Mac Mini or Linux/small pc for software development?

[shuttleboi]

I have a WinXP box at home for games but would like a new Unix installation to do software development (largely C++, Java, and the occasional PHP). I do NOT want to dual boot my WinXP box (had bad experiences before).

I have a budget of about $600. I think I have two options:

1. Mac Mini running OS/X. Supposedly this comes with the whole GNU suite of tools.
2. Build-it-myself PC (maybe a Shuttle) running some Linux.

Any suggestions?

 

[ValuedCustomer]

Is it just your preference that it be sff or is there a physical space limitation? - either way you'll be able to get a LOT better performance from building your own (vs Mini).

do you already have a monitor, etc?

 

[shuttleboi]

I don't have a lot of deskspace or a high tolerance for noise, so I thought a SFF PC or Mac Mini would be good. I'm not looking to run games, just to run g++ or javac. I already have a monitor, mouse, keyboard and was planning to get a KVM switch.

 

[SLCentral]

Coding on OS X is a dream. I'd get the Mini just for OS X and XCode.

 

[mosco]

If you decide on a mini, wait until after macworld because they will probably have intel ones by then.

 

[Nothinman]

You could always get a copy of VMWare and install linux in there.

 

[drag]

Actually...

If you ask me, buying a Linux box to use remotely is a bit of a mistake. What you want to do is to run the Linux box natively and use the Windows XP box remotely.

I've seen a couple threads here and there that end up with a guy asking how to use the Linux box remotely on his Windows box.

You have a few choices..
SSH using Putty.exe --this is the 'best', but it's command line only.
Use Cygwin enviroment and ssh and X --this is good and provides a GUI, but X servers for Windows suck.
Use VNC -- which is ok.

Now I use ssh all the time, but I prefer using Linux over Windows generally because then I get the nice command line on the box that I am using. And going from Linux to Linux is easy because ssh rocks and X over ssh is easy and fairly fast. For slow links you have FreeNX which compresses X well and makes it fast over the internet and such. SSh encryption keeps it secure.

Now if your going the other direction.. from Windows to Linux, then it's easy. You use Windows XP Pro and setup remote desktop and have the window's remote desktop on Linux. It works quite nice and if you configure stuff nicely you can get a full screen (minus the toolbars) Windows with 24bit color support and it runs fairly fast. There isn't much difference between running it remotely vs natively over a lan.

Between OS X and Linux.. it's pretty much the same. OS X has good X windows support and vnc and I suppose rdesktop (never tried that though) and all that.

The difference between OS X and Linux is that although OS X has a better desktop experiance.. linux still makes a better server setup.

Now with Debian Stable, if you can manage to get a good Gnome or KDE desktop setup on the thing, (debian's default install can't rely be considured newbie freindly) then it's very easy to manage and install different things... You have a couple different versions of Apache to choose from, different databases (mysql, postgresql, firebird, etc), different languages like PHP, perl, Python, ruby, etc.

All if is 'officially supported'. All of it has it's dependancies taken care of and it all works together with all the different permutations and whatnot. All the software has been tested, bugs are known fixed or workarounds documented. You just have to install them with apt-get and configure them to your specific setup.

Also security is very good.

There is a good reason why Debian is rapidly becoming one of the most popular OSes for web serving.

Now with OS X you have things like Fink or Gentoo for Mac to choose from, which do a ok job.. much better then Windows does, but it's not as nice as Debian.

Also there is Fedora, which does a better job at managing packages then OS X can, and is quite popular also. Also if your planing on working within a 'enterprise' enviroment then Redhat is the most common Linux OS your going to run into and Fedora is very close to that.

Now aside from doing that and investing in a second machine there are some alternatives...

One is to use Cygwin. Cygwin is a Linux/Posix-like enviroment for Windows were most GNU software works well. You can do perl, run a ssh server and things like that. Lots of web developers use cygwin and it's quite popular. It's Free software, originally from Redhat, I beleive.. and is good on the resources.

