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Leaving htop running freezes macOS High Sierra

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Re: Leaving htop running freezes macOS High Sierra

#201

Post by tomxor »

chrissnell wrote: post #117
seanp2k2 wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Store the screen layout using serials from the EDIDs. Why it doesn’t do this and “tries” to guess their position somehow is beyond me. I use the OWC TB3 dock with dual Asus PA328qs with the latest firmware. Because of apparently some lame design decisions, in order to run dual external monitors over a single TB3 port, you need the dock, which has one DisplayPort output, then a TB3-> DisplayPort (via USB-C alt mode II…

I hit a breaking point with the Apple laptops a couple of years ago. It was actually iTunes that drove me off. iTunes Match somehow corrupted and lost a bunch of my music. Forever gone and I didn't have backups. After working with Support for a while, I finally gave up and bought a new ThinkPad T470s and put Arch Linux on it and never looked back. Things work really well and predictably. I have it dialed in just how…

I stuck with the hardware (albeit quite old) and went linux for similar reasons.

The older hardware can be quite nice with linux, but my next notebook wont be a mac, not due to value for money (spec and built quality balance is actually quite good for price these days), but because all attempts to run linux or any OSS on the more recent models are a disaster.

Re: Leaving htop running freezes macOS High Sierra

#202

Post by tomxor »

somethingsimple wrote: post #111
linkmotif wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The things I would do (and pay) for 2010-Apple tier hardware built for CentOS Isn’t it remarkable this still doesn’t exist? Build quality still does not compare in the PC world. Yet, I’m on a MBA3,2 (late 2010) and it’s great. Still running Yosemite. It’s got 4gb ram but handles running 10 JVMs with modest heaps for development no problem. Stable and runs for months without issue. I’d love more RAM and more cores b…

> Yet, I’m on a MBA3,2 (late 2010) and it’s great. Still running Yosemite. It’s got 4gb ram but handles running 10 JVMs with modest heaps for development no problem. Stable and runs for months without issue. I’d love more RAM and more cores but none of these computers seem worth it. I have the same hardware but unfortunately my experience is the exact opposite. It’s barely usable. I literally can’t browse JavaScript-…

I'm using an MBP5,1 (2 years older than yours) as my main personal machine still, it's quite comparable to your MBA3,1, (P8600 vs SL9600), both Core2Duo roughly same clock speed, same RAM and bus speed etc, but different GPUs, also I added an x25-M SSD back when that was "new" :P it's lasted well...

I'll admit some of the really heavy websites are crap, but that's mostly because the websites are crap and wont be smooth on anything than the latest i7. Generally I have no problem with gmail or google maps which are reasonably heavy.

Depending on what version of OS X you are using that might be the culprit, OS X is a pretty heavy OS, especially post 10.6. For me 10.6 was o-k but changing to linux and a tiling window manager freed up a lot of resources, I never end up paging out with web browsing even though it's only 4GiB, additionally I find graphics are faster on linux but that may be GPU and driver specific due to Apple's underclocking tactics. If I hadn't switched I would probably have ditched this hardware by now.

Alternatively the GPU difference between these machines may explain web browsing speed considering how much stuff is hardware accelerated these days.

I think this era of hardware is pretty linux friendly if you wanted to try it, you don't have dual GPU which is the biggest pain for linux too... there is no issue with mac EFI from grub anymore so should be zero configuration install for you, at the most you might have to manually select the proprietary drivers for your GPU for reasonable performance.

Re: Leaving htop running freezes macOS High Sierra

#203

Post by RGS1811 »

calinet6 wrote: post #180
RGS1811 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I came for the filesystem bugs, I stayed for the absurd root exploit, but its the little crashes, rendering glitches, and feeling of general instability that made me fall in love with High Sierra...

Secret hint: if it's an older mac, try the NVIDIA Web Driver for the video driver.

It's a 2017 MBP with touchbar (and a Radeon GPU).

