Re: Mac OS X or Windows?
Frantisek Psotka
>
> I know it's a basic question and I do not want a discussion about
> which one is the best in general, I only want to know which OS you'd
> recomment for programing in Rails and to do webdesign.
> Maybe you can also tel me why you think so?
>
> Regards,
> zok
the most simple question with the most clear answer. i've tried both.
--
Posted via http://www.ruby-forum.com/.
Ron
I'm not sure that it matters as much anymore. I used to work for an
all Windows shop that did ColdFusion and Adobe CS3. So I approached
Ruby from Windows. I found that it was fine. Now, I code in Mac OS
X, which is also pretty easy to do.
I have a slight preference for Mac or Linux because I prefer to use a
terminal sometimes. Its nice to be able to open terminal and type irb
and try an idea.
In either case, I think the more critical choice is what sort of IDE
you want to use. I use NetBeans and that works really well for me.
Ron
Ahmed Abd-ElHaffiez
I used ruby on both OS. I just felt that i got better performance on
the MAC.
I don't have workbenches or so. just when I rum my unit tests. The
MAC was much faster....
guys, plz tell me if i am wrong.
Bryan M.
platforms (OS X, Windows, Linux), so in the end it comes down to what
you prefer, and are comfortable with. That being said, I would
personally recommend Mac OS X or Linux over Windows. Working with rails
(or really any web programming) without a terminal by my side would be
frustrating for me. I think once people are comfortable with the Unix
command line, they realize it has major advantages over anything Windows
has.
I would also argue that software like Ruby, Rails, Subversion, mySQL,
etc were originally intended to run under a Unix environment, and that
much of the documentation on these tools assumes you are, too. Also, on
OS X, you can use Textmate, which is a great editor (although to be
fair, there are tons of great cross-platform editors - I use jEdit when
I'm on Windows).
I really can't make a direct comparison to Windows. I had a bad
experience in the earlier days of Rails trying to get it running through
Apache and SCGI, but I would hope that Mongrel makes it much easier now.
rpflorence
By that I mean Mac OS X.
With VMware Fusion I've got Leopard, XP, Vista and Ubuntu (just for
kicks) and I can run them all simultaneously.
When I'm slapping up an app (especially the CSS) I get Safari,
Firefox, Windows XP IE 6, and a Vista IE 7 windows open all in one
"Space" (multiple desktops) and refresh my way to cross-browser
compatibility bliss. It's funny to see an OS X window behind an XP
window, behind a Vista window all behaving in one desktop--like they
all belong there). I don't have to code for one and then adjust for
others, I just code for them all at once.
(It also doesn't hurt that the core developers of Rails all use OS X
and TextMate and that Rails comes with the Leopard either)
James Byrne
> Hey,
>
> I know it's a basic question and I do not want a discussion about
> which one is the best in general, I only want to know which OS you'd
> recomment for programing in Rails and to do webdesign.
> Maybe you can also tel me why you think so?
>
> Regards,
> zok
At the office I work on a Linux (CentOS-51.) desktop using gvim 7.1 with
ruby-vim gem together with vim scrips such as rails.vim,
vividchalk.vim, Ruby_Snippets and a couple of others that I cannot
recall. The DBMS is postgresql 8.3. and we use Subversion.
I have exactly the same setup on my MS-XPpro laptop, excepting that I
use Tortoise as the svn client, and I really cannot tell the difference
other than the damn / \ reversals. There is a Resource Kit Tools
package for XP (Server2003 actually) that provides a tail command on XP.
I recently had to switch to the pure ruby pg adapter because of a
missing dll in the recent 8.3 release but that works fine for
development.
If vim is too primitive for your tastes then Komodo seems a good
alternative for Rails developers. It comes in Linux and MicroSoft
flavours.
Bryan M.
> with VMware?
The sad news is, you can't. At least not without using very specific PC
hardware configuration and an illegally cracked copy of OS X. OS X will
only work on Mac hardware (and in the case of OEM versions, I believed
it's locked to the specific model of your computer).
I think that's the other reason people generally recommend Macs. It's
easy to run all 3 operating systems, but you can't do it the other way
around. I certainly can't blame you for not wanting to put up the money,
though. If you want OS X, you might want to look into a Mac Mini, it's
not the most powerful system, but it should be fine for web dev.
Rick DeNatale
>
> Hey thanks for your answers!
>
> I think Mac OS has the better programs for developing with rails (e.g.
> Textmate or cocoa MySQL), but I only have a windows machine and Macs
> are not very cheap I think.
While the hardware might be a bit more expensive at first, I think
that the case can be made that the total cost of ownership is at a par
or perhaps less than a windows machine.
