Best operating system for programming in class

[Alex9339]

Hey my computer sciene education is staring in 2 months. And I'm searching now for the perfect notebook. My favorites are the new MacBook the Razer blade and the Dell xps15 .

Now the question, which operating system isthe best to start programming and with which one I will have hopefully no problems with the compiler etc

Thx

[JaegerB]

Ubuntu is nice. Atom works really well on it. I wouldn't get the macbook. The dell is probably your best bet. If you need a hand installing ubuntu alongside windows 10, fire off a pm to me.

[Oshino Shinobu]

Windows for compatibility's sake. You can VM in any OS if the program is incompatible with your chosen OS, so in the end it doesn't really matter. I'd say go for what you're most used to or just go for Windows as most applications are still made for Windows first or only. 

 

EDIT: Dual boot of Windows and a Linux distro would give you a lot of flexibility. 

[Ethann_AKA_CPU1]

well as much as i love linux and i think that everyone should use it, windows is probably the best since they have visual studio

[DrMacintosh]

I would stay away from Razor. 

 

Imo get the MacBook for the most compatibility with all programs and coding languages since you can install Windows and Linux on top of macOS in either a VM or a direct install of each one. 

 

Also the Mac would just be a more solid machine overall. 

[JaegerB]

5 minutes ago, DrMacintosh said:

Also the Mac would just be a more solid machine overall. 

Their ifixit scores are atrocious though. I've heard that everything is soldered on to one board, to prevent repair. Still, you're right about the VM and compatibility.

[DrMacintosh]

Just now, JaegerB said:

Their ifixit scores are atrocious though.

Well for the non-Touchbar models they get a 2  

 

The iFixit score is based on user repairability and upgradability. The upgrade complaints are valid to an extent* but the repair complaints aren't and any 3rd party shop could service you. 

 

*Lets be honest, 16GB of RAM is more than enough for this type of work and by the time 16GB is as small as 4GB is today the machine will be useless. CPUs arent upgradable on anything today either. User upgradable storage is probably the most valid complaint but I mean a little external drive can do that.  

**Unless you have access to board schematics and a repair shop workstation its not like you can repair a MacBook on your own so the user repair scores are not valid imo.  

[JaegerB]

1 minute ago, DrMacintosh said:

*Lets be honest, 16GB of RAM is more than enough for this type of work and by the time 16GB is as small as 4GB is today the machine will be useless. CPUs arent upgradable on anything today either. User upgradable storage is probably the most valid complaint but I mean a little external drive can do that.  

 

True, with the advent of USB 3.1, extnl SSDs are actually not being bottlenecked too much anymore.

1 minute ago, DrMacintosh said:

**Unless you have access to board schematics and a repair shop workstation its not like you can repair a MacBook on your own so the user repair scores are not valid imo.  

Eh, but why spend money getting someone to fix it for you when you could fix it yourself like most windows laptops. I just think it's a shame, because Apple could sell a lot more if they were reparable by the user. Not to mention their sneaky tactics like fake error messages on their support sites so those that aren't experts are unable to fix simple issues like software issues.

[DrMacintosh]

2 minutes ago, JaegerB said:

but why spend money getting someone to fix it for you when you could fix it yourself like most windows laptops.

Do you honestly believe that the average user could do the job that Louis Rossmann does?  

[JaegerB]

17 minutes ago, DrMacintosh said:

Do you honestly believe that the average user could do the job that Louis Rossmann does?  

You misunderstand. I'm suggesting that the dell might be a better choice in this case because of the ability to repair it.

[Alex9339]

Is the i5 in th e MacBook enough or is it to slow to Code?

[DrMacintosh]

1 minute ago, Alex9339 said:

Is the i5 in th e MacBook enough or is it to slow to Code?

What model are you looking at? But generally yes. Code is not that intense. 

[Alex9339]

7 minutes ago, DrMacintosh said:

What model are you looking at? But generally yes. Code is not that intense. 