Also another is to use a virtual machine like Vmware. Just run the entire Linux OS as a application on your Windows OS. Basicly. It's also very popular. This costs money and requires a bit more machine.



For Linux/OS X hardware with a 600 dollar budget and small and quiet formfactor...

Apple's Macmini makes a good Debian box, and it supports OS X. In fact you can run OS X inside Linux if you realy wanted to. Booting and setup Linux is a bit more confusing then it is with x86, though. Probably stick with OS X if you go this route. It's nice that it's inexpensive.

Shuttle XPC is a good Linux route as long as your choosy..
For these you'd probably want to go the Intel route for less headaches.
The 915G* chipset is ok supported. Everything should work out of the box.. sound, video, networking, etc. 3D graphics it may be a bit new for Debian Stable, I am not sure. I think it will work. If not go with Debian Testing, Fedora, or Ubuntu. If that matters to you.

There is one model, I beleive, with a 'Sound Blaster Live! 24bit' sound card. Those sound cards are not well supported in Linux... they sound like the normal Sound Blaster Live! 5.1 cards or Audigy 1/2/etc.. which are very well supported, but are internally completely different.

Also the Audigy LS is a similar thing to SoundBlaster 24bit. These should be avoided.

Audigy 1 or other Audigys are well supported as well as the Soundblaster Live 5.1 stuff. All these use the Emu10k1 chipset or derivative, which are very well supported.

The intel-onboard and such are well supported, but their capabilities are limited.

Avoid the ATI motherboards. Not good at all with Linux.


Go with onboard Intel for video. Avoid ATI. You can upgrade to propriatory Nvidia drivers in the future for more performance if you need to.. (but you have to deal with drivers, which kinda suck)

Pentium-Ms are easy to keep quiet and are fast, but they are expensive...

Also there are some Asus barebones that are small and quiet. Similar to the shuttle.



Another option if you want is to go with a Laptop.
Intel everything.. Intel Video, Intel Wireless, etc.. Well supported by Linux. Older 'centrino' style laptops with the 855 chipsets have subpar performance with Video, but are well supported non-the-less. Same thing with 915 chipsets.

Avoid broadcom wifi. Anything with the official 'centrino' lable will have all Intel stuff in them, except for some with ATI video, which is so-so, but you have to deal with the drivers.

You can find these guys new or refurbished from Dell and HP and such for around and under 600 bucks.

That's pretty small and quiet. As well as having a built-in UPS.


And the final option that I can think of is going Mini-ITX formfactor.

This is nice because it's less propriatory then Shuttle or Asus minipc stuff. It's upgradable and such.

Check out Logic supply.
http://www.logicsupply.com/
I haven't seen these up close or used them before but they seem pretty nice and are low-energy.

There are Via-based items... with slow cpus and slow video, but make great servers non-the-less. Also have some Celeron/P4/P-M systems.

Fanless, rackmount, firewalls, carputers.

 

[sigs3gv]

Linux FTW

Edit:
A Linux x86 rig will offer better performance at the same price.
Additionally, if you were to buy the Mini, it would be replaced relatively quickly by the new Intel Macs running on x86.

 

[shuttleboi]

Hi Drag, thanks for the detailed info.

Originally posted by: drag
You have a few choices..
SSH using Putty.exe --this is the 'best', but it's command line only.
Use Cygwin enviroment and ssh and X --this is good and provides a GUI, but X servers for Windows suck.
Use VNC -- which is ok.

I've been using local Windows and remote Unix for a long time. I use SecureCRT as a ssh terminal. I've also used Cygwin considerably, but the Cygwin shell window (based on the DOS Command Prompt) is ugly; I can't even change the font. Cygwin supports X, but I don't like the look, so that is why I want to use a KVM to switch to the native OSX/Linux box.

