Try Manjaro. It's my favorite distro and has amazing driver compatibility out of the box. It's also based on Arch Linux so there are rolling updates and no need to worry about release cycles breaking your machine. It's essentially the "Ubuntu" of Arch Linux
Ask HN: Switching from OS X to Linux
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Re: Ask HN: Switching from OS X to Linux
#42Good! 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…
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 to view PDFs
In general I do a lot more stuff via the commandline now than before and a selection of custom scripts in ~/bin is growing. For example I have a script "serve" that will copy a file via scp to my webserver and return the URL that I can then share, and I have cronjobs that fetch my bank account balances and synchronize my mail via offlineimap etc.
And the thing I like most is that I know exactly what the running processes/services are doing; there are no adware/crapware/updaters; memory usage is minimal (about ~150 MB for a clean desktop); the system never swaps (8GB RAM).
Re: Ask HN: Switching from OS X to Linux
#43While I never used Alfred, it sounds like rofi[0] might be for you (if you like the minimalistic design).
Re: Ask HN: Switching from OS X to Linux
#44I'm not sure how well it compares to iTerm2, but check out terminator.
My personal favourite terminal on Linux is yakuake (global hotkey for bringing the window to the foreground is really useful).
On the same line you have Tilda https://github.com/lanoxx/tilda
I used the three of them and always ended using Tilda. Be sure to install 1.2.2 (from the gh repo) so you can even use Solarized colors (the one on the ubuntu was 1.2.1 last time I checked).
Xfce's default terminal emulator also has this hotkey feature now.
Re: Ask HN: Switching from OS X to Linux
#45Being an OS X user myself I would lie if I said the thought hadn't hit me to switch to another Unix or Unix-like OS. Most notable candidates for me were:
Elementary OS Looks great and Ubuntu based so there's a thriving community around it. Sort of.
Crunchbang Linux Looks interesting. Didn't look into it much more than just click around on their website.
FreeBSD My weapon of choice for servers. I bed it'd make a mean desktop but there'd surely be a lot of work to set things up.
When I'm on Linux desktops the things I miss the most are Safari, Xcode, Alfred and Adobe Photoshop. Not to mention the polish. The things I miss in OS X are a proper volume manager (like the one in Windows where you can control the volume of individual applications or mute them), case sensitive file system (I know you can set this but I don't because of legacy script compatability) and an out of the box package manager/port tree. Yeah I use brew but the volume thing is driving me nuts having gone from Windows.
Re: Ask HN: Switching from OS X to Linux
#46Ubuntu 14.04 Trusty Tahr is where you want to be. It Just Works, plus there's a huge and awesome community to help out if you have questions. I haven't tried the derivatives, like Mint or Elementary, but I've heard good things. Note that even though Ubuntu is based on Debian, you do not want Debian... It's release cycle is a lot slower, the UI is much less polished, and you'll be stuck with versions of software that…
> awesome community
I think a lot of us have had mixed experiences. I've had some that were awesome, but some that made #python look like a hippie drum circle.
(Of course, sometimes #python is a hippie drum circle, but that's another conversation.)
Re: Ask HN: Switching from OS X to Linux
#47I have not had luck finding an equal to iTerm2 on Linux. While there are many to choose from, few combine all the features (color support, themes, layouts, configurable hot-keys for navigating panes, etc.) in one package. The one thing I miss the most is having nearly border-less panes for differing font sizes. To my knowledge, that can't be done on tmux or screen. I'd welcome any suggestion of a terminal with the fe…
Or give a tiling window manager [0] a try. My favorite is i3 [1].
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiling_window_manager
[1] http://i3wm.org/
Re: Ask HN: Switching from OS X to Linux
#48> I'm tired of having to have a kernel extension to remap keys and a stupid "window manager" just so I can hit Caps Lock+Up to make a window fill the screen. I'm using Karabiner + Seil for this. I suppose Seil is the kernel extension you mention? Is Karabiner technically a "window manager" or did you have another app in mind? If this is the only source of your complaints, honestly, I believe you'll have a lot more to…
there's also ControllerMate which certainly has a kernel extension.
Re: Ask HN: Switching from OS X to Linux
#49Earlier quoted context omitted.
gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.interface gtk-key-theme "Emacs" Yeah, the fact that there isn't UI for this basic pref says a lot about the relationship between desktop environments and "power users"... (source: http://askubuntu.com/questions/181532/emacs-keybindings-in-u... )
I just tried that in Elementary and it doesn't work :( I'm sure I'll find a way, but I'm starting to realize that the Cocoa Text System is pretty great compared to what other OSes have.
What didn't work about it? I have this in my .gtkrc-2.0:
gtk-key-theme-name="Emacs"
[Settings]
gtk-key-theme-name = Emacs
There are a couple of GTK+ applications that annoyingly override the shortcuts, like Pidgin for example (which binds C-w to "close window").
Re: Ask HN: Switching from OS X to Linux
#50You're absolutely right about Linux Mint. You can think of it like a curated Ubuntu. I'd recommend going with the Cinnamon UI. I've been using this combination for a few years now. About once or twice a year, I fire up a few other distros on one of my spare laptops at the house just to see where they're at. Mint is just a step ahead of the rest.
For your "mini-command-line" utility, I'd recommend picking up Guake terminal, and using the very easy hotkey mapper to map opening the terminal to something dead easy, like LeftAlt+Space. Guake is totally configurable, but with those simple hotkeys, you'll get a terminal. When you're ready to switch back, hit the hotkeys again and it will hide the terminal (keeping your session live). It supports multiple terminal tabs, which you can also switch between with a configurable hotkey (I use Ctrl+Shift+o and Ctrl+Shift+p to move left and right, respectively). Of course the display is ultimately configurable, too, so you can have it docked basically anywhere, transparent if you'd like, or as big or as small as you'd like. Highly recommended.