[HN Gopher] Lima: Linux-on-Mac
___________________________________________________________________
Lima: Linux-on-Mac
Author : alexellisuk
Score : 144 points
Date : 2021-05-14 08:19 UTC (14 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (github.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (github.com)
| riffic wrote:
| Why would I want this as opposed to Vagrant, or Multipass even?
| luke2m wrote:
| Other away around please???
| yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
| Pretty sure that exists already? Darwin isn't _that_ special; I
| used to be able to run it in qemu easily enough (straight from
| a disk image of an iMac, although that was a _long_ time ago),
| and if you want easy-to-use
| https://github.com/sickcodes/Docker-OSX looks unbeatable (I
| say, having never tried it:]).
| phamilton wrote:
| Is IO still going to be horrible here?
|
| Docker on a linux VM, with all code on the linux VM, is
| significantly faster than Docker for Mac. Generally just because
| of IO.
| TimTheTinker wrote:
| This is why I run my dev environment in an Ubuntu VM on
| Parallels Pro.
| dkarras wrote:
| I use vagrant boxes (virtualbox) with nfs shares, works well.
| I'd still do it if I was on linux to be honest. My VMs are
| provisioned in a way that they have everything installed for
| the particular project and they are "stateless" in a way that
| I can and sometimes do reset them to their post-provision
| state (as virtualbox / vagrant supports snapshots) and my
| experience with the project stays the same. They are meant to
| be the perfect environment for a given project and nothing
| else. The "mutable" stuff is just mounted as nfs shares from
| my host machine.
| regularfry wrote:
| I would do, but corporate VPN management clobbers the
| routing table and breaks it.
| tgv wrote:
| IO in Docker has improved greatly, some 6 months or so ago.
| [deleted]
| rubyist5eva wrote:
| I used it last week...it's still really bad. Running IO heavy
| tests taking literally 100% more time for me. I'm just
| running openSUSE MicroOS with podman for my container
| workloads now, it's been rock solid.
| krono wrote:
| The increasing amount of unexplainable hangs and crashes has
| since offset any of those improvements many times over.
| alexellisuk wrote:
| It's going to be pretty bad because it's using SSHFS - but your
| mileage may vary.
|
| For Docker Desktop, hopefully Justin Cormack will stop by and
| answer.
| elisaado wrote:
| Cool but when can we have Mac on linux?
| [deleted]
| the_why_of_y wrote:
| It's here, but you'll need a PowerPC Mac, it won't work with
| m68k hardware.
|
| https://www.maconlinux.net/
| c2xlZXB5Cg wrote:
| With time, difference between Apple devices and the Playstation
| is shrinking. I am fine with using any OS that gives me a
| terminal emulator with vim and unixy friends.
|
| However, I detest artificial platform limitations and software
| that wants to "nudge" and manipulate users, hostile defaults and
| "optimized expiriences".
|
| My last used Apple device was from 2015.
| [deleted]
| seiferteric wrote:
| Just vm's? No syscall emulation?
| the_duke wrote:
| Microsoft abandoned syscall emulation with WSL2.
|
| The differences between Linux and XNU might be less
| problematic, since it's a Unix derivative.
|
| But as Wine shows, it takes a lot of work and you still get a
| suboptimal, buggy experience.
| tjoff wrote:
| WSL1 is still a thing. And you can't compare it to wine. WSL1
| is a masterpiece and wine is, quite understandably,
| problematic. If only because they have to reverse engineer
| it.
| seiferteric wrote:
| This is what I was hoping, I know there is irreconcilable
| differences between NT and linux kernels, but maybe there is
| hope on XNU.
| duskwuff wrote:
| I'd be surprised if there weren't already something out
| there to do this. Darling [1] already translates in the
| opposite direction with little difficulty; I'm not aware of
| any fundamental reason that you couldn't emulate Linux
| syscalls on XNU.
|
| [1]: https://github.com/darlinghq/darling
| saagarjha wrote:
| We do this with iSH, it's mostly a question of putting in
| effort to get them right.
| alexellisuk wrote:
| Right, it's "just" a VM like Multipass which is another
| alternative we use in the faasd project for developing against
| containerd on Macs. You need a full Linux host.
|
| https://blog.alexellis.io/containerd-development-multipass/
| user3939382 wrote:
| I always thought "Windows Subsystem for Linux" was phrased
| backwards and should have been "Linux Subsystem for Windows". It
| threw me for a loop when I read that phrasing on the readme.
| morsch wrote:
| I think it's ambiguous either way.
| sergeykish wrote:
| Linux on Windows (VM)
| OJFord wrote:
| I think 'Windows subsystem' is, but I agree with GP about
| 'for Linux'.
|
| I'd go with either 'WS of L', 'WLS', 'LWS', or 'LS for W'.
| jeremyjh wrote:
| Well, "Windows Subsystem" is a term that has existed for like
| 25 years; the kernel design for NT included this idea of
| subsystems that could provide compatibility layers or other
| functionality at a lower level of abstraction than a user-space
| library. They thought they needed this when they splintered
| from the partnership with IBM in the OS/2 project. In the early
| days of Windows NT, Windows Subsystems for OS/2 and for POSIX
| existed as as well as the win32 subsystem. I think the POSIX
| subsystem eventually became Subsystem for Unix Applications
| (SUA) which did have some users at some point, though I was
| never one of them. I think they did borrow at least ideas if
| not code from that project for the Linux subsystem.
| [deleted]
| mixmastamyk wrote:
| Not with Windows shoehorned into the front? They were called
| "the X subsystem."
| bayindirh wrote:
| > I think the POSIX subsystem eventually became Subsystem for
| Unix Applications (SUA) which did have some users at some
| point...
|
| It had a bundle which had a NFS server or client, I don't
| remember. The only thing I remember is NFS functionality was
| a sure way to get BSODs. Every. Time.
|
| Towards end of its lifetime, SUA was re-purposed as a toolset
| to migrate UNIX environments to Windows, not to enable
| interoperability. The toolkit discontinued a year or two
| later IIRC.
| em500 wrote:
| "Because we cannot name something leading with a trademark
| owned by someone else." -- Rich Turner, former PM of WSL
|
| https://twitter.com/richturn_ms/status/1245481405947076610
| wmf wrote:
| So they can't use the obvious name Linux Subsystem for
| Windows but that still leaves other possible names.
| mixmastamyk wrote:
| It's backwards on purpose, from my understanding. Bad old days
| marketing folks still have the upper hand at ms.
| Procedural wrote:
| Did you know Darth Plagueis died of Ligma?
| [deleted]
| gnzoidberg wrote:
| Ligma?
| imoverclocked wrote:
| 6 Ligma for the reliable version?
| mhh__ wrote:
| What's Ligma?
| Naac wrote:
| It's just a "better integrated" virtual machine: "Lima launches
| Linux virtual machines on macOS"
|
| This might be a controversial opinion, but I find developers
| flocking to macOS really bewildering. As a developer, why do you
| want to fight your operating system to get basic things done?
| This Lima thing, docker running in a virtual machine, Apple being
| actively hostile with the default coreutils requiring you to
| layer multiple third party tools just to get a modern version of
| awk and grep.
|
| I Just recently I learned you can't add more swap ( creating a
| swap file and adding it ). That seems incredible to me.
| domano wrote:
| "As a developer, why do you want to fight your operating system
| to get basic things done"
|
| After 10 years of linux it took me 1 month with a macbook to
| decide that i just dont have the time to keep my linux running
| the way i want to, play the hardware lottery and fear every
| major update (or every update after a vacation with arch).
| monocasa wrote:
| I mean, I just don't understand the fascination with rolling
| update models for the core os. I've got other things to worry
| about than playing with config files, so I just install a new
| LTS distro every couple years or so and amortize the pain to
| less than the yearly macos updates.
| kelnos wrote:
| I guess that's just personal preference; I prefer to keep
| my systems up-to-date at least on a monthly basis. Most of
| the time the updates go without a hitch, and maybe once a
| year something very minor breaks. If I were to only update
| once a year (aside from security updates), I would expect
| many more things to break. And that's what I see from the
| complaints of my co-workers when they update macOS on their
| laptops once a year: a lot of pain in the ass issues that
| take a while to resolve. And this is _after_ our IT dept
| has taken 3-6 months to test things on the new OS version
| and allow people to upgrade.
|
| For reference, I run Debian testing until it becomes
| stable, and then 4 months or so later I switch to the new
| testing release name. I get an up-to-date system (Debian
| stable has a reputation for being old and outdated almost
| at release day), but also skip the part where Debian
| testing has a lot of churn and possible breakage. The
| newstable->newtesting upgrade, even though it's a larger
| one, rarely causes problems, and happens once every two
| years.
| moshmosh wrote:
| I, too, dislike rolling updates for my workstation OS.
|
| I don't like using _anything_ OS- or package-manager-
| provided on my dev workstation for per-project development
| dependencies, since usually it 's much less painful (sooner
| or later) to manage those with a special tool for that
| purpose, or to vendor them, or to pick some OS that you
| might not like for your workstation as your deployment
| target (Alpine, say, or a very vanilla stable Debian) and
| just use scriptedly-reproduceable VM or docker or whatever.
|
| I _do_ like rolling updates for my actual tools and
| programs that I, personally, use. Editors (code or
| otherwise--image, video, audio, document, whatever),
| multimedia programs, browsers, quality-of-life improvement
| tools, command-line tools that aren 't build dependencies,
| that kind of thing. If I hit a bug, then see that it's
| fixed in the latest release, I want there to be a very good
| chance I can just update my packages and get the fix, no
| further effort required. Or at worst wait a day or two for
| the package to be updated, and get it that way. If I read
| that a tool has some functionality, and install it
| _specifically for_ that functionality, I don 't want to
| lose time wondering why the hell I don't see it in the
| program, only to realize that it's because Ubuntu's
| packages serve a version that dates to before that feature
| was added (real thing that's happened to me on Linux).
|
| That's where LTS Linux distros end up being a bad fit for
| me, because I want most of the stuff I _actually use_ to be
| newer than what 's in the repos.
|
| macOS with Brew is about as close to perfect (for me) as
| I've seen. Slow-paced and relatively-reliable major OS
| updates, but my tools and programs stay up-to-date, and I
| can install damn near _anything_ though the package manager
| (the closest I 've seen to being as good as Brew as far as
| likelihood of my asking it to install something without
| checking that it has it first, and that actually working
| nearly every time, including for closed-source software, is
| Gentoo's Portage). I wouldn't prefer to install a project-
| dependency (say, PostgreSQL) through my workstation package
| manager anyway, so I don't care that it's rolling, since if
| I need something pinned I'll be fetching it some other way.
|
| Given how fragmented Linux's GUI desktop is, and the way so
| much of it blurs the line between system- and user-
| packages, I think it'd be very challenging for a Linux
| distro to deliver as clean an experience, if that's the
| workflow you prefer (as, I've discovered, I do).
| devmor wrote:
| After 2 months with a macbook supplied by my employer, I am
| literally begging to go back to a Windows or Linux machine.
|
| I just don't understand how you can possibly be productive
| with these things if you have to do anything out of the norm.
| It's like bureaucracy as an operating system.
| mdtusz wrote:
| I have the same experience.
|
| I was given a MacBook pro at my last job and had to request
| a ThinkPad after a few weeks - the lack of function keys
| alone was enough to drive me mad, but countless issues with
| docker and even homebrew pushed me over the edge. For
| context, I _used_ to be a hardcore mac fanboy and did all
| my development work on it, but the macOS of today doesn't
| feel the same as the OSX of yesterday - at least not to me.
