Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Ask YC: Why do you recommend a Macbook?

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 118 posts

Re: Ask YC: Why do you recommend a Macbook?

#91

Post by gcv »

utx00 wrote: post #65
gcv wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure. Two problems with it: 1. Still fairly bad video hardware support. I spent two hours helping a buddy set up a mid-range ATI card recently, and we couldn't get full acceleration to work. The configuration just plain sucked. 2. Fonts in the X environment are so ugly that I can't stare at an editor window full of code. Good fonts are rarely open-source. Ubuntu is nice, but it doesn't come close to the experience of…

1. fair enough. i can see how that could be a deal breaker. You probably know about the sad state of affairs with those vendors, and I guess reasons don't matter much if it doesn't work. all i can say is that it is improving. 2. it's not the fonts. check this out: http://ubuntutips.net/node/10 . in a nutshell, just put hintslight true rgb true true in your ~/.fonts.conf file. you won't believe your eyes. try it. :)

Thanks, will definitely give it a shot.

Re: Ask YC: Why do you recommend a Macbook?

#92

Post by Jd »

doubleplus wrote: post #89
davidw wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can buy Dells with Ubuntu on them: http://www.dell.com/ubuntu It was pretty cool to get it, open it up, and see it boot Ubuntu. I admit I did have to tweak it just a bit (about 15 minutes of googling and config files), but I think it was one of the first ones, hopefully they've gotten even better. I chatted with some of the guys working on it at OSCON last year, and they wrote down a few of the bugs I had found.

I got one of these right after they came out, too. Having had no experience with Linux before then, I've spent more than 15 minutes at a time figuring out how to get things to work. Right away, it was a couple nights on nvidia driver and wpa support. And since then, about once a month, I'll have to spend a whole night or two figuring something else out... last weekend it was something with generic vs rt kernels for u…

Ditto. I also acquired a Dell+Ubuntu in 6/07. Switched to a Macbook in 10/07. If you are making decent contract money it just isn't worth the hassle to, for instance, try and get a decent music playing software w/ the appropriate codec support.

Re: Ask YC: Why do you recommend a Macbook?

#93

Post by kirubakaran »

utx00 wrote: post #65
gcv wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure. Two problems with it: 1. Still fairly bad video hardware support. I spent two hours helping a buddy set up a mid-range ATI card recently, and we couldn't get full acceleration to work. The configuration just plain sucked. 2. Fonts in the X environment are so ugly that I can't stare at an editor window full of code. Good fonts are rarely open-source. Ubuntu is nice, but it doesn't come close to the experience of…

1. fair enough. i can see how that could be a deal breaker. You probably know about the sad state of affairs with those vendors, and I guess reasons don't matter much if it doesn't work. all i can say is that it is improving. 2. it's not the fonts. check this out: http://ubuntutips.net/node/10 . in a nutshell, just put hintslight true rgb true true in your ~/.fonts.conf file. you won't believe your eyes. try it. :)

Wow I tried it and it looks great now! Thanks a lot!

Re: Ask YC: Why do you recommend a Macbook?

#94

Post by utx00 »

whatever wrote: post #86
utx00 wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1. fair enough. i can see how that could be a deal breaker. You probably know about the sad state of affairs with those vendors, and I guess reasons don't matter much if it doesn't work. all i can say is that it is improving. 2. it's not the fonts. check this out: http://ubuntutips.net/node/10 . in a nutshell, just put hintslight true rgb true true in your ~/.fonts.conf file. you won't believe your eyes. try it. :)

And this is why people like the mac. I can edit an XML file in emacs, I just don't want to have to figure out which file to edit and what to put in there.

here's one example that drove me up the wall:

== swapping ctrl/caps lock ==

* on osx *

http://ella.slis.indiana.edu/~jfieber/osx/ -- i believe i ended up using ucontrol.

* on ubuntu *

go to System/Settings/Keyboard Preferences (xmodmap is still there if you're so inclined)

also, off the top of my head, it was a pain to:

1. add widgets to the menubar (on ubuntu i just add it)

2. rsync backups to an openbsd server because of the hfs+ tags

3. changing the buttons in Mail.app -- they were horrible

4. shutting down spotlight (can't even remember that one)

5. verbose booting

6. and my personal favorite: getting a cd out of the player when the power is off.

