[HN Gopher] I switched from macOS to Linux after 15 years of Apple
___________________________________________________________________
I switched from macOS to Linux after 15 years of Apple
Author : miles
Score : 262 points
Date : 2021-08-26 20:40 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (markosaric.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (markosaric.com)
| Lafriakh wrote:
| I really love Linux an use it for a long time. But the quality of
| software in macOS is the big difference for me.
| alexfromapex wrote:
| Yeah Linux needs some UX love
| riazrizvi wrote:
| Does anyone know of a good resource to identify and explain
| unnecessary launchctl daemons, that I can then disable? My $4k
| Intel Macbook, new this year, can't even smoothly handle cursor
| movement in vim/neovim because of the bloatware and possibly T2
| chip interference, and it is driving me up the wall. Or if anyone
| has experience running the nearest thing to an open source
| version of MacOS, I'd love to get your pointers.
|
| If I can't solve this then I will switch to Ubuntu but as others
| have pointed out, I can see it will be a big time sink, that I'd
| like to avoid.
| djhworld wrote:
| I switched from apple to Linux fora brief 6 month period, but
| sheepishly came crawling back to OSX when I got my M1 MacBook
| Air.
|
| Using Linux was pretty awesome but there were a bunch of niggles
| that made it irritating, especially around battery life. No
| matter how many things I tried, power top and all the other
| battery tricks, it just wasn't that good.
|
| The other was getting hardware accelerated video to work in
| Firefox, although I think Firefox finally supports it nowadays
| with recent versions.
| blumomo wrote:
| My System76 Lemur Pro easily runs a complete business day on a
| single battery charge, on Pop_OS!. Thanks to its hardware,
| performance can be throttled (which I barely notice as it's
| quite performing with standard settings) so that a single
| charge can last easily 12 hours.
| buserror wrote:
| Errr, I switched from Apple (II, and mac) after 20+ years of
| being a professional developer to -- Linux/embedded. To be fair,
| I was also a UNIX developer all that time, starting with Minix
| all the way back then, to Pr1meOS, HP/UX, SunOS, Solaris and blah
| blah. The fact I had that UNIX background is what saved me. I was
| _really_ highly technical and very highly rated Mac dev until
| about 2006 when I realised this was a lost cause. I would not
| stand developing for the apple business these days -- these days,
| I can use my "embedded" skills on linux (or bare metal) and "be
| the tree that stands out from the forest" -- these days on Apple-
| land you are just chowder.
|
| Mind you, I might have audio working on my linux workstation, but
| I can't seem to get the mouse wheel doing the right thing. That's
| the price to pay, and I might grumble about it (a lot) but it's
| better than having half the available API your app used to use
| just diseapear into thin air.
| the_solenoid wrote:
| I manage hundreds of linux servers... from my windows desktop and
| mac laptop.
|
| This will be super unpopular, but Linux missed the desktop boat
| 20 years ago, and my feeling as someone who at the time built his
| gentoo OS's from source, it was the fault of a few things:
|
| 1) Fragmented gui development. There were too many projects with
| none focusing on really making a better gui than mac/windows.
|
| 2) A lack of bread and butter 1st class "business" apps - you
| know, office. OpenOffice is fine, IF you are ok with the janky ui
| and no one knowing how it works.
|
| 3) lack of open source exchange type mail/cal/etc server and
| outlook-like client). Holy fudge, I tried to get this going and
| people just crapped on me for suggesting it.
|
| 4) Until recently, installing on laptops was an absolute crap
| shoot.
|
| 5) Just, apps, in general. Gimp is fine, but it has never been
| close to photoshop. GUI standards are all over the place, etc.
| People go to a platform because it has the tools they want. The
| real fallout from point 1 is no one would ever port apps to linux
| (a little hyperbolic - a lot of high-end post production apps and
| audio apps all made it over). Open source yadda yadda, thats nice
| (this is not a brush off, it IS nice), but the ecosystem could be
| light years ahead of where we are now.
| yoyohello13 wrote:
| I've been using Linux desktop exclusively for about 5 years and
| I agree with everything you said.
|
| > Open source yadda yadda.
|
| This is it right here. I think this is the main differentiator.
| At the end of the day whether a person is happy on Linux
| depends on how much they care about software freedom. I'm
| willing to put up with the Linux jank because free software is
| really important to me and aligns with my values.
| kaladin-jasnah wrote:
| I feel like some Linux users (like me) stop noticing the jank
| over time since we slowly become very adept at coping with it
| (eg. finding good resources on how to solve the problem so we
| can find the fix pretty quickly, or just knowing the fix out
| of experience.
|
| In the end, it gets not so bad. But GUI front ends for
| package managers, like _[especially]_ GNOME Software are
| _horrendous_ from my experience. Which is not so great of a
| look; of all the things that should be user-friendly it
| should be package management (IMHO). Package manager failures
| (conflicts, whatever) are handled horribly by GUI front-ends
| and even then usually require some expertise to fix, which is
| a pain. At least Fedora Silverblue nails the updates so that
| stuff usually doesn 't break... but of all the things that
| were broken OOTB for me on my install... it was (duh!) GNOME
| Software.
| deckard1 wrote:
| I care about freedom more than most people using Linux these
| days.
|
| But from a historical perspective, desktop Linux was only
| made possible by Nvidia and their closed driver. That's a sad
| fact. I've been on Linux "desktop" since 1995 or so. There
| are only two businesses that really gave much of a crap about
| Linux (other than Red Hat) and those were: id Software and
| Nvidia. ATI had _total garbage_ for drivers for many many
| years. Practically up until AMD bought them. I built a HTPC
| back in 2005 around a passively-cooled ATI card trying to get
| it silent as possible. The idea was that I would use the
| Radeon driver on Linux and everything would just work. But it
| didn 't. And I was stuck using Windows.
|
| ATI shares part of the blame for why Linux never made it on
| the desktop. You can't have one of the two major video card
| vendors dropping the ball for so long and come out okay.
| silisili wrote:
| As someone using Linux on the desktop for a looong time, I
| don't have any real arguments against any of these except 1(I
| quite like Gnome).
|
| I think it just comes down to how you uses a computer. I mainly
| program, web browse, and listen to music. I don't game, watch
| movies, nor use or want to use 'business' apps. Abiword is
| about the most business app I use with any regularity. If I
| -have- to do something else, usually GDocs can handle it.
|
| Re: 5) It might depend on the person. I've only ever used Gimp,
| and while it has redone the UI multiple times, and some things
| remain nonintuitive, I find myself around it well enough. When
| PhotoPea launched with its PS style UI, I wanted to give it a
| try to see what I was missing. I find myself lost, probably how
| a PS user feels going into Gimp.
| peatmoss wrote:
| I can't agree with this in 2021, but not for the reasons one
| might think. I agree that native app development never became a
| cohesive or predictable thing. But then most apps that people
| use these days aren't native.
|
| Business apps: Google Docs & Microsoft Office both have web
| versions that are good enough for many people.
|
| Mail / calendar clients: I am a nerd who prefers to use emacs
| for email, but I'm the weirdo--just like anyone who uses a
| native Outlook client. I also use Fastmail's web interface, its
| iOS app, and the mail app on my iPhone. And even that is weird,
| because everyone just uses Gmail.
|
| Laptop support: Yes that used to be a problem for Linux for
| varying definitions of "recently." Used to be. My corp-issued
| laptop took to Linux just fine with nothing discernibly less
| functional than Windows.
|
| The apps that don't exist on the web are getting more and more
| niche.
| ubermonkey wrote:
| I do not interact with any professional contacts who use
| Gmail. It's universally Exchange in my professional life.
|
| This MIGHT be because the invite/accept/scheduling setup in
| Exchange is so good that it's hard to sell anything else. It
| also might be that most big orgs are very wisely reticent to
| host their email with an advertising company.
|
| I'm also gonna push back on the "web tools are enough for
| most people." I mean, how effective is the web version of
| Excel, really? Can it easily interact with local data stores
| for elaborate data mining and updatable queries? My guess is
| "probably not". How is it for macro development? My company
| works closely with the finance orgs of our client parties,
| and let me tell you a LOT of these folks are extremely
| advanced Excel users. Web tools aren't to par here.
|
| Web Outlook is also pretty awful compared to the native
| version, quite honestly, as is Word. Maybe PowerPoint is
| okay, but I'm not a power user of PPT so I don't really know.
| troutwine wrote:
| Huh, interesting. Since GSuite became a thing I've never
| seen Exchange in my professional life, so, generously,
| since 2007/8? I've only had one employer that used Exchange
| and they sold a setup for it, but even they were switching
| internally to use GSuite by the time I left, if I recall
| correctly. I recall the switch as being extremely abrupt in
| that era.
| bcrescimanno wrote:
| While this isn't a hard and fast rule, GSuite adoption
| outside of the "tech sector" is extremely low. We have to
| recognize our own biases and that the experiences of the
| average HN reader doesn't reflect the larger business
| world.
| ubermonkey wrote:
| Very much this.
|
| My professional life has been interacting with very large
| organizations (as clients, not employers) -- think
| Fortune 500 firms, if not bigger. Major oil companies (I
| live in Texas), major defense contractors, etc.
|
| These are not GSuite users, generally speaking. It's
| Office and Exchange in these places. Microsoft is VERY
| VERY STRONG at the Enterprise level.
| treeman79 wrote:
| If one user in an org does something stupid will Microsoft
| ban the entire org with no recourse? I doubt it.
|
| I setup several companies on google apps. Never had an
| issue. But I would be more reluctant to do so again.
| ubermonkey wrote:
| Given that MSFT still sells Exchange that you can host
| internally, they wouldn't even be ABLE to shut down the
| org.
| paganel wrote:
| For me as a programmer the biggest issue with Linux on desktop
| was the wifi thing, you were never sure if it would work out of
| the box or if you needed to copy some obscure .bin files found
| on the Internet so that it would work with your wifi adapter. I
| think I lost a day or two on this about 15 years ago when I
| last set up a Linux desktop machine for myself.
|
| The second thing (and which you mention) is the laptop install
| situation, I was never sure if running Linux on whatever laptop
| would work, and if yes if it would work 100%, meaning no
| wifi/sound/battery drain issues. That was one of the main
| reasons that has kept me away from Linux since then. Granted,
| if Apple goes on its current way of trying to restrict access
| to its machines I may make the switch back sometime in the near
| future.
| jacurtis wrote:
| I've had the experience you are talking about in the past,
| But this is mostly gone now. Most of the distros ship with
| wifi drivers so you can do an internet install.
|
| Most wifi cards on Laptops now are either Intel or Killer. So
| most distros will ship with these common ones. They also
| usually ship with universal drivers for things like trackpads
| and monitors so that at least everything "works" out of the
| box on a fresh install. However you still are best hunting
| down specific drivers for your equipment to get the best
| experience or performance.
|
| My personal experience is that if you use a Dell or Lenovo
| laptop, that you won't need to worry about compatibility.
| These two companies in particular seem to have the best linux
| support so their equipment generally just works. I have found
| HP to "mostly" work. Good luck with Asus or Gigabyte. I
| wouldn't even try a lesser brand than those.
|
| Battery life on Linux is a mixed bag. There are tools you can
| install that can give you incredible control over your
| battery and drag a battery's life out much longer than you
| would get from the same laptop on Windows. But you will need
| to constantly manage it and be aware of it. For example I
| need to go into the terminal and manually change a profile
| every time I connect and disconnect from the charger. As
| opposed to Mac and Windows that mostly manage themselves to
| get the best performance/battery life ratio. I found that if
| you don't do anything with Linux and just run it on battery
| that you will get substantially lower battery life than the
| same device would give you on Windows.
