Preview is one of the most underrated pieces of software in the world today.
I make the assumption that Quicklook uses Preview (because surely it must).
Being able to hit spacebar on just about any kind of selected document/image type file and see a near instant look, multiple pages and all, is so important. Once you don't have that (move to the Windows world), you realize how much you miss it. And you can, with a small bit of effort, add capabilities for additional files such as Markdown.
Being able to open a PDF or image in a fast, reliable native viewer, and even do some level of editing (such as quickly adding a signature!) is super useful.
In terms of reliability, every time over the last 20 years (some distant, some recent) where I tried to live with a Linux desktop, things would stop working after a short while. Meanwhile, I have lived on my 2014 MBP since 2014, going through multiple OS upgrades in place - no wipes/reinstalls - and find it just as performant as ever. It is in most use cases more performant than my 2017 _much_ higher spec Dell XPS 15 (in Windows or Linux boot mode).
There are still some things I hate, #1 being that when I cmd-tab to a window which is minimized, it doesn't raise that window. What is the f*cking point of cmd-tabbing to an application if you don't make its window visible!? This I have never understood. But generally speaking, macOS on Apple hardware is unmatched by any alternative.
Quicklook is such an amazing feature and it seems so basic that I just don’t get why windows hasn’t added anything like that. Are there patents on this?
Just an example that I have about every day: before sharing a file via file select/open dialog I can double check if it’s the correct one.
I can only speculate that quicklook prevents a substantial amount of accidental information leak across the entire world :)
The magic of quicklook isn’t really about the behavior in Finder, though. The magic of it is that it’s available as an API to developers. I use an app that is ostensibly marketed as an image viewer but, because it uses quicklook to render file content, it can open all the file types that quicklook supports.
Being able to use an image viewer to cycle files in a zip archive (without extracting them) and be able to render anything from images to spreadsheets to pdf files is pretty remarkable.
In Explorer, just go to the View tab/menu, enable Preview Sidebar, click on the image, resize the Preview Sidebar as necessary, look at the image, then disable Preview Sidebar again.
Windows Explorer Preview is just not the same. It's either always on or always off, and it takes up space, and it does not pop up above other content.
Quicklook is there only when you want it; it pops up a good sized window on top of anything else, and it goes away just as quickly and easily as you brought it up - spacebar.
Yeah sure. And try to rename a file while it‘s preview loads. Does not work, the flow will break. Sometimes it will just not rename the file. Sometimes it will block the UI as long as the preview is not loaded.
I would never set preview on Windows to the same level as preview on OS X. Because the one on Windows as just not as good.
Seer on the Windows Store is an alternative which works pretty well for the default file types (images, text files, PDFs). However, I don't think it works in the open/save dialog boxes.
Because Windows users have long been dependent on Acrobat Reader (or lately, browser PDF renderers) for showing PDFs. If Apple had a relationship with a third party providing something akin to a system application like Windows and Adobe, they'd happily make a native equivalent and relegate the old product to the dustbin. Windows doesn't do that as much.
It does not stop at PDF / Acrobat. Windows sucks for media and document management. No thumbnails for random media / file types. No playback for random media types. Metadata may be in the files, but who cares? --- the OS makes no sensible use of them except in the details view of "library" folders to show the title and an obscure tab in Explorer's file properties dialog. Calendaring? Sorry, we don't support CalDAV. Email? Well we have IMAP support but it's a footnote. Contacts? God help you, we want you to use Outlook and Outlook only.
Microsoft had to walk a tight rope, historically, for fear of antitrust action. If they had improved Windows too much, big developers would have gone ballistic and dragged them in the courts again. Apple never had to care about this, and it shows.
Microsoft only had to worry about antitrust because of their previous anticompetitive/antimarket behavior. It is easy to imagine ways that Microsoft could have fostered the ecosystem while supporting Quick Look in File Explorer.
Preview has been there from the very early days of NeXT and Display PostScript (NeXT worked on DPS with Adobe). Apple’s pdf handling has always been baked in as Quartz is ‘pdf based’.
Neat! I just discovered the gnome alternative gnome-sushi (available via apt-get). It's very nice, but sadly the "open file" dialog doesn't trigger gnome-sushi.
You'll be happy to learn that your "#1 hate" is easily resolved: cmd-tab then hold option key down while releasing cmd-tab. Voila, the minimized window is restored with focus. :)
Somebody needs to make a bot/AI that regularly posts semi-contentiously titled articles like the above because they spawn some of the best discussion threads on HN, I learn something new (or try something new) every time..
Thanks for the 'option-tab' trick!
Windows users who switch to macOS will complain that their new shiny and expensive machine won't let them to go through their photos in a folder using the arrow keys and they have to open the photos one by one. Then you tell them to hit the space when a photo is selected, they first look at the keyboard then at the screen and they are like "O.K. that will work", you proceed to tell them to try it on a PDF or something else and that's the moment they recognise the value that they paid for :)
I’m a Linux and Mac OS user myself and I’m sorry to say it’s never as easy as that, there is a lot left behind and very difficult to know what exactly to clean up if you built and install yourself
I don't understand either. The lingering files left over after I deleted a .app would always require a third party tool to gather and clean, and even then, I wouldn't be sure, and would then find missing preferences files. I don't have that problem with the Windows uninstaller.
I may be missing something, but aren't you describing Finder's Gallery View? In that mode, you can left/right arrow your way through the entire set of files in a folder, viewing each one (image or pdf or whatever).
Gallery view is pretty new and still needs to be discovered. Also not very convenient just for quickly viewing bunch of files. The view of the folder changes completely, so you get disoriented and if it's a large folder you will need t skim through one line of folders to find what you are looking for. It's good for certain use cases but it doesn't help with quickly going through some files in a large folder.
On Windows, when you open a photo by clicking it, you can go to the next/prev one using the arrow keys and on macOS you can't do that. So the Windows immigrants get annoyed, naturally.
On Mac, you can simply select a single file anywhere and hitting pace will very quickly show you the contents, hit space again and you are back to the folder. You can use the arrow keys to skim around and the file contents will be quickly displayed. If you first select a bunch of files and then hit space, it will loop though your selection when you use the arrow keys.
It's a very convenient feature to skim through the files in a folder.
Select a file, not necessarily a photo, hit space and a Quicklook window displaying the contents should appear. When you change file (through clicking to another file or using the arrow keys), the quicklook should update to display that file.
Yeah, that repository's README is a little bit outdated.
Here's what I found works or is broken in macOS Catalina and above:
Works:
--------------------
# Preview source code files with syntax highlighting (like colored .JS files)
brew install qlcolorcode
# Preview Markdown files
brew install qlstephen
# Preview JSON files with syntax highlighting
brew install quicklook-json
# Preview plaintext files with unknown extensions, like README, CHANGELOG, etc.
brew install qlstephen
# Preview the content of .IPA files
# Installs inside /Applications folder
brew install suspicious-package
# Preview iOS/macOS provisioning information for .ipa and .xcarchive
# For 'mobileprovision' files, Xcode has Quick Look plugin collision:
# https://github.com/ealeksandrov/ProvisionQL/issues/20
brew install provisionql
# Preview the content of macOS apps
# Installs inside /Applications folder
brew install apparency
# Preview WebP images
brew install webpquicklook
Broken:
--------------------
# Display image size and resolution in windo titlebar of Quick Look
# Doesn't work due to API change from Apple
# https://github.com/Nyx0uf/qlImageSize/issues/45#issuecomment-610852166
#brew install qlimagesize
# Preview Adobe ASE color swatch files from Photoshop, Illustrator
# Doesn't work in macOS Catalina
#brew install quicklookase
# Preview the content of Android .APK files
# Doesn't work in macOS Catalina
#brew install quicklookapk
As listed in the README, you also need to unset the quarantine attribute. To see the changes, you need to restart the Quick Look Server after the install, and sometimes requires logging out and in again. Here's a script I made, let me know if it works for you:
CSV, markdown, plaintext, and JSON plugins are must-haves for office work.
BetterZip's plugin is okay.
Even better would be:
I'd sacrifice my first born child for a "Show Package Contents" option supporting zip, webarchive, and other common composite files.
(Using Finder: highlight file with .app or .dmg extension, right-click to show context menu, chose "Show Package Contents", opens new tab with selected file as "mount" point. I'd really like to know how Finder "mounts" composite files without using fuse file system thingie. Then maybe we could write plugins.)
Because they’re not really “composite files”, they’re packages. It’s just a normal directory with a bit set to treat it as a file in context (also driven by file extension). “Show Package Contents” just opens a Finder window rooted within the package. From CLI you’ll see them as a directory.
Aha. Feeling dumb that I didn't know that. Of course they're directories with some metadata. Duh.
I always kinda guessed that DMGs were something like a ZIP file. Well, not really:
"3. Mounting DMGs
DMGs can be mounted, just like any other file system, though technically this is what is known as a "loopback" mount (i.e. a mount backed by a local file, rather than a device file)"
There is a Quicklook clone on Windows called Quicklook [0]. Not associated with it, just found it when seeing if there was an equivalent for Windows platform.
> But generally speaking, macOS on Apple hardware is unmatched by any alternative.
lmfao. About the preview thing ;
- ranger (cli) has the file preview thing, no need to press spacebar. Has all the vim keybindings, you can cycle preview through files much faster than on macos.
- (sushi)[https://github.com/GNOME/sushi], if you want to use gui.
About your cmd-tab point, macOS in its distant past made an architectural choice to decouple the running application from the windows presenting it (I think this goes the whole way back to nextstep).
So while cmd-tab does give the application focus (as you’ll see reflected in the menu bar) it won’t bring up the window.
This exists for Windows though as a third-party application, which points to one of the reasons why Windows is great. There's great software for nearly anything you could think of. It's one of the main things I miss when I use Linux. The usability/functionality in the applications simply isn't there and it will never be there, for whatever reason.
Linux has been my main OS on at least one of my devices for as long as I can remember. I still think there's a stark difference in what applications are capable of. It feels like most Linux applications try to make GUIs as simple as possible, while shunting all possible advanced features into the command line. For example, there's not a single file browser that in any way compares to Directory Opus, which is my replacement file explorer on Windows.
I had a Linux IdeaPad p400 for like 12 years with Ubuntu. 0 issues. I now have a system 76 gazelle. No problems.
Ubuntu 20.04 is really easy to use.
I can't stand the mbp. Hoops to jump through for everything with a cli. Extra permissions to make build tools work. Extra additions to file permissions that are incompatible with docker. Special gui with extra settings to make docker work. vpns that have to run inside the top bar and freeze up with no way to get them to shut down. Weirdness with .net core compilations. User admin only with a gui. Difficulty finding files because the finder window doesn't follow path. Extra steps to launch apps from the cli. Weird ppi so text settings that are legible everywhere else aren't in Mac. Slow keyboard repeat rates that are hard to change.
"In terms of reliability, every time over the last 20 years (some distant, some recent) where I tried to live with a Linux desktop, things would stop working after a short while."
nixos (a linux variant) addresses this on a much deeper level than any other os.
Preview is a great program, but unfortunately when I upgraded from Mavericks to High Sierra on my 2012 Macbook Pro, I started to notice that Preview rendering is now blurry. And I never figured out how to fix it -- nothing I found online worked. What a bummer.
xpdf satisfies most of my PDF reading needs now instead. It has tabs too, which is handy.
The change to High Sierra also broke some nice iTunes behavior I had been exploiting previously that let me connect to my home iTunes share over a VPN connection. Ah well.
There’s no such thing. You command-tab to an application, which can have many or no windows. The different mental model is probably the reason for your frustration.
Tomato Tomato. As another person clarified, I'm probably trying to switch to the most recent window of a given application. For all practical purposes, the window and the application are the same thing. There may be additional windows of that app, but they are all that app.
> For all practical purposes, the window and the application are the same thing
Not at all. That's a very unique thing about the Mac that trips Windows people. It's a subtle but crucial difference, unless you grasp it, you'll always be a bit lost on the Mac, as I am when I use Windows.
On the Mac, for instance, Photoshop can be frontmost and have no windows, panels, while you're seeing your whole desktop. The only hint you have is the menu on the top left. Photoshop on Windows covers your whole screen all the time when it's frontmost. If you think that's tomato tomato, you haven't understood the difference.
Eh I think the model they implemented makes sense. You are confusing the window of an application with the application itself.
Cmd + Tab switches between applications, or windows. If you had multiple windows of an application like Safari open but minimized to the dock, maybe you are switching to Safari the application and then opening a new window? I believe there is a command that actually pulls up the windows individually as well? Maybe CMD + 1 or something similar?
Personally I think this route is the most intuitive and makes the most sense to me, but I can empathize with your frustration. Kind of related but I generally feel annoyed whenever I use Windows for anything. It’s very unintuitive for me.
I recently switched to a Mac and overall the OS is superior to Windows, but Windows and Linux handling of windows just makes more sense in my mind. If you have 3 windows you are cycling through, composed of 1 Excel spreadsheet and 2 browser windows, it's very nice to just keep track in your mind of whether the window you want is the most recent in your "history" of windows or 2 ago, and hit Alt+Tab as needed. In the Mac world you have to switch between Cmd+Tab and Cmd+` depending on which you want to reach and where you're starting from, and that just seems like an unnecessary split to think about.
You may want HyperDock[1] which enables that behaviour. There is also HyperSwitch[2] which switches windows, not apps. It's a beta, but still works great on Big Sur.
Hyperdock has been unstable for awhile, and judging by comments on social media and the silence of the dev, it's finally been abandoned. I'm currently trying [DockView](https://noteifyapp.com/dockview/) from the maker of ActiveDock.
Command + Backtick was a pretty big game changer to switch between windows. I understand the difference between that and Hyperswitch, but I’ve rarely been truly wanting for something much more than Cmd+`
> What is the f*cking point of cmd-tabbing to an application if you don't make its window visible!?
What if you have multiple windows of the same application, and you minimize one of them, then auto opening of that window everytime you switch back to the app will be super annoying.
Just take me to most recent non-minimized window of that app. And if there is no such window left, and I told system that I want to switch to the app, then yes, of course I want the most recent window unminimized. This isn't rocket science.
> And if there is no such window left, and I told system that I want to switch to the app, then yes, of course I want the most recent window unminimized.
If one is screensharing or presenting to an audience and the only windows in the target app are minimized but contain sensitive information, one most certainly would not want one of those minimized windows to reveal.
As a sibling to your comment points out, the solution is to hold the option key down while releasing the command key. This verifies a user’s intention to reveal the first-minimized window.
Alt-tabbing in the middle of a presentation risks displaying random information no matter what. You could tab to browser showing mail, or to Slack, or a PDF viewer showing your latest payslip, or whatever. If you have sensitive information or something which might show alerts in the middle of an important presentation, you should probably close such apps and / or mute their notifications.
> Alt-tabbing in the middle of a presentation risks displaying random information no matter what.
When presenting, I keep close track of what information I have minimized and unminimized.
It would severely hamper my work (all of which is disclosed) to quit apps that have minimized windows with information I do not want to show to undisclosed parties.
To be clear, command-tabbing on macOS may not behave the same "Alt-tabbing" on other platforms (I honestly don't know). Specifically, command-tabbing does not give focus to apps that are hidden until they are selected and does not reveal minimized windows without user intervention (holding option down while releasing command.)
Automatically disclosing minimized windows for command-tabbed apps that have no disclosed windows would actually remove a privacy feature rather than enhancing command-tab app switching.
What is the more common case: a user switches to a hidden app and then does NOT want to actually see a window from that app, or the user switches to an app and wants to see it.
I don't need to do research to answer this question. If a user switches to an app, it's because they want to use that app. And using most apps depends heavily on being able to see them.
If I want to control things without a UI, I'll go to terminal.
I agree w you in principle, but the minor ergonomic friction -- adding the option key to alt-tab to restore and focus a minimized window -- is not a big deal to me. That said, I never got in the habit of minimizing windows (partly bc I didn't know about the keyboard-only way to restore them), so it's a non-issue for me.
It really shine in this use case:
Because only he app menu is visible, sometimes, you can open|create a file without cluttering your desktop. It’s ok for document based apps
>apt-get was a revolution when it was released in 1998 and it is still the best way to manage software today. brew is a mediocre replacement.
While apt still isn't the best package manager (my heart belongs to pacman, no matter what the haters say), I completely agree that brew is a failed imitation. I wanted to use MacOS for the longest time, because I've been told that it's a real "Unix system". Brew has distilled my fears into a sobering reality. The "advantages" MacOS offers really comes down to eye-candy or slightly more consistent shortcut mapping, but none of this really matters to me when I can't use the software I want, and the OS is always second-guessing my authority. Maybe I've been spoiled by Linux, but I don't understand the hype. Not even on my M1 Macbook Air.
People state consistent shortcut mapping is an advantage of using Mac but after 2 years of being required to use a Macbook Pro I'm not really sure about that - often they are more complicated IMO. I still miss built in Linux and Windows key mappings. For example Windows + Left to move the window on the left side of screen for side by side apps on the same screen. Great for remote demo's and coding sessions. Ctrl + Shift + F4 to take a screen shot vs Linux PrtSc feels backwards at least to me. On the mouse pointer side with scroll direction most people I know also get a plugin to swap the scroll direction when they use their mouse and switch back to track pad. Another example - on VS Code very often the key bindings don't work on my Mac whereas on my Linux machine they work every time. My point is while I'm probably don't know all the tricks to learn since its not my platform of choice YMMV.
I think the impression of "better key bindings" comes down to familiarity more than anything. Getting used to something else seems uncertain (it may never be as good despite learning investment) when you know on the other platform you can just "get things done fast".
On a mac I can't live without "Magnet" [1]. It lets you do organize your windows in half/thirds of screens with simple keystrokes. That should be part of the OS.
I use Rectangle [0] for the same purpose, it has a few more bells and whistles and is open source. It does have a bit of a debounce problem on multiple screens though (one tap might move the window two positions).
Will try it out. Having said that it is on my Linux machine "for free". I'm not even quite sure if I'm allowed to use these paid apps on the Macbook Pro I've been given.
For Linux users on Gnome looking for similar functionality, I use the gTile extension to accomplish this. When I first got my ultrawide display on macOS, Divvy was critical to be able to do this. gTile was a similar enough replacement to get me my workflow back.
It's not even a software development exclusive problem. You might create a product, sell it on Amazon and then notice Amazon sell its own AmazonBasics version of it after a while.
I used a macbook for 2 years and the key binding is definitely less consistent than windows or linux. If nothing something as important as word navigation and word selection (ctrl+arrows and ctrl+shift+ arrows on linux and windows), is located in different modifiers (can't remember which), something along the lines of: move with command+arrow and select with option+shift+arrows.
Drives me crazy every time, given that command + backspace deletes a word (and command +del deletes a word in the other direction).
But of course on a Win/Linux system you rarely need to use three fingers at once. On mac this is all too common for even the basic tasks you state.
Shift + End: Select to the end of the line
Home + End: Select to the beginning of the line
Home or End: Move to beginning or end of line respectively.
What's worse is when I plug in a keyboard with Home and End buttons on a recent Macbook Pro they still don't work. Do I need another plugin for that? Even if I do personally I don't find the Mac keyboard shortcuts better than Linux/Windows. Tbh after using Mac for 2 years running now every day at work I still don't quite get how people find it easier - I still wish personally for a Linux or even Windows machine to speed up my productivity.
And that's because people prefer what they are familiar with them - the mental leap to jump to another way of working for most people isn't pleasant and isn't really worth the investment. Mac still feels like a "second language" to me just as Linux must feel to mac users - I'm always translating it back to "how do I do this Linux/Windows thing" in Mac. In the end Linux, Windows, and Mac are perfectly capable OS'es and the differences is marginal between them which makes switching difficult. But I do prefer my Linux machine these days - more just comes out of the box.
> If nothing something as important as word navigation and word selection (ctrl+arrows and ctrl+shift+ arrows on linux and windows), is located in different modifiers (can't remember which), something along the lines of: move with command+arrow and select with option+shift+arrows.
I think you’re misremembering here, I don’t think there are any macOS keyboard shortcuts that work like this. It’s always shift plus the original keyboard shortcut to select.
It could be! There is one that's hostile, but I can't remember which. I know for sure because my colleague switched back to a Mac and it's complaining about it
I was honestly hyped when i got a MBP beast as developer machine after so many years of hearing mac is basically a luxury unix.
I was and still am heavily dissappointed. This was ~2018 it looked exactly as boring as imagined, a desktop as intiuitive as windows 7s. The terminal felt at best strange, many settings and confirmation dialogs are simply not available via terminal, only hidden somewhere in their UIs. The hardware run hot every day, always and you could not use an external screen without waste cycling your battery to death. Honestly not impressed.
Both mac and windows are like stuck in time compared to modern desktop approaches like gnome shell or recent kdes. If you are a shell guy to some degree no other os will justice
Yea, I think I've been through a similar thought process. Apple hardware is second to none and their machines do look awfully pretty. Macs have become the default engineering laptop in all the start ups I've been at in the past ~10 years but I never got to the point where I was really comfortable. I have grown to really love wsl 2 on windows in the past year that I've used it. To me it seems really elegant and has been a dream to work on. Most assume it's just a vm running on windows, but the integration it has between Linux and windows make it extremely powerful (eg from your Linux shell you can run windows executables, so you can do stuff like run powershell to write text to your windows clipboard or run 'code .' to open the windows vs code gui on your current working directory in wsl). I'm not sure if it would be best for everyone, but as an SRE it's great to have my Linux container have the same operating system my company uses in production so that I don't need to figure out how to do stuff on two different operating systems and I am just a lot more comfortable on centos.
There is one single feature of homebrew that regularly bites my coworkers. You can refer to software by name@version ("brew install postgresql@11" or "brew install postgresql@12") and there is no confusion about what you are installing; or you can refer to software by name only ("brew install postgresql") and the version number is calculated to be "most recently released." (v13 at the time this was written.)
Hypothetically I have two machines that I want to build out and give to developers. One machine arrives on Monday. My script runs "brew install postgresql" (no version), because of when I ran that script postgresql@10 gets installed. Tests pass, I hand that machine off to a new developer. The second machine arrives on Wednesday. I run the same script, but because v11 of postgres was added to homebrew on Tuesday, the second machine receives postgresql@11 even though the first machine received @10. Same script, two days apart, different major version of postgresql.
Yes, I can write my scripts carefully to avoid this. But consider this scenario: a new developer encounters a problem, tries to solve it themselves, finds a seemingly helpful blog, and ends up with postgresql@13 and node@15 when everyone else in their team is using postgresql@11 and node@12. Now tests are failing, but only for this one developer and only locally...
Doesn’t apt (for instance) work the same way? Or docker images without a tag? I’d you don’t specify a version in each case then you get the latest available. I’d you want a specific version pinned then you should specify it. I think I don’t see your point, works as intended. If you enforced mandatory version specification every time, you’d have to know exactly which version is which package for anything you install: apt install Firefox > nope won’t work, instead you have to know what is today’s latest Firefox version (changes every couple of days/weeks)
It's not really how apt works but rather how Debian works: you use apt with a specific release repository of Debian (stretch, buster or whatever ISO you installed).
Debian is really strict about its releases and won't push a breaking change in a specific version of the OS.
For instance, `apt install htop` will only ever install the 2.X version of htop in Buster. Including security patches and all, but you won't get a 3.0.0 version without going sideways and add a specific repository for that. Debian will ship with htop version 3 in the next release, but you'll have to upgrade the entire distro for that.
Brew is different in that it allows anybody to merge a new breaking version of the software you use, so `brew install htop` on Monday could give you the 2.x version, and on Tuesday will install the 3.0.0 version.
You could maybe compare it to the rolling releases of Arch. But Arch has a better way of handling it than Brew: they test, they prepare, they communicate for bug changes..
Brew would benefit from segmenting their offering, but you'd lose the bleeding-edginess of it. Really, if you want reproducible packaging on Mac, I'd use nix or docker. If you want convenience and edge, use brew and deal with it.
> For instance, `apt install htop` will only ever install the 2.X version of htop in Buster. Including security patches and all, but you won't get a 3.0.0 version without going sideways and add a specific repository for that. Debian will ship with htop version 3 in the next release, but you'll have to upgrade the entire distro for that.
Debian has an official backports repository if you want that behavior. It just gives you the freedom to choose.
On most debian-based distros, most packages aren't upgraded to a new major version in the repos for a particular version of the OS. If a new version of postgres is released, it won't be added to the apt repos for the current stable debian, ubuntu, etc. distributions. Instead it will be included in the repo for the next major release of the distro.
There are exceptions to that, for example browsers like Firefox and Chromium, but upgrading the major version of Firefox is much less risky than upgrading the major version of postgresql.
Rolling release distros like Debian Sid (and archlinux, though that doesn't use apt) don't work this way, which is why rolling release distros have a reputation for being less stable.
That’s really interesting, does anyone have a book or blog post taking about this versioning and releasing strategy?
I feel like as a new dev there’s so much in engineering I could learn from that’s already been solved and re-solved again and again or at least addressed by existing distribution systems.
However the reading materials to learn about some of this stuff seems far and few or very niche, sitting on some cached blog post from the 90s..
apt generally doesn't switch you to a new incompatible version of a package unless you upgrade your whole install. Browsers are not libraries and have special status due to their importance and having security and feature updates not separated.
If the solution to homebrews handling of major versions is to not use homebrew, I think it indicates there are issues.
I think it should work like almost Linux distros where the major version is fixed for a release lifecycle, and any other installations require modification. So say brew install postgresql should always install 12, and if you want something else you have to add the version modifier.
This is a side point but the docker suggestion is far cleaner if you work on multiple apps as you can easily configure and run multiple versions with Dockerfiles and compose files to be exactly right for each app, with only the plugins the specific app needs, data stored in a custom location for each app, and the ability to turn off postgres for an app. System postgres installs and upgrades are a needles pain for development.
But I agree that's nothing to do with brew conversation.
Not just different apps but having multiple working environments for the same app - very useful when you wreck the db on a feature branch and need to jump to another to fix a bug etc.
We do this where I work and while it’s great that it solves this problem, but Docker on macOS leaves much to be desired. The situation with filesystem performance is abysmal, and if you’re unlucky, CPU usage can go through the roof even when running a few lightweight containers.
That is my preferred solution and I think it works great. I have persuaded a couple of coworkers to switch, but only a couple so far.
Containerized Postgres is a real win, but running OpenLDAP (+ custom schema) as a containerized application has measurably improved my quality of life. Kudos and great gratitude to the people behind
https://github.com/osixia/docker-openldap
I think you could also utilize 'Brewfile' with pinned versions, where needed, and the latest available for the rest. I manage my environment this way when migrating from one work laptop to another. Works fine so far.
Alternatively, you can create your own 'tap' to gain more control over some packages.
For databases, I'd stick to running them as containers, too.
Homebrew is not ideal, of course, but there are ways to achieve desired goals until we have something better.
It's actually worse than you think since the @version notation needs to be explicitly marked by the maintainer of the package.
If they don't do this then there is no easy way to install an older version of a package, you will have to get the old .rb file from the brew git history and execute it yourself.
Apt sidesteps this problem because Debian-based releases are not rolling releases. Unless you install a custom PPA, if you are running Ubuntu 18.04 and you "apt-get install postgres" you will always get version 10.x. The major version number will not get bumped for Ubuntu 18.04.