|
| Linux desktop environments definitely still suck, and
| there's always some quirks with hardware but for the work
| related tasks once it's initially set up, it's always rock
| solid.
| deviantfero wrote:
| I'll just repost something I wrote on some other thread one
| time:
|
| I've changed my laptop 4 times now in 5 years for different
| reasons, when I do so, there's only a couple of things to
| consider:
|
| if I'm upgrading the HDD (for example when I made the jump
| from HDD to SSD or from my 2.5inch SSD to my M2 SSD
| currently) I need to clone the drive to my new storage,
| otherwise I only need to swap out my storage device from my
| old laptop to my new one.
|
| With linux it just works I don't have to fiddle for my
| devices to be found, everything is just where I left it, the
| biggest change was when I went from an intel based PC to an
| AMD one, I only had to switch the display drivers after the
| fact (I knew because X crashed, I had to do this from tty),
| but it is expected since the display cards are totally
| different, all it took was a: sudo pacman -S xf86-video-
| amdgpu and a restart.
|
| having a rolling release distro helps too, because you really
| don't have a reason to nuke your install and start from
| scratch, but even if I decided to do that for whatever
| reason, since most configuration is done via text files I can
| easily save those in a repo and just clone them to my new
| install and be done in a few minutes.
|
| drwx------ 2 root root 16384 Dec 25 2016 /lost+found
|
| ^ that's when I last installed linux, I've been using the
| same install through 5 years in 4 different devices, it's
| pretty cool.
|
| Of course I do my research before purchasing a new device,
| see if there's anything on the arch linux forums that's
| causing trouble with that particular device, but beyond that,
| it's all been good for quite a bit, I've never used another
| OS for this long without doing a hard format and performance
| hasn't suffered at all, I have almost every development
| environment available to me one command away (except for
| Xcode and some Windows specific stuff ofc).
|
| but, my counterpoint is, I feel all OSs are decent enough
| nowadays and all provide good enough or better functionality
| OOTB, so for me it has become more subjective than anything,
| there are strengths and weaknesses to all of them, and I
| wouldn't be particularly bothered if I had to use one of them
| because of some requirement or something, but if the choice
| is mine, it's GNU/Linux
| gnufied wrote:
| For the most part hardware lottery can be summarized in one
| word - Nvidia. Don't buy laptops with Nvidia card if you want
| to use Linux. Optimus is crap, prime offloading is crap and
| often laptop manufacturers hardwire external hmdi to Nvidia
| GPU.
|
| I have been running the latest Thinkpad t14s with fedora 33
| and it is perfect in almost every possible way compared to
| MacBook. I also have Thinkpad extreme gen2 with Nvidia card
| and I had nothing but trouble with it.
| guidoism wrote:
| It's just a trade-off. Which part of the OS do you hate
| fighting the least. Given that by the early 2000s you couldn't
| really get away with a text-only terminal as your dev machine
| and years of fighting with XF86Config and some other bullshit I
| left it for MacOS using Emacs tramp-mode on the Linux box for
| development. I'm still waiting for the "year of desktop Linux"
| to arrive.
| gjsman-1000 wrote:
| "why do you want to fight your operating system to get basic
| things done?"
|
| Depends on the developer. How many developers use awk and grep?
| Most web developers probably have touched them once and never
| used them again, and prefer using MacOS compared to fighting
| Windows to do their web dev. Making a blanket statement that
| doing any development requires "fighting MacOS" is silly.
| Naac wrote:
| That was just an example though. My point was that you're
| constantly fighting an operating system that's clearly not
| designed for you ( the developer ).
| spicybright wrote:
| Can you list a few more examples of fighting things?
|
| I'm using a macbook as a dev machine, and I've genuinely
| never been so productive in my career.
| gjsman-1000 wrote:
| Apple has always made it clear that they care about the
| experience of their users, not the developers. Because the
| customers are there, the developers follow. That's just how
| it works unfortunately.
|
| Also, clearly not designed for you? You can install Brew to
| have a package manager, Magnet to add Window snapping for a
| dollar, you can make it fit your use case for not that much
| effort or money. You don't have to use vanilla MacOS.
|
| Furthermore, consider the alternatives. You've got Windows
| (bleh for a thousand reasons and clearly also not designed
| for developers), or you've got Linux (which doesn't have
| many of the apps you need, worse battery life, doesn't have
| Handoff to your iPhone). MacOS is the best all-rounder
| option for many people.
| mixmastamyk wrote:
| You can't stop dozens of chatty network services, due to
| a read only system partition. Without defeating other
| security that is. That's a poor design.
| gjsman-1000 wrote:
| Umm... yes, you can. You can use Little Snitch just fine.
| smoldesu wrote:
| Poor design is leveraging a security model on an
| arbitrary and centralized root of trust, but maybe it's
| just a matter of perspective.
| zepto wrote:
| Yes, that is a poor design - no sarcasm - I mean it.
|
| However it's better for most people than the alternative.
|
| Fixing this should be job #1 for the Linux community.
| smoldesu wrote:
| For the most part, Linux has "fixed" that. Really, the
| hardest part of using Linux is the onboarding process,
| which is being addressed with companies like System76 and
| Lenovo offering to ship laptops with Linux preinstalled.
| smoldesu wrote:
| For a few years now, Linux has had KDE/GSConnect, which
| adds in basically all of the MacOS/iPhone handoff
| functionality to your Linux distro/WM of choice, with a
| few extra tools that go beyond even what Apple has.
|
| For starters, there's the basic stuff: desktop messaging,
| contact synchronization, integrated wireless filesharing,
| universal clipboard/notifications and battery updates for
| your connected device.
|
| Then it also has some features that don't exist on
| MacOS/iOS: you can set up macros on your computer and
| easily remotely execute them with the press of a button
| on your phone, use your phone as a wireless trackpad,
| synchronize media controls across all your devices, use
| your phone as a keyboard for your computer, use your
| computer as a keyboard for your phone, wirelessly mount
| your phone as a webcam, ring it at max volume if you lose
| it, and sharing links.
| jakeva wrote:
| Forget window snapping for a dollar, try window snapping
| for free with Rectangle! https://rectangleapp.com/
|
| And I agree. As a user and developer, I have no idea what
| the OP is on about
| OJFord wrote:
| Yabai is (also free, beer and speech) the best I found. I
| mainly use Linux, but I do _try_ to keep my dotfiles
| agnostic, or have ~ 'equivalents' like i3 & yabai.
|
| MacOS is fine if you want to run with defaults and
| experience everything as Apple wants you to, and change
| that if they announce they want you to in the grand
| unveiling of the next version.
|
| If you try to deviate at all, it becomes a fight.
|
| Linux is sort of the opposite extreme and some people
| don't like it because to some extent (although surely not
| really true of Ubuntu etc.?) you have to have these
| would-be deviating opinions on setting something up, you
| know, choose a shell, a window/display manager, a
| browser, a file manager, etc. But because of that, it
| doesn't care which you pick, if you change it, or how
| long past its sell by date you keep it running.
| smoldesu wrote:
| > If you try to deviate at all, it becomes a fight.
|
| Exactly this. Linux scares people because many people are
| allergic to choice, and the concept of actually
| developing an opinion on something other than the sum of
| their total experience on MacOS. Linux is frustrating,
| because there are a lot of different places you can point
| to as underdeveloped, but only because you can see the
| entire thing. When something breaks on MacOS, you just
| have to shrug and pray you don't use it, because your
| only support options are to reinstall MacOS or buy a new
| computer.
| leadingthenet wrote:
| Beyond the choice vs lack of choice issue, Linux is also
| frustrating because it just lacks the high quality apps
| macOS has. Period.
|
| I use Arch btw.
| OJFord wrote:
| I sort of simultaneously see that that's true, but also
| don't personally feel I'm missing anything except
| Fusion360.
|
| But maybe that's just the extra motivation I need to use
| something else like FreeCAD or OpenSCAD with more git-
| able files anyway.
|
| (I also use Arch btw.)
| leadingthenet wrote:
| Sure, you might only miss one or two apps. And I might
| only miss one or two apps. But it's probably different
| apps for both of us, and I think that probably generally
| holds true for the vast majority of people.
|
| The Linux Desktop is 95% of the way there, no question
| about it. But that 5% is different for each individual,
| and ultimately, it matters.
| smoldesu wrote:
| I mean, we can't kid ourselves here: none of these
| operating systems are 100% of the way there. By your
| logic, MacOS isn't 100% of the way there because it can't
| play the same games as Windows, and Windows isn't 100% of
| the way there without running Final Cut and Logic. The
| issue with that metric is that it will grossly play
| against your favor if we're being diminutive about the
| amount of software that's on each respective platforms.
|
| It _really_ depends what you do on your computer. I think
| a better way to look at it is that each of these OSes
| will do 90% of the things you want them to, and you just
| need to pick and choose which 10% matters the least to
| you.
| [deleted]
| smoldesu wrote:
| "High quality" depends on how you measure quality. If
| you're judging by looks and how many buttons it has, then
| yes, I think it takes the cake. But I honestly appreciate
| the current Linux design paradigm. GTK and QT are both
| awesome GUI toolkits, and compliment each other nicely.
| GTK does a wonderful job of filling the MacOS gap, by
| making it easy to create simple but effective UIs. QT, on
| the other hand, offers a more stable and "complete"
| experience, pretty much catered towards people familiar
| with the Windows/.NET development workflow.
|
| Like the other commenter said, I just don't see anywhere
| Linux is particularly lacking. It has first class support
| with DAWs like Reaper and Bitwig, it has pretty great
| video editing chops with apps like Davinci Resolve and
| Kdenlive, and it almost has a complete photography setup,
| at least once GIMP switches to GTK+ and Darkroom gets a
| few more features. All of those are "high quality" apps,
| and they're also free: a pretty massive distinction from
| the MacOS software you might pit against it.
| grawprog wrote:
| > to add Window snapping for a dollar
|
| You have to pay extra for basic window manager features
| on macos? How is that even caring about the experience of
| users let alone devs?
| gjsman-1000 wrote:
| Apple clearly has evaluated Window Snapping and decided
| not to add it for whatever reason. Rumor has it Microsoft
| patented it.
| smoldesu wrote:
| That's untrue though, because Linux DEs have been doing
| 4-way snapping for decades now.
| grawprog wrote:
| It reminds me of how my old Nokia phone could do such
| basic things as use custom ringtones, whereas iPhones of
| the time did not have this functionality.
|
| Apple seems to have this thing where they treat basic
| functionality as a premium or an upgrade. Things like
| window snapping, or being able to compile and distribute
| software...
| smoldesu wrote:
| It's especially heartbreaking when they take that same
| functionality and lock it behind APIs that most
| developers can't use.
| zepto wrote:
| > That's untrue though, because Linux DEs have been doing
| 4-way snapping for decades now.
|
| That doesn't mean it's not patented. It just means
| there's nobody worth Microsoft suing.
| kergonath wrote:
| It is not built in. They won't sell it, though. There are
| tools to add this sort of features, some are free
| software, some are gratis but proprietary, and some cost
| money.
| mxcrossr wrote:
| You forgot BSD... oh wait I guess they're also user
| hostile because they dare to ship without GNU grep
| eschaton wrote:
| The people who develop macOS, iOS, et al are also users of
| those systems. It's pretty awesome actually.
| pkulak wrote:
| A couple years ago I realized that if I had a good terminal
| environment, all I really needed was a terminal, browser, and
| IDE.
|
| So, by using Linux, I lose, I dunno, iPhoto and iCal and
| whatever, but I gain real Linux with a real Linux package
| manager and immediate access to the latest version of every
| tool I can imagine. Plus fun stuff like BTRFS, a tiling
| window manager, and a feeling that I'm actually in control of
| the system I spend 8 hours a day in front of.
