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Ask HN: Switching from OS X to Linux

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Re: Ask HN: Switching from OS X to Linux

#151

Post by mwhite »

wishiknew wrote: post #59

I switched a few weeks ago because I was tired of OS X, too. I tried every distribution out there and the one I've kept is Debian Jessie. Debian is great in that it's a simple and stable Gnome experience. Linux can be much more dangerous than OS X in terms of applications crashing badly, so I like the fact that I have an OS that I have thoroughly tested, fixed, and that won't move much in years. And I can get both th…

Try Kupfer. Been using it for years with no complaints. http://engla.github.io/kupfer/

Re: Ask HN: Switching from OS X to Linux

#152

Post by pil4rin »

toadi wrote: post #150
bitshepherd wrote: post #147

After over a decade of fiddling, twiddling, tweaking, breaking, fixing and generally trying to use Linux on a desktop, I gave up and went the opposite direction, and I couldn't be happier. I no longer actively fight my package manager because it decides that my kernel needs to be broken at this very moment (looking at you, openSUSE). I don't have to deal with the twiddling that one must do to get a working laptop set…

I'm like you. I started using linux round the time the kernel hit version 1. It was ok because when I was young I could not afford a recent computer and linux worked best on my hardware :) First years of my proffesional life I installed linux on all my laptops. Broken kernels, not working hibernate/sleep, battery life that sucked,... Every time I bought a new laptop some new tinkering followed. I always laughed with…

"Hardware is ok" In your mind, who makes a better laptop than Apple? In my experience build quality is unparalleled, but that obviously comes at a price. Having owned multiple macs, I opened up and attempted to look at other models (for work) and the only model that came close was the Razer Blade pro (which is similarly priced as the MBP counterpart).

Re: Ask HN: Switching from OS X to Linux

#153

Post by lsaferite »

rohansingh wrote: post #83
mntmn wrote: post #34

Good! I switched to Debian Linux on my Retina MBP about 4 months ago fulltime and after a few weeks of twiddling and fiddling it's super fun, fast and nice. I'm really enjoying it. I normalized all the keyboard shortcuts using several methods, the most important one is to switch Cmd and Ctrl keys. I documented that here: http://mntmn.com/Hipster%20Linux#keyboard-cmd-ctrl-copypaste... I use Terminator for Terminal and…

Did you do anything for trackpad gestures? My last attempt using Linux on a MBP (~3 years ago) was abandoned because I couldn't get over not being able to do three-finger swipes, etc.

I bought an MBP just to run Linux on it a few years back. The WiFi wouldn't work and the gesture support sucked. I love Linux SO much more than OSX or Win so it was a huge disappointment. The WiFi issues have been solved, but the gesture support on OSX is still amazingly superior.

Re: Ask HN: Switching from OS X to Linux

#154

Post by collyw »

yellowapple wrote: post #130
collyw wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree. The problem is Ubuntu is too popular, so you get many "mainstream" users responding with really nasty hacks to make things work rather than fixing things properly. Arch linux (actually I use a spin off called Manjaro) seems to be a lot better in that regard.

Arch is starting to suffer from similar problems, though, from what I can see; a large number of Ubuntu users are graduating to it and its relatives. That said, as a Slackware user, I'll admit to the Arch wiki being one of my go-to stops for reading up on how to tweak some program or other; Arch's wiki and the Slackbook are both on pretty equal footing for the closest things the GNU/Linux world has to OpenBSD's manpa…

Arch does seem to have a higher bar of entry, i.e. its a bit complicated to install. Ubuntu always seemed to aim itself at the inexperienced Linux user. I still have it on one of my machines as its the easiest way to get around secure boot.

Re: Ask HN: Switching from OS X to Linux

#155

Post by Nanzikambe »

wishiknew wrote: post #70
mntmn wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also, a list of superb tools: - Inkscape instead of Illustrator - GIMP instead of Photoshop (just install Photoshop keyboard shortcuts and use single window mode and it's much less "alien") - Iceweasel/Firefox instead of Chrome (super fast, works well with HiDPI and the dev tools are really on par now) - Steam (obvious) - pavucontrol as audio mixer - ncdu to track down disk space usage - sxiv to view images - zathura…

Opera's whole UI is hidpi enabled, unlike with FF and Chrome. You might want to give it a try.

> unlike with FF and Chrome

Both of these work fine in hidpi, see: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/HiDPI

Re: Ask HN: Switching from OS X to Linux

#156

Post by wooger »

lectrick wrote: post #115
yaantc wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have no experience with OS X and Alfred, but from what you describe it looks like krunner for the KDE desktop environment. krunner is a mini-CLI you can open with alt-F2 by default (customizable of course). It allows searching apps or the web, opening web sites, search files, controlling music being played, or whatever really as it's extensible through plugins. If using KDE is acceptable to you, you can learn more…

Alfred is awesome http://www.alfredapp.com/ It is based on an idea from an older launcher called Quicksilver http://qsapp.com/ These types of apps have existed in OS X for a long time. I'm kind of surprised that Linux doesn't have an equivalent yet, as pretty much any open-source dev who uses a Mac laptop knows about the above apps.

They have existed on Linux for just as long, it's just you Mac folks haven't heard of them as there's more choice, and all the major desktops have this functionality built in, at least as far as app launching goes - just press the windows key and start typing works in Unity & Gnome at least.

