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Comment by easton | Hacker News Reader

Why Windows/macOS and not Linux for the test runners? Chrome/Firefox runs just fine on Linux, and then you don't have to pay for licenses. (I suppose if you get one of those resale agreements with MS you wouldn't have to either as long as you bill the customer, but as the customer I don't care about what OS the browser is running on.)

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Thank for your comment. I see your point. Linux is fine for functional testing. But we just want to test how your users use your app. Our end goal is to use keyboard and mouse on OS level. And adapt to the changes. Some of the functionality and fonts don't work on linux so it's a little tricky.

Ideally the app shouldn't work differently based on what OS the browser is running on (especially since Chrome OS is more popular than macOS these days, and that's a Linux. Not to mention Android and iOS which behave differently too.).

Most distros offer font packages that can get you the stock Microsoft fonts if you're missing those, although these days I think it would be safest for the server to serve any fonts that aren't on all three platforms by default. On Ubuntu, you can do `apt-get install -y ttf-mscorefonts-installer` to get them.

That's unfortunate.

Even on GitHub -- owned by Microsoft -- Windows runners are twice the cost of Linux runners (macOS is 10x). Given that, the extra unnecessary cost is almost certainly pushed onto the customer.

Yeah I didn't like that news as well. But most of the users are on MacOs and Windows. So we really want to test how your users use your app. We have plans on adding linux but it will take longer.

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