I’m interviewing for a software dev job currently (it’s in the initial stages). If things work out, I’d absolutely prefer a work laptop with Linux installed (I personally use PopOS but any distro will do), a Mac will be second choice, but I absolutely cannot tolerate Windows, I abhor it, I hate it… (If all computers left on earth have Windows I’d either quit this field or just quit Earth).
Sometimes it’s possible to tell if they use Windows or not, for example, jobs with dotnet/C# are most likely using windows, but not in my case.
Anyways, is it too weird to ask what kind of laptop they provide to their employees? And to also specifically ask for a Linux (or anything but windows) work laptop?
As a Linux user, you can pretend the os x is just Linux. That’s not true, but you can make it work with brew, some googling and your favourite ide / tech stack.
On the plus side, macs are less problematic to integrate with corporate software. You can run commercial software that’s not available for Linux.
Windows is just Windows. A step back from either Linux or mac. Two steps backed when managed by corporate IT.
Yeah I use a Mac at work and it’s actually amazing. Lots of stuff runs the same as in linux.
Right up until you try to use some standard Linux tool like sed and all the flags are wonky. Never understood that, is that something to do with MacOS’s BSD ancestry? Idk.
Yep it’s a BSD thing (and deviations down the line), but you can amend your
$PATHso that the homebrew GNU variants take precedence. Obviously you’d only set this for your user/shell, otherwise it’d cause issues with system-wide tools that expect the macOS variants.You can, but it’s still a miserable experience because the GUI is opinionated and its opinion is shit. I’ve been on that boat for three years now.