You’re fundamentally right, but “no less powerful” is a pretty big stretch, consideration that the majority of the Internet runs on Linux servers, not Mac servers.
But your point about FreeBSD is right. It’s more work, but most software built for Linux will at least run on Mac if you know your compiler flags well enough.
But if someone tries to spin up web services on a Mac, they’re going to have a bad time. So I wouldn’t quote say “no less powerful”.
Edit: but I agree with your core point that the meme is silly and way off base.
Linux’s big competitive advantage in web servers is licensing. You don’t have to pay Apple a penny to start up a linux VM, and you don’t have to contractually run it on apple hardware.
In most modern languages, the difference in building your project on linux vs OS X is basically non-existant. I’ve spent nearly a decade working on backend web services on company MacBooks that get deployed to a linux EC2 instance. Running the server locally makes basically no difference.
Agreed that the fundamental advantage is licensing.
But let’s not underestimate the enterprise packaging gulf that this difference has led to.
It sounds like you and I both could get a full set of web services running on Mac.
That said, among the diversity of things I’ve had to get running on Mac, it was a lot less simple than on Linux. Which is why I run as much as possible inside Docker.
You’re fundamentally right, but “no less powerful” is a pretty big stretch, consideration that the majority of the Internet runs on Linux servers, not Mac servers.
But your point about FreeBSD is right. It’s more work, but most software built for Linux will at least run on Mac if you know your compiler flags well enough.
But if someone tries to spin up web services on a Mac, they’re going to have a bad time. So I wouldn’t quote say “no less powerful”.
Edit: but I agree with your core point that the meme is silly and way off base.
Linux’s big competitive advantage in web servers is licensing. You don’t have to pay Apple a penny to start up a linux VM, and you don’t have to contractually run it on apple hardware.
In most modern languages, the difference in building your project on linux vs OS X is basically non-existant. I’ve spent nearly a decade working on backend web services on company MacBooks that get deployed to a linux EC2 instance. Running the server locally makes basically no difference.
Linux’s advantages are more legal than technical.
Agreed that the fundamental advantage is licensing.
But let’s not underestimate the enterprise packaging gulf that this difference has led to.
It sounds like you and I both could get a full set of web services running on Mac.
That said, among the diversity of things I’ve had to get running on Mac, it was a lot less simple than on Linux. Which is why I run as much as possible inside Docker.