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MacOS Catalina: Slow by Design?

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Re: MacOS Catalina: Slow by Design?

#341

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does that even make sense? It’s an OS, go grab a Desktop Environment and download nvim, VSCode or whatever.

The original line that I was responding to was > Teaching my daughter to program on a modern computer, we spend more time bootstrapping and in process, than we do in actual development. Arch Linux does not help with this, unless you make it boot into a VIC-20 emulator or something. Arch can help with boot speed, but once you're booted you're back in a full modern OS. So fine, install VSCode and Python... okay, now yo…

This is very possible on Arch Linux, moreso than other distributions. After installing Arch, just run the following two commands:

  sudo pacman -S xonsh

  chsh --shell /usr/bin/xonsh
Bam! You're booting straight into a full Python environment when you turn on your computer. This is similarly achievable with other languages as well, including BASIC.

Re: MacOS Catalina: Slow by Design?

#342

Up until the release of Catalina, I've always upgraded to the latest version of macOS within a month or two. But some of the changes this time is really stopping me from upgrading. As of Catalina, there's no sane way to install the Nix package manager without losing functionality because macOS now disallows creating new files in the root directory[1]. Nix stores its packages in the /nix directory and it's not possibl…

[deleted]

Re: MacOS Catalina: Slow by Design?

#345
post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mac is a BSD. OpenBSD exists. FreeBSD exists. NetBSD exists. Because there are at least four BSDs, Mac therefore isn't good. Do you see how ridiculous applying that logic to any operating system is? Linux isn't a disaster. It's a kernel. There are Linux distributions with great user interfaces and great UX, developed by people who are great at it. There are also distributions that aren't.

> There are Linux distributions with great user interfaces and great UX Could you name some? No sarcasm, actually interested!

It sort of depends on what really fascinates you, right? I'll avoid naming some of the most popular ones, because it's likely that you've already tried them. If you haven't, I'd really recommend giving them a try. Many people seem to really love them.

In terms of defaults:

I've heard really good things about Solus, and its use of AppArmor seems really cool. Never touched its package manager, so I won't recommend it, but it might be worth checking out. Its desktop environment is really snappy and has an interesting design philosophy.

Elementary is really cool as a boutique distribution; I don't personally feel any urge to use it seriously (I dislike apt as a package manager), but I always keep its live environment on a flash drive, because it works without any setup on basically anything I throw it at, painlessly, and without error. It's got a cool indie app store full of curated Elementary-centric free software, and overall just feels great. Using it, you'll probably notice a few areas that it clones Mac on, and a few that feel delightfully different.

Clear Linux (Intel's desktop distribution) is pretty popular right now because of how simple it is & how Intel seems to be going to great lengths to optimize it and make it a serious contender, but I don't like its desktop environment (vanilla GNOME 3 as far as I'm aware) all that much.

ChromiumOS is probably the best-designed desktop operating system on the planet right now technically, and I say that as a person who really hates Google. UI-wise it's so-so, but UX-wise it's really something special.

But more interesting are desktop environments in general, since they can be used with any variant of Linux you feel the urge to use. There's an exception there, though, in that Elementary's DE and Deepin's DE tend to not work so well or nicely on platforms that aren't Elementary or Deepin.

There are modern environments:

Plasma has hands-down the best UX of any sort of desktop operating system assuming you've got an Android smartphone; you say you're coming from Apple's environment, so imagine the interop between your Mac and your iPhone, but going both ways instead of just Mac -> iPhone. Texting, handling calls, taking advantage of the computing resources of connected devices, using your phone as an extra trackpad, notifications, unlocking your PC, painless file-sharing, pretty much anything you'd like. There are a bunch of distributions that ship with Plasma by default.

Solus's Budgie is kind of neat in that it takes the main benefit of GNOME 3 (ecosystem) with far fewer downsides.

There are also retro environments, if those are your thing. There's a pretty much perfect NeXTSTEP clone (including the programming environment, not just the UI), amiwm is still pretty interesting, there are clones of basically every UNIX UI under the sun, so on.