| soniman wrote:
| Linux via crouton doesn't have any wifi or battery issues
| because it's all handled by Chromebook. I don't know if the
| Gallium OS (Linux for Chromebooks) is the same.
| techrat wrote:
| Gonna be one of those to disagree to some extent.
|
| I flirted with Linux but never used it full time until about
| 2017 when the C710 Chromebook came out. What I really wanted
| was a basic laptop that was cheap enough to toss into a bag. So
| I nuked ChromeOS and started using ChrUbuntu.
|
| Windows 10 had been out for about 2 years by that point and it
| became an increasing source of frustration, but I also knew I
| couldn't stay on Windows 7 forever.
|
| What surprised me was that I came to prefer using my ChrUbuntu
| laptop despite having a much, much, MUCH more powerful desktop.
|
| Windows 10 broke me. Why? How?
|
| Inconsistency in the UI. Still finding old shit buried under
| several layers of new shit. It was still all shit in the end.
|
| Ads in the Start Menu.
|
| Haphazard driver support.
|
| Forced updates and starts. Kind of a problem when you're trying
| to do a 17 hour overnight render job, y'know...
|
| The problems I had in Windows just didn't seem to exist in
| Linux. The things people said "Oh, you have to go to the
| command line to fix everything" didn't seem to ring true at
| all. The memes, stereotypes, the disclaimers and talking
| points, all of it, were badly out of date. With Ubuntu, I could
| install from LiveUSB, entirely graphical, go through less steps
| during the installation process compared to Windows and still
| install software like Steam, vendor specific drivers and other
| stuff _without ever touching the command line._ AND Ubuntu
| doesn 't piss me off by forcing me to restart when I don't want
| to.
|
| After that, I continued to have BSOD's in Windows 10 with
| hardware that ran flawlessly under Ubuntu.
|
| Networking, filesystem management was slower in Windows 10. I
| didn't have any issue getting Samba working in Linux to use
| with the NAS drives during video editing and transfer.
|
| Google Drive was more than good enough when it came to office
| file compatibility. In the production house I worked out of, it
| came to be the _preferred_ method. Gone was the Office
| shackles... and rightly so, after decades of email attachments
| being the viral vector for Windows systems, it 's safer to just
| share a Drive link.
|
| It was also because of the overhead of management that the
| house ended up switching from Outlook/Exchange to GoogleApps
| completely.
|
| The more we did online, the less it mattered what type of
| system we were using.
|
| The last, and still current, issue we still had? Adobe. After
| Apple's Final Cut fiasco, Adobe's failure to provide themselves
| as an alternative on Linux based setups was a major
| disappointment.
|
| So, at this point... I have a separate airgapped Windows 7 box
| that runs my offline Adobe CS apps. They don't get updated and
| they don't need to be. (Why Win 7? Windows 10 BSODs on that
| box, too.)
|
| Recently did an upgrade on my main system as well. Had a Ryzen
| 7 2700X setup that ran great for 3 years. Decided to make that
| my Windows 10 sidebox for apps that still don't quite work
| under Wine (though Proton is really helping to reduce that
| number of apps) and... yep. Have gotten hard freezes and BSODs
| for the first time when all I did was format the SSD to put
| Windows 10 on it.
|
| Windows is decades of crap compressed into an OS. Despite
| having started with MSDos5.0 and Windows 3.0, using WinNT4
| through to Win7 as my primary and only OS... I find Windows
| cumbersome, clunky, kludgy and badly implemented compared to
| where Ubuntu is today.
|
| Year of the Linux desktop? Fuck off. People repeat that like
| it's some great joke, but the honest truth is... I use Linux
| now despite never having had a Linux background because it is
| less annoying to use than Windows.
| type0 wrote:
| > Gimp is fine, but it has never been close to photoshop.
|
| You can use photoshop cc on linux
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jl3Pa8udFQQ
| tkp wrote:
| Krita, while originally focused on painting, is also worth a
| try for image editing. It has effect layers missing in Gimp,
| and an easy to grasp GUI.
| istingray wrote:
| In terms of UI or actually under the hood?
|
| I've found PhotoGIMP makes GIMP UI more like Photoshop, which
| helps me a lot:
| https://github.com/Diolinux/PhotoGIMP/releases
|
| On a Mac I switched from Photoshop to Pixelmator no problem.
| Hoping PhotoGimp can help me do the same.
| cmeacham98 wrote:
| Photoshop CC runs in wine as of the last time I checked,
| although I think some tweaking was needed?
| bamboozled wrote:
| Here's the thing, what do you need a desktop to do? I use Gnome
| 3 on wayland, and I don't really pay attention to the
| "Desktop", I do 90% of my work in a web browser and a terminal.
|
| I use gimp and inkscape sometimes.
|
| Gnome 3 is perfect for 99% of what I need it to do.
|
| I still own an iPhone, it compliments my Linux laptop well
| where I do my serious work, the phone is a toy.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| > _This will be super unpopular, but Linux missed the desktop
| boat 20 years ago_
|
| Desktop Linux in 2021 is nothing like it was 20 years ago.
| Plasma Desktop is a great experience these days, and in my
| opinion, surpasses both the Windows and macOS desktop shell
| experiences while implementing features from both systems.
| hn-is-life wrote:
| Sorry but you can also manage these 150 servers from a linux
| desktop since you are probably using putty ...
| Tenoke wrote:
| GUI issues are probably the worst but there's also just more
| that you have to tinker with to fix/adjust on Linux, even on
| Ubuntu which is likely the most user-friendly distro.
|
| Good luck getting multiple different sized monitors to work
| well out of the box (e.g. laptop + external) on Linux,
| sometimes even with tinkering you are left with subpar scaling
| on one. Mac on the other hand just handles whatever combo of
| monitors and resolutions you throw at it with nothing that you
| have to do on your side and has done so for a decade now.
|
| Things are much more likely to eventually break if you use an
| installation too long - I rarely have issues with 5+ year old
| Windows but most distros don't even support that, and even if
| they do good luck getting through all the upgrades without
| having to tinker. Hell, I have to manually mess with PPAs at
| least once a year just to apply updates.
|
| There's also just too much choice with so many of the options
| having drawbacks that are hard to distinguish between,
| especially for non-power users.
|
| There's a ton of other stuff like that that we Linux users are
| used to so it's not too bad for us but that cause so many
| people who get a linux machine from a friend to eventually just
| pay for a Windows install on it since they can't deal with it..
| caslon wrote:
| > Good luck getting multiple different sized monitors to work
| well out of the box (e.g. laptop + external) on Linux,
|
| Just Works(tm) actually. Using a laptop/external simultaneous
| combo at different resolutions right now, and it's literally
| perfect. It even gets the scaling right. Not a second of
| configuration.
| Tenoke wrote:
| Lucky. I'm currently on a 20.04 install with a 1080p laptop
| + 4k, and the scaling options are 100% or 200% for a
| monitor with fractional scaling I can apply with tinkering
| that applies to both at the same time. I just sort of have
| it in a non-optimal for either monitor state but I'm sure
| there's some way which I didnt find when I first installed
| it to make it okay. On a different machine and combination
| of monitors I've gotten it to work but with a lot of xrandr
| tinkering instead. I'm hopeful that your comment might
| suggest that next time I upgrade it'll work out of the box.
| caslon wrote:
| It's not _lucky,_ it 's just that I know better than to
| install Ubuntu. Ubuntu's been a bad choice from the
| beginning and intentionally goes against the defaults of
| upstream providers.
| Tenoke wrote:
| Ok, that's fair. Maybe I'll finally decide that Ubuntu
| has more drawbacks than advantages for me (and it does
| have both) and finally switch to Debian directly.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| Ubuntu's upstream and release schedule ensures that its
| packages are relatively out of date. It might be worth
| trying 21.04 for real fractional scaling with Wayland or
| a different distro with recent packages and Wayland.
| Tenoke wrote:
| You're almost certainly right, as far as I can tell it
| should be fine with Wayland and 21.04 but I am just tired
| of reinstalling my OS every 6 months and don't trust
| direct upgrades much since they lose me even more time
| diagnosing an issue in the cases where they do break
| something.
| jhanschoo wrote:
| This is more than basic functionality, but I'm experiencing
| limitations with multiple monitors that I don't get in
| Windows. The bundled remote Screen Sharing in GNOME does
| not work in that setup. VSync (on NVidia, possibly not a
| driver issue) doesn't work well, resulting in tearing in
| one consistent.
| christophilus wrote:
| Vanilla Fedora user here, after years of Mac and Windows. It
| works really well these days. Multiple monitors, including a
| 5k monitor. And personally, I find Gnome to be almost as good
| as the mainstream desktops and even better in some ways.
| YMMV.
| 0x0nyandesu wrote:
| It's way better these days. I'm on Gentoo now and game on it
| rrss wrote:
| 6) Linux falls over under memory pressure
| Tenoke wrote:
| I've stopped having as much issues with this when I stopped
| using swap which must be one of the biggest traps for desktop
| in common linux guides. In my desktop I'd much rather
| something crash than my system to grind to a halt.
| kyuudou wrote:
| I want to identify the memory hog(s) first so I can
| determine the next course of action.
|
| Suddenly seeing a black screen with an Apple while I'm in
| the middle of something important is irritating at best,
| especially when it happens repeatedly and I haven't pinned
| down the RC.
| est31 wrote:
| Actually for me it's the opposite. The linux system grinds
| to a halt when I _don 't_ use swap. See also:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20620545
|
| https://lkml.org/lkml/2019/8/4/15
| Tenoke wrote:
| Maybe because nvme is more common now? Last time I had
| swap was a few years ago now and every time I'd enter it,
| it'd be so slow as to be hard to even fix it. Since I've
| had no swap I've had a couple of times when docker or
| whatever just crashes instead and that's it but possibly
| with my current nvme swap wouldn't be too awful if it
| gets used.
| est31 wrote:
| Yeah it can be due to nvme, because then it's at least
| _somewhat_ responsive. Ran into an OOM situation with a
| newer computer of mine that has an NVME and I could close
| the offending electron application easily.
| phendrenad2 wrote:
| This is true, and I don't understand why Linux doesn't have
| a smarter approach here. When a process suddenly starts
| using a lot of memory, and memory usage is approaching the
| limits of physical RAM, that process should be killed,
| rather than swapping out things like Gnome to make room for
| it.
|
| Of course, that assumes a desktop environment. On a server,
| if a process starts using up a lot of memory, it's probably
| vitally important to keeping the (database|webserver) up,
| and should not be constrained in any way.
|
| Which probably explains the situation that we're in.
| caoilte wrote:
| The opposite. My issues stopped when I created insane
| amounts of swap so it never ran out again.
| sjcoles wrote:
| I manage hundreds of Linux desktops (VDI, laptops, desktops)
| and about 75 Windows 10 laptops.
|
| I see at least 25 Windows tickets for every Linux desktop
| ticket.
|
| Sure I am paid more than an equivalent Windows admin but the
| ongoing cost of support is far less. Stuff just doesn't
| randomly stop working like in Windows. It's really nice.
| simonh wrote:
| The Linux desktop never made it because it's a terrible
| platform for distributing commercial applications.