| HaoZeke wrote:
| +1000 for the tiling window manager comment! I can't stand
| the weird nightmare which is macos desktop management with
| spaces.
|
| iCal is a big draw though, Linux calendars are terrible and
| since thunderbird choked and left xul Mailmate is
| attractive too.
| sidlls wrote:
| I develop backend (services and other infra-y things) and ML
| systems on a MacBook Pro. I use awk, grep, find, cut, sort,
| etc. frequently (awk and grep daily).
|
| They work fine. And I really enjoy developing on my laptop.
|
| I was forever the biggest anti-Apple, anti-M$, pro Linux
| "fanboy" you could imagine until a year ago or so. So it's
| quite new to me really.
| emptysongglass wrote:
| I have two MacBooks now given to me by work. I loathe these
| things. The two finger scroll is awful. I'm constantly getting
| what feels like palm rejection mid-scroll. Everything is mouse
| driven, including split windows and if you want to use your
| mouse to split your windows it shifts the window and you over
| to a new virtual desktop. MacOS is constantly roosterblocking
| me from installing any apps not from the App Store. If I
| connect it to my little HDMI type-C dock that hooks me into my
| multi-monitor setup, then leave it to sleep it will begin
| making a chime saying it can't provide power to my peripherals.
|
| Docker is awful on it, (yes that's what ssh is for), devland in
| general is awful on it. It feels like I'm using an overwrought
| iOS interface.
|
| The trackpad is obnoxiously large. There's no reason for it to
| be so large. My XPS 13 Developer Edition's trackpad
| legitimately feels as good and leagues better as far as
| scrolling goes.
|
| There's also some huge performance issues if you upgrade
| Catalina to Big Sur and you use a model with hybrid graphics.
| Like out of the box, upgrade, bam issues.
| mypalmike wrote:
| I definitely agree with the trackpad complaints. Pre-2016
| MacBook trackpads were basically perfect. But the newer ones
| are truly junk. I'm holding onto my 2015 Air as long as
| possible, for this and other reasons related to the hardware.
| asdff wrote:
| >Apple being actively hostile with the default coreutils
| requiring you to layer multiple third party tools just to get a
| modern version of awk and grep
|
| This is a pretty trivial complaint. It's three lines pasted
| into the shell available on like a hundred blogs on the
| internet to update your coreutils. If you are at the point
| where you need a modern awk or grep and you absolutely cannot
| do with what is installed already, I would be shocked if you
| didn't already know about brew and have them installed.
| metalforever wrote:
| It's because web design software does not work in Linux and a
| lot of developers are expected to be full stack. Sometimes the
| software packages don't work well in windows
| notsureaboutpg wrote:
| I also don't understand it at all. The tooling is worse. The
| CLI tools are worse. The underlying OS is slightly different
| than your likely development target which causes issues. In
| addition the machine is not able to have its components updated
| easily (compare to a Thinkpad where RAM, hard drive, battery,
| etc. can be easily replaced)
|
| There's less customizability, and it just seems less full of
| the magic that drove me to be a developer in the first place.
|
| The place I work at now mandates Macbooks for all developers,
| and I have gotten used to it, but I'll never love it
| Toutouxc wrote:
| Oh I'm not fighting my OS to get basic things done, also I
| can't remember the last time I used awk. I use grep often, but
| I'm okay with whatever version I have (apparently it's BSD grep
| 2.5.1).
| VWWHFSfQ wrote:
| Long time Linux user and also long time macos user. I've never
| had any problems getting "basic things done" on either
| platform. Except for Linux, which has inferior applications for
| most things.
| dreamer7 wrote:
| Would you call tethering your Android phone via USB to your
| laptop a basic thing? Recently, I was having trouble with my
| phone's WiFi hotspot and tried to tether via USB. The only
| solution was Horndis, a 3rd party kernel extension. I quickly
| became knowledgeable about kexts and csrutil, rebuilt a
| kernel extension for M1 architecture and gave up after
| several hours of frustration. It's ridiculous that Apple can
| get away with being so closed
| gjsman-1000 wrote:
| Or maybe it's ridiculous that Google leaves this "basic
| feature" to Horndis and doesn't make a nice way to do it
| themselves. Which is telling on how "basic" this feature is
| and how many people actually use it in the real world. I
| wouldn't call it a basic thing.
| VWWHFSfQ wrote:
| you can just use adb to forward a socks proxy through your
| phone. not sure why you would need a kext
| yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
| If a Linux user suggested that, they'd be laughed out of
| the room. "Yeah, just use this semi-obscure command line
| tool to forward a port, then set your system to proxy
| through it" is a technically workable solution, but
| _poor_ UX.
| olyjohn wrote:
| Exactly! I keep seeing this shit about how you have to
| fuck around with all these config files in Linux... Then
| when you have to do the same trash for basic things in
| OSX, nobody blinks an eye.
| gbear605 wrote:
| That's not an Apple problem, that's an Android problem. The
| ball is in Google's court there.
| kelnos wrote:
| How so? It works fine on Linux, and I hear it works fine
| on Windows too (I think you might have to install a
| driver there though). Apple seems to have the odd OS out
| here, why is it no their fault?
|
| My assumption here is that, as usual, Apple doesn't care
| about anyone who hasn't fully bought into their
| ecosystem. If it's not an iDevice, they don't care if it
| works fully with their desktop OS.
| ISL wrote:
| I've been using Debian almost-exclusively since 2001. A new
| job requires that I work on MacOS, which has been fun.
|
| The primary things that I am struggling with are the
| keybindings and loss of true fluxbox sloppy focus. zsh and
| the BSD tools take a little getting used to (different ps,
| grep, sed, etc?), but are quite serviceable.
|
| But lordy, do I wish I could hit windows-A at any time and
| instantly get a new terminal, as I've been doing for twenty
| years. How do y'all Mac people live? ;).
| Toutouxc wrote:
| > wish I could hit windows-A at any time and instantly get
| a new terminal
|
| You can create your own macOS native workflows with
| Automator and launch them with macOS keyboard shortcuts.
| It's all built right in.
|
| https://www.computerhope.com/issues/ch002051.htm
| ISL wrote:
| Will that override command-A for select-all? (which would
| be ctrl-A on most other platforms) Looks like maybe-not,
| through redirects?
| kergonath wrote:
| Yeah the different keyboard shortcuts are annoying. Though
| I have the opposite perspective, and macOS' feel much more
| natural.
|
| That said, on macOS there is a preference pane in which you
| can rebind almost all shortcuts, and add shortcuts for
| things that don't have them, and it works OS-wide without
| fuss. In particular you can add shortcuts to services
| (which is something you probably want to look into), and
| you can set Automator workflows as services. I haven't seen
| anything quite like that on Linux.
| ISL wrote:
| I do love that the command-key allows terminal copy/paste
| without overloading Ctrl-C (and was overjoyed when I
| center-clicked by reflex and the Terminal did the right
| thing :))
| spicybright wrote:
| I think where macOS shines is it's standardization of things
| beyond the unix terminal.
|
| (I'm also a big fan of the hardware. 2019 macbook has been
| the best laptop I've owned so far)
|
| In terms of fighting the OS, I don't know where that comes
| from.
|
| Anything cli you generally use sudo, anything else you open
| the security settings and tick some boxes. I don't even have
| to type my password, I just touch the finger print reader.
| Then the program works forever. (I have a keybinding to open
| security settings too, so it only takes maybe 5 seconds most
| of the time)
|
| I honestly don't know what people are fighting, unless they
| just really hate clicking through a few menus.
|
| One key piece of advice I follow is NEVER update to the
| latest new OS version. Almost every person I know does and
| they run into crazy issues that shouldn't even be problems.
| I'm not going to be your free QA engineer, Apple.
| TheAceOfHearts wrote:
| I don't feel that I have to fight the operating system at all.
| In order to get the package manager and a modern version of
| coreutils you have to run three commands: $
| sudo xcode-select --install $ /bin/bash -c "$(curl
| -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/HEAD/i
| nstall.sh)" $ brew install coreutils
|
| The upside is getting a system where most of what I need works
| out of the box with fairly sensible defaults. The viability of
| macOS probably depends heavily on the kind of work you're
| doing.
| nathancahill wrote:
| I can't tell if you're being sarcastic, and I say this as a
| Mac fan, but your 3 commands are: - Install a
| whole IDE, so you can... - Install an unofficial
| package managar, so you can... - Install coreutils
| Ducki wrote:
| "sudo xcode-select --install" doesn't install the whole
| IDE, just some cli tools.
| Ericson2314 wrote:
| Yes, I am the same way. As soon as you leave some tiny sandbox
| whose borders I can't even make out, development on macOS is
| absolute hell and the world breaks every new version.
|
| I guess macos devs just know how to confine themselves better
| to the sandbox than me (don't use other shell, don't use
| postgresql, only do web/jvm/interpretted language programing,
| never ever need a C library that isn't installed?)
|
| NixOS doesn't make the things linux is bad at better, but it
| sure makes the things linux is better at better, so the
| difference between linux and macOS for me is especially stark.
| jpgvm wrote:
| For me I stopped fighting the OS by abstracting the OS away
| from my work. The JVM is my target and it "runs everywhere"
| essentially.
|
| Then I chose macOS over Linux or Windows because I like the way
| it looks, iTerm is good, brew is "good enough", my IDE
| (IntelliJ) runs nicely and looks good with nice crisp fonts on
| big 4k display.
|
| I do Docker things but only because others write code in JS,
| generally I use tools like Google's Jib that allow me to build
| and push containers without needing Docker locally. Docker does
| nothing for JVM apps, we have jars/wars/nars for distribution
| and already get that "runs the same everywhere" for free
| without all the nonsense that comes with languages that depend
| on system libraries and architecture specific code like
| Node/Python/Ruby/Go.
|
| Build with Jib, push to registry, run with k8s, enjoy life
| without Dockerfiles.
|
| You can do similar with Bazel too but I imagine it would be
| harder if you need to cross-compile from Darwin to Linux, etc
| so probably only works this well with JVM.
| kergonath wrote:
| > This might be a controversial opinion, but I find developers
| flocking to macOS really bewildering.
|
| You're entitled to your opinion, but it is a good platform to
| work on. A real UNIX underneath, with a great GUI on top. Most
| things that run on Linux a recompile away from working
| natively, and still native versions of Office and such.
|
| > This Lima thing
|
| It is a VM to run Linux. How is that a demonstration that the
| OS is hostile?
|
| > docker running in a virtual machine
|
| This hasn't much to do with the OS. OTOH if you want Linux
| containers, then I don't see how you can avoid using a VM
| somewhere.
|
| > Apple being actively hostile with the default coreutils
| requiring you to layer multiple third party tools just to get a
| modern version of awk and grep.
|
| The versions of the GNU tools are ancient because they are pre-
| GPLv3. The BSD tools are more up to date. In any case, you can
| just do what you'd do on Linux and use a package manager.
|
| > I Just recently I learned you can't add more swap ( creating
| a swap file and adding it ). That seems incredible to me.
|
| What is the use case for this? The OS just adds some swap by
| himself, no need to mess around
| DCKing wrote:
| > As a developer, why do you want to fight your operating
| system to get basic things done?
|
| This kind of thing _easily_ goes both ways, and shows you 're
| considering things only from a narrow angle. Which is
| understandable by the way - but please do consider other views
| :)
|
| There are lots of "basic things" that Linux doesn't get done,
| depending on your definition of basic thing. It's entirely
| reasonable for developers to consider things like "accurate and
| versatile trackpad movement" [1], "renders things consistently
| on HiDPI screens", "natively runs mainstream image editing or
| word processing apps", "can stream Disney+ above 720p", "has
| font rendering at least on par with Windows Vista", "has a
| Little Snitch type application that's both usable and actively
| maintained" or "there's stronger accountability in the
| development of apps I use because it's not largely developed by
| volunteers or people who assume I should solve my own
| problems".
