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

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611–620 of 834 posts

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

#611
post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think brew does this? What it does do is update its package definitions automatically.

It was doing this until recently when I set the env variable. It updates itself every time and then updates everything else too. Maybe I did something wrong to trigger this behaviour but it was definitely updating the packages

I've seen the exact same behavior. I didn't realize it was behind an environment variable. I passed a package to the command and for the next week I was dealing with issues from everything being upgraded.

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

#612
post #567

Preview is one of the most underrated pieces of software in the world today. I make the assumption that Quicklook uses Preview (because surely it must). Being able to hit spacebar on just about any kind of selected document/image type file and see a near instant look, multiple pages and all, is so important. Once you don't have that (move to the Windows world), you realize how much you miss it. And you can, with a sm…

I switched from Windows to OS X over 7 years ago and this is the first time I've ever learned about Quicklook. Looks like a great feature.

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

#613
post #567

Preview is one of the most underrated pieces of software in the world today. I make the assumption that Quicklook uses Preview (because surely it must). Being able to hit spacebar on just about any kind of selected document/image type file and see a near instant look, multiple pages and all, is so important. Once you don't have that (move to the Windows world), you realize how much you miss it. And you can, with a sm…

> when I cmd-tab to a window There’s no such thing. You command-tab to an application, which can have many or no windows. The different mental model is probably the reason for your frustration.

Tomato Tomato. As another person clarified, I'm probably trying to switch to the most recent window of a given application. For all practical purposes, the window and the application are the same thing. There may be additional windows of that app, but they are all that app.

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

#614
post #521

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…

> My chosen password manager (1password) still has a fairly awful linux experience. This is my biggest roadblock to Linux as well. I don’t sync to 1Password.com though and that’s all that is available, so it’s more than just a poor experience for me. I thought about trying to share a Keepass database but that’s had some issues. I tried sharing via Keybase and had a weird issue that when I edited something in Keepass,…

I've been keeping a Keepass database on Dropbox (encrypted with password + key file, neither of which are stored on Dropbox, obviously) for a while, and haven't noticed any issues with syncing. I'm mostly using it from a single device, though, but I don't think it should be likely for the sharing to introduce problems even if I made heavier use of multiple devices. It's not like the database is constantly being modified.

This might be a bit of a lazy solution, but it has been working well enough for me.

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

#615

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've lost hope that Linux will ever be able to provide an experience on the level of the Mac, I'd like to move away from Apple myself too.

Unfortunately the modularity of Linux, despite being it's strength means that it can never possibly provide a UI/UX as coherent and interoperable as the Mac.

How can you provide things like spell checking, font rendering, copy/paste, drag and drop, password sync, across every widget and text field in the OS if every framework an application is built with and every part of the OS chain can be swapped out for something else and they're all made with distributed teams with no one at the helm to be the one to say "Drag and drop is broken in your app, you might not use it or care but others do, you need to fix it". or "Why does the text look weird in your app?"

This worries me because "M1 feels like Apple actually care about the Mac again" I completely disagree with this, I think Apple is aiming to have Macs running mostly iOS applications in the near future and MacOS will eventually be deprecated once we hit critical mass of that.

Not to mention the specific things I point out here that make the Mac great are being eroded away as more and more Mac apps are just electron wrapped React with custom text field components that disable OS spell checking and things like that.

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

#616
post #575

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What is the f*cking point of cmd-tabbing to an application if you don't make its window visible!? What if you have multiple windows of the same application, and you minimize one of them, then auto opening of that window everytime you switch back to the app will be super annoying.

And if you want to open the minimized or hidden window, after cmd-tab, do a option-cmd-tab and finally release cmd-tab. The window will get focus

What is the more common case: a user switches to a hidden app and then does NOT want to actually see a window from that app, or the user switches to an app and wants to see it.

I don't need to do research to answer this question. If a user switches to an app, it's because they want to use that app. And using most apps depends heavily on being able to see them.

If I want to control things without a UI, I'll go to terminal.

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

#617

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gimp's text tool was quite nice last time I checked. Krita's on the other hand is just horrible...

I don't understand how you can be happy with the text tool. It's easily the worst part of Gimp for me. I can't even find a way to move the text around after entering the text, I always resort to resizing the box from two corners to emulate a move. I'm probably doing something wrong but this is the status after using Gimp as my only graphics editor for about 15 years.

Yeah the only movable surface is the letter itself. I usually find myself zooming WAY in to be able to click on the letters so I can move, and then still sometimes miss and move the whole layer...

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

#618
post #567

Preview is one of the most underrated pieces of software in the world today. I make the assumption that Quicklook uses Preview (because surely it must). Being able to hit spacebar on just about any kind of selected document/image type file and see a near instant look, multiple pages and all, is so important. Once you don't have that (move to the Windows world), you realize how much you miss it. And you can, with a sm…

> when I cmd-tab to a window which is minimized, it doesn't raise that window

Hold the option key while releasing cmd, it will raise the minimized window.

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

#619
post #616

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And if you want to open the minimized or hidden window, after cmd-tab, do a option-cmd-tab and finally release cmd-tab. The window will get focus

What is the more common case: a user switches to a hidden app and then does NOT want to actually see a window from that app, or the user switches to an app and wants to see it. I don't need to do research to answer this question. If a user switches to an app, it's because they want to use that app. And using most apps depends heavily on being able to see them. If I want to control things without a UI, I'll go to term…

It really shine in this use case: Because only he app menu is visible, sometimes, you can open|create a file without cluttering your desktop. It’s ok for document based apps

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

#620
post #613

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> when I cmd-tab to a window There’s no such thing. You command-tab to an application, which can have many or no windows. The different mental model is probably the reason for your frustration.

Tomato Tomato. As another person clarified, I'm probably trying to switch to the most recent window of a given application. For all practical purposes, the window and the application are the same thing. There may be additional windows of that app, but they are all that app.

Eh I think the model they implemented makes sense. You are confusing the window of an application with the application itself.

Cmd + Tab switches between applications, or windows. If you had multiple windows of an application like Safari open but minimized to the dock, maybe you are switching to Safari the application and then opening a new window? I believe there is a command that actually pulls up the windows individually as well? Maybe CMD + 1 or something similar?

Personally I think this route is the most intuitive and makes the most sense to me, but I can empathize with your frustration. Kind of related but I generally feel annoyed whenever I use Windows for anything. It’s very unintuitive for me.

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