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Apple of 2019 is the Linux of 2000

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Re: Apple of 2019 is the Linux of 2000

#601
post #190

Meh. I bailed out of the Mac ecosystem last year, as my mid-2012 retina Macbook was finally getting too creaky, and the latest Mac hardware was a regression in many respects, while simultaneously utterly unaffordable. I'm now dual-booting Ubuntu/Windows 10 on a Dell XPS 15". What this experience has taught me is that computing in 2019 basically sucks. The problems with 2000-era Linux, as described in the article, are…

I have Fedora 30 running KDE as a desktop in a VM and a laptop. In the VM its actually very nice. Dolphin is nicer than Explorer, with tabs and better view options. The desktop customization options work well and I can set it up very similar to a Windows task bar as I am used to. The most annoying issue I've noticed is that copy and paste would stop working cross application sometimes (pretty poor). But turning off a…

There are other things under the hood. Things that a desktop OS can't do anymore, not today.

Your password manager kWallet is, once unlocked at system start, an unencrypted file where any application can access any password.

If kMail fetches a signed mail in background, you'll be unexpectedly prompted to accept the certificate with no indication where the pop-up came from.

Password dialogues have no priority whatsoever. When a password dialogue pops up just before another application starts, you're likely to enter your password into the wrong dialogue.

Re: Apple of 2019 is the Linux of 2000

#602

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use both Windows and Mac. I find Windows file management and window management to be much better. Love the preview you get when you hover over an app icon in the taskbar. Also love how windows don't automatically take up the entire screen. I like to have two windows open simultaneously. This is much smoother on Windows than Mac. I also prefer Windows' taskbar instead of Mac's dock. The negative is changing preferen…

I feel exactly the same way as you. It boggles my mind that Finder is the best OSX has to offer for file management after all these decades. I find windows explorer to be far superior and more intuitive in almost all cases. What really boggles my mind is how difficult it is to simply get a text string for the current path in Finder - https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/252171/mac-finder-... I absolutely love th…

I always add the copy-path button to the quick access toolbar (right-click on the button in the ribbon's Home tab) for faster mouse access when the ribbon is minimized.

You can even select multiple items and copy-path to get a list of paths, to paste into a text file for command-line processing, or into Excel.

Re: Apple of 2019 is the Linux of 2000

#603

Earlier quoted context omitted.

{any technology} {any year}: writing a post summarizing X products' issues will compel a point by point response in which a fanboy will either tell you "works for me" or "you're holding it wrong".

“And now for my next trick I shall pass a Turing test!”

...thirty years ago! [0] Just have the bot question the test giver's sexual prowes and use other vulgarity.

[0] https://slate.com/human-interest/2015/03/rude-or-mean-comput...

Re: Apple of 2019 is the Linux of 2000

#604
I use Ubuntu with Cinnamon when I can. It supports almost everything, and is endlessly flexible, looks nice. Supports a full data science stack + GPU.

My work provided me with a Macbook pro which is fine since I run everything in docker anyway, the hardware looks nice but the keyboard sucks. Each key has like .5mm clearance and one grain of dirt will stop it from working. I would never buy another mac because their walled garden policy is terrible.

I use windows for gaming, but hate developing on it. What can I say, it works as a casual desktop. Except if you want to move it to a new drive, or do anything beyond web browsing and video games.

They are all okay, not sure why there is so much vitriol in this thread.

Re: Apple of 2019 is the Linux of 2000

#605
post #411

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple seems to love doing this too. It's just great when it decides to update iMovie and iTunes, huge apps which I have never used, when your battery is at 30% and you're on a terrible WiFi connection. It's hard to tell that the update is in progress at all, and seemingly impossible to stop. Took me a while to figure out how to remove the apps I never intend to use and disable auto-updates for the ones I do use. It c…

>Took me a while to figure out how to remove the apps I never intend to use It took you a while to figure out how to drag an app to the trash in the same way that deleting any other file works? =/

It's not clear that dragging an app to the trash is the "official" way to remove an app, and will remove all associated data, including whatever links it to the App Store, and causes the store to not attempt to "repair" the app by downloading it again or something.

It does seem that the "official" way to remove some App Store apps is to long-press on them in the Launchpad, and then click the "X" button that appears.

Maybe I was overthinking things, but IMO neither of these methods seem very discoverable or clear about what they actually do. Would it be that hard to put a clear "uninstall" button somewhere in the App Store? Android does this, and Windows mostly does too, AFAIK.