|
| _All_ of these "basic" things are a fight on Linux, most are
| a fight you can't even win, and this isn't even a comprehensive
| list. A lot of these have a good explanation as to _why_ they
| 're a fight, but you can't blame people for wanting to avoid
| that fight.
|
| I too run desktop Linux on machines because it offers a lot of
| flexibility while tinkering with things and a greater sense of
| control. But failing to see why Linux is not the objective
| pinnacle of desktop computing - even objective pinnacle of
| desktop computing _for developers_ - is just really for a lack
| of trying. Desktop Linux is really awesome but damn it does it
| still have long ways to go.
|
| [1]: Up until recently, and maybe up until this day, the best
| trackpad experience on Linux is running desktop Linux in a VM
| on a macOS host.
| bovermyer wrote:
| I use a Macbook Pro for development. I spend a fair amount of
| time in Linux servers. Running a Linux VM for local development
| of things that require Linux doesn't bother me.
|
| I don't have to fight my OS. It works with my brain. When I'm
| using awk and grep, it's in Linux, not macOS.
|
| Not judging you or your opinion here - just explaining that I'm
| as bewildered by your experience as you are by mine.
| kelnos wrote:
| > _I don 't have to fight my OS. It works with my brain._
|
| It's great that works for you, but that only works for people
| whose brains are (or have become) attuned to Apple's
| (often... interesting) ways of doing things.
| smoldesu wrote:
| >I don't have to fight my OS. It works with my brain.
|
| I think that's a mantra that applies a little better to Linux
| than it does MacOS. Linux is well known for it's
| customization, and you can really pad out your desktop to be
| an ergonomic and customized place designed for you. MacOS, on
| the other hand, is practically the definition of fighting
| your OS: you aren't allowed to have a proper package manager,
| Apple has to drip-feed you old coreutils through their
| notoriously slow XCode service, and now you aren't even
| allowed to use a VPN without Apple disabling it on some of
| their apps. I don't really see how a Mac elevates your
| workflow that much, especially when most of your praise seems
| to be towards GNU tools and your Linux machines.
| gjsman-1000 wrote:
| Linux users clearly have an echo chamber too.
| f6v wrote:
| > I think that's a mantra that applies a little better to
| Linux than it does MacOS.
|
| You might be right. But Linux vs MacOS argument is
| meaningless. For me it's "Linux laptop" vs "MacOS laptop",
| and there's a huge difference in 2021.
| kergonath wrote:
| Linux is more customisable, but macOS is much, much better
| out of the box. I use both every day for about the same
| amount of time, and macOS requires much less fighting to
| get the basics right (i.e. networking and Bluetooth just
| works, no need to tinker with X or Wayland, printing is
| much less problematic, OS updates are non-events, etc). I
| am happy to use Linux at work, but I would never put it on
| my main computer at home. It's just too much trouble.
|
| > you aren't allowed to have a proper package manager
|
| I don't know why you say that there is no package manager.
| This is demonstrably false. It's just a different update
| mechanism than the core OS, which hasn't been a problem for
| about a decade.
|
| > Apple has to drip-feed you old coreutils through their
| notoriously slow XCode service
|
| The old coreutils are the result of GPLv3. Latest versions
| are one command away with your package manager of choice.
|
| > now you aren't even allowed to use a VPN without Apple
| disabling it on some of their apps
|
| If you're alluding to the Little Snitch thing, it had
| nothing to do with VPNs, and has been fixed AFAIK.
|
| Honestly, your points sound like third-hand complaints
| you've heard in an echo chamber. It's fine if you don't
| want to use the OS, but then you don't need to comment
| either.
| kitsunesoba wrote:
| It absolutely varies by workload and individual but I can
| be productive under macOS in a fraction of the time it
| takes with any Linux distro. Its defaults are much better
| aligned with what I expect of a desktop OS, and
| customizing Linux to behave similarly is both a fight and
| not possible to the fullest extent without breaking out
| the source code for existing projects and making
| modifications.
|
| It's great that source-level customization is possible
| under Linux, but really, who has time for that? I could
| see myself delving into writing a macOS-clone DE (which
| as a sidenote, GNOME and Pantheon doesn't go far enough
| with) if I'm fortunate enough to be able to take a multi-
| month break from work but otherwise it's a lot easier to
| just keep using macOS.
| smoldesu wrote:
| > I could see myself delving into writing a macOS-clone
| DE (which as a sidenote, GNOME and Pantheon doesn't go
| far enough with)
|
| How do they not go far enough with it? The only thing
| that I can think of them not emulating is the menu bar in
| the top left, but the Gnome team is already flying pretty
| close to the sun with their recreation. Even still, there
| are ways to implement a global menu bar into Gnome with a
| little effort if it means that much to you. Otherwise, I
| really can't fathom what you're missing out on, besides
| some walls for your garden.
| kitsunesoba wrote:
| Global menubar is indeed a big part. The biggest issue
| with implementations of this feature on the Linux desktop
| is that support of it varies wildly between apps (which
| is where some of the mentioned modifications come into
| play).
|
| There's also a huge pile of small features that go beyond
| the scope of a comment to list, which are either
| implemented inconsistently or not at all. For example, in
| GNOME and Pantheon, window minimization is disabled by
| default and even when enabled lacks integration with
| whatever dock you may be using.
|
| GNOME generally is rather odd, even if it's one of the
| more polished options. It strikes me more as a somewhat-
| desktop-adapted iOS than it does macOS.
| smoldesu wrote:
| Well, let's start with the places I take issue with:
|
| > OS updates are non-events
|
| Big Sur and Catalina have been the most disastrous
| updates in MacOS history. I'm not really sure why you'd
| choose _now_ to highlight their notorious stability and
| ease of use. Ask any sysadmin who had a fleet of Macbooks
| during this update cycle: it was a nightmare and a half.
| Failing that, ask them about Catalina. They might run and
| hide under the table, a lot of them are still a little
| skittish about the word.
|
| > I don't know why you say that there is no package
| manager. This is demonstrably false.
|
| Brew and Macports both suck. If you use Linux on a daily
| basis, then you're well familiar with what a good package
| manager looks like: apt and Pacman are both good
| examples. The amount of software on either of those
| platforms default providers makes Macports and Brew look
| like a pathetic joke. Add in the lack of extensibility
| offered on them both, the lazy Macports development
| cycle, Brew's half-correct installation philosophy and
| how out of place they all feel on MacOS, and you've got
| yourself a package management system that is just about
| as helpful as 'make install'ing it yourself.
|
| > The old coreutils are the result of GPLv3. Latest
| versions are one command away with your package manager
| of choice.
|
| The ball is in Apple's court then. If they want to brag
| about being a real Unix system, the least they can do is
| ship modern Unix tools with their OS. Ironically, MacOS
| is the least compatible Unix system around.
|
| > If you're alluding to the Little Snitch thing, it had
| nothing to do with VPNs, and has been fixed AFAIK.
|
| No, I'm referring to the fact that Apple gives divided
| their networking API into privileged and non-privileged
| systems as of Big Sur. Now, Apple can designate certain
| developers (and themselves) a way to circumvent any
| custom network filters when sending data.
|
| > Honestly, your points sound like third-hand complaints
| you've heard in an echo chamber. It's fine if you don't
| want to use the OS, but then you don't need to comment
| either.
|
| I mean, the M1 Macbook Air is sitting in my desk as we
| speak. I've also run MacOS on my beloved Thinkpad(s), but
| even the magic of a touchscreen Mac couldn't really
| persuade me to like the operating system. My guff is well
| founded, I think: as the most valuable company in the
| world, Apple has an obligation to provide at least some
| level of modularity in their ecosystem. Otherwise, the
| precedent they set will continue to influence every
| market we can conceive, until our concept of "ownership"
| is poisoned to mean a subscription service. It's driven
| by greed, and makes me sick. It always comes at the cost
| of the user, and the declining greatness of MacOS is a
| perfect example of how Apple's hunger for money is
| poisoning their product line.
| kergonath wrote:
| > Ask any sysadmin who had a fleet of Macbooks during
| this update cycle: it was a nightmare and a half.
|
| That's not saying much, everything is always terrible and
| it was all better under Lion/Snow Leopard/Tiger/OS 8. The
| 4 computers I had to update did it just fine.
|
| > Brew and Macports both suck. If you use Linux on a
| daily basis, then you're well familiar with what a good
| package manager looks like: apt and Pacman are both good
| examples.
|
| Indeed. From my experience either work great (I use
| CentOS and OpenSuse daily, alongside macOS). The only
| bits of software I've ever needed which weren't on
| Macports were quantum chemistry codes, which I wanted to
| compile myself anyway to configure them properly and
| avoid MPI issues. At some point I had to compile GCC
| myself to track the development branch, but I haven't had
| to do that in quite a while now. So yeah, your points are
| valid, but they still do their job, and you don't have to
| rely on them for OS updates, so they cannot compromise
| stability.
|
| > The ball is in Apple's court then. If they want to brag
| about being a real Unix system, the least they can do is
| ship modern Unix tools with their OS. Ironically, MacOS
| is the least compatible Unix system around.
|
| They haven't bragged about it in a decade. Besides, if
| you know UNIX, you realise that this kind of shenanigans
| is just life, and that there is quite a bit of variance
| in the specific implementation of user land software.
| Your problem is not that it is a sub-par UNIX, it's that
| it isn't Linux (which isn't UNIX). The BSDs also lack
| most of the GNU tools by default, and so did most other
| UNIXes when they were still around.
|
| > I mean, the M1 Macbook Air is sitting in my desk as we
| speak.
|
| That's fine. I didn't accuse you of lying, and you are
| entitled to your preferences. I just pointed out that
| your arguments were not great, and indeed often heard
| from people who never really used Macs.
|
| > My guff is well founded, I think: as the most valuable
| company in the world, Apple has an obligation to provide
| at least some level of modularity in their ecosystem.
|
| This might be your problem. Whatever their market cap,
| they don't really have an obligation to align with your
| opinions. I understand that you'd like it, but what kind
| of moral imperative would there be?
|
| > Otherwise, the precedent they set will continue to
| influence every market we can conceive, until our concept
| of "ownership" is poisoned to mean a subscription
| service.
|
| How is this related to their business policy? I strongly
| dislike their foray into services, but other than that
| they sell devices, not subscriptions. Your devices are
| yours, nobody is going to come and take them.
|
| > It's driven by greed, and makes me sick. It always
| comes at the cost of the user, and the declining
| greatness of MacOS is a perfect example of how Apple's
| hunger for money is poisoning their product line.
|
| Right, so you have an ideological problem and that's why
| you sound like that. Well, if I can recommend anything,
| it would be to keep using Thinkpads, they are good
| devices and Linux is great as well. That way you can
| completely ignore whatever happens on the Apple side and
| be happy.
| smoldesu wrote:
| > Right, so you have an ideological problem and that's
| why you sound like that. Well, if I can recommend
| anything, it would be to keep using Thinkpads, they are
| good devices and Linux is great as well. That way you can
| completely ignore whatever happens on the Apple side and
| be happy.
|
| Welcome back to square one. The only reason I even had
| any input on this in the first place is because I
| frequent Hacker News, and I just wanna pitch in my two
| cents where applicable.
| duskwuff wrote:
| > The ball is in Apple's court then. If they want to brag
| about being a real Unix system, the least they can do is
| ship modern Unix tools with their OS. Ironically, MacOS
| is the least compatible Unix system around.
