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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

#691

Post by spfzero »

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 don't worry about them deprecating MacOS. Apple has some important and beneficial constituencies for MacOS, not least of which is developers developing apps for iOS, watchOS, etc. Music and video production, etc. I know that by percent of revenue, iOS has the lion's share, but I think they realize that MacOS has an important role to play in keeping the entire enterprise working together.

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

#692

Post by dang »

sbuk wrote: post #526
dalu wrote: post #508

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You use rbenv. You don't sound very tech savvy, but using Ruby? It's weird how my workstations and desktops and laptops and netbooks all run Linux just fine, only you're having those issues. You're a joke. You're not adaptable. When in Rome... Only rich spoiled brats spend 5k on a laptop that would otherwise cost 1k

"You're a joke." Wow. "Only rich spoiled brats spend 5k on a laptop that would otherwise cost 1k" Not this again. A fully tricked out MBP 16" costs $6699. RRP for a Lenovo equivalent is $8,894. Dell doesn't sell anything that matches, but equivalent spec is $3,894.99 (MBP 16" $4199). System 76 - $3,174 with a shit display (1080p in a 'high end' laptop is absolutely shocking). Librem 14 (vs MBP 13" for $2299), $2,716…

"Don't feed egregious comments by replying; flag them instead."

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

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

#693

Post by Hiopl »

blunte wrote: 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…

This exists for Windows though as a third-party application, which points to one of the reasons why Windows is great. There's great software for nearly anything you could think of. It's one of the main things I miss when I use Linux. The usability/functionality in the applications simply isn't there and it will never be there, for whatever reason.

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

#694

Post by specialist »

cmehdy wrote: post #665
oplav wrote: post #612

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If you know about brew you can also find a bunch of extra quicklook plugins: https://github.com/sindresorhus/quick-look-plugins Works on and off for some things (video previews for example) but overall worth a quick "brew install" in my opinion.

CSV, markdown, plaintext, and JSON plugins are must-haves for office work.

BetterZip's plugin is okay.

Even better would be:

I'd sacrifice my first born child for a "Show Package Contents" option supporting zip, webarchive, and other common composite files.

(Using Finder: highlight file with .app or .dmg extension, right-click to show context menu, chose "Show Package Contents", opens new tab with selected file as "mount" point. I'd really like to know how Finder "mounts" composite files without using fuse file system thingie. Then maybe we could write plugins.)

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

#695

Post by krrrh »

Veen wrote: post #362
m12k wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't speak for GP, but I'd pay for Path Finder even if all it did was give me cmd-x to cut, and enter key to mean open instead of rename. It does a ton more, but those two are the killer features for me (Tabs used to be one too, but Finder finally got those a while ago).

I definitely agree with you on the lack of cmd-x for cut. However, you can do cmd-c to copy, and then cmd-option-v to move files rather than copy them. Enter to rename and cmd-o to open was hard to adapt to when I moved from Windows, but it's second nature now.

Using the distinction of paste as copy vs paste as move, instead of overloading the cut metaphor is a better choice semantically. When you cut text or images from a document with ctrl/cmd-x the content is deleted immediately. It’s weird and inconsistent that in windows the files get greyed out and if you don’t paste them they... eventually look normal again when you put something else in the clipboard? Modifying the paste with option on mac is also consistenT with option switching between move and copy while dragging files.

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

#696

Post by mrtksn »

blunte wrote: post #688
mrtksn wrote: post #621

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Windows users who switch to macOS will complain that their new shiny and expensive machine won't let them to go through their photos in a folder using the arrow keys and they have to open the photos one by one. Then you tell them to hit the space when a photo is selected, they first look at the keyboard then at the screen and they are like "O.K. that will work", you proceed to tell them to try it on a PDF or somethin…

I may be missing something, but aren't you describing Finder's Gallery View? In that mode, you can left/right arrow your way through the entire set of files in a folder, viewing each one (image or pdf or whatever).

Gallery view is pretty new and still needs to be discovered. Also not very convenient just for quickly viewing bunch of files. The view of the folder changes completely, so you get disoriented and if it's a large folder you will need t skim through one line of folders to find what you are looking for. It's good for certain use cases but it doesn't help with quickly going through some files in a large folder.

On Windows, when you open a photo by clicking it, you can go to the next/prev one using the arrow keys and on macOS you can't do that. So the Windows immigrants get annoyed, naturally.

On Mac, you can simply select a single file anywhere and hitting pace will very quickly show you the contents, hit space again and you are back to the folder. You can use the arrow keys to skim around and the file contents will be quickly displayed. If you first select a bunch of files and then hit space, it will loop though your selection when you use the arrow keys.

It's a very convenient feature to skim through the files in a folder.

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

#697

Post by epse »

blunte wrote: post #689
bdcravens wrote: post #648

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The PDF editing and signature workflow is so good that I never print out PDFs to sign and scan them in any more.

It's so good, so fast, and so easy, (and so obviously useful), I just cannot fathom why Windows doesn't have a comparable answer for this.

Antitrust lawsuit from Adobe maybe?

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

#698

Post by Labo333 »

lhl wrote: post #632
Labo333 wrote: post #607

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 sho…

Thanks!

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

#699

Post by SeanLuke »

dmitriid wrote: post #136
Fire-Dragon-DoL wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used a macbook for 2 years and the key binding is definitely less consistent than windows or linux. If nothing something as important as word navigation and word selection (ctrl+arrows and ctrl+shift+ arrows on linux and windows), is located in different modifiers (can't remember which), something along the lines of: move with command+arrow and select with option+shift+arrows. Drives me crazy every time, given that…

Option + arrows: move by word Option + Shift + arrows: select by word Cmd + arrows: move to the end of the line Cmd + Shift + arrows: select to the end of the line Additionally you can still use the decades old Ctrl+A/Ctrl+E shortcuts almost everywhere (some custom text input reimplementations ignore this).

> Additionally you can still use the decades old Ctrl+A/Ctrl+E shortcuts almost everywhere

These are in fact Emacs keybindings and they date from early NeXTstep. OS X inherited them from NeXT.

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

#700

Post by KMnO4 »

mrtksn wrote: post #621
blunte wrote: 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…

Windows users who switch to macOS will complain that their new shiny and expensive machine won't let them to go through their photos in a folder using the arrow keys and they have to open the photos one by one. Then you tell them to hit the space when a photo is selected, they first look at the keyboard then at the screen and they are like "O.K. that will work", you proceed to tell them to try it on a PDF or somethin…

For me, that moment was uninstalling an app.

I had to Google it.

“Drag the app to the trash bin.”

Remember how hard it is to uninstall stuff on Windows? Especially if you’re doing more than one?

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