Sure learning Linux will most likely teach you something about the platform on which anything you write will probably be deployed but that's really marginal (IMHO).
You get things done (programming included) by getting all the roadblocks out of your way. Linux is (IMHO) a roadblock. The OP claims it teaches you researching skills by giving you problems everyday you need to find solutions for. This is true in the same way that refusing to buy food of any kind teaches self-sufficiency.
To get things done you need to get in the zone. This means eliminating distractions. Trying to figure out why copy and paste doesn't work (and it turns out that it's because you're using OpenJDK instead of the Sun JDK) very much takes you out of that zone and then wastes time to boot.
This might be more useful later on (maybe) but learning to programming? No way.
To me, the best development platform is OSX. Why? Because it's (BSD) UNIX that is a pleasure to use that (mostly) doesn't have the aforementioned problems. My only real beef is that if you're used to using a program on Linux or Windows the keyboard shortcuts will generally be different on OSX (due to following the OSX conventions).
And as much as people (myself included) like to rag on Windows (in my case: the complexity), the fact is that modern Windows (Win7) is actually a pretty pleasant experience. Some things (eg git) suck but Cygwin can ameliorate a lot of those problems.
I didn't start to really understand how things all work and go together until I installed Linux on my desktop, and started exploring that world. I don't disagree with using OSX, in fact I use a Mac to do all my work now. But I never got started or interested or developed an understanding until I started using linux. Linux almost forces you to learn the underworkings of your system, computing in general, and loves to make you do work in the terminal. All good for learning programming.
I used to have a jokes tab on my iGoogle page, one day the joke of the day was: "If you want you computer to work, use a mac, if you want to know how you computer works, use linux, and if you don't want to know why your computer doesn't work, use windows." I thought it was funny, and it was a step in my inspiration to use Linux.
One analogy I'll make to promote learning on Linux: When I started playing guitar, any experienced player or teacher will tell you to learn on an acoustic guitar. Why? It's more challenging to make it sound good, you have to press harder on the strings, The strings are further away from the frets, you get buzz and damping if you don't use just the right form. It teaches you to over learn, then when you switch to an electric, it's easy peasy, and just sounds sooo good. I think in this case you could consider Linux to be the acoustic guitar, and Mac to be an electric. Just my two cents.
To my taste, Linux puts a lot less roadblocks in my way than MacOS does. Maybe my complaints that follow are simply due to my ignorance, in which case I hope you will take the time to correct me, but as far as I know they're real roadblocks.
I want to see the source to the ls command? dpkg -S /bin/ls; apt-get source coreutils. I have no idea how to do that on MacOS. I want to be able to compile it? apt-get build-dep coreutils, which IIRC will install the compiler. The equivalent on MacOS involves signing up for a developer account with Apple, signing a contract that promises God knows what, and downloading a multi-gigabyte disk image. Even after installing, gcc still isn't in your PATH, and won't work properly with the platform SDK without a verbose -isysroot option. I want to make executable the file named gooba somewhere under my current directory? chmod +x $(find -name gooba). Apple's find requires an explicit `.` and maybe an explicit `-print`, I don't remember. Got performance problems on your machine? On Linux you have htop, dstat, iotop, powertop, and latencytop, none of which have MacOS equivalents as far as I know. Even plain old top has keystroke commands to switch between sorting by CPU and sorting by resident set size. As far as I can tell, doing that on MacOS requires restarting top with different command-line options. And there's no package-management system, so if you're building a server-based app, good luck installing the same versions of the same libraries on the server that you tested against in development. Or on your new dev box. And the server's probably running Linux anyway. Also, where the fuck is strace? Dtruss is a fucking piece of shit.
Admittedly XCode is a pretty nice IDE, but there are a lot of nice IDEs out there, and most of them run on Linux too. And I'd love to have dtrace on Linux.
If I had to choose between a pretty and easy to use OS (that lets me write programs in peace and not have to manually fix everything from Terminal), and the ability to manipulate my OS's "ls" command, I'd choose the pretty OS every day. I wish we could have both, but now that we have to choose, that's my decision.