Now if your going the other direction.. from Windows to Linux, then it's easy. You use Windows XP Pro and setup remote desktop and have the window's remote desktop on Linux. It works quite nice and if you configure stuff nicely you can get a full screen (minus the toolbars) Windows with 24bit color support and it runs fairly fast. There isn't much difference between running it remotely vs natively over a lan.

I've used Windows Remote Desktop for going Windows to Windows. How do I use it with local Linux and remote Windows? What software do I need to use on the Linux side?

The difference between OS X and Linux is that although OS X has a better desktop experiance.. linux still makes a better server setup.

I agree completely. I've been told that SUSE/OpenSUSE has the best looking desktop (using KDE), but it pales in comparison to OSX. I've used Fedora Core in the past.

Also another is to use a virtual machine like Vmware. Just run the entire Linux OS as a application on your Windows OS. Basicly. It's also very popular. This costs money and requires a bit more machine.

I've also tried the demo of VMWare. The software is expensive (around $200 last time I looked). I tend to multitask a lot (www, winamp, photoshop, mail, games, coding), and I've found it taxes my system (3GHz P4). I feel that if I spend a bit more (up to around $600), I'd prefer to have a separate box with its own CPU and RAM.

Apple's Macmini makes a good Debian box, and it supports OS X. In fact you can run OS X inside Linux if you realy wanted to. Booting and setup Linux is a bit more confusing then it is with x86, though. Probably stick with OS X if you go this route. It's nice that it's inexpensive.

Are you saying replace the entire OSX with Linux? Or can the MacMini dual-boot both?

 

[Nothinman]

Additionally, if you were to buy the Mini, it would be replaced relatively quickly by the new Intel Macs running on x86.

It wouldn't be replaced, Apple will be supporting PPC boxes for a very long time.

 

[mosco]

Originally posted by: Nothinman

Additionally, if you were to buy the Mini, it would be replaced relatively quickly by the new Intel Macs running on x86.

It wouldn't be replaced, Apple will be supporting PPC boxes for a very long time.

I think the point was to wait because you can either get a new cool intel mac mini or if you don't like them you can buy an old mac mini for cheap.

 

[Nothinman]

I think the point was to wait because you can either get a new cool intel mac mini or if you don't like them you can buy an old mac mini for cheap.

But from a programmers perspective they'll be exactly the same, unless he ends up doing assembly work but that's pretty rare these days. As for the older models dropping in price, that may be true but I wouldn't delay my purchase just for that since Apple hardware tends to hold it's value pretty well.

 

[drag]

Originally posted by: shuttleboi
Hi Drag, thanks for the detailed info.

Originally posted by: drag
You have a few choices..
SSH using Putty.exe --this is the 'best', but it's command line only.
Use Cygwin enviroment and ssh and X --this is good and provides a GUI, but X servers for Windows suck.
Use VNC -- which is ok.

I've been using local Windows and remote Unix for a long time. I use SecureCRT as a ssh terminal. I've also used Cygwin considerably, but the Cygwin shell window (based on the DOS Command Prompt) is ugly; I can't even change the font. Cygwin supports X, but I don't like the look, so that is why I want to use a KVM to switch to the native OSX/Linux box.

Oh ya. Forgot about KVM stuff. That'll work, but I just dont' like spending money on hardware can be trivially replaced by software. (well for regular use) I am kinda cheap like that.

KVM is very handy though if you have computers close together of course, also it works during install time and troubleshooting, were as ssh and such is only usefull after install time on a machine with working network. So kvm stuff is pretty nice.

Now if your going the other direction.. from Windows to Linux, then it's easy. You use Windows XP Pro and setup remote desktop and have the window's remote desktop on Linux. It works quite nice and if you configure stuff nicely you can get a full screen (minus the toolbars) Windows with 24bit color support and it runs fairly fast. There isn't much difference between running it remotely vs natively over a lan.

I've used Windows Remote Desktop for going Windows to Windows. How do I use it with local Linux and remote Windows? What software do I need to use on the Linux side?

