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

Finding an Alternative to Mac OS X

bitcannon.net

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

231–240 of 342 posts

Re: Finding an Alternative to Mac OS X

#231

Post by fernandotakai »

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.

i don't know, i've been running archlinux on my mbp and the only busy work i did was installing wifi drivers (which i did using cower and it was quite easy).

everything i have worked out of the box. and, as a plus, android usb tethering works a lot better on linux than on osx (thanks to networkmanager)

Re: Finding an Alternative to Mac OS X

#232

Post by cgh »

INTPenis wrote: post #146

I had the same prejudice about Fedora and RedHat back when I was a debian fanboy. But if you look at what Redhat is doing with their money and their company then you soon realize that Redhat Inc. not only IS a large part of the Linux community, but also supports the open source movement in many ways. So Fedora has been my main distro of choice for a couple years now. I still hesitate to order RHEL licenses at work, u…

Yep, +1 for Fedora 25. The recent Ars review sums it up pretty well: probably the best Linux desktop ever.

Re: Finding an Alternative to Mac OS X

#233

Post by Humdeee »

applecore wrote: post #206
nnain wrote: post #193

If you're an iOS/Mac developer, there's no alternative. If you want an alternative for graphics work (or other development), try Windows. For other web development, in general, you'll be able to work well with Linux. Keeping work on different machines quickly starts to become unmanageable, that's why MacOS still leads. It gives the best of most options on the best hardware. P.S. - I tried ElementaryOS last month, for…

Best hardware, really?

Suggest something else more superior?

Re: Finding an Alternative to Mac OS X

#234

Post by sbuk »

I'd Love to see someone take on GNUStep are run with it. The constant reinvention of the wheel with FOSS desktops and Window Managers is mind boggling. Too much 'not invented here' syndrome? Sadly the task is way beyond my capabilities. Still one of the best ever... Of course, YMMV!

Re: Finding an Alternative to Mac OS X

#235

Post by notheguyouthink »

grhmc wrote: post #38
notheguyouthink wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(not the OP) Complicated, is my reason. I have a hell of a time making sense of the configuration syntax. NixOS is one of those "this has to be the future" things for me, but a future i can't currently use, despite wanting it. I hope someday i can make the switch. Also, Elementary is pretty.. and call me vein, but that is nice. Generally i want the OS to "just work" and pretty gives me the false, emotional impression…

NixOS is what got me to switch back from Mac to Linux. Being able to copy someone else's config for my MacBookPro and have a pretty damn good, working system was incredible. It really opened my eyes. Perhaps coming by #nixos on Freenode for an afternoon could get you over the configuration hurdle? I remember I tried NixOS in a VM on a Thursday and was so smitten that I replaced OSX on Saturday. Edit: I really appreci…

To add a bit more detail:

It's not purely the syntax, but more difficulty finding API documentation to match "what i want to do". Eg, if i wanted to add a package, or if i wanted to add a custom package, what function would i use? (not a question directed at you). If i wanted to add a chroot, what would i use? What args are available on those functions? etcetc

The documentation was a massive frustration to an already confused person.

On top of that, it seemed every package/binary i wanted wasn't available in Nixpkgs, or was outdated in Nixpkgs - so i had to learn how to modify the binaries for pretty much everything i did. And, when you don't know what you're doing, this is a massive barrier to entry.

I'm not too savvy on Linux and runtime requirements of binaries, so finding the requirements of a binary or setting up chroots for binaries that i could not modify was very time consuming. I spent most of my time doing that, in fact.

The concept of NixOS represents time saved to me. Reproducible builds based on a idempotent config, awesome! But in reality, i had to figure out how to make everything i wanted idempotent, and it was just a massive barrier.

I'm super smitten, i think the documentation just needs a bit of work. I would love to run it on my home server and also Nixpkgs on my Mac.

