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Ask HN: What's it like coming back to Windows from OS X?

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Ask HN: What's it like coming back to Windows from OS X?

#1

Post by brightball »

I'm at the point where I'm ready to retire from Apple. I happily switched years ago but recently realized that I'd dived in so hard to the ecosystem that disentangling is going to be really hard. I've learned looked at Linux laptops but it seems like an iffy decision unless I shell out for System76. I've been thinking more lately about coming back to Windows thanks to the Ubuntu integration.

What are your experiences here? Looking to get the experiences and suggestions of other people who've successfully gotten away from Apple.

Re: Ask HN: What's it like coming back to Windows from OS X?

#3

Post by dman »

Ive been enjoying windows a fair amount recently. With the Linux subsystem it has turned into a surprisingly great experience. All the familiar unix tools are here now and Windows 10 is pretty tasteful as an OS. Only request I have from Microsoft is to add a feature to disable file notification hooks from file created in the unix subsystem. Creating a lot of small files has always been slow on windows because it pounds the antivirus. I was hoping that the unix sandbox would be exempt from this however I see the Anti virus works hard even when I do IO in the unix subsystem.

Also Hyper-V being built in and free means that you can have test VMs with snapshot capabilities built right in the OS which is nice since it allows you to avoid the VMWare/Parallels tax.

Re: Ask HN: What's it like coming back to Windows from OS X?

#6

Post by brudgers »

I've never bought into Apple. I think Windows 10 is great, but I love tiling window managers. So I run Linux.

Windows 10 provides a polished, efficient, well designed interface. You have to get pretty far out on the edge of hardware before stuff doesn't just run [e.g. my eight year old Dell Precision configured as RAID 1 on via proprietary third party BIOS on the mother board interfering with the Windows 10 automatic upgrade until I turned it off and disconnected the disks until the upgrade had completed].

On the other hand, Linux provides a deeply documented operating system with text configuration files. It affords ample opportunities to hone one's RTFM skills, e.g. a 2016 kernel upgrade that borked Synaptics drivers made configuring my new Dell an exercise in understanding X11, systemd, libinput, and mouse configuration. Getting a 4k display well sorted is still underway (thanks for being the exception to deeply documented Unity!).

The downside of Windows for me is that most free software is untrustworthy and Microsoft has not quite come around to a good package manager system for native applications. By which I mean, there's lots of read the news apps in the Store, but not MIT-Scheme or little utilities like nmap. What I would say is that when Linux sucks, it sucks very consistently in a particular way: there's a fix that I am left to find myself and it might involve patching and recompiling the kernel (though it usually does not).

Anyway, Dell Precisions and some XPS laptops, can be ordered with Linux installed (at least in the US). So it's not just System 76. Also, there's generally a good Linux story with Thinkpads.

Re: Ask HN: What's it like coming back to Windows from OS X?

#7

Post by dmarlow »

dman wrote: post #3

Ive been enjoying windows a fair amount recently. With the Linux subsystem it has turned into a surprisingly great experience. All the familiar unix tools are here now and Windows 10 is pretty tasteful as an OS. Only request I have from Microsoft is to add a feature to disable file notification hooks from file created in the unix subsystem. Creating a lot of small files has always been slow on windows because it poun…

Can you exclude the directory from the AV's real-time scan?

Re: Ask HN: What's it like coming back to Windows from OS X?

#8

Post by Koshkin »

For me, switching between the two is painful - mostly due to difference in keybindings, and the only reason to keep a Mac around is the need to use it for projects targeting Apple's mobile platform. Windows seems to be a better PC-based gaming platform than either Mac or Linux, but overall Linux is what makes most sense for me - as a Unix and as a platform to get important and interesting stuff done.

Re: Ask HN: What's it like coming back to Windows from OS X?

#9

Post by peller »

If you haven't run Linux on a laptop recently, I suspect you'll be pleasantly surprised. As long as you're not buying a really cheap consumer-grade machine, or a bleeding-edge high-end machine, the chances it works out of the box are very high. Furthermore, the level of software support has improved drastically from even a few years ago.

Look at it this way. You're going to wipe and reinstall anyway, right? Might as well give running a real *nix a shot before you settle for less.

Re: Ask HN: What's it like coming back to Windows from OS X?

#10

Post by themoat »

peller wrote: post #9

If you haven't run Linux on a laptop recently, I suspect you'll be pleasantly surprised. As long as you're not buying a really cheap consumer-grade machine, or a bleeding-edge high-end machine, the chances it works out of the box are very high. Furthermore, the level of software support has improved drastically from even a few years ago. Look at it this way. You're going to wipe and reinstall anyway, right? Might as…

That is my suggestion as well. I can't go back to Windows, it just doesn't do it for me. I have been lucky to have my company buy laptops for me for the past bunch of years, but on my personal machine, the only reason I have Windows at all is for gaming.

For anything else I'm using some flavor of Linux. No question.

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