Most of the Mac software I use is either open source/freeware or quite
reasonably priced. I find that I can "afford" more software for the
Mac than for Windows.
And for Ruby/Rails work I definitely prefer Mac first, Linux or other
open source posix system (e.g. BSD) second, and windows a distant
third.
--
Rick DeNatale
My blog on Ruby
http://talklikeaduck.denhaven2.com/
Frederick Cheung
On 9 Mar 2008, at 16:43, Rick DeNatale wrote:
>
> On 3/9/08, zok <goo...@recentid.com> wrote:
>>
>> Hey thanks for your answers!
>>
>> I think Mac OS has the better programs for developing with rails
>> (e.g.
>> Textmate or cocoa MySQL), but I only have a windows machine and Macs
>> are not very cheap I think.
>
> While the hardware might be a bit more expensive at first, I think
> that the case can be made that the total cost of ownership is at a par
> or perhaps less than a windows machine.
>
And (at least in my opinion), while $2000-$2500 for a mac book pro is
a decent chunk of cash in absolute terms, I don't consider to be much
given that it is my main work tool, which I spend the best part of
most days looking at.
Fred
Rick DeNatale
> And (at least in my opinion), while $2000-$2500 for a mac book pro is
> a decent chunk of cash in absolute terms, I don't consider to be much
> given that it is my main work tool, which I spend the best part of
> most days looking at.
Also if you hurry, since the new penryn Macbooks and Mackbook pros
were just released, this is a good time to pick up a very slightly
back level model for a good price. They're probably going quickly but
google can probably ferret out some bargains. The new models don't
really add that much unless you REALLY want a pro with a multi-touch
trackpad.
James Byrne
>
> While the hardware might be a bit more expensive at first, I think
> that the case can be made that the total cost of ownership is at a par
> or perhaps less than a windows machine.
>
Or just get a Livino (formerly IBM ThinkPad) Ubantu (RedHat Linux) based
laptop from:
http://www.linuxcertified.com/linux_laptops.html
for between $700 - $1700 and stick with Linux everywhere!
Rick DeNatale
On 3/9/08, zok <goo...@recentid.com> wrote:
>
> Jeah I think you are right, I will go and buy me a mac!
>
> What macbook hardware would you recomment? A G or Core2Duo processor?
>
> On 9 Mrz., 20:44, James Byrne <rails-mailing-l...@andreas-s.net>
rpflorence
are as low as $850. Maximize the RAM from an online store and you've
got a great machine.
I just "upgraded" my MacBook. I bought it for $999, sold it on eBay
for $850 a year later and used that $850 to get a new one for $999.
What is that? $12/mo. cost? That's cheap in anybody's book. Even
Blue Hippo!! Macs are piles of trash after a couple years. Cost of
ownership is much lower (and explicit costs aren't that different
anymore with comparable specs, they just don't ship "junk" as Jobs
says).
On Mar 9, 2:05 pm, zok <goo...@recentid.com> wrote:
> Jeah I think you are right, I will go and buy me a mac!
>
> What macbook hardware would you recomment? A G or Core2Duo processor?
>
> On 9 Mrz., 20:44, James Byrne <rails-mailing-l...@andreas-s.net>
> wrote:
>
Eno
> ...but I only have a windows machine and Macs
> are not very cheap I think.
Really?
Windows is not a great platform for many many reasons - OS X is likely to
be closer to your hosting environment than Windows.
--
A
Gareth Howells
approaches to Linux. Ubuntu is based on Debian which is widely regarded as
being one of the best choices due to its stability and scalability.
-----
Gareth Howells, CertHE (Dunelm), BCS
CEO, GForce Industries
garethATgforce-industriesDOTcoDOTuk
07862725134
GForce Industries
86, Warwick Avenue,
Quorn,
Loughborough,
LEICS.
LE12 8HE
Bryan M.
>Macs are piles of trash after a couple years.
Don't want to get off topic, but I think the opposite of this is true. I
see a lot of people and businesses hold on to their old Macs, even for
production use. We've got everything from Mac Pros to Quicksilver G4s
being used at my office. Looking at the system requirements for leopard,
it should be able to run on systems around 5 years old. Try to run Vista
on a system that old.
They also hold their value much longer, judging by ebay listings.
I think if you're going to be buying a higher end system, I think a Mac
is a pretty good investment.
Gareth Howells
From: "rpflorence" <rpflo...@gmail.com>
> Macs are piles of trash after a couple years.
What are you basing this on?
Eno
> FYI, Red Hat and Ubuntu are different distributions, based around different
> approaches to Linux.
Linux is Linux but Ubuntu is free (as in cost) and Red Hat is not.