|
| The brutal fact is commercial software is essential to the
| success of any desktop or mobile platform. That's because it
| brings massive investment. The total ongoing investment in
| commercial applications dwarfs that of open source desktop
| applications, in developer-hours terms, probably thousands, or
| tens of thousands to one. Getting to that scale means paying
| people money, and not just developers. Artists, designers, QA
| and domain experts in the specialist fields niche apps serve.
| There's just no way open source apps can possibly compete.
|
| By failing to provide compelling support for commercial
| application development and distribution, the Linux desktop has
| starved itself of the breadth and depth of apps needed to
| succeed. When you're competing with the Mac, Windows, iOS or
| Android you're not just competing with Apple, Microsoft or
| Google. You're competing with the hundreds of billions of
| dollars in app and service ecosystems that have been built
| around those platforms.
| jacquesm wrote:
| I actually love this aspect of Linux, and if it ever does
| become successful it will kill it for me. Because every
| medium that gains a certain level of popularity will bring
| along a whole raft of commercial parasites that will spoil
| the original experience. It happened to the web, it happened
| to smart phones and it certainly would happen to Linux if it
| ever did gain substantial traction on the desktop.
| kzrdude wrote:
| Has this happened to macos? I don't get that impression. It
| has other problems, but not that.
| [deleted]
| dwrodri wrote:
| Spitballing a wild hypothetical that is probably wrong, but was
| inspired by what you said so I thought I'd share:
|
| I wonder if the arrival of the 3D revolution was just a little
| too early for computer nerds to embrace an open source
| ecosystem from the get-go and how different it would've been if
| "If you want to run DOOM/Quake/Unreal Tournament then install
| OpenSUSE/Slackware so you don't have to bother Fiddling with
| drivers on DOS" would've been more commonplace.
|
| From the 80s to the 2000s, video games became a multi-billion
| dollar industry that inspired two half-generations of kids to
| pursue careers in technology, but the world of FOSS was so
| focused on different use cases that the middle ground of
| "computer curious" kids probably wasn't as big of a revolution
| as it could've been.
|
| Hopefully, the work Valve is putting into Proton/WINE + Steam
| Deck will give us a piece of that alternate history.
| LAC-Tech wrote:
| I will try some linux apologetics
|
| 1. What is great about the windows GUI? Virtual desktops depend
| on monitors, annoying popup notifications that cannot be
| disabled and its resource intensive. IMHO linux has always been
| light years ahead of windows for as long as I remember, theres
| dozens of window managers better than the windows one. I am
| never 100% comfortable in windows, it's so locked down I feel
| like I am living in a hotel.
|
| 2. I do everything with the google docs these days, even on
| windows. So do a lot of businesses.
|
| 3. Again, most people seem to be using google calendar.
|
| 4. I actually found it easier to install on laptops back in the
| day. UEFI made it more painful.
|
| 5. A lot of unix tools are 2nd class citizens on windows. You
| can use WSL but file access is dog slow compared to the real
| thing.
| blix wrote:
| > Virtual desktops depend on monitors
|
| Why is this a negative? This is actually one of the largest
| pain points for me in switching from Windows/Mac to Linux.
| ubermonkey wrote:
| >I do everything with the google docs these days, even on
| windows. So do a lot of businesses.
|
| _Some_ might, but goodness knows I 've never run into one.
| The corporate America I have interacted with so far (30 year
| career, so not trivial) is Office all the way down, and
| deeply enmeshed with Exchange calendaring. (I mean, as an
| MSFT-hater from the 90s, it pains me to admit this, but
| Exchange calendaring is materially better than anything else.
| Sometimes, Redmond does things well.)
| clhodapp wrote:
| I am pretty sure that we're all myopic and tend to project
| what goes on inside of our little echo chambers across the
| entire space.
|
| Heck, I regularly manage to run into people that have
| managed to convince themselves that nobody _actually_ runs
| Linux servers or that Java is the only programming language
| that has any traction...
|
| The truth is that real-world tech adoption is actually
| extremely heterogeneous and we would all do well to remind
| ourselves of that from time to time.
| addicted wrote:
| I'll never understand how people can be close to effective
| with Google Docs.
|
| It's fine as a replacement for Word (I guess? I'm not much
| of a Word user). But Excel is so far ahead. And the
| ergonomics of working in a real application vs a web app is
| a significant difference.
| skrtskrt wrote:
| I have never worked for a company that _doesn 't_ use
| GSuite since a college internship at a 100+ years old
| insurance company.
| toolz wrote:
| I've been writing software professionally for a decade -
| I wanna know where all these people using ms office are
| hiding - I've certainly never seen them.
|
| Googles suite of tools have been first class citizens at
| almost every company I've been at.
| codazoda wrote:
| There are over _2 billion_ G Suite users.
|
| https://www.businessinsider.com/google-g-suite-
| gmail-2-billi...
| blackoil wrote:
| They probably count all Android users who create gmail
| account with phone as GSuite users. Corporate users
| should be couple of order of magnitude lower.
| clhodapp wrote:
| GSuite is (or rather was, until they renamed it)
| specifically the corporate version.
| easton wrote:
| I'd be surprised if there's even 200 million GSuite (not
| free gmail account, since that's not for commercial use)
| accounts active. They have like no market share in
| enterprise outside of schools. (I've never met anyone who
| wasn't at a school that used GSuite. Which shows the
| circles I'm in, of course, but I think there's a weird HN
| bias where people think that companies outside of smaller
| shops are using GSuite. Exchange is still good and
| cheaper than ever.)
| amyjess wrote:
| The last three companies I've worked at have all been
| GSuite shops.
| smorgusofborg wrote:
| Google sheets with JavaScript seems to be far more useful
| doing business automation tasks in small companies.
|
| In my world, Office is only used when you are consulting to
| companies where most data is for monthly meetings made of
| people that don't really care.
| nixpulvis wrote:
| UEFI really is an issue.
| dboreham wrote:
| Use WSL2 for non-dog-slow filesystem.
| andrewmackrodt wrote:
| This is true if you put your code in the Hyper-V managed
| WSL2 VM but now you have the reverse problem of WSL1, i.e.
| access via Windows P9 is slow and things like symlinks do
| not resolve whatsoever (on the Windows side).
|
| In WSL1, access to files on the Windows host is far quicker
| than WSL2 and symlinks work everywhere.
|
| To try to counteract this, I opted in to the insiders dev
| channel recently to try the upcoming X11 support, i.e. run
| IDEA inside WSL. While the performance is quite good, it's
| broken, e.g. try using find in project, the window
| disappears immediately 9 times out of 10.
|
| In many ways, I found WSL1 more useable as I could use one
| shell for both the Windows and WSL filesystems with
| reasonable performance. I now use cygwin if I want to use
| gnu linux type tools on Windows.
|
| Once the X11 support matures it will be a pretty good
| experience overall if people are willing to install things
| like IDEA in WSL, I'm looking forward to that.
| Tenoke wrote:
| >In WSL1, access to files on the Windows host is far
| quicker than WSL2 and symlinks work everywhere.
|
| I find this pretty annoying, as I need to access Windows
| files from WSL more often than the opposite (e.g. get
| stuff from my Windows Downloads folder, or use bash to
| quickly interact with a Windows folder). Do you know if
| access to Docker volumes is faster or slower on WSL2 by
| the way? I wouldn't switch back to WSL1 since some
| nix/cabal stuff didn't work on WSL1 at all but I am
| curious as that's the other point where my windows/wsl
| filesystems touch in ways I've never looked into.
| SXX wrote:
| Can you now use WSL2 together with other hypervisors like
| VirtualBox or VMWare? A while back WSL2 required use of
| HyperV and that removes possibility to run other VM
| software.
|
| Big no go for anyone who also want to test software in
| other VMs
| LAC-Tech wrote:
| I've got a hazy memory of trying this but had to back out
| because something broke. There was some big limitation of
| WSL2 I cant remember.
| Tenoke wrote:
| I'd bet it was network access. It's a bizarre and common
| problem (I see more people commenting on the issues all
| the time) which you can kind of fix by forcing 8.8.8.8 or
| a different nameserver into /etc/resolv.conf but it's
| unclear to me why this doesn't work out of the box.
| phendrenad2 wrote:
| > You can use WSL but file access is dog slow
|
| You can also use WSL2, which has fast file I/O. Unless you're
| trying to write to files in /mnt/c, at which point the
| comparison makes less sense, and a more accurate comparison
| would be trying to write to files on a remote Windows machine
| from Linux (also slow).
|
| > compared to the real thing
|
| Um, it is the "real thing". It's running in a hypervisor, on
| the real CPU core.
| hindsightbias wrote:
| > super unpopular
|
| Only if you're not in 99.9% of the computer user base.
| polote wrote:
| I've been using the same arch + i3 setup for at least 5 years,
| never had to change my habits due to an update (except
| thunderbird which is becoming worse and worse). I've lost a lot
| a lot of time setting up hibernation and sleep and solving
| broken depencies, but I have never been limited by gui tools,
| quite the opposite actually, it is easier to use Pacman than
| what you need to do on windows or mac.
|
| I honestly don't see what I would gain using Mac or windows ,
| except that hibernation works from the start
| [deleted]
| dukeofdoom wrote:
| So which is the top distribution now for desktop. Last time I
| tried was Slackware.
| jdoss wrote:
| Give Fedora Linux a try. It has been my daily workstation
| professionally and personally since 2007ish. Fedora 34 is
| pretty fantastic for hitting the ground running after you
| install.
| blacksmith_tb wrote:
| 'Top' could mean 'most popular' or 'I think this one is best'.
| I tend to just use stock Ubuntu (which with Fedora vies for the
| first of those senses), though some distros that are based on
| it like POP!_OS and Elementary are kind of appealing.
| peterburkimsher wrote:
| I want to switch to Linux, and made an external USB SSD with
| about 20 different distros on their own partitions. The
| installation for some was much easier than others!
|
| But this week, I was reminded why I still use Mac OS 10.13. On my
| Mac, I tried to install ffmpeg with rubberband support. When
| trying to compile it, brew gave cryptic error messages and
| eventually failed. For something else, I tried installing qemu,
| also using brew. There were a load of errors telling me I'm using
| an outdated OS and should feel bad about it, and again, it failed
| after 156 minutes with some libiconv error that I don't even
| totally understand, never mind know how to resolve. Something to
| do with having imagemagick already installed. I tried downloading
| an image from docker, and the docker-machine wasn't running, and
| even when I started it, the pull command from dockerhub still
| failed.
|
| On a Mac, these kinds of errors are unusual. On Linux, build
| errors like that are normal.
|
| I want to be able to install software in less than half an hour.
| Whether it's brew, apt-get, yum, pip, npm, or whatever other
| package manager you wish for - recompiling all my software is
| extremely slow, and by the time it's finished I've already moved
| on to something else.
|
| For as long as software continues to be distributed as binaries
| for Mac, in a dmg or pkg, I'll continue using my Mac. I do still
| have to recompile sometimes, but it's something I dread, because
| of the huge amount of time it takes. Requiring this for every
| software package on Linux is what's pushing me away from the
| platform.
| throitallaway wrote:
| IMO the power of Linux distros is the package manager. The ~2.5
| hour journey that you described on macOS should take less than
| a minute on most Linux distros. During my (somewhat brief) time
| with macOS, brew was a primary source of frustration.
