Ask HN: What OS do you run?

[grover_hartmann]

What OS do you run/develop on and on what hardware?

Also, what's your toolchain/development stack?

OS: Arch Linux

Hardware: Desktop (custom build), ThinkPad T510

Tools: Ruby, Rails, Vim, Git, etc

[thejosh]

I've been running Ubuntu as my primary desktop since the end of 2005, tried a multitude of other distros but always come back to Ubuntu - it just "works", the font rendering is excellent out of the box, package management is superb, yadadyadayada. I run XFCE, use to run LXDE but found XFCE a lot nicer.

Python/PHP, learning Go.. also learning docker.

My main PC is a Haswell i7, 512GB 850 Samsung SSD for Linux, 840 (512GB) for Windows, 32GB RAM, nVidia 980GTX, I sometimes play games (not as much as I use to), and the desktop is a pretty fantastic option.

I run a MacBookAir 2013 (i7/8GB RAM) with Ubuntu as my primary desktop, it's fantastic hardware the only limitation I run into is when I need to run everything at once (which is rare).

[QuantumRoar]

OpenSuse for work (not my choice), FreeBSD on a private server, OS X for the laptop, pfSense (based on FreeBSD) on a firewall, Raspbian for the little things, and I just ordered a NAS that will be running FreeNAS (also based on FreeBSD).

Vim, Git, Intel compiler, Glasgow Haskell Compiler, Mathematica.

Python for scripting, Haskell for analytical mathematical stuff, Fortran for high performance, Mathematica for fiddling around and sanity checks.

A total of 224 Xeon cores and 5TB of main memory.

For my private hacking I just use a laptop and whatever language seems to fit the purpose. Also, I'm about to buy a desktop computer and I was thinking of using Arch for that.

[zserge]

Thinkpad x120e + Gentoo is the only development machine I run (still looking for a newer 12" thinkpad to replace this one). There is also ubuntu installed in the chroot (for android firmware builds) and a few docker containers with various OSes.

In theory I can survive with any OS/platform, since my primary tools are tmux+vim+zsh. I use them for android development (Java, Kotlin), for web (JavaScript, Golang), for embedded systems (C, Lua).

So the only two apps that I keep always open is a full-screen terminal and a browser. Probably even Chrome OS would be comfortable for me :)

[gh02t]

> Probably even Chrome OS would be comfortable for me

I have one of those Asus Chromeboxes, can't praise them highly enough. I have it dual booting ChromeOS and OpenELEC as a media center and never really intended it to be used as a PC, but I still rather like ChromeOS. With Crouton installed, it's a pretty capable little machine. I occasionally run Steam in Crouton to use the machine as a terminal for in home streaming to my bigger TV.

[FlailFast]

Nice! I'm trying the ChromeOS browser + terminal experiment myself. Just bought a 2015 Chromebook Pixel LS and outside the local storage issue it's a glorious machine.

In terms of terminal use, I thought a chroot would be a little heavy handed and I didn't want to get rid of Google's verified boot, so I bootstrapped Linuxbrew and gcc using this guide: https://github.com/Homebrew/linuxbrew/wiki/Chromebook-Instal...

Given that I use vim + bash + go + ruby / python + js + tmux...well, everything seems to work. And it's easily the fastest web browser I've ever used. I tried installing Gentoo Prefix but couldn't get it up and running...think that would be better than Linuxbrew, but for now this seems to suffice. If I run into any roadblocks I'll probably wind up doing the whole crouton/chroot thing, but for now I'm a happy camper.

[forgotpasswd3x]

> Thinkpad x120e + Gentoo

I can't imagine running gentoo on that computer. The compile times would drive me insane.

[draven]

Archlinux at home on my desktop (custom build, a bit old), with Emacs + Ensime for Scala dev, with the usual suspects: sbt, Scala 2.11.x, Play. A Raspberry Pi B w/ Archlinux. I tried to play with Scala on it but it's a bit too limited. I use it for private repos and a bit of Go coding occasionnaly (with Emacs + tramp or vim over SSH.)