|
| macOS ships with BSD coreutils. It sounds like you prefer
| the GNU coreutils package, but that doesn't mean that the
| BSD tools aren't "real Unix", or that they're "less
| compatible".
| gjsman-1000 wrote:
| The VPN thing has been fixed months ago.
| dmitriid wrote:
| >>I don't have to fight my OS.
|
| > I think that's a mantra that applies a little better to
| Linux than it does MacOS. Linux is well known for it's
| customization
|
| > pad out your desktop to be
|
| You've just described fighting your OS.
|
| I mean, sure, if you like customizing things and "padding
| your desktop", knock yourself out. The last thing _I_ want
| to do on my machine is spending any time doing that.
|
| > I don't really see how a Mac elevates your workflow that
| much
|
| You listed package manager, coreutils, and VPN. That....
| That is a minuscule part of a programmer's workflow. And
| for the vast majority of people who end up using Macs as
| their development machines these three are a non-issue.
| smoldesu wrote:
| > You've just described fighting your OS.
|
| It's only fighting if it wasn't designed for it in the
| first place, which isn't true. Linux (and the software
| designed for it) will always be modular. Once you have
| your desktop however you like it, you can backup your
| dotfiles and call it a days work. Bare git repos do the
| job almost perfectly.
|
| > You listed package manager, coreutils, and VPN.
| That.... That is a minuscule part of a programmer's
| workflow.
|
| If coreutils and a package manager are "miniscule parts"
| of a programmers workflow, I'd sure like to see someone
| program on a Mac without them.
| dmitriid wrote:
| > It's only fighting if it wasn't designed for it in the
| first place
|
| You've completely ignored this: "I mean, sure, if you
| like customizing things and "padding your desktop", knock
| yourself out. The last thing I want to do on my machine
| is spending any time doing that."
|
| I have other things in my life than fiddling with arcane
| configs.
|
| > If coreutils and a package manager are "miniscule
| parts" of a programmers workflow, I'd sure like to see
| someone program on a Mac without them.
|
| Yes. Here you assume that everyone is like you and has
| the same workflows and desires from a desktop like you.
| Nope, not everyone.
|
| For the past 7 to 8 years brew has served me as a good-
| enough package manager. It's not perfect, but no package
| manager is.
|
| No idea what your gripe with coreutils is. All of these
| [1] exist and work just fine out of the box.
|
| So yes. Those are incredibly minuscule parts of a
| programmer's workflow. I've yet to remember any pain
| points concerning these two in the past 10 years of
| working on anything from backend in Erlang, Java, C#,
| Python, Go to frontend in Javascript and Typescript [2].
|
| Granted, one thing you might _not_ want to do is do C
| /C++ development on a Mac. I don't know the details, a
| friend of mine does embedded development, and needs a
| Linux machine for that.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_GNU_Core_Utilit
| ies_com...
|
| [2] Well. Two or three times in these 10 years I needed a
| version that wasn't immediately available in brew, so I
| had to find out how to install the specific version I
| required. Installing also involved brew. Installing
| arcane versions isn't a better experience in Linux
| either. And LTS versions of Linux can rarely properly
| install _new_ versions of required packages, much less
| arcane ones.
| ravenstine wrote:
| Here's why I moved away from Linux to macOS:
|
| - I'm sorry, but no Linux DE I've ever used beats macOS in
| terms of stability. The file explorers are also a joke and
| frequently changing.
|
| - I've never booted to a black screen when upgrading macOS.
|
| - 99% of the work I do never needs anything that has to be
| virtualized under macOS.
|
| - Macbooks are solid laptops. Every other laptop I've owned
| hasn't stood the test of time as well as my Mac.
|
| - More [actually good] software supports macOS. It's just a
| fact.
|
| - macOS is fundamentally the same as it was 10 years ago, just
| with some relatively minor changes to the design. I'm pretty
| confident they're not going to move the dock to the top and
| force a new window toolkit on me that most existing software
| can't use.
|
| - macOS has hardware that I _know_ it will work with. Finding
| compatible hardware for Linux can be frustrating and not as
| complete as is claimed.
|
| - Windows and macOS solved vsync issues long ago. Somehow, even
| with Wayland, you can still experience horizontal tearing if
| you have the wrong monitor or graphics card.
|
| ---
|
| All the customization doesn't offset the trouble that desktop
| Linux can bring.
| AtlasBarfed wrote:
| Not that I'll say Linux filesystem managers are any real good
| (last one I liked I think was replaced by nautilus), but
| Finder is no great piece of software. It actively opposes me
| finding hidden folders and files. It intermingles folders and
| files, with (AFAIK) no way to to change it. It won't show to-
| the-byte files sizes (AFAIK). Cut and paste and moving files
| is annoying. It constantly forgets I want details and not
| other views. It won't show zip contents without exploding it.
|
| There are a dozen other things I recall shaking my head at
| but don't remember the specifics. File extension hiding,
| program association issues, split view crashes, integrations
| constantly broken between releases.
| kitsunesoba wrote:
| Hidden file/folder visibility can be toggled with
| [?]-Shift-. and zip files can be previewed with QuickLook
| after BetterZip is installed.
| jbverschoor wrote:
| Didn't know about the shortcut! Supernice
| asdff wrote:
| macs also have unzip already installed so no need to
| install anything to see contents of zips
| derefr wrote:
| > It intermingles folders and files, with (AFAIK) no way to
| to change it.
|
| "Keep folders on top" is a Finder preference as of Big Sur.
|
| > file extension hiding
|
| Also a Finder preference
|
| > program association issues
|
| That's nothing to do with the Finder, but rather with how
| macOS discovers app-bundle file association claims through
| Spotlight. It applies equally to files opened through CLI
| open(1).
|
| (Hint: if you downloaded the app from a website/through
| Homebrew, try opening the app itself once. It's probably
| quarantined. Spotlight ignores quarantined things until you
| vouch for them. This is also why you won't find the app in
| a search until you open it.)
| kemayo wrote:
| Thanks for pointing out that preference -- I hadn't
| noticed it being added, so this was a nifty discovery.
| vvanpo wrote:
| There are many ways macOS improves over Linux desktops, but
| file explorers is not one of the arguments I would have made.
| Finder is practically unusable.
| moshmosh wrote:
| I don't particularly like it, but I've not seen it crash or
| glitch out with the frequency that Linux file managers have
| ever since I've used them (a couple decades across a dozen
| or so desktop and laptop systems; mostly Nautilus, Dolphin
| [wasn't Konqueror also the file manager for a while, or am
| I mis-remembering?] and IIRC Thunar)
| Toutouxc wrote:
| Honest question, what's wrong with Finder? I use ForkLift
| for the heavy lifting (lol), but it works just fine for
| "navigate to file, open/move/delete file, sort by
| size/date, tag files, find files".
| smoldesu wrote:
| Finder still can't handle SFTP connections. In 2021. I
| feel like I'm going insane, or I've missed some sort of
| critical update, but no, it's just sitting there.
| swiley wrote:
| This.
|
| It's incredibly useful basic functionality that both
| Finder and explorer inexplicably lack. This alone makes
| Linux desktops far more friendly even for novice users
| who want to do something beyond sharing gifs on web
| forums.
| dmitriid wrote:
| SFTP.
|
| Novice users.
|
| Why would a novice user want SFTP built-in to their file
| manager?
| olyjohn wrote:
| It hardly handles SMB/CIFS connections correctly, and
| it's been fucked up for years.
| jbverschoor wrote:
| Well.. you'll have to install an fs driver for that.
| Exactly like in Linux. Or just use mountainduck
| regularfry wrote:
| What makes you think that you need to install a driver on
| Linux to make SFTP mounts work in a file manager?
| smoldesu wrote:
| Every file manager I've used on Linux has support for
| SFTP out of the box. Not quite sure what you're talking
| about here.
| hyakosm wrote:
| - It's slow - Middle-click don't open the folder
| in a new tab - It doesn't natively handle SFTP
| mounting - The visual fixed arrangement of icons
| can be weird
| ravenstine wrote:
| Care to explain? I'm not saying Finder is _great_ , but I
| find it perfectly usable and I've never noticed it drop
| features willy nilly (as was the case with Nautilus back in
| the day).
| hyakosm wrote:
| The Finder doesn't even allow me to middle-click to open a
| folder in a new tab, it's horrible. I miss KDE Dolphin.
| qalmakka wrote:
| True that. Finder is only slightly better than nautilus,
| but it gets beaten up by Dolphin badly. It would win
| outright for me with the "Press F4 for an integrated
| shell" feature alone.
| leadingthenet wrote:
| You can definitely do that in Finder by adding the
| Terminal.app as a Service.
|
| Here's a guide I found:
| https://www.howtogeek.com/210147/how-to-open-terminal-in-
| the...
| satysin wrote:
| They are referring to the shell being integrated _into_
| Finder similar to the integrated terminal in Visual
| Studio Code or IntelliJ IDEs not launching a separate
| Terminal.app window.
| leadingthenet wrote:
| Oh, I see. Apologies for misunderstanding, then.
| f6v wrote:
| I see what's wrong. I just don't have middle mouse button
| - problem solved.
| [deleted]
| user3939382 wrote:
| I have to use TotalFinder to be able to cut and paste files
| which I find very strange after all the years of experience
| on other OSes. I also resent not being able to conduct
| basic file management in file selection dialogs. Other
| missing features I have to hack around with scripts or add-
| ons: Copy terminal-friendly path, open current folder in
| terminal, create a blank text file here. Probably more.
| dkarras wrote:
| you can move (cut + paste) in finder, it is hidden for
| some reason. instead of cmd + v, you need cmd + option +
| v and the file you copied will be pasted just like it was
| "cut".
| Blikkentrekker wrote:
| > _All the customization doesn 't offset the trouble that
| desktop Linux can bring._
|
| To be fair, those that desire that typically don't use file
| explorers.
|
| I personally find them a hastle when they must be used, such
| as some websites for file upload have no easy way around
| using a file picker, perhaps they are much more convenient on
| _MacOS_ , but I generally find it more convenient to use a
| shell command and simply provide the file to upload by way of
| an argument to the command. Modern shells also typically have
| advanced history search functionality to quickly enter a file
| path that one has already used in the past for something.
| happymellon wrote:
| > Macbooks are solid laptops. Every other laptop I've owned
| hasn't stood the test of time as well as my Mac.
|
| If you are American.
|
| In the UK, I find the keyboard layout bewildering. It is not
| ANSI and it isn't ISO. It's some other thing, with keys that
| don't exist in any other English speaking keyboard. They even
| hide # behind a special alt key combo.
|
| Other things about it are good, but there are some design
| decisions which are just plain wrong.
|
| [Edit] I received downvotes, so as someone who uses a UK
| Macbook Pro I just have to reference this because they layout
| pisses me off.
|
| Here is an Apple link to prove that this is real.
|
| https://store.storeimages.cdn-apple.com/4668/as-
| images.apple...
|
| In the UK ISO layout, the `~#` key is normally where the
| `|\\` key is on the Apple keyboard, and the backtick which is
| down by the Z is to the left of the 1. We get range and
| paragraph next to the 1, which is horrible.
|
| The thing that makes me concerned about the build of this
| 2019 i7 Macbook Pro is that is is always extremely hot. I'm
| only running one 4k screen off it but it is regularly running
| with fans on. I've had Macs in the past, and they haven't
| been quite as noisy as this. I'm sure its mostly due to
| crappy Intel hardware which is why they are being dumped, but
| this is a Mac and I can only judge them on what they sell.
| joombaga wrote:
| > They even hide # behind a special alt key combo.