If want to use a version of postgres other than 10.x, you can either use a different version of Ubuntu or install a custom PPA.
Apt's target audience is systems administrators. Homebrew's target audience is independent developers who might need to have four different versions of Postgresql installed simultaneously on their laptop, because they maintain Rails/Django/Node apps for four different clients who are each unwilling to upgrade for whatever reason.
IMO homebrew is "messy" because it is trying to solve a harder problem. If there is such a thing as an average enterprise software developer, I would argue that homebrew is trying to solve problems that the enterprise developer does not have.
For example Ubuntu X.Y LTS always use a pinner version of Apache 2.xxx and it will remain that version throughout that LTS release, such as 18.04. what they do for you is apply security patches and bump Apache 2.xxx.Y where Y is the security release applied patch. Apache stays at 2.xxx for the duration of that LTS and is considered the Stable version. Want something newer like Apache 3.x install from a PPA or an all-in-one bundled Snap package...
Except dpgk/apt is pretty good about keeping track of what libraries are being used. I've had homebrew upgrade readline to the next major version, uninstalling the version that all my other utilities were linked against. Admittedly, this was years ago and I don't know if that still happens; the experienced has soured me on homebrew and I actively avoid having to run the brew command and risking the same again.
I found it much worse that installing anything STILL by defaults upgrades literally everything. You have to actually set an ENV variable to stop this behaviour. My stuff constantly broke because I'd forget about this and install something else and a couple days later I'd go "what happened??"
It was doing this until recently when I set the env variable. It updates itself every time and then updates everything else too. Maybe I did something wrong to trigger this behaviour but it was definitely updating the packages
I've seen the exact same behavior. I didn't realize it was behind an environment variable. I passed a package to the command and for the next week I was dealing with issues from everything being upgraded.
Per gp, I haven't used Pacman in a long time, but when Arch was really popular I'd have a virtual machine, ignore it for a few months, then updates usually failed or rendered the machine inoperable.
The Arch wiki was so good that it inevitably included the exact problem and resolution already, but since I didn't have any important running systems I also might as well have reinstalled the whole thing. In which case I'd run into installation problems that were also perfectly covered in the Arch wiki.
Nowadays you can install Arch to a zfs or btrfs subvolume and have snapshots before every update, so a failed update requires you to just reboot to the previous snapshot and do a rollback.
I have never seen this personally, because the first thing to do if you haven't upgraded Arch in a long time is check archlinux.org where they list right in the front page any breaking update, which are quite rare and they provide the exact steps to proceed.
Or just install informant from AUR, to force you to read the Archlinux package news before proceeding with any pacman operation.
I had packages installed by brew that used readline 7. This went on fine for a while. At some point, brew installed something (at my direction) and moved to readline 8. Unbeknownst to me, readline 7 disappeared from my system! Tada, a pile of tools require reinstallation. Oh, and I didn't notice until weeks later when psql stopped working.
I find Docker to replace the parts that suck about using brew. E.g. I would never install something like Postgres using brew again. Small command line tools sure, but anything with complex dependencies and where you might need multiple versions it’s just better to use containers.
- updating the package index on each operation. I just want to install stuff, dammit. I don't need you to run git pull to update the gazillion package definitions
- `brew update` and `brew upgrade` dichotomy. 99.9999999999% of the time I need to update/upgrade a package, not brew. If I ever needed to upgrade brew, I could run `brew update --brew` or something
Very concise way to put it. I feel the same way. With FOSS I feel that I'm fighting with the software, and with proprietary stuff I feel like I'm fighting against the software.
Macports is a system that installs in the /opt root folder to run along side your native applications without overwriting them, but it compiles each application as you install. Installations can be very slow. It seems like it was adopted from FreeBSD's ports system.
Fink is more apt like but I haven't used it in years. All the packages are precompiled and the installations are much faster, but it seems out of date.
For both packing systems all the code and installation packages are managed by volunteers so quality varies across packages.
> Is MacPorts Universal?
MacPorts works on Apple Silicon as well as Intel- and PowerPC-based Macs, but, by default, the ports you install will be compiled only for the architecture you're currently running on. This means that if you migrate from, say, a PowerPC Mac to an Intel one and use Migration Assistant to copy your data to the new machine, you should reinstall all your ports on the new machine to rebuild them for Intel.
What they mean is that the downloaded binary will have been compiled for only the architecture you're running on. Take a look at all the binaries on http://packages.macports.org. MacPorts downloads from here.
If MacPorts is compiling from source, you're either using a non-default varient, on a very old version of OS X (MacPorts supports Tiger, but doesn't build binaries), or have some other unusual configuration option set.
That can't be true. For any mildly complex application I install it asks for "xcode-select --install". I'm using an intel Mac on 10.14.6, so it is pretty standard. I just reinstalled the software under a year ago and redownloaded macports from the website and installed it. It seems to require a local compiler to be installed for most applications, such as gcc or llvm. For instance, why wouldn't installing ffmpeg just download the ffmpeg binary instead of the all the compiler dependencies?
Oh, that may be because ffmpeg uses libraries with incompatible licenses. I should have mentioned, ports with nonredistributable binaries are also built from source, and MacPorts tends to interpret licenses conservatively.
Does the list change if you specify the +gpl2 varient?
I'm just doing the "standard install". Macports does source code for standard installs. End of discussion.
Heavenly Lord, he just keeps coming back with more rules lawyering. The macport for git goes through patching, configuring, building routine that is common in source code installs. Give me peace of mind, strength, and patience in dealing with internet trolls.
I am sorry, but you are wrong. MacPorts will not go through configure/build/install for all ports, only those for which no binary archive can be made available. As others have already explained, this happens when license restrictions do not allow redistribution of a binary.
With your example of ffmpeg, you can check yourself that ffmpeg-4.3.2_0+gpl2.darwin_18.x86_64.tbz2 exists as a binary archive and will be used on a standard install on macOS 10.14. MacPorts will definitely not build ffmpeg from source by default.
I recommend you test again with something simpler than ffmpeg, for example bzip2 or less.
Yeah, I’m a maintainer, MacPorts will download a binary if it can. ffmpeg is a weird case thanks to the non-free variants, but even it has some binary installs.
Also, for instance, OpenJDK is a port that is offered and we do not compile that in any way on any system because that way lies madness.
The other reason that macports will build from source is when there isn’t a binary like early on in Big Sur.
...no, it does that when the standard install would not be possible to legally redistribute. :) It's true that MacPorts generally prioritizes providing more features (in ffmpeg's case, access to more encoders and decoders) over providing a prebuilt binary.
I suggested the +gpl2 varient because I noticed it was present for all the ffmpeg binaries on MacPorts's build server. This is probably why. http://packages.macports.org/ffmpeg/
Now, if adding +gpl2 still causes MacPorts to pull in cmake, that's interesting, and I would like to bring that up on MacPorts's mailing list in case there's a bug. But I suspect adding +gpl2 will make it go away.
> because I've been told that it's a real "Unix system".
OSX certainly isn't a "real Unix system".
OSX a huge hodgepodge of proprietary crap with a Unix component buried somewhere in the middle of the dung heap to get FOSS proponent to believe that Apple believes in openness.
They were even certified as of 10.5 as a true-to-god Unix system. They have been more unixy than Linux for a while!
Unix, until Linux had made a breakthrough, was a proprietary system. The AT&T Unix, Xenix, AIX, SunOS, you name them. Openness of the source is not a defining characteristic.
Used to use MacPorts for many, many years. But grew tired of it breaking important packages or just failing to update when doing macOS major version updates.
Also, MacPorts can many times just fail to install a package or fail to update a series of dependencies. Good luck then getting your operation important packages running ..
Anyway, switched to Brew completely a while ago when updating to Big Sur, so have no idea if Brew will also do the same thing over time, but at least their system seems more simple, which might result in less breakage.
I've given it a whirl, and while it's better than Brew, that's not a high bar to pass. Macports suffers from the same lack of software and strange idiosyncrasies that crop up in Brew, and it really doesn't justify it's place in my workflow.
I switched to all Linux in my house a few years ago, it is a simpler and better existence overall. My kids laptops are mint, my wife is the only holdout on Mac. Mac is not bad, but for me it doesn’t have a lot of advantages and has a lot of obvious disadvantages.
> Maybe I've been spoiled by Linux, but I don't understand the hype.
This type of sentiment is usually a sign. If you've been spoiled by something, that's because it's better. I had the same feeling trying to go back to windows, "Man, why am I always fighting damaging updates", "Why can't I change this very simple setting", "Where is the documentation for this file".
The answer usually comes down to "because one thing is really good (not perfect), and the other thing is shitty (but tries to look perfect)."
I adopt a different attitude. If you have been spoiled by something, doesn't mean it's better, just that you are set in your ways. Which might be good, but sometimes it's better to broaden your horizon.
I liked macOS, I had used Linux full time for 15 years, spoiled by it if you will, then I tried to set up a WSL environment just for me and let me tell you: you guys can keep your Macs and half arsed Linux distros, Windows these days is truly underrated. Being able to game, have a better Linux and Docker experience than macOS, and not stuck in the 90s like Linux actually feels great.
Because the reality is that all software is actually crap. If you think one is better than another, you need to look harder.
Can you explain briefly what the issues are around brew? I've been a Mac user for the past decade and I still remember the days of macports, so brew still feels like magic to me.
Agree about brew and highly recommend nix in its place. Failed updates can’t take down your system (it’s literally impossible, as changes are made atomically), different packages maintain separate versions of their dependencies so there’s no dependency hell, and it’s very speedy. Only downside is it’s not as Mac centric as brew, so AFAIK casks are a no go.
For me, the ease of use of PKGBUILD files makes it easier to interface external or modifird software with the system (this has led to success of the AUR).
Apt itself is great, but the PPA repos that make every dist upgrade more complex is kind of not nice. With pacman you have AUR and very simple package scripts, that lets you easily add whatever to your system that's not included in the distribution.
There is "checkinstall" that creates an apt package by watching changes during a "make install" step. So you can install many programs that don't provide .deb packages or only provide source code that way.
Imo, both are kind of sucky. (Just install a gnome group on each, then remove it and install plasma and see how many non-used service whatever continues to be installed). Nix is the correct solution to the dependency hell problem.
Preview is probably the most underrated app of all time, with “quick look” as a contender for most under-appreciated feature.
Just hitting spacebar to see virtually any file, and the ability to open in preview and read or even markup and make small changes, is so nice. Whenever I use a non-Mac system I really miss those two features.
The ability to extend QuickLook to support more types is huge too. If it can be rendered to a static image or HTML page it can have a QuickLook plugin written for it.
QuickLook is great. And the plugins are fantastic. I remember when I used to have a Mac there was a QL a plug-in that allowed you to peek into and browse Zip/Rar/DMG files.
That was so useful at a time where my workflow included multiple zip files containing assignments etc. Being able to simply hit spacebar to look into them, instead of decompressing and creating a new folder was incredible.
And if I’m not mistaken, the same plugin also allowed spotlight to then search the contents of the zip files.
Used it for a while, but it really annoys with random “let’s get updates in chinese” popup from time to time. This is that last mile that non-macs always get wrong, gosh.
Edit: to add some value to the rant, there is also MiniBin, which sits in a tray area and allows you to open/purge your recycle bin without reaching a desktop icon.
Preview works better than anything I’ve found for adding or deleting pages to a PDF, and using the camera to input your signature is such a nice feature.
I wish preview had the option to disable editing, I find its ability to make small changes a misfeature. I use it to read big spec documents, and it wants to change them all the time -- I think accidentally clicking on tables is the usual trigger. I resorted to making all my pdf files read-only, but Preview is the only pdf viewer that's ever forced me to do that...
To this day I have still never found any application on any device that is as simple and easy to add an arrow and some red text to an image for highlighting something as it is with preview. It is just unbelievable how janky and bad every single other application is at doing this simple task. Not even on phones is there anything easy.
Ahh interesting point. Somebody needs to make their next 20% project a gmail labs extension that gives a simple annotate option to images in mail. It would probably be a sleeper hit that gets more use than 90% of other gmail features.
> Preview is probably the most underrated app of all time
I’ve lost count of the times I’ve seen macOS users saying they can’t leave it in part because of Preview. But IDK if any have listed any features not present in both GNOME’s Evince and KDE’s Okular (not that I’ve ever needed or used any of the three).
Editing PDFs and sticking your signature on documents is trivial with Preview.app. Save-as-PDF is broken (edits don't show up reliably), but you can easily just print to PDF to work around that bug.
I can't get Evince or Okular to do this task: it'd be great if either worked, but I haven't looked into it.
(FWIW, I'm a full-time Linux desktop user, but I have to test PhotoStructure on Windows and macOS, so those boxes are on my desk too. PDF-related tasks are the only other reason why I turn to my Mac.)
How are those for editing PDFs? I haven't tried those specific tools, but in the past when I tried it was surprisingly difficult to figure out how to do things like merge 2 PDFs or rearrange the pages on non-Macs
Hmm, I installed a quick look equivalent on my desktop because I saw that mentioned as being so useful a lot, but I keep forgetting I have it. In what situations would you use it?
If you had the real Preview on MacOS, you’d be using it all the time without even thinking, like 100% of MacOS users. Because it’s fast, it opens everything faster than you can think, and it just works well. The effort required to launch it is zero, or even negative. It’s just part of the OS.
But since you have a « sort of » copy cat which does not work as well or as fast, is not as well integrated, does not support as many files or any fatal flaw like that, you just don’t use it.
So yes, Preview is underrated and really hard to replicate.
I wasn't talking about Preview, I was talking about quick look, i.e. when I browse files in my file browser, I can hit space and immediately look at that file in a pared-down interface. But I'm not browsing my files that often, and when I do, the only time I seem to be interested in what it looks like is when I'm looking for an image, in which case the thumbnails that I can see without interaction suffice.
So I'm probably missing something. Does that mean that, because it's so fast and low-effort, you use it as a complete replacement of a native app you'd use otherwise? And then just for files you're just consuming, or does it also work for editing? And what kind of files?
Note that I'm not out to prove any point, I just want to understand what I'm missing :)
> Does that mean that, because it's so fast and low-effort, you use it as a complete replacement of a native app you'd use otherwise?
In my case, yes. It’s the only way I ever look at images, and I often use it to have a quick look at scripts or text/data files (try it on a CSV and it’ll show as a table!). It’s also convenient for design files, whose apps are incredibly slow to launch. With Alfred[1] you can even preview URLs directly.
Finally, QuickLook shines when you have file formats for which you don’t have an editor (e.g. you may need to view a Photoshop or Word document once in a while). It allows you to view them faster than in the editing application, for free, without having to install or configure anything.
Unlike the swath of people who are singing praises to Preview, I rarely touch it and mostly resort to QuickLook, even for PDFs.
> And then just for files you're just consuming, or does it also work for editing?
It works (at least) to edit images like Preview (annotate, rotate, crop).
Thanks, I suppose I should make an effort to think of it when I look at local images or PDFs (which I don't do that often) - although edit doesn't seem to be supported by my version of it, unfortunately. CSVs or files without an editor I don't think I ever touch :)
It's faster, and less jarring when it opens due to animating FROM the file). It also works in Open / Save dialogue windows in any app which the equivalent does not.
That little "wait is this the file I want to open / overwrite?" When saving a file, it adds to an overall feeling of polish.
Like a tasty meal, it's all in the details and how they add up
quick look spreadsheets when you don't want to wait half a minute for excel to load. Quick look pdfs with nondescript names that you've downloaded to check paper titles/authors, quick look ppts youve been emailed (from within the email app) to see if they're worth reading in depth.
Not sure how GNOME's preview feature is written, but macOS QuickLook plugins are written in C, C++, or Objective-C and the plugins included with the OS leverage OpenCL (or maybe Metal now) to accelerate rendering of previews, which is part of why it's so fast.
From someone who tends to try this switch about once a year (because the lack of TLC the Mac was getting in the last 5 or so years was getting very very worrying - M1 feels like Apple actually care about the Mac again), I agree with a lot of these pain points. My biggest personal issues end up being (and these are super subjective!):
- Preview on macOS is great and no other OS has anything remotely equivalent. First class PDF support, ability to easily annotate anything, makes basic PDF editing easy.
- I'm far too used to the macOS touchpad gestures, and emulating these on linux doesn't end up working well. There is an ongoing project for this but it's very Ubuntu-centric for now. I am hopeful this will help the whole ecosystem improve though! This is still a pain for me on a desktop because my work setup uses a touchpad as the pointer device.
- it's nigh impossible to eliminate tearing on multimonitor setups with X11, and X11 doesn't support a mix of DPIs for displays without scaling tricks that make text look awful on the low-DPI displays. Wayland was promising here last time I tried, but Wayland itself still has a lot of rough edges for a desktop. Plus since last time I tried I have replaced my last low DPI monitor on my dev setup, so this ought to be a point I can ignore going forward :)
- Finding a mail client I don't hate on linux is tricky. I've never been able to get on with the console clients, and I actually quite like Mac Mail. Thunderbird is kinda okay.
- My chosen password manager (1password) still has a fairly awful linux experience. This is getting better - they're producing a native app now. Said native app needs to support the local browser extensions though!
- I like the various iCloud/multi device integration features for Apple OSes far too much. This is mostly relatively simple things, that produce disproportionate pain - eg cross-device copy+paste, browser tab syncing, bookmark syncing, etc. Yes, Firefox has Firefox Sync, and Chrome has it's own sync stuff too, but there's nothing as all-encompassing.
I've lost hope that Linux will ever be able to provide an experience on the level of the Mac, I'd like to move away from Apple myself too.
Unfortunately the modularity of Linux, despite being it's strength means that it can never possibly provide a UI/UX as coherent and interoperable as the Mac.
How can you provide things like spell checking, font rendering, copy/paste, drag and drop, password sync, across every widget and text field in the OS if every framework an application is built with and every part of the OS chain can be swapped out for something else and they're all made with distributed teams with no one at the helm to be the one to say "Drag and drop is broken in your app, you might not use it or care but others do, you need to fix it". or "Why does the text look weird in your app?"
This worries me because "M1 feels like Apple actually care about the Mac again" I completely disagree with this, I think Apple is aiming to have Macs running mostly iOS applications in the near future and MacOS will eventually be deprecated once we hit critical mass of that.
Not to mention the specific things I point out here that make the Mac great are being eroded away as more and more Mac apps are just electron wrapped React with custom text field components that disable OS spell checking and things like that.
> I completely disagree with this, I think Apple is aiming to have Macs running mostly iOS applications in the near future and MacOS will eventually be deprecated once we hit critical mass of that.
I don’t understand comments like this because iOS apps as well as macOS apps are built using macOS devices. While it may come to pass that iOS becomes a viable platform to develop iOS and macOS (?!) apps, Apple cannot proceed by removing the ability to develop apps on both platforms.
Apple has proved itself a canny organization with regard to the development and maintenance of its platforms (bugs and pain points notwithstanding), so it seems highly unlikely they would move forward in a way that prevents the development and maintenance of those major platforms.
> This worries me because "M1 feels like Apple actually care about the Mac again" I completely disagree with this, I think Apple is aiming to have Macs running mostly iOS applications in the near future and MacOS will eventually be deprecated once we hit critical mass of that.
They’ll be running apps, but the lines between iPhone, iPad, and Mac will be blurred and I think this is fine. Similar to how apps now may have different features or layouts as you switch from iPhone to iPad.
I’m a little less worried about them deprecating macOS. They could do it tomorrow really but there doesn’t seem to be a need to do so. I think the goal here is to actually make the Mac stronger by unlocking access to the iOS App Library. It’s a good goal. I know some will complain about the iOS apps not being open source or something but probably 95% of users (myself included) don’t really care. I find open source software extremely valuable, but I don’t care if Flappy Bird or Office 365 are open source. I just need to use the software and get on with my day.
I don't worry about them deprecating MacOS. Apple has some important and beneficial constituencies for MacOS, not least of which is developers developing apps for iOS, watchOS, etc. Music and video production, etc. I know that by percent of revenue, iOS has the lion's share, but I think they realize that MacOS has an important role to play in keeping the entire enterprise working together.
> I completely disagree with this, I think Apple is aiming to have Macs running mostly iOS applications in the near future and MacOS will eventually be deprecated once we hit critical mass of that.
The Mac sits in an awkward position indeed, especially with Apple giving a touchpad and keyboard to the iPad Pro.
Do be careful, though, when collating PDFs with Preview. I've had several experiences where the resulting file works fine in Preview, but can't be opened by other PDF readers, e.g. Acrobat Reader. Share the file with a non-Mac user and they'll be scratching their head…
I have to do a lot of PDF manipulation for my work, and after some time I accepted, grudgingly, that there's no substitute for Acrobat Pro.
Yeah thats the other thing I found fascinating about macOS, a bunch of useful features are very hard to discover. Mostly because you won't see any menu entries, but some sort of drag-and-drop will / alt+click will activate a very useful feature.
Their idea of being user friendly, I guess.
Actually, this is one of my biggest problems with macOS. So many tremendously useful things are hidden.
Why do they do this? It's not good for anyone. I can understand this concept of "just do what's intuitive - try it!", oh what fun - but nobody is going to risk messing up the important files they're working with by randomly dragging things onto other things just to see what happens.
Just tell us how to use it.
Almost every (third-party) iOS app or game by comparison seems to have understood this basic concept of educating the user on how to use the product, but Apple falls far behind especially on macOS.
When multi-touch first appeared it was touted as a Holy Grail of UIs.
The only multi-touch gesture that is in widespread usage across all mobile platforms is pinch to zoom. The rest of the multi-touch gestures are probably used 100 times less (maybe less, I can't even remember the last time I used 2+ fingers to do something on my Android devices, except for pinch to zoom).
I bought an iPhone on day one in 2007. For me it was more about a nearly-all-screen device with a usable browser and navigation than anything else at that point. Jeez, that’s still mostly what I use it for. Pinch is certainly nice, but I hardly thought about multi touch when looking at the value proposition. The Apple Pencil is what got me to finally buy an iPad (and immediately miss the side-click I’ve been used to with computer pens since circa 2001).
> multi-touch was what got the the smartphone revolution going
Massive citation needed. When I bought the first iPod touch (at the time it was a gen 1 iPhone without the GSM modem) it was because it had a real web browser and not the BS 'mobile' browsers on my Windows Mobile smartphone. I could actually visit a store's website and find their hours, check if an item was in stock, etc. There wasn't even an app store back then... IIRC multitouch was only used for zooming into photos in the photos app.
Pinch & zoom was the killer app to navigate normal websites (as opposed to dedicated XHTML + handheld-stylesheet). This is now for the most dead with `meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1"` as a standard.
Smartphones had been around for years (e.g. devices like the SE P800 and P900 series) before the iPhone, but these remained niche and required specially skinned websites for full functionality (XHTML and CSS stylesheets with `medium="handheld"`, which is now dead). It was really the iPhone's capability to render normal websites and to navigate them via pinch & zoom, which was considered the killer-app of the iPhone (esp. before there was an App Store with a wide variety of apps available.) The success of the iPhone was built on the much acclaimed multi-touch feature. And this is now, with responsive web-pages set to `meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1"` as a standard, practically disabled and dead. (In other words, with a grain of salt, responsive killed multi-touch – or, at least, rendered it disposable.)
(Moreover, I do not see any wide deployment of two or three finger gestures or similar multi-touch interaction on usual web-apps, especially, as these lack any standardization, but this may be just my own observation and anecdotal. That said, there's probably a niche use for virtual controllers for web games. But it's really the Mac trackpad and maybe the Magic Mouse, where multi-touch lives on with any significance.)
Sounds obvious now but pinch to zoom was a big new feature on iPhone that traditional phones, even those with touch capability, did not have muti-touch. Part of this was capacitive touch screen technology that few other devices had at the time, instead having cheaper resistive which pretty much required a stylus to do anything but press in a particular spot on screen. I don't believe android devices had muti-touch originally even though they had capacitive touch screens. Touchpads on laptops and touch screens added multi-touch years later.
I don't think it was so much that resistive touchscreens were cheaper; rather, the dominant mobile interaction model had for a decade been oriented around styluses - handwriting recognition, small UI elements - and resistive touchscreens are simply more precise. Even with a capacitive screen, direct physical interaction such as smooth scrolling and pinch-zooming requires graphical horsepower that just wasn't on the table until around the time the iPhone came along.
Yeah. The T-Mobile G1 lacked multitouch gestures. You could hack them in though as the hardware supported it. I think it was a patent issue or someething which was why it was left out.
> My chosen password manager (1password) still has a fairly awful linux experience.
This is my biggest roadblock to Linux as well. I don’t sync to 1Password.com though and that’s all that is available, so it’s more than just a poor experience for me.
I thought about trying to share a Keepass database but that’s had some issues. I tried sharing via Keybase and had a weird issue that when I edited something in Keepass, it was unreadable in Linux. I didn’t have a problem if I shared it via USB drive though.
I've been keeping a Keepass database on Dropbox (encrypted with password + key file, neither of which are stored on Dropbox, obviously) for a while, and haven't noticed any issues with syncing. I'm mostly using it from a single device, though, but I don't think it should be likely for the sharing to introduce problems even if I made heavier use of multiple devices. It's not like the database is constantly being modified.
This might be a bit of a lazy solution, but it has been working well enough for me.
have you tried syncthing? i have it running on a synology nas that acts as the always-on server part, but i used syncthing just fine for over a year without it as well. you just have to be very conscious about having both devices turned on at the same time so they can sync to each other. you pretty much have to do the same thing with dropbox anyway, i.e. let a large file upload to their server before you turn off your computer
I ran 1Password 4.x on WINE successfully for a long while but the browser extensions started breaking so I eventually bit the bullet and switched to Bitwarden (running my own instance with bitwarden_rs). The import wasn't perfect (it doesn't handle attachments or tags), and the browser extension can sometimes be laggy, but so far it's at least worked everywhere I need it, which is more than can be said for 1PW or anything else.
> - I like the various iCloud/multi device integration features
Next time you give linux a try, you might want to check out https://kdeconnect.kde.org/ and https://syncthing.net/. I'm not a Mac user but I'd be surprised if between these you'd be missing any features.
+1 for KDE Connect. I had a friend who nearly shit their pants when they realized that "Continuity Clipboard" and "Airdrop" weren't iPhone-exclusive features.
My chosen password manager (1password) still has a fairly awful linux experience. This is getting better - they're producing a native app now. Said native app needs to support the local browser extensions though!
The desktop app is pretty good now, and if you’re using the Beta browser extension, it can talk to the desktop app to unlock. This feature is still in development, though, and has some restrictions.
> it's nigh impossible to eliminate tearing on multimonitor setups with X11,
I haven't seen tearing in longer than I can remember, and can't remember anyone even mentioning it, so I think you're overplaying this point JUST a tad. I tend to use older laptops with Linux, and older screens (VGA, DVI), so maybe that's the reason.
Out of curiosity (not to question), is this on Xorg or Wayland?
I rarely use my external monitor, and I can't even remember the last time I had used it in portrait mode, so these comments made me realize there could be use cases (and not just hardware or drivers) that trigger tearing that I just hadn't encountered. But I just took a quick shot at it, and I didn't see tearing, at least not on YouTube, nor when moving a window around.
