this post was submitted on 07 Oct 2023
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Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).
Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.
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My bigger problem is many swear on FLOSS, but using Apple is OK. Go to a FLOSS conference and there are Macs everywhere.
It's undeniable that Microsoft has had positive influences on the opensource world with language servers, debug adapter protocol, an inbrowser editor that is seemingly embedded in any website with a code editor, cross-platform C# (maybe that's a curse though, I dunno), linux contributions, and probably more I'm not aware of. Apple... I dunno. Vendor lock-in and more electronic trash?
Apple isn't okay. Apple is forced onto developers. The general population using Apple products requires developers to use Macs. And, last time I checked, it's a lot easier carrying around one laptop than two. It also doesn't hurt that Apple products aren't exactly the quality of off-brand Chinese laptops.
I hope EU slaps Apple hard for abusing their market position in this. I've seen it happen in several companies I've worked in. Developers prefer Linux, but it's the only machine you can build for all target platforms, so.... macbooks it is.
Plenty of developers prefer Macs to anything else. Forcing developers to use Macs for iOS development isn't okay though.
Of course. They are pretty great battery wise. UI and OS is however inconsistent, buggy and frustrating. I had expected "annoying design decisions".
They are 20% of the laptop/desktop owners? 25%? A dev is most likely going to be writing backend software to run on a linux platform on some server somewhere or write a web application (for the browser or electron). How many devs are actually going to be writing mac-native applications?
Sure Browserstack or browserling. Costs less than a Mac and get you browsers on all OSes (even mobile OSes).
I am one of those people. I have a Macbook Air laptop, which I mainly use to remote into my Linux desktop while on the go (mainly with vscode by the way). I found this to be sweet spot of usability, while at home the laptop is in a bag, charging and waiting for the next outing. This way I can enjoy the niceties of having a big desktop PC (performance, a LOT of USB ports, a huge monitor).
The reason I have the Apple laptop is mainly because of the lightness and battery life. No other machine comes close to it. For now I sort of treat it as a dumb terminal, so MacOS is not a big hassle for me (except for the insanely dumb window management). I will try to ditch MacOS as soon as Asahi Linux releases webcam and microphone support, because it is the only thing that is stopping me from using it.
And yeah, the ugly truth is that once I damage the screen or the SSD fails, the whole thing becomes e-waste (and money-waste).
I mean if it's the choice between Fisher-Price Linux in a decently good looking package or Windows in whatever (maybe entirely useless spec) machine your employer offers, it's probably better to get the Mac for a lot of people.
Why not Linux though? I don't get it. Why does it have to be "Fisher-Price Linux or Windows"? (I assume FP-Linux = Mac?)
I guess it's mostly because Mac and Windows are just easier to run for most organizations, and IME as someone who's never worked at a software company, IT teams don't have any interest in admin'ing Linux for a small handful of users.
Probably those IT teams are just ignorant. Kerberos has been around since 1988. Fat and thin clients ran on Unix back in the 80s, there Endpoint Protection Platforms (EPP) exist for for linux and so do Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR), opensource Preboot eXecution Environments (PXE) have existed since at least 1984 so you can install linux on a bunch of devices in your LAN with the configuration you want, it's possible to setup update policies and a bunch of other things if you like as they can be grabbed from a server, you have remote desktop solutions, and so on and so forth.
The only real thing missing IINM is Mobile Device Management (MDM) where a user can get a mobile device delivered to them, they login and enter a URL + credentials into their MDM solution, and the device pulls configuration information from a remote server to setup and manage the device. The device never has to enter the premises of the enterprise and employees can be anywhere in the world and be provisioned. There are workarounds, but nothing enterprisey has been made yet, which is probably due to the lack of Linux at work. A chicken and egg problem.
But well... you might be right. Non-linux sysadmins probably think it's not possible and just hand out windows or mac.
I mean even if you were totally knowledgeable about it (Imo, as a non-IT person) it seems like it's a hard sell in terms of effort/value unless it's totally necessary esp if there's an established user base for Mac/windows.
I think Apple is supposedly meant to be more respectful of privacy, which to be fair I haven't heard of much scandal around user data from apple, they have other issues though
They had an Ad network. I'm not sure how that's supposed to "respect your privacy". They're very good at marketing, I'll give them that.
Didn't know about that. I don't use any apple stuff and know nothing about how they operate except what I hear online
Well... Whenever that statement is said, there is a pretty significant caveat: the data collection done by apple itself is ignored.
is that a typo of FOSS or is FLOSS something else?
Free, Libre and Open Source Software
what does libre mean? I thought that was just a thing for the office suit
Libre basically means "free as in freedom"
oh that makes a lot of sense, so then the F in FLOSS unambiguously stands for Free as in no-charge, thanks for the explanation!
No, this is a common misconception. F has always stood for Free as in freedom. No part of FOSS or FLOSS refers to price.
This confusion is one of the reasons why the term FOSS or FLOSS is problematic.
oh
I think that's pretty silly bc free as in price seems like a pretty important pillar to me. but thanks anyway for the extra context on the nuances between "free" vs open source and correcting my misunderstanding about free as in price
In the context of the software freedom movement, the fundamental pillars are the four freedoms - to use, share, modify, and share modified copies. It's never been about price and we even say that selling free software is okay.
It's a common misconception about the free software movement to say we're against "developers making money" when we're really just about computer users having the four freedoms. We just argue that those four freedoms come before the developer's business model.
this confuses me more, if it's free to use and share, how can it be not free of charge? is putting up a paywall not expressly limiting all four of those freedoms for people who can't afford to pay? I know the article says you could get it free from a friend, but how is that different from stealing if the original dev is charging money for it? idk it just seems weird to me to focus so much on free not meaning free-of-charge when the same effort could be spent emphasizing alternate ways of monetization besides paywalling software that's intended to be shared
besides that, it is sad to learn that people use a straw-man argument like saying someone is against developers making money just because of the idea that they support free-of-charge software. I feel like companies such as red hat have pretty much proven that free-of-charge software can be made in a system where developers still get paid (ie through selling support, taking donations, etc).
thanks again for the extra context, I appreciate you helping me improve my understanding of this situation
May people just love to hate Microsoft. It's still seen as a boomer company by may.
Apple does have some open source contributions. One example is CUPS, which was made by Apple and is now used by most modern Linux distros for managing printers. If you want more examples you'll have to ask someone who actually likes Apple, I'm sure they can think of more.
Thanks for the correction!
There's also Webkit, which a few foss browsers (ie gnome web, and whatever kde's browser is called) use instead of Chromium or Gecko, and Swift, a c++ based language that I haven't personally seen used much outside of iOS development.
I don't like Apple tho (:
While Apple have contributed to WebKit, they did not make it. It started as a fork of KHTML, a KDE project.
Not everything Apple is bad but iMessage is an active annoyance and so is their walled garden approach. It's a bit like looking at someone you hate and talking about how that one time they brought a pie to the pot luck at work.
Sure it's cross platform, but it lacks feature parity with the Windows version. And the development experience is lacking on Linux. It's not even that they haven't brought everything over, it's that they've even removed features, like hot-reload, from Linux.
Do you think Microsoft removed features from their language because they hate Linux? Or do you think maybe the way syscalls and the filesystem work are different in Linux and that makes hot reload a bit of an engineering problem?
We can never know, but I'm guessing Microsoft didn't port their language to Linux just to shoot themselves in the foot. On the other hand, it is Microsoft.