There is rdesktop for Linux that supports the rdp stuff. It's Free software and most distros will support it, I expect. There are gnome and kde frontends, but I had best luck using rdesktop from the command line.

Basicly you go:
rdesktop remote.computer
And that is it. It defaults to 256 color though... and so I go like this:
rdesktop -a 16 -g 1024x724 remote.computer

Then that works. there are lots of options and it supports different servers, even sound from Win2003 servers.

The difference between OS X and Linux is that although OS X has a better desktop experiance.. linux still makes a better server setup.

I agree completely. I've been told that SUSE/OpenSUSE has the best looking desktop (using KDE), but it pales in comparison to OSX. I've used Fedora Core in the past.

Also another is to use a virtual machine like Vmware. Just run the entire Linux OS as a application on your Windows OS. Basicly. It's also very popular. This costs money and requires a bit more machine.

I've also tried the demo of VMWare. The software is expensive (around $200 last time I looked). I tend to multitask a lot (www, winamp, photoshop, mail, games, coding), and I've found it taxes my system (3GHz P4). I feel that if I spend a bit more (up to around $600), I'd prefer to have a separate box with its own CPU and RAM.

Apple's Macmini makes a good Debian box, and it supports OS X. In fact you can run OS X inside Linux if you realy wanted to. Booting and setup Linux is a bit more confusing then it is with x86, though. Probably stick with OS X if you go this route. It's nice that it's inexpensive.

Are you saying replace the entire OSX with Linux? Or can the MacMini dual-boot both?

Ya.

Right now I am running Debian (what I am typing from) on a Ibook and the Mac Mini is very similar hardware. Debian's PowerPC support is pretty complete. The software and UI is identical to Debian on x86. All supported Free software is cross-platform. Propriatory stuff like flash and some media codecs aren't going to work. Java may be a problem.

The hardware is mostly well supported except for the wifi which is broadcom unit (the 'Apple Extreme').. which you can't probably replace due to the f-ed up. (it's a minipci card that has been changed so that it's incompatable with normal slots)

This is the only big deal that I have against the MacMini. I probably won't buy another Ibook either since the Intel Sonoma platform is superior and is fully supported. (this wasn't a option price wise for me when I bought this laptop)

You can install Linux completely on the Macmini and you can dual boot. The setup is a bit more tricky then on x86, and OS X can easily make it difficult to boot into Linux if you choose a 'boot up device' in the control panel stuff. This is fixable by a boot disk and chroot enviroment to resetup the bootloader. No real damage.

The nice thing is that with Mac-on-Linux you can run OS X on Linux without any extra software other then some Free software stuff aviable via apt-get. You may have to compile special drivers to interact with the OS X system on the Linux side, but that is about it.
see for details:
http://www.maconlinux.org/

The mol support on Debian stable maybe non-existant or maybe kinda old though. I use Debian unstable mostly. I am not sure.. but it's fairly easy to 'pin' the OS to stable and bring in software from testing or just compile latest mol from the website.

The nicest thing I figure from going at this angle from a web developer point of view that combining this with rdesktop and KDE (or Gnome if you like KDE) in a xnest (run a window'd X server on your current x server) enviroment is that you can easily test out all commonly used browsers on most common platforms without having to resort to any expensive hardware or software.

Firefox on Windows, Netscape on Windows, IE on Windows, Firefox and other Gecko based browsers on Linux, Konquerer on Linux, Text-based browser (for disabled people) on whatever, Firefox on OS X, IE on OS X, Safari on OS X, etc etc.Opera on Linux/OS X/Windows.

Whatever you want. All from the same desktop. Also it would be nice for cross-platform development.

That's the biggest deal it seems to me. Otherwise it's a lot of work for a fun diversion. I am sure that your more interested in getting work done then playing at being a sysadmin.

OS X and Linux can't read each other's partitions. (at least with windows you have fat32) OS X is actually more dual-boot unfriendly then Linux is. Also to play around with stuff like that you'd need a lot of RAM.