Peter De Berdt
FYI, Red Hat and Ubuntu are different distributions, based around differentapproaches to Linux.
Linux is Linux but Ubuntu is free (as in cost) and Red Hat is not.
Best regards
Peter De Berdt
Eno
> ... but Fedora is. Fedora is the community version of Red Hat, just
> like OpenSuSE is the community edition of SuSE.
Sure, but the OP was specifically talking about Red Hat...
Jonzo
seemed like no one had any real evidence to give for each environment.
There are a few good reasons I thought one environment differs over
the next that I've had personal experience with:
Some things don't run on windows (Background processing)
----------------------------------------
I've recently slowed in development of my rails app, and started
improving the performance. One thing I was going to do was to start
using BackgrounDRB to push long running tasks like report generation
or image processing to the background. Only, you can't on windows. For
this reason I am going permanently move to either linux or a mac! This
point is probably my strongest, because there's actually nothing I can
do about it if I want to use BackgrounDRB. I don't know how many other
ruby plugins/gems there are out there that don't run on windows, but
this is the only one I've found.
Some common things are annoying on macs (Image manipulation)
-----------------------------------------
If you are planning on doing any kind of decent image manipulation,
most of what rails has to offer is wrappers for imagemagick.
Imagemagick (I've heard) is horrible to install on a mac. However,
from personal experience, it is a piece of cake on windows and linux
(if you use package management systems like on debian or ubunutu).
There are other image manipulation plugins (ImageScience) that don't
use imagemagick, but last time I checked they could only create
thumbnails, and it couldn't process as many file types.
Command Line, Development Environments, Speed etc.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
First up, it seems like macs and linux are faster than windows for
running ruby code. In dunno why that is, just is. But, having said
that, I develop on windows and macs, and at times linux, and the ONLY
place I have noticed speed problems is while running my unit tests.
Development environments are everywhere. People on macs love textmate,
other people love aptana, or netbeans, or if they're old school
something like vim or emacs... The thing is, development environments
aren't the best reason to choose one or the other. There's something
good on all environments, people like to just stick with what they
know.
People have mentioned command lines a lot (apparently you can't use
one on windows?). I use command line on windows all-the-time. Every
command that you'd want to run for rails development from the command
line you can do in any operating system.
Ease of use
----------------------------------------------
Windows and OSX are easy to use for anyone. Linux is easy to use for
seasoned geeks (no offence). So if you're a noob (no offence), then
don't choose linux right off the bat I guess...
From my experience with linux, some of the most annoying things was
that third party programs often don't work, and if you're not used to
linux, the problems definitely don't solve themselves. I use ubuntu
and simple things were often broken - flash player was broken for
months, google notifier never worked, I switch monitors twice a day
(work and home) with different resolutions, that was just craaaaaazy.
I never quite got the hang of it... These are things I used every day,
all the time, so it drove me crazy (I don't use linux GUI any more,
just command line).
Cost
----------------------------------------------
If you're strapped for cash, linux is the way to go. PC's are about
1/2 the price of a mac for a system with the same specs, and linux is
free, windows is also needlessly expensive when there is linux out
there.
That's my 2c! Correct me if anything I said was wrong :-)
Jonzo.
heimdull
system with the same specs" is not correct...
15" macbook pro is $1990... Go to Dell and get the 15" xps with the
same specs and you are very close. (almost $1800) Thats not including
Vista pro. (or whatever they call it.)
The macbook is more expensive (just not 50% more) but you get a better
product.
Jonathan Fantham
looking at prices in NZ, a 15" macbook pro here is about 3.2k, and a
dell I'd been looking at a few weeks ago was about 2.3k (inspiron),
still not 50% though! Ha, I'll just say that I was just rounding to
the nearest 50% :-) it's actually about 70% the cost.
--
Jonathan
Frederick Cheung
On 10 Mar 2008, at 21:46, Jonzo wrote:
>
> Hi there, I thought I'd just add my 2c in this conversation because it
> seemed like no one had any real evidence to give for each environment.
>
> There are a few good reasons I thought one environment differs over
> the next that I've had personal experience with:
>
>
> Some common things are annoying on macs (Image manipulation)
> -----------------------------------------
> If you are planning on doing any kind of decent image manipulation,
> most of what rails has to offer is wrappers for imagemagick.
> Imagemagick (I've heard) is horrible to install on a mac. However,
> from personal experience, it is a piece of cake on windows and linux
> (if you use package management systems like on debian or ubunutu).
> There are other image manipulation plugins (ImageScience) that don't
> use imagemagick, but last time I checked they could only create
> thumbnails, and it couldn't process as many file types.