Re: Finding an Alternative to Mac OS X

#236

Post by notheguyouthink »

cagey wrote: post #76
notheguyouthink wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except the stupid decision(s) they continue to make, like advertisements in my operating system. Seriously, i can't comprehend why they take a paying customer (me) and frequently think i want to see their ads my operating system is some kind of blog. (The ad in question is for me to try some new microsoft product.. i forget which one offhand, Office Live? no idea. I usually see too much red when it happens to even re…

The ads I've seen in Win 10 (Home): (1) (Don't I want to claim my) Free trial for Office 365? (2) MS Edge is faster/better than my (non-MS) default browser (and don't I want to try Edge?). These seem to recur once after each Windows Update reboot. Anyone know of a way to permanently disable these?

Office 365 sounds correct, i bet that's my ad as well.

Like, i cannot even stress how pissed off it makes me.

Re: Finding an Alternative to Mac OS X

#237

Post by mxuribe »

HugoDaniel wrote: post #101

Reads and feels like a sponsored post trying to get the attention of people who are using OSX, Fedora and Arch into elementary OS. It presents a huge list of OSes but then it just says "After evaluating each I was left with a top 3." Without providing any reason as to why. To top it there is no QubesOS and no NixOS on the list. This in 2017.

The author does note that: > This is the first in a series...

So, perhaps future posts will provide more details, etc.

Re: Finding an Alternative to Mac OS X

#238

Post by slantyyz »

hiram112 wrote: post #228
Klathmon wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I gotta say I've tried to do the VM thing. I REALLY tried. But it just isn't something that will work for any significant amount of time. It would break with any updates, half the time xcode just wouldn't work, and it would sometimes be so slow that you'd need to wait minutes for some fancy animation to run. And this wasn't even to get around buying a MacBook, we had one, I just wanted to compile and sign a hybrid ap…

I've also tried to use a Linux VM on Widnows due to issues with Node, paths in various Scala libs, and a dozen other problems. Cygwin works for 50%, but not for everything. I've tried Win 10 with Subsystem for Linux (Ubuntu Bash) and unfortunately it is not even close to production ready. Besides, I'm terribly disappointed with Win 10 after having been really happy with Windows 7 since its release. Running a few Java…

Have you trued ConEMU/CMDer? For my uses, I found it to be an adequate replacement for the terminal in OSX. Outside of "watch" not working properly in Windows, the stuff I've done in Node has worked fine, but I probably do simple stuff compared to most.

Re: Finding an Alternative to Mac OS X

#239

Post by ams6110 »

kqr wrote: post #148
INTPenis wrote: post #146

I had the same prejudice about Fedora and RedHat back when I was a debian fanboy. But if you look at what Redhat is doing with their money and their company then you soon realize that Redhat Inc. not only IS a large part of the Linux community, but also supports the open source movement in many ways. So Fedora has been my main distro of choice for a couple years now. I still hesitate to order RHEL licenses at work, u…

I agree. My impression of RHEL and its likes is that they are "slow and outdated", but the more actual research I do, the more I feel like using them for their stability and security.

Agree as well. And I'm not sure about the "outdated" characterization. I find the most hardware driver support with RHEL. If a vendor is going to support Linux at all, they almost always start with RHEL and its derivatives.

RHEL is the Linux distro for production systems that you want to just run without any tinkering or surprises.

Re: Finding an Alternative to Mac OS X

#240

Post by Klathmon »

ahawkins wrote: post #227
Klathmon wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I gotta say I've tried to do the VM thing. I REALLY tried. But it just isn't something that will work for any significant amount of time. It would break with any updates, half the time xcode just wouldn't work, and it would sometimes be so slow that you'd need to wait minutes for some fancy animation to run. And this wasn't even to get around buying a MacBook, we had one, I just wanted to compile and sign a hybrid ap…

Have you considered CircleCI? They have iOS/OSX toolchain support.

Ya know we use CircleCI for another project for running integration tests and deployment, but I never looked into it any more than that.

The system is working right now, so I kind of don't want to mess with it until we get some time, but I'll definitely take a look at that.

Post reply on HN