Summary of Reddit thread

Christian Schaller cschalle at redhat.com
Thu Apr 2 14:19:55 UTC 2015


I came across this Reddit thread* about why devs use Mac OS X instead of Linux. I tried to pick out a representative set of comments below as I thought it could be a useful exercise to help us refine or reinforce our efforts around the Fedora Workstation. Being human there probably is some confirmation bias in my selection of quotes, but hopefully not to much :)

I think a lot of these items are things we are already aware of and trying to fix, but of course not all of them are easily fixable, like access to proprietary Windows or MacOS X applications or similar hotkeys/behaviour across UI toolkits. I think we made some great strides in the stability department, but reading the reddit thread did reinforce that it is an area we need to keep focus going forward.

Christian


"I'm one of the only linux users in a mostly mac web dev shop. The sense I get from everyone else is they don't want to play sysadmin or tweak all the things. They put 100% of their brain cycles into getting shit done. Taking a half hour here or there to google for better xbm icons for their tiling WM's bar is not part of their day."

"I play in Linux and work on a Mac (or work on Linux servers through the terminal). Just because I have the knowledge doesn't mean I want to put in the effort when there are other things I'd rather be doing."

"Seriously long battery life"

"Access to commercial apps like Excel and Photoshop"

"The desktop looks OK, not spectacular, but it generally stays out of the way and lets us get on with the work."

"Sure, I'd prefer to have a pure linux working environment, but it's not worth the heartache of figuring out why last weeks update broke my multi-monitor, again. I've got stuff to do, and OSX is good at allowing me to get that stuff done."

"Experience on a Linux desktop is so dependent on the hardware that is running. There should be a buying guide where folks have tested everything under the hardware. My bet is that if hardware manufacturers experiences a significant jump on their products, they'll start watching more carefully and will want to be on that recommended list."

"Close to all applications on OS X follow the design guidelines, and if you can navigate one application, then you can likely navigate them all. On Linux the UI is a mess of different UI libraries that all look and act differently. Sometimes a central enforcement of things is actually a good thing."

"I find OS X to be much more polished than any Linux GUI I ever used. Are there any Linux distros that automatically adjust the LCD and keyboard backlight when ambient light changes?"

"There's absolutely nothing that will ever make me switch to desktop Linux from OSX. Anything I want to do requires Googling, complex CLI operations, and usually takes a few "solutions" before things actually start working or are fixed while doing untold damage along the way."

"I don't want to fiddle with config files, /etc, anything anymore."


*http://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/30pgob/why_do_web_devs_use_os_x_what_would_take_it_for/


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