|
| That's way worse than removing the escape key.
| happymellon wrote:
| It's things like this that make me say that Macbooks
| aren't for developers rather than running Linux in a VM.
| dmitriid wrote:
| I'm baffled how a developer ever assumes that whatever's
| on the keyboard is hardcoded and can never be changed.
|
| Yes, for some reason (tradition, history) Macs prefer
| typewriter layouts on their keyboards. But... have you
| ever even tried looking into System Preferences -
| Keyboard - Input Sources and changing the layout to "US
| (PC)"?
| eikenberry wrote:
| These sorts of lists always just sound like someone laundry
| list of personal preferences which have no bearing on what I
| would pick. Is is just a narcissistic tendency to think that
| one person's personal preferences are that generalize-able?
| Or is it more just the general love people have of talking
| about themselves?
| smoldesu wrote:
| > Macbooks are solid laptops.
|
| I desperately wish this were still true, but I can't even see
| myself keeping my M1 Macbook Air as a Linux laptop. Too many
| compromises, too little power. Not to mention, it's a fragile
| little sucker too. I somehow managed to scratch the bezel on
| the second day of owning it...
| voidlogic wrote:
| Most of your above list would be taken care just by sticking
| to Ubuntu on Thinkpads using gnome-session-flashback. Its
| basically a polished version of the same DE I have been using
| since 2004 and love... rock solid (not of the boot or HW
| issues you mentioned, etc). I spend like no time ever messing
| with it and its been that way since 2014, 2016?
| cardanome wrote:
| > - macOS is fundamentally the same as it was 10 years ago,
| just with some relatively minor changes to the design. I'm
| pretty confident they're not going to move the dock to the
| top and force a new window toolkit on me that most existing
| software can't use.
|
| I don't know anything about macOS but that is an interesting
| point. I actually use Linux because of its stability. It is a
| deeply conservative operating system that tries its hardest
| to never break existing software. I recently booted up an old
| Netbook running Linux that is surely much more than a decade
| old now and hasn't seen any update and I still felt right at
| home.
|
| Sure the Linux ecosystem has seen a bit of changes but most
| of them are opt in and can be avoided. If you were on Ubuntu
| you got experimented on quite a bit but thank god nobody is
| forced to use Ubuntu.
|
| In contrast I am not even able to use a modern Windows system
| productively these days. The last version I used was Windows
| XP and it does not seem to have improved for the better UI
| wise to say the least.
| regularfry wrote:
| > Sure the Linux ecosystem has seen a bit of changes but
| most of them are opt in and can be avoided
|
| Ah, I see you've managed to avoid Mr Poettering and his
| opinions. Well done.
| Phrodo_00 wrote:
| > - I've never booted to a black screen when upgrading macOS.
|
| Haven't had anything close to this happen to me in Linux in
| like 15 years. I've had to reimage my macbook thrice in 5
| years. I really don't get it, my linux laptop is pretty wild
| (touchscreen, hidpi, tablet mode) and everything is supported
| out of the box, and I'm not even using a friendly distro.
| swiley wrote:
| >o Linux DE I've ever used beats macOS in terms of stability.
|
| Maybe this is because I exclusevely use naked WMs with Xterms
| but OSX is horribly unstable. The GUI is fantastic though in
| every way you would expect a good gui to be that Windows and
| kde/gnome disapoint you.
|
| >macOS is fundamentally the same as it was 10 years ago
|
| It's way more service focused and a lot less performant.
| Opening apps sometimes pops up a "verifying authenticity"
| dialog with a progress bar for example.
|
| >Windows and macOS solved vsync issues long ago.
|
| If the tearing really does bother you then yes you should use
| OSX.
| aequitas wrote:
| Dont' forget:
|
| - Multi- and highres monitor support out of the box with
| proper scaling and readable fonts
|
| - A package manager with up to date packages (granted there
| are Linuxbrew and things like Snap now for Linux.)
|
| - Applications that have a consistent UI/UX and all use the
| same keyboard shortcuts
|
| > All the customization doesn't offset the trouble that
| desktop Linux can bring.
|
| It's nice you can customize almost everything on Linux, but
| most of the time I feel I must customize everything to get to
| a basic standard.
| __jem wrote:
| > A package manager with up to date packages (granted there
| are Linuxbrew and things like Snap now for Linux.)
|
| On what planet is is homebrew better than Linux package
| managers? I agree with many of the other items in these
| lists, but this makes literally no sense to me. Homebrew is
| probably one of the _worst_ things about doing dev on a
| mac.
| jpgvm wrote:
| Agree as a Mac user. I miss pacman from Arch. Now -that-
| is a nice package manager. It took the best (simple)
| parts from Gentoo and combined them with the better parts
| of apt/rpm/zypp etc.
| irateswami wrote:
| Homebrew is more transparent and approachable, I can
| easily customize what is being installed, it's
| versioning, and control it's dependencies better than
| apt.
|
| Apt, more often than not, acts as a gatekeeper for the
| latest version of whatever software packages I'm trying
| to install. I end up just having to adding various
| libraries and repos to my sources list to get the version
| I need, or go to an outside dependency manager like gvm,
| sdkman, etc which is basically homebrew anyway.
|
| Homebrew is for devs that need to get shit done, apt is
| for computer scientists that love the tool more than
| solving problems with a tool. For the record, I'm on both
| linux and mac and there's plenty of upside and downside
| to both.
| regularfry wrote:
| More accurate to say that apt is for the sysadmin,
| perhaps.
| cookiengineer wrote:
| You're extrapolating from Debian's packaging concept to
| other distros, though your argument does not apply to
| most of the rolling distros out there.
|
| On a rolling distro (e.g. using pacman, or say yast2 and
| others for sake of argument) you typically ship the
| header files included with the libraries, so that you
| don't need multiple versions of the same library
| installed. On Debian/Ubuntu, however, it will always end
| up with that mess of dozens of versions of the same
| library because all PPAs are somewhat outdated and used
| different versions of specific libraries once they were
| published.
| dmitriid wrote:
| That's the problem isn't it? Whichever problem you point
| at in Linux, the answer is invariably the same: "you're
| holding it wr^W^W^^W you're using the wrong distro, the
| wrong package manager, the wrong DE, the wrong version of
| any of those things".
|
| And, invariably, for any problem the one true combination
| is different.
| moshmosh wrote:
| Homebrew's very up to date, without that cutting-edge
| quality risking system stability (since that's totally
| separate) and has an incredible number of supported
| packages, _including_ tons of closed-source stuff, _out
| of the box_. No hunting down PPAs or obscure unofficial
| back-port packages or anything. The only Linux package
| managers I 've seen even approach it (not match, but
| approach) are from bleeding-edge distros like Arch or
| Gentoo, but those come at a harsh stability cost since
| they also manage the rest of your system, including all
| the shared libs (ugh) and system-level packages (I gather
| that's the case on Arch, it sure was on Gentoo when I
| used it for many years, mostly because I loved Portage
| and OpenRC)
| TwoNineA wrote:
| > Multi- and highres monitor support out of the box with
| proper scaling and readable fonts
|
| My M1 mini has all kinds of issues with 2 4k monitors
| attached. Sometimes waking up from sleep, the monitor
| plugged into TB scales to default setting (200%?) instead
| my config (125%). And don't get me started on Ultra Wide
| support.
| waiseristy wrote:
| > Multi- and highres monitor support out of the box with
| proper scaling and readable fonts
|
| What's funny, is this is the _complete_ opposite experience
| that I had in every single way. Multi-monitors absolutely
| suck on macos unless you drop $1000 on mac monitors
|
| Try running two external monitors with differing
| resolutions, in my experience, it will be stable about 1
| time out of 20. The rest will have artifacting, refusal to
| recognize the monitor, or other weird behaviour.
|
| Or try running a monitor that isn't at least 4k, the most
| recent macos removed text aliasing so text rendering on
| 1080/1440p monitors looks like something out of the 1980's.
|
| Linux though? I've never once had an issue with external
| monitors using Ubuntu
|
| Edit: Sitting here on my work mac, almost forgot about my
| favorite one! When running multiple monitor resolutions,
| mouse movement hitches and lags for seemingly no reason!
| Only a disconnect and reconnect of the external monitors
| fixes it!
| kelnos wrote:
| > _It 's nice you can customize almost everything on Linux,
| but most of the time I feel I must customize everything to
| get to a basic standard._
|
| The last time I had to customize everything was like 10
| years ago, and now I just copy my $HOME from machine to
| machine when I get a new one and everything just works and
| looks like it did on my previous machine.
| laumars wrote:
| > _I 'm sorry, but no Linux DE I've ever used beats macOS in
| terms of stability. The file explorers are also a joke and
| frequently changing._
|
| Dolphin on KDE hasn't changed in 10 years and is far more
| functional than Finder. Frankly I think Finder is an
| appalling file manager so I'm surprised to hear anyone
| advocate it.
|
| > _MacBooks are solid laptops. Every other laptop I 've owned
| hasn't stood the test of time as well as my Mac._
|
| 5 years ago I would have agreed with you but MBPs these days
| are really built more like expensive consumer devices rather
| than workstations that expect to see heavy usage.
|
| Ultimately I think the real reason people use Macs is just
| personal preference and there isn't any tangible, provable
| benefits of one over the other. Despite our engineering minds
| thinking every decision can be distilled down to fact and
| reason.
| kall wrote:
| At this point the #1 is that I believe directly paying
| relatively small developers money for software produces by
| far the most user friendly (in many senses) desktop
| software. On the mac, that model is still thriving.
| Everywhere else you have maybe a handful of great options.
| Apart from that you get some Electron SaaS, some ancient
| professional software and some messy open source options.
| If you're lucky maybe some mac ports like Tower or Paw.
| tokamak-teapot wrote:
| I wouldn't say I work with files a lot, but when I do,
| Finder seems to work 'fine'. What do you find 'appalling'
| about it? If I'm missing the option to make my life much
| easier by using an alternative I'd like to at least try
| something else out.
| johnvaluk wrote:
| You know those completely useless files (.DS_Store,
| ._foo.bar, etc.) that you see whenever you expand an
| archive or clone a repository from a developer who uses a
| Mac? Finder drops those turds.
| Redoubts wrote:
| Who cares?
| kelnos wrote:
| > _I 'm sorry, but no Linux DE I've ever used beats macOS in
| terms of stability._
|
| Been running Xfce since 2004 with no stability issues
| whatsoever.
|
| > _Macbooks are solid laptops. Every other laptop I 've owned
| hasn't stood the test of time as well as my Mac._
|
| Oof, I guess you never got a Mac during 2016-2020 or so.
| They've been gradually declining in build quality. I owned
| Mac laptops continually from 2005 until 2019, and they've
| been going downhill pretty much the entire way, especially
| since 2012 or so.
|
| > _More [actually good] software supports macOS. It 's just a
| fact._
|
| That's pretty much the definition of an opinion, not a fact.
|
| > _Finding compatible hardware for Linux can be frustrating
| and not as complete as is claimed._
|
| It really isn't. The problem is that everyone already has a
| laptop when they decide they want to switch, and then get
| frustrated when their existing laptop doesn't work well with
| Linux. These days there are quite a few laptops that work
| perfectly or near-perfectly with Linux, and they're not hard
| to find.
|
| > _All the customization doesn 't offset the trouble that
| desktop Linux can bring._
|
| That's a fair opinion, but I've found my experience to be the
| opposite. Every time I go back to macOS, I get frustrated
| with the inflexibility of it all. I get that it's a pain to
| feel like you have to customize _everything_ to get something
| usable for you, but macOS goes too far in the opposite
| direction for me: Apple just does not give me enough knobs to
| turn to make me feel comfortable in their environment.
