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

From OS X to Ubuntu

nicolas.perriault.net

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

271–280 of 403 posts

Re: From OS X to Ubuntu

#271

Post by pawadu »

activatedgeek wrote: post #233
nkoren wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This, this, a thousand times this. One thing that Apple has done very well is put together a website that: A.) Tells you what they are selling, and B.) Can sell it to you. Why is it so hard for other vendors to figure out that this is a pretty good way to sell computers? My girlfriend bought an Asus Zenbook the other day; it's a really nice machine and made me wonder whether there might be a Zenbook for me. So I ende…

I think the problem here is that Apple doesn't really have to have a huge product range because they are pretty much focused on the premium price range. On the other hand, manufacturers like Asus, Lenovo and Dell have everything from the economy to premium range which makes the content organization a natural headache. And it looks like nobody has figured out a good way to fix everything up.

But Dell has a pretty nice web site despite having a huge range of products.

Re: From OS X to Ubuntu

#272

Post by raverbashing »

majewsky wrote: post #248
ePierre wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Save time. Support having good laptops and good drivers. Buy pre-installed. Paying the "windows tax" and installing a Linux on a windows laptop isn't just more work, it is bad for the ecosystem. I wish I could. Unfortunately, I live in a country (Taiwan) where no one knows about Linux. It's impossible to buy a pre-installed Linux laptop here. You know the most ironic part? My job here is to certify hardware (includ…

> I live in a country (Taiwan) where no one knows about Linux. It's impossible to buy a pre-installed Linux laptop here. Quite some years ago, I went into a smaller electronics store in Germany because I had seen a nice notebook model on their website that had an SKU without operating system. When I spoke to the clerk, he was completely puzzled that I would want a notebook without Windows. I can still hear his words…

Go online and buy corporate versions (that usually come with FreeDOS) so it gets a corporate license and no builtin windows

Re: From OS X to Ubuntu

#273

Post by naibafo »

colemickens wrote: post #254
willismichael wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh come on, I've been a Linux enthusiast for over a decade now and it's been years since I've even touched xorg.conf, installed a kernel that didn't come from a standard repo, or had trouble rebooting due to a change I made to the system. Linux has gotten significantly less painful over the years, and it's not just that I'm more familiar with it now. Installing a mainstream distro these days is easier than the last t…

Not only that, I don't even run X as my root display server. Sure, XWayland is around, but only because of Chromium apps (`google-chrome-unstable`, `visual-studio-code-nightly-bin`, `slack-desktop`, `riot-web`). And the best part is, Wayland (Ozone) support is already in Chromium, it's just not really enabled right now.

sadly I have yet to come across a functioning tiling window manager for wayland.

Re: From OS X to Ubuntu

#274

Post by boomboomsubban »

ePierre wrote: post #143
timtadh wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Linux laptops: buy pre-installed. If you want linux and you want to be sure everything is functional, AND you don't want to devote lots of time to a "project" buy a pre-install. Dell Developer Edition laptops (XPS 13, 15) make great laptops. I hear good things about system 76 and purism as well. Save time. Support having good laptops and good drivers. Buy pre-installed. Paying the "windows tax" and installing a Linux…

> Save time. Support having good laptops and good drivers. Buy pre-installed. Paying the "windows tax" and installing a Linux on a windows laptop isn't just more work, it is bad for the ecosystem. I wish I could. Unfortunately, I live in a country (Taiwan) where no one knows about Linux. It's impossible to buy a pre-installed Linux laptop here. You know the most ironic part? My job here is to certify hardware (includ…

That's bizarre, considering 40% of Dell computers sold in China come with Linux.

Re: From OS X to Ubuntu

#275

Post by luca_ing »

pjmlp wrote: post #226
qplex wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Linux is the only consortium of operating systems that still suffer from the inability to "just work out of the box". Google the laptop model + Linux before you buy it. That increases the odds of getting a "it works out of the box" experience. You'll also usually find pretty straightforward instructions how to get things going quickly if they do not work out of the box, or the simple fact that the machine is not wel…

> Google the laptop model + Linux before you buy it. That increases the odds of getting a "it works out of the box" experience. I would happily do this when was a university student about 20 years ago. Nowadays, I want to go whatever store (physical or online) and just take what I want to buy. Yes, there are some online stores for GNU/Linux, but as I discovered with the one I bought (Asus + Ubuntu), it might happen t…

> > Google the laptop model + Linux before you buy it. That increases the odds of getting a "it works out of the box" experience.

> I would happily do this when was a university student about 20 years ago.

> Nowadays, I want to go whatever store (physical or online) and just take what I want to buy.

Well, if you do that little research, I suspect you might be disappointed even if you were to stick with Windows 10. With devices as complex as notebooks, I think a few hours of spec-reading and comparison is warranted.

