Derek McEachern
Rafael Pérez 🌱"I'm a programmer with a Fediverse account. I spend *most* of my programming hours on this OS:"
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Microsoft Windows
MacOS
Linux or Unix
Other (Please comment.)
Poll ended at .
lizard appreciator@rperezrosario voted “Linux” because work machine is windows and personal is mac but on both I’m using a linux vm
@bonzoesc That counts.
CaptainAyeAye@bonzoesc @rperezrosario Similarly, I chose Linux because I exclusively develop using WSL on my Windows machine at work.
MozDitto. I have a windows host machine with the MS office drivel on it because that's what the workplace demands (we have team meetings using Teams! because unlike the Teams team our team is mostly remote)
But there's a vrtual linux machine on it where the coding happens, because working on a Debian box for a Debian server avoids a whole lot of problems.
This laptop runs Mint, my gaming rig runs Debian.
Lucy@bonzoesc @rperezrosario But why not just Linux bare metal on the mac 😭
Sean D@bonzoesc @rperezrosario me too! Windows for Office, Teams etc, but using a load of ash sessions (on a local Hyper-V VM) for most development work.
Y⃒̸̷̝̜̙ͥͥͥngmar@rperezrosario What do you mean, you haven't written your own OS and claim to be a programmer with a Fediverse account? 😆
@yngmar Lol, yes.
MaysonLancaster@yngmar @rperezrosario A few decades ago I coded a prototype distributed OS from a nice design created by a team at JPL (I only did a small, but demoable portion of the design – demoed on 8 small Vaxen). Chose a subset of the design I thought I could code up in 6 months (the demo was 6 months and a few days away). Demo went off without a hitch 6 months later. Does that count?
Martin Vermeer FCD@yngmar @rperezrosario "When men were men and wrote their own device drivers"
Joe Cooper 🇺🇦 🍉@rperezrosario It's the year of Windows on the Fediverse, I guess. That's wildly more Windows (and MacOS) than I expected.
@swelljoe I was actually surprised that Linux/Unix has taken such a big lead in the poll so far. I expected Windows numbers to be lowish but not as low as 13%. I also expected MacOS numbers to be higher almost on par with Linux/Unix. Surprise surprise surprise. 😲
@rperezrosario I assumed programmer+fediverse=Linux, because that's my feed. But, also, over the three+decades I've been working in tech, I've seen more and more devs being Linux first devs, to the point where the company I work for now has been almost entirely Linux users among the dev team. I don't keep close tabs on everyone, but when it comes up, it's more Linux than anything else, with MacOS second. Everything cloud and web is Linux native, so it's all easier on Linux.
lesbian propaganda (211695-343)@rperezrosario @swelljoe too much time in Spanish circles I guess x3
Simon Eilting@rperezrosario roughly half of my past employers have insisted on my using Mac OS, but I always switched to Linux (on private hardware) in the end. It's just so much faster when you don't have another OS between you and the Linux VM that all the containers inevitably end up running on.
MostlyBlindGamer@eseilt @rperezrosario I’m cautiously optimistic about Apple’s native containers idea. Otherwise, macOS is Unix but has actual accessibility development.
ww 🩶@MostlyBlindGamer @eseilt @rperezrosario those aren't really native, it's mostly just a very optimized linux kernel in a vm again
@ww @MostlyBlindGamer @rperezrosario they should call them Windows Services For Mac OS For Linux 3.0
@ww @eseilt @rperezrosario oh wow, it totally is. I’d caught a bit of the first WWDC videos on them and it seemed like a great idea, but I didn’t get too deep into the topic. Not looking at the GitHub repo, at let’s it’s very honest:
> A tool for creating and running Linux containers using lightweight virtual machines on a Mac.
Well, I still get GNU core utils and magnification and a screen reader on the same computer. I’ll happily take a minor container performance hit.
@MostlyBlindGamer @eseilt @rperezrosario yeah, i also use a mac, and while i'm not a big fan of macos, voiceover is definitely something i would miss on linux (as a web developer, for testing websites). and podman desktop while not ideal, it does the job.
@ww that’s actually a good reason to use Windows. VoiceOver has weird quirks (different ones on macOS and iOS even) and isn’t very popular. NVDA on Windows is free and very widely used.
You can keep a safe distance by using a VM. Hehe.
You can keep a safe distance by using a VM. Hehe.
@MostlyBlindGamer wait, really? i do have a vm with nvda and firefox, so far i mostly found that if it works with voiceover, it'll work in nvda. except for like, the way they handle focus differently (i do find nvda's way to be more intuitive).
but, for some reason i was under the impression that apple hardware was popular among blind people?
but, for some reason i was under the impression that apple hardware was popular among blind people?
@ww they work differently but also have weird quirks - all screen readers do.
Enjoy this incredible blog post where @aardrian probably descends into madness (while maintaining impressive composure) by comparing VoiceOver to VoiceOver:
https://adrianroselli.com/2025/02/which-voiceover.html
The best part is each comparison also leads to other screen readers.
iPhones are popular and were much more popular before Android got better accessibility, but Windows is much more popular than macOS.
A couple of references:
Which VoiceOver?
You may have seen this as a thread on Mastodon (my primary social short-form platform) or on BlueSky. Imagine these as the opening to a series of conversations between a vendor or client or boss or PO or whomever and me. Variations on Real Life Conversations “We like the way…
@MostlyBlindGamer oh cool! thanks for the links, this is useful info!
