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Darling – macOS Translation Layer for Linux

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Re: Darling – macOS Translation Layer for Linux

#131

Post by patrec »

laumars wrote: post #93
patrec wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So, the appeal of Mac emulation is very limited, because it starts out with tinkering. There are countless of utilities for tinkering with you mac setup and the best and most tinker-y terminal for any platform is a mac-only app (iterm2). It's just that macOS starts out with a far high usability level without tinkering and comes with lots of basic stuff working that no amount of tinkering will ever give you with lin…

> There are countless of utilities for tinkering with you mac setup and the best and most tinker-y terminal for any platform is a mac-only app (iterm2). It's just that macOS starts out with a far high usability level without tinkering and comes with lots of basic stuff working that no amount of tinkering will ever give you with linux I was with you right up until you made the cheap shot at Linux. That was as unnecess…

> I was with you right up until you made the cheap shot at Linux. That was as unnecessary as it was untrue.

Here are some concrete examples:

- macOS has essentially a single set of efficient and consistent keybindings that works everywhere. Command line and GUI work essentially the same, i can use emacs style navigation with C-a C-e C-f C-b etc. everywhere. I can copy with Cmd-C and paste with Cmd-V in my terminal. The geniuses who created the first mainstream Linux GUI paradigms decided to copy windows and go with Control as the main key modifier to create a set of clashing keybindings for GUI and console.

- file history (If I messed something up in my keynote presentation, I can easily compare previous versions and restore what's needed)

- Cmd-? allows you to access any menu item quickly by search, how do I do that on Linux?

- finding files (see below)

- MacOS can recover from memory pressure fine. How do I get my linux machine not to effectively crash if I run an app that happens to use too much memory (technically it just swaps itself to death, in practice reset is the only remotely timely way to recover)? I've tried any amount of tweaking, but turns out that you can't turn off overcommit and swap completely, even if have lots of memory, things will just break randomly (chrome for example).

> Linux is no harder to find files on than it is on OS X.

Can you point me at something on linux that comes anywhere close to spotlight/mdfind?

On of the reasons spotlight works well is file system integration, to the best of my knowledge nothing on linux does that.

It's trivial to open a file by recency or contents or type (or tags or ...) from the open dialogue of any application on macOS, how do I do that on linux?

If I want to find all mp4 videos of 1000x1000 resolution that I modified within the last week, or all jpeg files with sRGB color profile, I can do so instantaneously with mdfind.

That is not to say that linux isn't more ergonomic for certain things, but in my experience they tend to be mostly limited to things only programmers would care about (/proc is the number one thing I miss on a mac; some commandline utilities are also nicer on linux, but you can normally install them easily enough on macs as well).

For what it's worth: I'm using both linux and macOS daily and am both productive and reasonably expert with both.

Re: Darling – macOS Translation Layer for Linux

#132

Post by snazz »

abricot wrote: post #121
vaylian wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How on earth is there still no terminal emulator like iTerm2 on linux????! Genuinely curious: What does iTerm2 do better than any other terminal emulator on Linux?

It's probably because it has a lot of features that are not unique, but you won't find all of them in a single terminal emulator on Linux. Example, I don't know about a terminal on linux that both works as a drop down terminal (quake-like) & supports inline images. Or split screen & password manager.

For the split screen functionality, I’d recommend tmux or Terminator. If you try w3m on xterm, you’ll notice that inline images can work. Could someone enlighten me as to why inline images are useful in the first place?

Re: Darling – macOS Translation Layer for Linux

#133

Post by Veen »

headsoup wrote: post #87
ncmncm wrote: post #73

The main attraction of Apple products is the certainty that, no matter what you do, they cannot be made to do what you would like. The consequence is that you feel no urge to spend time tinkering to get there, and instead adapt yourself to what it actually does. This reclaims all the time and attention that you would have spent on tinkering. Since what Apple products do has proven adequate for a large number of peopl…

I disagree entirely with that. I think Apple sold people the idea that what they provide is really cool and 'just works' and that you want to be in their 'ecosystem.' It worked, people bought the allure and then just stopped looking at other solutions because Apple said they don't need to. I think your post highlights exactly that: a buy-in to the brand so strong as to not even try and look elsewhere when issues aris…

How do you explain people like me that used desktop Linux for years but then moved to Mac? I fully understand the benefits of Linux and MacOS. I compared them and made an informed choice around the time I stopped being a student and started making my living a professional writer. I've got deadlines and word counts and I can't afford to waste time fiddling with my computer. I want to be able to turn it on, even after updates, and start working.

But, I also love to tinker and automate, and MacOS gives me a full Unix environment to play with.

Re: Darling – macOS Translation Layer for Linux

#134

Post by coldtea »

simonh wrote: post #90
ncmncm wrote: post #73

The main attraction of Apple products is the certainty that, no matter what you do, they cannot be made to do what you would like. The consequence is that you feel no urge to spend time tinkering to get there, and instead adapt yourself to what it actually does. This reclaims all the time and attention that you would have spent on tinkering. Since what Apple products do has proven adequate for a large number of peopl…

I don't really get this, MacOS is super tinker-y. You can script multi-app work flows with Automator, set up folder actions to magically transmute files (I have one that insta-shrinks the images in PDFs for me and puts them in an output directory), cast magic spells on selected data using custom services, use the full range of Unix commands for text processing. You have Perl and Python right there. The things that ar…

Those are not tinkering things -- those are productive uses.

