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Fed up with the Mac, I spent six months with a Linux laptop

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Re: Fed up with the Mac, I spent six months with a Linux laptop

#11

Post by nanis »

ratww wrote: post #7
ggm wrote: post #2

So Carlos says "don't pick off single issues because it's forest/trees stuff" but I gotta say: he thinks apt is better than brew. Nothing else felt "wrong" but that one just threw me completely. I can go with his whole write up, but not that. Admittedly I come from a BSD background on 7th ed. 32V and 4.1bsd onward, so to me ports and pkg are the more natural path, which brew conforms to. I also totally get his previe…

Brew is the single thing that I absolutely loathe about macOS. It dog slow (does it really need to git pull from GitHub every 15 minutes, really?), doesn't support multiple users, doesn't support alternative folders, hates static compilation (which is mostly why the two previous break), and lots of new things are not available there anymore. In my new computer I didn't even install it, I just used the Rustup/Dotnet/R…

> I'll probably try MacPorts.

I've been using MacPorts continuously for about 10 years now. It's been completely pain free. I think I ran into a single broken package in that time period.

Re: Fed up with the Mac, I spent six months with a Linux laptop

#12

Post by ericwooley »

I also switched to Linux, and I love it, but only on my desktop machine. I got uhk for key remapping, and that's been great. For email and calendar, I use wavebox, which side steps most of the app issues.

As the article says: The laptop experience is not anywhere near as good. I had a lot of the same issues, even on a system 76.

Eventually I decided to try giving windows wsl2 a shot for my laptop, and I gotta give Microsoft credit. It's been great. All the benefits of windows ecosystem, hardware comparability, games etc.... And the ability to do pretty much everything development wise through wsl2. The keyboard combos are similar enough in Linux and windows that I don't have trouble switching contexts. However, most of my development is still on desktop.

A few years ago, I would probably have described myself as a never Microsofter. Maybe my passion for using as much open source software as possible is dying down, or maybe Microsofts push to embrace open source is paying off. Whichever it is, I've come back around to appreciating windows recently.

Re: Fed up with the Mac, I spent six months with a Linux laptop

#13

Post by fiddlerwoaroof »

ratww wrote: post #7
ggm wrote: post #2

So Carlos says "don't pick off single issues because it's forest/trees stuff" but I gotta say: he thinks apt is better than brew. Nothing else felt "wrong" but that one just threw me completely. I can go with his whole write up, but not that. Admittedly I come from a BSD background on 7th ed. 32V and 4.1bsd onward, so to me ports and pkg are the more natural path, which brew conforms to. I also totally get his previe…

Brew is the single thing that I absolutely loathe about macOS. It dog slow (does it really need to git pull from GitHub every 15 minutes, really?), doesn't support multiple users, doesn't support alternative folders, hates static compilation (which is mostly why the two previous break), and lots of new things are not available there anymore. In my new computer I didn't even install it, I just used the Rustup/Dotnet/R…

I've been slowly transitioning to using nix for all my software installations on macOS: it's pretty nice to have one tool that can manage all my 3rd-party software; manage the configuration of a bunch of programs, via home-manager; and, with lorri and direnv, replace nvm/rbenv/etc.

Re: Fed up with the Mac, I spent six months with a Linux laptop

#14

Post by nanis »

hashkb wrote: post #8
ratww wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Brew is the single thing that I absolutely loathe about macOS. It dog slow (does it really need to git pull from GitHub every 15 minutes, really?), doesn't support multiple users, doesn't support alternative folders, hates static compilation (which is mostly why the two previous break), and lots of new things are not available there anymore. In my new computer I didn't even install it, I just used the Rustup/Dotnet/R…

Yes. Brew is a crutch, and so network hungry. Nobody cares, but if you move to the mountains and want to do software development, a Mac will grind to a halt every so often for myriad reasons decided by someone at Apple, or just some dev accustomed to 100mbps. Linux (Arch for me, but probably others) can be told to respect your personal situation, as opposed to dictating it.

> Linux (Arch for me, but probably others)

ArchLinux has been painless. although I must say I've not tried anything too cutting edge with the GUI. Even if you don't use Arch, the Wiki is invaluable.

Re: Fed up with the Mac, I spent six months with a Linux laptop

#15

Post by Wowfunhappy »

ratww wrote: post #7
ggm wrote: post #2

So Carlos says "don't pick off single issues because it's forest/trees stuff" but I gotta say: he thinks apt is better than brew. Nothing else felt "wrong" but that one just threw me completely. I can go with his whole write up, but not that. Admittedly I come from a BSD background on 7th ed. 32V and 4.1bsd onward, so to me ports and pkg are the more natural path, which brew conforms to. I also totally get his previe…

Brew is the single thing that I absolutely loathe about macOS. It dog slow (does it really need to git pull from GitHub every 15 minutes, really?), doesn't support multiple users, doesn't support alternative folders, hates static compilation (which is mostly why the two previous break), and lots of new things are not available there anymore. In my new computer I didn't even install it, I just used the Rustup/Dotnet/R…

> I just used the Rustup/Dotnet/RVM/NVM install instructions rather than using Brew. I then got statically compiled versions of ffmpeg, jq, z7, which took a couple minutes.

This is the setup I prefer in a vacuum, although it depends on the stuff you need being available.

I also do think MacPorts is quite good. It follows UNIX principles, and it doesn't try to take over the systems. Everything is contained in its own world inside /opt/.

Re: Fed up with the Mac, I spent six months with a Linux laptop

#16

Post by shrimp_emoji »

>Nautilus is better than the Finder. It's not even close.

That's astounding. Finder must be awful.

To me, Nautilus is virtually unusable -- it's like a toy file manager. Nothing beats Dolphin (or PCManFM as a not-so-close second). For some reason, Qt apps are way better than GTK apps in general.

Re: Fed up with the Mac, I spent six months with a Linux laptop

#18

Post by whatsmyusername »

To be fair, I’d never use a gnome distro. Basic things are plugins now, because 1% market share says “be super weird and experimental”

I switched my x220 to kubuntu after windows 19.09 support ended and it’s been fine. Random things like printing don’t work, but nothing I need daily.

Re: Fed up with the Mac, I spent six months with a Linux laptop

#19

Post by cptskippy »

ericwooley wrote: post #12

I also switched to Linux, and I love it, but only on my desktop machine. I got uhk for key remapping, and that's been great. For email and calendar, I use wavebox, which side steps most of the app issues. As the article says: The laptop experience is not anywhere near as good. I had a lot of the same issues, even on a system 76. Eventually I decided to try giving windows wsl2 a shot for my laptop, and I gotta give Mi…

> but only on my desktop machine... The laptop experience is not anywhere near as good.

That was a neat trick. You get me to read your whole post because I wanted to know why you didn't use Linux on your servers.

Re: Fed up with the Mac, I spent six months with a Linux laptop

#20

Post by Operyl »

cptskippy wrote: post #19
ericwooley wrote: post #12

I also switched to Linux, and I love it, but only on my desktop machine. I got uhk for key remapping, and that's been great. For email and calendar, I use wavebox, which side steps most of the app issues. As the article says: The laptop experience is not anywhere near as good. I had a lot of the same issues, even on a system 76. Eventually I decided to try giving windows wsl2 a shot for my laptop, and I gotta give Mi…

> but only on my desktop machine... The laptop experience is not anywhere near as good. That was a neat trick. You get me to read your whole post because I wanted to know why you didn't use Linux on your servers.

Given the context of the article, I didn’t expect him to be even talking about Linux Servers in his comment.
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