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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

#751

Post by botverse »

KMnO4 wrote: post #700
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…

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?

I’m a Linux and Mac OS user myself and I’m sorry to say it’s never as easy as that, there is a lot left behind and very difficult to know what exactly to clean up if you built and install yourself

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

#752

Post by sergeykish »

kelnos wrote: post #59
marcodiego wrote: post #17

Tell that to Icaza: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26668789

The thing that always bothered me about de Icaza is that he should know better, given his credentials and how immersed he'd been in the FOSS scene for so long. He boils down the issues with Linux on the desktop to what jwz calls Cascade of Attention-Deficit Teenagers[0] model. Essentially open source developers don't have the discipline and patience to do the hard work of maintaining their software, and instead just…

[2012].

A lot has changed, Apple braking compatibility, Microsoft braking so much. Microsoft hegemony on desktop destroyed by web, smartphones and Apple, so much that ChromeOS exists. No Flash, no IE, Microsoft Edge based on Chromium. Windows adopted Linux with WSL. Wine getting better, Valve Proton drives gaming on Linux. Open source AMD GPU driver. Wayland. The future is awesome.

He thought of stomping alternatives, parroting Jobs, that's wrong. The reason I've switched to Linux is such attitude from Microsoft. Linux experience is a moving target. At first we are expats, striving to replicate what was lost, but Linux provides much more. Why not explore it?

Microsoft Windows is powered by legacy, enterprise and gaming. Apple macOS advertises polished experience, creative applications, iOS development. Google Android, Apple iOS — touch oriented OS, app store. Google Chromebook — security and web. Linux is different, every community strives to find its own answer.

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

#753

Post by zmmmmm »

throwanem wrote: post #45
zmmmmm wrote: post #25

I would like to see someone do the equivalent experiment now with a Win10+WSL2 setup. I'm carefully watching Apple to see what the next line of Macbook Pros looks like. Esp. how well the M1 architecture fits into a development workflow that will still for the forseeable future center heavily on deployment to x86 architecture. We already are seeing significant time wastage from employees having to fight architecture i…

A couple Saturdays ago, I spent thirty minutes setting up WSL2 on a Windows 10 machine. Immediately afterward, I called Apple and spent a thousand dollars on an M1 Mac mini for same-day pickup. I've been running Linux devenvs on Windows, in Virtualbox, for something well over a decade now. Imagine my surprise when I discovered that the vaunted WSL2 is literally just that, plus preinstalled OS images that save maybe a…

Without invalidating the rest of your comment, 30 mins is way shorter than I consider a valid attempt at this. I'm happy to invest even months in achieving an optimal setup, as long as it gets there.

Most of what I am interested in is a streamlined docker setup and WSL2 provides an amazing experience for that, with a single docker / container experience spanning both the Windows host and the linux VM. While there are still some issues with it I have reasonable confidence MS will sort out the sharing of memory and CPUs so that resources can be shared better b/w Win10 and Docker/Linux than you would ever get without a lot of work through VirtualBox.

On the Windows side all I really need is a proper, native office experience. Working in a regulated industry there isn't really any room for less than 100% fidelity in handling official documents and forms. But I will never need to touch powershell or anything else from the native Win10 experience.

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

#754

Post by galkk »

antod wrote: post #381
galkk wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I own Thinkpad X1 extreme, that I bought with my own money, and chose as working laptop Thinkpad Carbon. Both are not working well with linux. 1. Carbon, due to it's intel chip, can not drive 4K and 2K external monitors via thunderbolt adapter. 2. I need to authorize dock (Lenovo's thunderbolt dock) after every reboot. 3. The screen tearing sucks. 4. I need to have pulse audio volume control window opened all the tim…

I was having huge flaky thunderbolt problems on my Linux T490 - even updating the laptop firmware didn't fix it despite Lenovo changelogs indicating a bunch of thunderbolt dock bugs fixed. Then I swapped the Lenovo thunderbolt dock with another one at work and everything just worked fine. I run 3 monitors (2 external 2560x1440) at once, but no 4k. Maybe it was dock firmware versions - the Lenovo dock updater software…

    sudo fwupdmgr update
was finding updates for thunderbolt dock on linux

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

#755

Post by galkk »

one2three4 wrote: post #250
galkk wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I own Thinkpad X1 extreme, that I bought with my own money, and chose as working laptop Thinkpad Carbon. Both are not working well with linux. 1. Carbon, due to it's intel chip, can not drive 4K and 2K external monitors via thunderbolt adapter. 2. I need to authorize dock (Lenovo's thunderbolt dock) after every reboot. 3. The screen tearing sucks. 4. I need to have pulse audio volume control window opened all the tim…

Curious. If you had to buy tomorrow, what would you do? Given that M1 Pro won't be out till end of 21(?) and despite that, current Pros don't seem to come with a reduced price.

I haven't done my research recently. Thinkpad works fine with Windows, so, most likely, it'd be last gen Mac/Thinkpad Extreme or something in that league.

