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MacOS Catalina: Slow by Design?

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Re: MacOS Catalina: Slow by Design?

#531

Post by arianvanp »

arianvanp wrote: post #526
acdha wrote: post #441

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you explain the reasoning here? I can see it being _easier_ than doing it the right way but have trouble coming up with a scenario where it makes it _impossible_.

Packages can not 'accidentally' depend on other packages as the only way to depend on a package is by referring to their full path which your learn by evaluating that package. If you have an application that calls /usr/bin/nginx but doesn't declare a dependency on nginx; but you had nginx installed already the package works fine and you only find our later In nix you can't do this as you don't know nginx's path witho…

But yeh rooting everything under /usr/nix or /opt/nix would've probably been a better choice.

What annoys me more is that a popular nix Fork GNU Guix _did_ change the path; but they made the same mistake again (it's rooted under /gnu) whilst they already has the hindsight that a non-standard directory might be problematic

Re: MacOS Catalina: Slow by Design?

#532

Post by lilyball »

soraminazuki wrote: post #278

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…

You can install Nix without losing functionality, it’s just annoying because it requires setting up a separate volume, and if you want it encrypted and available before the GUI session restores then you have to use a login script to force-mount it. Personally I just keep my Nix volume unencrypted because I don’t build any proprietary software in it and I don’t care if someone can see what I have installed.

I really wish Apple would give third parties the ability to create firmlinks (or at least give Nix one), or barring that, give us a sane way to mount encrypted volumes at the same time that the system volume is unlocked.

Re: MacOS Catalina: Slow by Design?

#533

Post by kitsunesoba »

fastball wrote: post #500
etoulas wrote: post #488

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Very satisfied MacPorts user since 16 years. I really don’t get why brew is a thing...

Because 10 years ago when I first started installing software from the command line on my mac, a large number of the packages I wanted to install were very outdated on MacPorts, and {CURRENT_VERSION} on homebrew. Also `brew cask` is nice. EDIT: also that Macbook had a 128GB HDD, so space was kinda precious, and MacPorts installing its own version of libs that were already on the system was literally taking up GBs of…

In addition to outdated ports, several times I had issues with macports mucking with or otherwise interfering with the system-bundled copies of things which was a real headache.

Seems like the ideal setup would be something like Homebrew, except it "lives" in the ~/Library/Brews/ folder or something to that effect.

Re: MacOS Catalina: Slow by Design?

#534

Post by valuearb »

WrtCdEvrydy wrote: post #95
tragomaskhalos wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That computers are just slower to interact with now is such a truism that we hardly remark upon it any more. It seems utterly insane that in the early 90's I could just run Windows 3.1 on a bit of kit that in all likelihood wouldn't even power a toaster today, and the experience was, well, frictionless. I don't recall ever thinking "wtf is this thing doing ?", whereas today, by contrast, if I have the audacity to be…

I call this 'Outsourcing the cost of development to the user'... Getting knowledgeable people costs money so we build more abstractions that lower the cost of development and pass the costs of development from the company to the user in the form of requiring more hardware to do the same thing. How come I need 16Gb of RAM these days when 8Gb did it yesterday? How come my phone needs 4Gb of RAM while my 2012 tablet had…

What’s the point of cheaper disk and ram, and faster systems if not for supporting higher level abstractions?

Re: MacOS Catalina: Slow by Design?

#535

Post by Spivak »

prewett wrote: post #421
eximius wrote: post #367

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is special about /nix that would make it better suited elsewhere? Aesthetic? Clutter? I don't think there are any technical reasons why the root of the filesystem is important. The /nix folder is just another folder with some ACLs/Permissions (however OSX works, idk)

Historically / has been reserved for the use of the Unix system (the distribution that packaged it, not the computer you're running on). Local programs were installed to /usr/local. Packages installing themselves in /packagename are making your root directory like Windows' Start Menu. Furthermore, if your, say, Physics department has 20 machines, your sysadmin would install everything on an NFS share, which probably…

Everything not specified in the FHS is reserved for use by the administrator. The FHS isn’t all-encompassing. It’s a contract about what directories the OS wont touch.

Generally you’re right and if you make a piece of software not follow the FHS you better have good reason. Nix, I think, makes a solid case since existing outside of the FHS is the only safe way to not conflict with every package manager.

Re: MacOS Catalina: Slow by Design?

#536

Post by valuearb »

pier25 wrote: post #46
ronyfadel wrote: post #35

I hope Apple currently has a team focused on macOS perf. I worked on the team in charge of improving iOS (13) perf at Apple and IIRC there was no dedicated macOS “task force” like the one on iOS. Luckily some iOS changes permeated into macOS thanks to some shared codebases.

> IIRC there was no dedicated macOS “task force” like the one on iOS It's not surprising. Macs are less than 10% of Apple's revenue. https://www.macrumors.com/2020/04/30/apple-2q-2020-earnings/

Apples Macintosh division is the most profitable PC company in the world and has been for at least a decade. In fact, Macintosh is likely more profitable than all other PC companies combined.

Less than 10% is no excuse.

Re: MacOS Catalina: Slow by Design?

#537

Post by amelius »

kar1181 wrote: post #27

I completely understand why things are going the way they are as our computing environment has become ever more hostile. But I am very nostalgic for the time where I would power up a Vic-20 and within seconds be able to get to work. Teaching my daughter to program on a modern computer, we spend more time bootstrapping and in process, than we do in actual development.

We're moving away from general purpose computing, and Apple is one of the greatest forces in this.

Also, they are a threat to a free market for software, as they regulate their walled garden with arbitrary rules and skim off a lot of value.

I honestly don't understand why a large portion of developers have so much love for Apple. I'm personally a proud owner of a desktop PC with an ASUS motherboard. It serves me fine, and gives me full control over the software installed on it. I'm not a laptop-person but I believe there are many perfectly capable non-Apple laptops out there.

Re: MacOS Catalina: Slow by Design?

#538

Post by fxtentacle »

mst wrote: post #241
2ion wrote: 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.

Do you know of anything similar that supports GPU acceleration?

Re: MacOS Catalina: Slow by Design?

#539

Post by [deleted] »

kitsunesoba wrote: post #533
fastball wrote: post #500

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because 10 years ago when I first started installing software from the command line on my mac, a large number of the packages I wanted to install were very outdated on MacPorts, and {CURRENT_VERSION} on homebrew. Also `brew cask` is nice. EDIT: also that Macbook had a 128GB HDD, so space was kinda precious, and MacPorts installing its own version of libs that were already on the system was literally taking up GBs of…

In addition to outdated ports, several times I had issues with macports mucking with or otherwise interfering with the system-bundled copies of things which was a real headache. Seems like the ideal setup would be something like Homebrew, except it "lives" in the ~/Library/Brews/ folder or something to that effect.

[deleted]

Re: MacOS Catalina: Slow by Design?

#540

Post by aasasd »

grishka wrote: post #401
xenadu02 wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Xcode (the UI) is able to bypass GateKeeper checks for things it builds. The "Developer Tool" pane in System Prefs, Security, Privacy is the same power. Drag anything into that list you'd like to grant the same privilege (such as xcodebuild). This is inherited by child processes as well. The point of this is to avoid malware packing bits of Xcode with itself and silently compiling itself on the target machine, thus b…

So since these permissions apply to process trees, what happens if you put launchd in there?

The computer will probably hang while it tries to solve the chicken-egg problem.

Isn't launchd Mac's ‘init’? I.e. run before anything else.

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