Religion

[PhilipDAth]

I'm thinking of replacing my notebook in a couple of months.

I'm trying to decide which OS to go for.  Ubuntu, Windows 10, Mac OS, or something else.

I currently use Ubuntu.

I used to use Windows 10 when it first came out for maybe 6 months.  But it was so horribly slow it I couldn't stand it and wiped my machine and moved to Ubuntu.  Ubuntu has been great.

These days Windows 10 has been improved greatly, and I don't find it slow when I use it on other peoples machines.  So that is no longer a barrier to me.

I mostly use Web apps such as Office 365, LucidChart, Meraki Dashboard, Cisco Spark, the community, etc.

I use languages like Python and NodeJS.  I use a little bit of perl, but not so much on my workstation these days.  I like being able to use tools like grep to quickly search through lots of text data.

I use VMWare Workstation daily so I can have multiple machines setup with different configurations for testing things.

So which OS would you go for?

[jlandky]

Why not all three - My personal station is a MacBook Pro running Parallels with WIN10 and Ubuntu.

[ww]

hmmmm win10 in vm is slow. linux in vm is great.  im using win10 as main os and others in vm.  did you run windows on ssd before? 

[PhilipDAth]

Yes, my machine has always had an SSD.

[Adam]

Agreed with the above.  I feel like with a Mac you have the flexibility to run all 3 if you really wanted or needed to.  With any of the others not so much.  

[PhilipDAth]

After some further consideration, I have decided to rule Apple out of the options.

My primary concern with Apple is the eco-system they have created of vendor lock in, to make it hard to move to another platform.

For example, you used to be able to get Apple Configurator for Windows and Mac, so you could put an initial policy onto an Apple device.  Now there is only a Mac version, creating vendor lock in.

Consider iMessage - if you get all your mates on this then you are locked into using Apple devices.  You can't use it on any other platform.

Consider hardware like Apple Watch - once again only works with other Apple devices.

Consider music purchased through iTunes - its a real bitch trying to move that to a non-Apple platform.  Consider music purchased through Google Music - works on everything.

Apple want you to use all these technologies so that once they get you on their platforms it is hard for you to leave.

Once of the reasons I can use a platform like Ubuntu at the moment is that none of the technology I used is locked in.  I can use it on a Microsoft platform, on an Apple platform, on Android - and even Linux.

To support Apple would be choosing to support a company that wants to exclude others.

[Adam]

Right but you don't have to use the OS centric products.  The same argument could be made for Microsoft based products.  I purposefully try to avoid using any product that is OS specific and I stick to cloud based tools when possible.  Gmail, google photos, messenger etc.   

[PhilipDAth]

That sounds just like me!  The majority of the tools I used are cloud centric as well.

It makes the OS less important, and at the same time, harder to choose.

[Adam]

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@PhilipDAth wrote:

That sounds just like me!  The majority of the tools I used are cloud centric as well.

It makes the OS less important, and at the same time, harder to choose.

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That was the same situation I was in.  I try to make sure my tools/environment isn't dependent on a machine so I could conceptually work from anywhere on any machine.  So the reason I chose a Mac was mostly just to learn it.  I can still boot Windows if I wanted to but I work on tons of windows computers regularly so I'm not really missing anything.  And I boot from Kali linux via USB for security related work.  Good luck with your purchase.  Hardest decision an IT guys has to make lol.