N.B.: the "switch to Windows" is from macOS and not from Linux, just in case anyone was wondering. I think it's very interesting that the availability of Linux on Windows helped the author choose Windows.
The switch stories are always either “from Mac-OS” or “to Linux”, the former being a “oh no you didn’t” and the latter being “I’m with cool birds now” narrative.
It’s basically non-stories because your OS matters as little as what programming language you use.
Pick the one that works for you, but don’t become a fucking missionary or tie your personality to your brand of choice.
That might work for you and your choices but when you talk to developers whose software doesn't support your choice because "nobody uses it", and there are no native alternatives, you quickly see the fight is real.
The odd bit of platform evangelism is the reason we don't all have to use Windows. It's the reason we have a choice at all.
Yea, I made the jump from osx to Linux switch more than a year ago because of the hardware situation. I also have dual boot windows just for Lightroom. It was a bit of tinkering just because I decided to go for a bit esoteric distribution (NixOS) and also switch to tiling (i3 and sway). It’s different, I think it’s much better and tiling really keeps the clutter at bay. I am very happy with the setup and when I have to use OS X (still have the old MacBook pro for time on the road) I don’t enjoy it any more.
>It’s basically non-stories because your OS matters as little as what programming language you use.
>Pick the one that works for you, but don’t become a fucking missionary or tie your personality to your brand of choice.
I do what I want and you can't tell me what to do!
I think RMS was and is right and computing should not be viewed through a purely pragmatic lense, and I'm going to keep mentioning the importance of foss and copyleft to the future of computing and how it enables freedom for the user until I see fit to stop.
I think OS choice greatly matters. I say this as a senior sysadmin who has had to support all 3 major OS's for over a decade. Windows 10 was the final straw for me and I went completely gnu/linux and haven't looked back since except to feel sorry for all the stockholm syndrome I see in those chained to those ecosystems.
It is not about any specific OS or platform, it is about making sure the owner/admin is the final arbiter of what can or can't be done on that computer (now and into the infinite future).
As someone who made the same jump, Windows wasn't really a viable platform for non-dotNet developers until that happened. The state of Linux on the desktop is, frankly, a disaster — I spent months on trying to make it work, but wow, it's not worth the time.
Windows has been a viable platform for software development since always.
I have been developing Windows software since Windows 3.1 and my first UNIX was Xenix, followed by DG/UX, Aix and many other variants.
Windows is perfectly viable developer OS for C++, Delphi, Tcl/TK, Perl, Python, Java and .NET developers.
Microsoft did a mistake not following up on Windows NT POSIX support, because that is what many care about is POSIX shell utilities and C APIs, the actual kernel is irrelevant.
Exactly I spent many years with a windows desk top as my pc developing for Solaris and before that Primos (an ITS derived os) and for Unisys A Series mainframes.
I must be doing something wrong. I've been using Linux for my primary desktop since 1995 (started with TurboLinux 2.0, then jumped to RH v5.2).
Was it a cakewalk over the year? No. Even today there are times where I'm in WTF mode about something or another (my favorite is when I do an update to the NVidia drivers and it borks my system hard enough I have to restore my X config in some manner or another at the command line because I have custom crap in it).
But I don't regret anything about my 2+ decade decision to ditch Windows.
The fact that there is a wall between the Linux stuff and Windows stuff (“You can't edit a file that originates from the Linux userland inside Windows.”) sounds very hacky to me.
It's not a VM, it's like the inverse of WINE... it's a compatibility layer... and that one piece (not being able to edit files in the LSW from windows/gui) is what keeps me off of it.
It’s basically non-stories because your OS matters as little as what programming language you use.
Pick the one that works for you, but don’t become a fucking missionary or tie your personality to your brand of choice.