Ask HN: Switching from OS X to Linux

I'm switching from OS X to Linux because 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. But more importantly, I'm tired of every feature and option being taken away from me. OS X is just going downhill, so it's probably a good idea to switch as soon as possible.

There are a few things that I'd want in my new Linux distro:

- I'd really love to keep my OS X-style keybindings. It's really frustrating for me to be on Windows and try to paste the system clipboard into a command line. What is it again? Shift-Insert or Control-Insert? And how do I open a new terminal window? Alt-F2?

- The above also goes for Emacs text editing bindings (OS X comes with C-p, C-n, C-k, C-o, C-v, etc.). I want them around too.

So being able to rebind keys is really important to me.

I'm also looking to replace a couple apps:

- iTerm2. I was sure this wouldn't be a problem, but after looking more into it, apparently ... it is. I've heard that some emulators can't even wrap text properly. I'd also like if it could support profile switching via escape code and other nice things like that.

- Alfred. Not so much for searching for applications, more for having a mini-"command line" that I can use from anywhere.

Another thing is compatibility. Of course if that was my highest priority, I'd go with Ubuntu and Unity. It seems like more and more things are starting to say "Linux" when they mean "stock Ubuntu". I cannot stand Unity, so I'm thinking Linux Mint. I'm also giving Elementary OS a try in a VM right now, so we'll see how that goes.

Try Elementary OS, its based off ubuntu and is almost a dead ringer for OSX. It has the window management you are looking for as well as a couple of apps. Try Synapse as a replacement for Alfred.

Indeed, Elementary OS is very handy for anyone coming from OSX.

gnome-terminal has text wrapping

https://github.com/emgram769/lighthouse is like alfred

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 copy it over to my laptop (I'm on an iMac) and continue what I was working on from there; or to just reboot into windows and play some PC games. And being able to do branching at a machine level can come in handy too.

Anyway. To answer your questions about distros. I started with centos but it does not appear to be a great desktop OS, and chrome doesn't even support it. But I also noticed the font renderings in the browser were notably crappier, and ubuntu has a package to make that not suck so much.

So, I went with linux mint. I do NOT like the fact that the firefox it comes with prevents you from using google as your search engine (at all) because mint wants a cut of google's profits; so you simply can't use it. That still gets under my skin. But you can download Firefox directly and get around that, which is what I did.

But basically, anything ubuntu based. as much as I otherwise dislike ubuntu, it'll equate to the least tinkering required.

Otherwise my apps haven't really changed - everything I used regularly in OSX is in linux.

Some of the copy/paste behavior is nutty, but I haven't looked into tuning that yet to be honest.

But otherwise, I'm pretty happy with the move and the solution. If OSX gets worse I can move more into the VM.