OS X As My Workstation OS

By Jim on February 28th, 2005

Great piece by Joshua Wood on how he uses OS X as his workstation OS.

My work involves administering Unix Web servers and a mix of office desktops, along with developing the applications we run on them. I use Mac OS X to do it because it is something like a superset of those other popular OS choices. While much of the software I deploy is free, both as in speech and as in beer, I’m willing to open my wallet for OS X.

I need to connect to, and develop for, more than one platform, and OS X lets me keep all the tools I need in one (really shiny) toolbox. The Mac helps filter complexity for me as I use it, working with a variety of systems, standards, languages, and networking protocols, but presenting them in uncluttered, simple ways.

I can still choose to peek into the operating system source, because OS X’s kernel and low-level services, together called Darwin, are free software. But I can also choose to work without distraction in beautiful surroundings, tuning and tweaking on software and servers instead of on the machine I should be using to do that work.

I can understand his attraction to OS X. It’s got a beautiful GUI but there’s sooooooooo much more to it that makes it an extremely *powerful* as well as attractive looking operating system. Give his article a read to see how one guy has discovered that OS X is an amazing blend of things necessary for a great workstation OS.