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So Long, Macbook. Hello Again, Linux

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Re: So Long, Macbook. Hello Again, Linux

#401

Post by INTPenis »

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, display/compositor fragmentation etc...

Everyone has their own view of rough spots but those aren't mine.

The rough spots I'm experiencing with Linux are very specific. Namely lack of support for some proprietary VPN solutions like Junos Pulse for example.

Also lack of native clients for software like Webex Teams, forcing you to use their web apps which use up so much resources that I'm convinced they've caused my laptop to stall a couple of times.

And of course, perhaps related to the issue above, anything relating to graphics does need work.

The major positive thing I can say about using Linux daily in work and personal life is that it works so well that when it fails you get very annoyed. That's a good sign. It means that it's rare enough to annoy me. If it was too common I wouldn't be surprised when it fails.

I also switched back from Mac to Linux, 2 years ago.

But I use vanilla Gnome 3 on Fedora. Before Mac I used tiling window managers but now I don't see the point. It's just so much configuration to handle which Gnome does without a single line of config or shell code.

Re: So Long, Macbook. Hello Again, Linux

#402

Post by Rebelgecko »

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 certainly doesn't just work on my Macbook Pro. Sometimes only one monitor wakes up. Sometimes the touchbar wakes up but there's nothing on the laptop screen or external monitors. Sometimes when the lid is closed it never wakes up. Sometimes the OS forgets which monitor is which and I need to move the mouse off the left edge of my left monitor to get to the right edge of my right monitor.

Re: So Long, Macbook. Hello Again, Linux

#403

Post by pfranz »

matwood wrote: post #274
jasondclinton wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Finally! When I was searching for solutions to this issue a couple of years ago one response was 'no one needs 4k displays' smh.

I've always heard these were fundamental problems because of how X is architected. Something like everything assumes the desktop is a single, contiguous grid. Everyone built tooling top of X and tried to mitigate the problems.

I thought it was odd when Apple got a lot of heat for not using X and writing their own thing. It sounds like Apple had evaluated X and determined it wouldn't fit their needs. The same thing happened when things like Wayland started getting written.

Re: So Long, Macbook. Hello Again, Linux

#404

Post by Yeroc »

devereaux wrote: post #143
jasondclinton wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's true: some things are easier on Mac. In particular, I'd say that using software that hasn't been packaged for your distribution is much easier on Mac. However, your example of fonts is definitely not one of those areas, anymore. Font rendering on Linux is as advanced and capable as any other OS including in the areas of kerning and hinting. It should just work without any user intervention and look great. I ag…

Personally, I gave up on Gnome and run LXDE a bit like i3 - autopositionning the windows with Fx keys mapped to a given set of coordinates, so F10 will make a window use a square on the left covering 80% of the screen, F11 will move the window to the remaining 20% on the right, thus hiding conky - etc. The only advantage I find in LXDE is that it has a titlebar I can 'reveal' if I wish to mess around and fiddle with…

I'm curious what you find distracting in Gnome? Unless you're running in Classic mode the newer versions got rid of everything except the top menu bar and that is less busy than it used to be. The default launcher works very well using the keyboard only, I actually quite like it (though there are definitely other things I don't like about the Gnome defaults).

Re: So Long, Macbook. Hello Again, Linux

#405

Post by amvalo »

My dealbreaker with linux is the keyboard shortcuts.

On mac, ^A and ^E work in every text field. Also, you can press cmd with your thumb, which is much more ergonomic than mashing ctrl with your pinky. OSX also has more well thought-out shortcuts than linux in general.

You can try to configure these things on linux, but it's tedious and never works perfectly.

Re: So Long, Macbook. Hello Again, Linux

#406

Post by amvalo »

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…

This was my main complaint with OSX until I tried nix. When I ditched homebrew and reinstalled the same packages with nix, I don't think a single one had problems. The CLI has some stupid pitfalls though..

Re: So Long, Macbook. Hello Again, Linux

#408

Post by KaiserPro »

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…

middle button paste works almost everywhere, apart from when webdevs do clever things.

as for consistent keybindings, I feel you on that. However your example is a bit flawed. home/end keys do what you want, and ctrl left/right does word skipping.

Re: So Long, Macbook. Hello Again, Linux

#409

Post by willtim »

Wowfunhappy wrote: post #390
willtim wrote: post #387

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For our VPN details, I would have to get my IT dept involved. My point is that machines often need a lot of additional software and configuration. If the world ran NixOS then perhaps a loan machine with "backups" would be almost as convenient as an SSD swap.

OS X has an incremental, automatic backup system built in called Time Machine, which works pretty well in my experience. You'd just restore your time machine backup to the loaner machine, which would restore the vpn credentials.

Time machine is really a consumer gadget, I'd be surprised if IT departments were deploying it within organisations. Crashplan would be more appropriate, but I'm not sure how smooth the restore would be. IMHO not having a swappable SSD really sucks.

Re: So Long, Macbook. Hello Again, Linux

#410

Post by nkoren »

My 2012 Retina Macbook was on its last legs. I was deeply uninspired by both the regressive functionality and excessive price of the of the latest generation of Macs. So after almost 15 years in the Mac ecosystem, I bid it adieu and got a Dell XPS 9560, with dual-boot Windows 10 and Ubuntu.

I'm regretting that now.

Ubuntu was a breeze for setting up development environments, but a nightmare in basically every other sense. Keyboard drivers misbehaving, randomly disabling system shortcuts in certain key applications (like Chrome). Mouse wheel working horribly and requiring many hours of hacking to fix. Fans spinning out of control in some kind of fight with the BIOS that I still haven't been able to win, after more than 20 hours of working on it. And you want to connect a second monitor with a different resolution than your primary? Fuck you, no. Just no. You absolutely, positively, cannot do that. I spent days following red herrings on forums before giving up.

On the Windows side of thing, it's much better. Most things Just Work -- except that getting the mouse wheel to work correctly is a 15-step registry-hacking process followed by a reboot[1], and this needs to be repeated each time Bluetooth forgets it knows this mouse -- which is every other day or so. Oh, and also, it's so difficult to set up as a development environment that my CTO has told me not to bother.

So, yeah, after a month, I'm having regrets. I still think that Apple is taking the piss, but after all the time and frustration I've sunk into Linux -- and, to a lesser extent, Windows -- the Apple Tax is beginning to look like relatively good value for money.

1: You think I'm exaggerating? Honestly I'm not: https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_10...

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