I was wondering if I just wasn't very sensitive to tearing, because I haven't noticed it. One setup is a 4K 46" or Dell 30" next to a 4K laptop, the other is 4K 46" with two 1080P wings in portrait.
The recently released GNOME 40 has some new gestures enabled out of the box (3 finger vertical swipe for application switcher and horizontal for workspace switcher) and they work much better than previous attempts I've seen at touchpad gesture on Linux. The animation actually tracks your fingers now!
From what I've seen, it's very customizable. There's a custom Gestures app that allows you to bind an infinite amount of gestures to any shell command you want.
>is gnome still less customizable than even macOS?
Gnome has been more flexible since 2003, seeing as I haven't seen someone successfully replace the MacOS stylesheet. On Gnome, it's a 2 minute process, tops.
Thunderbird has "move to junk" on 'J'. I haven't found a way to deactivate that. Ultra annoying.
Evolution is fine, but I really wish Gnome's Mail and Calendar apps would get more love and development as they look modern and minimalistic. The accounts management is lacking support for the general case, sadly. And GPG...
> - Finding a mail client I don't hate on linux is tricky. I've never been able to get on with the console clients, and I actually quite like Mac Mail. Thunderbird is kinda okay.
If you're not a mailing list based developer, I would recommend MailSpring, which is both snappy any polished.
Regarding Preview, Gnome has an app called sushi that acts similarly, though in a read-only way. I don't usually use it much, but it seems to work on most videos and photos I've thrown at it.
As far as phone integration, KDEConnect is quite good, though it only works if the devices are in the same network.
> - Preview on macOS is great and no other OS has anything remotely equivalent. First class PDF support, ability to easily annotate anything, makes basic PDF editing easy.
How is the generation of 2D bar codes that many (government) forms use when you enter information into the various fields?
The only thing I like about windows is the image preview. You can easily scroll through a folder and look at all the images while you window is maximized. You can do the same in MacOS but I don’t think gallery is as good.
Previews capabilities are much better than any any built in tool or Adobe reader.
Re: mail client - it's been quite a while since I last used it, but I really liked Sylpheed on Linux. Lightweight, good looking, doesn't get in your way. You might want to give it a try if you haven't already.
I use Preview a lot just for batch resizing, I use KDE as desktop on my home computer and while Gwenview seems to be on par, it just cannot do batch resizing...
> I can agree with now are 2 and 3, the rest is just invalid.
The parent poster is clear on what they like (or don’t) and even prefaced everything with “and these are super subjective”. Personal preference doesn’t become invalid when another disagrees, nor does parent seem to be fishing for agreement.
I did explicitly state that my points were very subjective - they are personal opinions and I didn't try to hide that. I also did not try to hide that I like macOS - that's why I use it now, after all. As I explicitly said, my attempts with a linux laptop setup have been primarily an insurance policy against Apple continuing to run the Mac into the ground - not out of idealism.
But answers to a few specific points:
- Okular fails to render weird PDFs for me - things like NXP datasheets are notable for this. It is my usual PDF reader on Linux though. Additionally, the few features I called out were not an exhaustive list, just examples. Preview also makes it very easy to do things like combine PDFs or remove pages from existing PDFs, or do things like crop all of the pages in a PDF in one operation - this is surprisingly useful!.
- tearing is something I have never managed to actually completely eliminate. I can get rid of it for the most part on single display setups (although setting TearFree introduces video stuttering on intel), but on multi-display setups I have never managed to lose it - on both intel & amd's OSS stacks, and on nvidia's proprietary driver. I fully admit this is something that disproportionately annoys me and that others may not care about, but it's a solved issue on Windows and macOS and has been for years. Using wayland instead of X11 resulted in a lot of apps getting very poor performance or flat breaking when rendering - but every time I try wayland it has gotten a lot better since the last time. But replacing a 30+ year old windowing system with a new one is a pretty huge undertaking, so I'm not surprised it's taking a while!
- things like kdeconnect/gsconnect etc don't support integration with iOS. It's not their fault - iOS is restrictive and Apple keep it that way very deliberately, but it achieves their aim very well - it keeps people tied in to Apple's ecosystem. Losing all of the niceties at once is pretty jarring - and even if I replace everything at once, eg going macOS -> linux and iOS -> android, etc it still doesn't end up as fully integrated.
I'm not sure that the criticisms for the article and parent comment are quite so easy to dismiss wholesale, but I do concur that many of them are actually criticisms of the GNOME DE and not so much Linux itself. In my experience as a daily Linux user it was somewhere between 2-3 years ago that KDE Plasma surpassed GNOME as the most productive desktop environment for Linux, and the distance between the two only appears to widening still. I would love to see what impact the simple choice to swap plain Ubuntu for Kubuntu would have had on their conclusions.
Linux does have a lot of crappy and quality software. Using the better ones changes the experience a lot. Not all software on the macOS is top notch either. There are some amazing apps, but most of them can be replicated on Linux or have better equivalents.
It is however true that majority of Linux software that is excellent can leak over to Mac since OSS can be ported over, but the other way around doesn't really work.
Having said that, i have all the tools I need on Linux, excepting office, which I run via wine. I wish I didn't have to, but what can you do.
I also find a lot of people complain about to be simple habit; I've been using Linux 25ish years, and was an early (too early) adaptor of GNOME 3, and MacOS just pisses me off. I know that most of my complaints are simply me not being used to it though. I could learn to live with it I'm sure, but I'm not moving to a platform that's as hostile to users as MacOS. I'd rather move to Windows.
> Mac since OSS can be ported over, but the other way around doesn't really work.
Why then, is brew still considerably worse than apt, and Finder worse than...anything on Linux? You don't need the source code to replicate functionality. Additionally, some tools are better adapted to the philosophy of their 'native' desktops,so they have a challenge architecturaly and with the users mindsets/muscle-memory when ported across platforms.
This is all to say, I agree that it's pretty subjective: I'll take keyboard shortcuts over mouse gestures - so I won't "get" why Mac lovers emphasize trackpad performance so much, and I guess they won't "get" why I rave about system-wide shortcuts and configurability either. I use MacOs for work, but all my home computers run Linux. GNU core-utils are better than the BSD versions that ship on Macs - I will die on this hill
" beatiful, integrated kmail and their whole PIM suite"
Is that the one that used a MySQL database on the desktop? The disaster known as akonadi? That would frequently lock up requiring restarts? When I used KDE back in the day one thing I'd make sure was to remove PIM/akonadi/kmail completely and use Thunderbird or whatever else instead.
"Is that the one that used a MySQL database on the desktop?"
It's been a few months since I gave up, but IIRC Akonadi has a few storage backends.
I was looking for a GUI mail client to replace using my various webmail based interfaces. As much as I love Plasma, KMail and its ilk were painful. Akonadi still has issues all these years later, and gave me trouble setting it up. The messages produced are less than helpful.
Once KMail was running, it was fine to use, albeit with an occasional crash, just at the wrong times so it got annoying. I stopped using it.
Akonadi was an ambitious idea that was really badly implemented. I've not used KDE for ages so I have no idea what the current state of play is - I think they now disable it by default. Someone should have probably rewritten it with sqlite, back then.
Try watching Netflix in Firefox or Chromium. Or enable smooth scrolling in Firefox and hit PageDown a couple times. The issue with scrolling can be resolved by enabling hardware acceleration, but this isn't the default in Firefox and the obscure config breaks from time to time. Until hardware acceleration becomes the default, not an opt-in, I consider this feature broken.
Aside from Netflix, I'll sometimes see tearing even on YouTube, when I put it on fullscreen. Luckily, there is mpv with builtin youtube-dl support, which solves this problem. But I haven't found a solution for Netflix, other than rebooting into Windows, or switching to my Mac.
I wonder if there are significant differences between video hardware or drivers, or perhaps even generations. I've watched Netflix, a local HBO streaming service and YouTube on Linux for years on Intel graphics without noticing tearing, and yes, back when there was tearing when watching video on a previous (pretty old) machine I had, I did notice it.
Really? Last year when we were in the office multiple of my coworkers had awful tearing on their Linux machines of multiple distros. I’m sure it was related to their specific hardware/driver setups but still. These were workstation class machines.
I can’t remember ever seeing tearing on my MacOS machines. And I’m even using a cheapo $15 DisplayPort adapter for my third monitor.
I haven't seen tearing in years either except in somewhat exotic cases [1], so I wouldn't be surprised that there are other people who haven't either. Nor am I really surprised that some people do get tearing.
My recent experiences have been exclusively with Intel integrated GPUs on a laptop, which seem to be a fairly reliable option in terms of desktop compatibility and integration nowadays. I don't know what the current state of e.g. proprietary NVidia drivers is, but I wouldn't be surprised if you ran into more problems in terms of compatibility with the rest of the desktop system (including stuff like tearing) with those than with some of the better open source drivers.
Workstation-class machines might thus actually be more prone to tearing if they require using proprietary drivers.
That doesn't make it any less of a problem if your coworkers' machines did exhibit problems, of course.
[1] I've seen tearing e.g. when playing a web video in the Steam client, but I find that more of a corner case than browsers or general desktop use.
I actually experienced pretty bad tearing running i3 on a new (at the time, last August) Dell XPS 13, but switching to Wayland/sway fixed it and its been running flawlessly on that since.
I don't think it's even a matter of wanting to use Mac. What I read was "I simply don't want change. Full stop."
Subjeectively, being attached to an email client feels odd to me. That's what the brower is for; same for a PW manager. If Bitwarden has a client, I wouldn't even know. The browser ext works just fine. I used to use LastPass.
Ya can't have change without change. It's not necessarily easy. But it's always true: No delta, no glory.
I tend to like native apps a lot rather than browser equivalents.
I self-host my mail server and use an IMAP+SMTP client to talk to it - I don't use something like gmail. $work uses gmail and the web ui frustrates the hell out of me (and I pity anyone whose only experience with a native email client is being paired with gmail, because their IMAP implementation makes it rather painful!).
For password manager, 1password has a native app and browser extensions that talk to that local native app. There are browser only ones too, but I prefer the native app integration because it shares unlock state between all of the extensions and the full desktop client all in one go.
But you're right, you can't have change without things actually changing. It's a tradeoff between convenience and what you're used to, and the benefits of what you get from changing. For me, for now that ends up sitting on the side of macOS. For others, that might be Linux or even Windows. I don't think any of those positions are wrong, it's all about what works for each person.
It's absolutely subjective / personal. That being said, (non-mobile) OSs are less crucial, provided you have a browser. For a while I was having to move back and forth between Win and Apple. Being more browser-based made that less friction-y. Frankly, I think that's universally a good position to be in. That is, ultimately I don't care what OS. I'll be okay.
Humans adapt. It's what we do. Yet so often we mistake wants for needs.
If you're complaining about Linux drivers please do so after using a Laptop that supports Linux (Thinkpads for example). Just like it wouldn't be fair to complain about macOS on a Hackintosh - sound didn't work well and had to patch the DSDT.
> but there are rough edges for the power user.
> I am an extreme power user, ...
> In the end, I was able to replicate most of my macOS power tools setup via input hooks and shell scripts, but it took much longer than it should have.
It's very hard to define who a Power User is. But if you've spent a few years on Linux, you'd be able to do many things faster on Linux than on macOS. For instance, it's easier to automate tasks with shell scripts in Linux than to attempt the same with osascript.
I use macOS only when I'm forced to - because the absolute fundamentals are broken. Finder is unbelievably bad compared to Nautilus, package management is terrible, limited ability to tile windows, not even a simple way to set up an Application launch shortcut out of the box (yeah, can do with Automator).
If you're complaining about Linux drivers please do so after using a Laptop that supports Linux (Thinkpads for example).
So I Googled “laptops supported by Linux”. There is no official site. Ubuntu has a page. But it’s not on the first page of results. I only know about it because I’m familiar with it.
Supporters keeps arguing people should jump through hoops. I’m on Linux right now, but people have better things to do. Either provide a list so people know exactly what to buy, or all complaints are valid.
Apple sells you the whole package: take it or leave it. Windows supports everything and has their logo everywhere.
+1 I find it absurd that (some) linux supporters find it not only ok but even a must, to have to tinker around your machine in order to make everything work. I could understand it in the 90s but this is a very different era we're in. I get zero value from having to tinker with my x-org settings to make the external screen work (sometimes). I'm using a computer to create value elsewhere and having to even think about stuff that should just work eats up my time and energy.
I believe this is the main reason that OSx and even Windows are much more prevalent in company laptops that any linux distro. And I don't see this changing anytime soon. If even Ubuntu didn't make that cut I don't see which (distro) will.
Haven't tried a laptop that comes with preinstalled linux TBH. Maybe there's some light there. Dunno. But my last experience with a Thinkpad 550 and latest ubuntu was bad. As in no proper keyboard, terrible screen issues, networking issues...
> Haven't tried a laptop that comes with preinstalled linux TBH
Seriously? Why do you think Linux should work perfectly on some random machine that you installed it on? MacOS sure as hell won’t. If you don’t like the experience of doing the work to find the right hardware, distro, and customizing the setup with your favourite software then just buy a prebuilt system with everything installed. Like others have pointed out, many Linux users prefer to fully customize their setup, doing this is easier on Linux because you don’t have to hack around all of the default choices that Apple or Microsoft provide.
Ok, sure, many users prefer to fully customize their setup. But what about those who don't? Why isn't there a ready-to-go option like a Windows lapotop?
I got a System76 Darter Pro for work, preinstalled with Ubuntu. It worked perfectly. It booted directly into a graphical display manager. All drivers worked out of the box. Not sure what else there is to say here. That sounds like what you're after.
For reasons, I ended up installing Arch on the same laptop. It was your typical Arch experience, but I was able to get everything working, including fiddly stuffy like keyboard backlights, and monitor backlighting. Keyboard hardware controls all function. And this was with existing Arch packages. I didn't have to go hacking anywhere.
If I had to levy criticism, I'd say the preinstalled Linux options are at the same price point as Apple, and no where near Microsoft. Yeah, it's going to be harder to find an off-the-shelf $300 laptop with Linux preinstalled. I can say the same about a Mac too.
System 76 is not cheap. Worse if you’re international. Dell has limited options available and none that are available with their discounts. So if you want a nice and powerful dev machine... back to researching and tinkering. Is the cheapest way and if something is messed up, you still have the Windows license.
I acknowledged as much. However, the OP's comparison is with a Mac so I don't think discussing the cheapest approach is in the scope of the discussion.
There are ready to go options! System76 sells Linux computers, there's a few other companies that do too. Dell has stuff like their XPS Developer Editions that are designed for and come with Ubuntu out of the box. You just can't hop over to Best Buy and get a random system.
There are many, obviously not as many as ones that offer Windows.
In my previous workplace I had the option to choose any laptop and I chose one that comes with ubuntu preinstalled from the Dell XPS family. The reason I was comfortable with buying this for work, it comes preinstalled and I wouldn't have to tinker but I could call support. Didn't ever have to in the past few year.
There are a bunch of Lenovo thinkpads and thinkstations that come preinstalled with ubuntu. Not to forget multiple companies such as System76, Pursim etc.
There are options if you really want them. Whether you like to use one is up to one's personal preference. Though, it doesn't help that way too many people who haven't used a linux laptop in recent times have strong opinions about them, as evident in this thread.
Yeah, buy a linux certified laptop and you're done. You want the ability to hop hardware without paying the price that you might have to configure the OS to suit your workflow/hardware. Even the king of multiplatform PCs windows 10 you will sometimes experience issues until you install the right drivers.
Ubuntu has been going down the drain for a long time.
The problem is that they successfully (and for good reason) became the de facto Desktop Linux for users who wanted a desktop and not mess with it much.
They’ve cornered that market to the point there are very few alternatives (at least very few that will come preinstalled and supported) but because they want to IPO I guess, they’ve stopped focusing on the desktop at all and instead are concentrating on server uses primarily, which leads to significant issues.
The irony is by becoming the “it just works“ monster ubuntu tries to be right now it brought issues that no other major linux faces.
For me (using linux for 15+ years as desktop) ubuntu tends to break after only a few months. Usually complex dependencies like steam, wine or video editing stuff break first. I rarely manage to get out of a update without some dependencies breaking...
Fedora, Manjaro, Debian, ... nothing like that. Just a major stable operating system
Edit:// to clearify. I do like and use ubuntu server because its simple and well supported. I just think its mediocre as desktop OS and would recommend anyone to check Manjaro or Fedora
I vastly prefer Fedora but could never get tensorflow to work with my GPU (Nvidia 1660x,) and unfortunately now I can’t get it to work with Ubuntu either. Or, more accurately, I can’t get it to work while using display drivers. I have to install one or the other.
> but because they want to IPO I guess, they’ve stopped focusing on the desktop at all
No, that's simply because the desktop, after all these years, still brings in little or no money - whereas server builds are used in clouds (at one point they were the most popular "cloud distro") and do make significant money through revenue-sharing agreements.
Ubuntu desktop started going downhill the minute Shuttleworth decided he'd had enough with the "generous mecenate" thing and Ubuntu should make back its costs. Since then, it's been a series of steers towards anything that could make some cash.
So does Ubuntu. I've installed it on a few family's computers without any issues as long as the hardware wasn't brand spanking new. The defaults are fine and it makes a good secure machine for the (younger) kids to use the internet on for those families who limit their kids time on the internet.
No tinkering required, the only change required to make it useable was to set desktop scaling for HiDPI, accessible via Displays area if the settings app. No terminal commands required.
If anything, the amount of tinkering required has increased as hardware has gotten more complex. I'm probably looking through rose-tinted glasses to some extent, but in the mid 2000s it was usually quite easy to get graphics and sound working well in Linux on generic PC hardware. And of course, most people didn't need to worry about WiFi, Bluetooth, suspend/resume, touchpads, etc. etc. in those days.
I constantly had problems with these and more back then. (E.g. making my TV grabbing card work was a nightmare.) I don't experience this since I've been using a ThinkPad.
Our family Lenovo all-in-one windows machine with its preinstalled windows: Time synchronization doesn't work. Have to set the clock manually. When logging in and if another user is logged in the start bar freezes for up to 5 minutes before it lets me do anything. All sorts of things like this. Random problems like that.
My personal Windows machine upstairs loses sound output via my monitor every time the monitor goes to sleep and wakes up. Windows just forgets that the device exists. Sometimes plugging in a headphone and then unplugging it will "remind" Windows that there's an HDMI output device, other times not.
No issues with Linux on that machine at all. Everything just works, stock Debian install. No issues with sound, only issue being that the fan is a bit loud so I had to fiddle with bios settings to get it quieter.
Personally i think it is insane to install OSX or Windows for anyone who does not want to tinker these days. Why not just a major linux (maybe not ubuntu if you dont like tinkering, but fedora or so) so the box works without issues for more than a few months
Depends on what you tinker with. Getting basic things to work on your hardware is frustrating. Nobody wants to deal with that really. The answer for that is getting a laptop (or desktop) that is well supported. I know it can feel limiting, but with OSX you only get to choose from one vendor...
If we talk about tinkering for customizing your user experience then it's very empowering. You can get things to work exactly as you'd like and that is a productivity booster. (Even if it just removes frustration and friction.) Sometimes it means being able to undo the stupid decisions of the developers (e.g. GNOME) which may seem like the first category (i.e. you have to tinker just in order to get things work again as they used to), but if you are stuck on windows or osx you'd have a lot less chance to do so and you'd lot more likely just have to put up with it.
E.g. in the past 2+ decades I have to wrestle to get my desktop grid layout (3x3 desktops/workspaces) to work, because some idiot back around 2000 figured out that it's "not the right metaphor" or what not and they should not be geometrically related, yadda-yadda. Since then, every major upgrade of gnome breaks the external solution I use (which is different every time). Is it frustrating? Yes. At least I know not to upgrade until I know there is a workaround again. But I can keep using it nevertheless. (I used to have a utility that provided this feature on windows. The last version I've used it on was XP and even back then it wasn't available for download anymore. I'm not sure at all if I could still use it on win10 or even win7.)
Linux has some great new development, like Wayland[1], pipewire. They may be a bit buggy as of now, but the former does basically solve the tinkering with x config things, multi monitor hdpi, hotplugged monitor and the like will just work.
[1] Yeah wayland is a protocol, and it already has some quite stable implementations like gnome and sway.
I don't have to mess around with xorg config for more than 10 years.
I'm using Debian and the only thing I had to do is enable non-free to get some firmwares.
Everything works 100% hassle free.
My experiences with macos were quite frustrating, specially around package management (or the lack of it), poor quality of brew packages (too many dependencies breaking stuff), constant slowdown and crashes with mildly median workload, screen artifacts around the desktop time to time, having to disable stuff to be able to change things in /usr or /etc, too many stuff eating up ram by default, etc.
Honestly don't know how people can use that and be happy.
Even when bought with support, it might come with surprises.
I got the Asus 1215B with Linux, then Ubuntu decided to replace the perfectly working wlan driver with a FOSS one, except it took half an year to reach parity with the proprietary one.
Likewise, they decided to replace AMD driver with the open source one, goodbye OpenGL 4.1 now it doesn't do more than OpenGL 3.3, and hardware video decoding is still not a thing.
At the same time, the Windows DX 11 drivers shipped with the same hardware (it was Windows 7 back then), still work on Windows 10.
This kind of settled Linux on desktop for me, now it belongs to VMs, and on ChromeOS/WebOS/Android it is anyway just an implementation detail.
I get your frustrations, yet your problem is with proprietary software and proprietary drivers. I’m sure there’s a way for you to go back to using the old drivers if you’re set on using the latest capabilities of your hardware (without it being FOSS).
You don’t have to be the guinea pig, let others do it if it’s not your thing (many programmers do seem to enjoy it, and see it as a challenge).
There is no way, because the only way to make it work is to dig out a pre-historic kernel from the same year Asus released 1215B with Linux support.
Proprietary software for 1215B, e.g. Windows, is working just fine with Windows 10, even though it was originally released with Windows 7.
So we are talking about Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows 8.1, and several Windows 10 releases, all supporting the original Windows 7 drivers for Asus 1215B.
I have been a Linux guinea pig since Slackware 2.0 came on Linux Unleashed book, eventually one gets tired of the Linux Desktop meme.
Linux was anyway just the way I got cheap UNIX clone at home during my degree, professionally I have spent more years using commercial UNIXes.
Nowadays any POSIX clone will do the job, or as alternative we stuck the Linux kernel into a VM.
Have you tried to install AMD proprietary drivers?
Did you installed the firmware for your WiFi card?
By the way you complain about Linux seems that you really don't like it and that nobody can convince you te opposite, but I believe that if you manage to learn the basics around it it pay off in the long run :)
> There is no way, because the only way to make it work is to dig out a pre-historic kernel from the same year Asus released 1215B with Linux support.
My dear, my first UNIX experience was with Xenix back in 1993, I also used DG/UX, Tru64, HP-UX, Aix, Solaris, Slackware, Red-Hat, Yasdril, Mandranke, SuSE, FreeBSD, Ubuntu, Debian, OS, Scientific Linux.
Back in 2002 - 2003, I wrote cluster simulation software while at CERN running on Linux, followed by other examples of deployment of Linux based software into production, like Nokia's NetAct cluster monitoring platform.
I judge my Linux experience starting in Summer 1995, the year I got my first Linux distribution, Slackware 2.0, that makes a couple of years in experience.
Try to not see everything as an attack against your identity, detach yourself from it and don't take yourself too seriously. Been there, done that.
Now I have a way more pleasant life experience and people takes me seriously without having me needing to assert who I am. Life is lighter now and I have more friends, people few more comfortable around me.
I'm giving this feedback because I think it will make your life better too.
Was nice to chat with you, now I'll go out for a bike ride while I still a bit of sun over here.
That sounds a little like telling someone that their problems are that their cows are not spherical. For graphics drivers specifically, having tochoose between FOSS and something that works is very frustrating.
Well, it is still open after all, given you are a very experienced guy you should consider rolling the sleeves and sending some patches to fix that, right?
Giving back to the community for something you get for _free_ is nice.
My gratis work is done for things that really matter to fellow humans, like charity, poor people on the street and not so lucky people that need an helping hand to get back into society, refugees that almost faced death running away from oppressive regimes.
That is where I can gladly give my skills and money.
Look buddy, your experience (having a bad time) with Linux seems to be quite frustrating, I couldn't find one positive comment about Linux from you in this post.
Maybe I'm very lucky with Linux, but I don't agree that it is as bad as you are saying.
I'm sorry for you, maybe you should stay with windows indeed. :/
> The FOSS amd and intel drivers work great and have for years.
Intel has a random lock up in the Mesa. It had this lock up for several years. It has not been fixed. I have a 4k laptop with it, it is incredibly frustrating that I cannot use kitty or alacritty on it because of that crash.
AMD driver crashes on modern cards every few weeks.
If you want to have a "What are you talking about, it just works?" experience, you buy an NVidia card with proprietary drivers, slap X11 on it and you are off to the races. It just works (currently driving 4x 4k monitors). Last crash was about 11 months ago. The crash manifested in a freeze for about 20 seconds, followed by it recovering by itself.
OSS graphics drivers are just not as good as people claim.
I would have agreed with you but sound input broke for me (Lenovo flex 14 with AMD R5 3500U) on fedora with kernel 5.8 and didn’t get fixed until 5.9. That was months of something being broken. How did this happen and more importantly did we learn anything to prevent this from happening in the future?
For now fedora is on an old desktop machine with an ancient i3-2100 processor and I just ssh into it.
Again, that's like googling "laptops supported by MacOS" and expecting to find a list of Hackintosh compatible hardware. Dell and Lenovo both sell laptops pre-installed with Linux, and there are also boutique shops like System76 and TUXEDO. And I DDGed "Linux Laptops" and got all these suggestions.
Of course, Linux doesn't quite have the mass market consumer experience you get with MacOS or Windows, but it's not exactly hard to find laptops pre-installed with Linux.
Are they supported, though? That was the question. Downvote me all you want, put words in my mouth if that is what you need to do, etc.
A. But are they supported and is that a meaningful question?
B. I am not bashing anything Linux because I don't hate it in the slightest.
C. Did you read the parent I responded to? That comment makes two claims and tries to establish an analogous relation and that does not work the way the author wanted. That was also my reply.
So you missed the point of that post, you missed the point of mine and you strawmanned me :)
Several of the laptops mentioned are vendors who sell them officially with Linux support (system 76, dell developer edition, purism...) , so you either didn't bother or trying to create a false narrative
Actually the previous poster talked about sites for laptops supporting hackintoshes. I'd be very surprised if you find that information on any "official" website.
Not to give an argument along the lines of "You're holding it wrong," but...okay, yeah, I'm going to do that.
You hold a gun in one way. If you mess that up in any fashion, you probably won't hit what you're trying to, and, worse, might shoot yourself.
Saying things like "There is no official site" is holding Linux wrong. Linux isn't an operating system. Linux is just a kernel.
So phrase your search the right way:
"laptops that support GNU/Linux installation"
You'll be surprised to find, immediately it lists a whole bunch of laptops sold with a Linux kernel on them! I don't normally use Google, but just for you, I checked on it: It even has an easy-answers page.
If you want the whole package, look up an operating system, not a kernel.
With my latest Linux machine I actually picked some easy to get laptops on a steep discount and then started googling to find other people’s experience. I’ve been using some Linux distribution or other for a long time.