|
| You say that recompiling software is slow and errors during
| compilation are normal on Linux. I don't find myself compiling
| software very often. Most things are grabbed as binaries by the
| package manager. For everything else there's the AUR (which I
| rarely experience issues with.)
| bobbylarrybobby wrote:
| Well brew is absolute crap, and most Linux package managers are
| better. I'd suggest using nix for macOS in single-user
| imperative mode. It functions pretty much like brew except it
| never pukes all over itself.
| smoldesu wrote:
| Why would you use brew instead of your system's integrated
| package manager?
| sarpeedo wrote:
| I wouldn't necessarily generalize issues using brew on a mac to
| issues all package managers on linux. Some of those errors
| might be attributable to OSX locking down application
| installation. You can install binaries on linux just like with
| any other OS most people just prefer to use package managers.
| m0zg wrote:
| Feels like we have no choice but to switch to Linux for serious
| work nowadays.
|
| Next gen Apple laptops will be selling you out to your respective
| governments for storing unapproved memes and saying unapproved
| things. They'll also be locked down progressively tighter, so
| Apple is able to extract more rent out of you even though you
| think you "own" the hardware. A decade ago I've resolved to not
| do any serious, long term work using tooling and operating
| systems that aren't Free. I've yet to regret this decision. It
| only makes sense that we don't allow trillion dollar corporations
| to deny us access to our own work 10-20-30 years from now. It
| also makes a ton of sense to store long term work in formats for
| which you could _debug the code_ if it rots over time.
|
| I'm not a fundamentalist, though, so I use Windows for hobbies
| (audio recording, photography), but even then I watch out that
| the actual underlying work is stored in formats that I could in a
| pinch read with libre tooling on a libre OS of my choice.
| shmerl wrote:
| Congrats! Linux on the desktop is very good.
| chovybizzass wrote:
| Manjaro/KDE ftw -- beats sMacOS hands down
| jijji wrote:
| i switched to linux in 1992 and never looked back
| sarasasa28 wrote:
| ok nice blog
| BrissyCoder wrote:
| Not going to put much heed in the opinion of someone who used
| Apple operating systems for 15 years.
| justwalt wrote:
| Good thinking, someone like that is permanently tainted.
| andrewstuart wrote:
| Every time I use desktop Linux (I've only tried Ubuntu), it's an
| exercise in frustration simply because cut and paste is such an
| incredible pain.
|
| I use cut and paste every few minutes.
|
| The keys are not compatible with MacOS - why not? Surely this is
| an obvious need. I seem to recall the cut and paste keys aren't
| even compatible with Windows. The cut and paste doesn't even seem
| to work consistently across applications.
|
| Instead of just using the GUI, I have to constantly break my
| workflow to think about what keys I'm pressing - that's not a
| great way to enable switching to Linux from another OS.
|
| If cut and paste is painful then we're a long way from desktop
| Linux being viable for me personally. It seems such an easy thing
| to get right, but that's the essence of desktop Linux - 20 years
| down the track and the first thing you do cuts your finger.
|
| I'd be pleased to hear if some other distro has nailed this or if
| it's a universal issue.
| kraftman wrote:
| Could you describe the issue more? I've been using ubuntu for
| years and I've had plenty of issues, but cut and paste isn't
| one of them. It behaves exactly the same as windows for me.
| [deleted]
| xur17 wrote:
| > The keys are not compatible with MacOS - why not? Surely this
| is an obvious need. I seem to recall the cut and paste keys
| aren't even compatible with Windows. The cut and paste doesn't
| even seem to work consistently across applications.
|
| Do you mean that they're not compatible with a macbook
| keyboard? control-c / x / v work fine on all of my Ubuntu
| computers, but I might be misunderstanding what issue you are
| running into.
| DarmokJalad1701 wrote:
| Now try doing that in the terminal.
| jcelerier wrote:
| but that's the readline shortcuts which are the same no
| matter which Unix terminal you are using, on macOS, Linux,
| cygwin, git bash, WSL...
|
| https://github.com/chzyer/readline/blob/master/doc/shortcut
| ....
|
| I don't know if I'm an oddball but I'm switching all day
| long between Mac, Windows and Linux machines and I'd die if
| I had to use a different set of terminal shortcuts every
| time.
| leafmeal wrote:
| The terminal in JetBrains apps is smart enough to know
| when ctrl-c means copy and when it means abort. It's
| definitely a solvable problem.
| yoyohello13 wrote:
| ctrl+shift+c / x / v
| xur17 wrote:
| Bingo. This is the trick GP is likely looking for.
| bastardoperator wrote:
| MacOS uses cmd + c/v/x versus ctrl.
| handrous wrote:
| One thing I like about the Mac style for those is that
| there's less wrist movement (nice if you've got some RSI
| pain you'd rather not aggravate), and I can hit them while
| leaving 3 of 4 home-row fingers in place.
| 3r8Oltr0ziouVDM wrote:
| I've never worked on a Mac, but I have Ctrl and Alt
| swapped and I agree that it's much more comfortable.
| Steltek wrote:
| I'm not sure non-Mac systems preclude this. In fact, I
| never had RSI or wrist pain issues until my boss
| pressured me into using a MacBook. I now use a standard
| (= Windows) keyboard and remapped several keys.
|
| On the topic of keys, Mac users often fail to mention the
| reverse situation. Coming to a Mac from other
| environments, the keymaps are not intuitive to me and
| often leads to frustration, especially if you're
| frequently switching between work (Mac) and personal
| (Linux) machines.
| teekert wrote:
| I don't understand this comment, you can select and then middle
| click to paste or you can ctrl-c ctrl-v... what does not work
| for you? This does not sound familiar to me (a decades long
| Linux user).
| handrous wrote:
| Two possible issues the poster may be encountering:
|
| 1) Copy-paste shortcuts are different in terminals, on Linux,
| than they are everywhere else. They are the same, on macOS.
|
| 2) Much like drag-n-drop, reasonable support for copy-paste
| of things that _aren 't plain text_ is less common on Linux
| than on macOS, and attempting it is more likely to either not
| work or have unexpected effects.
| [deleted]
| willismichael wrote:
| Elementary OS is the only distro I'm aware of in which the
| default terminal uses C-x C-c C-v for cut, copy, and paste.
| gravypod wrote:
| What about cut and paste is painful? Is it the keys it's bound
| to? Cut and paste for me is cntrl+x and v. If you want to
| change the location of this button you can configure that in
| Ubuntu.
| nomdep wrote:
| But in the terminal they are mapped to Ctrl+Shift+c and
| Ctrl+Shift+v so the muscle memory breaks and is super
| annoying
| nathias wrote:
| the point of linux is making it your own, take the time to
| customize it ...
| madars wrote:
| You might be getting bitten by Linux having two clipboards
| https://codeyarns.com/tech/2017-01-18-the-two-clipboards-in-...
| . If you use a clipboard manager (e.g. gpaste or parcellite)
| they can be configured to synchronize the two. Windows uses
| Control-C for copying and that will for sure not be compatible
| with, say, terminal emulators (hence Shift-Control-C is very
| common). No idea about the waffle key.
| hk1337 wrote:
| Fedora 35+ is the closest I have come to really enjoying Linux.
| Fedora always seems a lot more polished and less edgy. I cannot
| really get into any of the other distros for the UI. I like
| using Debian for all command line.
| yoyohello13 wrote:
| Same. I've tried many, many distributions. Fedora definitely
| feels the most polished. Ironically, I find Ubuntu to be one
| of the worst, and it seems to be the default most people try.
|
| (P.S. Fedora 34 is the most current released version)
| 3r8Oltr0ziouVDM wrote:
| I've tried Fedora recently. The package manager didn't pass
| my stress test:
|
| 1. Did a minimal installation without a GUI. 2. Installed
| Gnome. 3. Installed KDE. 4. Uninstalled Gnome and KDE. The
| system ended up in a broken state: many important packages
| were deleted, I couldn't connect to the network, and the
| package manager stopped working.
| mickotron wrote:
| I tried the same in OpenSUSE, I was horrified.
| MarcScott wrote:
| One of the things I actually liked about macOS was the ability
| to use ctrl+k and ctrl+y in almost every application (looking
| at you Microsoft), as that was what my muscle memory had me
| doing from using a terminal and emacs on Linux anyway.
| jp_sc wrote:
| I complained about that for years until one day I founded you
| can actually remap Ctrl+C in your terminal, and the usual kill
| signal will still work when nothing is selected.
|
| https://jpscaletti.com/p/5/til-remap-copy
| [deleted]
| c-smile wrote:
| From native developer perspective...
|
| Just tried to compile my Sciter project, full rebuild scapp
| executable in particular - standalone Sciter binary
| (HTML/CSS/JS).
|
| * Windows / Visual Studio / VC++ - 58 seconds. Self assembled
| machine, i7 / 4 cores * Linux / Code::Blocks / GCC - 3 minutes 24
| seconds. MacMini 2018, i7 / 6 cores * MacOS / XCode / LLVM - 4
| minutes 20 seconds. MacMini 2020, M1
|
| So no surprise that I am using Windows as my primary dev
| platform.
|
| As always, YMMV, depends on what you are using your machine for.
| pier25 wrote:
| I've been considering doing this too for my dev machine.
| Thankfully I'm not trapped into the Apple ecosystem as I don't
| use any of their services (iCloud, Messages, FaceTime, etc).
|
| On my work machine, 99% of the time I just use VSCode, terminal,
| Git, Docker, and a browser... I reckon all those will actually
| run better on Linux than macOS.
| phendrenad2 wrote:
| MacOS is basically Unix, so I don't think it'll run better due
| to the OS. The real reason to switch to Linux is you can get
| much more powerful hardware than Apple sells (or sells for a
| reasonable price).
| mishafb wrote:
| Docker on Mac is actually running in a VM, since containers
| are a linux feature, not unix. You can't develop for linux
| servers like you can on a linux machine.
| Klonoar wrote:
| ...for a desktop, sure. For laptops, there is currently no
| real comparison on power and price.
|
| I very much hope the rest of the industry can respond to the
| M1.
| pier25 wrote:
| Yeah totally. I only use desktops now but if I _had to_ buy
| a laptop I think I 'd go for an M1 MBA or MBP.
| pier25 wrote:
| Docker runs ways faster on Linux.
|
| Also, I own a cheap Chromebook and in general Chrome seems to
| runs much smoother than on my expensive iMac.
| CalChris wrote:
| This was published on March 21, 2020 which is well before the
| introduction of the M1 MacBook Air and MacBook Pro on November
| 17, 2020.
| manachar wrote:
| Additionally the M1 Mac Mini is a remarkably nice little
| machine. Not perfect, but fits the"I just need a basic desktop
| machine" niche very nicely.
| madars wrote:
| And, notably, before Apple's announcement that they will
| incorporate some of their child safety features in macOS
| Monterey. No NeuralHash/CSAM scanning just yet though
| https://www.apple.com/child-safety/
| herpderperator wrote:
| I think this is important. I switched to macOS and stopped
| using my desktop completely because the M1 chip in my MacBook
| Air is so powerful it beats it by a long shot. It runs
| literally everything I do so smoothly and without emitting a
| single sound since there's no fan (and no coil whine under load
| for those who know what that is on the Intel MacBooks.)
| Unbelievably, it just doesn't get hot. I'm averaging temps
| under 30C without a monitor and under 35C with a 4k external
| monitor attached. Only brief bursts above that when compiling
| or doing something more intensive, but you don't even feel it.
