I read the article and groaned. My days of "tweak it until it works, just for fun" are pretty much past me (I'm typing this on a Mac, for instance). I like to spend my energy creating things these days.
But Arch seems really cool if you want to rebuild Linux systems for fun & knowledge!
Once you have Arch set up, there is very little tweaking that needs to be done. It "just works", well unless you have an AMD or NVIDIA graphics card and a new kernel or xorg comes out which isn't supported yet...
I think this is a little disingenuous. The Arch developers do their best to make sure that nvidia and amd drivers work with new kernels.
Sometimes updated drivers are needed, but not released for months, and the developers have to make the choice between holding back the kernel update for that small minority or releasing it to the benefit of everyone not using that driver.
Well, there are no graphics cards except AMD and NVIDIA (for Intel doesn't make discrete cards). And someone's a GPGPU developer who develops for various bleeding-edge Radeons and Teslas.
nouveau and the open source ATI radeon drivers work quite well on hardware that isn't the latest generation, and do not result in those sorts of issues.
Mac has major package management issues. Homebrew is fine (not as good as the linux counterparts, but fine), but if you make the mistake of installing Ruby with RVM Homebrew won't work, and you will spend a lot of time fixing it. With Arch you just have to get your basics set up and any development related item you need, there are precompiled packages you will install in seconds.
Perhaps, my point was that if you screw up your Ruby installation on Mac it is a pain to get things right again. RVM is the recommended way to install Ruby according to ruby-lang.org.
Homebrew expects ruby to be installed at /usr/bin. RVM installs it in ~/.rvm/bin/ruby-$VERSION. Even if you symlink there are compatibility problems. I'm sure it's fixable, but non-trivially so.
Sure. But unless you're deploying custom Linux builds, what does that get you, exactly? I have a number of packages on my computer I don't use, and I am not being hindered by their existence. I instead use my brain cycles for creating new software & systems, not retooling the existing one to no end.
edit: Please understand that I'm not saying a fully customizable Linux doesn't have its place. It absolutely does. But when you're trying to crank stuff out, having to stop and tweak/fix your system simply gets in the way. Well, it gets in my way, at least. :-)
Although I wouldn't word it so aggressively, I too feel compelled to react to your "creating thing" idea. Dismissing OS customization as something that "gets in the way" is a terrible misunderstanding of the role of an OS in "cranking stuff out". The truth is, good configuration of the OS can save you huge amounts of time in your creating "new software & system time".
The truth is, the OS is not supposed to be a black box that lets you run your IDE on top. That leads to extremely redundant systems with multiple failure points. Idiotic as it may sound, proper manipulation of your OS will make you "one" with the machine, and simplify your thoughts greatly.
I'll leave you with a quote found all over the Web: "Those who don't understand UNIX are doomed to reinvent it, poorly".
you make excellent points, but that still doesn't answer pnathan's problem. He just wants to get his work done, and he's getting just that with a Mac. Maybe he would not like to invest time in configuring his OS, that's a personal decision. Yes, OS customization may be an interesting/exhilarating experience for you, but maybe not for him; that's how its "getting in the way", for him
Just because a system gives you the freedom to customize your environment, it doesn't mean you required to "retool [it] to no end." I have used a simple Arch Linux installation for years and it has never interrupted my work flow.
But Arch seems really cool if you want to rebuild Linux systems for fun & knowledge!