But that’s not what a newbie or outsider sees. And until there is the kind of assurance from some Linux distribution or whatever, all criticisms of the difficulty of getting a Linux machine running are valid.
> And until there is the kind of assurance from some Linux distribution or whatever, all criticisms of the difficulty of getting a Linux machine running are valid.
Great, they're invalid! Off the top of my head, System76 and KDE both sell laptops running it. As both of them have distributions, and selling something is more or less as close to assurance as you can get, by your own logic here the criticisms are worthless.
I don't even care about "le Linux on the desktop meme", personally, I just find these criticisms incredibly lazy and transparently without merit.
Does anyone shop for laptops this way? or anything else for that matter - Google "laptops that support usb c" and expect an official page from usb c? or google "cars that have a turbocharger" and expect an official page from turbocharger? And, when you don't find it come to a conclusion that usb c is bad.
No offense but seems like even if you did find laptops with linux and pick the best one, you probably won't like it because you have already made up your mind.
I run a recent XPS Developer Edition (my second) and I've had so few issues over years. It's always seemed like a different world all users with constant issues.
Would absolutey recommend Elementary OS for Mac users switching to Linux. I moved to Arch a couple of weeks ago, but only because of combination of wanting to try Gnome 40 and wanting to run various cutting edge mobile Linux deps.
> Either provide a list so people know exactly what to buy, or all complaints are valid.
Sure, these are two devices I have recently used with Linux that work out of the box:
Dell XPS 13
ThinkPad T14s
Or more generally, you can extend that to any ThinkPad or Dell device without a dedicated graphics card and you will have a good Linux experience.
OP somehow has issues on XPS 13, probably due to meddling with too many things. My XPS 13 (9360) has everything working out of the box with Ubuntu 20.04
A very good idea if you want to confirm just before placing an order is to google "<laptop name> Arch Linux wiki" which will take you to the Arch wiki page for that device. There you can see if there are any known compatibility issues.
The Ubuntu certified devices page is pretty good as well.
> Apple sells you the whole package: take it or leave it.
For Linux Dell and Lenovo do that too (in most regions these days).
From what I understand from the blog post, the author is expecting Linux and the software to behave the same as macOS. That is just comparing apples and oranges. If you want a system that you are used to, you should probably stick to that. As in, if macOS works for you, I see no reason you should switch to Linux. I used a Mac for ~5 years before finally giving up because I just hated the window management (among other things). But hey, that does not need to apply to everyone.
- when using external display, video tearing would be visible either on internal or external display
- Xorg doesn't really support different scaling for different displays, and Wayland has other issues
- battery life is shorter than on Windows
- graphics performance is worse, at least in Firefox/Chrome (smooth animations on Windows would be choppy on Linux)
- touchpad is not great on Windows, but it's even worse on Linux (even after fiddling with settings, and trying many solutions, using it on Windows feels better)
Interesting. Apart from the per-display scaling (which is basically a Xorg limitation as you said) I had the opposite experience on my XPS 13. At the end I did not want a 4K display but Dell did not offer me the option. So I just used 1080p scaled most of the time.
Battery life was stupid on Windows (~3-4 hours max, while Linux did 7-8 with moderate load). Somehow on Windows the fan would always be running even without any significant activity in Resource Monitor.
I remember playing 4K videos on Linux (Firefox though, and I only tested YouTube) without any trouble (with monitor disconnected though, due to what you described earlier).
Touchpad would work sweet on Linux but needed some tweaking on Windows (otherwise it'd 2-finger scroll too fast sometimes).
> So I Googled “laptops supported by Linux”. There is no official site.
https://linux-on-laptops.com/ has been around for a long time and it looks like it's still being updated. Though the official Linux-Laptop-HOWTO does need a lot of work to make it current.
Out of curiosity, what would qualify as an "official site" for laptops supported by Linux? Would it be run by Linus Torvalds, Alan Cox, or some other maintainer? I think expecting anything official or authoritative from the Linux side is missing the boat.
What you're looking for is hardware vendors who support a Linux desktop environment on their laptops, which are not too difficult to find.
The poster wasn't using Linux to refer to the Linux kernel here - they used it to mean "a Linux distribution". Distributions have their own hardware compatibility documentation systems. Eg Ubuntu has this: https://certification.ubuntu.com/ and Red Hat has https://catalog.redhat.com/hardware .
Hence my question. Per site guidelines I assumed the most generous interpretation of the poster's comment, which to me means they found those sites and do not consider them official. In that light, I was curious what they would consider official.
I prefer to take a hardware vendor's opinion as to whether that hardware is supported by Linux. They have some skin in the game, and have the resources to test the hardware, whereas many Linux distros will rely on user reports.
I imagine Ubuntu and Redhat have more resources to validate hardware and so those sites are likely more reliable, but once you get to niche distros YMMV on their compatibility matrices.
I own Thinkpad X1 extreme, that I bought with my own money, and chose as working laptop Thinkpad Carbon. Both are not working well with linux.
1. Carbon, due to it's intel chip, can not drive 4K and 2K external monitors via thunderbolt adapter.
2. I need to authorize dock (Lenovo's thunderbolt dock) after every reboot.
3. The screen tearing sucks.
4. I need to have pulse audio volume control window opened all the time, otherwise the laptop loses my external sound card after first call via browser, and I need to turn it off/on.
On my own laptop, where I installed Ubuntu, I can boot only into 5.8.0.43 kernel (the one which I initially installed). All others, that I've got via apt-get update stuck with blinking cursor at last step of boot, and it's well known problem.
The longer I'm trying to love linux for work os, the more I realize that only tool that I truly want from linux is i3. For the rest I'm happily using WSL2 on my home, and don't have choice with work.
So on next hardware refresh date I think I'll choose Mac. The supplied by job laptop config is also more performant than carbon. So, hope, I'll be able to use my monitors in native res, and not put 2K into 1920x1020 mode
>4. I need to have pulse audio volume control window opened all the time, otherwise the laptop loses my external sound card after first call via browser, and I need to turn it off/on.
Sounds is really bad
To get sound on my headphones, I need to restart pulseaudio and ALSA, and unplug and replug the headphones
I was having huge flaky thunderbolt problems on my Linux T490 - even updating the laptop firmware didn't fix it despite Lenovo changelogs indicating a bunch of thunderbolt dock bugs fixed.
Then I swapped the Lenovo thunderbolt dock with another one at work and everything just worked fine. I run 3 monitors (2 external 2560x1440) at once, but no 4k.
Maybe it was dock firmware versions - the Lenovo dock updater software was Windows only, so I had never tried it.
> 1. Carbon, due to it's intel chip, can not drive 4K and 2K external monitors via thunderbolt adapter.
Is this a Linux only issue? I saw people reporting on Reddit that they are using 4k @ 60hz external monitors. Was thinking of getting an X1C but not if it can't do 4k
I wouldn't be surprised if it was a thunderbolt linux issue. The dell "docking station" usb-c hubs don't really work well with anything else than dell windows machines. Same with some lenovo bluetooth mice.
I do remember however that contrary to macos my 2012 macbook air could drive higher resolution external monitors when running linux. So I'd put this into the Thunderbolt is a hackjob on linux box.
Some non-apple laptops sometimes reduce badwidth of thunderbold 3 (e.g. in mine t490s the bandwidth is halved, just because - this is hardware, not linux).
However, TearFree does murder performance and lead to some horrible screen lag at times, and as an extra bonus AccelMethod sna is still crashy years after being introduced :(
edit: there's also the modesetting driver + a reasonable compositor, but this can come with it's own set of bugs and issues in my experience.
I've been interested in recording music using free software on Linux. The exchange above is similar to the cycle I've been in... encountering problems, finding magical incantations that fix things in some ways but often involve some sort of tradeoff, and making gradual progress toward being as productive as I am using Apple's Logic.
But I've been doing this three steps forward, two steps back routine for like three years now. I have most things working but it has really taken the full force of my frustration with Apple to keep returning to it and making progress.
It's exactly why I have mac laptops for work and personal use, although I also have a full time linux desktop (and also a windows one for gaming. still no real alternative there!).
I'm an easily frustrated person and I end up with enough pain points on linux for both work and personal use that I've never managed to make the switch full time.
> Thus enabling TearFree requires more memory and is slower (reduced throughput) and introduces a small amount of output latency, but it should not impact input latency
Curious. If you had to buy tomorrow, what would you do? Given that M1 Pro won't be out till end of 21(?) and despite that, current Pros don't seem to come with a reduced price.
I haven't done my research recently. Thinkpad works fine with Windows, so, most likely, it'd be last gen Mac/Thinkpad Extreme or something in that league.
I had hopes that Microsoft will evolve Surface Books to normal processors, but it seems like the line is dying.
I have a 13” M1 pro, it’s easily the best computer I’ve owned (and I have a Ryzen 3600/Vega 10 desktop with 128GB of RAM that runs KDE Plasma very well, but there’s still no competition)
I was trying to make the Mac to Linux switch just like the author, mostly due to excitement around sway (wayland). But it was awful, none of the basic things I wanted to do seemed doable...I would research solutions and they wouldn’t work. So I tried switching to i3 in the hopes of at least having a more established ecosystem to rely on.
But similar story. Half-baked (or sometimes, overcooked) support, configs that we’re supposed to swap eg CapsLock with Escape not working as described or losing their effect after sleep, impossible to get my multi monitor high DPI setup to work without coloration or resolution issues, futzing around with sound and not able to get it working as hoped just like the last time I tried to do this in 2008...you know, all the things you want before you start doing actual work, but none of them function properly OOTB or, often, even after reading extensive documentation and advice.
I wish I could use i3, but my BetterTouchTool configuration gives me something that is close enough.
I might still try FreeBSD, but I totally feel twice-burned by Linux at this point.
> I was trying to make the Mac to Linux switch just like the author
I've tried a couple of times, but finally decided what's the point. Linux is amazing on all the servers I run and manage. It's lightweight, supported well, and does a great job. I also rarely have to tinker with it. For servers, it really does just work.
On the PC side not so much. I used to run linux in various flavors on the desktop side for years. It provided more power than windows IMO. Then OS X came out with actual unix underpinnings, a functional media system (UI, audio, video), and fully supported creative apps like Ps, MS Office, and later LR.
Against my better judgement I tried a final time move to desktop linux a couple of years ago, but multi-monitor mixes of hi and low dpi were just unworkable. I actually posted a question (it may have been here on HN - can't remember), and one of the responses was 'no one needs HiDPI screens'. Got it.
He specifically targeted the "complain about linux drivers" part in his comment didn't he? He didn't dismantle the entire post, just comment on a specific part he disagreed with. I don't fully agree with it, especially since things such suspend, the fingerprint scanner and the LTE modem were still a mystery to be solved with the x1c6/7.
But if anything, your attitude that's effectively shutting down any criticism is the problem.
I clarified now in the article that the "Linux Laptop" is a Dell XPS 13" Developer Edition, which is marketed indeed as a Linux laptop, and the Ubuntu is marketed as "Ubuntu Dell".
> Screen tearing with the intel driver. Come on. This was solved on xorg and now with Wayland it's back.
Since you mentioned Dell XPS, I'm thinking they'd have sold it to you with Ubuntu 20.04. But why did you choose Wayland - which IIRC is not the default in 20.04? These are the trickiest pieces of the distro, and will take years to stabilize. Especially considering that Linux aims to work across the entire set of PCs in existence.
It is a 2018 Dell XPS. It had a previous version preinstalled, which used Wayland. I explicitly remember having to edit the settings to run with Xorg because otherwise screen sharing in Google Meet would not work.
I upgraded to 20.04 at some point. During the six months I tried both environments. I ended up with Xorg just because it works.
I'll be the devil's advocate even though I agree with you partially and I personally prefer Linux, both for practical and philosophical reasons. However, I use a Linux laptop privately and macOS for work, so I think by now I understand both systems a little bit.
For automating tasks on macOS you can look at something like hammerspoon which is really cool (though I mostly use it to modify some of the macOS keybindings which I find ridiculous) [1].
Finder is crap, I agree. But then again, I'm mostly in the terminal, so I don't care much. I would however complain that the default terminal on macOS is really not very good and I always install iTerm2... most Linux distros seem to have a better terminal pre-installed.
Package manager is better on Linux for system packages, applications, etc. (in fact, such a thing doesn't really exist on macOS, save for maybe homebrew cask, but that has problems). However, dev packages are tricky on Linux, too. Generally, for dev packages I might want to have a) a very specific (and often the latest) version of something, and b) often multiple versions installed separately. Additionally, on most Linux distros you can't install without root. On a Linux machine, I mostly have to install such tools in addition to my package managed libraries and apps, on macOS I can typically just "brew install rbenv" or so (though homebrew has its own share of problems).
In general I would say that macOS makes it slightly easier to do things sort-of reasonably well for default flows but can break down quickly once you want something more custom. With Linux, while it has become a lot (!) better in the last 15 years or so, I still occasionally need to debug some audio problem or so. The upside is that problems on Linux are generally solvable (although, in some instances it can be hard to figure out exactly how). If your macOS does something that is weird or buggy (e.g.: before the update to big sur I had the annoying issue that my system would go into DND mode after every restart, which is really not good if you don't want to miss notifications), then you're out of luck and there's nothing you can do.
> I would however complain that the default terminal on macOS is really not very good and I always install iTerm2...
Apple’s terminal is one of the very few that passes the VT torture test and has support for double width and height attributes. Sadly, it doesn’t do overlines and doesn’t italicise my terminal font.
I think it depends on a font supporting them correctly. I’m using a zsh prompt that uses them and it seems normal. Check https://github.com/rbanffy/3270font and let me know if it helps. I was thinking of adding the powerline symbols to the test renderings.
The problem is not with font glyphs, but with colors. Background and foreground colors that should be the same aren't, they are different shades, thus some themes (such as powelevel9k/powerlevek10k) appear broken, see https://imgur.com/a/HAcE4Yu
And the line height -- it could be font, it could be terminal, I didn't investigate (it is DejaVu Sans Mono for Powerline).
Terminal allows fine tuning the spacing. I tried to optimise my font to look good on the default settings, but that doesn’t always work and never works for every program.
I tried a bunch of terminals and ended up switching from urxvt to termite https://github.com/thestinger/termite a few years back (mainly for it's better handling for refreshing certain curses style output).
Anyone who is a "extreme power user" is doomed to fail on any new platform. You should approach a new platform planning to learn and embrace what you find there, and become a new power user. Trying to port over the most "extreme power user" workflows you're used to on one system is inevitably going to fail. This was doomed from the start.
My anecdote. Few weeks ago I bought Dell Latitude 3410. It's an extremely cheap (and underpowered) 13" laptop. I upgraded RAM and installed M.2 SSD. It came with Ubuntu 18.04 pre-installed (which contained a dozen of dell-specific packages). I installed Fedora 33 and checked everything I could check. Every bit of hardware worked correctly out of the box, so I'm pretty happy so far. And despite being underpowered, it's very fast and snappy, definitely faster than my old Macbook in day-to-day usage.
I paid $600 for laptop and $150 for RAM and SSD upgrades. Comparable Macbook Air would cost $2000 for me.
It does have terrible TN screen, cheap touchpad and bad keyboard layout. That's good enough for me, as I prefer external everything in day-to-day use.
The ones that have bugged me today: It randomly forgets view preferences. There is something weird about SMB shares where they appear mounted but actually aren’t.
It doesn’t have scroll bars in its default state.
MacOS is my favourite by a mile, but there are some major warts, though the finder isn’t my major gripe.
Not having used Nautilus, there's a bunch of bad things about the Finder I can complain about.
The tabs. First of all, they're Safari-style tabs and Safari has awful tabs. And then there's a preference called "open folders in new tabs instead of windows". Open up a Finder window, open Terminal and run `open /path/to/directory`. What happens? Directory opens in a new Finder window.
There's no way to have Finder remember what size a window should be. There's a bunch of tricks that people post online of how you can have Finder remember a window size but they don't work. It might register it on a folder-level but then you run `open /path/to/directory` and it opens up a postage stamp sized window (even though it should open a tab).
It's honestly surprising how absolutely horrible it is after years and the new Big Sur only have it a fresh coat of paint without fixing any of these issues
But that's not cut and paste. That's copy and special paste. And I don't want to start training my brain to use a different set of keys to do the exact same thing that I can do elsewhere just because Apple thinks I should.
Yeah, I am wondering about that too. Finder can rename multiple files and has a goto folder option. Edit: I couldn't find a goto option in Nautilus. I don't know how I missed batch rename in Nautilus... Still, if Nautilus has any advanced features, they're well hidden.
I agree, I’ve always found the Finder extremely usable, especially once you’ve taken a couple minutes to browse the menus and learn the Keyboard Shortcuts.
One interesting thing I’ve noticed is that people don’t seem to bother to look at the menus anymore: one of the first things I’ve always done with a new application (ever since Windows 3.1 on a Pentium 90) is open the menus and skim the menu items to figure out the basic functionality available.
Selecting multiple files and pressing F2 or "Rename Files…" under the context menu is about as intuitive for renaming multiple files as I can possibly imagine.
Yeah, typing a folder's address could be a bit more discoverable in Nautilus. You can press Ctrl+L (like a web browser), or just start typing a folder address that begins with / or ~ but you're right there's no visible clickable button.
My experience is the other way round: it took me several minutes and much frustration to find a way to type a folder address in Finder.
Unless I’m completely misunderstanding you, showing Thumbnails has an obvious button on the toolbar. Go to parent is harder, but I think for the sequence you describe there’s a back button on the toolbar that will do what you want. Otherwise, you can use the breadcrumb bar at the bottom (can’t remember if this is a default setting or not) or open the Go menu and learn that Command-Up is the shortcut for “parent directory”. (A little later you discover this is symmetrical: Command-Up goes “up” out of the folder you’re looking at, Command-Down goes “down” into the selected item.)
To go to the parent, command click on the title in the title bar of the window.
I don’t know how you’d ever guess that, but I remember it back from the Mac OS 9 days.
The only thing I can think of is that Finder doesn't support SFTP out of the box.
It's a bit embarrassing that Apple doesn't support an entry-level feature like that, but otherwise Finder has been steadily improving for the past few years.
I think “Linux supported” is a vague promise that should not be relied on. I had a T495s which is supported officially on Ubuntu 18.04 LTS. And it was quite frankly broken. Closing the lid didn’t work, it drank batteries faster than windows by a mile and plugging in external displays caused the X server to crash.
This is unfortunately every experience I’ve had with Linux on native hardware to some capacity in the last 24 years of using it other than dumb headless servers. So I use windows as the native OS and virtualise anything else.
> If you're complaining about Linux drivers please do so after using a Laptop that supports Linux (Thinkpads for example)
I bought a Lenovo specifically since they mentioned all their laptops will support Linux in the future.
Note that historically Lenovo didn't really "support" Linux. Remember the Windows tax and how most Thinkpads came with Windows and most still do? Thinkpads supported Linux in spite of Lenovo / IBM.
Anyhoo, my new Lenovo had to wait a few months until the trackpad worked! Turns out Lenovo only meant that business laptops (or some other sub-category) will support Linux out of the box. Silly me.
> For instance, it's easier to automate tasks with shell scripts in Linux than to attempt the same with osascript.
Are you talking about automating UI tasks in linux? Nearly all of my linux shell scripts work fine on macOS and vice versa unless they are using something OS specific.
While not perfect, with macOS I get a large majority of what makes Unix nice while also avoiding the UI annoyances. Using macOS also tends to give more software options over unix/linux alone, like PS, LR, the Affinity toolset, etc...
When I bought my Thinkpad (one year after its release and with lots of recommendations) it took more than a year before it worked reliably without any kernel panics and weird lockups. External monitor support when docked was broken for even longer. Now I fear the day this notebook stops working and I might have to go through similar trouble again.
* No ability to use single click + hover to highlight
* Relative sizing feels way off - everything in Finder always seems to be simultaneously way too spaced out while also being way too small.
* Never seems to remember view preferences properly, and often defaults to confusing arrangements.
* Doesn't like to stay connected to network drives, despite any number of tricks I've tried.
* The usual cut/paste/delete operations being needlessly complicated to perform
I do prefer macOS overall, partly because I'm tired of having to constantly tweak and fix Linux whenever I try to use it as a desktop system, and because of things like iTerm2 and BetterTouchTool.
But I really hate trying to do any kind of real file management with Finder, and most third-party apps I've tried just seem to replicate everything I dislike about Finder.
I can't speak for GP, but I'd pay for Path Finder even if all it did was give me cmd-x to cut, and enter key to mean open instead of rename. It does a ton more, but those two are the killer features for me (Tabs used to be one too, but Finder finally got those a while ago).
I definitely agree with you on the lack of cmd-x for cut. However, you can do cmd-c to copy, and then cmd-option-v to move files rather than copy them.
Enter to rename and cmd-o to open was hard to adapt to when I moved from Windows, but it's second nature now.
Using the distinction of paste as copy vs paste as move, instead of overloading the cut metaphor is a better choice semantically. When you cut text or images from a document with ctrl/cmd-x the content is deleted immediately. It’s weird and inconsistent that in windows the files get greyed out and if you don’t paste them they... eventually look normal again when you put something else in the clipboard? Modifying the paste with option on mac is also consistenT with option switching between move and copy while dragging files.
I also switched to Linux, and I love it, but only on my desktop machine. I got uhk for key remapping, and that's been great. For email and calendar, I use wavebox, which side steps most of the app issues.
As the article says: The laptop experience is not anywhere near as good. I had a lot of the same issues, even on a system 76.
Eventually I decided to try giving windows wsl2 a shot for my laptop, and I gotta give Microsoft credit. It's been great. All the benefits of windows ecosystem, hardware comparability, games etc.... And the ability to do pretty much everything development wise through wsl2. The keyboard combos are similar enough in Linux and windows that I don't have trouble switching contexts. However, most of my development is still on desktop.
A few years ago, I would probably have described myself as a never Microsofter. Maybe my passion for using as much open source software as possible is dying down, or maybe Microsofts push to embrace open source is paying off. Whichever it is, I've come back around to appreciating windows recently.
WSL 1 was great, WSL 2 is probably even more amazing. The problem is it comes with a massive ball and chain called "the rest of Windows 10". Even ignoring all the ads, all the spyware, all the Windows Update shittiness... the UI is a confusing mess and easily beat by the likes of XFCE, Mate, or Plasma. Add that other stuff, and it's all just a huge pain that I don't want to deal with. So I don't, and I just run Linux desktops. They do what they're called upon to do and otherwise just stay put.
And Windows isn't even that bad. Compared to busted up 90s Windows it's a dream come true. But I've been spoiled by Linux and my "geek privilege" of knowing how to operate it all these years.
> Compared to busted up 90s Windows it's a dream come true.
Hard disagree. A 90's-era Windows wasn't perfect by any means, but Windows peaked with Windows 2000 and it's been downhill from there. Modern Windows - at least as Microsoft intends for people to use day-to-day - is an abomination, and I would sooner use Windows ME day-to-day than any version of Windows 10 normally available to consumers.
That said, most of that downhill has been due to bloat. Windows 10 LTSC almost makes Windows nice enough for me to consider using it as my daily driver again.
Can’t say I agree with this. I’ve been using Windows as my daily driver for the last decade since switching back from Mac+Linux for work reasons.
Honestly there’s lots to like in Windows 10 even if there’s a bit of bloat around the edges. I cannot imagine wanting to go back to the bad old days of ME. Modern Windows is stable, secure, fast and has plenty in there for power users.
Driver support and sleep mode is seamless and just works. Even video drivers are sandboxes in their own process. Windows can and I have seen it recover from video and other driver crashes. My laptop can switch between embedded and nVidia graphics seamlessly. This is a lot better than the situation on Linux.
Integrated firewall, AV (Windows Defender), drive encryption (bit defender) and application signing is great for end users. The update process is pushy but nags less than I’ve seen on Macs and honestly you should update regularly.
PowerShell, WSL and inbuilt virtualisation (Hyper-V) are great for power users. Revamped Explorer is also nice with options like open in PowerShell.
Integration with Azure AD and SSO means that for all internal applications for work I don’t need to sign on.
My main complaints are that start menu search is still broken with unnecessary integration with Bing and file search corrupting search results with the slightest typo, file copy is still slow for many small files (although directory merging is nice) and Microsoft is a way too aggressive in their product placements on the start menu and trying to force people to create Microsoft accounts.
See, all of these things would be great reasons to use Windows, and I agree that these are nice (though I'd hardly call "seamless GPU switching" unique to Windows; my Linux laptops can do that perfectly fine with FOSS drivers).
The problem is that the Microsoft-sanctioned Windows desktop experience seems to be actively hostile to user experience due to all the extra shit that Microsoft has tacked onto the "goodness" that's Windows 10:
- Cortana not only enabled by default and difficult to remove, but shouting at me at max volume as my very first experience with a new Windows installation
- Random apps being preinstalled, even on so-called "professional" versions (hell, even on enterprise versions by default - and yeah, it's trivial to disable these things with GPOs, but I shouldn't have to)
- Literally no option to create a user account in the "home" edition that doesn't entail connecting to an online account, which is dumb as hell
- Ads. On a product that I paid money for. What the fuck, Microsoft?
Each of these things in isolation is itself entirely unacceptable for any product that even remotely respects its users. In combination, these things make Windows 10 Home and Professional the two absolute worst versions of Windows money has ever been able to buy, and fundamentally undermine any trust I might have in Microsoft.
I would, however, change my tune in a heartbeat if LTSC was at least an option, if not the default, for desktops. Windows 10 LTSC is what Windows 10 should be, and probably would be if the Windows team didn't seem driven to make the default Windows UX as janky as possible. I still think Windows 2000 was peak Windows, but LTSC is almost there - all the neat things you mention, and none of the bullshit.
----
EDIT: there are also a bunch of little papercuts that bug me every time I use Windows, like never knowing which tool is the "right" one to use for various things (screenshots come to mind; what was wrong with the Snipping Tool?), or the fact that "ClearType" is anything but. Not that Windows 2000 didn't have its own share of little papercuts, but when an OS has accumulated 20 more years of those papercuts, they start to really add up.
Also, maybe I'm just butthurt that Microsoft dropped Space Cadet Pinball ;)
Didn't realise Linux did seamless GPU switching these days. It's good to know. Personally I wish they'd move to proper driver isolation though.
Agreed about the BS. Honestly I'd pay more money to get rid of it and have thought about switching back to Linux a few times but the day-to-day Windows 10 experience is smooth enough that I always end up staying (maybe I just have Stockholm syndrome from the downright abuse Apple and Google throw at their mobile users though..)
==
PS: Snipping Tool is still around btw and works fine. Sometimes you might want to hit print screen to capture mouse over state though.
Also as long as you don't connect to the internet you can skip creating an MS account on setup and Cortana won't bother you either afterwards either.
Microsoft has disabled Cortana during the Windows 10 install process for recent versions -- albeit not for this reason. Rather, it was due to IT personnel doing multiple installs for corporate deployments only to be faced with a room full of chattering Cortanas.
EDIT: It's more likely due to Microsoft decoupling Cortana from the OS and making it available as an app download. Since Cortana is not a selling point of Windows 10 itself it makes no sense to have it during the install.
having 4 different sound control panels is a sickening joke. there's so many disjointed laters on layers on layers everywhere. nothing is ever cleaned up, just new glossy over layers that don't quite work as well created atop the old. tragi-comic experience.
