Developers often come to the following dilemma: either buy a Windows laptop and use WSL, or spend a lot of money on a MacBook. Linux distros are not usually in the first option due to a series of complexity that generate a lot of friction in the daily life of the developer, especially in their productivity.

We need to recognize the efforts that Microsoft has made to create a more pleasant environment for devs with WSL2, which can already be integrated with VS Code. Still, the feeling of having “two systems” running is strange and the experience is not as fluid as running a distro natively. Another important point is the memory consumption, which forces you to have a more powerful machine, which in general may not make up for the price and is better to buy a MacBook with its Unix-like capabilities.

DHH, founder of 37signals and creator of Ruby on Rails, created a script called Omakub, a very interesting option for configuring newly installed Ubuntu environments. The solution installs software, changes screen background, fonts, among others to improve the developer experience. And as DHH usually does, it is an Omakase solution, that is, strongly opinionated.

Some interesting things that already come in the package: really good, nice and smooth fonts; VS Code and neovim, already all configured, as editor solutions; Alacritty with Zellij, a modern combination for terminal use, with panel support, which facilitates the division of the screen into multiple small terminals, which makes it much easier if you use neovim and have a good screen resolution; in addition to some interesting settings of hotkeys that help a lot of productivity.

I’ve been using it since I decided I wouldn’t invest in MacBooks anymore. With similar hardware, the price of a PC is almost half that of a MacBook. The open source ecosystem has also evolved a lot, and the cost-benefit of having a cheaper device running a highly productive OS is unbeatable. In particular, the LTS versions of Ubuntu are extremely resilient, with a wide community willing to help.

About Omakub: https://omakub.org