Ken Brucker@eseilt @rperezrosario after several years, work finally got me a native Linux box and booted windows to the curb. Night and day difference. My compiles are about 5-7x faster than under WSL.
Wim 🅾→Ⓣ@rperezrosario I don't label myself as a programmer. But when I program, it's mostly on Linux.
Marcfp
babble encat@rperezrosario Windows 😔 Because of work 😔 Pays good though
Pino Carafa@babble_endanger @rperezrosario exactly. Same here. Been on Windoze since OS/2 died. See no reason to change that for the few more years until my retirement.
Jack C.@rperezrosario Windows at work, regrettably
ysbreker@rperezrosario up until about a month ago it was on Linux until work forced me to switch to a mac.
@ysbreker Bummer.
Wil Macaulay@rperezrosario iOS/ipados
meduz'@rperezrosario Windows because forced by current work, otherwise macOS.
Fonant@rperezrosario Ditched Microsoft Windows many years ago. Never looked back!
WanWizard 🏴 🇳🇱@Fonant @rperezrosario Same here, ditched it personally as main OS in 2012, had to use Windows in a VM for a few years (clients forcing the use of Outlook and Visio for example).
Since 2015 completely linux only, RHEL on the servers, Fedora on the desktop.
André Polykanine@rperezrosario Windows with WSL, except for pure Windows development.
DamonHD@rperezrosario "on" is a bit tricky. The keyboard is almost always that of my MacBook, but my terminal windows are both local and into my Linux server, and I do stuff across both, fairly portably!
Harry Sintonen@rperezrosario Other, MorphOS - I've worked on this OS for 24 years now.
However, these days I write most of the MorphOS code on a Linux system I SSH to from my MacBook Pro. Once cross-compiled, I run the code in qemu (on MBP). I could, in theory, run the cross-compiler on the MBP too, but building the browser and more involved parts would take a fair bit longer on it.
So what's MorphOS then? Probably the quickest intro: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=97qcyuX1cV0
Turn an Old Mac Into a High-End Amiga - MorphOS 3.17
Ian@rperezrosario Windows desktop, but my VSCode is running an SSH Remote to my dev server which is Linux.
masukomi@rperezrosario Voted macOS, BUT the I'm getting more frustrated with Apple every day and it seems like a given that i'll end up on Linux Real Soon Now™
Si Dawson@rperezrosario I have that weird/modern situation where I'm mostly macOS on the front end... but all my actual work is actually on linux devices. (and I've gnu-ified my mac until it kinda is one, too).
niccolo@rperezrosario it would be interesting to see if the results changed if you reran the poll separating "work" OS, and "Personal" OS.
@niccolo Thank you for the suggestion, I'll keep that in mind for a future poll.
@rperezrosario I *had* to vote for Windows because of work, but outside of that I'm a mac (wannabe linux) user 😉
Lauri KotilainenI have a 20+ year background in programming on Microsoft’s platforms for a living, and I kind of drifted to macOS by accident.
Got a work macbook for debugging iOS-specific issues with websites. Soon thereafter, Windows began a slide from ”not great, but mostly usable for my purposes” towards ”how in the name of all that is holy is a fresh install this sluggish with 24 cores and 128 GB RAM”. Path of least resistance and all that.
Cat 🐈🥗 (D.Burch) 
@rperezrosario @ConsoleWitch And no, I don't mean I am programming for Android.
I'm actually programming ON an Android
I'm actually programming ON an Android
just a blåhaj@catsalad @rperezrosario @ConsoleWitch That still (technically) counts as linux.
TBH, Android is just Linux with a lot of things abstracted for you. But the essential commands are there.
TBH, Android is just Linux with a lot of things abstracted for you. But the essential commands are there.
McTwist@catsalad @rperezrosario @ConsoleWitch I did that too for some time. Termux is gold in this case, but a less locked down OS would everything much easier
Sometimes I just clone projects I work on, just to see if it compiles/runs. Sadly, it stopped working recently due to how termux handles CMake FetchContent.
@catsalad @rperezrosario @ConsoleWitch Update: Apparently they have finally fixed it, so it can be builds fine now.
Luna Dragofelis ΘΔ🏳️⚧️🐱@rperezrosario My answer to this strongly depends on whether coding time on employer-mandated hardware counts.
I do all my personal coding on Linux for several years now, but my employer mandates Windows on the company provided laptop, and the total hours spent coding are more on the job than my personal stuff.
I do all my personal coding on Linux for several years now, but my employer mandates Windows on the company provided laptop, and the total hours spent coding are more on the job than my personal stuff.
Hugh Simpson@rperezrosario my work issues macos so, alas, voted for it. I work very hard on making my tooling work for Linux too. This often means using perl instead of sed lol. Linux is the goat though, obviously.
Dave Fischer@rperezrosario Haven't done any non-*nix programming since the 80s.
Adam Honse@rperezrosario All of my day job work is Windows, but most of my personal projects are Linux unless I'm using Windows to reverse engineer something. I also remote into my Windows office machine from Linux when I work from home.
Elliot Shank@rperezrosario
Well… the computer with the keyboard attached is a MacBook Pro, but the files being edited are on an Ubuntu tower computer buried in a corner of a server room. /cc @futuresprog
Well… the computer with the keyboard attached is a MacBook Pro, but the files being edited are on an Ubuntu tower computer buried in a corner of a server room. /cc @futuresprog
Future SprogI had the same thought. This window is CentOS, that one is vim on Rocky, maybe there’s some Ubuntu in the background.
Don’t mention the PowerShell IDE in that Remote Desktop!!!