A Linux Substitute?

[madmentalmicky]

I'm just about to start a PhD, for which I would hope to design and implement a Virtual Machine for an experimental programming language. The partform on which it is implemented on a *nix OS but beyond that it's more the structure of the design we're interested in.

My current hardware, a Wintel Box, is badly in need of replacment. I know that Mac OS X is the perfect replacement for everything I currently do within Winodws, but I also regularly use Linux for Java, C++ and Haskell development.

Does anyone have any experience about how well Mac OS X compares to a Linux install for development. Also, what pitfalls might I encounter working in a team which largely uses Linux?

[didde]

Well, this might not be an answer to your questions.. But what I can tell you is that I have personally been working with Macs for a long time now, and what I always have found quite fascinating about this OS is the great lengths Apple has gone to ensure multi-platform capabilities.

Of course, Apple is forced to make Mac compatible with Windows (in some ways) due to the superior number of users the Wintel platform has..

I now use Mac Os X in a 90% Windows 9% Linux environment, and I have yet to encounter a problem with communication, printing or anything. It all works smoothly. Especially the SMB feature of networking inbetween various platforms. My co-workers can connect to my Mac via a standard "shared" directory and I connect to theirs.

I say go for it! The time (worst case scenario) you'll have to spend getting your Mac up and running in a "hostile" environment of Wintel and Linux will be made up with the time you'll save with the nice interface and so on..

Good luck.

[Benad]

First off, I don't know what Haskell is, so I can't tell if it was ported to Mac OS X yet.

For development, Mac OS X is very close to linux. Most development tools are the same. If you use Fink, you can install gcc and XWindows. Obviously, the OS is different, so small changes are often required to make some Linux application work on Mac OS X.

So, it depends.

- Benad

[Novajo]

I am also a Ph.D. student in Physics and use Mac OS X permanently. I have compiled all the programs I was previously running on Linux and SGI without problems. Sometimes, files are in different places, but this is very minor and takes a second to fix. Most of the time, the configure script takes care of it anyway and a makefile properly written will provide you all the flexibility you need. But there are differences. If the programs are straightforward calculations, I don't see any problems. If they are fancier, yes, there could be some tweaking to do.

Linux (or any Unix for that matter) is very useful for those who want to use it. But no matter what these people say, XWindows isn't for everybody and the key software packages (Maple, Word and such) do not always exist on Unix. Free alternative are great, but they are not always up to par (no flames please). Emacs is great, but so is BBEdit. Codewarrior and GUI apps are great, but gcc and shell scripts are very useful too. With OS X, you get to choose whatever you want: you get all your Mac stuff, and all the Unix stuff too.