But that aside, I'm not sure about the rest of your complaints. I just created couple new folders and 5-6 files named gooba and gooba2 and typed 'chmod +x $(find . -name gooba)' and everything worked (gooba's are executable and gooba2's are not). I don't think that extra dot is that bad and I actually like it better (it's more logical).
Also, you can install package managers such as: MacPorts[1] or Homebrew[2] or Fink[3] (I prefer Homebrew). Then you can install htop, iotop, ftop, and a million other unix apps.
in 'top', if you press 'o' (order), and then 'cpu', it sorts them by CPU usage. You can even set a secondary key by pressing 'O'. And you can always "alias top='top -o cpu'" in your .aliases.
> If I had to choose between a pretty and easy to use OS (that lets me write programs in peace and not have to manually fix everything from Terminal), and the ability to manipulate my OS's "ls" command, I'd choose the pretty OS every day. I wish we could have both
Fortunately, you can: just use a current Debian on well-supported hardware. (Until a year ago I would have recommended Ubuntu.)
> I don't think that extra dot is that bad
There are a zillion things like that in MacOS that are just that little bit harder to use, for no good reason. Requiring five extra keystrokes in `top` to get an actual list of the top processes is another example. You can come up with justifications for why the roadblocks are there, or rationalize that they're not that bad, but they really add up.it
It's like Apple's vaunted relentless focus on user experience just doesn't extend to programmers.
> Also, you can install package managers such as: MacPorts[1] or Homebrew[2] or Fink[3] (I prefer Homebrew). Then you can install htop, iotop, ftop, and a million other unix apps.
If you're comparing MacPorts, Homebrew, and Fink to Debian or Ubuntu, I think you haven't used Debian or Ubuntu. I didn't realize iotop and htop had already been ported to MacOS, though. That's cool. Thanks for letting me know. Powertop, latencytop, strace, and dstat no, though, I guess?
I use htop on my macbook, that said it dual boots to #! linux. I honestly work in OSX more often than my linux environment, but installing Gentoo on an old PC when I was 15 really gave me the foundational understanding of computers I have today. Doing it again and again on various machines has improved that. I would like to work in my linux environment more (besides on my server that is), but I use OSX because there are a lot of convenience applications that make web development a cinch. Plus with homebrew I can get most cli stuff I need with out any problem.
Yes, it is. But on the other hand it is more discoverable. All I had to do is type "mac os x source code" in google search. It is a little harder to find out about apt-get source coreutils.
First of all you need to know about apt-get. Then you need to know that ls lives in coreutils etc.
You don't need to know that ls lives in coreutils; dpkg -S /bin/ls tells you that, although it is true that you have to learn a little bit about how dpkg and apt work to get to that point. You do need to know what package ls lives in to figure out which tarball to download from Apple's web site.
I want to see the source to the ls command? ... I have no idea how to do that on MacOS.
The rest have been addressed, but as for this:
The equivalent on MacOS involves signing up for a developer account with Apple, signing a contract that promises God knows what, and downloading a multi-gigabyte disk image.
It involves running an installer from your install disc, or, admittedly, in the case of the most recent release, downloading a multi-gigabyte disk image from the app store. You don't need a developer account if you just want to install the software.
So the answer to "How do I find the source to the ls command?" is "click around a web site perusing long lists of packages, trying one after another in an effort to figure out which one the ls command is from, then manually download nine files one by one from http://opensource.apple.com/source/file_cmds/file_cmds-212/l...? Is that a fucking joke? If that's your idea of fun, go ahead, but I have a computer to do that kind of thing for me. I have an operating system with package management, not a hobby.
> You don't need a developer account if you just want to install the software.
Perhaps this has changed since the last time I did it, a couple of years ago; it did then.
I'd say that the main advantage of Linux here is that it helps get you started; it's really easy to make a quick CLI tool, usually in the form of a shell, perl or python script, that is useful -- scratching an itch.
This applies quite well to Mac OS, of course, but to run Mac OS you'll need a Mac...
And most Windows aren't developers. The fact that linux has a CLI isn't a particularly compelling reason not to use Windows though, since Windows also does.
It's a cultural difference and nothing more. On Linux, opening a CLI is something natural and common, something that every user does at times. Hence writing a quick CLI script seems more natural than on windows.
