> Why build a Linux box and be locked out of tools like Photoshop
That's what VMs are for. You're never really locked out. It may not make sense to go that way if Photoshop is THE thing you work with of course.
> when I could have UNIX workstation that ran commercial software
Because for lots of software MacOS is a second class system. Partially because there's just no way to test things on it without investing lots of money in hardware, so many people don't.
If you're doing lots of sysadmin / software maintenance style work, MacOS just provides unnecessary pain.
I'm working on packaging things for Darwin platform. And helping people deal with homebrew/compilation issues. I'm painfully aware how much is developed by people with no access to or interest in MacOS. And unless something targets windows explicitly (not wsl), you can basically expect issues going in. In a twisted way, I'm one of the enablers of the current situation where things are usable on a mac.
Sometimes you can tell by the simple fact that the git repo contains files in one directory that conflict in naming. Linux has no issues with "Foo" and "foo" coexisting.
> > I'm painfully aware how much is developed by people with no access to or interest in MacOS. [...] Sometimes you can tell by the simple fact that the git repo contains files in one directory that conflict in naming. Linux has no issues with "Foo" and "foo" coexisting.
> Nothing to do with Linux, and everything to do with case sensite filesystems common on UNIX.
Of the three major desktop operating systems (Microsoft Windows, Apple macOS, and the Linux family), only Linux has case sensitive filesystems by default. Therefore, it's likely that someone who didn't care about filename case conflicts was running Linux.
If that works for you, great. My default works better with Linux with only occasional other system. Makes me least angry. (Also because Linux is the only system that handles sleep/hibernation for me without issues, ironically...)
That's what VMs are for. You're never really locked out. It may not make sense to go that way if Photoshop is THE thing you work with of course.
> when I could have UNIX workstation that ran commercial software
Because for lots of software MacOS is a second class system. Partially because there's just no way to test things on it without investing lots of money in hardware, so many people don't.
If you're doing lots of sysadmin / software maintenance style work, MacOS just provides unnecessary pain.