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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

#391

Post by Cockbrand »

minimaul wrote: post #368

From someone who tends to try this switch about once a year (because the lack of TLC the Mac was getting in the last 5 or so years was getting very very worrying - M1 feels like Apple actually care about the Mac again), I agree with a lot of these pain points. My biggest personal issues end up being (and these are super subjective!): - Preview on macOS is great and no other OS has anything remotely equivalent. First…

Re: mail client - it's been quite a while since I last used it, but I really liked Sylpheed on Linux. Lightweight, good looking, doesn't get in your way. You might want to give it a try if you haven't already.

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

#392

Post by Theodores »

tumblewit wrote: post #321

As someone who is comfortable with linux and macOS and also someone who used an M1 MBA here is my take because this article does not do justice to each of the platform pros and cons: 1. The M1 Macs are amazing. If you are the kind of person who needs a GUI and involves lot of app related work go for it. (this person seems more interested in stuff like that so linux ain’t gonna cut it for him). The cons? A super restr…

I like where you are coming from, however I think we need to recognise that Windows and OSX are proprietary consumer operating systems whereas Linux is not.

To take an automotive analogy, road cars and SUVs are designed for the rules of the road and they come with things like a warranty. Meanwhile race cars are different. You might have to put the engine in yourself and good luck with the warranty. Comparing the road car (SUV or truck) with the race car is not a fair comparison. The race car doesn't have the cup holders, sat nav, seats in the back, airbags, central door locking or tyres for the road. In everything that matters to most drivers the race car is just useless. But most drivers are not racing drivers, so what would they know.

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

#393

Post by dbspin »

Andrew_nenakhov wrote: post #378

For me, ubuntu is hands down better than mac. - Finder is a disaster - LibreOffice on mac works far worse - General aestetics is very unfortunate (ymmv) But macOS has that one killer application for me that makes it worth suffering all of this: Sketch.

Finder is certainly less visually appealing since it became monochrome, but a disaster? Its preview tools are excellent. It provides tabbed view, which is bizarrely still not available in Windows explorer. It's excellent at remembering the state of folders, and which information was previously available in columns. It works well across different sized screens. Not a huge fan of the look and feel of Big Sur in general, but moving back to MacOs recently after using windows of a couple of years, finder is a wonderful breath of fresh air.

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

#394

Post by konart »

microtonal wrote: post #331
konart wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>If you like Mac, then stay on Mac, and stop publishing articles on how good Macs are and how Linux is neat, but your time is so valuable that you can't spend learning a few commaind line tools. "Stop writing good things about things I hate and bad things about things I like!" > don't get why this narravitve still exists today. Linux works out of the box on many distros perfectly fine. Yeah. And then you connect two…

Yeah. And then you connect two monitors with different scaling factor. Turns out X11 can't handle this and Wayland is still broken Actually, this works fine in Wayland. I have used Wayland without any issues with amdgpu , including with mixed-DPI screens with GNOME's fractional scaling. However, things go downhill once you have to use X11 applications, and you typically do. E.g. JetBrains IDEs are a train wreck with…

That's the problem. This work fine in Wayland but some things that were working fine on X11 do not.

In the end you just give a sigh and go back to you macOS (assuming you were trying to switch).

PS: for me though linux distro share the same problems they had back when I was using Ubuntu and the Arch before 2013. Not much have changed since then. Linux on a home\work pc is still mostly about freedom but mostly not about well build human-to-machine interface.

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

#395

Post by Vinnl »

crubier wrote: post #224
Vinnl wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hmm, I installed a quick look equivalent on my desktop because I saw that mentioned as being so useful a lot, but I keep forgetting I have it. In what situations would you use it?

You just prove the point of the author above. If you had the real Preview on MacOS, you’d be using it all the time without even thinking, like 100% of MacOS users. Because it’s fast, it opens everything faster than you can think, and it just works well. The effort required to launch it is zero, or even negative. It’s just part of the OS. But since you have a « sort of » copy cat which does not work as well or as fast…

I wasn't talking about Preview, I was talking about quick look, i.e. when I browse files in my file browser, I can hit space and immediately look at that file in a pared-down interface. But I'm not browsing my files that often, and when I do, the only time I seem to be interested in what it looks like is when I'm looking for an image, in which case the thumbnails that I can see without interaction suffice.

So I'm probably missing something. Does that mean that, because it's so fast and low-effort, you use it as a complete replacement of a native app you'd use otherwise? And then just for files you're just consuming, or does it also work for editing? And what kind of files?

Note that I'm not out to prove any point, I just want to understand what I'm missing :)

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

#396

Post by sofixa »

aritmo wrote: post #318

I could not find information about the Linux distro he used. He says at some point "Wayland", which cancels Ubuntu. Which distro did he install?

Ubuntu comes with Wayland, and on the login screen you can switch to it ( at least it does on mine that's a 16.10 updated to 18.04 to 20.04, and i've never installed Wayland myself)

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

#397

Post by jmkni »

carlesfe wrote: post #162
jeswin wrote: post #142

If you're complaining about Linux drivers please do so after using a Laptop that supports Linux (Thinkpads for example). Just like it wouldn't be fair to complain about macOS on a Hackintosh - sound didn't work well and had to patch the DSDT. > but there are rough edges for the power user. > I am an extreme power user, ... > In the end, I was able to replicate most of my macOS power tools setup via input hooks and sh…

I clarified now in the article that the "Linux Laptop" is a Dell XPS 13" Developer Edition, which is marketed indeed as a Linux laptop, and the Ubuntu is marketed as "Ubuntu Dell".

Dell don't sell any machines with Linux on them in the UK anymore (as far as I can tell).

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

#398

Post by easygenes »

masswerk wrote: post #388
minimaul wrote: post #368

From someone who tends to try this switch about once a year (because the lack of TLC the Mac was getting in the last 5 or so years was getting very very worrying - M1 feels like Apple actually care about the Mac again), I agree with a lot of these pain points. My biggest personal issues end up being (and these are super subjective!): - Preview on macOS is great and no other OS has anything remotely equivalent. First…

> I'm far too used to the macOS touchpad gestures It's a bit ironic that the Mac is now the epicenter of multi-touch, while its use on mobile platforms has seen some of a decline. Also, I full-heartedly consent to the praise of Preview.

Multi-touch doesn’t get in the way of the screen on Mac. Also doesn’t require changing how you hold the device.

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

#400

Post by ben-schaaf »

2muchcoffeeman wrote: post #366
rjzzleep wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm all for bashing Desktop Linux but this statement is just ridiculous. Searching for exactly that search term gives me the following result: >Best Linux Laptops > > Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon (8th Generation) Last year, >Lenovo shocked the Linux community by announcing Linux >laptops. ... > Tuxedo Pulse 14 Gen 1. ... > System76 Serval WS. ... > Dell XPS 13 Developer Edition 2020. ... > Purism Librem 14. ... > System…

Yep, from a third party site. Maybe it’s true. Maybe it’s not true. I don’t have to double check Apple machines. And anything with a Windows sticker works with Windows. Some Linux distro should explicitly support some line of laptops. Literally “buy these models because we will 100% support them”.

> Some Linux distro should explicitly support some line of laptops. Literally “buy these models because we will 100% support them”.

Like PopOS from System 76?

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