Finding an Alternative to Mac OS X • Hacker News Board

Re: Finding an Alternative to Mac OS X

#181

Post by kaolti » Tue, Jan 03, 2017, 12:46 PM UTC

ourcat wrote: post #145

z1mm32m4n wrote: post #126

Many articles about wanting to leave the macOS ecosystem mention Sketch. Sketch is macOS only (and will be for the forseeable future), so it's understandable that people want to consider the implications of switching away from it. Recently, however, I stumbled upon Figma, a web-based, real-time collaborative interface design app (i.e., a competitor of Sketch). After convincing my group to experiment with it for a sch…

I've never really understood why people use Sketch. I recently worked on a project where I had asked for some basic vanilla templates of a mobile site from the designers and was sent a huge Sketch file. It was utterly useless and I had to code everything by hand myself, since the 'designers' very clearly had zero clue about HTML+CSS or any notion of responsiveness, thanks to apps like Sketch which teach nothing of th…

"thanks to apps like Sketch which teach nothing of the knowledge required to be a useful part of anyone's app/site building process." - I don't see how Sketch is to blame for designers sending you the wrong files.

Re: Finding an Alternative to Mac OS X

#182

Post by mverwijs » Tue, Jan 03, 2017, 12:50 PM UTC

gladimdim wrote: post #112

Clubber wrote: post #12

>Note that I don’t currently consider Windows a viable alternative. For the work that I do (Rails) and tools I use something *nix based is the best choice for me. For what it's worth Windows 10 now has a bash shell based on Ubuntu available. http://www.howtogeek.com/249966/how-to-install-and-use-the-l...

I switched to Windows 10 (Microsoft Surface 4 Pro) after ~15 years of using Linux and 5 years of MacOS. In Bash (based on Ubuntu) 99% of utilities just work. I can use npm, install modules and they still work. For me in Windows 10 - everything just works. Though I still miss: 1. MacBook's touchpad :-( 2. Emacs-like keybindings everywhere in OS (like MacOS has).

I bought a seperate apple Bluetooth touchpad for this very reason. Works for me.

Re: Finding an Alternative to Mac OS X

#183

Post by zeveb » Tue, Jan 03, 2017, 12:51 PM UTC

hartator wrote: post #155

Anyone knows an alliterative to Alfred in Windows or Linux? I really really like the ability to search apps with a few keystrokes and I really really like to be able to search clipboard history with another few keystrokes. Nothing I've found are doing both or one as good as Alfred.

> I really really like the ability to search apps with a few keystrokes

GNOME does this out of the box. It's possible to add this to e.g. StumpWM, i3 or AwesomeWM too.

Similar functionality is available in emacs with Helm: search through all callable functions by just typing a few characters.

> I really really like to be able to search clipboard history with another few keystrokes

Emacs does this, with yank-pop (M-y); Helm turns this into helm-show-kill-ring, which offers extremely convenient searchability.

I really can't recommend emacs highly enough: it's everything one could want in an operating environment.

Re: Finding an Alternative to Mac OS X

#184

Post by zeveb » Tue, Jan 03, 2017, 12:54 PM UTC

monochromatic wrote: post #57

If a Macbook sshing into your work computer is good enough, why isn't a Windows laptop sshing into your work computer?

FWIW, whenever I am forced to use Windows I want to hurl my computer through a window after using it for only a few minutes. Doing anything takes click after click after click: it's way too much work. Manual window management is horrible: it's way too much work. Trying to figure out how to make anything work is a chore, as is evaluating which websites are giving correct advice, which are outdated and which are trying to infect me with malware: it's way too much work.

Granted, I feel the exact same way about macOS (with slightly less concern about malware, to be sure).

Re: Finding an Alternative to Mac OS X

#185

Post by vermaden » Tue, Jan 03, 2017, 12:54 PM UTC

rectangleboy wrote: post #50

Where's the commentary on FreeBSD? It certainly seems like the right idea (to replace OS X), but I want to know their experience.

I use FreeBSD as a desktop/laptop/workstation since years and it works great for me. Total control over the system You work on is priceless.

Everything on my hardware works (ThinkPad W530). The WWAN(3g) connection, Wifi, SD Card Reader, Power Management, multi monitor setup, external disk in the Modular Bay ...

Also having ZFS and ZFS Boot Environments on a system is great for updates/changes. You are literally bulletproof.

Some screens: http://vermaden.deviantart.com/art/CorporateBSD-FreeBSD-at-W... http://vermaden.deviantart.com/art/FreeBSD-10-3-Openbox-6356...

Regards, vermaden

Re: Finding an Alternative to Mac OS X

#186

Post by bane » Tue, Jan 03, 2017, 12:58 PM UTC

I've used a Mac for work for the past 5 years, I use Windows PCs at home but most of my computing devices are Android.

I usually find if I need something specific for production use, it's in some Linux distro, and I'll either SSH into one for work, or fire up a VM with that distro in it and SSH into it. The best dev environment I've been able to conjure up is using WinSCP to act as a bridge to whatever system I'm connecting to, and just using a local great text editor in Windows (Sublime Text, etc.). When you save, WinSCP just seamlessly saves it back to the server.

I'll keep a Putty instance permanently ssh'd in and flip to that for console stuff.