| jorl17 wrote:
| These are all just anecdotes. From you, OP, and me...
|
| > Been running Xfce since 2004 with no stability issues
| whatsoever.
|
| I ran Linux (and was a _fierce_ OSS fanatic) from ~2002 to
| 2012. I've been a mac user since 2012. I moved around,
| using LXDE, Xfce, Gnome, KDE, no DE at all (openbox...)...
| I used Ubuntu, Mint, Gentoo, ADIOS, Crunchbang, Fedora...
|
| Linux DEs were solid, but they never felt sufficiently
| polished. When I first touched a Mac, everything just felt
| better -- drag and drop worked like a charm, and the visual
| queues and feedback were amazing. Often we'd realize that
| some things also worked in Linux, but they just weren't
| visually advertised as such -- cursors wouldn't change,
| things wouldn't slightly fade. It looked like a jumbled
| mess with no coherent design team behind it.
|
| > Oof, I guess you never got a Mac during 2016-2020 or so.
| They've been gradually declining in build quality. I owned
| Mac laptops continually from 2005 until 2019, and they've
| been going downhill pretty much the entire way, especially
| since 2012 or so.
|
| The quality of apple laptops has indeed been far from
| stellar in recent years, but I'm pretty happy with my 16'
| beefed-out Macbook Pro. It is undeniable, though, as you
| say, that they have been going downhill. Nevertheless,
| going downhill from where they were still means they're
| quite close to the highest peak you can find, IMO.
|
| > > More [actually good] software supports macOS. It's just
| a fact. > > That's pretty much the definition of an
| opinion, not a fact.
|
| Agreed, it is a matter of opinion. For what it's worth, if
| we exclude games (most of which I can play perfectly fine
| in a VM in parallels anyway), in my opinion, indeed more
| actually good software supports macOS. There are very very
| very few things I miss from my linux days, and I heavily
| customized everything I had.
|
| > It really isn't. The problem is that everyone already has
| a laptop when they decide they want to switch, and then get
| frustrated when their existing laptop doesn't work well
| with Linux. These days there are quite a few laptops that
| work perfectly or near-perfectly with Linux, and they're
| not hard to find.
|
| I completely disagree with the sentiment of this paragraph.
| While, yes, many laptops work flawlessly, and you may
| actually be able to google them somewhat quickly, the
| experience of finding a linux compatible machine that one
| wants to use and fits their needs is still a perilous road
| of doubt and uncertainty. This is a consequence of the many
| different choices one has, because while we can find
| reports that someone's favourite distro ran on a particular
| laptop at version X, we might not want that distro, or that
| particular version, and things instantly go south. Finding
| linux-compatible hardware and having to "jump into it with
| our money" is an extremely risky and stressful move -- one
| which can leave anyone with buyer's remorse pretty quickly
| if anything fails to work properly. Worse, "failing to work
| properly" can be as innocuous as "feeling that the laptop
| is running out of battery too fast" or "is running too
| hot". While all of these things definitely also happen on a
| Macbook, it is much easier to simply know that the hardware
| will be supported, much like we know that most games built
| for a console are sure to work on that console. If money is
| not an issue, and if there are no particularly clunky
| software requirements or vendor-lock-in issues (these are
| big ifs, I know), then buying a Mac is by far the easiest
| decision, because it lifts weights off of your mind, and
| puts them in Apple's hands -- to make sure that things
| work.
|
| Many of my friends run Linux, some of them as a daily
| driver. Some of these people are among the smartest I've
| ever known with computers, and some even make hundreds of
| thousands of dollars in the IT world, be it in
| cybersecurity fields or other such areas -- yet, most of
| them, too, do not really know which laptop to buy when
| upgrading, ever. They choose Linux _in spite of this_, but
| they most definitely see this as an annoyance and problem.
| Linux has to work everywhere and, so, it is only natural
| that there are pieces of hardware where it doesn't work --
| or it works poorly. I would expect nothing less.
|
| > That's a fair opinion, but I've found my experience to be
| the opposite. Every time I go back to macOS, I get
| frustrated with the inflexibility of it all. I get that
| it's a pain to feel like you have to customize everything
| to get something usable for you, but macOS goes too far in
| the opposite direction for me: Apple just does not give me
| enough knobs to turn to make me feel comfortable in their
| environment.
|
| I can perfectly understand this sentiment. I don't really
| feel like there are things I can't configure on my mac, but
| I can recognize that I had more configurability on the
| Linux side of things. I used to be the guy who had dozens
| of scripts and wrappers for everything, and the one crazy
| guy who got pulseaudio to play along with ALSA before it
| actually worked, all while getting the latest games to run
| on Wine with custom patches made for them. My computers
| always looked "slick" to other people, and I used to have
| this amazing feeling of having tailored it all to myself.
| Then, at some point in my life, I realized I was spending
| more time adjusting my configurations than actually doing
| stuff with them. Ever since circumstances led me to a Mac,
| I've never looked back. I've migrated data from my first
| Mac all the way to the latest always through Time Machine,
| and it feels magical.
|
| I'm a big fan of Linux. I think it's an incredible
| achievement. I'm not the OSS fanatic sending e-mails to RMS
| that I used to be, but I still feel the OSS cause deeply. I
| also think linux on the desktop is much more usable today
| than it was before (when I used it). It certainly fits the
| needs of many people. To me, though, the mac strikes a
| perfect balance for everything I do in my life. It
| literally just works. Everything just works. I airplay to
| my TV and it works. I migrate it with time machine across
| the span of 10 years and it works. I upgrade it and
| everything (mostly) works. Things don't change _too_ much
| in between updates. Stability has its ups and downs.
| Apple's decisions sometimes might leave one a bit
| infuriated (cough cough 32 bit support), but I've never
| been this happy with a computer as I am with the mac. In
| fact, even though I have theoretically less to configure,
| my mac feels like it's "more configured to me" than my
| Linux machines, because things just work like I want them
| to. It's like my mental model of a computer is better
| represented by the mac. Whenever I touch Linux and have to
| use it for a couple of days or in a VM, things are always
| out of place (this also happens a bit with Windows, but
| Windows feels coherent and I can instantly tell that after
| a couple of days I'd get used to it). Drag and drop doesn't
| do what it should. Things don't respond for no reason. Work
| is being done but no loading icon is present, leading me to
| do double-clicks and other shenanigans. I'm sure the right
| combination of tools and software for me is out there in
| the Linux world -- and the hardware too (I love the macbook
| trackpads -- they're actually the original reason why I
| started thinking of moving to the mac) --, but I have more
| to do with my life than keep tinkering with linux nowadays
| to make it work with me. I do that with my raspberry pis,
| as a fun thing.
|
| I have nothing against people running Linux on the desktop.
| The more, the better -- maybe one day I'll come back. I
| never thought I'd use a Mac -- I despised them -- and yet,
| here I am, 10 years later.
| TwoNineA wrote:
| > I've never booted to a black screen when upgrading macOS.
|
| I never had Linux physically damage my hardware after an
| update, MacOS sure did.
| rovr138 wrote:
| > - I've never booted to a black screen when upgrading macOS.
|
| My wife got bit by the Big Sur bug, 2 weeks ago, were the
| installer doesn't check if there's enough disk space
| available before starting the upgrade.
|
| Reached out Apple whom, had I not been next to her, wanted
| her to create a new volume on her disk and reinstall
|
| Stopped her. Jumped in. Asked what the plan was and it was to
| format.
|
| The initial question was if there was a way to recover the
| data.
|
| I stopped the conversation and started searching.
|
| Was working until midnight because everything I found
| basically said that you're f'ed and lost all your data.
|
| I was able to recover it.
|
| .
|
| - Yes, she didn't have a backup. But the installer also
| should do the minimum of checking if it can run.
|
| - I have no idea how old the installer is, but if Apple can
| remove Zoom due to a security issue with a web server, they
| can do it with a bad installer of theirs (or at least
| blacklist it).
|
| - Before giving steps that are destructive, they should have
| prefaced with it or at least warn that they're SOL and need
| to reinstall and restore from a backup.
|
| .
|
| It works the majority of the time, but honestly, this left a
| REALLY bad taste for me. If it wasn't because we are
| basically in the ecosystem and that it usually works, I'd be
| looking around to others.
| MandieD wrote:
| Have you written a post somewhere about how you got her
| data back, or what was something online that helped you?
| m463 wrote:
| I use macos for my desktop, but it has gradually become a
| terminal emulator + firefox + mail. and for mail, I won't move
| to catalina mail because they nerfed it.
|
| Eventually this will all be linux. I just have to make the time
| to figure out a good desktop setup.
|
| EDIT: actually preview (space bar in finder) on macos is quite
| useful.
| globular-toast wrote:
| That's pretty much what I use these days. Plus emacs. I run a
| minimal gentoo setup and hate using other computers as they
| are always sluggish despite having newer and more powerful
| hardware.
|
| You should look into a tiling window manager. It's really
| liberating to stop worrying about wm behaviour.
| m463 wrote:
| and emacs (yes)
| bostonsre wrote:
| I kind of think similarly on the subject. They make some
| beautiful hardware, but I've never been able to get comfortable
| on macos. I love linux, but that also has some drawbacks when
| running that as your desktop or laptop. I have been really
| liking WSL on windows 10. I don't need to worry about
| installing stuff on windows, but having linux as my shell has
| been pretty great. I wouldn't call it just a better integrated
| VM, it's almost like having a chimera of an OS that is both
| linux and windows.
|
| e.g. I have this in my .bashrc in my centos container. It runs
| the windows powershell executeable to write to my windows
| clipboard. Not sure how they're doing it but, seems pretty
| magical.
|
| function cb () { powershell.exe -command "\$input | set-
| clipboard" }
|
| echo "hello" | cb # hello written to windows clipboard
|
| All that being said, I'd be really interested in how well this
| project integrates the container on macs. Maybe this will be a
| good option for the future.
| vereis wrote:
| I found the start up time for powershell to be quite
| noticeable in WSL for scripts like that.
|
| If copying is all you're after you can invoke `clip.exe`
| instead.
|
| Honestly though I just caved and ended up using an xserver
| with WSL for really smooth copy and paste support. Paste
| requires a powershell invocation without an xserver.
|
| Definitely recommending X410 (paid) or VcrXsrv (free) --
| let's you launch x11 apps too!
|
| Once WSLu is released everything will be even more seamless
| though.
| samatman wrote:
| Just to address one part in detail, what "layer multiple third
| party tools" means in practice is: install brew, install gnu-
| utils, and add the relevant directory to $PATH.
|
| It's fire and forget. I'm quite confident you can do it with
| ports, or even nix if you really want to.
|
| I know it's subjective, but it doesn't _feel_ like Apple is
| being "actively hostile" here. It's just configuring your
| system to be different from the default.
|
| I don't even remember the steps in detail (like what does brew
| call the gnu utils?) because I did it, once, four years and
| three laptops ago. I actually did it seven years ago as well,
| but that laptop was stolen.
|
| Edit: also, I didn't "flock to" OS X, I eagerly bought a G5 as
| soon as I could afford it, in 2003. I learned Unix on
| workstations (Sparcs mostly) and my Yggdrasil Linux partition
| was always a poor substitute in comparison. So when Apple
| started selling workstations? and they were _Macs_? Yes please!
| eschaton wrote:
| Why do you assume running a bunch or GNU utilities and Linux
| chroots ("containers") is something developers need generally?
| Only developers working on specific things and working in
| pretty specific ways will need that. Maybe that's a lot of the
| folks here on Hacker News, but it's not, say, the millions of
| people doing iOS development.