Thenew mb pro without touchbar and with the i5 and 16gb ram

[DrMacintosh]

Just now, Alex9339 said:

Thenew mb pro without touchbar and with the i5 and 16gb ram

do yourself a favor and get at least 256GB of Storage 

[SCHISCHKA]

use what your class mates use. I used both windows and linux when I was at uni. Games programming, and some group projects had to be done in windows; some networking and others had to be done in linux; some papers were easier using linux,; anything web, mobile or embedded related was easier on linux.

I had three hard drives when i was an undergraduate. Linux, games, and Windows for course work. 

[noahdvs]

The Dell will probably work better than the other 2 with Linux. It's easier to get a development environment setup in Linux because you can just install everything you need from your distro's official repositories and everything is already in the PATH.

 

Windows:

Once you start trying to use different libraries or programming languages besides Java and C++ (with MSVC), you'll find that keeping things up to date and putting things in the PATH is just extra work. It's still easier if you're doing game development with something like UE4 or Unity though. Visual Studio is also one of the most powerful IDEs, but it's not irreplaceable. Qt Creator is a cross platform C++ IDE and easier to use than Visual Studio, but won't do absolutely everything VS does.

 

Ubuntu:

It's the easiest to get community support for and its default configuration is good for newbies. You may discover in time that you don't like the way they do releases or you may be totally fine with it. Releases happen every 6 months for regular Ubuntu and every 2 years for LTS Ubuntu. The versions for programs packed in each release are frozen except for when there's an important security update and excluding programs where updates are very important such as Firefox and Chromium.

 

Debian:

It's what Ubuntu is based on. Debian is much more minimal by default than Ubuntu, but still quite usable out of a fresh installation and has the largest official repository of any Linux distro. It does a new stable release every 2 years.

 

openSUSE Leap:

openSUSE has a friendly and knowledgeable community, though smaller than Ubuntu's. It has two versions: Leap and Tumbleweed. openSUSE has smaller official repositories than Ubuntu, but the quality control is good. If you want some software that isn't packed by default (such as a variety of games and emulators), you search for it on the Open Build Service. For openSUSE Leap, releases are done once a year.

 

If you like having up to date software most or all of the time, Fedora, openSUSE Tumbleweed or an Arch Linux based distro may be more your speed.

 

Fedora does an official release every 6 months, but it gets a lot of updates in between releases, so releases tend to be more like a snapshot. It may not always have the very latest software, but most software will be pretty recent.

 

openSUSE Tumbleweed is on the bleeding edge when it comes to updates, but it has sophisticated, automated quality assurance (openQA). It also has something called Snapper which lets you roll back to a previous snapshot if an update that screws something up makes it through (Leap has openQA and Snapper as well, but they're more important for Tumbleweed).

 

Arch Linux is on the bleeding edge, but you should probably stay away from it if you're new to Linux. You can completely customize your system with Arch, but installation is not newbie friendly at all.

 

Manjaro is based on Arch, but is generally 2 weeks behind Arch when it comes to updates so they can do more quality control. It's easy to install and use.

 

Antergos is on the bleeding edge and based on Arch, but it has its own installer that is much easier to use.

[Alex9339]

8 hours ago, SCHISCHKA said:

use what your class mates use. I used both windows and linux when I was at uni. Games programming, and some group projects had to be done in windows; some networking and others had to be done in linux; some papers were easier using linux,; anything web, mobile or embedded related was easier on linux.

I had three hard drives when i was an undergraduate. Linux, games, and Windows for course work. 

Did you had a notebook with 3 internal hard drives? Or where they external?:)

[Sauron]

It depends, if you're going to learn C/C++ or Python linux is by far the best choice, I would only go for windows if for some reason you'll be learning C# or Visual Basic/VBScript. Other languages like Java and JS will be just as usable on any platform. To be clear, you CAN learn C/C++ and Python just fine on windows and macOS, but linux makes them more comfortable to use (in particular C/C++ since most linux distributions come with a native compiler which is more up to date than what you can find on macOS and is simply not present in windows).

 

As for the hardware, honestly I strongly recommend buying a refurbished thinkpad, specifically an x220 with the IPS screen. They have incredible keyboards (in my opinion superior to a macbook, blade or xps), outstanding build quality and are compatible with all major OSs (even MacOS with some minor tinkering). They are a bit less powerful than a more modern laptop but they are plenty fast for the needs of a programming student. And of course, they are much cheaper.

