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So Long, Macbook. Hello Again, Linux

richardmavis.info

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Re: So Long, Macbook. Hello Again, Linux

#471

Post by dpark »

kurtisc wrote: post #418
dpark wrote: post #413

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m saying your interpretation of “rude” is overly sensitive. If I say “The USA needs to get its act together and fix its broken immigration system”, I don’t see this as particularly rude. By criticizing the immigration system, I’m already saying that it’s fucked up. The fact that I use the phrase “get it together” is irrelevant to both tone and content. And again, the subject is a large group. The idea that particul…

If I needed something from someone or a group at work and I told them to 'get their act together' and do it, I don't think I'd get what I want. And they're paid to work with me. People don't talk like this in real life.

If you go to an individual and tell them they need to “get their act together”, you’re being confrontational. If you make an equivalent statement about a group of people referred to as a third party, it’s not nearly as confrontational. Do you really not see the difference between these?

You probably don’t feel bad saying something like “McDonald’s burgers suck”, but if you tell someone who invited you to a cook-out that their burger sucks, you’re an asshole. Context and audience matter.

And people very much do talk like this is real life. People who understand context and audience can do so just fine.

Re: So Long, Macbook. Hello Again, Linux

#472

Post by toyg »

bigger_cheese wrote: post #462
toyg wrote: post #422

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People have been saying that ever since, uhm, the first Mandrake release? It’s so much easier now, soon it will all be so smooth! except every year there is something else to rewrite/rejig. As soon as auto-configuring XFree was kinda figured out, out goes XFree and in comes x.org. Xorg getting to the point where having 3d animations doesn’t require kernel-module-config expertise? Out goes Xorg, in comes Wayland. Gnom…

Yes the churn is an issue especially in desktop environments but relatively painless all things considered. I don't think there has been a single inflection point for me there has been steady incremental improvement. If you want to think about how far things have come I started using Linux in 2001 with Mandrake. Around 2.2 -> 2.4 kernel switch. So much has changed since the bad old days. I don't want to throw out a "…

I am not saying things aren’t better than they were; but they are still not as good or polished as the commercial counterparts (who obviously didn’t stay still), and looking at the overall trend, they will likely never be - because of innate problems with the development model (release early and often, even if it’s basically unusable).

So I can agree that “Linux will get smoother”, because progress is more or less inevitable, but “linux will be as smooth as [Windows|MacOS]”, as upthread implied? Never going to happen.

Re: So Long, Macbook. Hello Again, Linux

#473

Post by _emacsomancer_ »

cr0sh wrote: post #388
_emacsomancer_ wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One can certainly use Linux set up in such a way as to be very similar to a Mac experience. (ElementaryOS seems to me intentionally be Mac-like, for instance. But plenty of other distros are also set up in such a way that the user doesn't have to ever open a terminal if they don't want to.) There's no rule that you ever have to open either emacs or vim on Linux (though, personally I think you're missing out if you've…

I recently updated my Linux desktop at home; I tried a variety of live distros - I don't recall if Elementary was one of them - it might have been in there. The one I ended up using had the Budgie desktop, which I found to be the most "Mac-like" of all the experiences. The distro I used was Ubuntu Budgie, because I wanted the Debian and Ubuntu software ecosystem, but Budgie is a part of the Solus Linux project (which…

It's been a while since I've tried Budgie, but I recall it reminded me vaguely of Android in fact.

But, in any case, yes, there are plenty of Linux front-ends which can be 'Mac-like' if you like that sort of thing.

Re: So Long, Macbook. Hello Again, Linux

#474

Post by Klonoar »

amaccuish wrote: post #247
Hello71 wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. This isn't entirely true. AIUI, Apple enables LCD filtering and subpixel rendering by default, because it knows that you're using an LCD and what the subpixel order is. However, these are usually toggleable via the GUI, and even without t…

Since Mojave, MacOS nolonger does subpixel rendering. https://mjtsai.com/blog/2018/07/13/macos-10-14-mojave-remove...

On non-retina displays, which... is nowhere near the normal use case for Macs at this point.

Re: So Long, Macbook. Hello Again, Linux

#475

Post by zanny »

war1025 wrote: post #385
zanny wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a PC business on the side and I love selling people NUCs. Few or no moving parts to break, you can often mount them on the backs of monitors, performance has been good enough for ~4 years for 99% of desktop tasks. If not for the inexplicable price premium they'd be perfect for anyone except if you need a lot of storage, dedicated video, or expansion slots.

Yea, I was surprised how expensive they were. It seems like there should be cheaper options given how little laptops cost these days and them using basically laptop hardware from what I've read.