| latexr wrote:
| > I find developers flocking to macOS really bewildering. As a
| developer, why do you want to fight your operating system to
| get basic things done?
|
| Why is it hard to grasp that different people having different
| needs and experiences?
|
| Maybe _you_ would have to fight macOS. Others have to fight
| Linux, or Windows, or Android, or iOS. There's a reason not
| everyone is on the same platforms.
|
| Developers, like scotsmen[1], aren't an amorphous group.
|
| [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_true_Scotsman
| MR4D wrote:
| Because the touchpad works.
|
| And my dev is in the cloud (mostly).
| soheil wrote:
| Not sure what alternative you might have in mind, but none
| comes close to macOS if you want a half descent desktop
| experience based on unix. Ubuntu Desktop is an utterly terrible
| user experience, people who advocate for it generally still
| believe for example the mouse should have never been invented
| and those lesser people who find it useful should be happy with
| Ubuntu Desktop. Windows is also a no go, if you think Apple is
| hostile wait until you're presented with Internet Explorer or a
| slew of administrative layers meant to control you on a Windows
| box.
| gjsman-1000 wrote:
| "I Just recently I learned you can't add more swap ( creating a
| swap file and adding it ). That seems incredible to me."
|
| At what point are you just approaching MacOS with the wrong
| mindset? MacOS isn't something you should or need to manage
| swap for or should really think about. It's the same reason you
| don't think about managing swap on Windows or your iPhone or
| your Android or your Smart TV.
| Naac wrote:
| > MacOS isn't something you should or need to manage swap for
|
| I would 100% agree with you with regards to most macOS users.
| But as a software dev of course this is something you might
| have to do every once in a while.
|
| The fact that you can't doesn't seem to align with the fact
| that macOS is the operating system of choice for software
| devs.
| kergonath wrote:
| Swap files are created by the OS when the existing ones are
| full. They are removed by the OS when they are empty. There
| is no way to set the swap size, because it is dynamic. What
| is the point of setting the size yourself, besides running
| artificially out of swap when you need more or taking
| unnecessary space when you need less?
| mikestew wrote:
| _But as a software dev of course this is something you
| might have to do every once in a while._
|
| In about twelve years of a variety of software development
| on Mac, from embedded to iOS/Mac apps to web, it has never
| even once occurred to me to do that. Considering that the
| OS will fill the disk with swap if need be, I'm trying to
| think of a reason to even _want_ to do this.
| Toutouxc wrote:
| AFAIK macOS will use the whole drive for swap (or at least
| an awfully large number of gigabytes, correct me if I'm
| wrong), why would you want to add more?
| OJFord wrote:
| > you don't think about managing swap on Windows
|
| I haven't really been a Windows user since Win7, but as I
| remember it 'increase page file size' was right up there with
| 'clean the registry' and 'try turning it off and on again'.
| officeplant wrote:
| >It's the same reason you don't think about managing swap on
| Windows
|
| Except one of the first things I do on any Windows setup is
| to move the page file somewhere else or resize it.
| devmor wrote:
| Same here. It feels like the people going gung-ho for
| macbooks here are the type of people that would take their
| computer to best buy if they got a boot loop instead of
| just fixing it.
|
| Kind of incomprehensible to me that anyone in that mindset
| would be a developer.
| zepto wrote:
| > if they got a boot loop
|
| I have literally _never_ seen a boot loop on a Mac.
|
| How would that even come about?
| moshmosh wrote:
| This poster gets it.
|
| I use macOS because there's about 1/10 the likelihood
| that I'll have to burn half a day fixing its fuck-ups as
| there is with Windows and Linux. And I did _plenty_ of
| that for _years_ before ever seriously using a Mac.
|
| Nowadays when I check in on the Linux desktop to see how
| it's doing now, I notice how easy it is to get into the
| old habits of "oh this is pretty good, just a little
| tweak and I can get the audio working the way it ought
| to, oh and this and that" down a bunch of little rabbit-
| holes and pretty soon I've burned hours on stuff that
| sure looks like work, but is 100% unproductive. When I
| catch myself doing that I go "well, not ready to switch
| back yet, I guess, maybe next year".
|
| I think a lot of people using Linux on the desktop either
| somehow manage to use it very differently from how I ever
| have, _or_ are completely blind to how much time they 're
| losing to it because they're having to work around
| deficiencies, put up with bad behavior, or fix stuff.
| That is, I think both categories of Linux desktop user
| exist, not that it's one or the other. I was definitely
| in the latter category, and can recognize that in myself
| now. Last I checked (a few months ago) the Linux desktop
| remains something I need to avoid if I don't want to end
| up doing a bunch of fake work.
| officeplant wrote:
| For me personally Windows/Linux falls under the same
| umbrella: I'm going to largely use it as it comes from my
| favorite distro (or microsoft) with slight tweaks that
| rarely break anything. These tweaks are usually
| accessible via settings panels (or regedit)
|
| For MacOS: Instead of tweaking things internally I have
| to reach out to third party application developers to fix
| things the OS lacks. Some examples: bettersnaptool to
| give me modern window snapping like Windows/Linux, or the
| Android File Transfer so I can actually access my phone.
|
| Either way I'm having to make changes to get cozy, MacOS
| just means I'm going to be handing money to a few
| thirdparty devs by the end of it in order to get it to
| behave like I'm used to OS's behaving. Maybe that's my
| fault from growing up mostly in a Windows/Linux
| environment besides the few years I spent in OS8/9 in
| college.
|
| I'm comfortable in all the major operating systems. It
| just cost more for me to get comfortable in MacOS. Not
| that it's a bad thing, dev's need money too.
| jcelerier wrote:
| > It's the same reason you don't think about managing swap on
| Windows
|
| not managing swap on windows means being condmned to slowness
| smoldesu wrote:
| I'm also pretty baffled. I fell for the M1 Macbook Air, and now
| that I have it... I still reach for my Thinkpad 90% of the
| time. Maybe it's just because we're in a pandemic, but the
| battery life didn't really wow me, and the performance was a
| little underwhelming compared to the Ryzen APUs I had seen on
| laptops half that price a mere 12 months ago.
|
| And that's just the hardware side of things!
|
| Not only are your coreutils horribly outdated, but getting a
| complete set of development tools on MacOS is a nightmare.
| Unless you install the 65 gigabyte monster (!!!) that XCode is,
| you're getting a gimped toolset, and Apple is kind enough to
| offer the end user absolutely no modularity in that install.
| MacOS still doesn't have a good package manager (though Brew
| and Macports are _fine_ ), it still doesn't have support for
| any industry-standard graphics APIs (sorry, Metal is still a
| joke), and your "end-to-end" encryption still sends your keys
| to Apple and third parties.
|
| Seeing a developer use a Macbook used to be a symbol of
| pedigree back when OSX debuted, since it offered a pretty
| unparalleled Unix desktop experience. Nowadays though, MacOS
| has become such a bloated beast that its hardly worth using in
| my opinion. Big Sur feels like Apple's take on Windows 7, and I
| can only imagine that they will make the same mistakes that
| Microsoft did in their hubris with Windows 8.
| gjsman-1000 wrote:
| So much of this is incorrect. You can prefer the ThinkPad,
| that's fine! But you've got several incorrect statements.
|
| "Unless you install the 65 gigabyte monster" - It's 9GB. With
| caches and Simulator, maybe another 9GB. 1/3 of 65 GB.
|
| "sorry, Metal is still a joke" - It's different, but
| developers who have to write shaders in Metal actually have
| pretty good reviews of it. They admit it isn't as convenient
| as having native Vulkan or OpenGL, but Metal has it's charm
| as a language.
|
| "your "end-to-end" encryption still sends your keys to Apple
| and third parties." - INCORRECT. It sends your data over an
| encrypted connection to iCloud without any end-to-end
| encryption, but if you disable iCloud Backup, your data is
| completely end-to-end encrypted. This is very different than
| sending your E2E keys to Apple.
|
| "bloated beast that its hardly worth using in my opinion" -
| The same could be said for Windows 10, eh?
| smoldesu wrote:
| Sorry, I was referring to an older setup I had where I kept
| multiple copies of Xcode for project testing. Either way,
| 20 gigabytes is still way too large for a program running
| on a laptop that _starts_ at 256 gigs of storage (220 after
| the worlds largest operating system gets comfortably
| situated).
|
| As for Metal, I think my statement still stands. I can't
| think of a single developer who would prefer to write
| shaders in a language that is slower than Vulkan and more
| complicated than OpenGL. Charm be damned, it's an asinine
| practice, and Apple should just default to an open standard
| like Vulkan, which would likely be a win-win situation for
| all of their users. I don't care about Metal and it's
| existence as an API is what makes developers around the
| world lament cross platform development.
|
| I'm not really sure what point you're trying to make with
| the encryption bit, but it's a well known (and
| demonstrated) fact that Apple has the ability to unlock and
| access your iCloud data without your permission or
| credentials. They've done it several times, and have even
| used it to wiretap high-profile targets before (like poor
| Rudy Giuliani, or our friends over at SciHub!)
|
| >The same could be said for Windows 10, eh?
|
| Almost, though MacOS is technically the "larger" operating
| system: the disk image is more than twice as large as
| Windows, and it occupies about 50% more space on a fresh
| install. Both operating systems are pretty terrible choices
| though, and I should hope that incoming CS grads care
| enough about their freedom and privacy not to hand it all
| over to a centralized company that is ultimately beholden
| to a board of shareholders.
| saagarjha wrote:
| Perhaps the command line tools are all you need? They are
| much smaller than Xcode.
| sigjuice wrote:
| And easier to install as well, without even the need to
| log on to the Mac App Store. Just typing _cc_ or some
| other similar command should start the installation.
| f6v wrote:
| > As a developer, why do you want to fight your operating
| system to get basic things done?
|
| I've been using Macs for development since 2013. I've done
| Android, Ruby on Rails, React, data science with Python and R.
| Apart from Docker, I don't remember "fighting" the system.
| sethhochberg wrote:
| Same story as you. Nearly a decade of professional software
| development, most of it on company-supplied Apple hardware. I
| spent... maybe a week or two getting used to macOS with my
| first laptop after coming from linux and Windows, and don't
| really recall fighting much in the decade since.
|
| I used to be a heavy desktop linux user, and can kind of
| empathize with the idea of being frustrated with less
| control. But at the same time... I feel like if you're
| legitimately fighting with an operating system, you're just
| picking a fight because you're unwilling to adjust your
| workflow even the smallest amount.
|
| If I had to use a Windows laptop for work tomorrow, I'd
| probably spend a couple of weeks annoyed about relearning it,
| and then I'd be fine again (though I'd miss unlocking with my
| Apple Watch and having iMessage). Life is too short to get
| worked up over stuff like this.
|
| Sometimes I'm frustrated by AWS and miss being able to SSH
| into bare metal. Sometimes I'm also annoyed by payroll
| software. Confluence's text editor has a habit of freezing
| input if it thinks I'm offline. No tools are perfect.
| Imperfect tools still let you earn a living, and you can even
| do it without fighting holy wars in internet comments.
|
| There have got to be dozens of us around here who are
| competent technologists without the zealousness.
| porcc wrote:
| As a longtime macOS user and an ex-Linux user, I believe for
| many the idea goes the other way around. Why fight to keep your
| linux installation working? MacOS has worked nearly
| unconfigured for me for almost a decade now.
| OJFord wrote:
| That's fine _if_ you 're content with whatever changeable
| (just not by you) defaults.
|
| I use both, but mostly Linux, and macOS is way more of a
| 'battle' because something I have set to behave how I want it
| to will suddenly stop working, or have been barely possible
| (e.g. window managers) in the first place.
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