Less chance for market dominance from any one tool.

The coolest, ultra minimal yet featureful one is dmenu, which I haven't seen mentioned yet. Gnome-do, Kupfer are also good.

Re: Ask HN: Switching from OS X to Linux

#157

Post by johnward »

spike021 wrote: post #85
johnward wrote: post #81

Can anyone explain why OSX apps don't have a maximize button? The full screen button is just terrible.

Hold 'alt' when you click the green full-screen button and it'll maximize.

It still doesn't actually maximize, at least for chrome. It just expands vertically not horizontally. I also don't understand why fullscreen is the default. I've never once, ever, actually wanted something to go full screen.

Re: Ask HN: Switching from OS X to Linux

#158

Post by meesterdude »

beecup wrote: post #31
meesterdude wrote: post #9

Here here! I recently did this - well, I moved to a linux VM. Somewhat. First, I did not move everything; I only moved my dev enviroment. I have things bound to OS X and I can't say goodbye just yet entirely. But with everything in a VM I have a nice walled garden that i know will work, and I can update OSX with less hesitation as most of my time is spent in the safe world of the VM. It also makes it easy for me to c…

Are you using a remote VM or are you running it local? I'm using a decent MacBook Pro (2014) with 8GB of RAM, but running an Ubuntu with VirtualBox is performant enough to work in it. Or are you just ssh'ing into your VM ?

Running it in a local virtualbox VM. I have a 4-core imac with 16 GB of ram and throw all 4 cores at it and a good portion of the RAM. Going with a fixed disk size instead of dynamic gave a notable performance increase, too.

Re: Ask HN: Switching from OS X to Linux

#159

Post by yellowapple »

cheald wrote: post #135
yellowapple wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fedora's also a buggy mess at least 99% of the time. It's not something I would readily recommend to even an experienced user, let alone one new to GNU/Linux, unless they're prepared to use an operating system which is in no way meant to be stable.

This is true if you're running pre-releases, but what kinds of issues have you had elsewhere? I've been running Fedora for over a decade, and while it suffers from being bleeding edge sometimes, I don't think I've ever had stability issues or things I'd describe as a buggy mess.

I've only used "stable" Fedora releases (i.e. the ones officially released, named funny names, etc.). I think the most recent I used was whatever one came right before Spherical Cow (or maybe Beefy Miracle; my mind has done a good job of suppressing Fedora from my memory, which I'm thankful for, lest I be diagnosed with PTSD); whatever it was right when Fedora had switched over to systemd.

Fedora would throw kernel panics on seemingly-minor things. Things like starting Xfce instead of GNOME3, for example. Things like running for more than 15 minutes. Silly cases. The hardware was not the problem; it handled Slackware (a non-systemd distro) and openSUSE (a systemd distro) quite alright. Because it handled openSUSE alright, I knew it wasn't systemd itself either (though that certainly didn't help).

Fast forward a year or so, and I'm investigating using Fedora in order to leverage FreeIPA to authenticate against an Active Directory environment. Fine and dandy for all of three days, after which Fedora magically forgot all my network settings without any explicable rhyme or reason. Switched back over to openSUSE (which also has AD integration features - and much more polished ones, so I found), and everything worked fine for several months (after which I ended up finding a better job anyway).

To put this in perspective, I've found everything from Debian Sid to Arch to Slackware-current to openSUSE Factory significantly more stable than Fedora. I've also found RHEL and CentOS to be significantly more stable than Fedora. By some god-forsaken Beefy Antimiracle, Fedora somehow manages to fail even harder than Softlanding Linux System (which - if you know your distro history - was so awful as to cause Pat Volkerding and Ian Murdock to create Slackware and Debian (respectively) in a desperate bid to give people good reason to not use Softlanding Linux System). That's absolutely depressing that an ancient and horribly-designed distro from 1993 running on my ancient Compaq Presario 1210 runs better than a supposedly-modern distro like Fedora.

Re: Ask HN: Switching from OS X to Linux

#160

Post by gpinkham »

toadi wrote: post #150
bitshepherd wrote: post #147

After over a decade of fiddling, twiddling, tweaking, breaking, fixing and generally trying to use Linux on a desktop, I gave up and went the opposite direction, and I couldn't be happier. I no longer actively fight my package manager because it decides that my kernel needs to be broken at this very moment (looking at you, openSUSE). I don't have to deal with the twiddling that one must do to get a working laptop set…

I'm like you. I started using linux round the time the kernel hit version 1. It was ok because when I was young I could not afford a recent computer and linux worked best on my hardware :) First years of my proffesional life I installed linux on all my laptops. Broken kernels, not working hibernate/sleep, battery life that sucked,... Every time I bought a new laptop some new tinkering followed. I always laughed with…

I suspect a lot of this is per user.. I too have been using linux since the early days (slackware 1.1 which was kernel .99 or something like that). . I used linux on desktops and servers.. had tons of issues in the early and middle years with laptops.. but these last 4 or so years I have been running Ubuntu on a bunch of laptops with no sleep issues.. no battery issues.. no tinkering.. except to get the 3rd screen working with my lenovo.. then again never got that working with either of my macbooks.. so individual mileage may vary.. personally I like Linux.. but I'll probably have to go back to Mac simply for Office.. too many office docs come my way that don't work in Libreoffice..
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