You can now set a static IP either in the new network configuration panel or from the old adapter properties. If you set a static IP in one, it won't show up in the other. Either being set to a static IP overrides a DHCP setting. Who knows what happens if they are both set to different static IPs.
I use Linux Mint on various laptops (mostly Zenbooks) as a primary OS in HiDPI mode and I am totally fine with it. You just need to install drivers properly and find software you need and then you finally feel like in control and 100% in the flow.
Microsoft is really killing it these past couple years. I'm still not sure I'd recommend for a tech team over OSX. But mostly because most devs now know how to deal with the issues from Brew and OSX, not so much Windows. But hell, most barely know how to deal with Linux/Unix stuff.
>But mostly because most devs now know how to deal with the issues from Brew and OSX, not so much Windows. But hell, most barely know how to deal with Linux/Unix stuff.
If you can operate Brew, you can operate a Linux package manager.
The author doesn't state whether they installed Linux on a laptop that shipped with Windows, or bought an actual "Linux laptop". There's a huge difference, like reviewing a Hackintosh and saying "Macs are shite".
I did the same. I accidentally fubar'd my lovely 2015 Macbook by pouring a beer into it. I bought a Dell XPS and dual-booted Linux, which kinda worked but wasn't great. Then I bought a Purism 14, which has been awesome (after some teething troubles with the build quality).
I'm kinda tempted by the M1 goodness. But to be honest, I'm not happy at all about going back into the walled garden of MacOS.
I guess my main point of difference with the OP is that I never bought into the Apple ecosystem in the first place - I didn't use mail.app or calendar.app much. I never liked the Apple applications, they never seemed happy letting me take control of my life, and always seemed opinionated about what I should be doing.
I'm now running i3wm on PureOS (debian-derived), tweaked to how I like it. And it's great. Couldn't be happier. Except for Zoom's Linux client, (but Spotify's Linux client is now pretty good, so there's hope!). And odd config issues with the USB ethernet.
But the point is that I can go fiddle with those issues, and learn how Linux USB ethernet works, and generally mess about with my setup however I like. Yes I might brick it. But that's better than "oh it's gone dark, I have to take it to an Apple Store to get it fixed". Which is f-all use in a pandemic lockdown (or in rural SE Asia, which is where I was when I poured the beer in the Macbook in the first place). It's MY computer, not Apple's. That's actually important, not an ideological stance that doesn't matter in practice.
Because Apple stuff doesn't "just work" any more. And if it doesn't "just work" there's f-all you can do except take it to the Store. And usually they'll just shrug and hand you a new one, and hope you backed everything up to their servers. I mean, sure, that's OK. But it's not what I want.
I clarified now in the article that the "Linux Laptop" is a Dell XPS 13" Developer Edition, which is marketed indeed as a Linux laptop, and the Ubuntu is marketed as "Ubuntu Dell".
It was stated in the previous article of the series but you are right that it was not evident in the text.
Does it actually ship with Linux installed though?
That, I think, is the main difference. I had an XPS 15" and I was totally unable to get any support from Dell when running Linux on it. I understand the XPS 13's are marketed as being more "Linux-friendly", but I don't know how supported they are.
How are you finding that? I hear they work really well with Linux. I had such a bad time with the XPS15, I keep wondering why there's such a disparity between them.
I considered buying a System76 Lemur not too long ago because I liked the machine's specs and enjoy popOS, but after seeing QC issues with System76's OEM decided against it and got a Thinkpad X1 Nano instead.
Interested to see how their in-house laptop project goes though.
Thinkpads have always been the authentic Linux experience in my eyes, especially the models after 2009. I love what modern companies are doing with Linux laptops, but the Thinkpad is still the same, unrivaled, robust monster it has always been. There's nothing special about it, and that's why it's special. It feels standard issue, and hardware failure is a lot less sporadic than Macbooks.
I am using Pop!_OS on Thinkpad X1 Extreme Gen 2 - everything works (though switching between dedicated and integrated graphics has rough edges). Perfectly fine for normal use.
It is! The only issue afaik is that it doesn't support wayland yet, so you won't be getting any of the nice tracked trackpad gestures (unless something has changed since I last checked).
Linux main problems with laptops are drivers and firmware. The best you can hope for, when replacing windows - is that it runs somewhat stable.
But startup time, performance and batterie life will be much worse on standard config. And like the article said, don't expect resume/sleep to work consistently. Which can be very, very annoying and time wasting.
My use case is short(or long) bursts of working with it, and then stopping for some time and then later resuming, expecting everything to be as it was, when I reopen. And I can't do this consistently. Which sucks. On a old Linux laptop I got hibernation to work (mostly) consistently so that worked, too, but took even longer to resume. On my previous modell, I gave even up, trying it to get to work.
And now I just bought a HP Pavillon gaming Laptop. And I actually run Windows now, even though I hate windows.
But I need to get things done. And I don't want to mess with config settings, probably for weeks, to bring performance at least close to the stock values, windows provides.
Now this is not the fault of Linux, proprietary hardware support and optimisation are just very complicated. But it still sucks. And it really does not help, when certain linux evangelist claim to everyone, especially newcomers, everything is fine and much better than on windows and co.
Which is just not true.
Especially startup time annoys me. It is just painfully slow. And the chromebooks are showing, that it does not have to be that way.
My cheap Asus rugged chromebook, has by far the best startup time/wakeup time/standby life, of all the devices I ever used!
I open it and can immediately resume working. Just what I want and need. Optimized linux drivers and firmware that work. (And reworked procedures under the hood)
Everything else with ChromeOS is horrible, though. Shitty software, and lacking applications and all tied to google.
So for now I have to work with windows again, which in its stock config comes with so many bloatware, ads and spyware - that it is hard to believe people put up with this.
But what choice do they have?
I probably have to try purism at some point, but sadly with all my mobile linux experience so far, I expect just a expensive, but mediocre experience. And there does not seem to exist a version with a decent gpu?
I just went back to their site to check, and the 14 they show now looks different to mine. I guess there's a previous version that I bought back in late 2018?
My mac kernel panicked weekly for the last year. The software had stopped major development for the last 5 years on any area that doesn't help major media production or make it more like iOS.
But the software does work. It just doesn't do much interesting stuff anymore.
No it doesn't. It really doesn't. There are sooo many issues that are still not fixed, years after being reported. Apple's Support site has pages where there's hundreds of people saying "I have this problem too", and no comment from an Apple dev.
I'm not blaming them. This shit is hard, even if you control both the hardware and the software. I get why they don't say "it just works" any more.
> There are sooo many issues that are still not fixed, years after being reported. Apple's Support site has pages where there's hundreds of people saying "I have this problem too", and no comment from an Apple dev.
With a billion end-users this is really just noise. In any case this is a meaningless comparison. With Linux there is nowhere and nobody to even ask for this kind of support.
The answer is always some version of RTFM or fix it yourself.
> With Linux there is nowhere and nobody to even ask for this kind of support.
This is not true. Every time I've run into a Linux problem, googling the error has always produced an answer. Often more than one answer. Often mutually incompatible answers. But one of them usually works. In the end.
For Apple, googling the problem often leads to an Apple Support page that has no answers, just an endless stream of "I have this problem too".
> The answer is always some version of RTFM or fix it yourself.
Either i dont agree or we have a different understanding of major issue. Not being able to use a second screen withput active power, or being able to cook an egg in idle are in my eyes major issues. Both of which have long threads with no real response.
I still get “me too“ emails from issues ive “me too“ 5+ years ago.
There really is nowhere for everyday consumers to complain about comparable issues in Linux. There is nobody to complain to, and the the only options are self help.
Anyone who fails, fails silently, and there is also the issue that because of all the variation in hardware and software setups it’s hard to even determine that an issue is the same.
On the other side, Apple has more than a billion active users, so a few hundred people with a single issue really doesn’t mean anything at all.
> Apple software does “just work” with Apple hardware.
This is essentially a false statement for all intents and purposes.
Apple software is far from being immune to bugs, bad UX, etc., even on Apple hardware, as I can personally attest today from using a Macbook Pro daily for work.
You use this word, "straw man". I do not think it means what you think it means.
No, it is not a straw man to point out that bugs interfere with the notion that something "just works". When bugs interfere with getting things done - as I've found they often do in the course of using macOS daily, like when I can't open firewall ports for development or share my screen via Google Hangouts because the Big Sur update broke the password prompt for editing restricted things like firewall settings or app permissions, or when apps can't present an Open File dialog anymore across the board because God knows why, then it's a complete farce to call that "just working". There is no "just" nor "works" about that. Not to mention all the little paper cuts, like the lock screen taking 30 seconds to unfuck itself before I can actually type in a password, or constantly forgetting which applications I've set to open things by default (meaning that every so often I end up with a cacophony of fan whirring instead of an editor window when I try to open an XML file because macOS yet again decided to reset the default app to fucking XCode). (EDIT: oh, and the Touch Bar stops working if I plug in an external keyboard, which is just dandy)
Also, I love how both comments immediately coming to defend Apple's honor stop at the "bugs" bit and entirely ignore that I'm taking a fat steamy deuce on Apple's UX, too. So on that note:
> It means not having to do a bunch of incidental configuration, tuning, and setup.
Which you have to do anyway, because the macOS UX sucks, and seems to be getting worse with each update. Want to have persistent named workspaces? Nope, gotta install some buggy hack of an extension to do it (which in turn required going through a whole bunch of red tape to bypass a bunch of security checks, because of course it does). Want to control where in which of those workspaces application windows open (or at the very least whichever workspace currently has the selected window)? lol fuck user intent, Workspace 1 Monitor 1, and switching away from whatever workspace was on Monitor 1 because double fuck user intent. Application menus are so far away from application windows that the Ever Given could do a goddamn u-turn between them with room to spare. Forward/back buttons on mice don't inherently set focus, so instead of navigating the history on the window my cursor's actually pointing at said buttons end up doing so for some random window on an entirely different monitor. (EDIT: and how could I forget the arcane screenshot shortcuts! Command-Alt-whatever-4? The fuck?)
I could go on, but this comment's already enough of a deranged rant. A Chromebook has fewer bugs and a better UX. Even the grotesque hackjob that is the average GNU/Linux desktop has fewer bugs and a better UX. The bugginess and UX is maybe better than (modern, non-LTSC) Windows, but that bar is so low that even ants have to duck when crawling under it.
----
EDIT:
I will, however, give Apple credit where credit's due: I do like the use of Command instead of Control for the CUA shortcut prefix (and the use of Emacs shortcuts for text navigation), and the touchpad gestures are nice, even if limited in options. It'd be great if more operating systems adopted these things. And the Touch Bar's kinda cool, I guess.
Beyond that, I don't really have much praise for macOS. It's overrated, and "just works" is a myth in this day and age. It was arguably a lot more true back in the PowerPC days (even if OpenBSD is my current preference for my PowerPC Macs), but it's been getting worse and worse over the years. Maybe the switch to ARM will be an inflection point re: software quality. Fingers crossed.
----
EDIT 2:
And even just now, doing an SMC reset (to fix that password issue in System Preferences) broke the UI, giving me no background, no dock, and no workspaces. Rebooted to find that no input devices worked until I unplugged my docking station. Background loaded briefly, then back to brokenness. System logs say that the dock is crashing due to a SIGILL. Here goes another night of troubleshooting macOS again instead of getting work done. "Just works" alright...
If by ‘better UX’ you mean doesn’t even try to do things.
> Application menus are so far away from application windows that the Ever Given could do a goddamn u-turn between them with room to spare.
Have you considered why? There are good UX reasons for this. It uses less screen real estate, and leverages Fitt’s law because you don’t have to be accurate in the vertical dimension. It’s fine to have a preference for menus in windows. There are some arguments in favor of that, but you are just articulating a preference here.
Really your comment has nothing to do with whether MacOS *just works(, you have articulated a list of preferences and desires for it to work more like other things you have more familiarity with.
You just want it to work differently - I.e. you just don’t like it.
I increasingly don’t like it either for various reasons, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t just work.
Cherry picking bits and pieces of what I mentioned rather than addressing the entirety of the argument does not a good counter-argument make. And no, neither does linking some dictionary entry as if it actually proves you understand what that dictionary entry is saying. No comment on the Touch Bar being disabled with external keyboards plugged in? Or needing to disconnect USB-C devices to login? Or password prompts being broken in System Preferences? These are bugs that actively hinder usability and pretty clearly contradict the notion of "just works". It is not a strawman - at all - to suggest that these bugs and others directly challenge the notion that something "just works".
You know what is a strawman? Cherry picking only some minor weaker points you want to attack while entirely ignoring the ones that you don't, and then trying to pass that off as a substitute for addressing all points in their entirety. If you actually understood what a "strawman" is, you would recognize immediately that your behavior in this discussion is much closer than mine to that definition you cited, and then you'd kindly refrain, thanks.
> You just want it to work differently - I.e. you just don’t like it.
I "just don't like it" specifically because it does not "just work". It is tolerable usability-wise only after extensive fiddling and tweaking and troubleshooting, and that's only on good days when those aforementioned bugs ain't actively preventing me from using basic OS functionality.
And that's fine - I do enjoy fiddling with things on my Linux and OpenBSD desktops - but those Linux and OpenBSD desktops don't advertise themselves as "you shouldn't ever need to fiddle with things because everything just works" the way macOS does, and therefore I'm a lot less frustrated with that fiddling because those systems are designed for it and encourage it and make it easy and friendly and fun. Nothing about customizing macOS is easy or friendly or fun; it is not designed for it, and it does not encourage it. It is Apple's way or the highway - and given the evolution of Apple's way lately, the highway doesn't look so bad after all.
> and leverages Fitt’s law because you don’t have to be accurate in the vertical dimension
Right, let's watch users spend multiple seconds dragging a cursor to a window toward the bottom-right, clicking, and then dragging that cursor all the way back to the top-left just to save fractions of a second on vertical positioning in a specific spot.
Fitt's law is hardly useful here. If the window ain't maximized, then you need some degree of vertical precision to select the window in order to make its menu visible anyway. And if it is maximized, then it literally doesn't matter what owns the menu 'cause it'll be in approximately the same place either way.
That is:
> There are good UX reasons for this.
There were good UX reasons for this, back in the days of m68k Macs where mice were some newfangled invention and displays were tiny. In those days that unintuitive disconnection was a fair tradeoff to make if it meant conserving that tiny amount of vertical real estate and helping people figure out those newfangled rodents.
Now? It's been, what, 40 years? People know how to use mice (or, if not, can figure it out with a bit of practice - Microsoft understood this and opted to encourage that practice with games like Minesweeper and Solitaire instead of paternalistically assuming users will remain permanently inept), and even the absolute lowest screen resolution Apple sells on a Macbook has multiple times the amount of vertical and horizontal screen space. That tradeoff is far less useful now.
> Cherry picking bits and pieces of what I mentioned rather than addressing the entirety of the argument does not a good counter-argument make.
Here’s where I addressed the entirety of your argument:
> Really your comment has nothing to do with whether MacOS *just works(, you have articulated a list of preferences and desires for it to work more like other things you have more familiarity with.
You just want it to work differently - I.e. you just don’t like it.
I increasingly don’t like it either for various reasons, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t just work.
As for cherry picking. I don’t need to refute every point you made - they all fall under this umbrella.
> And no, neither does linking some dictionary entry as if it actually proves you understand what that dictionary entry is saying.
It does. If it didn’t you’d have addressed it, but you didn’t.
Your entire argument boils down to “Mac OS doesn’t work like linux”.
That doesn’t mean it doesn’t just work. It means it isn’t a good choice for you.
> It is tolerable usability-wise only after extensive fiddling and tweaking and troubleshooting,
Almost nobody does this. Most people find it very usable as is. As I said - this is just about your preferences and nothing more.
> and that's only on good days when those aforementioned bugs ain't actively preventing me from using basic OS functionality.ugh
This is also something almost nobody experiences.
Perhaps your attempts to make MacOS work differently from how it was designed are causing you these problems.
What is odd to me is that you continue to use an operating system that is so ill suited to your preferences.
> Here’s where I addressed the entirety of your argument:
...except for the usability-hindering bugs. Hardly meaningful to reduce those to "user preference"; like, no shit I'd prefer it if basic devices like keyboards and mice worked on boot without extra fiddling.
> This is also something almost nobody experiences.
The Big Sur upgrade breaking the password prompt in System Preferences, as one especially annoying example, is pretty well documented online - and was documented for Catalina upgrades, too. It's exactly where I got the troubleshooting step of "reset SMC". I'm far from alone there.
> Perhaps your attempts to make MacOS work differently from how it was designed are causing you these problems.
Most of them were an issue long before I felt the need to tweak things. And all of them are far outside the scope of said tweaks.
> What is odd to me is that you continue to use an operating system that is so ill suited to your preferences.
It's a work machine. My own computers all run Linux or OpenBSD (with a few exceptions, like the old laptop running Haiku).
(As a follow up here: turns out the Dock crashing is a MacForge thing AFAICT, so I won't blame macOS for that beyond the fact that I wouldn't need MacForge at all if macOS supported things that even ChromeOS supports, let alone a "real" Linux distro. Still janky that I have to disconnect from my docking station to log in, though; that's a far cry from "just works")
In particular the UI became a dumpster fire. I won't go into the Playmobil interface of Big Sur, let's just say that's a question of (acquired?) taste.
However, the interface is much too big. Most of my computer screen (a 15" MBP) is taken up by empty space.
Then you have all kinds of weird behavior in Apple apps that just wasn't there before. And I'm talking "Apple apps as shipped with MacOS", in particular Safari and Mail.
If I have Mail running in full screen, Safari in full screen also (different "virtual desktop") and I click on a link in Mail it will attempt to open it in safari on the same screen as Mail. No, it won't attempt to tile the windows, just stack them. Yeah, that's not supposed to work and it doesn't. In order to get back to Safari, I have to un-fullscreen Mail. If I try to reach Safari via Expose or Mission Control or whatever it's called today, it will select it, then when the animation finishes zooming in, it instantly switches back to Mail.
Speaking of Safari, my "favorite": try to open a new tab. Wait around for an hour while it spins the beach ball. Tried removing the history, the "smart" thingies on the new tab page had already been disabled, etc. This keeps on happening from time to time.
Then for some reason, sometimes in dark mode, the active button of dialog boxes is fully white. If I click outside the window and come back, it gets its regular color so I can read the text.
Also, auto light / dark mode used to work as it says on the tin. Now it randomly doesn't and gets stuck in one mode or the other. Fun fact: if I go to settings, switch from Auto to the one it's stuck it, nothing happens. Switch back to Auto, and now it knows how to change. No, it's not timezone related, as I don't change those and haven't since 2019. The clock is always on time.
I also use a USB drive for time machine. Sometimes, for some reason, the time machine icon in the menu bar becomes white on light grey. (In Big Sur the menu bar doesn't change color in dark mode, so why does the icon even have a light mode?). In Finder, the "eject" button is not aligned with the name of the drive until I click on it. Fun side effet: I have to click it twice to actually do something useful. You might argue that aligning the icon is useful (happens after the same click) but I'd rather I didn't have to do that. Even on my dinky file manager in Linux this doesn't happen and have never seen it happen.
Then, there's the App Store. For some reason, sometimes it won't update the apps. The progress goes all the way to almost full. Then it does something for a while. Then it says it needs to close the app. I say ok. Then it says "yeah, actually, I can't update it". Why? Won't say. Then after a while, it manages to update it somehow. This has happened with multiple apps, including Numbers (Apple app).
Now all these (except for the Safari beach ball) first started happening when I updated to Big Sur. I figured my mac may have accumulated cruft or incompatible settings during the years. It's a 2013 MBP that got the "transfer your data" from my older one and it also went through a bunch of public betas. So I figured might as well try the Windows treatment and do a clean install. Nope, none of the issues went away even without copying over anything from the previous install.
So even on "Apple hardware", there still are issues. And I really don't think any of those issues can be attributed to my particular hardware being old. And all of those issues are new issues in functionality that had been in MacOS for years and that worked well.
Now my MBP is gathering dust because it's just irritating to use. I find Linux (on Arch with i3 of all things) is getting out of my way and being less of a hassle to actually get my work done. Of course, I hate the hardware (some cheap HP probook from work that rubs my wrists when I type) but sitting at a desk all day it doesn't matter since I'm not physically touching it.
I have used a Thinkpad T470s for 3 years at my current employer with Fedora and it worked quite well (including standby, multi-monitor support etc). However, I have just switched to a Mac, and I can only say I've been missing it. The consistency of the key combination, the polish of the desktop applications. It's little things but they do add up.
When I first switched to the Linux machine, I first noticed every single papercut (e.g. warning messages that felt like errors). Then I grew more and more "tolerant" of these things. All in all, the experience was fine; but I never really loved it.
Not to mention, if you pick a Mac you often care about the aesthetics of the chassis and display; my Thinkpad with its low-light matte display (with very poor performance in natural lighting conditions) and its brick-like appearance (someone love them, I honestly don't), it always struck me as pretty meh.
In defense of the Thinkpad matte screen, in my experience it’s fantastic to use outdoors in direct sunlight compared to a glass covered screen. Even with a much higher overall brightness, the glare just killed any visibility on my 2017 dell xps.
As for the many many paper cuts of Linux, it’s a sacrifice I’ve accepted in exchange for having control over my desktop experience. It doesn’t change out from under me over the many years that I’ve used Linux. With windows and Mac I always felt like I was one software update away from them changing something out from under me.
The system administration and shell skills that I’ve picked up are an investment that keeps accruing over my entire software development career, and make me a more capable developer for being able to jump into infrastructure and devops concerns around the software that I write. I expect this knowledge will last me for decades more.
The daily experience of using Linux is generally one of being more exposed to the internals of the system. You’re only ever a thin layer above the kernel and its system calls.
If the inner workings of an operating system are a mystery that you’d like to explore, then you will uncover those mysteries in the course of running Linux as your every day experience. The error messages and log files are obscure but they’re always available.
If you have a problem and you have the patience and persistence to dive into it, then the next layer of abstraction is available for you to explore. You live your virtual life in a workshop, with powerful tools scattered about. A few times a year you discover a new one and it becomes part of you.
I've had the opposite experience. I used to be a huge Apple fan, and all hardware I owned was Apple. I have since completely moved away from them due to how buggy everything is now. I use Ubuntu MATE on a Thinkpad and it works beautifully. I honestly have zero issues with it and absolutely love it. I've been using MATE for about 3 years now.
> If you want to achieve some specific action you need to read four or five manpages, search online, and figure out how you are going to put the pieces together. That made me appreciate Karabiner and BTT much more.
This is still accurate to this day and what they don't tell you. Hence why you always need to search for 'xorg/wayland error' this, 'dbus initialization error' that or a random core dump occurred on a freezing window. I have zero time to search for these issues when I configure what I want and prefer it to 'just work' like it should on macOS.
> On November 10th Apple showed us the future of the Mac and released again laptops worth buying. So I bought the 2020 M1 Macbook Air. You will read a review of it soon.
If you like the M1, you will also like the M1X, M2 or M3 Macs. No need to rush for last years model, hence why I skipped this one.
> The experience of using Linux as a daily driver has been very positive for me, but I do need my productivity.
Exactly. Rather than messing around or spending days playing around with my setup or window manager.
>ther than messing around or spending days playing around with my setup or window manager.
I don't get why this narravitve still exists today. Linux works out of the box on many distros perfectly fine.
Keybindings are a very special use case, and if you need that customizability and its better on a Mac, then get a Mac. Doesn't mean that Macs are "more productive"
If you want to argue actual semantics in terms of value, Linux wins hands down for what you get. You can look at things like VM software, which is costly for Mac while Free for Linux. You can look at things like privacy - Apple still collects data for themselves, while in Linux you can fully disable that. You can look at open source software, which has a way higher compatibility rate with Linux than Mac, especially with M1 chips where Rosetta, as good as it is, isn't fool proof. You can look at hardware, where most "non-Mac" laptops that run Linux are upgradable and repairable.
If you like Mac, then stay on Mac, and stop publishing articles on how good Macs are and how Linux is neat, but your time is so valuable that you can't spend learning a few commaind line tools.
>If you like Mac, then stay on Mac, and stop publishing articles on how good Macs are and how Linux is neat, but your time is so valuable that you can't spend learning a few commaind line tools.
"Stop writing good things about things I hate and bad things about things I like!"
> don't get why this narravitve still exists today. Linux works out of the box on many distros perfectly fine.
Yeah. And then you connect two monitors with different scaling factor. Turns out X11 can't handle this and Wayland is still broken.
Yeah. And then you connect two monitors with different scaling factor. Turns out X11 can't handle this and Wayland is still broken
Actually, this works fine in Wayland. I have used Wayland without any issues with amdgpu, including with mixed-DPI screens with GNOME's fractional scaling. However, things go downhill once you have to use X11 applications, and you typically do. E.g. JetBrains IDEs are a train wreck with fractional scaling enabled in GNOME on Wayland.
That's the problem. This work fine in Wayland but some things that were working fine on X11 do not.
In the end you just give a sigh and go back to you macOS (assuming you were trying to switch).
PS: for me though linux distro share the same problems they had back when I was using Ubuntu and the Arch before 2013. Not much have changed since then. Linux on a home\work pc is still mostly about freedom but mostly not about well build human-to-machine interface.
For every niche feature that you cant do on Linux, I can name a niche feature that you cant do on Mac. And for every reason that you tell me how its not an issue on Macs, I can also tell you that its not an issue on Linux.
The point is that this is such a stupid conversation to have.
Double monitor setup works fine. Double monitor scaling setup is iffy.
Also, speaking of external monitors and Macs "just working", google "mac external monitor not working after sleep", which is the problem that i definitely have on my work issued Mac, but not any of my linux laptops.
Ubuntu literally does not have an easy way to configure what happens when you close a laptop. I want it to hibernate instead of sleep. Someone else didn't want it to go to sleep at all. None of the settings options allow this. While Googling it for a friend the only result was running a few commands and changing some stuff in some config file. You cannot possibly expect a business analyst who hasn't even opened the terminal once in their life to not be immediately put off and scared by this. This is the advantage of Macs. They literally do just work
So, does "Just Work" now include easily accessible noob-proof configuration of the things you want? In that case, macOS doesn't Just Work for me, because I want to be able to see what apps are playing sound or recording and manually set them to different sinks/sources, maybe even have sound playing from multiple devices at the same time. On Linux with PulseAudio and pavucontrol, this is effortlessly configurable with an intuitive GUI. I'm not even sure this is possible on macOS.
My point is, unless we agree on roughly what features are required, "Just Works" is a useless subjective specifier. We all have different priorities, so we either have to accept that there's no universal way to evaluate OSs or agree on some subset that really should Just Work.
By the way, KDE Plasma has pretty comprehensive GUI settings on power-related settings. I think having GNOME 3 and Ubuntu be the de-facto standard Linux experience is actually harming the perception of desktop Linux. People switch expecting a customizable, power-user friendly experience and get a DE that's trying to be the opposite.