There are answers, I'm sure, to all these questions but you have to figure it out.

-utx

Re: Ask YC: Why do you recommend a Macbook?

#95

Post by whatever »

utx00 wrote: post #94
whatever wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And this is why people like the mac. I can edit an XML file in emacs, I just don't want to have to figure out which file to edit and what to put in there.

here's one example that drove me up the wall: == swapping ctrl/caps lock == * on osx * http://ella.slis.indiana.edu/~jfieber/osx/ -- i believe i ended up using ucontrol. * on ubuntu * go to System/Settings/Keyboard Preferences (xmodmap is still there if you're so inclined) also, off the top of my head, it was a pain to: 1. add widgets to the menubar (on ubuntu i just add it) 2. rsync backups to an openbsd server beca…

Or go to the Keyboard system prefs and click on Modifier Keys.

Re: Ask YC: Why do you recommend a Macbook?

#96

Post by utx00 »

whatever wrote: post #95
utx00 wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

here's one example that drove me up the wall: == swapping ctrl/caps lock == * on osx * http://ella.slis.indiana.edu/~jfieber/osx/ -- i believe i ended up using ucontrol. * on ubuntu * go to System/Settings/Keyboard Preferences (xmodmap is still there if you're so inclined) also, off the top of my head, it was a pain to: 1. add widgets to the menubar (on ubuntu i just add it) 2. rsync backups to an openbsd server beca…

Or go to the Keyboard system prefs and click on Modifier Keys.

i mean, exchange the behaviour of the caps lock key with that of the control key.

ucontrol, and fkeys let you do that. both seem to be unmaitained though.

Re: Ask YC: Why do you recommend a Macbook?

#97

Post by davidw »

Jd wrote: post #92
doubleplus wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I got one of these right after they came out, too. Having had no experience with Linux before then, I've spent more than 15 minutes at a time figuring out how to get things to work. Right away, it was a couple nights on nvidia driver and wpa support. And since then, about once a month, I'll have to spend a whole night or two figuring something else out... last weekend it was something with generic vs rt kernels for u…

Ditto. I also acquired a Dell+Ubuntu in 6/07. Switched to a Macbook in 10/07. If you are making decent contract money it just isn't worth the hassle to, for instance, try and get a decent music playing software w/ the appropriate codec support.

Well, if what you want out of a computer is simply and exclusively tool, then some proprietary system might well be better, although Ubuntu is getting close.

If, on the other hand, you relish the ability to open things up and hack on them if needs be (whence "Hacker News"), then the extra effort 'fighting' with Linux is often time well spent. It's a good feeling to know a system from the ground up, or (as is the case for most of us), at least be able to figure out bits and pieces from time to time.

Re: Ask YC: Why do you recommend a Macbook?

#98

Post by gcv »

utx00 wrote: post #96
whatever wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or go to the Keyboard system prefs and click on Modifier Keys.

i mean, exchange the behaviour of the caps lock key with that of the control key. ucontrol, and fkeys let you do that. both seem to be unmaitained though.

The Keyboard prefpane trivially lets you map the Caps Lock key to Control. I used that setup for a long time. Are you actually asking to keep Caps Lock around but map it to Control? I guess that really is tricky, but it never occurred to me as useful, because I never use Caps Lock, so I just happily have two Control keys.

Re: Ask YC: Why do you recommend a Macbook?

#100

Post by rksprst »

mixmax wrote: post #28

I tried to switch over to a mac a year ago. It didn't work, so I switched back after three months. I found that a lot of little things were annoying, and made me spend more time than I needed on doing trivial things sucha as resizing of windows. On mac it can only be done from one corner, on windows from all four. There are lots of these little things that mean you have to spend three clicks instead of two. I see why…

There is a right click, simply click while you have two fingers on the touchpad. This is much simpler than moving your thumb to click on the right button.
Post reply on HN