OS X 10.10 on a 2014 MacBook Pro w/ Intellij at work (I hate this damn OS) and a dozen AWS instances running Ubuntu IIRC.

[yodsanklai]

OS X 10.3.3 Mac mini (late 2012), MBP 13 (2014), at work imac 27 (2014) I use mainly vim with plugins (notably youcompleteme, syntastic, ctrlp) for programming in various languages. Python, C++, OCaml, Erlang, Go. I try to keep everything synchronized with unison and git.

I like Mac OS because it works out of the box and I really hate spending time configuring things. But mostly, I'd be fine with any OS. The only thing that ties me to Mac OS is music recording. I couldn't get the same experience with Linux or Windows (not last time I checked a few years ago).

[RexRollman]

Do you mean OS X 10.10.3?

[bovermyer]

I use Mac OS X at work and on my web dev laptop (MBP). I use Windows 8.1 on my gaming PC. I have a Chromebook (CR-48) lying around collecting dust. Most other PCs in the house run Windows 7.

My dev stack is... complex. I use PHP, MySQL, NodeJS, JS/jQuery, Python, and Mongo at work. On personal projects I use Ruby/Rails, PostgreSQL, and raw JS. In both worlds I use Sass. I use a lot of Ansible.

Go is very interesting, and may become important to me in the future.

[davidgerard]

Xubuntu 14.04. It works and stays the heck out of my way. Whenever I hear the words "desktop" and "innovation", I reach for my revolver.

Hardware: whatever the nice thing my employer is providing. As a sysadmin, I feel it is a deep wrongness to spend money on hardware when there are employers for that sort of thing. Desktop is an HP DC7800 (I think) and laptop is a Lenovo X230 (which works flawlessly with free-software drivers).

[jaegerpicker]

OS: Mac OSX Deploy to CentOS

Hardware: Mac Book Pro retina latest refresh deploy to aws/rackspace

Tools: Java, Spring-mvc, JS, node and gulp, Intellij, chrome, emacs, sublime, tower git, kaleidoscope, Sequel Pro, hipchat, paw, zsh-ohmyzsh, iterm, Swift

Just changed positions prior to that it was the same except Python, Django, and Go instead of Java and spring-mvc.

[zumtar]

I use an ATIV Book 9 Plus ultrabook (13.3" LED QHD+ 3200 x 1800) as my main machine - the HiDPI screen is stunning and it is something I couldn't live without now.

Up until a week or so ago, my OS was GNU/Linux Debian Jessie, my DE was Cinnamon and/or i3wm (depending on how I felt).

A week ago I switched to Fedora 21 as I have to get back up to speed with RHEL for a work project. I am now using Gnome 3.14.2, and to be perfectly honest I am pleasantly surprised with the entire experience.

Development tools: vim, gcc, python, opera-beta.

Communication tools: utox and irc.

I also run another machine that sits on a different VLAN that I use for skype, the machine is locked down with SELinux and firewall rules both inside the machine and on the Ethernet switch and router, I also use this machine if i need to view any flash content.

[gh02t]

Primary workstation is a custom tower with Arch Linux. Secondary is a dirt cheap laptop with Fedora, home server is FreeBSD. I also have a monster headless workstation at my job that runs CentOS. Oh, I forgot... I have one of the newish Dell Venue 8000 Android tablets too. I got one of those folding Microsoft bluetooth keyboards to go with it and it makes a pretty capable little SSH terminal that I can actually be productive on as well.

I mostly use Python, C++, Fortran and Haskell. For C++/Fortran, I mostly use the Intel compilers or Clang. I do my coding in Vim, with a few plugins to add the IDE features that I actually use. I use a mix of Kdb and Idb for debug work, both are really awesome.

I use i3 pretty much exclusively and urxvt+tmux, with some bits and pieces from KDE (e.g. Dolphin).

[jjuhl]

Arch Linux privately. CentOS 7 for work.

Toolchain: private; clang + gold linker. For work; GCC + gold linker. Emacs as editor/IDE in both cases. Privately i use Scons as my build tool, at work we use CMake. Debugger == gdb. As for languages, I do 98% C++, 2% C.