On OSX I've setup a network mount to the same linux machine/VM with SSHFS and edit with pretty much the same text editors and use iterm2 that's permanently ssh'd into the same machine/VM so the experience is virtually identical (with the exception that SSFHS can be a bit fragile).

Most of the other apps I choose are cross platform because I work on a similarly mixed OS team. I think every team should be mixed OS because it forces the teams to choose cross platform tools instead of locking themselves into platform specific choices.

I don't dev from my Android devices, but I do push stuff to them frequently, so they all have Servers Ultimate on them and I'll frequently setup ftp servers on them to move files or ssh servers so I can remote in and do some simple maintenance without have to do it on a small screen or fidget with an on screen keyboard.

If you aren't doing something really specialized on OS X, I'm not sure I understand what the crisis is except for people building too much of their identity into what device they're carrying around.

Apple's hardware is the best, by far, but at $3k a pop, I can buy 4 or 5 perfectly fine and similarly specc'd Windows Laptops, or 6 or 7 better specc'd desktops. If one breaks, just throw it away and buy whatever the newer one is and keep your hardware fresh.

If most of what you're doing is looking at a console, or editing in a text editor, it only takes an hour to get a new machine up and functional again anyways.

So much drama.

Re: Finding an Alternative to Mac OS X

#187

Post by nkozyra » Tue, Jan 03, 2017, 12:58 PM UTC

severino wrote: post #118

nkozyra wrote: post #10

I'm full-time OSX user/developer, but if Rails is really your sticking point, shouldn't the linux subsystem make Win10 at least viable for a trial? Or, frankly, anything that can run VMWare or Virtualbox?

If Rails is his sticking point, then there's no point in paying for something when you can have it for free.

Well there's no indication that he's against paying, just that he looked for and failed to find a viable OSX alternative.

It's not listed in his requirements and Win10 may satisfy him.

There are lots of free things in life that have an inferior free alternative or only free alternatives and this may be one of them.

Re: Finding an Alternative to Mac OS X

#188

Post by zeveb » Tue, Jan 03, 2017, 12:59 PM UTC

holografix wrote: post #167

massysett wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i3 is great, until you try to do something simple like change the time zone for your desktop clock or add some wallpaper. I switched from Linux to Mac because I was too well acquainted with making symlinks to /usr/share/ somewhere just to change my clock when I traveled, and then figuring out just how few processes I had to restart so it would take effect. Unfortunately the Linux desktops were actually worse than the…

This. It boggles the mind how much time one can waste solving admin, busy-work type issues on Linux, specially when trying to use a GUI. I mean wifi, Bluetooth, retina class resolution issues, drivers for multiple devices not being available... unless one is using Linux to learn and understand it as a server of some type I can't fathom using it as a replacement for Mac OS.

> unless one is using Linux to learn and understand it as a server of some type I can't fathom using it as a replacement for Mac OS.

Perhaps some of us value our freedom?

Perhaps some of us find that it helps to develop on the same platform on which we deploy?

Perhaps some of us find that we don't, actually, spend all that much time on 'admin, busy-work type issues,' having decided on good, solid distros which fit our use cases (Debian works for me, others prefer RedHat)?

At the end of the day, though, it really is about freedom for me. You complain that you must tweak your system; I value that I can tweak mine.

Re: Finding an Alternative to Mac OS X

#189

Post by zeveb » Tue, Jan 03, 2017, 1:01 PM UTC

tracker1 wrote: post #171

khazhou wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, except that OSX's iterm2+Karabiner is so much better than any terminal on Linux. Awesome full-screen switching (⌘-Enter), easy shortcuts to create subwindows, natural clipboard support, great keyboard compatibility with Emacs (after futzing with keyboard settings and Karabiner mappings). On Ubuntu, all of these have been lacking. Hell, I can't even use the terminal for a single session without accidentally trig…

I have to absolutely agree on iterm2, I'd love to have the same on Linux... there are a few okay ones, none I've tried as good. On windows, I like ConEmu okay, still not as good, but better than default.

I really like st, from the suckless guys. It does one thing — terminal emulation — and does it very well. For multiplexing there's always tmux or screen or whatever (I like tmux). st just runs, never crashes and is beautiful to boot.

Re: Finding an Alternative to Mac OS X

#190

Post by DavideNL » Tue, Jan 03, 2017, 1:03 PM UTC

mrweasel wrote: post #100

Clubber wrote: post #12

>Note that I don’t currently consider Windows a viable alternative. For the work that I do (Rails) and tools I use something *nix based is the best choice for me. For what it's worth Windows 10 now has a bash shell based on Ubuntu available. http://www.howtogeek.com/249966/how-to-install-and-use-the-l...

I'm not exactly sure why this happens, but when I try to use Windows my hand (mouse hand) cramps up and I get angry and frustrated. In my view, Windows 10 is still miles away in consistency across the entire system, compared to macOS. Windows 10 actually made it worse, because it's trying to accommodate both Windows 7 and Windows 8 design. Currently I don't think we have alternatives to macOS. I understand that I sou…

> but when I try to use Windows my hand (mouse hand) cramps up and I get angry and frustrated

Same here! Also i start to suffer from 'update-fatigue' when using Windows. The endless updates, reboots, and god knows what it's doing in the background which consumes resources... it all just feels so clumsy. I've never experienced anything like this in OSX.