 

If you insist on buying new, I'd go for the xps.

[SCHISCHKA]

7 hours ago, Alex9339 said:

Did you had a notebook with 3 internal hard drives? Or where they external?:)

i swapped the dvd drive for a HDD bay. On thinkpads you can eject the bay without tools.

[mrchow19910319]

Everyone I know who is serious about programming/ who are a software dev is using macbook(pros)

Im not even kidding here. 

 

Linux is great, but the learning curve is much higher than macOS. 

 

Let's be honest here, if you are just got into programming, which OS you are gonna use does not really matter. (If you are going to use UE4 or unity please get one with dedicated GPU)

 

From my understanding Linux and macOS is both great for programming. Windows is meh/headache. My personal choice goes like this: macOS>Linux>Windows. 

 

If you want to use linux, that is great, get the official supported machine from dell. So that you wouldn't have to keep figuring out why the wifi is not working. 

 

If you want to use macOS, despite all the controversy you've heard online, like I said above, it is still the go to machine when it comes to programming. Just let this sink in for a moment. Also just to touch on the note of "it is hard to fix", I don't think your mac is gonna break down like some $400 machine. And apple's customer service is always top notch. Get apple care down the line and just have a peace of mind.

 

If you want to get a machine with a powerful GPU, pick a solid windows one. Cheap, easy to fix, customizable. Otherwise, windows is pretty meh. 

 

Last but not least, consult your school and see what kind of laptop your course is recommending. I remembered our school put out a form just to let us know what kind of laptop we need to get. Some courses have to use macbook pro exclusively. While others are recommending against it. It is really important before you get one. Good luck! 

[TurkarYash]

I am a Computer Science Sophomore. I started with a chromebook (Toshiba Chromebook 2 ) and installed ubuntu on it. It served me very well for programming C , C++ , Java and python. As I started with Machine Learning and Image processing the chromebook fell short of computing power so I had to do all the processing on my PC. Now I am planning to get the XPS 13 or the Razer Blade stealth.
So the point is , it depends on what type of coding you are doing. Some things cant be done on Mac OS or Windows but Linux is the most versatile OS for Programmers according to me. You can make the most out of the computational capabilities of your machine with linux.

So if you are going to program light weight stuff, go for any laptop with a good battery life because carrying a power brick to class everyday is annoying. Dual boot ubuntu or use a VM (Note: windows as a client in a Linux host performs better).

If you going into hardcore development like Image Processing or machine learning or data mining , get a powerful laptop with a good GPU (Nvidia) and run Windows or linux.

[Sauron]

2 hours ago, mrchow19910319 said:

Also just to touch on the note of "it is hard to fix", I don't think your mac is gonna break down like some $400 machine.

 

A 400$ refurbished thinkpad is going to break the floor before it stops working  but of course they aren't new

[JakeNTech]

I would get the macbook, its more likely to last then then a windows laptop, I do a fair bit of coding on a A1342 macbook and its more then enough. I believe there is a version of visual studio for mac.

Going back to the mac breaking thing again, I have 10-11 year old A1181's that have only been opened to change the battery and thermal paste. MacBooks are fairly bullet proof, and the slightly older ones are incredibly easy to find parts for, unlike windows laptops. 

And if you change your mind about the macbook once you have it, macs hold there value really well. 

[noahdvs]

Doesn't the Macbook only have a single USB-C port and isn't the RAM soldered to the motherboard? That doesn't seem very good for a developer laptop. The Mac version of Visual Studio isn't really Visual Studio, just a rebranded Xamarin Studio. Xamarin Studio is actually just MonoDevelop with some extra addons related to mobile development. You can use MonoDevelop on Linux, Mac or Windows.

 

https://www.visualstudio.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/intelligentService.png

http://www.monodevelop.com/images/md-hero.png

http://www.monodevelop.com/images/390-ss-debugger-5-4.png

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=MTMwNzk

[Guest]

Mac, or windows. A lot of professionals use macs and windows is just easy. 

 

Since these are laptops with os built in, I'd stick with the os it comes with.