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

So Long, Macbook. Hello Again, Linux

richardmavis.info

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

301–310 of 531 posts

Re: So Long, Macbook. Hello Again, Linux

#301

Post by csomar »

naibafo wrote: post #85

There are different issues with OSX though, that colleagues of mine had, that never occur with Linux. E.g. the chore of somehow managing different software versions such as the outdated default one and a second one installed with homebrew. Almost all my colleagues struggled with setting up python 2 und 3 correctly at some point, whereas this just worked for me on Linux. Some struggled with font rendering between a 10…

I might be unlucky but Linux had been a nightmare on the few laptops I've tried it on. It is not that I have not tried. I did. Some of the problems I had: Very slow UI, not recognizing my Wifi Card, Chrome stopping support for CentOS, Problems with the Graphic Card and multiple monitors, problems with most printers I try, problem with my Bluetooth mouse...

Linux and the multiple variants have been horrible. Also, you commented about Python 2-3, I agree I had issues with OS X. But you are ignoring the fact that installing software on Linux is still a mess of resolving all the dependencies and the package manager. Where in OS X, it is just a file move to App.

Nowadays, I run dev code on a Linux docker container. I do pretty much anything else on OS X.

Re: So Long, Macbook. Hello Again, Linux

#302

Post by checkyoursudo »

Tehchops wrote: post #132
naibafo wrote: post #85

There are different issues with OSX though, that colleagues of mine had, that never occur with Linux. E.g. the chore of somehow managing different software versions such as the outdated default one and a second one installed with homebrew. Almost all my colleagues struggled with setting up python 2 und 3 correctly at some point, whereas this just worked for me on Linux. Some struggled with font rendering between a 10…

>Almost all my colleagues struggled with setting up python 2 und 3 correctly at some point, whereas this just worked for me on Linux. This is one area where I'd have to concede the Apple experience is objectively suboptimal. However, the Python ecosystem isn't doing anyone any favors here.

I have struggled occasionally with the various Linux package managers not being able to resolve Python library conflicts/dependency conflicts. Like, really, things where you wonder how possibly could there be a conflict, such as scipy not being able to update because matplotlib ver whatever being needed by some other lib that interoperates with scipy but itself is updatable something something something.

I'm still not sure I know the best way to install Python packages. It seems someone has something bad to say about any given method (pkg mgr, pip, venv, etc).

Re: So Long, Macbook. Hello Again, Linux

#303

Post by csomar »

callinyouin wrote: post #185
Waterluvian wrote: post #129

Hooking up three monitors, 2 of which are 4k onto Ubuntu is the most frustrating thing I've done with that OS. It just works on OSX though. Rough spots is a good way to describe it. Overall it works... But not without effort and competence.

Not exactly your experience, but using a single (non-4k) external monitor is slightly painful for me with my MBP. It sometimes takes ~10 seconds for my display to work after plugging it in, with lots of intermittent flickering as the OS "figures it out". And afterwards, the menu bar on the external is a bit glitchy looking on the right side until I click on it. With my other laptop running Fedora the experience is mu…

The usb ports of the MBP delivers too little Wattage. Try having a hub with power. It solved my problems.

Re: So Long, Macbook. Hello Again, Linux

#304

Post by [deleted] »

pram wrote: post #39
AdmiralAsshat wrote: post #23

I find the fetish for terminal-based music players a bit odd. I associate terminals with doing work , so the idea of having one whose sole purpose is playing music (presumably in the background while you do other stuff) to feel like a waste of screen real-estate and something I'm likely to accidentally pull up while trying to cycle between my other terminal windows where I'm doing stuff. I much prefer something that…

Ah but how else are you going to have enough stuff open in tmux to impress people with your screenshot on r/unixporn

[deleted]

Re: So Long, Macbook. Hello Again, Linux

#305

Post by cmurf »

jasondclinton wrote: post #188
Waterluvian wrote: post #129

Hooking up three monitors, 2 of which are 4k onto Ubuntu is the most frustrating thing I've done with that OS. It just works on OSX though. Rough spots is a good way to describe it. Overall it works... But not without effort and competence.

It sounds like you hit the point in Linux where this is painful: mixed DPI displays with mixed display scaling. Wayland fixes that. And soon, we'll finally have fractional scaling, too. GNOME is close to delivering that. So, it's getting better.

15" Laptop has a 1920x1080 display that's not quite hidpi. So I'm using layout.css.devPixelsPerPx value in about:config of 1.4, and in GNOME Settings > Accessibility, enable large text.

This does make things a bit too big on the 24" external display which has nearly the same resolution, but it's not distracting. Some websites I use CTRL-+ and CTRL-- to change the scaling, or rather fine tune it, depending on more than +-20% and the rendering gets wonky. Firefox seems to remember this per site even after a relaunch or reboot.

The biggest problem I have is Bluetooth, my mouse is always disconnecting on Linux, dozens of times per day, but the same laptop+mouse rebooted to Windows 10 - no problem.

Re: So Long, Macbook. Hello Again, Linux

#306

Post by sowbug »

unfunco wrote: post #179

Anecdotal like other comments but I and a few others from my workplace have switched to Dell XPS machines and run Linux now, and it's because we're working with Docker, even with 16GB RAM and solid-state drives, the performance of Docker on MacOS is pathetic, and entirely unusable for our work. The XPS machines we have are ugly, they're flimsy, they have a grotesque carbon-fibre pattern on them, the keys leave imprin…

Counter-anecdote (I admit that I'm ignorant about aesthetics, so I'm not addressing those points).