Image magick was as easy as `port install ImageMagick` for me. The
only thing that makes rmagick easy on windows is that there is a
prebuilt package, which is both a blessing and a curse. A while back
there was not up to date binary package for several weeks for example.
In general the fact that as a windows use you either need to rely on
prebuilt packages or need to have visual C++ (if you want your
extensions to run against the prebuilt ruby) or compile it all
yourself via cygwin is a pain.
>
>
> Command Line, Development Environments, Speed etc.
> -----------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> People have mentioned command lines a lot (apparently you can't use
> one on windows?). I use command line on windows all-the-time. Every
> command that you'd want to run for rails development from the command
> line you can do in any operating system.
The windows shell has always seemed a bit horrible to me. but that's
just my opinion.
The other thing is that last time I heard, all of rails core was using
a mac.
Fred
Eno
> People have mentioned command lines a lot (apparently you can't use
> one on windows?). I use command line on windows all-the-time. Every
> command that you'd want to run for rails development from the command
> line you can do in any operating system.
True but comparing the windows "shell" to a real shell in UNIX/Linux/Macs
is like comparing a Ford Escort to a luxury Cadillac. Sorry, the Windows
"shell" is truly godawful.
> Windows and OSX are easy to use for anyone. Linux is easy to use for
> seasoned geeks (no offence). So if you're a noob (no offence), then
> don't choose linux right off the bat I guess...
Yeah, clicking through a menu in Ubuntu is so much harder than clicking
through a menu in Windows or Mac. NOT.
> I switch monitors twice a day
> (work and home) with different resolutions
Why?
> , that was just craaaaaazy.
> I never quite got the hang of it...
...or never bothered to learn about.
> That's my 2c! Correct me if anything I said was wrong :-)
I just did :-)
--
Marlon Moyer
On Mar 8, 2008, at 2:11 PM, Ron wrote:
>
> Hi zok,
>
> I'm not sure that it matters as much anymore. I used to work for an
> all Windows shop that did ColdFusion and Adobe CS3. So I approached
> Ruby from Windows. I found that it was fine. Now, I code in Mac OS
> X, which is also pretty easy to do.
>
Jonathan Fantham
> is like comparing a Ford Escort to a luxury Cadillac. Sorry, the Windows
> "shell" is truly godawful.
This seems very opinion based... why? Personally I've never found a
rails-related command that you can use in a unix system that you can't
use in windows. The only differences I have noticed is that you can
run unix specific commands like top or ps or something, which isn't
really related to rails, and aren't needed in windows.
However, unix does have very good security! You can't do certain
naughty things without the sudo command, which on a server is great,
but I hate it on a development box because it just means that I have
to type the same command twice when I need it (definately not DRY). I
usually try to rid myself of as many barriers as possible on a
development box.
> Yeah, clicking through a menu in Ubuntu is so much harder than clicking
> through a menu in Windows or Mac. NOT.
Sure, the menu systems are pretty easy, I was more thinking of side
cases, like monitors for example. When you are configuring the
resolutions for your monitors you need to edit a config file. Hardly
something I'd leave up to my mother to do for herself.
I gave some examples of third party software didn't work. What happens
now? You can't ring support and complain, because unix users are
supposed to be smart enough to fix it themselves. You can be assured
that no one is running around frantically trying to fix it (like I
said, flash player was broken for months). No one is trying to fix it
because they expect people to fix it themselves, and frankly they're
not losing any money by putting it off. So, how do you fix it? You get
the latest source, link it, compile it, etc. Would I expect my mother
to do that?
>
> > I switch monitors twice a day
> > (work and home) with different resolutions
>
> Why?
I have a laptop, I like to connect it to a large external monitor when
I am using it for sustained periods of time, this is work and home,
and I have different sized monitors at each.
>
> > , that was just craaaaaazy.
> > I never quite got the hang of it...
>
> ...or never bothered to learn about.
This is true, I never learned about it. Still, I prefer not to have to
edit a config file every time I connect my laptop to a new monitor or
projector.
>
> > That's my 2c! Correct me if anything I said was wrong :-)
>
> I just did :-)
You did? When I said that I was inviting people to make constructive
points. Not just flame. Don't be a hater man :-)
Adhiraj Rankhambe
Believe me Mac is the best and Windows is the worst, as lots of gems and
plugins have issues on Windows.
That's what we call a short and sweet reply.
Do let everybody know what you finally decide.....
Conrad Taylor
Hey,
I know it's a basic question and I do not want a discussion about
which one is the best in general, I only want to know which OS you'd
recomment for programing in Rails and to do webdesign.
Maybe you can also tel me why you think so?
Regards,
zok