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by eksemplar 3066 days ago
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.

4 comments

> but don’t become a fucking missionary

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.
>> Pick the one that works for you, but don’t become a fucking missionary or tie your personality to your brand of choice.

I find that people naturally tend to want others to be like them.

It doesn't matter whether its politics, religion, OS, camera brand, camera sensor size, programming language, diet fad or whatnot.

Maybe it makes them feel better about the choices they made?

More like people want external confirmation that they made the right choice.
>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.

The RMS message is different though.

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).

>it is about making sure the owner/admin is the final arbiter of what can or can't be done on that computer

Which you can't do with Windows, and only to a certain degree with osx.