Makes me feel good. :)
I'm on Reddit fairly regularly, and I only saw this thread as the result of your article, so I'm thankful for the service.
Cool, thanks again Steven. I like Reddit a lot too, it's a great source for interesting stories and comments. There are always juicy tidbits to be found there on various subreddits.
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Linux does not run fine on Apple hardware..
Coda and Transmit are great OS X tools for web development.