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Moving from Macbook to Linux

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Re: Moving from Macbook to Linux

#241

Post by rched »

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…

Your fears seem to come down to the idea that Apple will eventually try to force apps to go through the mac app store. I can understand why people would feel that way seeing what they have done on their mobile platforms but I don't actually think there is any evidence to suggest they want to do that on the mac.

I am not at all convinced Apple wants to go that route so the future of the mac doesn't look scary to me it looks pretty great.

Re: Moving from Macbook to Linux

#242

Post by cafed00d »

horsawlarway wrote: post #85
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 App…

Well of course! How many people who walk into Apple stores are reading hacker news to learn about Wayland, Gnome and XPS running Linux?

I can see you’re frustrated and lashing out with “Don’t buy their shit”. Honestly I would be too if I had to read another hn post on apple & their policies.

But the biggest gap here isn’t technology. Rather it’s empathy.

Empathy for all those people who don’t read hn and would walk into apple stores to buy the best computer they possibly can.

Re: Moving from Macbook to Linux

#244

Post by throwaway47399 »

gonehome wrote: post #182
berkut wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Out of interest, how do you define "works perfectly fine"? :) Obviously you're saying "for me", which I recognise, but from my experience playing around with Linux Mint, Kubuntu and Fedora on a Thinkpad T480S over the past year, while things work technically, getting them perfect (in my opinion) takes a lot longer, and might not even be possible in some cases. Take for example suspend/resume: yes, this works in terms…

This largely matches my experience whenever I play with it. Things generally work, but poorly with lots of little issues that degrade the experience and regular users wouldn't tolerate. If you use linux you learn to tolerate the bad experience, but I think it's just because you adapt to deal with it and lower your expectations of what good even is.

Not really. When I have to use Windows or OS X I'm always at pains to get some shit that should be basic working:

-No package manager. You have to download and install third party stuff like chocolatey (resp. brew). Unless you mean scoop (resp. macports)? In any case you have to commit to one and they're much less complete than Debian repos or the AUR so you still end up downloading stuff manually. A thing I don't miss from my teenage years is having to remember unchecking all the crap adware from installation wizards.

-No "open in terminal" option in file managers. Wtf?

-Windows "administrator mode" is incredibly bad and clunky to use. OS X's is better but sometimes you have to use sudo even though everyone tells you it's bad because nothing else works anyway.

-You can't just "upgrade everything" - package manager upgrades are distinct from system upgrades because, as said before, package managers are not builtin. Not only is this very clunky, you're also completely at the mercy of Microsoft and Apple.

-No shortcuts for basic stuff like "open terminal on ~" or "bring up app list with fuzzy search prompt", "hide all windows and bring desktop to the foreground" - windows used to have them but axed them for some reason? doesn't work anymore last time I tested anyway

-OS X file system is case insensitive. wtf? Windows still as really weird quirk where they won't let you easily browse to the WSL directory from the Explorer file browser, some directories can't be easily accessed and some files can't be created due to some backward compatibility behavior from 1974. wtf?

-lots of hardware won't work on Windows out of the box, especially drives with more exotic filesystems. never had a problem with Linux

Maybe all this stuff is duck syndrome but the same could be said about your "little issues"

Re: Moving from Macbook to Linux

#245

Post by busterarm »

hacknat wrote: post #154

I would strongly recommend the following combination for beginners: Thinkpad + Fedora Fedora stays on the cutting edge of the kernel, which means that driver support is quite good. Additionally, most of the Linux kernel developers use Thinkpads, so the drivers for Thinkpad are always good. I've never had to download drivers individually. Here's a list of things that just "worked" without me having to do anything: 1.…

Not just any thinkpad!

Stick to the X, T & to some extent P series. Avoid nvidia graphics if you can.

Arch Linux (and to some extent OpenBSD) probably has the best support/documentation/fixes for any ACPI/APM management issues you have.

I have a top-end 2017 MBP and I just recently bought a brand new 7th Gen X1 Carbon for very cheaply (like $800) and it _screams_ in comparison to the Mac.

Re: Moving from Macbook to Linux

#246

Post by rv-de »

McBooks only convince in two areas: display and touchpad. That's it. Nothing more. The rest is just hindsight justification caused by drinking too much of the KoolAid.

Linux Mint on a ThinkPad and then you can just go on with your life.

I have to use a MBP for work and it's a nightmare compared to my unsophisticated Linux setup. Updates take ages, possibly break your applications and are totally obnoxious.

Re: Moving from Macbook to Linux

#247

Post by vlunkr »

I just want to say that if you're waiting for Linux to be as smooth as Mac or Windows out of the box, it's never going to happen. A full Linux desktop is a combination of software from many different people, targeting the hardware of companies that really couldn't care less about Linux. Yeah there will be hiccups. Most can be avoided by picking the right hardware and consulting good online sources. And once you solve them they'll be gone for good.

I'm not saying Linux is for everyone, just that it absolutely is usable, and in my opinion it's absolutely worth the trade-offs.

Re: Moving from Macbook to Linux

#248

Post by Cu3PO42 »

fabianhjr wrote: post #232
Cu3PO42 wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I imagine the post you are replying to is referring to actually getting the Linux kernel to boot (since there is no BIOS, UEFI, etc.) and writing drivers for all the possibly specialized hardware Apple put in there.

The main issue might be video drivers and other non-standard hardware. There are many reports of people being able to boot into linux on the new M1 by tweaking secure boot.

The way I understand these reports is "it's most likely possible, but we still need to actually make it work". In particular, it seems there's not a complete boot loader.

Or at least this is what this thread implies: https://twitter.com/never_released/status/132739810298317619...

Re: Moving from Macbook to Linux

#249

Post by pxeboot »

horsawlarway wrote: post #85
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 App…

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

While PC trackpads were absolutely terrible for a long time, I actually really like the one used on my X1 Carbon. Inertia scrolling and gesters are not as smooth, but the hardware itself is quite pleasant.

Re: Moving from Macbook to Linux

#250

Post by odiroot »

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.

There's Manjaro and few others too.
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