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Moving from Macbook to Linux

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Re: Moving from Macbook to Linux

#261

Post by romanoderoma »

heavyset_go wrote: post #212
rhinoceraptor wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been using Linux for many years, and it's definitely better, but definitely not what I'd want to use seriously. My gaming desktop has a 20.04 drive which I occasionally use, and yet I still find myself dropping to a TTY occasionally to reboot the machine or restart gdm because it waking from sleep, or just plain crashes. Also, I have 4k, 28" monitors which is just the size where 1x is comically small, and 2x is…

Plasma Desktop does fractional scaling correctly, is stable and comes with sddm as a display manager instead of gdm. I found the GNOME ecosystem to be bug prone and opinionated in ways that I disagree with, and have been impressed with KDE 5's stability and versatility.

Same here.

Plasma is great and it feels lightweight compared to Gnome

Re: Moving from Macbook to Linux

#262

Post by driverdan »

bsaul wrote: post #75
driverdan wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That future looks extremely scary. What can we do, now, as developers ? Stop buying, using, and supporting the Apple ecosystem. Vote with your money. The new chips are faster. So what? The laptop you have today works fine, you don't need the latest and greatest hardware.

i code iOS (native) app for a living. I'm already stuck developing for the app store, using xcode to sign and deploy, using a programming language (that i love) swift that only really works on mac OS. My personal situation isn't going to change anytime soon unfortunately. I was about to dump my iphone next time i had to pick one (and keep my current one for testing), however my laptop is my work computer. I think "st…

If you choose to work in their ecosystem of course you're going to be stuck with whatever Apple does. If you're capable of building iOS apps you're capable of learning other languages and working on something else.

There isn't much you can do other than sucking up what they feed you or getting a new job. If there's a 3rd option I'd love to hear it.

Re: Moving from Macbook to Linux

#263

Post by anderspitman »

vr46 wrote: post #220
anderspitman wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use Arch. I love it and I think it's gotten a easier to install over the years (hard to gauge because I also understand more), but it does lean towards the minimalist side. The big win for me is using a lightweight window manager (i3 in my case), which you can do with any distro. My main recommendation is stick with one of the major distros because you'll get more results when you search for solutions to issues. Wi…

Sold, on all counts. I have an MBA 2012 running Ubuntu that will be trashed this weekend in favour of Arch.

One of my favorite things about Arch is booting up a fresh install and seeing something like 10 processes running and a tiny amount of memory being used (granted that might be archlinuxarm I'm remembering). It feels like a blank canvas.

Re: Moving from Macbook to Linux

#264

Post by Spivak »

busterarm wrote: post #245
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.

Avoid Nvidia Optimus (i.e. the W series). It’s so much worse than having a dedicated card because of the way it’s soldered on. It only kinda works. It still consumes power when “disabled”. You can’t use GPU passthrough.

Stand-alone Nvidia GPUs are fine but on Fedora you have to do some work because the Mutter and Kwin devs are currently in a spat with Nvidia.

Re: Moving from Macbook to Linux

#265

Post by mcjiggerlog »

gradstudent wrote: post #219

I went down the same road last year and many of the suggestions are same I eventually found. I gave up scaling though because it's garbage. The gnome-tweaks solution mentioned in the article works, but it's buggy. Some apps ignore the setting (Dia, I'm looking at you!) and in some distros (Mint, I'm looking at you) parts of the OS bug out, with e.g., some dock icons being scaled and some not. Anyway, the resulting ho…

I'm not sure what distro or desktop environment you're running, but integer scaling has worked perfectly on gnome, kde and others for years now. So 200% scaling of a 4k resolution should look exactly the same as unscaled 1080p, just sharper. No performance issues, no glitches, no inconsistencies.

The jankiness of scaling on Linux is when you want to do fractional scaling.

Re: Moving from Macbook to Linux

#266

Post by cutemonster »

cafed00d wrote: post #242
horsawlarway wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 i…

What could be ways to bridge that gap?

Re: Moving from Macbook to Linux

#267

Post by anderspitman »

veddox wrote: post #202
anderspitman wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use Arch. I love it and I think it's gotten a easier to install over the years (hard to gauge because I also understand more), but it does lean towards the minimalist side. The big win for me is using a lightweight window manager (i3 in my case), which you can do with any distro. My main recommendation is stick with one of the major distros because you'll get more results when you search for solutions to issues. Wi…

How often do you run into packaging problems? As in, you need some software but it‘s only available for Linux via the Ubuntu repos?

Rarely. I think between the official repositories and the AUR, there's probably more useful, updated software than is available for Ubuntu.

Granted, I probably use less programs than most people, and I'm the type of person who would rather download the nodejs tarball and update my PATH than use the system package or nvm.

Re: Moving from Macbook to Linux

#268

Post by Shared404 »

throwaway47399 wrote: post #244
gonehome wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 mi…

Largely, I think it's that all OS's have individual pain points, which we become desensitized to.

While using a different OS's, all you see are the things that work worse, not the things that work better.

At least, that how the first few hours go for me.

Re: Moving from Macbook to Linux

#269

Post by eikenberry »

gorgoiler wrote: post #99

This is going to sound dumb or elitist but I am so much happier working since I ditched portable computing. I have a desk at home in an office. I have the same setup at work. I don’t carry my dev environment with me. When I need to work I go to the ’do work stuff’ place. Nice keyboard. Nice mouse. And a nice OS that, yes, took a whole day to configure but over which I have total control. (Full-screen focus-mode no-or…

Why either/or.. with laptops you can have both the desktop experience and the portable experience. I have a laptop that I primarily use as a desktop. I like it that way best, but I like the option to take it with me. For when I travel or just times I want to sit out in the family room.

Re: Moving from Macbook to Linux

#270

Post by torstenvl »

grawprog wrote: post #22
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…

I literally just had to manually debug kernel modules to upgrade from Ubuntu 20.04 to Ubuntu 20.10 because of the breaking changes in proc and renaming "sem[aphore]" to "lock" in places.

So no. There is just as much forum hunting as ever.

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