| I do everything on this laptop. All my professional work,
| simultaneous Chrome profiles, dozens and dozens of tabs, video
| calls through Meet/Zoom, programming, VSCode, Photoshop,
| watching 4k videos, terminal, everything. It doesn't even
| stutter, and has NO FAN.
| kazinator wrote:
| I was quite impressed when I ssh-ed into the M1 machine
| offered by the GCC Compile Farm, and found that it recompiles
| the TXR Lisp standard library in under 3 seconds.
| inter_netuser wrote:
| does M1 run linux just a well?
| edgyquant wrote:
| I don't think the Linux port to M1 is complete yet
| smoldesu wrote:
| No, and it probably won't unless Apple releases GPU
| documentation or a kernel blob (neither of which are very
| likely)
| arelyx wrote:
| As far as I know there has been progress made to add native
| linux support for the M1 (the work done by the people at
| Asahi Linux comes to mind) but there's still a long way to
| go. However virtualization isn't too bad, I've been using
| UTM and their prebuilt images and that's worked for most of
| my needs so far.
| linguae wrote:
| It's still under heavy development (see
| https://asahilinux.org for more details). Developer Alyssa
| Rosenzweig has been doing great work on getting Linux
| graphics to work on the M1; just a few days ago she
| announced that she got GNOME to work on the M1, though
| without graphics acceleration
| (https://twitter.com/alyssarzg/status/1429579145827127296).
| It's still going to be a while until Linux on the M1
| reaches daily-driver status.
| hughrr wrote:
| I just ssh into my desktop if I need more grunt. That's a lot
| faster than an M1.
| herpderperator wrote:
| Sure, a many-many-core desktop will be able to beat the M1
| when the workload extensively uses parallel processing. But
| there likely isn't any faster single-thread CPU in the
| world at the moment[0], barring any overclocking. If there
| is (maybe through other benchmarks), then the difference
| will be minor and the competing CPU would be extremely
| power hungry in comparison.
|
| Remember the M1 is a 10W chip.
|
| [0] https://www.cpubenchmark.net/singleThread.html
| hughrr wrote:
| You're probably right for synthetic benchmarks.
|
| But none of my workloads work on macOS. So the point is
| moot.
|
| I did have an M1 MBA and mini until recently for
| reference.
| tick_tock_tick wrote:
| 16GB max ram is a non starter for any real work.
| vayeate wrote:
| I've been really happy with my M1 and it's my first Macbook
| ever, I've been a diehard Windows guy my entire life. So, so,
| so tired of loud and failing fans on my Windows machines,
| terrible trackpads, terrible displays, constant hardware
| issues, Windows update forcing shutdowns in the middle of
| meetings, malware-level upgrade prompts, etc etc.
| fhood wrote:
| I don't actually think macOS is any less buggy than
| windows, as someone who uses both constantly. And wsl2 is
| decent if shockingly hard to set up properly. But damn,
| having my macbook not relocate all my windows when
| disconnecting from a monitor is such a godsend.
| vayeate wrote:
| I'm not sure I've encountered a single bug in the half
| year or more I've had this. I don't ask a lot of it, to
| be fair. I guess Firefox as my main browser really drains
| the hell out of the battery, which is annoying. Not
| really a bug.
| fhood wrote:
| That is amazing. My work machine is on Big Sur and the
| minor glitches are pretty constant. Having bluetooth
| connected can cause weird issues, the dock and top bar
| frequently forget where they are supposed to be, and
| quite a few other similarly minor issues.
| drusepth wrote:
| Yeah, in my experience macOS work really well if you just
| stick to the same few applications over time. I guess my
| problem is that I'm always installing new stuff,
| tinkering with settings, and tweaking things everywhere I
| go. I don't think I've ever gone more than a year or two
| without having to completely wipe my mac and start over
| from scratch because of bugs.
| Klonoar wrote:
| I probably tweak more settings than most on macOS and
| I've not encountered any of the common bugs people
| experience.
|
| Reviews on tech boards about macOS are similar to reviews
| for apartment buildings: why would anybody bother writing
| a good one? Complaints and issues bubble to the top.
| drusepth wrote:
| One other big problem I've had with bugs and issues in
| macOS is that every time I look online for solutions, I
| consistently find people entirely dismissing those
| problems as rare or "you're using it wrong" instead of
| acknowledging that problems exist and/or offering
| potential solutions.
|
| It's extremely frustrating when you're just trying to
| work and your OS gets in the way _and_ everyone online
| just says, "Well, it works for me!"
| fhood wrote:
| Amusingly, trying to debug issues with Windows is equally
| frustrating, but for different reasons.
| Klonoar wrote:
| _shrug_
|
| Post your issues/an example then. I'm legitimately
| curious.
| a-dub wrote:
| > But damn, having my macbook not relocate all my windows
| when disconnecting from a monitor is such a godsend.
|
| and it puts them all back where they were when you plug
| it back in. it's so nice!
| hughrr wrote:
| It was a love hate relationship with me. I had an intel
| MacBook Pro and hated it for a couple of years. So went and
| got a Ryzen based T495 thinkpad. This was pretty good but I
| got seduced by the M1 so jumped in.
|
| I had three major issues with the M1. Firstly not enough
| RAM and it's crazy expensive. Secondly I couldn't run local
| x86-64 VMs which are if you like it or not the defacto
| cloud standard. Thirdly a lot of third party stuff just
| doesn't work at all. The last point was the killer. I had a
| massive problem trying to get something Qt based working
| properly and eventually gave up. Oh and the thing feels
| physically horrible - give me a plastic laptop with rounded
| edges any day.
|
| Then the whole CSAM thing.
|
| So fuck Apple. Out came the T495 again and it's sitting
| here with 24Gb of RAM and a 1TiB SSD that I put in myself
| and didn't have to pay in organs.
|
| In fact as a pricing point the T495 cost me PS550 new old
| stock with 20 months of next business day premier warranty
| left. +16Gb of RAM was PS77. +1TiB PS109.
| grafelic wrote:
| I think you would need to be a tinkerer to enjoy the Linux
| experience fully. I've running Linux on desktop (and servers) for
| 15 years at least and there has always been tinkering, although
| much less the last 5 years or so.
| argvargc wrote:
| Genuine question:
|
| By "tinkering" do you mean every once in a while something
| really important completely stops working and you have to pull
| your hair out in the middle of some important work in order to
| get that thing fixed so you can use your computer properly
| again, which usually involves a series of incomprehensible
| steps you found on the 17th page of a phpBB forum thread?
|
| Or...?
|
| Because, that being one primary reason many people choose macOS
| over Windows, it would really suck.
|
| Asking because the article was interesting, Gnome looked great,
| and it'd be genuinely fantastic if this assumption on my part
| was wrong.
| oarsinsync wrote:
| As someone who's been locked into the Apple ecosystem since 2010,
| I was extremely hopeful that this article would help me.
|
| Unfortunately, the writer does not use iOS devices, iCloud,
| FaceTime, unlikely to be using iMessage (although not explicitly
| stated), so this is great if you're hooked in macOS only, and not
| with iDevices & iCloud services as well.
| forrestthewoods wrote:
| Huh? I use iOS devices and do not own a single macOS device.
| iPhone + iPad + Windows desktop. It's great.
|
| I haven't connected my iPhone to a PC is 6 years. iTunes is the
| worst piece of software ever made. Thankfully it hasn't been
| needed or even useful for half a decade.
| ksec wrote:
| The biggest one for me isn't anything you mention, It is iCloud
| Keychain. Due to all the security concern I have finally made
| the effort to use random password for almost everything now (
| macOS even has a hidden password generator in KeyChain App if
| one of those site happen to have stupid password combination
| requirement )
|
| But I cant even use it in Firefox on my _Mac_.
| eric__cartman wrote:
| Can't you migrate everything to a cross platform password
| manager like KeepassXC or Bitwarden? It seems quite clunky
| that the iCloud Keychain locks you to a particular browser
| and operating system platform.
| wcchandler wrote:
| I'm in a similar situation. Once the core apps stop working as
| expected -- iMessage, FaceTime, easy transfer of music to
| iPhone -- I will be going back to Linux. I honestly can't wait,
| but for now it's not worth the time sink to get it installed on
| this 2010 MBP. Plus that would be an immediate loss of
| functionality for most of those applications without
| considerable research into FOSS alternatives.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| If you feel that trapped doesn't it piss you off?
| derekp7 wrote:
| I've been using Linux as my primary desktop since the early
| 90's. I used to dual boot as needed, then switched to Windows
| in a VM, but now I will RDP into a Windows server at work if I
| need to run a business app. But for the most part everything I
| do is either a web app or is in a terminal window. Of course
| that is a function of my particular career (Unix/Linux
| systems/network engineer/developer).
|
| At home I use VLC for videos, or Chrome/Firefox for Netflix
| (and other streaming services). I also picked up a Chromebook
| tablet for various media consumption needs. I can't really
| think of the last time I needed a non-Linux system for
| anything.
| pengaru wrote:
| I needed a non-linux system recently to update the firmware
| on a Digidesign Mbox... had to borrow someone's mac.
| campground wrote:
| I use a Linux exclusively for my regular computing needs,
| development work, office stuff etc., and have an iPhone and
| iPad. The iPhone market is so much larger than the Mac market
| that Apple has designed the devices to work just fine without a
| Mac to plug in to. I do use Dropbox instead of iCloud for most
| files, but if I need to get a photo out of iCloud, the web
| interface works fine.
| georgyo wrote:
| I don't understand entirely. Apple has locked you into their
| walled garden.
|
| But FaceTime and iMessage? There are plenty of alternatives.
| More importantly the alternatives have bigger user bases. What
| is making you feel locked into iMessage?
|
| Interoperability between apple devices and services is good,
| but any individual service is not actually great. They are only
| good if you commit everything to apple.
|
| So if you actually wanted to break free, switching from
| iMessage and FaceTime would be the easiest. Reduce your
| dependencies of stuff in the walled garden, then leaving that
| garden get easier.
|
| Apple knows that switching from MacOS/iOS is hard if you use
| their services that only work on their devices. The solution is
| don't use their services even if you use their devices.
| easton wrote:
| But none of those users will talk to me :(
| acomjean wrote:
| iMessage is a little weird.
|
| I use other apps too, but somehow straight up SMS messages
| from non iPhone users seem to get routed to iMessage on my
| phone. The messages also seem to get forwarded to a computer
| if your logged in.
| t-writescode wrote:
| > What is making you feel locked into iMessage?
|
| When the not-tech savvy grandmother uses iMessage and
| FaceTime, it's hard to encourage her to switch to What'sApp
| or Discord.
| georgyo wrote:
| How did your not-tech savvy grandparent deal with grandkids
| who use don't use apple products?
|
| If an entire family feels compelled to use apple products
| because the family users apple products things start
| feeling more like a religion then a technical choice for a
| product.
|
| The fact that the software choices of other people are
| forcing your hardware choices here is horrible.
| t-writescode wrote:
| It's not so different form everyone in a friend group
| buying an XBox so they can all play (game) together,
| honestly.
| georgyo wrote:
| So if you have friends who play on PS and friends who
| play on XBox, is it reasonable to choose one set over the
| other? Should I buy the same game twice?
|
| Just because unreasonable walls exist else where does not
| justify unreasonable walls everywhere.
| miloignis wrote:
| I agree, and in my opinion it's Apple's greatest sin.