I got a personal 2016 XPS 13 (9350) because of Project Sputnik (https://bartongeorge.io/tag/project-sputnik/), which brought official desktop-Linux support to it. I also work at Google where we have a very solid desktop distribution, providing me a working example of almost every tweak I might want to make. Owning the hardware has been a great experience since two changes. First, I swapped out the Killer wifi card and replaced it with an Intel card. Unfortunately this is table stakes for any machine with that card. Second, I thought the spring on the keyboard's keys was much stronger than another XPS 13 that I'd test-driven, so I rolled the dice on eBay and bought a replacement for something like $20. I swapped it in, and it indeed restored the light touch that I liked about the other one. I wouldn't expect many people to do this.

As for software, I've settled successfully on Ubuntu 18.04 LTS, running the same Cinnamon desktop environment we use at work. A key part of my success has been committing to Ansible for configuration management. When I make a settings change I want to keep, I figure out where it's persisted, and then upstream it into my Ansible repo. This has the three-part benefit of teaching me a little about the system (mostly dconf), creating a worklog of changes I've made to the machine, and giving me the psychological comfort that if things get really bad, I can reinstall the OS plus all my tweaks. (Just to be clear, these aren't

I've since expanded the Ansible setup to manage a tiny target-practice server I keep on a cloud service, and over the holiday break this year I successfully set up an old desktop in a closet by (1) installing base Ubuntu, (2) unzipping my Ansible repo to it, (3) running a bootstrap script in the repo that installs python, git, and ansible, and runs Ansible on itself, and then (4) drinking a cup of coffee. By the end I had a machine that was substantially identical to my XPS 13.

I'm sure I'm proving someone's point that Linux isn't ready for the desktop. But from my perspective, the Linux-hardware interface is excellent on a Dell XPS 13 because of Project Sputnik, and if you can factor out the likely dozens of hours I spent overengineering my personal Ansible configuration system, I now have a reliable, easily reproducible desktop setup that rivals the manageability of a Chromebook, which is my personal gold standard for desktop statelessness.

Re: So Long, Macbook. Hello Again, Linux

#307

Post by kilburn »

ufo wrote: post #227
jwr wrote: post #48

I so wish the Linux community would get its act together and implement a working usable clipboard. It's the one thing I miss the most whenever I switch from Mac OS to Linux. On a Mac, you can cut/copy/paste using predictable keystrokes in any application, anywhere. And there is a single clipboard. On Linux, you have to deal with a multitude of behaviors (middle mouse button, Ctrl-C, others, and does it paste where th…

If you pretend that the "middle mouse button" clipboard doesn't exist (it is a feature that many are not even aware of) you then using the the regular one instead is a piece of cake. In Linux, all applications use Ctrl+C and Ctrl+V. The exception is inside the terminal, where you need to use Ctrl+Shift+C and Ctrl+Shift+V (due Ctrl+C already having a meaning there).

I spend somewhere around 30% of the time in a terminal, and the remainder outside of it. I am a former mac user, and after a year and a half the Ctrl+Shift+C thing still drives me mad.

Shortcuts are just better on the OSX side of the fence (not perfect, but way better). IMHO, global actions (copy, paste, select all, cut, undo, redo, etc.) should be mapped to one modifier (say AltGr) and local actions to another (say Ctrl). The most important part of this scheme would be that "global modifier + key" has an unsurprising result that is consistent system-wide. Then "local modifier + something, or modifier1 + modifier2 + something" can do whatever the app wants. This would improve things immensely IMHO...

Re: So Long, Macbook. Hello Again, Linux

#308

Post by abrowne »

Tehchops wrote: post #42

End-user Linux has definitely improved in the last few years. It offers a lot of attractive features for what I imagine to be the typical HN demographic. That being said, it's still got rough spots that OSX doesn't. It works great when it works, but when it doesn't.... Font rendering, display/compositor fragmentation etc... Inb4 the anecdotal "well it works for me I just had to download the xf86 font library and comp…

Font rendering is a funny one. Some distros were limited by patent issues, but Ubuntu has looked great for a while. Now Apple removed subpixel anti-aliasing in 10.14. This may look better on hidpi, but lots of us still have non-retina Macs

Re: So Long, Macbook. Hello Again, Linux

#309

Post by the_cat_kittles »

been using ubuntu for the last 2 weeks. i cannot believe i hadnt thought to do this sooner. i miss nothing from mac or windows land, except easier drivers for some peripherals. i cannot believe how worthless windows terminal is. i cannot believe how bloated osx is. ububtu is a dream!

Re: So Long, Macbook. Hello Again, Linux

#310

Post by kps »

yjftsjthsd-h wrote: post #213
ptero wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just as a nitpick: communities can (almost) never "get its act together", as they are comprised of people with different preferences who do not want to abandon their preferences for some abstract common good. On a more substantive note (globally consistent actions from keystrokes). It would be great, but not going to happen because there are established modes where the same keystrokes lead to well known results. And…

There's also complication that there's more than one standard. It's the same reason that emacs doesn't use conventional shortcuts even when it's running in a GUI: it's been using its current conventions since before the invention of the conventions that are now more popular. Similarly, if we just want to go by "preexisting standards" then really it's those newfangled applications that have hijacked ctrl-z to do anyth…

> it's those newfangled applications that have hijacked ctrl-z

Yes. Windows botched this by hijacking the Control key, and the desktop-Linux crowd are unable to do anything but imitate Windows. Pre-Linux GUIs didn't have this problem, and MacOS doesn't have this problem.

Post reply on HN