Everything you require is not in the least beginner user problems. I'm talking basic issues faced by a person who only views emails, looks at spreadsheets and word documents and opens their browser
I get that, and my setup is definitely not beginner-friendly. But I think we need to agree on what beginners actually do, because I wouldn't say customising power settings falls into that category.
The problem as I see it is that even people who really are beginners sometimes want to reach for more advanced functionality, and different systems expose different advanced functions in a user-friendly way.
Try soundflower for mac. I think JACK audio also works on Mac/Win.
> "Just Works" is a useless subjective specifier.
I'd say a good usable mail client, a readily available video editor, sound recording software and office suite are more important than an advanced audio mixer.
> sound playing from multiple devices at the same time
This seems like a very niche use case. Along the lines of the usual nerdy response of linux being able to compile gcc or run vim and why would anyone use their computer for anything else.
> I'd say a good usable mail client, a readily available video editor, sound recording software and office suite are more important than an advanced audio mixer.
I'm not disputing that. It isn't hard to agree on what an average user definitely needs and therefore must work. The hard part is where to draw the line, what is still needed and what is niche.
> This seems like a very niche use case.
Maybe. But it's very much something an "average user" might want. It's actually something I want to be able to do so I can watch a film with my sister, each with our own headphones. That's a real user need, not something "meta" like the FLOSS things you mentioned (not a solution by itself, but something that can help a programmer fill that user need).
One thing that Windows and macOS users will never understand about Linux, because they’ve never truly experienced it, is just how viscerally different the Linux experience is depending on your hardware. You don’t really need to go with a vendor like System76, and going with a fan favorite like Lenovo does not guarantee a good experience, but seriously, Linux on a machine that runs it well is just not comparable to a machine that runs it poorly. The only good news is the count of machines that run Linux well increases over time. My Lenovo P51 used to be pretty piss poor, not so much anymore. Anyway, that’s just one point, but still worth noting.
I've been using Linux almost exclusively for many years, and I had to google what screen tearing is after all the comments about it in this thread.
I do get people's resistance to switch.
I bought a M1 Mac Mini because I wanted to be able to test and optimize code for it, but found the difference in experience jarring enough that I enabled remote desktop and now mostly run code on it through ssh.
I'm sure I could configure it to behave more like I'm used to, but, why bother?
If things were flipped, and I was that comfortable with the Mac experience while Linux felt alien, I'd probably feel the same way.
Screen tearing is typically very difficult to avoid with proprietary NVIDIA, but I have no issues with my AMD setups running Linux. I suspect that is usually the main difference.
In my experience, Linux PDF readers suck, and so do email clients. OpenOffice is not as good as Excel / Word. Not sure how changing the hardware would fix this.
Most of the Linux complaints that I see are focused on the quality of the applications, not a driver support
I've mentioned something similar elsewhere in this thread, but I really don't see why someone would choose Linux if their daily work revolved around marking up PDFs, editing Office documents and sending email.
I do these things on occasion (maybe once a quarter). When the time comes I drop the file on a suitable machine, do the work there, and get back to my real job (writing software that runs on Linux).
Conversely, if I was still developing iOS software, I would not insist on using a Linux or Microsoft machine. It's just not practical.
I get that people think the PDF/Office/Email should be on-par with Apple/Microsoft on Linux...but they're just not. I wish they were too, but I'm not going to spend my time making a Preview quality Linux app. These are objectively hard things to do. Most folks developing for Linux have other priorities.
I switched to Linux when learning nodejs and web development in general. Setting up nodejs and using commandline was pain so I decided to completely switch to Ubuntu and never looked back and I consider that one of the best decisions I ever made.
Now after getting tempted to try Arch Linux and I finally gave it a try and its been great so far and especially the Arch Wiki has been the best resource for all my linux knowledge
I just can’t thank enough whoever created ArchWiki Project it’s full of great knowledge related to Linux.
I just wanna take a moment and appreciate the efforts of people who contributed to archwiki and to linux project in general making it great for people like us to use it as a daily driver
Indeed. Arch's disadvantages are obvious, but the educational contribution of the Arch community to all its users has been immense. Almost everyone technical that I know personally has really levelled up through it at some stage. I think Arch's detractors often miss its role in getting more people truly on board with Linux and OSS.
I don’t disagree with the author’s observations, but I think it’s important to note that basically what they describe is that “Linux is not a better OSX than OSX”, as opposed to “Linux is not a better OS than OSX”.
The latter may also be true, but that’s not what they describe in this article. Because in this article what they are trying to describe is trying to setup Linux to do the things they did on OSX the way they did it on OSX.
I think the three major OSes are now sufficiently different that calling any of them “better” than the others is meaningless. All three have issues but they are in different places. And many of the things people complain about are just different from what they are used to.
I was linux only until last year when someone convinced me to try a Mac. I have been very happy with it: it's way less intrusive than what I had pictured (I think prejudice against commercial OSes from my windows days). Memory and CPU issues that seem to crop up in ubuntu using desktop apps are not present - I had a lot of trouble using e.g. zoom and g-suite on ubuntu without having either lockups or full blast cooling fan. And I still have a unix-like OS that I can do my usual development, ssh-ing, and file manipulation on.
I currently have a Mac for "office productivity" stuff and ubuntu for development, but if I had to only have one computer, it would be a Mac.
I was also Linux-only for several years, then I started getting into Macs and they felt more or less good enough. I definitely appreciated not spending as much time just to make my computer work, and I liked the familiarity of the terminal. I started drifting back toward Linux as my Macs started to give out.
The macOS installer kept failing and I had to jump through hoops to download the installer for the macOS version I wanted and 'verify' it. (This was ~10.10-10.13, not sure if it's still as much trouble to verify an installer that isn't the latest version.) After the second Mac that refused to reinstall, I had had enough and put Ubuntu on it.
I started to realize around 2012 (with the release of soldered-RAM Retina MBPs and razor-edge discless iMacs) that Apple did not need me as a customer, and eventually I was fine with that. I have one remaining Mac Mini that I use as an HTPC and to get pictures off of my iPad. For daily use I usually prefer an old Thinkpad running Debian.
Same here with regards to preferring the old Thinkpads for daily use. The trouble as I it is that the great ones are getting really old now, and the newer ones don't seem to be of the same ilk.
I picked up a W500 recently to replace my R61i, and while it’s an incremental improvement it easily handles 80 percent of what I need a computer to do. I’m planning to add a Bluetooth adapter to get that up to 90%, the rest being limitations of the Core2 Duo and graphics card.
I’d maybe consider going a little newer and going to a T series but it sounds like they really started going downhill (build-wise) when they changed the keyboard. Even the W500 has a lot more keyboard flex than the R61i, in an attempt to add lightness to a chunky laptop.
I'm sure Gimp has its fans, but do people just not know about Krita? I'm not saying it's as fast/easy at small changes in Preview, but it's cross platform and mostly a drop-in for people who are familiar with Photoshop. I know people who use it on non-Linux platforms and chose it on its own merits, not giving any excuses because it's Open Source or ported from Linux--they probably don't even know.
I've been using Krita for some time as a replacement of GIMP. However, I still don't understand how these programs are rather powerful and complete, and yet the text tool sucks in all of them.
I don't understand how you can be happy with the text tool. It's easily the worst part of Gimp for me. I can't even find a way to move the text around after entering the text, I always resort to resizing the box from two corners to emulate a move.
I'm probably doing something wrong but this is the status after using Gimp as my only graphics editor for about 15 years.
Yeah the only movable surface is the letter itself. I usually find myself zooming WAY in to be able to click on the letters so I can move, and then still sometimes miss and move the whole layer...
What he's looking for in his post is XnView or something similar. I faintly remember it as a clone ACDSee, it has a basic integrated editor.
It's not really that popular on Linux though even though it was first released on *nix some 23 years ago. I don't think people generally recommend it, simply because they don't know it. It's more likely that you know ACDSee from Windows and decide to use something similar on Linux.
So it's not necessarily his fault for not knowing it.
I would like to see someone do the equivalent experiment now with a Win10+WSL2 setup.
I'm carefully watching Apple to see what the next line of Macbook Pros looks like. Esp. how well the M1 architecture fits into a development workflow that will still for the forseeable future center heavily on deployment to x86 architecture. We already are seeing significant time wastage from employees having to fight architecture issues with docker. We will see where that ends up. And then, whether the rumors are true that they might support more ports and even options without the touch bar. These things would signal a genuine change of heart on considering developers to be first class citizens in their ecosystem. If all these turn out positive I'll be sticking with it. If not, Win10+WSL2 are looking extremely compelling.
A couple Saturdays ago, I spent thirty minutes setting up WSL2 on a Windows 10 machine. Immediately afterward, I called Apple and spent a thousand dollars on an M1 Mac mini for same-day pickup.
I've been running Linux devenvs on Windows, in Virtualbox, for something well over a decade now. Imagine my surprise when I discovered that the vaunted WSL2 is literally just that, plus preinstalled OS images that save maybe a half hour's work, plus also it actually breaks virtualization so you can only use WSL2 and no other VMs. And ~ is still just a shared folder, so chown and symlinks don't work.
I'd tolerate it if I had no better option, just like I have all those other times. But even then, just running Virtualbox proper is no worse in any way, and better in some. I really don't understand what the hell all the hype is about - maybe for folks who've only ever used Windows and never had a chance to really try Linux at all, I can see it, but people who have no reason not to know better also seem often to be over the moon about it and I can't for the life of me figure out why.
Granted, that Lenovo had been pissing me off well before I tried turning it into a dev machine - Windows 10 is just a dumpster fire in every respect, WSL2 or no. But it was WSL2 turning out to be literally just broken Virtualbox that really sent me over the top.
And I have to thank Microsoft for that! Even with the occasional slight flakiness of any new architecture, the M1 mini is an excellent dev machine, blazing fast and unbelievably power-efficient - the same deskside UPS that promised 50 minutes runtime for the Windows box claims almost 300 for the mini, and that's with something like a 10x perf boost. If WSL2 hadn't been so lousy, I might have taken another year to make the jump.
Without invalidating the rest of your comment, 30 mins is way shorter than I consider a valid attempt at this. I'm happy to invest even months in achieving an optimal setup, as long as it gets there.
Most of what I am interested in is a streamlined docker setup and WSL2 provides an amazing experience for that, with a single docker / container experience spanning both the Windows host and the linux VM. While there are still some issues with it I have reasonable confidence MS will sort out the sharing of memory and CPUs so that resources can be shared better b/w Win10 and Docker/Linux than you would ever get without a lot of work through VirtualBox.
On the Windows side all I really need is a proper, native office experience. Working in a regulated industry there isn't really any room for less than 100% fidelity in handling official documents and forms. But I will never need to touch powershell or anything else from the native Win10 experience.
No setup involving "oh, it's literally just worse Virtualbox" was ever going to be optimal for me, not when I could just use a Mac and do everything I care to do on that machine without putting up with a lot of nonsense to marshal between two very different and not all that compatible operating systems and filesystems. As I said in the comment to which you replied, I've done lots of that with Linux in Virtualbox on Windows. I know how to do it just fine. It was wanting to do it that I lacked. And, happily, I didn't have to! I could do something else instead. So something else is what I did.
I'm glad you have something that works for you! I'm glad I have something that works for me, too.
I'm just not sure I agree that "literally worse than Virutalbox" is a fair assessment. For example, I don't think VirtualBox can do dynamic memory sharing no?
Apparently WSL 1 is different, it's a layer between linux apps and the windows kernel. WSL 2 is not great, esp. file operations, that's why VSCode has a wsl plugin.
Yeah, I know, but I also hear WSL1 is super slow especially for Node, which is a big part of what my mentees want to learn - the major point of setting up that devenv at all was so I could use it for mentoring, and quite aside from
my own impatience with flaky tech, I also don't want to waste a mentee's valuable time with nonsense on the part of the machine we're using as a teaching and learning tool.
We all have busy lives. When there's only an hour a week or an hour every other week to spare for doing this, it's on me to make sure they get the most out of that time. So, from that perspective too, it was more worth spending the money on a known good platform than spending any more time dinking with one that had already shown itself at best only questionably equal to the task.
You are probably better off with the Mac, but I can recommend one option that many people ignore but that works for well me.
Modern Linux virtualization (KVM/Qemu) is powerful and is getting easier to setup with programs such as Virtual Machine Manager and Boxes. I run several Windows VMs without problems and they have usable performance.
I have used Windows VMs for Word and Skype for Business using KVM.
Lightroom is an utter resource hog and practically unusable without GPU acceleration - reasonable given the 45-megabyte raws I develop in it, but still a constraint. Too, I use a physical edit controller that needs a driver of its own, and setting up USB passthrough is probably a hassle. Judging by the docs I've read, setting up GPU passthrough certainly is. Meanwhile, the Mac driver for that edit controller, compiled to x86_64 and not yet updated for arm64, works flawlessly and with no extra effort under Rosetta 2. (And Darktable isn't really an option - impressive as anything given the constraints the devs have to work under, but one of those constraints is relatively poor support for undocumented raw formats including those my cameras produce, so I can't get the same quality of results out of it that Lightroom gives me.)
In general, I avoid sysadmin work wherever possible these days, as for example when I migrated to Fastmail in January after 17 years of self-hosting. Back when I set that up, I had more time than money, and an interest in learning how to do it, besides. These days I have more money than time, and already know very well how. So at this point it's just a question of the most efficient use of resources, and - in part because of that drive to learn new things, which I now apply to other technologies - obtaining more money has become fairly straightforward, while obtaining more time is of course impossible, human life lasting only as long as it does.
Sure, by dint of enough effort, I could have got WSL2 working acceptably, or get Lightroom running OK under virtualization, or whatever. But at this stage in my life, I can afford to spend money to not have to deal with those problems, so that was what I happily did.
No way I can list them all, but here's my top five:
1. Start menu is awfully designed, really slow, and doesn't even return exact matches sometimes. Seriously, it shouldn't take that long to launch something.
2. Lack of tabs in file explorer forces me to have like three-to-five windows open, making alt+tab navigation annoying.
3. It's like each app does its own thing with notifications. It does have a decent notification system, it just happens that nobody really uses it.
4. Lack of proper package management makes every app run their own update checker in the background. I easily have 10-15 items in my tray, and have to chase down something essential like Bluetooth across them. And half the time at least one of them doesn't have an icon!
5. Updates. Booted into Windows after about a month, it restarted twice + gave me multiple notifications that it's gonna restart again outside active hours. I only need to use it for like an hour or so.
I basically did that for the first WSL. I occasionally helped friends install drivers or find their printer, but mostly didn't touch Windows from XP until I got a job using Win10. I used macOS at home Linux at work during that period. I wont comment on WSL because I haven't used v2 and it wasn't my biggest annoyance (it also doesn't sounds like v2 fixed the issues I had with it)
Man, I hated it. I'm just not a fan of how windows are managed, OS updates are constant and require a lengthy reboot, installing/uninstalling is the same awkward mess except now there's 2 Program Files directories, Control Panel is like archeology digging through generations of UIs dating back to Windows 95.
I hate all the intrusive tracking, ads, and preinstalled games and junk.
I tried to give PowerShell a fair shake. I liked some of the concepts around it. It's annoying the documentation requires a download (I was on an airgapped network). It was super awkward to wrap everything in a BAT file. Everyone else just wrote in BAT files because our needs weren't huge. They would be more maintainable and better behaved as PowerShell scripts, but it didn't seem worth pushing for. PowerShell was just so verbose I found it very hard to use as a REPL to build pipelines.
The experience triggered a lot of things I hadn't thought about in over a decade and I was bummed at how few things had changed. That's probably the case for macOS and Linux, but personally I find myself liking those OSes more than Windows...I've definitely been exasperated explaining their shortcomings to others because I've been comfortable avoiding them.
I ended up mostly using it as a dumb terminal to ssh into an Ubuntu box running tmux and vim.
WSL2 has quirks that make it not the same as running linux natively. For some workflows this may not matter but I have seen it evaluated for some use cases where not everything worked.
Also, windows is, for lack of a better word, obnoxious, in the way it bothers you about updates (and other messages of various kinds), and forces you to restart frequently and kn its terms.
The few times I have used windows recently, I found it the opposite of "just getting out of the way and letting me work", and I fear that even if wsl did work smoothly for what I was doing, just the fact that windows was running in the background would degrade the experience.
I'm a Linux user on my own hardware and was just put onto win10 at my current gig.
WSL has made this workable, really. Not the nightmare I expected. But the rest of windows still sucks.
As for apple stuff, I used to use Macs for a decade, starting with a colour iMac right down to MBP 2013 ... The platform felt like it got and more in the way. I hated the app store. Firwire transfer from old to new machine also didn't work properly between two OSX versions. Set up took long. Everything was a forced login. The straw that broke the camel's back was shitty support when I came home after closing the brand new laptop to find a cracked glass screen when I opened it up again.
Been using Dell's xps series and Nuc barebones since then, and moving some crucial things like keyPass files onto Google drive. I can spin up a new Dev ready setup in about 15-30mins. Everything works out of the box. Bliss.
Dell btw gave me great support every time I had a hardware issue.
Apple made Macs UNIX developer-friendly (2001) before they switched to x86 (2005), so they have a good chunk of non-hypothetical past data to look at. Really hoping this means they won't screw this up.
Anytime I tell people that I switched from Mac to Linux I let them know that it’s not for everybody. I’m happy with my decision, but I did it for the hardware and there are enough quirks that I wouldn’t recommend it for anybody who wasn’t really committed to the move.
Everything in this article is true. I tend to mute the desktop notifications for several noisy applications. I use mail web apps directly rather than using the desktop clients but I am really encouraged by the future of Thunderbird and do plan to switch one day in the future.
In this field, I learn from the quirks though. I use Ansible to manage my laptop configuration and it teaches me a lot about Linux under the hood that I never would have learned otherwise.
When I need docker, I like having a native linux experience.
Ultimately, there’s nothing I need that I can’t do and I can buy hardware that I’m in complete control of (upgrades, etc) which is important to me.
Software wise, I do miss Preview and OmniGraffle. Other than that, I’m not missing much.
> When I need docker, I like having a native linux experience.
This is a severely underrated point. If you're not running docker on a linux host, you are running it on a VM and getting all the performance tradeoffs you would get with developing on a VM. There seems to be a lot of developers that are unaware of this.
I got fed up and shifted fully to a Linux desktop and laptop setup like 20 years ago. Computers are silly devices and there is no end to the annoyances involved with them regardless of operating system.
I got used to it and was/am able to get what I need done. I liked the cheap netbooks when they were a thing, and I like zenbooks these days. You always have to shop with compatibility in mind. Hard edges persist in any environment though the particulars change. I am comfortable with the tradeoffs currently and luckily there are enough people using Linux to take care of most of the show stoppers fairly quickly.
Agree here. I use Windows at work and use full time Linux on home desktop since 7 or 8 years. Both have bugs and annoyances but one thing that turns me off on windows is how computer becomes more and more sluggish as the time goes on with each update. Never had that issue with Linux. Updates might break a thing or two. I am okay with occasional break/fix but just can't get used to progressive sluggishness.
To preface, I think all of the author's complaints are pretty valid. I spent 15 years primarily on Mac laptops/desktops and finally switched in 2015 after a few years of being less and less happy with the direction both the hardware and OS was taking, and it was definitely a rough transition even having years and years of UNIX/LINUX experience and using "perfectly" compatible hardware (I started with a Thinkpad X250 and started with an Ubuntu default DE before ditching it pretty quickly for a custom Arch/Openbox setup that I've been yak-shaving since). There are still quirks (sleep/suspend, bluetooth, multi-display, DPI and color adjustment) that make it far less dependable than using a Mac, but on the flip side, I feel like I've had much superior (if more complex) customizability, and in general, less unsolvable/nasty surprises when upgrading. I still have some Mac testing machines and it seems like MacOS has continued to get buggier and less power-user friendly with every update.
Also, for my needs, luckily I was a lot less dependent on PIM features, and much more so for dev tools, so it was a better fit for my needs overall. WINE (and virtualization) has been a huge thing for bridging some of the missing pieces as well.
While the edges have been rougher, one other big advantage for me has been the much wider hardware selection - over the past few years I've switched from Thinkpads, to Chromebooks, to gaming laptops w/ beefy CUDA support, and now to a 8C16T Mobile Ryzen laptop with 64GB of RAM w/ 12h+ battery life that's almost as fast as my desktop workstation.
It's a Mechrevo Code 01 (TongFang PF5NU1G). It's sold by a number of OEMs including w/ Linux pre-installed as the KDE Slimbook, Tuxedo Pulse and others. Actually, I linked to almost all of the various OEM releases along with a detailed review from when I got mine last summer: https://www.notion.so/lhl/Mechrevo-Code-01-TongFang-PF5NU1G-...
Note, pretty soon, 5800H and 5800U laptops should be available. The new CPU should perform even better (Zen 3 based vs Zen 2) and in general seem there seem to be more premium builds coming. USB-C DP and 2.5K displays would be the big things I'd be looking for if I were shopping this year. Personally, I'm ok w/ waiting for for next gen though (USB 4.0).
I think this all has to do with your intended use case. I’ve been a full time Linux desktop user for ~10 years now, and I completely agree that the PIM/email/calendar apps need a lot of work to compete with the standard macOS apps.
Interesting many macOS users default to Gnome-based distros for the familiar paradigm, but I’ve had a lot of success recommending Plasma to such users. It’s not as pretty, but it is very stable and has a lot of the same default/built in functionality in the K* apps that Mac users usually expect. Doesn’t stop me periodically getting dragged back to Gnome, mind you...
I’ve used it on a bunch of different hardware and rarely had issues with screen tearing or ‘needing to tweak’ to make things work. And I truly cannot find a better alternative for most dev workflows.
It’s swings and roundabouts. I settle for using the web Gmail/Calendar experience in exchange for the other benefits it brings to my work
As someone who is comfortable with linux and macOS and also someone who used an M1 MBA here is my take because this article does not do justice to each of the platform pros and cons:
1. The M1 Macs are amazing. If you are the kind of person who needs a GUI and involves lot of app related work go for it. (this person seems more interested in stuff like that so linux ain’t gonna cut it for him). The cons? A super restrictive platform (even more than it was under intel) and a very pricey hardware affair where getting anything fixed is hard. My speaker was faulty after my 2016 mbp already had a broken display thanks to apple. I hope new MBPs do a much better job at hardware after the keyboards that seem to be fixed now.
2. Linux can do everything almost that Windows / macOS can. But not necessarily better. In GUI it’s still a mess but wayland actually fixed tearing so I’m not sure what is the deal here. Overall I think you need to spend time with linux to become comfortable vs expecting a distro to solve all your requirements. If you really want the fine control go with Arch it’s usually good for cutting edge hardware.
for 1. The cons? A super restrictive platform (even more than it was under intel)
You can still boot arbitrary unsigned OSes - Apple still allows this, but it is obviously going to take time for other OSes to grow support for apple's custom hardware. So it's still a computer you can control if you want.
for 2., wayland is still a very rough experience imo (I periodically try it on an all-intel system, which ought to be a good target as everything is OSS supported, etc). Lot of apps still don't have native wayland backends (although this is improving!) and it seems generally less stable than boring old X11 for me.
I like where you are coming from, however I think we need to recognise that Windows and OSX are proprietary consumer operating systems whereas Linux is not.
To take an automotive analogy, road cars and SUVs are designed for the rules of the road and they come with things like a warranty. Meanwhile race cars are different. You might have to put the engine in yourself and good luck with the warranty. Comparing the road car (SUV or truck) with the race car is not a fair comparison. The race car doesn't have the cup holders, sat nav, seats in the back, airbags, central door locking or tyres for the road. In everything that matters to most drivers the race car is just useless. But most drivers are not racing drivers, so what would they know.
I honestly have not met another Linux user in Silicon Valley that actually lives here and I have been here 7 years.
I have to fly to Germany and hang out at CCC to find people that know how to be productive with open source hacker-friendly software. It is even rare over there to meet a Mac user. I meet more FreeBSD users than Mac users in Europe.
Meanwhile in the US It feels like at every new employer or client it is a PITA to get a Linux machine because no one has ever asked for one before. It is just assumed no one could possibly get a technical job done without Apple.
I have been told multiple times that I need to use Apple so IT can help me when it breaks in spite of me literally being a Linux hardening specialist who even has a few lines in the kernel. I can maintain my own machine, thanks.
I have even had people insist on sending me Apple laptops even if a Linux machine is approved just because they are so sure I am going to need it. I never do.
Where are all of you hiding? I feel like I need a support group of people that also opped out of the cult.
I'm up in Canada using Linux for c/c++. Im no expert in Linux either. I just use mint pretty much out the box and it works awesome for me. I'm just too cheap to buy a MacBook and prefer desktops anyways. I understand that docker is bad on mac too, that seems like it'd be a big deal.
As someone who has used Windows, Linux and Mac comprehensively over the years, and bounced between all three a few times, I can say that ALL operating systems have warts and problems. There is no such thing as a perfect operating system and its unreasonable to expect that any system will ever work 100% perfectly how you want. You also shouldn't expect to be able to get an operating-system-A experience on operating-system-B, if you want A, keep using A.
However, I've found that with Linux, the "perfect" experience is much more under my control than it is with Mac or Windows.
I've settled on using Sway (on Manjaro, but I also use Ubuntu on one laptop because I was lazy about finding drivers and it came with Ubuntu) and besides Windows games not running well on Proton on Wayland (for which I need to switch to X instead, where I just use gnome), its been a very stress-free and convenient environment for me.
Eh. I've ended up with the opposite conclusion, at least for my purposes. Running Word is neat, but having to spend half a day figuring out what Apple did to C++ headers after an Xcode update so R will compile packages again is not fun. Unfortunately I can't really install Linux on the damn thing because of the hardware.
Also mailspring is a pretty good Linux email client with conversation view...
I agree. The author makes it clear that using "business" tools like MSOffice and writing a lot of nicely formatted emails is important to him. Wouldn't have switched to Linux if that was the case for me. I'm writing < 10 emails per day - Evolution + WebDav/CardDav is good enough for me.
I'm also on a 2018 Xps with Ubuntu 20.04 and everything just works.
To me, the clear advantage is how installing all kind of obscure R/Python packages is usually a smooth experience, whereas a working Mac version frequently doesn't even exist or requires struggling with obscure errors, especially after MacOs upgrades (e.g. https://mobile.twitter.com/mcmc_stan/status/1186923309662953...)
Seconding the Mailspring recommendation, but be aware that it requires a Mailspring ID. There’s some progress, though, with a telemetry-free fork[1] (that’s the version I’m using right now) and plans to make the ID optional in the official client [2].
Oh and one day Xcode will suddenly stop updating. Why? Because I lost my credit card yesterday and blocked it, so now App Store will not update a free app. Whaa?
> migrating to Linux is fine, but don't expect a better experience than the Mac.
It seems that depends on what you do (and like). If you spend most of your time in Mail.app and previewing your files with Preview app and you like those apps, then perhaps Mac OS is a good choice for you.
I personally don't fall into those categories. I care more about the software development experience where Linux is a better option for me. In fact, I was a bit surprised that the blog post was from "Engineer, developer, entrepreneur" and there was no coverage of software engineering/development tools.