| (Linux/Android/Pinephone/Matrix user here with family in
| the Apple ecosystem)
| riversflow wrote:
| So you expect people who don't really even care about
| technology in the first place to rapidly adapt to your
| changing preferences? I don't have facebook, and I know
| that I could be better in touch with my extended family
| and many of my friends if I had one, it's my choice to
| die on that hill. I don't want facebook to invade my
| privacy, I could make a hardware choice and have a device
| or devices dedicated solely to their swill, to cordon off
| my private life from their information vacuum, but I
| choose not to do so. How is switching off of one
| ecosystem (facebook ads monetization) any different than
| another (Apple hardware monetization).
| pier25 wrote:
| Discord I agree, but it should be easy to install and use
| Whatsapp. There are probably already millions of grandmas
| using it since Whatsapp is the dominant messaging app
| outside the US (even by iOS users).
|
| BTW Whatsapp also has audio and video calls.
| ubermonkey wrote:
| I feel like arguing that _Facebook_ is somehow a better
| plan than iMessage is a little weird.
| theonlybutlet wrote:
| Whatsapp isn't really Facebook and it is ubiquitious. I
| live in Europe and have lived in Africa, I only know of
| one person that doesn't have it and they're tinfoil hat
| level paranoid (following a privacy scare earlier this
| year).
| ubermonkey wrote:
| Whatsapp really is Facebook. Facebook owns them, lock
| stock and barrel, so I'm not sure what you think the
| distinction is.
|
| I understand it's ubiquitous, but I don't personally use
| it, and can't imagine joining it. Nobody I know uses it,
| but I will absolutely allow as how that probably has to
| do with demographics -- my network of friends, family,
| and coworkers is overwhelmingly on iOS.
| pier25 wrote:
| I wasn't arguing which is better, just that it would be
| easy to switch to.
|
| Also, what should 90% of the world population that can't
| afford an iPhone do?
| ubermonkey wrote:
| Find something that Facebook doesn't own? I mean, there
| ARE other options, right?
| azinman2 wrote:
| FaceTime will soon work with web links, tho I dunno if you
| can schedule that from the non-Apple side.
| trangus_1985 wrote:
| > iOS devices, iCloud, FaceTime, unlikely to be using iMessage
|
| Attack it piece by piece.
|
| I have some experience de-siloing myself, and I have some
| insight on this. The first and most important thing is that you
| should (for the most part) not use anything that's a free
| hosted cloud service.
|
| Find a cross platform equivalent to those services and start
| switching to them. Standards based hosted services are much
| easier to set up than self-hosting, and makes it MUCH easier to
| switch out later.
|
| The first thing I'd recommend you do is get Signal installed.
| Figure out which of your friends are on there already, and just
| start sending them messages from that.
|
| Next, register a domain. Your name is a good start, since
| you'll need it for email (and for, if the privacy landscape in
| the US continues on its trajectory, self-hosting)
|
| Here are some good (non exhaustive) cross-platform alternatives
| that I use or have used:
|
| - icloud photos: Google Drive, Smugmug (my fav), Flickr
|
| - icloud mail/contacts/calendars: Fastmail (mail + card/caldav
| syncing)
|
| - imessage/facetime: signal (im aware there's other chat
| clients but signal is me and my friends' go to. Discord,
| whatsapp, telegram, etc also exist)
|
| - safari: Firefox with account set up
|
| I pay less than $150 a year, and I get phone or email support
| with a real person for all of the services I use. I use an
| iphone, apple watch, with windows 10 on a laptop, and desktop
| linux. It all works together pretty well, and it really wasn't
| that hard to establish.
| everdrive wrote:
| It's important not to start using a service which will be
| difficult to cease using. This is how lock in occurs. It's not
| truly convenient if you're stuck with it.
| jstx1 wrote:
| > It's not truly convenient if you're stuck with it.
|
| That's a bit extreme. I would say that it's only inconvenient
| if you need/want to switch - everyone can make a guess about
| the probability that they will want to switch in the future,
| what effort it would take and whether that's worth it for the
| value they will get in the meantime.
| tw600040 wrote:
| like the internet?
| pknomad wrote:
| But that's a trade-off that most users are expected to have.
| I like how macOS can handle continuity of applications
| (iMessage, Apps, Fileshare) across multiple devices. I
| haven't seen any other OSs or ecosystem handle this as well
| as Apple's.
| dylan604 wrote:
| That works great if you're a nerd and only every communicate
| with other nerds. Once you try to talk to moms, your stuck
| using FB or messages. So, you can be definitely use the most
| secure stuff out there that gives you all the freedom to do
| exactly what you want, but you'll be on that island all by
| yourself. Enjoy
| newsclues wrote:
| The service known as the Internet taught me this.
| yodsanklai wrote:
| What would be a practical reason to switch from MacOS to Linux?
| Also, what good laptop supports linux out of the box?
| tick_tock_tick wrote:
| Native containers so no more docker VM eating all you CPU.
| jay-aye-see-key wrote:
| Sometimes I used macOS for work and get reminded why I prefer
| Linux. - homebrew is slow and brittle, between 10x and 100x
| slower than pacman in my experience, and the only package
| manager I've used that breaks at least every year - homebrew is
| only a userspace package mananger, many applications have their
| own update mechanisms. I greatly prefer being able to update my
| entire system with one command. - xcode is a fragile 10GiB pig
| that I don't want, but homebrew needs it - docker has a
| significant performance overhead on macOS - the tiling window
| managers available on macOS are less reliable and don't have
| the features I value - some terminal based software is
| significantly slower on recent versions of macOS, even on a
| 2019 macbook. I'm not sure what's causing it but there is
| noticeable lag that I don't get on much older hardware with
| linux - documentation; in my experience searching for error
| messages on macOS results in something like "paste this command
| into a terminal, no one knows why, and it will break again on
| the next OS release" or "plug the charger into the left usbc
| port not the right". Where as on linux I end up on the arch
| wiki with a fix that makes sense, and I've learned something I
| find valuable or interesting - I don't like how macOS is
| visually turning into iOS, I like that I have the option to use
| what looks like a "desktop" on linux
|
| I'm learning nix at the moment, and hopefully that can solve a
| lot of the problems I have with maxOS/brew.
|
| macOS is good, linux is good, as always it depends on what you
| need.
| jdoss wrote:
| Thinkpads have pretty great Linux support. I haven't had any
| major hardware compat issues in a long time when installing
| Fedora on a Thinkpad.
| imgabe wrote:
| I've been very happy with my System76 Linux laptop.
| lbhdc wrote:
| I find developing to be easier on linux. When working with
| things that have weird c/c++ dependencies, they are usually
| available through my package manager, as an example.
|
| I have a thinkpad and I have been pretty impressed with the
| linux support. I get firmware updates through my package
| manager, which makes for a nice experience keeping it up to
| date.
| pjmlp wrote:
| Basically all those folks that buy Apple hardware, when they
| actually should have been supporting Linux OEMs, because they
| don't use anything from Apple other than BSD userspace.
| wcchandler wrote:
| For me personally, I can't update my laptop (2010 MBP) to the
| latest MacOS without trickery. It's simply unsupported.
|
| I plan on moving back to Linux once the core apps cease to
| operate -- iMessage, easy transfer of music/audiobooks to
| iPhone, FaceTime.
|
| Also, I'm pretty sure Dell and Lenovo have OoB support for
| Linux. Lenovo especially since RedHat is under the same
| umbrella.
| Klonoar wrote:
| I am not sure I understand this viewpoint. A 2010 MBP is ~11
| years old at this point, which is an eternity given how the
| past decade of laptops have evolved.
|
| If you buy any modern laptop that's not junk, you're going to
| be paying hundreds of dollars. I simply don't see why you
| wouldn't grab an M1 Air at this point.
|
| Is it Big Sur/Monterey...? Like, if you _could_ upgrade,
| would you?
| phendrenad2 wrote:
| Why would Linux on your 2010 MBP be better than your current
| MacOS on your MBP? Or is the real issue that you're looking
| to upgrade, and don't want to pay the Apple tax on new
| Macbooks?
| brightball wrote:
| Similar story for me. Switched 5 years ago after 10 years with
| Apple. You have to be pretty determined to make the switch.
|
| I love it. I'm really happy with the switch and have no plans to
| ever go back but it's a decision you need to choose and commit
| to. I'd never recommend it to somebody else. If Linux is right
| for you, you will seek it out and make it happen.
| rsyring wrote:
| I don't Linux b/c it's the best desktop. I use it for two
| fundamental reasons:
|
| 1. With enough time and effort I can make it do whatever I want
| it to do (that can be done). 2. I'm a Python web developer and we
| deploy to Linux so it means I only really need to learn one OS
| (time to learn is in limited supply for me as man who cares about
| family life).
|
| What this means practically for me is that 95% of what the OS
| provides works the way I want it to. I have a handful of things I
| customize and I've scripted those (Linux is great scripting) so
| it's easy to apply when I refresh my OS every 1-2 years.
|
| It also means I don't have to do things the Apple way, I can make
| it work the way I want it to work (within reason).
|
| It also means I don't have an OS that will put advertisements in
| the start menu (that was the last straw for my family using
| Windows, everyone uses Linux now).
|
| I realize if I was a lawyer and needed Microsoft Office or a
| designer and needed the Adobe Suite, then I'd couldn't take this
| approach or would need to run a different OS in a VM. I wish the
| Linux desktop would be an attractive target for all popular
| commercial apps to support it. But I'm not holding my breath,
| that's not why I use it.
| istingray wrote:
| As someone new to Linux from 20 years on a Mac -- what's the deal
| with everything being free?
|
| Seriously, where are the "take my money" opportunities. I don't
| want free OpenOffice. I want to pay $100 for something better,
| whatever the heck that is, maybe a little less clunky. I don't
| want free open source Notes app, I want to pay for something
| that's polished.
|
| The Linux community is incredibly giving and passionate and it
| seems like it's all "free" but sucks up my time. I couldn't even
| figure out how to slow the scroll of my trackpad on Ubuntu after
| lots of digging.
|
| Please, coming as a Mac user, take my money.
| benhurmarcel wrote:
| There are more and more paying/professional-quality software
| that is available on Linux, mainly due to the popularity of
| Electron and subscriptions:
|
| - Companies choose Electron to reduce the cost of supporting
| Windows and Mac, which has the side effect of making Linux
| supported easily even if the market isn't there. People sure
| like to complain about Electron but it has been very beneficial
| for Linux desktops.
|
| - Selling Linux software has always been hard, mainly due to
| piracy and a widespread aversion to closed-source software
| within Linux users. With subscription business models being
| more popular/acceptable nowadays, which comes along a
| requirement to be always-online, such services are more easily
| available on Linux too.
|
| For example Linux has VSCode, Spotify, 1password, Bitwarden,
| Obsidian, Slack, Discord, Skype, Typora, Simplenote, Inkdrop,
| Wordpress, Microsoft Teams, Zoom, Signal, Atom, Ghost... It has
| improved drastically from even just 10 years ago, when almost
| no popular software/service was available.
|
| And that's not mentioning the general shift to using webapps
| instead of desktop apps (Google Workspace, Office 365, most
| email services, Jira, Github, Asana...), which obviously makes
| Linux much more viable.
