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by mhh__ 1282 days ago
Soo niche except for 99.99999% of devs
4 comments

A lot of devs don’t want to tinker with Linux. Myself included. And this is disregarding all of the work places that only give out Windows or MacOS machines.
I use Linux. No tinkering required if you use a major distro. I used to like to tinker with stuff, but slowly my viewpoint changed. Most of the time these tweaks are just different, not better, and a waste of time. Worse, whenever you have to use a more stock configuration on another machine, you are fumbling around. These days I just use the defaults on almost everything, whether Windows, Mac, or Linux.
Also I've spent a grand total of 30 minutes tinkering with my Linux machines this year, windows has had to be reinstalled twice.
No tinkering required. Tinkering can be tempting and dangerous, but if you keep yourself in check it's just not a thing you need to do. Unless you install Arch, but then you deserve what you get. Just install Ubuntu or Pop and you'll be fine.
"No tinkering required" needs to come with a big YMMV. Most of the devs I've polled about their Linux experience matches the OP, they tried it and went back to Mac/Windows.
The comment I am replying to says that computers with keyboards are niche, that's what I'm replying to
As a developer I tried Linux for 1 year (no dual boot). It was such traumatic experience, that I would never repeat it again.
Not me, I make it a habit to try Linux every year to see what the major distros are, and test their feasibility as a replacement for MacOS. I usually run into bugs and lots of necessary copy-paste from the internet to get random features working.
Even the majority of “command line devs” are satisfied by Mac or even WSL for their machines. The servers they connect to are almost always Linux, however.
Apparently not, since every time Microsoft does something boneheaded that alienates their "command line devs" we hear about it on hackernews.
If they didn't keep using it we'd've only heard about the first time.
It's almost as if those are multiple people with different tolerances for microsoft induced pain