Tinkering is endlessly playing with the window manager configs, changing desktop environments, getting your system "just so", switching this (e.g. audio framework) for that, etc.

Re: Darling – macOS Translation Layer for Linux

#135

Post by coldtea »

panpanna wrote: post #112
michaelgrafl wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you have proven your parent's point by drawing the line between useful and time wasting tinkering.

These whole thread saddens me. The amount of "tinkering" I have done on my Ubuntu PC was limited to changing background and reducing icon size to fit my monitor better. I'm not going to apologise for having better performance and first class containers.

>The amount of "tinkering" I have done on my Ubuntu PC was limited to changing background and reducing icon size to fit my monitor better.

Outliers need not apply.

Re: Darling – macOS Translation Layer for Linux

#136

Post by coldtea »

Sammi wrote: post #95
ncmncm wrote: post #73

The main attraction of Apple products is the certainty that, no matter what you do, they cannot be made to do what you would like. The consequence is that you feel no urge to spend time tinkering to get there, and instead adapt yourself to what it actually does. This reclaims all the time and attention that you would have spent on tinkering. Since what Apple products do has proven adequate for a large number of peopl…

This Apple "Upgrade" is an almost perfect example of real world Doublethink as George Orwells defined it in the novel 1984. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doublethink

No, it's a real example on "focus on what matters" and dropping support for bike-shedding (all too popular with tinkerers).

Many users are not college students discovering the world of UNIX and customization and tinker happy -- they're people that want to get something (not "how the computer works" related) done.

Re: Darling – macOS Translation Layer for Linux

#137

Post by coldtea »

AriaMinaei wrote: post #102
Sammi wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This Apple "Upgrade" is an almost perfect example of real world Doublethink as George Orwells defined it in the novel 1984. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doublethink

I also noted the Orwellian tone. We live in troubling times when the value of tinkering is lost to the tinkerers themselves.

Tinkering was never important to real hackers. It's the script kiddie analogue to hacking.

Re: Darling – macOS Translation Layer for Linux

#138

Post by simonh »

panpanna wrote: post #112
michaelgrafl wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you have proven your parent's point by drawing the line between useful and time wasting tinkering.

These whole thread saddens me. The amount of "tinkering" I have done on my Ubuntu PC was limited to changing background and reducing icon size to fit my monitor better. I'm not going to apologise for having better performance and first class containers.

There is certainly a fair bit of extremity measuring going on in this thread, and I'm as guilty as anybody. The fact is a default install of MacOS or any of the mainstream Lunux distros is a fine system just as it is.

Re: Darling – macOS Translation Layer for Linux

#139

Post by snazz »

patrec wrote: post #131
laumars wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There are countless of utilities for tinkering with you mac setup and the best and most tinker-y terminal for any platform is a mac-only app (iterm2). It's just that macOS starts out with a far high usability level without tinkering and comes with lots of basic stuff working that no amount of tinkering will ever give you with linux I was with you right up until you made the cheap shot at Linux. That was as unnecess…

> I was with you right up until you made the cheap shot at Linux. That was as unnecessary as it was untrue. Here are some concrete examples: - macOS has essentially a single set of efficient and consistent keybindings that works everywhere. Command line and GUI work essentially the same, i can use emacs style navigation with C-a C-e C-f C-b etc. everywhere. I can copy with Cmd-C and paste with Cmd-V in my terminal. T…

Re. keybindings: you can change your default GTK bindings to Emacs-style if you want to. Whether the super/Windows/Command key should be used for window management or application controls is still up for debate; it always bothers me whenever I have to use a Mac that some browser bindings are already taken by the WM/OS because Cmd is shared between apps and the OS. There are very few bindings that you can’t change on Linux or another non-Mac Unix-like.

Re. file history: use real version control or a filesystem with this functionality (I imagine that ZFS would). Better to just use Git.

Re. Cmd-?: no alternative exists that I know of. However, menu bars are usually less prevalent on software written for traditional Unix than on a Mac.

Re. Finding files: GNOME does this with the search bar OOTB it appears. Otherwise, use search in Nautilus like you would in Finder.

Re. Memory presssure: search “swappiness Linux” into a search engine. Do you prefer maximum available memory or responsiveness? Linux gives you the choice here.

Recency, contents and type can all be sorted with Nautilus on GNOME. I’m not aware of a way to find very specific files that meet your search query quite like you mentioned (although I’m sure they exist). I would pipe file into grep personally, but that’s probably too rudimentary for what you want.

Re: Darling – macOS Translation Layer for Linux

#140

Post by saagarjha »

viraptor wrote: post #31
saagarjha wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This really depends on the tests you're running.

True. But in context of: "tests in a CI environment which costs you less than a MacBook", I don't believe anyone would go to the level that avoids those issues. It would take a lot of work and resources to replicate a "real run in clean, real environment".

Again, this depends on the tests you’re running and how you’ve set up your CI environment.
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