What it comes down to is what you feel you'd be most productive on.

 

[ProviaFan]

I vote Mac Mini (wait a week to see what you think about the Intel-based minis that will most probably be released). Having OS X on my PowerBook is a dream for anything that needs a UNIX environment and/or the GNU development tools. By the way, KVM is the way to go over remote Windows desktop, because you lose any sort of graphics acceleration when running with a remote desktop, aside from the other disadvantages already mentioned.

 

[Malak]

I don't understand, why do you need nix for programming? Why not just use what you got, or even use that money to upgrade it to run faster?

 

[drag]

Originally posted by: Malak
I don't understand, why do you need nix for programming? Why not just use what you got, or even use that money to upgrade it to run faster?

Because he is a web developers and Linux/BSD servers is what he programs for. Unix is pretty much the default system for web servers. He wants to have a box around that he can test his websites out on.

 

[Netopia]

Personally, I like tsclient to get to Windows boxen from Linux. It has a gui so I can quickly change resolution and other things.

BTW...drag, that was a AWESOME bit of info you posted on this thread. If you weren't elite, I'd be arguing that you should be!

Joe

 

[shuttleboi]

Originally posted by: drag

Originally posted by: Malak
I don't understand, why do you need nix for programming? Why not just use what you got, or even use that money to upgrade it to run faster?

Because he is a web developers and Linux/BSD servers is what he programs for. Unix is pretty much the default system for web servers. He wants to have a box around that he can test his websites out on.

Not exactly. I do research/development and program a lot of non-GUI stuff in C++ and Java. I've grown up on vi and gcc, and that's what I'm sticking by.

 

[shuttleboi]

Originally posted by: Nothinman

I think the point was to wait because you can either get a new cool intel mac mini or if you don't like them you can buy an old mac mini for cheap.

But from a programmers perspective they'll be exactly the same, unless he ends up doing assembly work but that's pretty rare these days. As for the older models dropping in price, that may be true but I wouldn't delay my purchase just for that since Apple hardware tends to hold it's value pretty well.

I don't do assembly programming, but there is a difference in endian-ness between PPC and Intel. That doesn't affect me much either though.

I think I will wait for the new Intel Mac Mini to come out (supposedly some announcement will be made at MacWorld this month). All other things being equal, I'd rather have Intel since that's what Apple's moving to.

 

[Nothinman]

I don't do assembly programming, but there is a difference in endian-ness between PPC and Intel. That doesn't affect me much either though.

If you're using a language like C or C++ you should be worried about endianness no matter what anyway, unless you purposely want to ignore portability.

 

[hooflung]

Maybe getting a G4 based mac since it is bi-endian and they should cost less. There are also other products that use the G4 that aren't Apple, such as a Genesi Freescale product.

 

[Nothinman]

Maybe getting a G4 based mac since it is bi-endian and they should cost less. There are also other products that use the G4 that aren't Apple, such as a Genesi Freescale product.

I don't know about the bi-endianness of the G4, but I would assume it's only running in one endian state at a time so you would still have issues.

 

[n0cmonkey]

Originally posted by: hooflung
Maybe getting a G4 based mac since it is bi-endian and they should cost less. There are also other products that use the G4 that aren't Apple, such as a Genesi Freescale product.

I wouldn't recommend anyone buying something from Genesi. Ever.

 

[alfa147x]

jsuk, the apple contract for the G4 chips are untill late 2007

so $500 for, maybe more, 2 years is realy worth it (THE MINI!)

 

[shuttleboi]

FYI: I tried out the free VMWare Player to run Fedora Core 4 and SUSE Linux. The VMWare player is a pretty slick virtual machine, but it is not as optimised as the $300 WMWare Workstation product. I may just stick with using VMWare Player until the Mac Mini on Intel comes out. I've found that the KDE look of SUSE Linux is pretty darn nice; it sure beats the old Red Hat GNOME desktop that I used back in 2001.