For someone who already has a Windows machine (still the majority, I believe) you just replaced one roadblock with another. One is technical and the other is financial (buying a Mac).
Really, Norvig sums this up best: "When asked "what operating system should I use, Windows, Unix, or Mac?", my answer is usually: "use whatever your friends use." "
(I use a Mac and think it's swell, but I definitely couldn't have shelled out for one as a high schooler learning to program, but could burn a weekend dual booting Linux)
> you just replaced one roadblock with another. One is technical and the other is financial (buying a Mac)
I think you hit on an important point. Most people seem to be approaching this from an adult / professional perspective. I'm thinking of the bright 14-year-old kid who wants to learn about computers. He (or his parents) may not be able to afford a $2000 Macbook, but he could build his own box relatively cheaply and put a free operating system on it. Linux is democratizing that way. And he can download the source code to virtually everything running on that box. That has undoubtedly inspired a few programmers.
You cannot imagine how beneficial Linux has been in making it possible for students from countries like India to learn deeply and experiment with their systems.
Fwiw, in my own experience, I learned more about how computers and computing work from the first year of exclusively using Linux than from a decade of using Windows. Windows is designed from scratch to hide all that and abstract it into a GUI.
Linux both forces you to figure stuff out, and enables you to, which in my case also motivated me to.
I don't know how that would have worked out had I been using OS X instead of Linux though, maybe the same since it's BSD-based. But I suspect Linux may be the only one where you can feel full ownership over your own system, and can be motivated by the knowledge that if you take the time and effort to figure it out, you can make it do anything you want to.
That personal, emotional investment I believe is the most important, rewarding, and incentivizing aspect of learning computers, computing, programming, and/or CS.
Windows is also designed to make you start paying to get at details. And keep paying. If you are e.g. a youngster, or a "this should be automated" worker who doesn't have any tech budget, this can be a significant hindrance. (Yes, I know there are now various MS initiatives such as the Express Studios and Spark whatnot. There didn't used to be (I wonder what changed ;-), and I remain skeptical.)
I think Linux is a much richer development environment than OSX and much easier to manage through package managers like apt or yum. Sorry, but nothing on OSX comes close. Plus, you get an insanely rich collection of interpreters, compilers and assorted tools and it runs on just about any computer you already have.
Cygwin can make life under Windows bearable, but there is a long list of confusing things people have to deal with such as the /cygdrive tree and executables always having the .exe extension. "ls" autocompleting to "ls.exe"?
It's funny that you mention the keyboard shortcuts!
When I talk to old hackers on Linux about moving to OSX, I tell them, "well, if you move, you don't have to configure your power management and display drivers and it has Emacs keybindings in all the windows!" and they get excited.
When I talk to young CS undergraduates --- all of whom have Macs, because it's not an engineering college --- I tell them, "you should learn Emacs; I know it's in a terminal, but it has all of the OSX keybindings you already started to learn!" and they get excited.
Sure learning Linux will most likely teach you something about the platform on which anything you write will probably be deployed but that's really marginal (IMHO).
You get things done (programming included) by getting all the roadblocks out of your way. Linux is (IMHO) a roadblock. The OP claims it teaches you researching skills by giving you problems everyday you need to find solutions for. This is true in the same way that refusing to buy food of any kind teaches self-sufficiency.
To get things done you need to get in the zone. This means eliminating distractions. Trying to figure out why copy and paste doesn't work (and it turns out that it's because you're using OpenJDK instead of the Sun JDK) very much takes you out of that zone and then wastes time to boot.
This might be more useful later on (maybe) but learning to programming? No way.
To me, the best development platform is OSX. Why? Because it's (BSD) UNIX that is a pleasure to use that (mostly) doesn't have the aforementioned problems. My only real beef is that if you're used to using a program on Linux or Windows the keyboard shortcuts will generally be different on OSX (due to following the OSX conventions).
And as much as people (myself included) like to rag on Windows (in my case: the complexity), the fact is that modern Windows (Win7) is actually a pretty pleasant experience. Some things (eg git) suck but Cygwin can ameliorate a lot of those problems.