> Cut the bullshit and just run Linux on the bare metal,

I run Linux on Linux via vagrant, it's not about my program running faster it's about isolating a client projects dependencies from each other so when I have to work on that system that is still in production on PHP Current-1 or Ruby-1 I don't have to fuck with my host OS at all.

In fact I have very few developer bits and bobs installed on the host (mostly just JetBrains stuff) and all the actual tooling is run in the VM, this makes for far easier deploys for myself since my process is

pull projectname/(site||name), pull projectname/vagrant, vagrant up.

It takes me less than 30 minutes from reinstalling to having half a dozen projects with all their weird dependencies and cruft installed and I never have to worry about breaking something else or needing to blow away a machine for some reason.

I'm happy to trade some performance for running damn near everything in a guest OS for that.

Curious, why Vagrant and not Docker? Then you don't need to run a VM, but still get the same isolation.

Not the person you asked, but I use Vagrant because I deploy to hosts that I consider disposable and don't trust Docker in production, for reasons more thoroughly explained by the person that wrote this article: https://thehftguy.com/2016/11/01/docker-in-production-an-his...

I am guessing is that when he started working on this stuff docker was in it's infancy (still is IMHO), and had no reason/time to port it.

Absolutely this, vagrant has bee reliable, stable (barring the odd oops on a new release) and fits my workflow, docker is interesting but the switching cost to payback ratio isn't there (yet, I'd really like to get rid of having to use NFS, that's accounted for 80% of my vagrant issues).

Or you could have glanced at the article and seen that your guess is wide off the mark.. ;-)

Which article?

> Curious, why Vagrant and not Docker?

I have a Vagrant/Virtualbox workflow (on Windows host, so Docker not a great option yet) but curious: does Docker have shared folder support - via NFS or other?

It's been the getting stuff into & out of the VM that's most painful IMO.

On Windows, if you are using Docker Toolbox, you can keep using VirtualBox. The corresponding driver of docker-machine will spin up the VM that runs the docker daemon, which, once it's running, you can control from the "outside". It uses shared folders support to map the user's home directory by default: https://docs.docker.com/machine/drivers/virtualbox/

> On Windows, if you are using Docker Toolbox, you can keep using VirtualBox.

Oh awesome, thanks! I looked when Docker for Windows came out and (thankfully) spotted the "After Hyper-V is enabled, VirtualBox will no longer work" (?!) warning before trying it. I didn't dig any deeper.

Docker has better than just shared folder support, you can share folders, UNIX SOCKETS!!!, and DEVICES!!!!! And no need for NFS either, its just a bindmount into the container...

well pointed!

Yeah I bought a pretty expensive Macbook Pro earlier this year and recently ended up switching from OSX to Ubuntu after I got tired of dealing with all sorts of random Docker issues. To my surprise, I've found Linux to feel faster and be somewhat more pleasant than OSX. Now I sometimes wish I had just spent half as much money getting a more powerful (bulkier) laptop that just ran Linux.

Docker outside of Linux has been a major pain point for a while. I'm switching to a Linux laptop and native Docker is one of the things I'm most looking forward to.

