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by wuwuno 2189 days ago
I've been a nix guy since 1983. Worked for a major nix player, wrote end user application software on the platform, built chip design software on the platform, wrote device drivers for all kinds of hardware, system admin for years and years, etc. etc. I'm not some newb who just fell off the truck.

In many way *nix is still stuck in 1983 because it's a craftsman's platform, which is why there 10,000 distros, oops 10,001, no 10,002, oh 10,003, ugh! Linux is great on servers, because all servers require craftsman for the care and feeding, and Linux is so much better than Windows in that regard.

I gave up my Linux machines because I'm no longer interested in being my own sys admin. Frankly I was done being my own sys admin back in the 90's but I felt the need to keep my propeller spinning, and stay true to my geek roots.

In 2008 I bought a Mac Pro 8 core machine, and that's still kicking, my son uses it for Machine Learning as part of his graduate program, and it's just as fast now as when I first bought it. It was left behind with the last OS upgrade, but it will work just fine for another 4 or 5 years on the old OS.

In 2009 I still had a Linux laptop, but it was painful back then. With SnowLeopard it became easier to create an maintain a Hackintosh then it was to manage a Linux laptop I was off Linux for good.

For a hobbyist(craftsman) Linux is great, for a server that needs craftsman, Linux is great, for a consumer, buy a Mac.

2 comments

And most server admin is moving to an “immutable infra” model where the Linux box is a container worker node that is disposable. Life’s too short to be sysadmining.
I went to a mix of Windows/macOS instead, but can fully relate to your story, as I had an UNIX zealot phase during my university years, and have been the UNIX/Windows porting guy at several projects.

My reason for giving up was reaching the conclusion that Linux distributions would never replicate the expectations of an Amiga/BeOS like experience for those that care about multimedia.