Does the Operating System Matter anymore?

This was an experiment to see if my operating system matters at all to how I work and how productive I can be. Having been on OSX on a Macbook Pro for the last seven years, I wanted to see how easily I can migrate to another OS and hardware and how much it would disrupt my day to day work.

First I listed all the applications that are critical to get stuff done.

The Macbook Pro is an excellent choice — OSX natively provides a Unix-like interface with a great UI. But then, it is the OSX way and no other way. The lack of customization is extreme. Everything else on OSX is amazing. SSH support is native, Office Apps and Slack run without issues and the hardware is top notch. The only problem is the limited disk space and the fact that expanding storage is a warranty breaking affair. Oh, also the Mac heats up a lot, with the metal base sometimes being too hot to place on the lap. Since I need to run several VMs, the fan at highest speed is a norm.

The office had an old ThinkPad E480 that they could spare. It came with 16G RAM, and a 500G disk. I wanted to try two alternate options. One pure Linux OS and one Windows 10 and VirtualBox Linux.

I chose Fedora 29 as the OS to run Linux. The installation was simple, no issues with hardware. The low resolution screen of the E series took a while to get used to, but was OK after a while. I installed Chrome, sync’ed the account, and LastPass. All my sessions were restored and everything was just as it were on my Mac. Installed docker and minikube, few other tools and restored the home directory from the VM on my Mac. Pretty much everything was just as before. Perfect. Slack installed fine, no issues there. Next was Email. Evolution has the best support for Exchange on Linux. I was amazed at how well the integration is, everything was available, Addresses were searchable, Calendar invites appeared and so on. I remember the old days of struggling with Email but this was great. Then VPN. Trouble started now. Needed to get the right AnyConnect version, and for some strange reason, its easier to download AnyConnect from third-party websites than from Cisco. They intentionally make it hard to download. After fiddling with two or three versions and searching for the right `libpangox`library, finally the VPN window was up and I could connect to the office. Last but not the least I needed to connect to Citrix. This was one thing that just plain refused to work. Citrix ICA client is the worst kind of release that one can do. Even though the forums all point out the issues, there seem to be no response in addressing them. I tried multiple versions, and finally gave up on it. I had to resort to running a Windows 10 VM and launch Citrix from that. Surprisingly, whenever I ran the Windows 10 VM on the MacBook Pro, it would heat up a lot. Linux on the Thinkpad was cool as ever and Windows 10 VM was smooth. Citrix problem solved for now, but going into a Windows 10 VM each time is a pain. Overall all of this set up activity took a good part of a Saturday, but by late evening I had a fully functional alternate work computer, where I can get everything done. Well, technically. After a week of usage, I found Evolution difficult, and switched to MailSpring, just for a better interface, then switched back to Evolution. Going to the Windows VM for Citrix was the most painful one of them all. But otherwise, the OS felt right at home, and I really don’t understand why Linux cannot be used as a development workstation. My issues were of course not Linux related — MS wont release a Linux version of Outlook obviously, and anything else is a retrofit. It was great to have Native docker and Kubernetes and most of all there was no indication of heating up at all. Even on this old ThinkPad. I ordered a HDMI cable to connect it to my larger monitor and totally avoided the crappy low resolution screen. The best thing was that there was lots of room and I constantly didnt need to fiddle with 2 USB HDDs as I needed to on the MacBook Pro.

After a week, I decided to try Windows 10 on the same Laptop. I have not used Windows in close to 10 years now, I have skipped Windows 7 and Windows 8. To start with I created a bootable USB to install Windows 10, and created a separate partition to install Windows. Installation was the usual, and post install and a few reboots later Windows 10 was running in all its glory. I’m very impressed with the changes from XP to Windows 10, and though there is no single theme in Windows 10, it still seems to run very nicely. Office 365, Slack and Chrome brought my work back to its normal state. What was now missing was a Linux environment to develop on. I had no interest to reboot to Fedora all the time, so turned to VirtualBox for Linux. (I tried Docker on Windows for a very short time, but found the experience too limiting for me. Not a fan of Powershell yet). With Virtualbox, I tried to set up the actual Fedora Partition as a rawdisk VMDK, so that it actually boots to the pre-installed Fedora. This was only partially sucessful, and with the weekend coming to a close, I have just copied across my previous Fedora VMDK from the Mac, and I have exactly what I have on the other computer. Needless to say, Office and Outlook work as expected, Chrome makes life seamless across phones, Operating systems and Slack is the same everywhere. Most importantly Citrix works and for now I dont need to struggle with that problem. I’m going to stick to this setup for a month or so, to see what how its like. What I really want to do is to get Virtualbox to install the Linux OS on the raw partition so that I can get the full utilization of the disk, and not be limited by the VMDK file. I’ll try this out next weekend and that should give me a very good workstation for the moment. If everything is good, I might try and ask for a more recent Thinkpad model that has a better screen, as the display on this E series Thinkpad is terrible.

The Operating system seems to have been totally taken out of the equation these days. Of course the fact that I’m comfortable on any OS to configure/tweak and adjust as necessary helps, but what this exercise really made me think about is that most of our work these days lies in the cloud, and the way I’ve migrated without even realizing it, surprised me. All I need is a Linux VM, and the command line tools, and the rest is a breeze. Certain handicaps like Citrix are certainly not Linux’s problem, but it is a problem in the environment nevertheless. Linux as a standard work station is totally there, no doubt about it. If at all MS would release a Linux version of Office that would be fantastic. The Thinkpad remains cool most of the time, much more so than the MacBook Pro and I’m able to adjust the fonts and colours as I please especially to suit a colourblind eye. I seem to suddenly have grown more desktop area on my large work monitor, but the Thinkpad screen of course is totally bad. Zero loss of productivity in 3 weeks switching between three completely different Operating systems is really something!

Related posts:

Since starting my channel I’ve been getting lots of questions, and I’ve noticed that the one thing that everyone really has in common is that we’re all different. Specifically, we all have a…

In the middle of your time in high school you are sent to live with relatives in another country whose customs are largely strange and unfamiliar to you. The food, the clothing styles, cultural…