Fed up with the Mac, I spent six months with a Linux laptop • Hacker News Board

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

#51

Post by ggm » Sat, Apr 03, 2021, 1:35 AM UTC

rahimnathwani wrote: post #31

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…

> Post O365 no complaint about office on Linux makes sense really Excel Online doesn't come close to the feature set or usability of Excel for Windows.

There's a great story in how much of the world runs in excel. I use it simplistically, but I make no pretence there aren't deep, complex use cases. Maybe because I use it simplistically it doesn't bother me how weak it is compared to native.

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

#52

Post by boogies » Sat, Apr 03, 2021, 1:35 AM UTC

vngzs wrote: post #30

You complain about power user tools, then list a bunch of Xorg tools. Xorg is dying; move to Wayland. I use Sway, but if you want something that's closer to a macOS power user experience, you should probably go with KDE[0]. Tearing? Fundamental Xorg problem. Fixed in Wayland. Wayland has some rough edges, but the reality of the ecosystem is Xorg is dead and not coming back, and it's better to be a little ahead of the…

> Tearing? Fundamental Xorg problem. Fixed in Wayland.

TFA:

> Screen tearing with the intel driver. Come on. This was solved on xorg and now with Wayland it's back.

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

#53

Post by symlinkk » Sat, Apr 03, 2021, 1:36 AM UTC

burlesona wrote: post #41

Preview is probably the most underrated app of all time, with “quick look” as a contender for most under-appreciated feature. Just hitting spacebar to see virtually any file, and the ability to open in preview and read or even markup and make small changes, is so nice. Whenever I use a non-Mac system I really miss those two features.

GNOME has this feature

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

#54

Post by symlinkk » Sat, Apr 03, 2021, 1:37 AM UTC

preommr wrote: post #39

What a topsy-turvy article. Mail is fine if you use browser-based solutions. Nobody is talking about only sending plaintext emails? Wtf? Why are they running so much stuff on wine? Why are they upgrading their kernel every few weeks? How does anyone think nautilus is good? How does anyone think that Gimp/inkscape are better than affinity designer? These are the things they find useful about linux? There's so much mor…

What’s wrong with nautilus?

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

#55

Post by christiansakai » Sat, Apr 03, 2021, 1:38 AM UTC

I finally reinstalled my Windows 10 after some time for a gaming PC and it was surprising to me that they are very intrusive. Like, I have to create a Microsoft account? And they have other sorts of update that happened randomly. Can we trust Microsoft?

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

#56

Post by arcatech » Sat, Apr 03, 2021, 1:41 AM UTC

yellowapple wrote: post #46

zepto wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Because Apple stuff doesn't "just work" any more. This is essentially a false statement for all intents and purposes. Apple software does “just work” with Apple hardware.

> Apple software does “just work” with Apple hardware. This is essentially a false statement for all intents and purposes. Apple software is far from being immune to bugs, bad UX, etc., even on Apple hardware, as I can personally attest today from using a Macbook Pro daily for work.

“It just works” never meant it was immune to bugs. No software is.

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

#57

Post by Daho0n » Sat, Apr 03, 2021, 1:42 AM UTC

zepto wrote: post #37

marcus_holmes wrote: post #10

The author doesn't state whether they installed Linux on a laptop that shipped with Windows, or bought an actual "Linux laptop". There's a huge difference, like reviewing a Hackintosh and saying "Macs are shite". I did the same. I accidentally fubar'd my lovely 2015 Macbook by pouring a beer into it. I bought a Dell XPS and dual-booted Linux, which kinda worked but wasn't great. Then I bought a Purism 14, which has b…

> Because Apple stuff doesn't "just work" any more. This is essentially a false statement for all intents and purposes. Apple software does “just work” with Apple hardware.

Yes if you live your life exactly as Apple wants you to (plus some luck). Otherwise you get "you are holding it wrong" bugs.

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

#58

Post by kitsunesoba » Sat, Apr 03, 2021, 1:42 AM UTC

burlesona wrote: post #41

Preview is probably the most underrated app of all time, with “quick look” as a contender for most under-appreciated feature. Just hitting spacebar to see virtually any file, and the ability to open in preview and read or even markup and make small changes, is so nice. Whenever I use a non-Mac system I really miss those two features.

The ability to extend QuickLook to support more types is huge too. If it can be rendered to a static image or HTML page it can have a QuickLook plugin written for it.

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

#59

Post by kelnos » Sat, Apr 03, 2021, 1:43 AM UTC

marcodiego wrote: post #17

Tell that to Icaza: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26668789

The thing that always bothered me about de Icaza is that he should know better, given his credentials and how immersed he'd been in the FOSS scene for so long.

He boils down the issues with Linux on the desktop to what jwz calls Cascade of Attention-Deficit Teenagers[0] model. Essentially open source developers don't have the discipline and patience to do the hard work of maintaining their software, and instead just want to refine their designs, throw things away, start over from scratch, and make things perfect.

I don't disagree with this view, and I think it's just somewhat silly to expect the same level of polish and back-compat on Linux that you'd see on a commercial OS with commercial apps. Certainly there is a lot of very polished software built under the OSS model (though many of that software has funded full-time developers working on it), but any project that is either run largely by volunteers, or largely by the programmers themselves, is often not going to end up like a polished, seamless, corporate product. Companies (and product managers) make decisions about building software in a very different way than developers do. They have different priorities, and different things they care about.

There will never be a "year of Linux on the desktop", because FOSS Linux-based OSes are constantly-moving targets run by people who generally aren't getting paid to do the work necessary for that to happen. That's pretty much always been the case, and even with all the corporate interest around Linux (Canonical comes to mind), it's just not happening.

My first experience with Linux was with Red Hat 4 back in 1997 or so, though I didn't start using Linux as my daily driver until 2002 or so. It has always had, and will always have, many rough edges. For me, I find that I have fewer problems with it than I did during my stints running macOS, but... that's just me, and I can fix nearly any issue I run into (even if they are few and far between) with a minimum of effort and time. That's not for everyone, and that's fine.

[0] Don't click (copy/paste into a new tab), as jwz has a nasty redirect for people coming from HN, but: https://www.jwz.org/doc/cadt.html

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

#60

Post by hashkb » Sat, Apr 03, 2021, 1:43 AM UTC

nanis wrote: post #14

hashkb wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The wiki... Shows that community maintained resources don't have to suck.

I'm just using Sway and yay all day. The blunt edge works for me.

And, can't say this enough, please always keep in mind that your software may be used by someone with a slower connection or who may even be entirely offline sometimes. I deserve music while driving, and text is king. (Elon - starlink me please)