Here are things I prefer on Linux (not in any particular order): docker actually runs without taking over half to all of the system, window manager behaves the way I configure it, Kate works better, it's closer to what's in production - I don't need to run another docker container do/test simple things or fight with Mac OS workarounds, most tools/packages I use are a simple command away - Linux package managers are better and have a lot more packages than Homebrew, all/most installed packages get updates automatically, GUI file managers and file open dialogs are better than the Finder app, app menus belong to their windows, fonts aren't extra blurry on external monitors, most software stack is open source - if I find a bug I can troubleshoot or even try fixing it, etc., etc.
Things I liked better on a Mac: giant click anywhere touchpad (though tap-to-click feature was inadequate).
Mail is fine if you use browser-based solutions. Nobody is talking about only sending plaintext emails? Wtf?
Why are they running so much stuff on wine?
Why are they upgrading their kernel every few weeks?
How does anyone think nautilus is good?
How does anyone think that Gimp/inkscape are better than affinity designer?
These are the things they find useful about linux? There's so much more that makes linux a powerful solution (e.g. great window managers like i3), or much better support for shell based workflows.
I think it's great. If I had to pick between Finder, Windows File Explorer, Nautilus, or Dolphin. I'd honestly choose Nautilus. It's visually simple, has previews, built in support for Google Drive, easy to find how to show hidden files, if I double click an archived file; it decompresses it, and it has an "Open Terminal" right click prompt. If I had to walk someone through performing a file system action, say over a phone, I feel confident that I could do so with the least confusion using Nautilus. I simply never have understood the arguments against Nautilus and am extremely thankful to the developers who have chosen to make the hard decision to reduce features to make the application maintainable.
> Why are they upgrading their kernel every few weeks?
This makes sense if you install a distro like Manjaro or Arch. Not something I'd ever recommend to someone who's taking Linux for a first spin. I don't think I've had any troubles doing regular kernel upgrades, though, the problems mostly laid in proprietary drivers, specifically Nvidia's.
> How does anyone think nautilus is good?
I have no problems with Nautilus. Perhaps it's not the greatest file manager, but it's way ahead of Finder in my opinion.
Fedora also does kernel updates within a stable release, and some proprietary hardware works best with it while being mildly broken on Debian-derived distros so I might even recommend it to some first-time users.
Maybe how you use Linux is different from how the authors uses Linux? Maybe their relation to their computer is different from yours? Maybe Linux serves some use cases well, and not others?
I agree that you don't need i3 for the common scenario (IDE + terminal in my case). i3 is more about the myriad of uncommon scenarios that come up all the time.
For example, maybe I want to keep an eye on several terminal commands at the same time. With i3 I just press the terminal shortcut n times and I have n new terminal windows sharing the space. If one of the commands fails with a long error message I press another shortcut and the terminal windows are now tabbed and full height, with the IDE still visible on the side.
Or maybe I want a small browser window or Slack window in a corner to keep an eye on a meeting or discussion while I work.
Whatever uncommon layout best serves my needs right now, i3 can get it done in seconds.
You never really need a tiling WM, though. i3 just solves my problems really well, so well in fact that I actively enjoy using it. Some people feel the same way about vim, and you never really need vim either.
I disagree. The hardware and build quality of the XPS13 is notably better than my MBP, except for better CPU performance which I do not notice at all in daily usage (I know all ultrabook keyboards are terrible but the MBP is an a whole other level of awful.)
Linux on the XPS has surprised me. I hadn't used desktop Linux for ~6 years, but I remember lots of tinkering to get what I wanted. Now... If I had to describe it in one word it would be "boring". Boring because it just works. Honestly, I have spent significantly more time fixing problems in OSX behaviour than I do fixing problems on Linux. Even just weird things like Terminal text rendering breaking after an OS update which I've never seen on Linux.
Admittedly I have never used the default Mail/Calendar apps on either OS. I appreciate I'm biased because I know how to use Linux fairly well, in spite of a 6 year hiatus. The writer can of course hold his own opinion, but I take it with a large grain of salt. It's also disingenuous to present his own problems as reasons not to use something. It's fine to have a preference but I don't see why he needs to try and influence other people's decisions.
I have an XPS 9370 and it feels rickety and poorly made. It can't be opened without holding it with both hands. The screen gets smears on it from getting in contact with the keyboard. The bezels scratch very easily. The light from the LED in the power button bleeds out from the edges. The charging brick makes a high pitched whine when being used.
I use a MacBook 2015 for work and that feels much nicer and has better build quality. I don't plan on buying another XPS.
> The hardware and build quality of the XPS13 is notably better than my MBP
Strongly disagree... the trackpad is much worse on XPS13, and the power plug is a joke. Mine broke, I took it to a technician to fix and he said it's very common to break that on XPS13's, just have a look at the stupid plug they use... after that, the plug didn't quite fit anymore and when I tried to make it fit better, the metal base for the plug broke completely (and I was being really careful!). Now I have a plug hanging outside and the only way to fix it is to buy a new frame (which I haven't been able to so far).
Bought a MacBook Air to replace it and couldn't be happier with my choice... it's a bit slower but so much quieter, better hardware in every way, and MacOS is actually very polished compared to Ubuntu and KDE.
Anecdotal I know, but my experience differs. I'm fixing problems more frequently on OSX than Linux. I started using OSX in 2015 and honestly I now consciously fear the "System update available" notifications.
I can't speak to your plug issues, as both the Macbook and XPS (2021) I have are USB-C and appear to function identically. Sounds annoying though for sure. I don't notice any difference in the trackpads, but admittedly I use them infrequently.
Sorry to hear about the QC issues. I suppose my opinion will sour if I run into them later down the line, but for now it's certainly the preferred option. Slightly smaller and lighter with a better (but still terrible) keyboard, and feels much more comfortable for my palms vs the MBP. And native Linux is very well supported so I don't need to deal with Docker for Mac or virtual machines to do day to day development work.
No matter who reports breakage ever, on whichever machine, on whichever OS - this is always the answer.
"If it doesn't work for you, you are doing something weird."
It's both true and false - it's true, I've progressively gone more vanilla in my desktop Linux setup, because the more boring and closer to the original developers intention you run it, the less hassle and issues you have.
Its false because -everyone- is doing something weird, and nothing should break ever.
Breakage will always occur more often in the edge cases then mainstream use. Its still bad tough.
The author is speaking authoritatively while coming from a very narrow, specific perspective, which seems pretty common on hacker news with Apple users who write about "my platform is better than yours" to the point of being disingenuous.
This type of thing pops up pretty often on HN from Apple users and it's almost always the same, I don't every see Linux users posting this sort of thing, different mentalities I guess.
Full disclosure, I didn't finish reading because it quickly devolved into fanboyish propaganda. It showed the typical fanboyism we should all be grown up enough to get over by now and not just "use my platform, it's better for everyone because it suits me better than yours does".
I (and my entire team; backend development) have been running Linux on our XPS 15's for the best part of a decade now. The Android development team at my place all run Linux too. The iOS Devs run on Apple devices, and the Windows Devs run on Windows, operations team all run Linux but they're using Latitudes (I think? The chunkier ones which still have ports and ethernet), management run a mix of Windows and Mac.
I have been exclusively running Linux on my personal XPS 13 for 2-3 years (since buying it), and on my MSI gaming laptop 5-6 years before then. I also run it on my gaming Desktop and have no major issues on any of those. I have been running 4K displays (which has gotten better in the past couple of years, particular with Gnome), and using Thunderbolt docks. My laptops and desktop sleep and wake just fine, CPU scaling works, I run a mixture of AMD Ryzen, and Intel Core CPUs and I've never had to touch a driver (Nvidia on work XPS is disabled at the moment). My desktop upgrades the Nvidia driver as part of its normal routine.
Let's be clear, the email apps aren't great on Linux, but I'm a backend software engineer, I don't care about email, it's just a thing I need to use occasionally to reply to my colleagues and sometimes our clients. I don't need HTML emails, in fact, it's almost always junk if it is HTML, calender I use but don't need anything advanced, just to know when meetings etc are.
Keyboard? My XPS 13 (2019) has much nicer keys than my work XPS 15 (2017) so they're improving for sure, however, I write code for a living, I have hundreds £££s worth of keyboards to type on, so the built in keyboard is a minor point. Use the tool for the job and all.
What I'm not blind to is that gaming would be easier/more reliable if I ran Windows, you won't catch me telling everyone to switch to gaming on Linux, I have my reasons for doing it, but it can be done if you really want to, you'll have to accept some compromises.
If you design/content create, Mac, I'm told is the best platform, you won't find me telling people to do that on Linux, but if you _really_ want, you can.
Guess what, if you write server software targeting Linux, use Linux, it has the best tools for the job.
The build quality of the XPSs is excellent. Unless I wanted to spend a lot more money on a specced thinkpad-carbon, I'd always buy an XPS over any other brand, they're super thin, very strong, great battery life, and DELL isn't hostile to you repairing them, you can buy a battery and change it yourself, the service manual is even on the website.
I'd be interested to know why the author thinks apt-get is so much better than brew (honest question!). I've never had any problems with homebrew (even on M1 mixing and matching arm and intel binaries).
I have however had many massive problems with apt-get, specifically getting a version of an app that's later that what's included in the distro. It usually ends up with a couple of PPAs that then don't work properly and brick the system.
Homebrew in this regard is far better as all packages are "always" at the latest stable version and I imagine get more testing than some random PPA or backports repo.
I have just switched back to Linux in January after over 10 years on OSX,
I am quite an advanced user and usually write my plugins/extensions or software if i have something missing,
Everything is fine when I started to figure the nightmare that is nvidia and being able to sign those to load in kernel, it's incredible how far linux has come since using it in the 90s/2000s,
My only issue is not actually with Linux, it's with the hardware. Using it as desktop works just fine, but the laptop keyboard and mousepad is bloody clunky...
So I still use my macbook when traveling or when I am out of work. Since I configure a magic keyboard on linux, i don't have much a context switch issue (except maybe Command+w Command+c/v and Control-Shift-c/v Alt+f4)
Oh yeah the only thing driving me crazy is not having proper emacs keybinding all over OS, you can set this up for firefox but then select-all which is supposed to be alt+a is kinda clunky and does not seem to work all the time...
I saw that OP missed Calendar.app and I was convinced he was a liar. I regret that this is so aggressively ad hominem but Calendar has such obvious bugs I do not believe anyone - even the Calendar dev team - uses it.
It has two jobs: store events and remind you about events. Calendar gives notifications 10 minutes into meetings I'm already in (because my phone tells me about the meetings). It is unfathomable that this could have been released if anyone uses it.
I am a Mac user but I largely use the Google suite web apps, which I guess is the polar opposite of being a "power user".
What's contradictory however about someone using Mail or Calendar and being a power user? Is there a world of productivity apps that are much better designed than those? Or is anything below "I do everything in emacs" not a power user?
Being a power user doesn’t mean that you have to run basic functionality like mail and calendar stuff from the terminal, and the GUI equivalents on Linux are not good enough
This piece is mostly evidence that it is hard to switch platforms and expect to preserve one's workflow. Doesn't work. Have to adopt to the native ergonomics.
In that context, Linux is often best looked as a Chromebook Pro. Great when you can do most of your work in or around a browser, plus or minus the shell.
I've heard that a lot: "If you complain about Linux then you installed it on the wrong computer, and you're using it wrong." Basically it's your fault when Linux doesn't work. Doesn't matter if 1 of 2000 packages or libraries has a system breaking bug. It's your fault if you "updated too soon", or "did not update yet". It's even your fault when bug reporting doesn't work the way the distribution maintainers designed it, because when the window manager throws errors randomly and you try to report it, the bug reporting crashes too. Because of "you must have done something wrong" and "why would you want to do that, use the website!".
I use Linux because it gives me good if crude tools, not because it makes me happy to use them.
"You're using Ubuntu, you should use Pop OS/Mint/Fedora/new Fedora/new/old Debian, it's flawless". And "you are using Gnome, I haven't had any issues with KDE, Plasma, XFCE, i3, Mate, oh Enlightenment, Enlightenment is the best."Why are you using Geary/Thunderbird/LibreOffice, I do all my email/coding/music in emacs/vim, you never have to leave the terminal and it has worked fine for over 30 years."
"Everyone knows VLC is buggy, use mpv... mpv is not working for you? You should use VLC, never had problems with it." "Linux is wonderful on my machine, once I recompiled my kernel to verxion xyz everything worked out of the box."
> I feel like I need to clarify that this is an article aimed at Mac users who are considering a migration to Linux in hope of a more polished system
I... don't really know what to say here. Seems like a fundamental misunderstanding. On a mac, polished is pre-polished - polished from the box to a nice one shape fits all sphere.
For linux, you machine it out of stock to your personal dimensions, and hand polish to the finish of your choice.
What I like about Linux over Mac is I can do just about anything I want. Apple puts guardrails up, or has weird technical reasons [0] why certain things just can't be done.
On Linux, I know it's just a matter of perseverance to achieve my desired workflow. With Apple, I'm always left wondering if the problem is even solvable.
That said, I'm quite a bit different from OP. I'm not concerned with marking up images with circles and arrows and a paragraph explaining what each one is. If that was my workflow, I think I'd be much happier on Mac as well.
>Nautilus is better than the Finder. It's not even close.
That's astounding. Finder must be awful.
To me, Nautilus is virtually unusable -- it's like a toy file manager. Nothing beats Dolphin (or PCManFM as a not-so-close second). For some reason, Qt apps are way better than GTK apps in general.
Personally I find Nautilus much more irritating than Finder has ever been. Finder has most of the features most people need, you just need to know where to look for them, but Nautlius just straight up cuts stuff out.
Some of Nautilus' forked kin like Nemo (Cinnamon) and Thunar (XFCE) are decent though.
Dolphin is alright but in my case it has a bit of "MS Office" syndrome where I only ever use maybe 20-30% of its functionality, with the rest just being more clutter to have to dig through. I know some find those things useful, but in my case it's just going to collect dust and get in the way.
Helped a family member with some troubles on their M1 Mac recently. Take with a grain of salt: this is a single 30 minute anecdote from someone who last used OS X about a decade ago.
Finder was the worst part of the experience by far. Perhaps there's some setting to turn this behavior off (or some setting said relative turned on that caused this) but it seemed to constantly attempt to hide the underlying filesystem from me, instead showing files in groups like "Documents" and "Downloads". I could not figure out if/where in the UI I could type in a path to a folder to manually browse to it. The search was slow and awful, to the point of being near useless.
After 10-15 minutes of wasting my time in Finder I gave up and used the terminal for all file operations.
In case the knowledge ever comes handy in the future:
- You can toggle on a path bar in Finder windows with View > Show Path Bar. Additionally, the path of open folders and files can be viewed by Command-clicking the icon next to the title in the titlebar (this works in third party apps too)
- You can navigate to folders by path with Go > Go to Folder… or Command-Shift-G
- Visibility of hidden files/folders can be toggled with Command-Shift-. (also works in open/save dialogs)
Also, as a general rule, in Mac apps everything an app is capable of is surfaced through its menus, so if you’re ever looking for a specific function in one, menus are a good place to check. Cross platform stuff ignores this custom frequently but that’s nothing new.
I get what you mean, and I have the same complaints about the defaults. Here are some useful shortcuts to know, especially when fixing issues:
- View > Go to Folder… (Cmd-Shift-G) to type in a path to go to.
- Cmd-Up takes you one level up.
- Right-click/Control-click the current folder name in the title bar to see the location of the current folder. This works with any title bar that has a file/folder icon, not just Finder!
- Cmd-Shift-. to temporarily show hidden files.
And here are some settings I recommend that turn Finder into a very pleasant experience for someone coming from Linux. I always set these as soon as I get a new account:
- View > as Columns (You might need to set this a few times for different initial folders.)
- View > Show Path Bar
- Preferences > General: New Finder windows show (home folder)
- Preferences > Sidebar > Favorites: Make sure (home folder) is checked. I'd actually recommend unchecking every other item in this group (except for Airdrop if you need it). Why: Having less sidebar items makes Column View work better because, when opening a folder in Column View, the sidebar item that's the closest ancestor is shown as the leftmost column.
- Preferences > Sidebar > Locations: Make sure "Hard disks" is completely checked. By default, the / disk is hidden from the sidebar.
Documents and Downloads are the actual directories on disk, they're not some sort of abstraction. It's pretty simple. /Users/<user>/Documents, /Users/<user>/Downloads, etc.
My experience as someone who uses Linux but isn’t great at it, is that it works well as a desktop os.
I’m lazy I willing to pay for simplicity so I bought a preinstalled Linux laptop. And it’s been chugging along fine. Everything Works (excepting wake forms sleep when I close the lid sometimes, it’s like gambling...but I manually suspend and that works)
I takes a little research to figure out which application are available (I’ve heard of none of these video editors..) but I haven’t had any issues. Libre office works great.
I even got unreal engine compiled and running. It’s pretty nice experience overall.
Not sure what OS you’re running (my guess is Ubuntu). I’ve had no issues with wake from sleep when using Fedora, FYI. My biggest complaint is the Nautilus file browser’s address bar being mostly worthless, the Gnome terminal’s inability to move tabs into a new window, and the inability to use normal copy / paste in the terminal (Elementary OS gets this right, and I run their terminal on Fedora now... I may look into running their file browser, too...)
My laptop has an nvidia gpu and it works great. Even steam works will which was unexpected and made the machine more enjoyable although myself a little less productive on it.
Operating systems and people's use cases seem to be so specialized that you will rarely see someone switch because they feel happier at the other side. Especially for professional work there seems to be "one true way" and emulating that on a different setup obviously has some productivity loss.
It's a bit silly though to call out the author for not using the right linux laptop or being too hung up on their workflow. It's not unfair towards linux, the conversion of a macos power user was never meant to be!
I finally reinstalled my Windows 10 after some time for a gaming PC and it was surprising to me that they are very intrusive. Like, I have to create a Microsoft account? And they have other sorts of update that happened randomly. Can we trust Microsoft?
I have been a long term linux user, tried an M1 macbook air recently and actually switched back to linux (a 13" razer blade stealth). I found the linux laptop to actually be faster, more responsive, have better software for me (plenty of free alternatives that are Good Enough for my purposes, also it's linux and my servers run linux, so no weird OS crossover issues).
To my incredible surprise, I actually feel that the linux laptop's trackpad works better than the one on the macbook! This was one of the big reasons I wanted to switch back to a macbook and I was extremely disappointed with the results. I was having serious issues even just selecting text with the trackpad on the macbook air.
The author notes a 2-3 second delay in DNS lookups - I'm actually having that problem with my macbook, and not with my linux laptop, and I have no idea what weird Apple goop is causing it or how to fix it.
To each their own I guess. I tried the new macbooks because of what everyone has been saying but was pretty disappointed in the experience, so much so that I was wondering if my macbook air was damaged somehow. The battery life was solid, though.
I thought this review was super fair and I really enjoyed his takes. I had a Macintosh from 2012-2016 and can definitely agree with many of his opinions (preview.app is amazing, notifications on Mac are amazing).
I've been on / off Linux as a daily driver since 2009. I went off Linux during the Gnome 2 / Unity debacle, had to use Windows for engineering school (not compsci or "tech") and had a Mac mini in there (2012-2016). I agree with the author and I left Macintosh when I felt that Apple simple didn't care about their "computer" division anymore. With the M1 and new advancements in their desktop OS, I think Apple is starting to put more effort in their laptops / desktops again. I think apt-get is amazing as well and it would be cool to see a REAL package manager for MacOS.
For what it's worth, I run RHEL workstation, use an iPhone, and have been thinking of getting a Macbook as "corporate compatibility layer" for when a client uses teams or MS office or some junk like that that has no browser or Linux support.
In reading this, I found it very misleading. The expectation is that the author's work flows is somehow impacted and slower because certain commercial software that said author has been become dependent on does not exist.
The large blanket statements such as:
"Power tools are more limited and more difficult to use",
"Any advanced Mac user knows about Karabiner, BetterTouchTool, Choosy, Alfred, Automator, and more."
"With Linux, you can achieve almost the same feature set, but it is harder and more limited."
In this case, the author has limited themselves to what is commercially available. Or looking at their choice tools they mentioned, the wrong tool for the job.
The entire review seems very biased in the context that the expectation is Linux should have the same tooling and UX as macOS. There is no mention on viewing other GUIs that could be tuned to better suit the expectations of the author.
Very little support for W10 in here, which is understandable.
I just recently switched back from a work Linux config and a hybrid Mac config to a full W10 config for a variety of reasons, the largest being that W10 is solid, performant and doesn’t feel as limiting as Mac, or distracting and warty as Linux, when I’m programming.
I think that if you remove the crap preinstalled on Windows, which is trivial for an experienced Windows user, and you don't have a work laptop with a ton of corporate management-ware installed, Windows 10 is super snappy, stable and with WSL you also get quite a few Linux goodies.
If you approach it with an open and flexible mind, it's at least equal to Linux or Mac desktops, for developers.
I knew that if this got posted to HN I'd need to explain myself more :)
To address some of the top comments:
- I clarified now in the article that the "Linux Laptop" is a Dell XPS 13" Developer Edition, which is marketed indeed as a Linux laptop, and the Ubuntu is marketed as "Ubuntu Dell".
However, this is missing the forest for the trees, because only a couple of the issues I mentioned were related to hardware. The main point of the article is software polish, not hardware compatibility. On the previous article where I decide which laptop to use I already mention that it's not an issue nowadays: https://cfenollosa.com/blog/how-i-moved-my-setup-from-a-mac-...
- What is a power user? Indeed, the core point of the article. I tried to be as detailed as possible with my requirements. Saying it is "a bunch of custom keyboard shortcuts" is a straw man.
- apt-get vs other package managers. I've used rpm/yum, emerge, pkg_add, brew, and port. I found that apt-get is very fast and reliable. brew is embarrassingly slow and doesn't apply important changes to config files, just drops you a notice asking the user to do it.
- The Mac also sucks. Yes indeed! That is why I ditched it for six months!
- What about Windows? Well, I install Windows 10 regularly for other members of my team. I hate it. Not only you have to work around the software, you have to actively fight AGAINST the system and its dark patterns. Preinstalled crap, "fake" requiring a Live.com user for a local account, constant and unexpected reboots, telemetry... sorry, it's not for me.
- Do you use Linux on your servers? Yes, indeed. Debian as base, then containers with Void.
- Didn't you expect you'd need to change your workflow? Sure, that is why I stayed with Linux for six months and not two weeks. I gave myself time.
By the way I have been using Linux non-stop since 1999, and 7 years as my only system. I know the Linux-isms
- Just do [the opposite of my requirements]. I wish!
- How can you like Nautilus? I just said it's better than the Finder.
- This is an article aimed at Mac users who are considering a migration to Linux in hope of a more polished system. If you've never used a Mac, you probably can't relate because you don't know what you're missing (happened to me before I tried a Mac!)
I'll hang around to answer more questions, thanks for all your feedback!
I have been running Linux (Arch) with Gnome on a Dell XPS 13 9380 for the past 2 years and I did not face major issues.
My first major complaint is the lack of fingerprint reader driver. It simply does not work.
My desktop environment is Gnome on Wayland.
The support of multiple monitors with different pixel densities is also problematic. You can set fractional scaling but the rendering was really blurry. So now I have a script that runs when I connect an external monitor that just changes text scaling in Gnome (usually when connected on an external monitor I don´t use the laptop screen).
Other than that I have better battery life than on Windows 10 even if video hardware acceleration is less efficient than on Windows (firefox is the only browser supporting it). And for server side development which I occasionally do on my personal laptop, I vastly prefer Linux over Mac or Windows (even with WSL2).
I think at some point it's just hard to get used to something new. Linux to me is incredibly polished in terms of both UX and customisability, compared to both Windows and Mac (both of which I've used commercially for 5+ years). But I've been using linux on desktop and server for at least 20 years so I'm probably just not able to see some of the things people complain about (or they're just non-issues for me).
All your points are valid as much as I can tell, but this one : "requiring a Live.com user for a local account,"
You can create a local account without any live.com user by just disabling internet while installing windows. I know it's still working around the software... But it's still doable.
What I would like to add is: bluetooth support and sound stuff. It feels like it's still an afterthought in the community and is still flaky at best.
I think the main problem with linux on desktops shows quite perfectly in this thread. Good UX? Nah, why would we? Invest your own time, fiddle around until you settle on a mediocre and cumbersome solution.
I've been using Arch for over 13 years now and over 10 years of MacBooks with a short break. It feels like the problems are still the same. Though the X auto configuration got way better.
I love (especially) Arch though, but not the experience of using it on a day-to-day basis. I always miss pacman on macs, but I miss the UX on arch.
I have not found anything better than wmii, last year replicated experience in xmonad now without any WM controls. My environment is clean and unobtrusive — xterm, vim, mpv, mupdf. Arch Linux user since 2009. Recently I've tried Windows and macOS, can't stand them.
There are other projects though — Gnome, KDE, more mainstream approach.
This was great. I love how Carlos ends his experience with positive takeaways from using Linux.
I worked with someone who used Linux as their main OS. They _ALWAYS_ had issues with Zoom. Terrible audio over IP (phone was better), terrible video quality, video would timeout after a few seconds, A/V mis-sync, etc.
That would be a non-starter for me, given that I use Zoom frequently.
On the topic of email clients: I'm always wanting to use them, especially when I'm spending more time in the terminal, but its lack of integration with any calendars always stops me from getting serious with it. That and it having not-great support for Office 365.
When I read "I am an extreme power user, I use the keyboard" I stopped reading. I think these power users have an inflated sense of self and the writing is atrocious. No doubt he's a rockstar code ninja too.
You complain about power user tools, then list a bunch of Xorg tools. Xorg is dying; move to Wayland. I use Sway, but if you want something that's closer to a macOS power user experience, you should probably go with KDE[0].
Tearing? Fundamental Xorg problem. Fixed in Wayland. Wayland has some rough edges, but the reality of the ecosystem is Xorg is dead and not coming back, and it's better to be a little ahead of the curve than behind it and complaining about things that are resolved on the other side.
Tearing is one of the reasons why Wayland was started. "Every frame is perfect" was the goal, and they baked it into the design by making all updates atomic.
That's why I doubt the author had a full Wayland setup running. Maybe the app ran via Xwayland or there was no Wayland at all.
I agree with the article in that the Apple hardware is superior. The best laptops available for Linux are the Dell XPSs and they are not in the same league as the Mac (I have both). However, for developers, especially system software developers, Linux is a far better choice in terms of software. Everything is scriptable, tools and libraries are typically built first for Linux and then ported over, you get enormous customizability for your workflow. Its not even close.
Left desktop Linux for a Mac and I’m not going back. Everything just works. Docker for Mac plus brew install coreutils to get the gnu utilities I love from Linux user land and I’m good. Also magnet for window management and I don’t need i3 (often I just split one terminal in iterm2). To each their own, though. I like the hardware, the Mac plays nice with all my homepods, and my AppleTV, and the trackpad is hands down the best ever and the keyboard is much improved.
I'm a Linux fan, but I'm toying with the idea of getting one of the new Macs to replacement my Chromebook...
For work I am very happy with my Linux setup. ~5-6 years ago I got a good chromebook as an experiment, and I really like it in general. Long battery life, good build, high res screen, good security model, not much mucking around on it. It's a $1K chromebook that I got almost half price because refurb.
