Operating system for engine development?

Discussion of chess software programming and technical issues.

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Which OS do you prefer for development of your engine?

Poll ended at Tue Mar 01, 2022 8:03 am

Windows
20
42%
macOS
2
4%
Linux/Unix
26
54%
 
Total votes: 48

smatovic
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Full name: Srdja Matovic

Re: Operating system for engine development?

Post by smatovic »

Magnum wrote: Fri Jul 01, 2022 5:10 pm MacBook Pro 16-inch M1 MAX all-in version.
= always newest: macOS, Windows 11 ARM, … Linux.
+ always newest: Parallels and CrossOver.
I admit, I was once an Apple fan, Apple MacBook Pro 15, the Unibody from 2010, produced from 2008 to 2012, got it from my employer for Ruby on Rails web-programming, I guess all RoR developers back then used a MacBook, liked the Unix under the hood, Zshell, ports install, and yes, the design. Since the mid-2012 MacBook product line I am not a fan anymore. And since 2018 Apple is deprecating their OpenCL support in favour for Metal.

I have heard that Linus used once an Apple too, the Power Mac G5:

https://macdailynews.com/2005/03/09/lin ... er_mac_g5/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_Mac ... wer_Mac_G5

a bella machina back then. Steve Job's choice to switch to the Darwin Unix (Nextstep OS) based Mac OS X in 2001 was really a good one, Mac OS entered the open source POSIX world. I never really figured how to use the one-button mouse in Mac OS 8/9.

Meanwhile Linus uses an 32-core Ryzen Threadripper with Fedora Linux:

https://www.zdnet.com/article/you-can-b ... to-buy-it/

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Srdja
PK
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Re: Operating system for engine development?

Post by PK »

Sad to say it, but Windows. I had friends who advocated installing Linux as a secondary OS on my laptop, they ended up destroying my file system entirely because of some hardware niceties. I don't consider them friends anymore because of destruction they caused. Years' worth of writing and years' worth of coding went away because of stupid Linux advocacy and supposedly "safe" procedure.
Last edited by PK on Fri Jul 01, 2022 8:37 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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algerbrex
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Re: Operating system for engine development?

Post by algerbrex »

PK wrote: Fri Jul 01, 2022 8:13 pm Sad to say it, but Windows. I had friends who advocated installing Linux as a secondary OS on my laptop, they ended up destroying my file system entirely because of some hardware niceties. I don't consider them friends anymore because of destruction they caused. Years' worth of writing and years' worth of coding went away because of stupid Linux advocacy.
Damn, that sucks.

I’ve done dual booting in the past on some of my windows machines, but was always very careful not to royal screw up and lose my data. Of course this still wasn’t very safe, and now if I ever did try dual booting on my current machine, I’d make sure to back up the hard drive before I tried anything.
PK
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Re: Operating system for engine development?

Post by PK »

algerbrex wrote: Fri Jul 01, 2022 8:27 pm
PK wrote: Fri Jul 01, 2022 8:13 pm Sad to say it, but Windows. I had friends who advocated installing Linux as a secondary OS on my laptop, they ended up destroying my file system entirely because of some hardware niceties. I don't consider them friends anymore because of destruction they caused. Years' worth of writing and years' worth of coding went away because of stupid Linux advocacy.
Damn, that sucks.

I’ve done dual booting in the past on some of my windows machines, but was always very careful not to royal screw up and lose my data. Of course this still wasn’t very safe, and now if I ever did try dual booting on my current machine, I’d make sure to back up the hard drive before I tried anything.
They promised that the procedure is 100% safe. Afterwards, I decided not to touch Linux no matter what, if only to avoid contacting the members of its fucking sect ever again.
Last edited by PK on Fri Jul 01, 2022 8:45 pm, edited 3 times in total.
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Ras
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Re: Operating system for engine development?

Post by Ras »

PK wrote: Fri Jul 01, 2022 8:13 pmYears' worth of writing and years' worth of coding went away because of stupid Linux advocacy and supposedly "safe" procedure.
If you don't have any backups, the data are not important anyway. They're just one hardware drive issue away from being gone anyway.
Rasmus Althoff
https://www.ct800.net
PK
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Location: Warsza

Re: Operating system for engine development?

Post by PK »

Ras wrote: Fri Jul 01, 2022 8:43 pm
PK wrote: Fri Jul 01, 2022 8:13 pmYears' worth of writing and years' worth of coding went away because of stupid Linux advocacy and supposedly "safe" procedure.
If you don't have any backups, the data are not important anyway. They're just one hardware drive issue away from being gone anyway.
Still, as far as data destruction is concerned, in my experience, both work and private, Linux users lead 3:1.
benb
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Full name: Ben Bradley

Re: Operating system for engine development?

Post by benb »

mvanthoor wrote: Thu Feb 17, 2022 1:04 pm But now, you could just install something like Linux Mint, add VSCode, and be done with it.
I only got vscode to replace notepad++ a few months ago, but I've since discovered vscodium.
https://vscodium.com/
smatovic
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Full name: Srdja Matovic

Re: Operating system for engine development?

Post by smatovic »

Unix Pioneer Ken Thompson Announces He's Switching From Mac To Linux:
The closing keynote at the SCaLE 20x conference was delivered by 80-year-old Ken Thompson (co-creator of Unix, Plan9, UTF8, and the Go programming language). Slashdot reader motang shared Thompson answer to a question at the end about what operating system he uses today: I have, for most of my life — because I was sort of born into it — run Apple. Now recently, meaning within the last five years, I've become more and more depressed, and what Apple is doing to something that should allow you to work is just atrocious. But they are taking a lot of space and time to do it, so it's okay. And I have come, within the last month or two, to say, even though I've invested, you know, a zillion years in Apple — I'm throwing it away. And I'm going to Linux. To Raspbian in particular.
https://apple.slashdot.org/story/23/03/ ... inlinkanon

https://www.chessprogramming.org/Ken_Thompson

One Raspberry Pi to rule them all?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raspberry_Pi_OS

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Srdja
Sopel
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Re: Operating system for engine development?

Post by Sopel »

PK wrote: Fri Jul 01, 2022 8:13 pm Sad to say it, but Windows. I had friends who advocated installing Linux as a secondary OS on my laptop, they ended up destroying my file system entirely because of some hardware niceties. I don't consider them friends anymore because of destruction they caused. Years' worth of writing and years' worth of coding went away because of stupid Linux advocacy and supposedly "safe" procedure.
The did god's work, teaching you about the importance of backups earlier. And you generally can't fuck up an existing drive when installing an OS other than explicitly formatting it.
Still, as far as data destruction is concerned, in my experience, both work and private, Linux users lead 3:1.
nah, you're just biased
dangi12012 wrote:No one wants to touch anything you have posted. That proves you now have negative reputations since everyone knows already you are a forum troll.

Maybe you copied your stockfish commits from someone else too?
I will look into that.
syzygy
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Re: Operating system for engine development?

Post by syzygy »

wickedpotus wrote: Tue Feb 15, 2022 1:23 pm
Tord wrote: Tue Feb 01, 2022 5:37 pm I'm surprised I'm the first macOS user so far. Almost all the non-chess developers I know use macOS.
Why surprised? Most Chess-engine-developers like openness, loathe proprietary stuff and artificially produced vendor lock-ins, driven by business reasons rather than technical reasons. Also, they know poor price/performance when they see it... You cannot blow marketing fairy dust onto chess players as easily as "influencers" on youtube...

I think there is a good reason you never see Linus Torvalds carrying a macbook around :-)
But he does.
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2022/08 ... ux-kernel/
(Yes, it runs Linux, but a macbook is a macbook.)