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

#491

Post by nerdponx » Sat, Apr 03, 2021, 12:42 PM UTC

darkandbrooding wrote: post #80

xtian wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What makes Homebrew a failure? I don’t generally have issues with it for my needs.

There is one single feature of homebrew that regularly bites my coworkers. You can refer to software by name@version ("brew install postgresql@11" or "brew install postgresql@12") and there is no confusion about what you are installing; or you can refer to software by name only ("brew install postgresql") and the version number is calculated to be "most recently released." (v13 at the time this was written.) Hypothet…

Brew always had and always will have a rolling-release model. Pin your dependencies or don't, but you can't blame Brew for this situation.

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

#492

Post by minimaul » Sat, Apr 03, 2021, 12:43 PM UTC

popeathlete wrote: post #389

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…

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 did explicitly state that my points were very subjective - they are personal opinions and I didn't try to hide that. I also did not try to hide that I like macOS - that's why I use it now, after all. As I explicitly said, my attempts with a linux laptop setup have been primarily an insurance policy against Apple continuing to run the Mac into the ground - not out of idealism.

But answers to a few specific points:

- Okular fails to render weird PDFs for me - things like NXP datasheets are notable for this. It is my usual PDF reader on Linux though. Additionally, the few features I called out were not an exhaustive list, just examples. Preview also makes it very easy to do things like combine PDFs or remove pages from existing PDFs, or do things like crop all of the pages in a PDF in one operation - this is surprisingly useful!.

- tearing is something I have never managed to actually completely eliminate. I can get rid of it for the most part on single display setups (although setting TearFree introduces video stuttering on intel), but on multi-display setups I have never managed to lose it - on both intel & amd's OSS stacks, and on nvidia's proprietary driver. I fully admit this is something that disproportionately annoys me and that others may not care about, but it's a solved issue on Windows and macOS and has been for years. Using wayland instead of X11 resulted in a lot of apps getting very poor performance or flat breaking when rendering - but every time I try wayland it has gotten a lot better since the last time. But replacing a 30+ year old windowing system with a new one is a pretty huge undertaking, so I'm not surprised it's taking a while!

- things like kdeconnect/gsconnect etc don't support integration with iOS. It's not their fault - iOS is restrictive and Apple keep it that way very deliberately, but it achieves their aim very well - it keeps people tied in to Apple's ecosystem. Losing all of the niceties at once is pretty jarring - and even if I replace everything at once, eg going macOS -> linux and iOS -> android, etc it still doesn't end up as fully integrated.

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

#493

Post by akdor1154 » Sat, Apr 03, 2021, 12:43 PM UTC

2muchcoffeeman wrote: post #167

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…

If you're complaining about Linux drivers please do so after using a Laptop that supports Linux (Thinkpads for example). So I Googled “laptops supported by Linux”. There is no official site. Ubuntu has a page. But it’s not on the first page of results. I only know about it because I’m familiar with it. Supporters keeps arguing people should jump through hoops. I’m on Linux right now, but people have better things to…

It's fair to say you could google 'laptops that come with Linux', which will give you a list of laptops from major vendors with ootb Linux.

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

#494

Post by happyjack » Sat, Apr 03, 2021, 12:44 PM UTC

I thought this review was super fair and I really enjoyed his takes. I had a Macintosh from 2012-2016 and can definitely agree with many of his opinions (preview.app is amazing, notifications on Mac are amazing).

I've been on / off Linux as a daily driver since 2009. I went off Linux during the Gnome 2 / Unity debacle, had to use Windows for engineering school (not compsci or "tech") and had a Mac mini in there (2012-2016). I agree with the author and I left Macintosh when I felt that Apple simple didn't care about their "computer" division anymore. With the M1 and new advancements in their desktop OS, I think Apple is starting to put more effort in their laptops / desktops again. I think apt-get is amazing as well and it would be cool to see a REAL package manager for MacOS.

For what it's worth, I run RHEL workstation, use an iPhone, and have been thinking of getting a Macbook as "corporate compatibility layer" for when a client uses teams or MS office or some junk like that that has no browser or Linux support.

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

#495

Post by minimaul » Sat, Apr 03, 2021, 12:44 PM UTC

RScholar wrote: post #489

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'm not sure that the criticisms for the article and parent comment are quite so easy to dismiss wholesale, but I do concur that many of them are actually criticisms of the GNOME DE and not so much Linux itself. In my experience as a daily Linux user it was somewhere between 2-3 years ago that KDE Plasma surpassed GNOME as the most productive desktop environment for Linux, and the distance between the two only appear…

I actually use KDE generally on Linux, I find GNOME very difficult to get along with :)

edit: and desktop distro of choice is generally Arch for me - it's been a long time since I used ubuntu.

