The Java JRE doesn't run like a bear in a tar-pit on Linux. I consider that a plus, particularly for my Java IDEs.

Then you've got Valgrind, Callgrind and all that jazz, which you tend to pay Microsoft $200 for equivalent tools for, and never seem to be as good as the Linux tools.

Cross-compilers tend to be a breeze also, so I can get some OS X compiling goin' on in my Linux, yo. Or Windows compiling, if I'm allergic to Windows but want to build binaries for it (whaaaa???).

Then there's your chroots and jails, for tending on bare-bones setups, but without the VM aspect at play, very quick, very easy, very performant (meaning jailed performance tests) and very nice.

And of course, as Aud mentions, all possibly automated via scripting. Meaning I could have one seriously kick-ass automated integration test suite on my local development box. Develop in the day, kick off integration test suite as I go to bed, have results in the morning, without the extra server.

You have the power of Bash scripts

Windows has Batch scripts, not sure how powerful they are > though.

Pretty poor. Fortunately stuff like PowerShell has upped the game on the Windows end here, with it's .NET support built in.

Then you've got Valgrind, Callgrind and all that jazz

Visual Studio provides some debugging. For profiling gotta pay, and it's way over $200, therefore I don't know what tools you have in mind.

Mostly thinking GlowCode and company, but I see they are $500 new licenses now. Huzzah.

Cross-compilers tend to be a breeze also

I see this argument nearly all the time, but how many programs you actually developed, that were useful on more than 1 system, or even single situation? Chances are none. Therefore it's completely irrelevant.

Most! This will be why I develop Java, typically, of course. But many of the things I like to dabble in will have Windows and Linux builds, or Windows/Linux/OS X builds.

In a corporate sense, we usually end up building cross-platform C++ stuff as different customers will have different server requirements. Some have bought heavily into RedHat solutions, some Microsoft solutions. For our encoding platforms, Java isn't really a viable option for this, the argument for Java for those always runs into low jitter roadblocks.

On Windows you just gotta pay a lot for good tools, Linux tends to provide them for free. But my past experience with Linux says it's usually horrible quality with huge bucket of bugs (or maybe I just fail).

I actually tend to find the development tools are rock solid on Linux, and offer up a more advanced method of access. Usually what you pay for on Windows is better visualisation of data, and nice UIs. As I don't struggle with visualisation an awful much with the Linux tools, the price-tag of the Windows ones (and the aforementioned ... ehh, of the OS for my development purposes) isn't really worth it.

I've upgraded Ubuntu to 12.04 TLS and that start menu thing (not sure how it's called in Linux) works much better now. Overall responsiveness is better too (no more GUI lag). But fan is still going crazy, battery dies in 1:30 hours.

Zaoshi wrote:

I've upgraded Ubuntu to 12.04 TLS and that start menu thing (not sure how it's called in Linux) works much better now. Overall responsiveness is better too (no more GUI lag). But fan is still going crazy, battery dies in 1:30 hours.

Find out what's going 100%. Your CPU or GPU for example?