I know the feeling. I was sick of using company's laptop (ideapad) to everything I needed to (messing personal stuff together), and went forward looking for a new (used) laptop in internet classified boards. I wanted a well built, portable (like 13" max), and mint condition used laptop. Went to Docker Slack and asked what were their experience running docker on mac. There are still some improvements to be made there, and besides I dont want to run VMs again unless its totally needed (like a windows environment in a vm, or coreos on qemu as I use here for k8s testing, but not docker itself). I know xhyve is transparent and everything, but lets face it, its just another virtual machine running docker, from boot2docker to xhyve was a no-go to me. So I decided to go for a Linux laptop (using linux since 98, in fact I got excited about it). My options for a decent linux laptop concerning portability were the Dell XPS, or a Thinkpad X260. So I started to watch reviews on youtube for both laptops. Doing so I found that the Dell has a coil whine issue that would really drive me crazy having a laptop screaming right out of the box. It was a no-go for me. If you want to check what I am talking about, watch this https://youtu.be/cwR4CWzDtfQ. My boss has one and I started to listen to the laptop and yes it is kinda noisy. So there was this thinkpad. At amazon the X260 was USD 2750. Far from my spending range right now, so I decided to check classifieds for a used one. Keeping in mind the linux laptop for docker development, I found a thinkpad x240 which is a beast - 12,5"/i7 proc/8GB ram/256 ssd. its silent, portable enough, feels well built as most thinkpads, its possible to upgrade the memory to 16GB when I have the resources for it, has back-light keyboard, a nice keyboard indeed. The trackpad is sort of weird, but I am getting used to it. The version I got is a touchscreen HD display and not FHD, so my max res is 1366x768. Using the gnome tweak tool I was able to change some fonts and icons size, its just great now, feels like HD for me. Has 2 video ports, VGA and miniDV. it has card reader. Even a sim card modem built in. It was USD 500. I dont see myself changing to another one soon. And docker is flying over here - as well qemu. Cheers mates.

Yeah, I wouldn't want a crummy windows trackpad taking up space either ;) also all Apple laptops are 16:10, other than the 11" MacBook Air.

What's a Windows trackpad?

I've been a thinkpad user since 386 days, and love my x201 and x220, but I prefer the Dell Rugged Extreme (price notwithstanding) -- feels like an old school bombproof (literally in this case) thinkpad...

but I really miss the UltraNav.

If you want there was a P series of thinkpads that are designed to be milspec and IP60 something.

Not all the P-series, as far as I can see - the P50/P50s/P70 do, but the P40 Yoga notably doesn't (and I'd be impressed if they had made a hybrid tablet/laptop that did).

(And here I thought the P-series was "just" what the W series morphed into...)

I thinkimux is rather hit and miss when it comes to battery life on Linux.

I've never really quite understood why, as I though ACPI is meant to handle this. But I'm not terribly au fait with this interface, so there might be good reasons, I know Torcalds criticised it early on as a "design disaster" and there were and I think still are concerns about the way that bytecode has unfettered access to the system.

> You will have to claw my x201 out of my cold dead hands, I've not found a single notebook (even the newer ThinkPads) that are as comfortable to use. I've got no crummy trackpad wasting space and a 16:10 display that's designed for work, and not watching cat videos.

the X201 has a trackpad. The X1 carbon (and several other models) have 2560x1440 displays.

The x201 was the last ThinkPad to offer NOT having a Trackpad, you just swap the palmrest.

http://mos6581.com/pictures/thinkpad/201-palmrest.jpg

> (...) most developers setting up vagrant on their Mac just to get a working environment.

What kind of working environment requires setting up Vagrant on OSX? It's a Unix-based OS, if you're doing any web development you can do it on the host system.

Isolation and reproduction.

For one thing, you want the development environment to be as similar to production as possible – same OS version, same webserver version, same DB version, same dependencies, no unwanted extras that differ between environments.

For another thing, you don't want to have to solve conflicts between project A and completely unrelated project T if you need to work on them both.

If you care about isolation and reproduction then you're using a VM anyway and the host OS is completely irrelevant.

Using a VM is the reason to use Vagrant.

Yes, I know.

You generally develop on the platform that your software will end up running on, and nobody in their right mind uses OSX on a server.

If you have a SaaS product that needs 3D rendering on the server, Windows and Linux servers that have a GPU are targeted towards GPGPU and are expensive to rent.

MacPros have two descent AMD FirePro GPUs but much cheaper to rent.

If you are trying to match your production platform then you will use a VM of some sort in Linux anyway. If you are not trying to match your production platform then you can develop just fine on OSX.

> not watching cat videos.

yea. ok

edit: Why not watch cat videos?