| awinter-py wrote:
| feels like some important apps are starting to distribute on
| linux -- tbh steam may be the _most_ important of these because
| it contains such a diversity of other software and has a
| microtransaction system
| eric__cartman wrote:
| There is paid commercial software for Linux, like MATLAB or
| Wolfram Mathematica. But the sad truth is that many companies
| like Microsoft aren't interested in offering MS Office for
| Linux. A lot of FOSS projects do make money by offering things
| like 24/7 support and security updates guaranteed for x amount
| of time (see Ubuntu Extended Security Maintenance). Also a lot
| of software is used by big companies that do have an interest
| in sponsoring the development on something they depend on.
| Where it be by contributing development time themselves or
| donating money to the developer fund.
|
| Maybe as Wine advances we'll be able to use more and more
| commercial Windows software, kind of like what is happening
| with games. But I'm not holding my breath yet.
| tech234a wrote:
| Microsoft does offer Teams, Edge, and VS Code on Linux these
| days.
| istingray wrote:
| Is there a way to pay for WINE to encourage this? For example
| Parallels costs $80 on a Mac to run Windows, seems reasonable
| enough.
| est31 wrote:
| There is! CrossOver from CodeWeavers bases on Wine and the
| company employs many of the Wine maintainers. So buying
| from them directly sponsors Wine development and gives you
| access to an improved product over Wine.
| istingray wrote:
| This looks great. Thank you for the recommendation!
| est31 wrote:
| There is definitely a proprietary desktop software market for
| Linux.
|
| For your office example, try WPS office. Never used it myself
| but I heard good things. There are paid text editors like
| sublime or the stuff that jetbrains is building. There is also
| lots of Linux desktop software in the SFX industry.
| istingray wrote:
| Oh Sublime looks great, like BBEdit on Mac. $30 not bad.
| Thanks for the rec!
|
| Checking WPS out now: https://www.wps.com/premium $30/year,
| not too bad. The fact that their free version runs on ads is
| a turnoff from a brand standpoint.
| yoyohello13 wrote:
| My main problem is I don't want proprietary software. I want
| to pay for FOSS software. I have a rolling monthly fund where
| I donate to projects I like. A lot of Linux users scoff at
| paying for software, but I think the Linux community would
| really benefit from fostering more of a donation centric
| culture.
| est31 wrote:
| I see contributions which are not paid for as donations.
| Even if some work is paid for, it's often not market rate
| for that quality of work.
|
| From this perspective, donations are extremely prevalent,
| they are just not in terms of money. Of course this doesn't
| bring food to the table of contributors however. I agree
| that there should be more monetary donations in FLOSS.
| hindsightbias wrote:
| > it's all "free" but sucks up my time.
|
| Linux is for users who don't value their time.
| trismegisti wrote:
| Although I understand the "Linux Users spend their time
| instead of money" argument, I think that is not true. aI
| value my time.
| JeremyNT wrote:
| If you want, you can run a lot of proprietary Windows software
| in wine, so this is already an option for you.
|
| However, a lot of open source software projects will also
| accept donations in addition to code (if you do not have time
| to contribute the latter) so if you find something lacking
| there may be an easy way for you to help. I like to pick a few
| OSS projects every year to make some donations to. I have
| always figured it would be better to help improve the open
| source solutions than it is to look for proprietary ones.
| istingray wrote:
| Appreciate you sharing your experience how it works. Glad to
| hear Windows software is an option.
| ksec wrote:
| Generally speaking the Linux community thinks that money is
| somewhat evil. There are little take my money moment. Most
| value only comes from services and support, which is not a
| sustainable stream of revenue of consumer computing.
|
| Which is fundamentally different to the Apple and Mac platform.
| It is the polish app and take my money market. And for most
| part it is doing exceptionally well. ( On macOS, not MacBook )
| istingray wrote:
| That's helpful context. If there's good pro-Linux developers
| and apps worth buying from, let me know. i.e. on Mac Panic,
| Pixelmator, BBEdit. Would love a Mail alternative.
| Thunderbird is...not for me.
|
| I'll take the opportunity to recommend Standard Notes. They
| have great Linux support, it's basically an Apple Notes
| replacement with E2EE for $50/year.
|
| Take my money!
| Shadonototro wrote:
| Gnome is the reason why people don't stay on linux
|
| I was so happy when Valve announced they'd ditch debian/ubuntu
| and gnome
| lbhdc wrote:
| One of the reasons I enjoy using linux is the endless things
| you can customize, including the DE. You can easily switch your
| DE to something more inline with your preferences. Or you can
| install a spin with your preferred DE already enabled.
| argvargc wrote:
| Why is Gnome the reason people don't stay on linux?
|
| The article makes it look great to anyone familiar with macOS,
| which while it has faults is generally regarded as a pretty
| good OS GUI.
|
| Is there something bad about Gnome the article is missing?
| hathawsh wrote:
| From my perspective, the era of switching desktops is over--I
| don't really have to choose anymore. These days I can run all the
| operating systems I need at once. I can run a Windows virtual
| machine in Linux and vice versa. If I need to run a Mac app, I
| can rent a VM on AWS. My Mac developer friends run Docker
| Desktop, which actually runs Linux.
|
| I remember a time when the host operating system was an important
| choice that limited what kinds of things you could do with a
| computer. It's really not anymore IMHO.
| skrtskrt wrote:
| > My Mac developer friends run Docker Desktop
|
| Mac Docker is insanely resource-heavy since it runs through
| that virtualization layer instead of being native. Definitely a
| major source of frustration unless you keep your Docker stack
| very, very small or have an absolutely max-spec Macbook Pro.
| systemvoltage wrote:
| Desktop OS (Mac, Linux, Windows) needs an authoritarian single
| person designer that can dictate how UI/UX would work.
| Democratically developed interfaces suffer from the same
| paralysis that industrial design faces - You need Ettore
| Sottsass, Dieter Rams and Jony Ive of software UX/UI. Otherwise
| it's an unfocused trend driven graphical gore that community
| tends to develop. A thousand squeaky wheels can't stay aligned on
| the road.
|
| I think they're all broken. Not just Linux Desktop.
| BurningFrog wrote:
| Back in the 90s, I think the Apple UI design team (whatever it
| was called) provided the best such dictated UI guidelines I've
| seen.
|
| Just to make the point that it doesn't have to be one person.
| systemvoltage wrote:
| Agree but it needs to behave like an authoritarian little
| group - lots of autonomy and decision making abilities.
|
| A lot of car designs are done by a single person aided by a
| small group of exceptional designers. That brings me to a
| second point - that team has to be the cream of the crop. Not
| any goof with design degree but a demonstrated long history
| of exceptional understanding of human to machine interaction.
| Apple attracted such people back in the day.
| phendrenad2 wrote:
| It's still not the same though. There was a lead designer,
| who was accountable to the CTO, who was accountable to the
| shareholders. There's downward pressure to stop analysis
| paralysis when it appears.
| mixedCase wrote:
| GNOME is the closest thing to that in an open source world,
| they build on top of one pretty specific vision and have a good
| set HIGs.
|
| And if you don't like it, you're wrong. Not because your
| opinion is not valid, but because that's what you're requesting
| essentially.
| Timothycquinn wrote:
| I switched about 8 years ago. Tried OpenSuse for several years
| but have settled in on Ubuntu with ZFS root on HPE ZBook G2 and Z
| workstations. The only thing that may draw me back is the Apple
| M* chips.
| forgotmypw17 wrote:
| My computer is my "work station", so I don't want anything to
| change how it works without my asking for it.
|
| Only FOSS has given me that so far. With the others, I inevitably
| run into "interface I'm used to changes without my consent".
| ElijahLynn wrote:
| Every Linux distro needs to adopt something like the Arch User
| Repository (AUR). It is hands down the nicest way to install
| packages out of all OSes, including Mac and Windows. Everything
| is in the AUR, and if it isn't it is fairly easy to wrap it up
| and put it there yourself.
|
| Or one can just use Arch + `yay` and move on already!
| xedrac wrote:
| As someone who has used Linux almost exclusively on the desktop
| for the past 10 years, I recently bought a Windows laptop to use
| with Piano Marvel. I was astonished at just how awful the Windows
| experience was. From the mandatory online user accounts, to the
| pre-installed garbage. Not to mention the in-your-face-constantly
| notifications, and forced updates. Using Linux feels unshackled
| and more polished.
| toast42 wrote:
| "I'm here to save you some time and energy by telling you that
| the distro you pick doesn't matter that much. "
|
| That's the point I stopped reading.
| jneumann004 wrote:
| I've been using Linux for years, so I've got my opinions about
| distros. Why should the distribution a new user pick matter
| that much? They can easily switch if they don't like the first
| one they pick.
| read_if_gay_ wrote:
| GP probably conflated distro with DE, which is covered in the
| next paragraph in TFA, maybe shouldn't have stopped reading
| after all.
| asciimov wrote:
| Stability of install.
|
| New users probably shouldn't use a rolling release because
| updates can cause the install to be unbootable, leaving a bad
| impression of linux.
| wayneftw wrote:
| What happens then is that the new Linux user soon needs a
| newer version of some package and they have to add a third
| party repo to their stable system and after having done
| this a few times, soon an update from one of them will
| cause the install to be unbootable.
|
| I've had a way better experience with desktop Linux when
| using a managed rolling release like Manjaro.
| zepto wrote:
| Easily switch? You mean by reinstalling from scratch, or is
| there another way?
|
| I'd like to know because I am interested in trying different
| distros but don't want to have to keep setting up machines.
| throw7 wrote:
| Well, IMO, a new user should pick a distribution that has
| different DE's available in it's repository. That makes
| switching and trying different DE's very easy. As opposed to
| some distros which are specifically tailored to only a
| specific or supported DE.
| shreddit wrote:
| And I'd like to know the reason
| dmart wrote:
| It really doesn't. And the desktop Linux community's obsession
| with bundling a few tweaks and preinstalled applications as
| separate "distros", splintering the community into a million
| tiny sub-groups, is part of the reason it's failed to achieve
| mainstream popularity.
| phendrenad2 wrote:
| I've noticed that people tend to think of the surface level
| of any desktop OS.
|
| They think about the GUI, the command-line programs that ship
| with it (curl/grep/ls/etc.), the driver support, and the
| package manager it ships with. These are all trivial
| abstractions built on deeper facilities.
|
| The farther down you go, the less people understand. Who
| actually can express the difference between X11 and Wayland
| that isn't full of weasel words and equivocation? What about
| mesa, or dbus, or pulseaudio? These are all core components
| that alter the "flavor" of a desktop Linux system. And yet,
| all distros basically use the same off-the-shelf components.
| They only change the higher level GUIs and package managers
| and stuff.
|
| And people GROSSLY underestimate how much the kernel
| contributes to the "flavor" of Linux. (I could go on and on
| about how the GNU GPL directly impacts how drivers are
| developed for the kernel, or how the small number of core
| devs are overwhelmed by additions for hardware drivers which
| move rapidly and break things, and the subsequent
| vulnerability patches, leaving little time for desktop-
| focused improvements).
|
| People tend to say things like "the kernel just manages the
| hardware" or "the kernel is just an interface layer for the
| hardware" or "MacOS and BSD are the same, only the kernel
| differs". If only they knew. The kernel is like a seed
| crystal that defines what can grow outward from there
| (without massive painful compatibility shims).
|
| Lastly, people OVERestimate the importance of things that are
| entirely irrelevant to a desktop OS. Just look at how many
| desktop Linux users are arguing over SystemD vs SysV vs
| whatever else. Are desktop Linux users really digging into
| log files, and are annoyed that the log files are now in a
| binary format? Are desktop Linux users really annoyed that
| sudo is now part of systemd, instead of a standalone binary
| that they can swap out? I think the number is low, but the
| number of desktop Linux users arguing about such things is
| high.
