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Moving from Macbook to Linux

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Re: Moving from Macbook to Linux

#81

Post by Aperocky »

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…

I got the new mac.

I don't have any intention to contribute to the mac ecosystem. I still hog in what I like best - the terminal.

I treat the mac as a client - web+cloud is my backend. The client should feel good to me with decent battery life and snappy experience, and maybe some gaming. But I don't care much else about it.

Re: Moving from Macbook to Linux

#82

Post by smnrchrds »

tomwojcik wrote: post #30
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.

Could be openSUSE Tumbleweed.

Re: Moving from Macbook to Linux

#83

Post by Technically »

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.

https://marc.info/?l=9fans&m=111558805207697

Re: Moving from Macbook to Linux

#84

Post by somesortofsystm »

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…

Although my Macbook is my main personal interface for a lot of things, I've stabilized on Ubuntu for my workstation machines, and they have been rock-solid stable desktop systems since 2009, at least this generation of hardware. I have not had any of the typical issues - my machines just work very well. I've got a system for software development, and another for Audio (yes, Linux is a functional DAW - digital audio workstation), and they are both just pleasant and joyful systems to use.

Of course, the fact that I have the chops to fix things is key, because I really, really do (Systems Programmer, 30+ years building OS and system-level things), but for the Ubuntu experience key factors have also been: pick your hardware nicely (e.g. Presonus=great Audio for Linux), use package management, do frequent manual updates, and use containers/virtualization for anything where ones hacking around might be dodgy - i.e. keep the work part of workstation in mind with all system updates/installations, etc.

Decades of Linux desktop usage means, to me, the cliche is over. Linux is an awesome desktop workstation. Everything just works, audio, video, graphics .. WINE is perfectly functional .. and there is zero bloatware or concern about walled gardeners.

Re: Moving from Macbook to Linux

#85

Post by horsawlarway »

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…

Don't buy their shit. Period.

Wayland already has trackpad support that's nearly identical to macOS.

Gnome with a dock is basically the same desktop experience - Pick a distro of your choice.

I can honestly say I prefer my linux XPS to my work macbook, by a large margin.

Plus - It doesn't spy on me. I actually own it. I can release software through channels that aren't entirely abusive.

Basically - The only thing Apple does truly well at this point, in my opinion, is marketing how great Apple is. But it turns out they just aren't all that great.

Don't buy their shit.

Re: Moving from Macbook to Linux

#86

Post by WanderPanda »

jdhawk wrote: post #59
iaw wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a 2014 Macbook Air that I'm about to replace the battery in. Once that thing goes I really think I'll have to head over to Linux. Mac quality has gone downhill.

I run linux on a Macbook Air 4,2 (2011) and its pretty nice.

I am going strong on a 2012 MBA, but I guess I will soon update to the M1 Air/Pro

Re: Moving from Macbook to Linux

#87

Post by massysett »

reidrac wrote: post #58

Interesting that the author didn't consider stability or long time support as a factor to choose a distribution. I was a happy Fedora user, but I got tired of an uneven quality and only 13+ months of support for a given release. It is a great distro to use the latest versions of everything, but it was too much disruption for me. I guess I'm getting old. I'm currently on Debian stable, that comes with "good enough" ve…

I’ve got a laptop with Debian oldstable. I can’t be bothered to upgrade it because I just don’t care.

I’m comfortable with Debian; otherwise I’d look for something with even longer term support, like CentOS. Computers are just boring now and not worth upgrading, which is a good thing.

Re: Moving from Macbook to Linux

#88

Post by anderspitman »

aaomidi wrote: post #46
vr46 wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you use? I have tried this multiple times and always give up. I ran FreeBSD for a decade as a server in a datacentre and have a deep and abiding love for it, but it doesn't sound it makes a usable desktop these days. Ubuntu appears to be the desktop of choice, but I find it buggy, sluggish and tedious. I'd like a practical and speedy OS that is responsive and configurable. But I don't know enough :)

Not OP but I do recommend PopOS. It's worked really well for me. The sluggish performance you're getting is honestly probably related to CFS (the default linux process scheduler). Windows does an AMAZING job with scheduling for UI applications. You almost never feel like your computer is struggling because anything UI related gets scheduled first. CFS does not do this. I've found that changing the scheduler to someth…

Never heard of Pop before today. Looks cool. Love the built-in tiling functionality. Do they use a different scheduler by default?

Re: Moving from Macbook to Linux

#89

Post by snazz »

mettamage wrote: post #48
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…

I don’t look at it with sarcasm. I have an issue that laptops and PCs are not having the same ISA.

I expect that the x86_64 instruction set will stick around for a very long time. Rosetta is super smooth and very fast on M1 Macs, so legacy apps still work just fine for the time being.

Re: Moving from Macbook to Linux

#90

Post by ognarb »

masklinn wrote: post #41
fsflover wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can find GNU/Linux ARM laptops, too: https://www.pine64.org/pinebook-pro/ (slow, but it's a start).

> slow, but it's a start That it's slow makes it a bad one. It's the issue endemic to existing ARM laptop offering: in the best cases, either the performances are lackluster and the battery life is good, or the performances are terrible and the battery life is great. Sure the pinebook is super cheap, but the performances are bad and it gets 6-8h battery.

The real problem is the driver situation for the GPU on ARM. If we could have more mainline supports, the Desktop Linux ARM ecosystem would be a lot better.
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