Re: Apple of 2019 is the Linux of 2000

#606
post #190

Meh. I bailed out of the Mac ecosystem last year, as my mid-2012 retina Macbook was finally getting too creaky, and the latest Mac hardware was a regression in many respects, while simultaneously utterly unaffordable. I'm now dual-booting Ubuntu/Windows 10 on a Dell XPS 15". What this experience has taught me is that computing in 2019 basically sucks. The problems with 2000-era Linux, as described in the article, are…

I was linux-only from 2002 to about 2009, on laptops, when I switched to Mac. I just set up a linux desktop for kicks the last couple of weeks, and it doesn't seem to me to be any better than it was a decade ago. * No way to adjust mouse scroll speed; official answer seems to be "don't want that". (Or install imwheel and change your mouse scroll to be equal to hitting the down button (!) which breaks other stuff) * T…

> To make an icon on the favorites bar in gnome, you have to edit a .desktop text file! Madness.

.desktop files are about the dumbest damn thing ever. Why is the 'category' of an application, which pretty much every menu interprets as its sub-folder location, determined here [0]? Why is there absolutely no ability whatsoever to set a relative path to an icon file [1]? It's like there were designed by someone who had never used a GUI before and had one described to him while writing the spec [0].

[0] Given other choices made by FreeDesktop.org, this might actually be true.

Re: Apple of 2019 is the Linux of 2000

#607

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's really not. I think you're giving Linux far too much credit. If it really did "just work" and was that easy, you'd see way more computers in the wild using it. It's literally a free alternative that can be installed on any computer. The two biggest barriers to adoption are non-existent with Linux and yet it still has a minuscule user base comparatively. Unless you don't exclude servers, Linux doesn't "just work"…

>It's literally a free alternative that can be installed on any computer. Practically nobody installs operating systems on their computer. The computer they bought comes with one and it never changes. The stability of Linux isn't the problem here.

Ok but even if I, hypothetically, conceded that point, all it would take to make my point is 1 piece of hardware or software that didn't work as intended. Wacom tablets, for example, do not have drivers that can be installed from Wacom. Yes, there is an Open Source project for those but most users wouldn't know or have the technical capability to install that past what's been contributed to the kernel.

For technical users, Linux is fine but it still needs some tinkering. Technical users are more comfortable with tinkering so it's probably not a big deal and "just works" for them but that's a very liberal definition of "just works", imo.

Re: Apple of 2019 is the Linux of 2000

#609
post #190

Meh. I bailed out of the Mac ecosystem last year, as my mid-2012 retina Macbook was finally getting too creaky, and the latest Mac hardware was a regression in many respects, while simultaneously utterly unaffordable. I'm now dual-booting Ubuntu/Windows 10 on a Dell XPS 15". What this experience has taught me is that computing in 2019 basically sucks. The problems with 2000-era Linux, as described in the article, are…

I was linux-only from 2002 to about 2009, on laptops, when I switched to Mac. I just set up a linux desktop for kicks the last couple of weeks, and it doesn't seem to me to be any better than it was a decade ago. * No way to adjust mouse scroll speed; official answer seems to be "don't want that". (Or install imwheel and change your mouse scroll to be equal to hitting the down button (!) which breaks other stuff) * T…

> * No way to adjust mouse scroll speed; official answer seems to be "don't want that". (Or install imwheel and change your mouse scroll to be equal to hitting the down button (!) which breaks other stuff)

Oh yeah, that! Lost another five-ish hours to that, and eventually just decided to live with crappy scrolling.

Re: Apple of 2019 is the Linux of 2000

#610
post #597

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's really not. I think you're giving Linux far too much credit. If it really did "just work" and was that easy, you'd see way more computers in the wild using it. It's literally a free alternative that can be installed on any computer. The two biggest barriers to adoption are non-existent with Linux and yet it still has a minuscule user base comparatively. Unless you don't exclude servers, Linux doesn't "just work"…

And I think you're conflating market share with how well something works. > If it really did "just work" and was that easy, you'd see way more computers in the wild using it. I encounter a number every day, in software engineering. For non-technical users installing an operating system is beyond what most can comprehend anyway. I'd wager the vast majority of hardware never sees an OS change in its life. Add on that d…

I don't understand the point you're making here. You initially said that Linux being arduous is an outdated trope and then admitted that the only people you see using Linux are software engineers and that non-technical users can't even comprehend the install. Who is Linux non-arduous for, then, except technical users and software engineers? Was your argument meant to apply to only the technical users because that wasn't clear, if that's the case.
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