Re: Leaving htop running freezes macOS High Sierra

#205

Post by afandian »

codezero wrote: post #130
malchow wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm on macOS High Sierra for the spontaneity. Every morning, I go to wake my Macbook Pro with two 4K USB-C connected displays and external keyboard and mouse. Will one display turn on? Both? Neither? Who knows!

I am always baffled by these reports. I’ve had nothing but success with external monitors on my last three MacBooks. What is your setup out of curiosity? Monitor brand, connection type, cable brand etc. I’m assuming I’m an outlier because I see this in almost every thread that mentions MacBooks and I am real curious how it manifests. Edit: reading further comments it sounds like possibly the monitors use the same edi…

There's a certain amount of selection bias.

I've had over the years a 2005 PowerBook G4, three 2010ish MacbookPros, a 2014 MacBook Air and a 2016 MacBook Pro. All have occasionally hung on a blank screen after lid open. The latest routinely forgets Dell screens (two identical ones at once) and I have to replug them.

Otherwise, no issues (except random kernel panics). Like brains, I'm astonished that they work at all, let alone work so well. Of course I'd like something bulletproof, but Apple doesn't seem to be able to make one.

Re: Leaving htop running freezes macOS High Sierra

#206

Post by microtonal »

valuearb wrote: post #191
themistocle wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And to think that ZFS for FreeBSD had already been up and running for years...

Not on 1B devices.

Maybe not on 1 billion devices, but ZFS was running on mission-critical Sun/Oracle hardware with expensive support contracts for many years. ZFS is currently probably the most reliable modern filesystem.

Still, rolling out APFS on such a large number of iDevices/Macs is a very impressive feat (although APFS is, of course, a simpler filesystem). The problems are with many of the 'edge cases' (RAID, etc.). This is not really surprising, btrfs has been in development since 2007 and still has problems with more complex setups.

Re: Leaving htop running freezes macOS High Sierra

#207

Post by microtonal »

xiaomai wrote: post #169
glogla wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Was it hard to move off Retina and reasonable touchpad? I am considering similar route, but these are the two things that keep me on Apple.

High DPI displays are common on PC laptops now, they generally work well in Linux (not so much for legacy apps but you're unlikely to use those). I like the touchpad on my X1 Carbon, but I never used a mac long enough to really adapt my workflow to all the touchpad gestures (I think on Linux you'll be happy with general usage/scrolling/etc, but stuff like pinch to zoom is still not widely supported).

High DPI displays are common on PC laptops now, they generally work well in Linux (not so much for legacy apps but you're unlikely to use those).

Surprisingly, some Tk applications that I use irregularly actually work with HiDPI with Tk 8.6 (as in, they are scaled up with an integer scaling factor, and are sharp).

Multiple displays with different DPIs also work with Wayland (I have one 4k screen and a LoDPI display 90 degrees rotated). Though, there are some bugs with GNOME 2.26 on Wayland with HiDPI displays that are switched off and on again (e.g. some applications such as GNOME Terminal become blurry, they seem to be rendered at lower DPI and scaled up). I have reported some bugs and the gnome-shell/mutter developers are quite responsive.

Re: Leaving htop running freezes macOS High Sierra

#210

Post by tomxor »

iamdave wrote: post #74
notadoc wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well this is purely anecdotal, but at least 70% of the developers, IT workers, and researchers that I know are using prior generation MacBook Pro hardware (the ones without the touch bar or terrible keyboard, and with ports) and are intentionally using the older OSX versions. I know several people who traded in 2016/2017 models for 2015 models because it's literally an upgrade; get an older machine and you suddenly h…

> but at least 70% of the developers, IT workers, and researchers that I know are using prior generation MacBook Pro hardware You can have my 2015 MBP when you pry it from my cold dead hands. But yes. We recently sold off a bunch of hardware resulting from workforce reductions; I clued a friend in on this and he was begging me to nab him a 2015 MBP. The obsession is real, it is the last truly great Macbook in a while…

I believe those are also the last linux friendly ones so you know that once you either get too sick of the newer OS X whatevercat or the version your are stuck on stops receiving security updates you still have useful hardware.
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