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

#496

Post by toyg » Sat, Apr 03, 2021, 12:46 PM UTC

addicted wrote: post #280

one2three4 wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thinks were a little better with previous ubuntu TBH. After upgrading to latest LTS I got the screen issues on top of everything else. Think twice before upgrading your distro.

Ubuntu has been going down the drain for a long time. The problem is that they successfully (and for good reason) became the de facto Desktop Linux for users who wanted a desktop and not mess with it much. They’ve cornered that market to the point there are very few alternatives (at least very few that will come preinstalled and supported) but because they want to IPO I guess, they’ve stopped focusing on the desktop…

> but because they want to IPO I guess, they’ve stopped focusing on the desktop at all

No, that's simply because the desktop, after all these years, still brings in little or no money - whereas server builds are used in clouds (at one point they were the most popular "cloud distro") and do make significant money through revenue-sharing agreements.

Ubuntu desktop started going downhill the minute Shuttleworth decided he'd had enough with the "generous mecenate" thing and Ubuntu should make back its costs. Since then, it's been a series of steers towards anything that could make some cash.

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

#497

Post by throw0101a » Sat, Apr 03, 2021, 12:47 PM UTC

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 on macOS is great and no other OS has anything remotely equivalent. First class PDF support, ability to easily annotate anything, makes basic PDF editing easy.

How is the generation of 2D bar codes that many (government) forms use when you enter information into the various fields?

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

#498

Post by christophilus » Sat, Apr 03, 2021, 12:48 PM UTC

acomjean wrote: post #490

I went from Mac to Linux at home. My experience as someone who uses Linux but isn’t great at it, is that it works well as a desktop os. I’m lazy I willing to pay for simplicity so I bought a preinstalled Linux laptop. And it’s been chugging along fine. Everything Works (excepting wake forms sleep when I close the lid sometimes, it’s like gambling...but I manually suspend and that works) I takes a little research to f…

Not sure what OS you’re running (my guess is Ubuntu). I’ve had no issues with wake from sleep when using Fedora, FYI. My biggest complaint is the Nautilus file browser’s address bar being mostly worthless, the Gnome terminal’s inability to move tabs into a new window, and the inability to use normal copy / paste in the terminal (Elementary OS gets this right, and I run their terminal on Fedora now... I may look into running their file browser, too...)

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

#499

Post by cmrdporcupine » Sat, Apr 03, 2021, 12:50 PM UTC

one2three4 wrote: post #228

2muchcoffeeman wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're complaining about Linux drivers please do so after using a Laptop that supports Linux (Thinkpads for example). So I Googled “laptops supported by Linux”. There is no official site. Ubuntu has a page. But it’s not on the first page of results. I only know about it because I’m familiar with it. Supporters keeps arguing people should jump through hoops. I’m on Linux right now, but people have better things to…

+1 I find it absurd that (some) linux supporters find it not only ok but even a must, to have to tinker around your machine in order to make everything work. I could understand it in the 90s but this is a very different era we're in. I get zero value from having to tinker with my x-org settings to make the external screen work (sometimes). I'm using a computer to create value elsewhere and having to even think about…

I dunno, not my experience these days.

Our family Lenovo all-in-one windows machine with its preinstalled windows: Time synchronization doesn't work. Have to set the clock manually. When logging in and if another user is logged in the start bar freezes for up to 5 minutes before it lets me do anything. All sorts of things like this. Random problems like that.

My personal Windows machine upstairs loses sound output via my monitor every time the monitor goes to sleep and wakes up. Windows just forgets that the device exists. Sometimes plugging in a headphone and then unplugging it will "remind" Windows that there's an HDMI output device, other times not.

No issues with Linux on that machine at all. Everything just works, stock Debian install. No issues with sound, only issue being that the fan is a bit loud so I had to fiddle with bios settings to get it quieter.

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

#500

Post by MrMan » Sat, Apr 03, 2021, 12:50 PM UTC

smoldesu wrote: post #35

>apt-get was a revolution when it was released in 1998 and it is still the best way to manage software today. brew is a mediocre replacement. While apt still isn't the best package manager (my heart belongs to pacman, no matter what the haters say), I completely agree that brew is a failed imitation. I wanted to use MacOS for the longest time, because I've been told that it's a real "Unix system". Brew has distilled…

I switched to all Linux in my house a few years ago, it is a simpler and better existence overall. My kids laptops are mint, my wife is the only holdout on Mac. Mac is not bad, but for me it doesn’t have a lot of advantages and has a lot of obvious disadvantages.