Why do devs prefer linux/mac for development rather than windows?
Hello, quick question, why do people prefer linux over windows when it comes to developping stuff?
I'm used to windows so I only have windows experience, will really appreciate if someone can explain why other people prefer linux/mac for coding. From what I've read this is why microsoft has enabled WSL.
When it comes to using linux machine as server rather than windows I understood their pros we don't have licensing etc.
60 Replies
WSL is very new considering his long we’ve had Linux servers. And it’s better to just run Linux instead of in a VM on Windows.
But to answer the question: Windows servers used to be hella expensive and Linux was free, so Linux won.
And since macOS is a certified Unix OS, the dev environment is pretty similar to the production Linux environment, and the closer can get dev/prod the better.
I use WSL, it's nice. I really only use it because its recommended and someone at my old work showed me it. If you just want a Linux 'feel' you can use something like Git Bash which allows you to use Unix commands
no I mean, why people prefer to use mac rather than windows
fwiw the original reason is likely because the backend you use has almost always been exclusively Linux
is it just for the "feel" ?
if you develop on windows, that can cause issues with paths and access restrictions and all that jazz
Compatibility is key. The closer dev is to prod the less likely something will break because differences
so folks preferred to develop on *nix systems, and while most devs probably could run linux, it's always been a bit of a crapshoot on laptops, and macs are just nicer hardware and software for day-to-day use
and the price tag doesn't matter if the boss is paying anyway
is there companies that offer mac to their employees? where am doing my internship I have a thinkpad laptop
(and a boss buying a laptop for a developer isn't going to give a shit about an extra €1000 anyway, because that's a fraction of a fraction of what a developer costs per year anyway and the laptop lasts multiple years. ANd even less of a fraction of what they should be able to make off the developer's work)
Yea my company does
ohhh ok
lots of places do, though it's not everywhere anymore
didn't know that
yeah I see, for personal use, is it worth to shift from windows to mac?
what it really boils down to at the end of the day I think is that Windows users backslashes for path separators and *nix uses forward slashes
Not really imo
especially not since the advent of WSL
oh ok got it, my laptop is giving down day by day, so was thinking of saving a little bit for a mac but since I never use one, I don't know if it would worth it :c
I wouldn't bother, personally
macs are also more expensive to run and repair
the expectation for a lot of software on mac is that it's paid, where on windows and linux a lot of software is free
yup I see
one last thing, for person use, for development purposes, like building our own personal projects etc, can anyone of you recommend what would be considered as good spec pls
for frontend?
or full stack?
full stack
hmm. Get something with a decent amount of RAM so you can run docker. That's about it
a screen is nice too, and a keyboard
hmm decent amount, like how much? 16 GB?
that's probably fine, yeah
though it's nice to have the option to expand that if you want
yeah, it's my first time using big screens at my internship, like I can extend my screens etc, I am use to that now, I find it difficult with one screen at home 😭
yep noted
Ty !
used to?
windows server starts being paid by the core after 16 cores.
and the windows server tools for the internet are just ...
microsoft used to charge CALs for "uniquely identified users" on your system. That included people that logged into your website based on credentials stored in MySQL
yup
Get 32 if you can afford it
Idk how people still run with 16
I can barely get by with 32
for dev work, i had to upgrade my laptop to 32gb
but if you are at home, you can get away with buying a raspberry pi zero 2 with headers
and you can do many things there, maybe all that you need
it's a 15€ pc
for me, the vscode integration with wsl is important, since i can just click and go
if you dont mind tinkering, you can go that route
I didn't use wsl yet, I didn't have a purpose to use it but why do people use it? I mean I did install a distro on that, it was ubuntu, I was able to open the command line but after that didn't know what to do next
what gap has WSL bridged?
I use it purely because it was recommended to me at work. In some cases it's easier to set things up on WSL (like ddev, for example -- but that's really niche to what I was working with)
Now I just use it as a way to separate my work stuff, and it's nice to use the Unix (?) commands over Windows
y'all are wild, I'm sitting here with 8 and decently happy about it
Can you even run Chrome with 8 😂
firefox sits at 2-ish GB all day
I, too, have 8. Wish I could have afforded 16 though
it has yet to hamper my use of this PC
though I guess I don't use docker, but 🤷
I just wouldn't buy a PC with 8 anymore, it's not exactly future proof
i use it because i can spin another install in 10 minutes max, and the terminal and explorer and vscode integrate with it really well
you can also just use localhost for your stuff, without having to fiddle with ip addresses and other crap
yep noted, ty !
using WSL, we can now just ran commands sudo apt install rather than going on the web and finding an installer?
Yea you have to do that anyway since you need to be inside of WSL
An installer wouldn't work I think
WSL is just a headless linux VM with some fancy network BS
you're literally just running Ubuntu on your windows machine
yeah I see
thanks for the insight shared, really appreciate
Most dev tools are also built for Linux and can cause problems on windows
On of the people other days had prettier complaining about formatting even after the code file was formatted
They later reported that it was due to line break on windows being different or something and they had to do some config
Also I'm not sure about this but if you care about testing on safari maybe then mac is important? Since safari isn't available anywhere else
hmm I think we can download safari on windows, no?
I remember having downloaded it years ago
They discontinued it from what I remember
safari 5, from before ie11
you can download the webkit test browser
GitHub
[BUG] Arguments are not correctly passed from CLI to npm script (n...
Environment: OS: Windows 10Pro 20H4 Node: 16.0.0 npm: 7.11.0 package.json: ... "script": { "git": "git", "help": "npm run git -- --help" } npm run ...
There was also this thing where powershell just wouldn't pass arguments to npm
Only got fixed recently iirc
So yeah bugs. Tho maybe Linux also has it's share but probably not as obvious as these
And probably would be prioritized to get fixed I assume over windows bugs
Is this for latest version?
This thread's question assumes windows as the default and that's not the case in software development. You'll use different operating systems for different needs. Techy people also just like having more customizability and understanding of their os so linux is great for them. In gamedev windows is still the standard sadly. Web dev is much more mixed since browsers works pretty much the same on all operating systems, so people just use whatever they prefer and know best
is there a reason why in game dev windows is still prefered?
all the tooling is just built for windows
always
especially in aaa. of course you can build your godot game on linux but for big studios it's hard to switch
and game engines tend to target windows anyway
Most games are run on Windows. So again, dev and prod souls be as close as possible
actually now that proton is so good there's little reason to make a native build. proton is sometimes even faster and less buggy than native lmao
visual studio is also pretty much the standard in games because a lot of extensions are built for it
yeah I see
well, anti-cheat is still mostly setup just for windows