A Mac is excellent for authoring graphics considering you use Photoshop so a Mac. Inkscape and Gimp are a total pain in the ass with tiling window managers too. But give me a fucking break. There is no way the mac desktop can beat a good tiling window manager like XMonad or Awesome combined with Vim/Emacs, and urxvt-unicode. I switch to a test workspace and start tests, switch to the browser and Ctrl-R, and flip back to Emacs before you’ve moved your fucking hand to the fucking mouse.

Most of the tools cited in this article have nothing to do with RoR. Where’s your git gui for example? Oh yea, it’s all text. WTF does MarsEdit have to do with Ror? Gimme a break!

I’m soooo happy I’ve switched! To the Linux users reading this — Mac OS X is a whole new world, especially in terms of how smoothly things work, how well-integrated Cocoa apps are, and the little details that, compounded, make things much easier.

I’ve been proven wrong.

I really echo Peter Cooper’s words: just buy a fucking mac.

And this comes from a guy using Ubuntu every day since 2006.

My recommended applications for those developers wishing to use Ubuntu (or some other Linux distribution):
FTP Client: FileZilla
Programming Editor / IDE: GNU Emacs
Easier (than Emacs) Programming Editor: Geany
Terminal / Console: rxvt-unicode (and) GNU Screen
Quicksilver Alternative: Gnome Do (or) Launchy
RSS Feed Reader: RSSOwl
File Manager: Midnight Commander
Outliner / Note-taking App: NoteCase
IRC Client: WeeChat

All of these are very powerful apps. Take the time to learn them. You’ll be rewarded.

For those interested in finding Linux alternatives to OS X apps:
http://linuxappfinder.com/alternatives
http://www.osalt.com/

And…
http://ubuntuforums.org/
For questions and answers.

Ultimately, I think it comes down to a matter of personal choice.

And, BTW, there are great Linux alternatives for all the apps you mention.

On a terminal I am using vim, but I am not really proficient with it and would never switch from TextMate (btw wtf http://nubyonrails.com/articles/emacs-emacs)

Java vs Ruby - it’s not for everyone. For some guys (no offense, but IMO mainly for the mediocre ones) it is more convenient to sit at some big Java shop as one of the x Java devels and code something. Nobody notices if you have no particular result in say a few weeks. In that timeframe in Ruby/Rails you could create a google competitor

The IDE topic is particularly interesting. Previously I followed every innovation in the IDE world and thought that it’s the way to go — IDE has to handle code completion (it’s literally impossible to remember every method of every class), real-time code review and take other complex tasks off the shoulders of the programmer. Over time IDE’s have become more complex and demanding to system resources (to the hilarious extent sometimes). They have simply because the languages they were intended for are far from natural and easy themselves. Instead of solving the root cause of the problem — simplifying the language so that it doesn’t stay in a way of a programmer — people focused (and still do) on building complex tools to deal with the stress of programming on those language. What is fascinating about Ruby is that you don’t need an IDE at all and I proved it to myself working in VI (comfortably) for quite some time. And that’s a sign that something has finally been done right. So, the question you quoted should sound more like “You DO use IDE? Lol…” really.

I was also coming from the Java world (7+ years before the switch), but in my programming life used about 14 languages for projects of sizes from micro to huge. Ruby is the love of my life. It truly is. Many say that it feels like a rope long enough to hang yourself, so flexible it is, but if you have the coding discipline, value style and consistency, this flexibility is really a blessing!

Hope I’m not violating any policy of the comment size.

Cheers!