[nitai]

This is a question that comes at the right time for me.

I just went two weeks with a Asus UX305 and Ubuntu 14.04. Everything worked out of the box. Beautiful hardware, too.

Since I run all my servers on Ubuntu LTS I really wanted to go with Ubuntu Desktop.

However, after two weeks I'm going back to MacOS X. Reason is that I'm just way faster with MacOS X. Additionally, and I hate to say this, but it is not the OS alone anymore theses days.

Applications can make or break your decision. Something like Sourcetree is awesome, Arq (for backup) is a simple no-brainer. The option to use Time-Machine and re-install a Mac is painless. Dash for documentation simply rocks, Slack as an independent app is very convenient, etc.

[huehue]

Home: i7-4770k, 16gb RAM, AMD r9 290x running Windows 8.1. I might be getting an XPS 13 to replace my old laptop.

Work: i5, 8gb RAM 2015 MacbookPro running OS X.

I develop on Debian VMs (VirtualBox + Vagrant) at work and Ubuntu Server VMs (VMWare Workstation) at home. Almost everything is done remotely, sshing into the dev VM and running emacs there, the only exception being java stuff. Other than VM management tools and Eclipse my client boxes don't have much development stuff installed.

Tools: Emacs, Notepad++, Eclipse, Perl, Java, Clojure, Git, Putty/iterm2, Firefox, MySQL, redis. I'm playing around with OCaml but I'm a total noob.

[gtf21]

- OSX 10.10 on a MacBook Pro, 15" late 2014 (I use my laptop for everything, work and home). - Various servers with Ubuntu / Debian on Digital Ocean.

- Atom, Git (Tower/Atom/command line), Node, Python, Docker

[jsherer]

Just recently picked up a Lenovo Thinkpad and immediately installed Ubuntu 14.04 LTS on it. It's quite unfortunate that the bar is set so low with Linux laptops that the thing I enjoyed most is that everything worked out of the box, including wifi, suspend/hibernate, and external monitors. Hopefully this trend continues with more laptop brands so more people can enjoy the freedom in choosing an OS that works best for them without having to worry about whether or not standard features work without difficulty.

[Mister_Snuggles]

Work is MacOS X and Windows 7 on a Retina MacBook Pro. Windows is used for PeopleTools, but everything else (SQL Developer, NetBeans, etc) runs in MacOS.

Home is Mac OS X on a 4-year-old MacBook Pro (which, after replacing the HDD with an SSD, feels a lot faster than you might expect) or Kubuntu 14.10 on a ThinkPad x131e (working Linux, cheap, and rugged were the main requirements when I bought that). Personal projects generally involve Python or Java, so a text editor and NetBeans are my tools of choice.

[greggyb]

Work:

OS: Windows 7+, Windows Server 2008+

Hardware: Consistently 4+ workstations and dev servers with varying specifications.

Tools: SQL Server 2008+, Visual Studio 2012 with tweaked VsVim. Powershell, Vim and Cygwin.

I work in BI consulting, so dev environments and workstations change with clients.

Home:

OS: Arch Linux

Hardware: 2008 Sony Vaio (Core 2 Duo 2.5 GHz, 4G RAM, not as bad as it sounds - I have no reason to update this machine until the RAM goes).

I don't really do development at home - just trying to learn "real" programming. Vim, playing in Python, Lisps (Scheme and Common), and Haskell currently.

[mattkrea]

Work: OS X on 2013 MacBook Pro (13")

Home: Ubuntu 14.10 (used on all our servers as well)

Tools: Sublime Text 3 + SublimeLinter + GoSublime and when I'm forced into it.. Visual Studio 2013 on a Windows 7 VM

[lordbusiness]

OS: Mac OS X (But likely switching to Ubuntu soon)

Hardware: Retina MacBook Pro (But XPS 13 Dev Edition will be next)

Tools: Atom, Git, whatever toolkits necessary for my current working language.

Edit: formatting and typo