Otherwise I quite plainly wouldn't know what to grab from the shelf once I'm at the store.

Maybe I'm more discerning (you might say: anal), but I like to do a little research for purchases like this.

Re: From OS X to Ubuntu

#276

Post by pjmlp »

tomcam wrote: post #246
pjmlp wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, GNU/Linux needs less fragmentation. It needs a full OS stack, from the kernel to the UI toolkit, that is guaranteed to be the same, across all distributions. Where are the Mac OS X frameworks on GNU/Linux? Nowhere, because each distribution might be using a total different way to play sounds, music, doing SIMD, process images, accessing databases, UI toolkit ....

We all agree. How do you achieve that goal when device vendors have no interest in working with a distant third Linux in the OS ecosystem, much less your elegant but totally unproven PjmlpOS?

I don't, hence why I moved away from GNU/Linux as desktop OS.

For embedded use or being a POSIX clone on the server, it does just fine.

Re: From OS X to Ubuntu

#277

Post by pjmlp »

pawadu wrote: post #269
pjmlp wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I bought an Asus 1215B netbook that came with GNU/Linux pre-installed (Ubuntu), sold via Amazon a couple of years ago. Guess what, the Ubuntu devs decided they should replace the Broadcom closed source WiFi drivers by the half-working open source ones, so during six months I didn't had a working wireless connection. Asus could not support us, and Ubuntu forums were full of hacking the old drivers into the updated one…

I believe Ubuntu allows you to choose between closed source drivers from the vendor and open source ones. It even asks you during install. I think it's on the very first page they show you.

Not in this case.

If you wish I can try to track down the online forum discussions, with the hacked down suggestions from the Ubuntu developers that decided to throw away the broadcom drivers during an update, just because.

Re: From OS X to Ubuntu

#278

Post by pjmlp »

kagamine wrote: post #267
pjmlp wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Linux on a laptop is still 100% usable and gets you everything you need. Unless one is into proper UI/UX design experiences, game and graphics programming specially with multi-GPU and all those nice buttons on the laptop.

There are so many desktop environs for Linux, some mimic OS X, some Windows (XP, 7, 8/10), some unique that if you can't find a UX experience on Linux that is acceptable then the problem isn't Linux, but it might be you! Game and graphics programming - fair point. Nice buttons, assuming you mean that row of lights and so on that laptop designers seem to love, always just work for me. Volume, wi-fi, etc work. What doe…

> some unique that if you can't find a UX experience on Linux that is acceptable then the problem isn't Linux, but it might be you!

Nice way to welcome outsiders into the GNU/Linux world, then don't complain non-geeks don't feel welcome.

I use GNU/Linux since Slackware 2.0 and have used quite a lot of UI managers, probably all the most known ones.

My remark of UI/UX was from the point of view of someone that also does it, creating software for people that want to know as little as possible from computers, regarding their actual work.

Re: From OS X to Ubuntu

#279

Post by pawadu »

falcolas wrote: post #105
ekianjo wrote: post #11

> So, is Linux ready for the desktop? > For me, the answer is yes. Honestly it's been ready for years on the desktop (of course, this does not apply if you are an expert user in Y software only available on Z platform and need to use it for your job/company, etc...). Ubuntu 16.04 did not bring anything significant on the table, it's just that most people have not noticed. I switched full Linux back in 2009~2010 and I…

Opinion follows: I don't think so. My three day old vanilla Ubuntu desktop install completely froze up on me the other day. I wasn't doing anything out of the ordinary - browsing Reddit with Firefox. It was a mostly default Ubuntu install (nvidia and broadcom drivers) and otherwise completely up to date. I was frustrated enough I haven't bothered to troubleshoot it yet, but my best guess is somehow I ran it out of th…

The only time ubuntu has crapped on me was due to a failing hard drive. Check your hardware.

Note: sometimes a bad drive works fine under windows but dies under linux simply because windows doesn't happen to use the fault sectors.

Re: From OS X to Ubuntu

#280

Post by pawadu »

trm42 wrote: post #219
desireco42 wrote: post #33

Most important part here, and what is mostly stopping me from jumping ship is photography. Darktable is probably fantastic software, however there is number of great plugins for Lightroom that I would miss dearly.

Used Linux before really started photography hobby. After a while of fumbling with additional WinXP desktop for Lightroom 1-3, decided to start using my work Macbook for photography as well and it has made my life a lot easier. One reason being that keeping laptops working with Linux is PITA. Lightroom is amazing piece of software for its purpose, but the vendor lock-in of 9 years of raws stored and edited( ) with Li…

Did you read the article?

> I've been a super hardcore Lightroom user and lover, but eventually found Darktable and am perfectly happy with it now. Its ergonomics take a little while to get used to though.

I know one pro photographer that use Darktable, not because its free but because it has some fancy algorithms that Lightroom lacks.

Post reply on HN