Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by komali2 51 days ago
> But it beggars belief that most of the millions of GitHub's users would switch to something so much more complicated. Has the same energy as "20XX is finally the year of linux on the desktop".

This is funny, because 2025-on seems to be starting some couple years of Linux on the desktop/laptop. Valve introduced millions of people to gaming on Linux, bazzite is exploding in popularity, and that popularity is pouring into other projects like Omarchy, Mint, Ubuntu.

GitHub maybe will end up like Twitter - where the people who are there are there because they have to be, while the people actually enjoying their time online are on different platforms.

2 comments

I joined a startup 3 years ago as employe 6. everyone was using windows but I was used to working with macos so I got a mac.

Took a year till everyone was using a Mac.

Most places I've worked I've had the autonomy to re-install my machine to whatever OS I worked with, so was always Debian Linux.

Then I joined some mega-corp, with it's structures and set systems, so opted for a Macbook.

Worst mistake of my life, OSX is horrid, I'd rather use Windows.

Lack of knowledge about something can certainly make it seem horrid. It just means you have a lot to learn. There is a reason so many of us engineers with decades of experience in Windows, MacOS (and OSX), and Linux use a Macbook Pro as our daily driver.
That is a really really shitty comment. Because their choice is different to yours they have a lack of knowledge?

FYI I had a top class developer working for me about 5 years ago, who saw me using WSL and VScode... they had a Windows machine and several macs due to the nature if their work. A week later they were on Windows every day, only using apple for apple builds.

The answer is, we don't all do the same kind of work. There is a reason so many engineers working in your field use mac. Guessing you are a Web developer?

It's funny you say this because the more I learned about mac the more I understood its limitations in being as good an operating system as e.g. Arch.

I know a lot of engineers. Some daily osx, some daily Linux. I'm not seeing any particular correlation in knowledge or skill - except perhaps slightly in the osx people's disfavor.

Maybe you can install homebrew and open source apps to make it more Linux like, but you'll still be stuck with Mac OS's shonky window and task management UI unfortunately.
Install SizeUp. I paid $10 10 years ago and have been using it ever since. Far better window management than any Linux distro I've used. (and better than windows but that's not saying much)

edit: 13 years ago

I like Divvy because it supports more than just halves and quarters — I use a 7×6 grid so my browser can be wider than my editor and terminal: https://mizage.com/divvy/

Pairs well with Stay to make windows automatically return to their assigned layout when plugging/unplugging my external display: https://cordlessdog.com/stay/

I found that part ironic and tone deaf as well. Like, read the room buddy. France just announced they're officially moving from Windows to Linux. The country of France. I think OP is looking for a single lynchpin moment where things change from one way to the other. Where in reality, things rarely happen that way. It's a slow and steady shifting away from one thing towards another.