<div dir="ltr">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.<div><br></div><div>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 (<a href="http://github.com/u-root/sidecore">github.com/u-root/sidecore</a>, 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.</div><div><br></div><div>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: <a href="https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1d0yK7g-J6oITgE-B_odadSw3nlBWGbMK7clt_TmXo7c/edit?usp=sharing">https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1d0yK7g-J6oITgE-B_odadSw3nlBWGbMK7clt_TmXo7c/edit?usp=sharing</a> -- so I've largely stopped using C at all. That, in turn, affects which systems I use for interactive work. </div><div><br></div><div>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."<br></div><div><br></div><div>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.</div></div><br><div class="gmail_quote"><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr">On Thu, Mar 7, 2024 at 8:13 AM Marc Rochkind <<a href="mailto:mrochkind@gmail.com">mrochkind@gmail.com</a>> wrote:<br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex"><div dir="ltr">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.<div><br></div><div>I often hear that there are Open Source equivalents for Lightroom and Photoshop, but the people saying that aren't serious photographers.</div><div><br></div><div>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.</div><div><br></div><div>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.</div><div><br></div><div>(Like everything else posted here, these are my opinions, likely not anyone else's.)</div><div><br></div><div>Marc Rochkind</div></div><br><div class="gmail_quote"><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr">On Thu, Mar 7, 2024 at 8:52 AM Clem Cole <<a href="mailto:clemc@ccc.com" target="_blank">clemc@ccc.com</a>> wrote:<br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex"><div dir="ltr"><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif">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 <sys/mtio.h> 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.</div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif"><br></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif">Clem</div><div hspace="streak-pt-mark" style="max-height:1px"><img alt="" style="width: 0px; max-height: 0px; overflow: hidden;" src="https://mailfoogae.appspot.com/t?sender=aY2xlbWNAY2NjLmNvbQ%3D%3D&type=zerocontent&guid=d8c1ceb3-baf9-4952-9c06-5742223078c3"><font color="#ffffff" size="1">ᐧ</font></div><div hspace="streak-pt-mark" style="max-height:1px"><img alt="" style="width: 0px; max-height: 0px; overflow: hidden;" src="https://mailfoogae.appspot.com/t?sender=aY2xlbWNAY2NjLmNvbQ%3D%3D&type=zerocontent&guid=3be25c0b-05ba-4ba3-87d4-5cb50c7e05a9"><font color="#ffffff" size="1">ᐧ</font></div></div><div hspace="streak-pt-mark" style="max-height:1px"><img alt="" style="width: 0px; max-height: 0px; overflow: hidden;" src="https://mailfoogae.appspot.com/t?sender=aY2xlbWNAY2NjLmNvbQ%3D%3D&type=zerocontent&guid=d01e2407-d6c7-4ea4-a19b-78066b00cf41"><font color="#ffffff" size="1">ᐧ</font></div>
</blockquote></div><br clear="all"><div><br></div><span class="gmail_signature_prefix">-- </span><br><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_signature"><div dir="ltr"><div><i>My new email address is <a href="mailto:mrochkind@gmail.com" target="_blank">mrochkind@gmail.com</a></i></div></div></div>
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