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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

#461

Post by popeathlete »

latexr wrote: post #451
popeathlete wrote: post #389

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No offense, but this largely reads to me like "I don't wanna use Linux because I wanna use Mac". If you want to move to a different system, you can't expect to get the same thing. Really, the only complaints I can agree with now are 2 and 3, the rest is just invalid. You've got kdeconnect gsconnect nextcloud keepassxc many, many configurable mail clients, especially the beatiful, integrated kmail and their whole PIM…

> I can agree with now are 2 and 3, the rest is just invalid. The parent poster is clear on what they like (or don’t) and even prefaced everything with “and these are super subjective”. Personal preference doesn’t become invalid when another disagrees, nor does parent seem to be fishing for agreement.

Excuse the morning haze clouding my vision, guess I focused on writing without focusing on reading enough. Invalid is not the right word.

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

#462

Post by nikanj »

jchw wrote: post #354

One thing that Windows and macOS users will never understand about Linux, because they’ve never truly experienced it, is just how viscerally different the Linux experience is depending on your hardware. You don’t really need to go with a vendor like System76, and going with a fan favorite like Lenovo does not guarantee a good experience, but seriously, Linux on a machine that runs it well is just not comparable to a…

In my experience, Linux PDF readers suck, and so do email clients. OpenOffice is not as good as Excel / Word. Not sure how changing the hardware would fix this.

Most of the Linux complaints that I see are focused on the quality of the applications, not a driver support

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

#463

Post by afturkrull »

I have used Linux exclusively at home for years. Recently, I was very impressed with antiX Linux. Runs like the blazes on minimal hardware and highly configurable. For those used to a more busy desktop there's Ubuntu Mate or Lubuntu. A minimum version of Ubuntu, but not as minimum as antiX Linux.

https://antixlinux.com/ https://ubuntu-mate.org/ https://lubuntu.net/

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

#464

Post by pjmlp »

kaba0 wrote: post #453
pjmlp wrote: post #370

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nope, older GPUs just get basic support, while the older proprietary driver, more feature rich, don't work in modern kernels.

Yeah, unfortunately it is not backported for older GPUs. But it doesn’t make the case of supported hardwares worse.

It does, because the hardware support for OpenGL 4.1 got broken due to ideology.

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

#465

Post by dsego »

dvdkon wrote: post #327
aniforprez wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ubuntu literally does not have an easy way to configure what happens when you close a laptop. I want it to hibernate instead of sleep. Someone else didn't want it to go to sleep at all. None of the settings options allow this. While Googling it for a friend the only result was running a few commands and changing some stuff in some config file. You cannot possibly expect a business analyst who hasn't even opened the t…

So, does "Just Work" now include easily accessible noob-proof configuration of the things you want? In that case, macOS doesn't Just Work for me, because I want to be able to see what apps are playing sound or recording and manually set them to different sinks/sources, maybe even have sound playing from multiple devices at the same time. On Linux with PulseAudio and pavucontrol, this is effortlessly configurable with…

Try soundflower for mac. I think JACK audio also works on Mac/Win.

> "Just Works" is a useless subjective specifier.

I'd say a good usable mail client, a readily available video editor, sound recording software and office suite are more important than an advanced audio mixer.

> sound playing from multiple devices at the same time

This seems like a very niche use case. Along the lines of the usual nerdy response of linux being able to compile gcc or run vim and why would anyone use their computer for anything else.

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

#466

Post by RamblingCTO »

What I would like to add is: bluetooth support and sound stuff. It feels like it's still an afterthought in the community and is still flaky at best.

I think the main problem with linux on desktops shows quite perfectly in this thread. Good UX? Nah, why would we? Invest your own time, fiddle around until you settle on a mediocre and cumbersome solution.

I've been using Arch for over 13 years now and over 10 years of MacBooks with a short break. It feels like the problems are still the same. Though the X auto configuration got way better.

I love (especially) Arch though, but not the experience of using it on a day-to-day basis. I always miss pacman on macs, but I miss the UX on arch.

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

#467

Post by latexr »

Vinnl wrote: post #395
crubier wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 pro…

> 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?

In my case, yes. It’s the only way I ever look at images, and I often use it to have a quick look at scripts or text/data files (try it on a CSV and it’ll show as a table!). It’s also convenient for design files, whose apps are incredibly slow to launch. With Alfred[1] you can even preview URLs directly.

Finally, QuickLook shines when you have file formats for which you don’t have an editor (e.g. you may need to view a Photoshop or Word document once in a while). It allows you to view them faster than in the editing application, for free, without having to install or configure anything.

Unlike the swath of people who are singing praises to Preview, I rarely touch it and mostly resort to QuickLook, even for PDFs.

> And then just for files you're just consuming, or does it also work for editing?

It works (at least) to edit images like Preview (annotate, rotate, crop).

[1]: https://www.alfredapp.com

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

#469

Post by SirHound »

fallingknife wrote: post #384
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…

Preview is awesome! My favorite feature is splitting up and combining PDF's by dragging and dropping the pages.

Yeah I found out you can combine two videos in QuickTime by dragging one into the other. Amazing but I had to Google it

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

#470

Post by cryptica »

apareis wrote: post #347
cryptica wrote: post #155

As an power user (dev), I would never consider switching away from Kubuntu for any other OS.

That I find interesting. Been trying KDE flavour more recently and the only distro that would work for me is openSUSE (Tumbleweed) KDE. Everything was pretty much perfect. I've tried KDE Neon and Kubuntu, both didn't have the correct dark icons for LibreOffice (as an example). As a developer about to switch companies, I'm now faced with a forced switch to Linux or if I want I could also stay on Apple (M1). I'm really…

Agreed, KDE is great. The default theme is somewhat disappointing but once configured, it beats OSX and Windows hands down. It's extremely configurable.

I also wouldn't mind Ubuntu/Gnome but I encountered some touchpad issues with my new HP laptop and I didn't want to fiddle too much with the Ubuntu drivers and internals. Kubuntu was just more configurable including the touchpad driver.

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