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by zee2345 985 days ago
Windows can install full Linux distro via WSL. You can have a nmap in two minutes!

I like it much better than MacBook with its incompatible ARM cpu, and outdated commands from some ancient BSD!

6 comments

GNU tools are generally one command away on macOS. So is nmap, and it takes a lot less than 2 minutes to have it running directly on the host. What's ARM incompatiblw with? Certainly not Linux distros, certainly not GNU tools, and certainly not networking. Not to mention that for most things that don't run native, Rosetta2 makes them work at near native performance.

You can also run Linux on a VM if you want. With the native macOS virtualisation stack in UTM it takes about 2 seconds to have a full Linux VM up and running.

It's been a year or two but last time I tried networking tools like nmap in WSL I would get all kinds of errors.
I was getting errors from ping. Update fixed that, my guess is WSL2 is much better
Big fan of using Orbstack for this. Full Linux VM with transparent access to Mac disk. I love it.
you can install gnu utils on a mac if you’d rather use them.
Yes ever since the M1 chip it’s just annoying to work on the M1. Day to day it doesn’t matter much but it wastes days of times the few times i ran into an issue. I wish companies would stop defaulting to macs for development
Would not work at a company who only offered macs.
Can someone enumerate these problems? I’ve been on an M1 for almost 2yrs and I’m apparently missing out on what makes it a bad experience.
Some X86 binaries do not run on M1, big deal in ERP. My collages spend like two weeks trying to emulate some older server.

It has little RAM, small disk... so you depend on cloud for build. No Nvidia GPU for CUDA... Some USB externals do not work...

Depends on which model you get and how you configure it. You can easily get up to 96GB of RAM and 8TB of SSD, if that's what you really want. It's damn bloody expensive to do that, but the possibility is there.

So, you can't legitimately say that the memory is always low and the disk is always small. That's just a configuration thing. If you don't configure it right, then I don't hold out much sympathy for you.

What?
He, I asked for Windows laptop. I am the only one in like 30 people.

My laptop has 64GB RAM and 2TB ssd. And unlike Mac, it drives 4x4k displays via USB4 hub. Even with all those extras, it costs less than Macbook, and I have some hardware budget still available:)

And it came with unlocked bios, no spy software... Windows are basically unsupported by our IT...

Depends on what Mac you get, but 64GB of RAM and 2TB of SSD with support for four 4k displays is pretty easy with the current MacBook Pro. It might be more expensive than your garden variety Windows laptop, or maybe not if you find one of the great deals that are frequently offered by B&H Photo or Adorama.

No spy software will be installed, and the latest version of macOS is making it harder and harder for people to create malware that can easily infect Macs.

`brew install nmap`