I'm not the best person to answer your question, because for the most part I don't go out of my way to use new desktop environments and distributions, and nothing above is my first choice. (In terms of window management, I usually stick with 9wm & E just because I have ridiculous ADHD and 9wm forces me to focus while E allows me to tile painlessly if I ever need it. I use three distributions overall, none of which are very popular at the moment, pretty much solely because I'm really picky with package managers & design philosophies.) That's a "me" issue rather than a Linux issue, though.

Re: MacOS Catalina: Slow by Design?

#346

Up until the release of Catalina, I've always upgraded to the latest version of macOS within a month or two. But some of the changes this time is really stopping me from upgrading. As of Catalina, there's no sane way to install the Nix package manager without losing functionality because macOS now disallows creating new files in the root directory[1]. Nix stores its packages in the /nix directory and it's not possibl…

IMHO the original choice of the path seems incredibly ill-advised and the main burden lies with the original developers. sometimes old errors and mistakes come back and bite

It only seems that way now because some platforms have begun locking down their root directories. Nix, by design, doesn't conform to the FHS way of organizing directories so it made perfect sense to use /nix when the decision was originally made.

Re: MacOS Catalina: Slow by Design?

#347
post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My mother asked me to help her out with her win 10 installation on her work notebook. This was terrible. UI is still inconsistent between apps, sometimes it feels like you are using 3 different OS from 3 different time periods. But you can get used to that I guess. OS settings are still a strange place created to make an average user (or someone who haven't been using the OS for more than a decade) feel as an idiot.…

Interesting it’s possible that we have different priorities, but I’m not bothered by UI inconsistencies. I use chrome, office, adobe suite, a trading application, games, VSCode, they all have different interfaces that I know how to navigate. I agree that the settings can be tough. Half the time you are in “new” stuff and half the time you’re pulling up the screens from XP. I just google what I need to do though, and…

> priorities

Not priorities but rather attitude maybe? (Not sure if the best word but this is the best I can think of with my english, hopefully it doesn't sound offensive or tactless)

Imagine you have a car. Great engine, relatively comfortable seats, a new set of tires and a body so ugly you want to ram it into a wall everytime you are behind the wheel. It does its job well but you do not enjoy the time with.

Being able to enjoy my time with a device or an OS (or any other thing or person for that matter) is what I want. Obviously sometimes the issue is on my part.

Re: MacOS Catalina: Slow by Design?

#348

I am using Ubuntu 20.04 on a Thinkpad X1 Extreme Gen2 and you would be surprised how "normal" it feels as a development machine. Sure there some little annoyances, the touchpad behaves a little worse than on windows, sound is a little worse. But the most important things, Keyboard and Screen are excellent. The system in general does not feel like the horror stories that people keep telling about linux on desktop(note…

I would love to switch back to Linux but Apple's Retina displays are absolutely beautiful and there is no way I could enjoy going back to anything with noticeably lower pixel density on a laptop. I'd like to be told I'm wrong, but as far as I know it's not really possible to recreate a comparable high pixel density experience under Linux on a laptop.

Re: MacOS Catalina: Slow by Design?

#349

Up until the release of Catalina, I've always upgraded to the latest version of macOS within a month or two. But some of the changes this time is really stopping me from upgrading. As of Catalina, there's no sane way to install the Nix package manager without losing functionality because macOS now disallows creating new files in the root directory[1]. Nix stores its packages in the /nix directory and it's not possibl…

IMHO the original choice of the path seems incredibly ill-advised and the main burden lies with the original developers. sometimes old errors and mistakes come back and bite

What should the default nix store path have been then?

Re: MacOS Catalina: Slow by Design?

#350
post #241
post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Our help desk is wise enough to keep existing mac users on the oldest supported macOS version; but inevitably at some point in the future they'll have to roll out the latest version. This will be the week when I will exchange my macbook for a Windows 10 ThinkPad. A lot of our dev teams have moved to this setup alreay using WSL or a VM for Linux if really needed and it has been really smooth (our helpdesk staying on t…

If WSL turns out to be insufficient, https://multipass.run/ is worth a look.

Or, you know, just run Linux outright.
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