They are a fairly niche product. The only real demographic buying them in bulk from consumer outfits are small businesses without big contracts to HP / Dell, the one in a million informed tech "muggle" who knows how to install their own OS, and small IT shops that recognize how practical they are.

You can get some of them with a preinstall of Windows but because they aren't made by the big builders who stock Best Buy and Walmart shelves they don't often show up in front of consumers faces to buy, much like Linux desktops. But Dell / HP / etc have no real reason to risk their business investing in their own NUCs because theres nothing really competing with them in their spaces for that kind of hardware, and they already make the all in one computers that are about one notch too far up the "unmoddable" ladder for most of us to be content with.

Re: So Long, Macbook. Hello Again, Linux

#476

Post by klardotsh »

stcredzero wrote: post #450
klardotsh wrote: post #448

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is rarely (but entertainingly when it happens) a thing - I once waltzed into a job interview and fought xrandr for like 5 minutes to demo my take-home project: turns out mirroring my 1080p built-in panel to a 4k HDMI screen with herbstluftwm/xrandr command line hackery _only_ was... non-trivial. Thus, for the whole 13 months I worked there, I got to share several laughs about how "it's the year of the Linux desk…

I got to share several laughs about how "it's the year of the Linux desktop, yeah?" The amount of time that joke's been around should be taken as a sign of a persistent condition. unless my kernel does Strange Things and panics, I basically plug and play into whatever I want The kernel doing strange things and panicking doing plug and play was never a thing on OS X when I started using it. Seems to me it's not been a…

The only piece of this I'm going to engage on is the kernel panic bit, and only as far as a counter-anecdote (so take it as you will), but I had almost as many kernel panics on a 2016 Macbook Pro over a bit over a year of using it at a past job. In fact, almost the exact same scenarios that I'd see panics on Linux on an XPS 13, would panic the Macbook: plugging in external displays through USB-C/TB3 ports. Probably double or triple the frequency if those displays were connected to a full docking station - probably something odd in PCIe code, potentially even firmware level.

The only OS I haven't had kernel panics on in recent memory is, indeed, Windows starting with 7, but I have a long list of other reasons I can't/don't/won't use it as my daily driver.

Re: So Long, Macbook. Hello Again, Linux

#477

Post by AnIdiotOnTheNet »

psadauskas wrote: post #463
AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #425

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find that when I google Linux problems I'm much more likely to get dozens of answers, all of them wrong. They're for a different distro, or a different arrangement of the software stack, or out of date, or not actually answers (why would you want to do that?), or just plain wrong. Theoretically it could be a lot better, if the documentation was better, the stack wasn't so maddeningly complicated, and there wasn't s…

Really? Whenever I'm googling a problem, I just prefix it with "Fedora" or "Ubuntu 18.04" or whatever I'm using, and most everything is relevant. Additionally, the Arch wiki is probably some of the best documentation out there, but I don't find it to hard to translate to either distro.

Actually I'll agree about Arch being pretty good documentation, at least by Linux Desktop standards.

Re: So Long, Macbook. Hello Again, Linux

#478

Post by war1025 »

zanny wrote: post #475
war1025 wrote: post #385

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yea, I was surprised how expensive they were. It seems like there should be cheaper options given how little laptops cost these days and them using basically laptop hardware from what I've read.

They are a fairly niche product. The only real demographic buying them in bulk from consumer outfits are small businesses without big contracts to HP / Dell, the one in a million informed tech "muggle" who knows how to install their own OS, and small IT shops that recognize how practical they are. You can get some of them with a preinstall of Windows but because they aren't made by the big builders who stock Best Buy…

Thanks for the super-informative replies. One of the nice things about HN is there is always someone that knows about some niche topic.

Re: So Long, Macbook. Hello Again, Linux

#479

Post by war1025 »

jagger27 wrote: post #259
war1025 wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you like the NUC? I have been toying with the idea of buying a mini computer like that. I don't really want a full-size desktop tower, but I also don't really want to go the route of a laptop in a docking station.

As someone who works on an older NUC all day, do yourself a favour a get the highest end one you can afford. The J5005 CPU is an absolute piece of shit. Otherwise they're fine computers if you don't care about graphics performance.

In fact I don't care about graphics performance. Thanks for the tip. Not sure if I'll ever actually go through with buying one, but seems like a neat idea anyway.

Re: So Long, Macbook. Hello Again, Linux

#480

Post by manaskarekar »

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…

> 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 the window position

Unless I'm misunderstanding, you can use Alt + left click to move any window around, and Alt + right click to resize. No need to reveal the title bar except perhaps to read the occasional title.

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