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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

#631

Post by gumby »

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.

I use all sorts of multi-touch gestures on my iPad. Less, it’s true, on the phone.

It is annoying that many web pages and apps can’t zoom in/out on iOS. On the Mac it’s trivial to zoom the whole screen.

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

#632

Post by lhl »

Labo333 wrote: post #607
lhl wrote: post #589

To preface, I think all of the author's complaints are pretty valid. I spent 15 years primarily on Mac laptops/desktops and finally switched in 2015 after a few years of being less and less happy with the direction both the hardware and OS was taking, and it was definitely a rough transition even having years and years of UNIX/LINUX experience and using "perfectly" compatible hardware (I started with a Thinkpad X250…

What is your "8C16T Mobile Ryzen laptop"? 12+ battery life sounds really promising!!!

It's a Mechrevo Code 01 (TongFang PF5NU1G). It's sold by a number of OEMs including w/ Linux pre-installed as the KDE Slimbook, Tuxedo Pulse and others. Actually, I linked to almost all of the various OEM releases along with a detailed review from when I got mine last summer: https://www.notion.so/lhl/Mechrevo-Code-01-TongFang-PF5NU1G-...

Note, pretty soon, 5800H and 5800U laptops should be available. The new CPU should perform even better (Zen 3 based vs Zen 2) and in general seem there seem to be more premium builds coming. USB-C DP and 2.5K displays would be the big things I'd be looking for if I were shopping this year. Personally, I'm ok w/ waiting for for next gen though (USB 4.0).

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

#633

Post by toxik »

tomaskafka wrote: post #593
usaphp wrote: 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.

Just take me to most recent non-minimized window of that app. And if there is no such window left, and I told system that I want to switch to the app, then yes, of course I want the most recent window unminimized. This isn't rocket science.

I think there’s a setting for this behavior, or there used to be at least.

Edit ah. no it’s when you click the app icon in the dock. I guess that’s the behavior sought here?

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

#634

Post by brightball »

hk1337 wrote: post #521
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…

> 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,…

It’s the reason I switched to LastPass and then Bitwarden finally.

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

#635

Post by giovani »

ericmay wrote: post #620
blunte wrote: post #613

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 indiv…

On my keyboard its CMD + ` by default, but I guess you can probably change it somewhere.

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

#636

Post by 2muchcoffeeman »

redshirtrob wrote: post #541
robsonhn wrote: post #513

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok, sure, many users prefer to fully customize their setup. But what about those who don't? Why isn't there a ready-to-go option like a Windows lapotop?

I got a System76 Darter Pro for work, preinstalled with Ubuntu. It worked perfectly. It booted directly into a graphical display manager. All drivers worked out of the box. Not sure what else there is to say here. That sounds like what you're after. For reasons, I ended up installing Arch on the same laptop. It was your typical Arch experience, but I was able to get everything working, including fiddly stuffy like ke…

System 76 is not cheap. Worse if you’re international. Dell has limited options available and none that are available with their discounts. So if you want a nice and powerful dev machine... back to researching and tinkering. Is the cheapest way and if something is messed up, you still have the Windows license.

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

#637

Post by blacksmith_tb »

vamega wrote: post #604
robert_foss wrote: post #509

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> - Finding a mail client I don't hate on linux is tricky. I've never been able to get on with the console clients, and I actually quite like Mac Mail. Thunderbird is kinda okay. If you're not a mailing list based developer, I would recommend MailSpring, which is both snappy any polished. https://getmailspring.com/

What’s the caveat with mailing lists?

I took that to mean if email was your day job you'd need to see emails in Outlook and Gmail, not a potentially great but uncommon mail client.

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

#638

Post by smoldesu »

_9rq6 wrote: post #383
jek0 wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On a mac I can't live without "Magnet" [1]. It lets you do organize your windows in half/thirds of screens with simple keystrokes. That should be part of the OS. [1] https://apps.apple.com/us/app/magnet/id441258766?mt=12

I used Magnet extensively when I used a mac. There is no linux equivalent.

There are... hundreds of Linux equivalents. Magnet is a pretty boring Window manager anyways.

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

#639

Post by utxaa »

whywhywhywhy wrote: post #615
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'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 widg…

i would move to windows/wsl then. windows UI and tools are vastly underrated. start here if you're interested:

https://www.hanselman.com/blog/scott-hanselmans-2021-ultimat...

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

#640

Post by 2muchcoffeeman »

ben-schaaf wrote: post #400
2muchcoffeeman wrote: post #366

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

At those prices in Australia, it’s not a great option. None of those Linux vendors are.

Dell or Lenovo has international presence and if something goes wrong with the hardware, support exists.

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