The double edged sword is that it's limited. There are benefits to that I don't expect much from it. But for anything beyond web browsing I just use it as an ssh terminal. It works fine there, but I haven't found a programming environment I can use on it. Note: It apparently will never support the Linux apps.
Sometimes I make movies, and borrow my wife's Windows laptop to run Resolve on. It's worlds better than any of the video editors I've used on Linux, and I was never able to get Resolve working on Linux.
So with the new Mac I was thinking maybe I should try one of those instead of the Chromebook? At the lower end of the spectrum, the price is comparable to a good Chromebook (and I was dissatisfied with the lower end Chromebooks). But, if I actually want to do video editing I need 1-2TB of storage, which pushes the price up close to $2K. But if I avoid upgrading both my laptop AND personal desktop because of it... One option would be a lower end Mac and an external SSD. At least until I accidentally unplug it on the couch while editing a video.
But for 95% of my personal use, the Chromebook is just great.
> Any advanced Mac user knows about Karabiner, BetterTouchTool, Choosy, Alfred, Automator, and more.
> With Linux, you can achieve almost the same feature set, but it is harder and more limited.
> For example. To customize your keyboard, you will need a combination of xdotool, xbindkeys, xcape, xmodmap and setxkbmap to capture some event and then run a shell script. There is a Gnome Shell plugin that allows you to tweak your keyboard, but it's nowhere near Karabiner.
Much of what you said is true, but you may also want to checkout my mac-style shortcut keys for linux project over here https://github.com/rbreaves/kinto. It takes a lot of the effort and annoyance of remapping out of the equation imo.
Generally it is more difficult to find working alternatives on changing basic linux behaviors quickly, whether those solutions be free or cost money.
And yes libinput-gestures can be difficult to work w/ I spent over an hour until I realized I needed to log off and back on -.-. Also it is concerning that you say screen tearing is back under Wayland - I haven't spent much time in Wayland because I have not yet worked out a good solution for porting my kinto project to it.
I also carried out this experiment, mainly cos I couldn’t afford a Mac for a while. Completely agree with all his comments except: the default terminal in Ubuntu is a gazillion times better than Mac and that makes a huge difference. But ultimately productivity suites matter, webmail sucks, and all of the email clients on Linux were awful. That’s a showstopper for anyone doing a lot of office or management work.
I have a hard time seeing, as a long time Linux user, how the default mac terminal is crap ? It's very responsive, fast, you have most of the features you need. That compared to the clunky, slow gnome terminal for example, or the many various RXVT xterm clones.
Of course, you can install iTerm2 which is even better.
Thunderbird is pretty good and in my experience, less buggy than Apple Mail, especially when using providers other than iCloud. My wife absolutely hated Apple Mail, primarily because it would forget passwords and stop syncing/sending. So I moved her to Thunderbird and now she's happy.
I've been using Thunderbird for like a decade, but I've been spoiled by Fastmail's web interface so much that I now consider Thunderbird to be one giant mess from a UX perspective.
Half the time I miss-click the first email and sort by subject. In what world would I want to sort my emails by subject!?
Search vs. filter messages, I really don't need two search bars, one is fine.
I'm annoyed that the default sort is oldest to newest, and that I have to change it for each individual folder.
Tabs really don't fit into how I consume my email. Flagging important ones is good enough.
I'd take Geary (https://wiki.gnome.org/Apps/Geary) over Thunderbird any day, but lack of GPG integration is what's forcing me to stick to Thunderbird.
Yes I agree, the UI is a mess and they have made some bad design decisions. One time I was on train with my network connection dropping constantly and Thunderbird was giving me a model pop-up dialogue each time! It still gives pop-ups for updates. But it's open-source, relatively stable and reliable, and that counts for a lot.
The sad fact is that there is simply no money in building email clients. Email is a legacy technology and arguably no longer fit for purpose. We need a new standard and that's not something that BigTech has delivered yet.
agree that Thunderbird is the second best mail client I've used. But the gap is huge, and the bugs in Thunderbird were significant enough to cause me real problems in my work.
Apple is for people who want the generic apple experience, if you want to customize its the worst of all. I run arch linux on thinkpad carbon x1 and its the best laptop I ever owned or seen, mostly because I care much more about my own customized workflow (tile management, fast terminal instantiation, vim keys everywhere, CLI apps when possible etc.).
Sure it is, just not ALL of it. Everything's a tradeoff; I like my work Mac, but I'd never buy one, and not just the absurd Apple Tax reason. For my use cases, BY AND LARGE Linux works better, for me, but the Mac has some really neat features I miss in Linux.
For opening a very large and organizationally complex PDF like the ARMv8 Architecture Reference Manual, Preview.app is the only PDF reader, on any platform, which I would recommend. The competition is simply a joke in comparison. I also like it for filling out PDF forms; I think I ended up using a web service (!!) the last time I wanted to do that on another platform.
But aside from Preview.app, I don't find anything commendable about macOS. I've remained on an old and vulnerable version to ensure I don't lose control of my own hardware, and what's more, I will never upgrade that hardware given how bad the new hardware seems.
In short, I'm just waiting for a Preview.app clone/same-weight-class competitor on Windows and I'll be off to one of Msft's first party laptops.
I have the same experience. I bought a System76 darter pro, it comes with a linux pre-installed. I've been using it on and of for a year now but cannot 'give up' my mac:
- It is not stable at all; weekly complete freezes
- The key-bindings are a joke. Even after remapping and hacking stuff
- bluetooth support sucks, sometimes it works for days, then it will not reconnect and keep spewing errors.
- Sound drivers seems buggy, it takes 20-30s to 'switch' to a BT speaker.
- I cannot for the life of me figure out how to install Ruby 'correctly' via apt.
We've banned this account for repeatedly breaking the site guidelines and ignoring our request to stop.
If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com and give us reason to believe that you'll follow the rules in the future. They're here: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
"Only rich spoiled brats spend 5k on a laptop that would otherwise cost 1k"
Not this again. A fully tricked out MBP 16" costs $6699. RRP for a Lenovo equivalent is $8,894. Dell doesn't sell anything that matches, but equivalent spec is $3,894.99 (MBP 16" $4199). System 76 - $3,174 with a shit display (1080p in a 'high end' laptop is absolutely shocking). Librem 14 (vs MBP 13" for $2299), $2,716 - again, with a really poor screen, but now the Mac has a better processor and significantly better battery life. So, yet again, we illustrate that when you look for equivalent new spec of an Apple device, they cost about the same. There is always manufacturer refurbished or secondhand, much like every other laptop.
You have the option to flag - everyone with > 30 karma does.
The site guidelines contain a straightforward way to contact us.
Even if the above sentences weren't true, it's still not ok to break the site guidelines yourself, regardless of what someone else has posted—so please don't do that.
The Pantheon desktop environment (default in elementaryOS, a Linux distro) is the most similar to macOS, in case that's what you are looking for.
Kupfer is an alternative to Alfred. Tilix is an alternative to iTerm2. Instead of using Crossover, just use SoftMaker FreeOffice.
I would use Xournal++ rather than Xournal.
Gimp has a lot of annoyances right now, notably: uses GTK 2 which doesn't support HiDPI. Gimp 2.99.2 (development version) adds support for GTK 3 but it's unstable and crashes often. Hopefully Gimp 3 is released soon. For now, I use Krita.
I am someone who has recently transitioned from Mac to Linux.
Here were my grievances with Mac:
- Lack of absolute control over the system: In linux I can increase inotify watchers, use a local version of whatever CLI I am working with i.e Docker (Docker is uncomfortable to use on Mac), apply patches to kernel modules if I need em, apply bugfixes instantly etc
- The keyboard for my Macbook Pro 2015 has become sticky and the keyboard for Macbook Air 2020 is too shallow and hard to press for me. My Thinkpad E15 seems to do it just right. I imagine this is even better on a superior model.
> the keyboard for Macbook Air 2020 is too shallow and hard to press
I had to temporarily switch back to my 2013 MPB while my 2019 was in for repair (my fault, drink near laptop = bad idea) and was actually surprised how mushy the keys felt on it in comparison to the 2019. Of course it is a matter of taste, but IMO once you get used to it, the 2019/20 keyboards are actually the best Apple have made, so maybe it is worth persevering.
Certainly a million miles from the butterfly disaster! That said, I mostly work with an external Microsoft Sculpt keyboard, which is probably more like the older MPB in feel.
Docker is installed different on Linux (as Docker Engine) vs. on Win and macOS (as Docker Desktop). A workflow or team assuming either would run into issues on the other. Most importantly Docker Engine runs as a service with root permissions whereas Docker Desktop implements a VM that hosts its services, with workflow implications for development where a host process and a container needs to communicate.
I have been an Linux and open source software user for over a decade. I will be getting a Mac from work and it feels weird to jump on the proprietary bandwagon.
That being said one can get used to most of the complainants about the app space. But system continues to have problems with hibernation/resume and memory management. App updates, critical, and system updates should be separated. If one opens a large apps then slowly the system load will increase to a level which will render the system unusable.
This is my exact experience. My current setup involves a powerful Linux rig under my desk that I use remotely over SSH for development work but my Mac is my ‘frontend’. But for a while I tried to use that Linux box exclusively.
This has been working really well for me, docker runs faster and I can get a lot more bang for my buck performance wise. Plus I get to keep using things like fantastical. I much prefer the Mac UI as well tbh and seem to not run into whatever bugs people seem to complain about.
The thing that always bothered me about de Icaza is that he should know better, given his credentials and how immersed he'd been in the FOSS scene for so long.
He boils down the issues with Linux on the desktop to what jwz calls Cascade of Attention-Deficit Teenagers[0] model. Essentially open source developers don't have the discipline and patience to do the hard work of maintaining their software, and instead just want to refine their designs, throw things away, start over from scratch, and make things perfect.
I don't disagree with this view, and I think it's just somewhat silly to expect the same level of polish and back-compat on Linux that you'd see on a commercial OS with commercial apps. Certainly there is a lot of very polished software built under the OSS model (though many of that software has funded full-time developers working on it), but any project that is either run largely by volunteers, or largely by the programmers themselves, is often not going to end up like a polished, seamless, corporate product. Companies (and product managers) make decisions about building software in a very different way than developers do. They have different priorities, and different things they care about.
There will never be a "year of Linux on the desktop", because FOSS Linux-based OSes are constantly-moving targets run by people who generally aren't getting paid to do the work necessary for that to happen. That's pretty much always been the case, and even with all the corporate interest around Linux (Canonical comes to mind), it's just not happening.
My first experience with Linux was with Red Hat 4 back in 1997 or so, though I didn't start using Linux as my daily driver until 2002 or so. It has always had, and will always have, many rough edges. For me, I find that I have fewer problems with it than I did during my stints running macOS, but... that's just me, and I can fix nearly any issue I run into (even if they are few and far between) with a minimum of effort and time. That's not for everyone, and that's fine.
[0] Don't click (copy/paste into a new tab), as jwz has a nasty redirect for people coming from HN, but: https://www.jwz.org/doc/cadt.html
A lot has changed, Apple braking compatibility, Microsoft braking so much. Microsoft hegemony on desktop destroyed by web, smartphones and Apple, so much that ChromeOS exists. No Flash, no IE, Microsoft Edge based on Chromium. Windows adopted Linux with WSL. Wine getting better, Valve Proton drives gaming on Linux. Open source AMD GPU driver. Wayland. The future is awesome.
He thought of stomping alternatives, parroting Jobs, that's wrong. The reason I've switched to Linux is such attitude from Microsoft. Linux experience is a moving target. At first we are expats, striving to replicate what was lost, but Linux provides much more. Why not explore it?
Microsoft Windows is powered by legacy, enterprise and gaming. Apple macOS advertises polished experience, creative applications, iOS development. Google Android, Apple iOS — touch oriented OS, app store. Google Chromebook — security and web. Linux is different, every community strives to find its own answer.
I estimate that by the middle of this decade, linux will no longer be a moving target for third parties. It is just getting complex, mature and polished enough to keep continuously changing. It will likely be good enough for most things most people would like to do.
Nevertheless, I don't think that will make its market in increase significantly. There are more factors that influence the success on the desktop beyond polish, maturity and technical excellence. Even listening what industry say they need is a good indicator of what needs to be done. The "third party software industry" is like steve jobs said about users: "we can't just ask for what customers want".
> Suffice to say, I had both Thunderbird and Gmail open and used either one depending on the task I needed to complete.
Genuinely curious as to what people cannot accomplish in the Gmail web client (or any major web client for that matter) that they can accomplish with the desktop app. I have outlook for work and while I use the desktop client out of habit, plenty of colleagues use the web client exclusively.
I use a Mac laptop for leisure and a Linux desktop for work. I'm very happy with both. Switching their roles would be miserable: Linux laptops can't compete on trackpad and battery life, and Macs can't compete on perf especially if you need more than 16 GB of RAM. Macs also don't have i3, but that's subjective.
I work with a colleague who uses a mac while almost the whole company uses linux. The number of times he complained something doesn't work (like using curl? Or running some python? I don't know i never had a mac) when it clearly does, is amazing.
So i guess you trade one type of annoyance for another
Personnally been using Linux for 5 years everyday now
> I am an extreme power user, to the point that many of the keys on my keyboard don't do what the keycap says.
Is that really the definition of an extreme power user? I switched the layout on my work MacBook to UK and remapped caps lock to command, but I’m in no way a Mac power user, let alone an extreme one.
You’ve misread. He wasn’t suggesting that the process for remapping a keyboard falls under power user, as in understanding how to do that. Remapping keys on a keyboard so they are exactly how you want them for your workflow definitely is the behaviour of a power user.
The biggest problem with Linux for me was different keyboard inputs. CJK, English and, for example, Cyrillic input don’t work together out of the box. Don’t tell me “you should install this and that”. It’s basic functionality that every desktop OS should have. Linux desktop sucks.
This reminds me of the h3h3 video of a student dropping out of college because they couldn't install their Verizon CD on Ubuntu: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WRWrmT0ovPE
I used to work at a place where every workstation was a $5000 Mac. I quickly found out those things are clunkier than my $600 laptop, and way clunkier than my ancient desktop box. As a Linux user of many years I didn't enjoy having to deal with my workstation.
Read up to the point he said the app he missed most was Mail.app!!! Ha ha ha. As a long time Mac and iOS user I dont use the mail apps on either platform. IMP its pretty badly done.
Finder is certainly less visually appealing since it became monochrome, but a disaster? Its preview tools are excellent. It provides tabbed view, which is bizarrely still not available in Windows explorer. It's excellent at remembering the state of folders, and which information was previously available in columns. It works well across different sized screens. Not a huge fan of the look and feel of Big Sur in general, but moving back to MacOs recently after using windows of a couple of years, finder is a wonderful breath of fresh air.
For one thing, it is extremely slow. Every time open file meny appears, or need to search for something, prepare to wait 15-30 seconds. File management is a pain, renaming, viewing properties, etc are likely the worst of all file managers I've ever seen. Nautilus is so much better (but it changed for the worse since 2008, too).
(I'd prefer a Far Manager version for linux / iOS to manage files, but I have accepted that this will never happen, unfortunately)
How is renaming poor? You can batch rename and a simple click on the file name allows for renaming. Last time I used Nautilus, you still had to activate file renaming with a keypress or from a menu and that had to be done in a moat window. Viewing properties in Finder is easily done with cmd-i or viewable in column mode.
> You can batch rename and a simple click on the file name allows for renaming.
Exactly! So every time I double-click a bit slower than macOS wants me to, it enters the renaming mode. I rarely need to rename files, and since the name should be entered via keyboard anyway, a special hotkey makes way more sense.
Also, not showing file extensions by default is a big problem. And it is generally EXTREMELY SLOW, I shrug every time I have to launch the damn thing.
Personally, I find that counter-intuitive in a WIMP UI. If it keeps happening, you can change your double-click speed in System Preferences - shortcut key is Enter (which has been the shortcut since before Windows or Gnome/KDE existed). File extensions have always been hidden by default. Again, on a WIMP based UI, they're kind of superfluous. Finder is super snappy form me. Literally just launched it and it's there straight away. Obviously YMMV...
So Carlos says "don't pick off single issues because it's forest/trees stuff" but I gotta say: he thinks apt is better than brew.
Nothing else felt "wrong" but that one just threw me completely. I can go with his whole write up, but not that.
Admittedly I come from a BSD background on 7th ed. 32V and 4.1bsd onward, so to me ports and pkg are the more natural path, which brew conforms to.
I also totally get his preview/calendar/mail.app vibe. Mail.app is not getting better. But the trio are pretty rock solid. Post O365 no complaint about office on Linux makes sense really, so it comes down to productivity apps and integration.
And yea, I wish a decent gtk port into osx was a thing.
Brew is the single thing that I absolutely loathe about macOS.
It dog slow (does it really need to git pull from GitHub every 15 minutes, really?), doesn't support multiple users, doesn't support alternative folders, hates static compilation (which is mostly why the two previous break), and lots of new things are not available there anymore.
In my new computer I didn't even install it, I just used the Rustup/Dotnet/RVM/NVM install instructions rather than using Brew. I then got statically compiled versions of ffmpeg, jq, z7, which took a couple minutes. Let's see how long until I cave. I'll probably try MacPorts.
I've been slowly transitioning to using nix for all my software installations on macOS: it's pretty nice to have one tool that can manage all my 3rd-party software; manage the configuration of a bunch of programs, via home-manager; and, with lorri and direnv, replace nvm/rbenv/etc.
There were multiple successful package manager systems on macOS (MacPorts and fink) before brew came out. Brew hardly has any technical advantages over them except that maybe fink got stuck using an older version of dpkg/apt, and it made some new mistakes like installing in /usr/local.
Instead what seemed to happen is a new generation of Rails developers got Macs, decided all their tools needed to be written in Ruby by hipsters with lumberjack beards, and so they didn't want to touch the old stuff.
Yes. Brew is a crutch, and so network hungry. Nobody cares, but if you move to the mountains and want to do software development, a Mac will grind to a halt every so often for myriad reasons decided by someone at Apple, or just some dev accustomed to 100mbps.
Linux (Arch for me, but probably others) can be told to respect your personal situation, as opposed to dictating it.
ArchLinux has been painless. although I must say I've not tried anything too cutting edge with the GUI. Even if you don't use Arch, the Wiki is invaluable.
The wiki... Shows that community maintained resources don't have to suck.
I'm just using Sway and yay all day. The blunt edge works for me.
And, can't say this enough, please always keep in mind that your software may be used by someone with a slower connection or who may even be entirely offline sometimes. I deserve music while driving, and text is king. (Elon - starlink me please)
Both of these experiences are completely unlike mine, but I guess that goes to the variances in what people want and use.
The one thing I want in brew and don't have, is hugin. Nothing else I use is missing. Iterm and docker and other cask like installs can be ropey especially if they do update checks inside themselves.
I, probably a very simplistic user compared to others. YMMV.
I've been using MacPorts continuously for about 10 years now. It's been completely pain free. I think I ran into a single broken package in that time period.
> I just used the Rustup/Dotnet/RVM/NVM install instructions rather than using Brew. I then got statically compiled versions of ffmpeg, jq, z7, which took a couple minutes.
This is the setup I prefer in a vacuum, although it depends on the stuff you need being available.
I also do think MacPorts is quite good. It follows UNIX principles, and it doesn't try to take over the systems. Everything is contained in its own world inside /opt/.
> I come from a BSD background on 7th ed. 32V and 4.1bsd onward, so to me ports and pkg are the more natural path, which brew conforms to.
Brew conforms to your idea of how a traditional UNIX package manager should work? The same brew that pretends multiple users don't exist and takes control of /usr/local/ for itself? Are we talking about the same thing?
Ok. You got me there. But, in my defence, most macs are run single user. If I'd done any login separation I'd probably be wincing at what I said there.
Apt, yum, bundles, renamed packages at random, the whole -devel thing.. brrrr. Please, no.
Macports lost out. Liked it, found it wasn't getting enough attention.
There's a great story in how much of the world runs in excel. I use it simplistically, but I make no pretence there aren't deep, complex use cases. Maybe because I use it simplistically it doesn't bother me how weak it is compared to native.
Yea, although for the Emacs user because all x11 apps acquire x11 through MIT's X10R4 idea of textbox edit norms, they get the in line text edit/move behaviour they expected on anybody's xorg app. Not such on notepad.exe
Powershell doesn't do it for me, but that aside WSL might.
Our code runs on Linux servers, our (business) customers all run Windows. I run a linux laptop as I don't want to introduce another stack into the mix.
macOS has a great UX but in my personal opinion I dislike the native Mail app and native Calendar app.
I use Gmail and to me Gmail is far better than the native Mail app on macOS.
I also don't see how the author consider himself a power-user and then use the native Mail app which is clearly less advanced than Gmail which offers far more features and integrations.
As a macOS & Linux user and KDE fan (without the boy), I love how macOS uses space so efficiently and has great productivity flow.
Also, the native mail & calendar apps are not that crippled when combined with a capable IMAP/CalDAV server combo. After using it for some time, I personally like how I can map it into my mental model and use effortlessly.
I'm not a macOS power user though. I like the vanilla macOS and doesn't add many tools on top of that (like Brew, HammerSpoon, yadda yadda).
Ubuntu comes with Wayland, and on the login screen you can switch to it ( at least it does on mine that's a 16.10 updated to 18.04 to 20.04, and i've never installed Wayland myself)
The first and main mistake any OS switchers do, regardless from where they come and to which OS they go is the fact that they expect the new OS to provide the same experience like the one they come from. Switching from Windows to Linux, people expect great GUI and hand holding. Switching from Linux to Windows, people expect a lot of customization and are annoyed by hand holding Microsoft does. Switching from Mac to Windows, people expect the Apple's way of hand holding, which is done differently by Microsoft and thus is annoying.
Before doing such a drastic move maybe do a parallel of your most menial everyday task on both OS'es and then decide how to move about on the new OS regarding that. Also read about the philosophy behind each OS and understand it's strengths and weaknesses. Only after that you can complete and/or adjust to this switch.
As an example, I was first a Windows user. Then I started to go about with Linux. And I loved the style of pipe one program to next to complete a task using nothing but bash/batch (whatever terminology you prefer). This was before Windows implemented same using PowerShell, hence why I love and use to this very day CygWin. On many of my customers systems CygWin is installed and used for production.
The article's author mistake is exactly this lack of adjusting and instead trying to force Mac style on Linux. My 2 cents.
I feel like I need to clarify that this is an article aimed at Mac users who are considering a migration to Linux in hope of a more polished system. As usual, personal experiences and requirements are subjective. I know that Ubuntu ≠ Gnome ≠ Linux. I also know that I'm not entitled to anything, everybody is welcome to send patches. Just let me say that if you try to cherry-pick any single issue, you're missing the forest for the trees.
That I find interesting. Been trying KDE flavour more recently and the only distro that would work for me is openSUSE (Tumbleweed) KDE. Everything was pretty much perfect. I've tried KDE Neon and Kubuntu, both didn't have the correct dark icons for LibreOffice (as an example).
As a developer about to switch companies, I'm now faced with a forced switch to Linux or if I want I could also stay on Apple (M1). I'm really inclined to say goodbye to Apple, as I have suffered too many uncomfortable changes over the most recent 12 years or so. I feel home in KDE, tried Gnome which I find too hard.
Agreed, KDE is great. The default theme is somewhat disappointing but once configured, it beats OSX and Windows hands down. It's extremely configurable.
I also wouldn't mind Ubuntu/Gnome but I encountered some touchpad issues with my new HP laptop and I didn't want to fiddle too much with the Ubuntu drivers and internals. Kubuntu was just more configurable including the touchpad driver.
I have used Linux exclusively at home for years. Recently, I was very impressed with antiX Linux. Runs like the blazes on minimal hardware and highly configurable. For those used to a more busy desktop there's Ubuntu Mate or Lubuntu. A minimum version of Ubuntu, but not as minimum as antiX Linux.
I did for work. Always had a screw-driver with me, in case the system frozze and i needed to remove the battery to get it working again, because the power button wouldn't restart it.
Tryied to diagnose the error, but it wasn't cooling and other colleagues had it too- so i guess its just distro-crap.
I suffer through it for open source, but it ain't something i can recommend.
Essentially the article boils down to "I am used to a Mac and anything that doesn't behave like a Mac is incorrect, and I'm unwilling to invest time into figuring it out". It's fair enough stance, but unless you are willing to invest time into becoming a Linux 'power user', you're going to remain locked into whatever hardware Apple happens to be peddling at the time.
The M1 seems great today, but Apple will slump again in the future and there will be yet another blog about how a Mac user tried Linux and found out it's different. With Linux I'm pretty free to move about different hardware platforms and pick whatever is out there that suites my needs. This ranges from desktops, to laptops, to tablets, and now even phones. The Linux 'ecosystem' looks more compelling every day, especially for power users.
For those looking to transition, I would recommend doing so by running something like Ubuntu in a VM on your Mac and slowly transition your workflow. You'll find that in some areas your workflow will be significantly better and after some experimenting you'll find the right tools for you.
>Essentially the article boils down to "I am used to a Mac and anything that doesn't behave like a Mac is incorrect, and I'm unwilling to invest time into figuring it out".
It doesn't look like that. He has legitimate issues with things he needs for his job, like a good email client and calendar client. No matter how you try to adapt your workflow, the PIM situation in Linux is very poor.
If anyone realizes that all they are mostly doing is using, let's say, a browser, IDE and terminal for most tasks and some tooling that can be used anywhere, the value proposition for macOS (or Windows for that matter) is much lower. My last Mac I stopped using in ~2016 because I made that realization myself. Even if my hardware is not to the standard of Apple's hardware, the only thing it should do is not fail randomly on work-critical devices. That doesn't happen at all to me - Ubuntu on the ThinkPads I use work great.
What it all boils down to is a matter of taste, IMO.
In the 90s there used to be big differences. E.g. Apple had their own network protocols and so on. It was harder to use FOSS software on a Windows 98 system etc.
These days, both Linux and macOS are Unix/Unix-like. Windows 10 has WSL. They can all run Chrome, Firefox, Visual Studio Code, Emacs, vi, Sublime Text, bash, git, grep, etc etc.
So whatever you choose you can probably find a way to configure a reasonable system. Some details differ, but in many parts they are all alike.
I make the assumption that Quicklook uses Preview (because surely it must).
Being able to hit spacebar on just about any kind of selected document/image type file and see a near instant look, multiple pages and all, is so important. Once you don't have that (move to the Windows world), you realize how much you miss it. And you can, with a small bit of effort, add capabilities for additional files such as Markdown.
Being able to open a PDF or image in a fast, reliable native viewer, and even do some level of editing (such as quickly adding a signature!) is super useful.
In terms of reliability, every time over the last 20 years (some distant, some recent) where I tried to live with a Linux desktop, things would stop working after a short while. Meanwhile, I have lived on my 2014 MBP since 2014, going through multiple OS upgrades in place - no wipes/reinstalls - and find it just as performant as ever. It is in most use cases more performant than my 2017 _much_ higher spec Dell XPS 15 (in Windows or Linux boot mode).
There are still some things I hate, #1 being that when I cmd-tab to a window which is minimized, it doesn't raise that window. What is the f*cking point of cmd-tabbing to an application if you don't make its window visible!? This I have never understood. But generally speaking, macOS on Apple hardware is unmatched by any alternative.