| fhood wrote:
| I don't know if the splintering is that big a deal. For
| nearly everybody Ubuntu for personal use, rhel for enterprise
| right?
|
| Ubuntu you just use gnome, and I've don't think I've ever
| actually seen redhat (or any centos) attached to a desktop
| environment.
| pjmlp wrote:
| Red-Hat moved away from desktop, because they were the
| first to realise there is no money on Linux Desktop.
|
| https://m.slashdot.org/story/100116
| raffraffraff wrote:
| Been using Ubuntu for 15+ years and never used gnome. I
| always install xfce4 (which has basic tiling), Plank and a
| few other little gadgets. It stays so much out of my way
| that I basically don't even notice I'm using it. I tried
| one or two other distros but generally come back to Ubuntu
| because it hits the sweet spot of modernity and stability.
| rovr138 wrote:
| What's the best way to bundle those?
| AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote:
| Why would you bundle them at all?
| petepete wrote:
| I think Ubuntu-style 'flavours' of distro pattern work
| well. They're called Spins in Fedora.
| alpaca128 wrote:
| Just don't. Why bundle stuff if the user can just install
| it using the package manager?
|
| It's easier to add to the system than remove redundant
| packages, and if the distro developers focus on the
| repositories and package management software it benefits
| everyone much more. That's one of the big reasons people go
| for Arch.
|
| Nobody cares if LibreOffice or Inkscape or whatever is
| preinstalled. Just put a usable appstore on the taskbar by
| default, it works for smartphones too. Many distros are
| about as necessary as Samsung's or LG's customized Android
| builds.
| cosmotic wrote:
| The splintering is real, but the differences between distros
| is also real. The pace of updates and the availability of
| packages is pretty important, as is a large community that
| you can lean on for support, even if passively by searching
| for solutions to common problems. Maybe you mean "of the 5
| most popular distros it doesn't matter"; then sure.
| prox wrote:
| Why is there such a fascination with having so many versions?
| Vaslo wrote:
| I ask the same questions about programming languages but
| usually get downvoted to hell.
| megous wrote:
| Are you asking why everyone doesn't want the same things
| from their computer?
| blacktriangle wrote:
| Off the top of my head...
|
| Some people want to build everything from source.
|
| Some people want a preconfigured Gnome enviornment.
|
| Some people want a preconfigured KDE environment.
|
| Some people want a distro with the latest version of
| packages.
|
| Some people want a distro that is conservative about
| upgrading packages.
|
| Some people are running in VMs and don't need all that
| extra crap.
|
| Some people want a version that pedantically sticks to the
| spirit of the GPL.
|
| Some people want a version that is maximally convinient GPL
| be damned.
|
| I'm sure there's more reasons.
| gerdesj wrote:
| I think you have pretty much covered all the main
| reasons.
|
| I use Arch (formerly Gentoo) on my work and home
| PCs/laptops because I like rolling releases with a
| bleeding edge. I generally run Ubuntu LTS minimal
| installs for servers because they are tiny and stable and
| guarantee to be upgradeable to the next LTS release. I
| run Home Assistant IoT wranglers on Debian because that's
| what HA insists on for "Supervised".
|
| My wife uses Arch because I look after it and she doesn't
| care. It simply has to just work and it has for years now
| without skipping a beat.
|
| Upgrading hardware for laptops and PCs means dumping the
| filesystems to files on a server or whatever and blatting
| them onto the new device. If there is physical space, put
| the old HD/SSD/whatevs into the new box and use a live CD
| like system rescue or Clonezilla. All the drivers are
| built in out of the box. These days most things simply
| work with minimal fiddling. I can't remember the last
| time I fiddled with xorg.conf. OK I disabled the
| touchscreen on this laptop when I cracked it and that
| involved fiddling with xorg. I remember setting modelines
| by hand in XFree86 ...
| prox wrote:
| Thank you for the elaborate answer, so flexibility is
| key.
| 3r8Oltr0ziouVDM wrote:
| Some people hate systemd :)
| gerdesj wrote:
| It gets on my nerves sometimes but then I remember the
| days of creating init scripts a la Miguel van Smoorenborg
| (with various dialects), upstart, Gentoo etc style OpenRC
| jobbies and the rest.
|
| I get on with my day and you can barely see the blood
| dribble out of the corner of my mouth when I put the verb
| in the wrong position. systemctl rofl restart ... [
| _fuck_ ] backspace etc ... [ _bollocks_ ][ _arse_ ] ...
| hit enter.
| handrous wrote:
| I'd agree that it doesn't matter much within a certain _band_
| of distros. Fedora vs. Ubuntu, for a new user without
| opinions about things like Flatpack or rpm vs. dpkg, doesn 't
| matter much, sure, I agree. Throw in Slackware, Gentoo, Void,
| and Arch, and now it kinda _does_ matter which you choose.
| Even Debian, since your software will be farther behind
| current releases and its preferences about things like non-
| free software are likely to be something you notice and have
| to deal with, one way or another.
|
| But, among the small set of relatively user-friendly distros,
| sure, it doesn't actually matter that much. A generous
| reading would take that meaning from it, I think.
| OtomotO wrote:
| That's why after trying out a few distros back in the day I
| settled with a rolling release one and truly learned linux.
|
| I totally agree with the "uselessness" of too many distros
| but not with your conclusion.
|
| There are multiple reasons for linux not being Mainstream on
| the desktop.
|
| Windows comes preinstalled on 99% of all non self built
| laptops/desktops.
|
| Installing an OS is not something the average user does.
|
| It's different and people hate change, unless it's popular
| stelcodes wrote:
| It doesn't matter which distro you use... unless it's NixOS.
| Declarative operating systems are the future. NixOS is
| incredible. My whole configuration is a git repo. My servers have
| the exact same neovim/tmux/zsh config as my laptop. Switching
| between desktop environments couldn't be easier. Messed up your
| system? Simply choose a previous generation on the boot screen.
| Seriously, try NixOS.
| xaduha wrote:
| I used NixOS for years now and it would be my first choice for
| anything else, but I wouldn't use it for desktop.
|
| Solus has that on lock for me and initially I didn't see it as
| particularly special, I too thought distros didn't matter much
| anymore. I thought I could switch away from it to any number of
| capable distros, but it never worked out and I returned to
| Solus every time.
| ubermonkey wrote:
| I joke with a friend -- a serious emacs maven of 20+ years --
| that he took up NixOS only because he was no longer daunted by
| emacs.
|
| NixOS looks neat, but holy hell I absolutely do not have the
| time to deal with the learning curve OR the implicit
| abandonment of all the tools I use to do my job.
| Madeindjs wrote:
| Is it equivalent to initialize Git repository in $HOME ?
| lightbulbjim wrote:
| No. It replaces the FHS with a whole new vision of how the OS
| is arranged and managed.
| phendrenad2 wrote:
| So NixOS is great for using the same setup between computers.
| What about for people with one computer? Is it still good? Is
| it as easy as Ubuntu?
| stelcodes wrote:
| Yes definitely good for one computer! And I really think that
| NixOS is simpler than Ubuntu but there are many different
| ways of setting up your configuration repo and that is
| difficult for beginners. The way I do NixOS is _very_ simple.
| And I really want to make a comprehensive guide on how to do
| it my way because it's so nice! But I had to wrestle with it
| for many months to get to where I'm at with my config repo.
| mixedCase wrote:
| caveat: gargantuan learning curve. Expect to be learning a
| small yet slightly odd programming language and an ecosystem
| years in the making. As a distro it is strictly only useful for
| very technically minded people or people who rely on someone
| like that to maintain their distro for them.
|
| But once you do learn it and fully prepared your set-up, it's
| amazing. Around a month ago I switched from Arch to NixOS after
| using the former for around a decade and I'm very happy with it
| despite its warts.
| stelcodes wrote:
| I agree that there is a large learning curve. It certainly
| took me a many months to get a good configuration repo going.
| But I see this as a failure of documentation rather than a
| failure of NixOS. The way I have my config setup is really
| _not_ complicated, but it took so long to figure out the
| design. I really want to write a blog post series about how I
| do NixOS because I highly value simplicity and I think there
| are too many NixOS "learning" resources that are written by
| and for highly technical NixOS gurus. NixPills is a prime
| example of this. That blog post series is NOT for beginners.
| At all. But somehow is referenced as a learning resource.
| quyse wrote:
| I've also switched from Arch (has been on it for ~10 years)
| to NixOS (~1 year so far), and fully agree it's amazing.
|
| I've been thinking how interesting it would be to create a
| user-friendly Linux distribution on top of standard NixOS
| (similar to what Manjaro is to Arch), which would not require
| learning Nix language or tinkering with the configs. I mean,
| system configuration/choosing packages/drivers/kernels should
| not really require a user to write in Nix language - the sane
| choices can mostly be represented by a set of GUI checkboxes.
| There also could be GUI utilities for other Nix goodness,
| such as creating nix-shells with necessary dependencies
| available, declaring wrappers for proprietary software, or
| building temporary VMs. So, I would say, the user absolutely
| does not need to know a lot about Nix to fully appreciate
| robustness of NixOS way, and in principle, with the right
| tools/GUIs it can be very approachable for even non-technical
| users - it's just that user friendliness seemingly has not
| been a priority so far.
| lightbulbjim wrote:
| I wholeheartedly agree, and I am a giant NixOS fan, BUT:
|
| 1. You need space for the Nix store, so it's not appropriate
| for every system (I like building small embedded appliances).
| 2. A six month release cycle can get a bit tiresome after a
| while. I know it's personal preference, but I wish it was a bit
| longer. 3. Or, in order to contribute to the project, you need
| to chase the dragon with the unstable channel. 4. Forcing all
| the system state through the funnel of a single config file is
| great, except that it doesn't cover home directories. I found
| that I ended up with a massive unmanaged blob of state in my
| home directory which I couldn't capture (I never tried out
| home-manager, maybe I should have).
|
| This is not to detract from NixOS! NixOS is great, and I remain
| a massive fan :-). But on my personal systems I find myself
| using macOS and Debian these days. -\\_(tsu)_/-
| stelcodes wrote:
| Valid points. I definitely wouldn't use NixOS on embedded.
| About contributing, You don't really need to be on the
| unstable channel completely. I use a mix of stable and
| unstable packages. It's not hard to do but it's also not
| super intuitive either. And about home directories, I don't
| use Home Manager either. I find that it introduced too much
| complexity and I don't actually like it all that much. What I
| do is globally install all my packages and put configuration
| files in /etc. if the programs don't have an /etc location to
| look for, I just create a symlink to config file in my home
| directory. That way all my config files are in my nixos-
| config repo.
|
| I want to write a blog post about my way of setting up NixOS.
| There are many ways to go about it and I feel like mine
| prioritizes simplicity and doesn't use complex Nix
| techniques, so it may be very helpful for beginners.
| pmahoney wrote:
| For 1., it's possible (easy even? I've never tried this in a
| cross-compiling situation) to build packages on one system
| and push them to another via SSH.
|
| I suppose an upgrade would still result in two copies of
| everything, at least temporarily, but at least the target
| system doesn't need source code, compilers, etc.
|
| https://nixos.org/manual/nix/unstable/command-ref/nix-
| copy-c...
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2021-08-26 23:00 UTC)