my user-facing system is OSX on an m2, 96 G DRAM, 4T SSD. I have a system76, 40G DRAM, 4T NVME running linux for things needing linux. I have a USB Armory, 512M, running either a small Debian distro or Go on bare metal with Tamago. I have several systems that run TinyGo on bare metal. I have a boatload of IoT under development, nowadays, all RISC-V. They run a cut-down Linux with ONE init process, written in Go, that implements a version of the Plan 9 cpu command, called sidecore ( github.com/u-root/sidecore, first talk to be presented next month). As a result, most of the systems I have can run any distro I want, on a per-command basis, so in most cases the distro I run is called "make your choice". I can run any distro I want, with $HOME coming from $HOME, from OSX or Linux, and It Just Works. You Plan 9 folks have some idea what I mean, although sidecore actually does more. WIth Go and Rust, distros matter much less. Most C nowadays is not written in a portable way anyways -- see a bit of the full sad story here: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1d0yK7g-J6oITgE-B_odadSw3nlBWGbMK7clt_TmXo7c/edit?usp=sharing -- so I've largely stopped using C at all. That, in turn, affects which systems I use for interactive work. So I guess the answer, in my case, is "whatever I need at the moment" -- since my UI is OSX, my build systems are OSX and Ubuntu, and my IoT are, on a command-by-command basis, "it depends." cpu (and sidecore) is one of those Plan 9 commands I could not live without, and Go made it possible to have it everywhere. It's even got an IANA number since last year -- 17010. On Thu, Mar 7, 2024 at 8:13 AM Marc Rochkind wrote: > To my way of thinking, the OS itself matters only if you're developing or > supporting the OS, or doing development for that OS. Otherwise, the > overwhelming criteria are what applications are available. I use Adobe > Lightroom and Photoshop for my photography, and those are available only > for MacOS and Windows. Because of very bad experiences with Apple as a > developer of apps for the iPhone, I don't like anything Apple, so I use > Windows for my desktop and laptop, and an Android phone. > > I often hear that there are Open Source equivalents for Lightroom and > Photoshop, but the people saying that aren't serious photographers. > > If you don't require any particular applications, then, as I said, the OS > doesn't matter, so Linux and FreeBSD are fine choices. I've long been > impressed with how usable distros like Ubuntu have become over the years. > > On rare occasions, I need to run a UNIX/Linux program, and for that I used > to use the MacOS command line back when I used a Mac, and now use Windows > System for Linux, which runs Ubuntu. > > (Like everything else posted here, these are my opinions, likely not > anyone else's.) > > Marc Rochkind > > On Thu, Mar 7, 2024 at 8:52 AM Clem Cole wrote: > >> Like Marc Donner, my primary system, UNIX or otherwise, in which I'm >> typing this message, is a current late model MacPro (arm/Sonoma) - which I >> switched to Apple's UNIX flavor about 20+ years ago and have yet to look >> back. That said, I have almost every OS that runs on x86 from different >> Linux flavors and BSDs, plus lots of different I/O controllers for >> conversion in my basement. Further, I also have a number of historical >> (non-Intel or Arm-based) computers on my different ethernets. FWIW: I >> also have a ton of SCSI equipment that's either on a FreeBSD Box (most >> often), or I have a RATOC SCSI to USB2 controller cable that 'just works' >> on my Mac and/or any x86 laptop I have around. It is known to talk to the >> disks as well as recently discussed Archive Viper QIC drives. That said, >> I've never tried the USB to SCSI cable with a Linux -- only MacOS and >> Winders (I never needed to use it with anything else). Also, I have never >> tried that interface with 9-track, which is on the FreeBSD systems SCSI >> chain driven by an on-motherboard Adaptec PCI to SCSI. The only real issue >> I have had trying to use SCSI peripherals with MacOS is that traditional >> BSD is not included in the last N versions of the Apple >> developers tool kit, making a compilation of old tape-based C code a PITA. >> Still, if you install the controller and can manage to rebuild -- it all >> seems to work fine. >> >> Clem >> ᐧ >> ᐧ >> ᐧ >> > > > -- > *My new email address is mrochkind@gmail.com * >