Moving from Macbook to Linux • Hacker News Board

Re: Moving from Macbook to Linux

#61

Post by acatton » Fri, Nov 20, 2020, 7:54 PM UTC

What matters is getting the right distro.

I've been using Fedora as my daily driver for almost 13 years. But in my current company (a big search engine company), I was forced use a debian-based internal distro for work, and I realized why people say "linux is buggy and broken". Once a month I'm facing a pulseaudio or xorg issue which I've never had single time in my last 7 years using Fedora. Everything just worked out of the box.

I've installed Ubuntu LTS on my parents' computer 5 years ago, same. Everything was working out of the box, never had a single issue.

Re: Moving from Macbook to Linux

#62

Post by shmerl » Fri, Nov 20, 2020, 7:55 PM UTC

Congrats!

There were also a lot of refugees from macOS due to how Apple treats gamers. First they let OpenGL rot, then they didn't support Vulkan, then they dropped 32-bit. You don't have such nonsense on Linux.

Re: Moving from Macbook to Linux

#63

Post by masklinn » Fri, Nov 20, 2020, 7:55 PM UTC

driverdan wrote: post #51

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.

Learn to use keyboard shortcuts instead. It's faster than using the trackpad and makes it much less important.

Why do you not want people to use linux?

Re: Moving from Macbook to Linux

#64

Post by somesortofsystm » Fri, Nov 20, 2020, 7:55 PM UTC

I've been running Linux since forever, and had an investment in Apple hardware since even longer.

I've not used any laptop but an Apple since 2000, but consider Linux to be my primary professional realm.

MacOS has been a 'decent front-end', but more and more the only love I have for it is physical.

As soon as I can find a Linux laptop from a non-Apple vendor that feels as good to wake up to in bed, I'll ditch the Macbooks and switch.

The trouble is, the physicality of the experience is important. A slab of metal is friendlier than a chunk of solid petroleum-based product.

I do have a GPD Pocket, which fulfills the needs, and is indeed a great little computer .. if they rise to the challenge of building a bigger system while maintaining the language of their metal milled cases, I could consider very little need, indeed, for a continued investment in Apple.

Re: Moving from Macbook to Linux

#65

Post by renewiltord » Fri, Nov 20, 2020, 7:56 PM UTC

I use a Macbook and a Linux desktop that I dual-boot for games. Honestly, platform specificity except for the games is gone. I pretty much use the Mac and Linux interchangeably. I've got 20 years on a *nix so I imagine the only reason I don't use Windows for dev is that I don't know the ecosystem.

It can't be very much harder, though.

But my Macbook is a very good laptop. It isn't as good a computer as my desktop (latter more powerful, more RAM, more cooling capacity, bigger GPU) but it's a good laptop. Way better than the gaming laptop I have.

Re: Moving from Macbook to Linux

#66

Post by sitzkrieg » Fri, Nov 20, 2020, 7:56 PM UTC

linux on the desktop for me: i cannot get a usable mouse sensitivity (WAY too high, at 400dpi) without downloading sources and recompiling a driver. but mouse input has always been pretty darn barebones/bad for those who care about quality input like 1000hz and no accel.

anyway unless you're willing to make many compromises, using linux daily is a test of time or patience for broken things

Re: Moving from Macbook to Linux

#67

Post by mrspeaker » Fri, Nov 20, 2020, 7:56 PM UTC

bsaul wrote: post #25

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…

Freedom is less important than convenience. People will put up with all sorts of draconian control as long as they can have smoother scrolling, or a nicer feeling trackpad.

Re: Moving from Macbook to Linux

#68

Post by senko » Fri, Nov 20, 2020, 7:57 PM UTC

I find it funny when people complain Linux is not ready for desktop. Sometimes it's because Windows software doesn't run on it, sometimes because Apple makes a fast chip...

Dunno. Been using it on desktops (well, laptops, mostly) since early 2000s, then some 6-year hiatus with OSX, then back to Linux. Works/worked great for me.

So, Year of Linux Desktop is really old news for some. For most, it'll never arrive.

And that's fine.

What I do like is choice - to each their own. You can now use and be fully productive 3 on completely different platforms, depending on your personal choice and work you do.

Re: Moving from Macbook to Linux

#69

Post by dllthomas » Fri, Nov 20, 2020, 7:57 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.

It's a very different approach, but for picking I really like keynav. That said, it's poor for dragging, and garbage for expressing relative motion or tracing out paths (although defining that in terms of control points for a curve could be neat...)

Re: Moving from Macbook to Linux

#70

Post by throwaway47399 » Fri, Nov 20, 2020, 7:57 PM UTC

Been a Linux Mint user for nearly 10 years now, never looked back. I installed it on plenty of computers, desktops or laptops, personal or professional. Everything just works out of the box, and keeps working.

I really don't understand the fuss about Linux' usability, like we're still in 2004 or something.