Moving from Macbook to Linux • Hacker News Board

anderspitman wrote: post #12

I got into Linux when I was younger because I thought it was cool, and I had plenty of time to fix it when things broke. It's been my daily driver for ~10 years now. But there's quite a bit too learn. If I were to try and switch from Windows or Mac today I'm not sure I'd succeed before giving up. But I'm grateful every day to have a machine that I have some semblance of control over. I use a rolling release distro. I…

The thing is, in those ten years the hump's slowly been getting smaller and smaller, every time I reinstall or upgrade there's less and less work to do to get things up and running, to the point where it's not much different than getting a new windows install going.

Install some drivers

Install some apps

Configure things and set up my ui

There's a lot less forum hunting, obscure edge cases you run into, random things not working and all those other problems I remember.

Part of it is my experience at this point, but another large part is just the general improvement of the linux ecosystem over those years.

It really has improved drastically from my first days using it regularly in 2007-2008 or so.

Re: Moving from Macbook to Linux

#23

Post by fsflover » Fri, Nov 20, 2020, 7:45 PM UTC

DarmokJalad1701 wrote: post #8

The trackpad is still a dealbreaker for me. Nothing I have tried so far comes close to the trackpad on a macbook with the sensitivity turned up to max.

Consider supporting this project then: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23615218.

Re: Moving from Macbook to Linux

#24

Post by radlad » Fri, Nov 20, 2020, 7:45 PM UTC

anderspitman wrote: post #12

I got into Linux when I was younger because I thought it was cool, and I had plenty of time to fix it when things broke. It's been my daily driver for ~10 years now. But there's quite a bit too learn. If I were to try and switch from Windows or Mac today I'm not sure I'd succeed before giving up. But I'm grateful every day to have a machine that I have some semblance of control over. I use a rolling release distro. I…

I truly believe that the argument for switching to Linux has never been stronger. Windows has embedded bloatware, and Apple allows no control over your hardware. There's really no other option if you care about these things. (Full disclosure - I do own a Macbook for photography work, and use Bootcamp for gaming.)

Like you, my Linux installs have been incredibly stable for a long time, even with a rolling release distro which is often considered "unstable."

I use Linux at work, and while I struggle with a few tools others do not as regularly (e.g. video teleconferencing software isn't always optimized for Linux, but overall it works fine), I also don't encounter tons of errors they do. From Apple updates bricking machines, to obscure Bluetooth/Wifi issues that you can't fix, or having to run Docker in a VM, I'm pretty convinced I've got it better.

Re: Moving from Macbook to Linux

#25

Post by bsaul » Fri, Nov 20, 2020, 7:46 PM UTC

The fact that many people reading this post title (including me) look at it with sarcasm is telling on how apple scored big points with its new cpu. Keeping up with mac OS and the trackpad was already quite hard, but CPU could be the killing blow.

Which could lead us in a few years to a situation where mac developers will face the same fate as ios developers : forced to buy hardware to sign their app, forced to push them on the mac app store, forced to give 15/30% cut, forced to be removed whenever an app doesn't feel "right" to apple, or a government strong enough to force Apple. And competitors will probably follow the trend, because Apple will have proven that it's doable and profitable.

That future looks extremely scary. What can we do, now, as developers ?

Re: Moving from Macbook to Linux

#26

Post by skrowl » Fri, Nov 20, 2020, 7:46 PM UTC

rektide wrote: post #7

skrowl wrote: post #2

2021 is going to be the year of desktop Linux... for sure this time! /s j/k Chromebooks have been desktop Linux for years and they work great

It's more than being about what kernel our devices run. Android devices are Linux too, but we don't go around saying it's an era of the Linux Handheld. It is, sort of, but the "Linux Desktop" implies a wider free & open source stack of interlinked technologies, multiple disjointed entities working in different places but building towards some kind of intertwingularity. You can not get that endless-frontier expanding-…

Many modern Chromebooks can literally run unmodified Linux apps. You can even install them via apt.

That sounds like Desktop + Linux to me!

Re: Moving from Macbook to Linux

#27

Post by peterangular » Fri, Nov 20, 2020, 7:46 PM UTC

DarmokJalad1701 wrote: post #8

The trackpad is still a dealbreaker for me. Nothing I have tried so far comes close to the trackpad on a macbook with the sensitivity turned up to max.

Apple's mouse/trackpad/touch drivers are out of this world. Anecdotally as someone who collects laptops - you can't beat them. There's polish there that doesn't exist on any other solution on the market!

Re: Moving from Macbook to Linux

#28

Post by old-gregg » Fri, Nov 20, 2020, 7:46 PM UTC

vondur wrote: post #6

I think this is going to be a tougher sell for laptops as the M1 chip seems to be a game changer for battery life and performance. Once the majority of software gets native ARM support, it will only get better, not to mention this is only the first iteration of a desktop class Apple Silicon. I do understand from a philosophical point of view why people may not want to use MacOS, particularly after last weeks code sig…

Docker performance on current Intel Macs is much worse than Linux. So if you're building software to run on an x86 Linux server, dealing with ARM-based MacOS is going to be even a bigger PITA: as both the arch and the OS will be different. I am definitely in the camp of replicating server setups on my laptops, so as sweet and incredible as M1 is, I won't be able to use it.

But for new projects, I honestly do not know what will people do.

If Amazon continues to evolve their Graviton chips, and other cloud providers follow, it will be quite tempting to try a 100% ARM setup...

Re: Moving from Macbook to Linux

#29

Post by vtrips » Fri, Nov 20, 2020, 7:46 PM UTC

DarmokJalad1701 wrote: post #8

The trackpad is still a dealbreaker for me. Nothing I have tried so far comes close to the trackpad on a macbook with the sensitivity turned up to max.

I recently made the jump from a macbook to a thinkpad with linux ubuntu. For gestures - Fusuma (https://github.com/iberianpig/fusuma) is pretty stable and feels almost entirely like a native macbook

Re: Moving from Macbook to Linux

#30

Post by tomwojcik » Fri, Nov 20, 2020, 7:46 PM UTC

anderspitman wrote: post #12

I got into Linux when I was younger because I thought it was cool, and I had plenty of time to fix it when things broke. It's been my daily driver for ~10 years now. But there's quite a bit too learn. If I were to try and switch from Windows or Mac today I'm not sure I'd succeed before giving up. But I'm grateful every day to have a machine that I have some semblance of control over. I use a rolling release distro. I…

> I use a rolling release distro

This might be the first time someone could have said 'I use Arch' but decided not to.