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

261–270 of 342 posts

Re: Finding an Alternative to Mac OS X

#261

Post by slantyyz »

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.

On Windows, it's probably a combination of multiple tools. Some examples:

* For searching and browsing, Listary Pro is pretty good.

* For text expansion, AutoHotKey

* Automating, maybe AutoHotKey again.

* Clipboard stuff - Ditto, Clip X

As I mentioned in another post, Scott Hanselman's giant developer tools list is particularly useful:

http://www.hanselman.com/blog/ScottHanselmans2014UltimateDev...

Re: Finding an Alternative to Mac OS X

#262

Post by michaelmrose »

aexis wrote: post #156
m45t3r wrote: post #140

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. Systemd makes using i3 so much easier. No more fiddling wit…

Most people hate systemd for the sake of hating something, or following the hate train. At least for me all my close encounters with it have been positive.

The fact that your machines haven't personally been broken doesn't mean its a good or a bad design

Re: Finding an Alternative to Mac OS X

#263

Post by ourcat »

jasim wrote: post #252
ourcat wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I'm a programmer like you and used to believe in the idea that you should design in the medium which is HTML and CSS, and not in a tool like Photoshop or Sketch. But I've completely reversed my stance after working with a lot of designers who create beautiful sites that goes very well with the grain of the web. The reason is direct manipulation. You're not thinking in terms of the DOM's static flow when trying to cre…

Mostly hand-coding since ~'94. Also waded through the code-soup created by Dreamweaver for a bit. Thought it might save time having 'the designer' do the layout. It didn't. ;)

Re: Finding an Alternative to Mac OS X

#264

Post by michaelmrose »

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'm assuming if you want someone else to ensure everything works for you without hassle then logically you would by a machine with linux preinstalled with a long term support release and then wait until a month after the next lts release to update after everyone else works out the kinks in the new release.

You know kinda like you do with apple machines.

Re: Finding an Alternative to Mac OS X

#265

Post by WorldMaker »

slantyyz wrote: post #238
hiram112 wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

"watch" works great in Node when "natively" installed, rather than Bash on Ubuntu on Windows. Natively installed Node is a great development experience on Windows these days (just make sure you install a version with NPM >= 3, which is now no longer an issue as even current LTS has NPM >= 3).

On the flipside, Ruby remains a nightmare to install natively and Ubuntu Bash is the easiest way to work with it. There I really do miss having a working "watch" for Jekyll builds.

Re: Finding an Alternative to Mac OS X

#266

Post by nnain »

alphonsegaston wrote: post #244
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…

The problem I'm finding with graphics work is that I'm more and more relying on scripted tasks to complete things efficiently or get around deficits in Adobe's software. I'd move to Windows, but I can't imagine giving up how easy a Unix-like environment makes things.

You might have heard by now that Windows 10 now comes with a full Ubuntu-based Bash shell that can run Linux software. Guess that covers your use case well!

Re: Finding an Alternative to Mac OS X

#267

Post by slantyyz »

WorldMaker wrote: post #265
slantyyz wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

"watch" works great in Node when "natively" installed, rather than Bash on Ubuntu on Windows. Natively installed Node is a great development experience on Windows these days (just make sure you install a version with NPM >= 3, which is now no longer an issue as even current LTS has NPM >= 3). On the flipside, Ruby remains a nightmare to install natively and Ubuntu Bash is the easiest way to work with it. There I real…

>> Ruby remains a nightmare to install natively

I cheated and used RubyInstaller for Windows, and it's worked great for me for the past couple of years, but I guess it really comes down to how you use it and what you need.

Re: Finding an Alternative to Mac OS X

#268

Post by slantyyz »

WorldMaker wrote: post #265
slantyyz wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

"watch" works great in Node when "natively" installed, rather than Bash on Ubuntu on Windows. Natively installed Node is a great development experience on Windows these days (just make sure you install a version with NPM >= 3, which is now no longer an issue as even current LTS has NPM >= 3). On the flipside, Ruby remains a nightmare to install natively and Ubuntu Bash is the easiest way to work with it. There I real…

btw, what do you mean by Node when "natively" installed. I used the Windows installer from the node site. Is that what you meant?

The issue I get with watch is that it doesn't properly detect added files in a watched subfolder, although changes and deletions are detected with no issue.

Re: Finding an Alternative to Mac OS X

#269

Post by nnain »

mastermachetier wrote: post #248
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…

The problem I with linux is that there is no good laptop running linux well or anywhere near as good as windows or osx. If I could run osx on alternatives to the macbooks I would be happy best of all worlds.

I see this complaint often here, but I don't get it. Is some Linux driver not working? You can't use the mic, Wi-Fi etc? Linux just works fine on my machine, and also for a large user-base.

Re: Finding an Alternative to Mac OS X

#270

Post by KangooDude »

His only whines are about hardware that is too thin/light and does not have legacy ports and OS that won't work on some junk and don't let you publish hacks in some rarely visited moderated store (just like windows, or linux)

And instead of ordering dirty cheap hackintosh with up to 4 CPU Xeons with all memory he can get and compatible wifi, that will be no thin and no light and he can run familiar terminal window to remote build his diamond code while listening to sound of coolers,

He starting to search OS with better GUI than OSX (Elementary it is) and dreaming about hardware you can run FreeBSD (like PS/2 mouse and glorious VESA 2.0 12801024?)

I expect next article will be a tour to the wonderful world of 15" 1366768 Celeron laptops that let you upgrade memory (up to 8Gb!), spacious replaceable 4200 hard drive and have USB 2.0 ports and VGA in addition to HDMI 1.4. People will know in detail how good terminal window run there on FreeBSD with Elementary OS theme (without 2D acceleration of course).

He makes alot of sense, that mate.

Post reply on HN