I had hopes that Microsoft will evolve Surface Books to normal processors, but it seems like the line is dying.

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

#756

Post by throwanem »

zmmmmm wrote: post #753
throwanem wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A couple Saturdays ago, I spent thirty minutes setting up WSL2 on a Windows 10 machine. Immediately afterward, I called Apple and spent a thousand dollars on an M1 Mac mini for same-day pickup. I've been running Linux devenvs on Windows, in Virtualbox, for something well over a decade now. Imagine my surprise when I discovered that the vaunted WSL2 is literally just that, plus preinstalled OS images that save maybe a…

Without invalidating the rest of your comment, 30 mins is way shorter than I consider a valid attempt at this. I'm happy to invest even months in achieving an optimal setup, as long as it gets there. Most of what I am interested in is a streamlined docker setup and WSL2 provides an amazing experience for that, with a single docker / container experience spanning both the Windows host and the linux VM. While there are…

No setup involving "oh, it's literally just worse Virtualbox" was ever going to be optimal for me, not when I could just use a Mac and do everything I care to do on that machine without putting up with a lot of nonsense to marshal between two very different and not all that compatible operating systems and filesystems. As I said in the comment to which you replied, I've done lots of that with Linux in Virtualbox on Windows. I know how to do it just fine. It was wanting to do it that I lacked. And, happily, I didn't have to! I could do something else instead. So something else is what I did.

I'm glad you have something that works for you! I'm glad I have something that works for me, too.

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

#757

Post by rbreaves »

> Any advanced Mac user knows about Karabiner, BetterTouchTool, Choosy, Alfred, Automator, and more.

> With Linux, you can achieve almost the same feature set, but it is harder and more limited.

> For example. To customize your keyboard, you will need a combination of xdotool, xbindkeys, xcape, xmodmap and setxkbmap to capture some event and then run a shell script. There is a Gnome Shell plugin that allows you to tweak your keyboard, but it's nowhere near Karabiner.

Much of what you said is true, but you may also want to checkout my mac-style shortcut keys for linux project over here https://github.com/rbreaves/kinto. It takes a lot of the effort and annoyance of remapping out of the equation imo.

Generally it is more difficult to find working alternatives on changing basic linux behaviors quickly, whether those solutions be free or cost money.

And yes libinput-gestures can be difficult to work w/ I spent over an hour until I realized I needed to log off and back on -.-. Also it is concerning that you say screen tearing is back under Wayland - I haven't spent much time in Wayland because I have not yet worked out a good solution for porting my kinto project to it.

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

#758

Post by Wowfunhappy »

guessbest wrote: post #728
Wowfunhappy wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but it compiles each application as you install. No it doesn’t. Hasn’t been that way for years.

I use it and it clearly compiles each package. Please read the FAQ. https://trac.macports.org/wiki/FAQ > Is MacPorts Universal? MacPorts works on Apple Silicon as well as Intel- and PowerPC-based Macs, but, by default, the ports you install will be compiled only for the architecture you're currently running on. This means that if you migrate from, say, a PowerPC Mac to an Intel one and use Migration Assistant to copy…

What they mean is that the downloaded binary will have been compiled for only the architecture you're running on. Take a look at all the binaries on http://packages.macports.org. MacPorts downloads from here.

If MacPorts is compiling from source, you're either using a non-default varient, on a very old version of OS X (MacPorts supports Tiger, but doesn't build binaries), or have some other unusual configuration option set.

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

#759

Post by usefulcat »

Delk wrote: post #614
hk1337 wrote: post #521

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 modif…

I’ve been doing the same for years. It’s also a good cross platform solution since both Dropbox and keypass are available for Mac, windows and Linux.

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

#760

Post by guessbest »

Wowfunhappy wrote: post #758
guessbest wrote: post #728

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use it and it clearly compiles each package. Please read the FAQ. https://trac.macports.org/wiki/FAQ > Is MacPorts Universal? MacPorts works on Apple Silicon as well as Intel- and PowerPC-based Macs, but, by default, the ports you install will be compiled only for the architecture you're currently running on. This means that if you migrate from, say, a PowerPC Mac to an Intel one and use Migration Assistant to copy…

What they mean is that the downloaded binary will have been compiled for only the architecture you're running on. Take a look at all the binaries on http://packages.macports.org . MacPorts downloads from here. If MacPorts is compiling from source, you're either using a non-default varient, on a very old version of OS X (MacPorts supports Tiger, but doesn't build binaries), or have some other unusual configuration opt…

That can't be true. For any mildly complex application I install it asks for "xcode-select --install". I'm using an intel Mac on 10.14.6, so it is pretty standard. I just reinstalled the software under a year ago and redownloaded macports from the website and installed it. It seems to require a local compiler to be installed for most applications, such as gcc or llvm. For instance, why wouldn't installing ffmpeg just download the ffmpeg binary instead of the all the compiler dependencies?

> sh ~ % sudo port install ffmpeg

---> Computing dependencies for ffmpeg

The following dependencies will be installed:

Xft2

XviD

aom

autoconf

automake

brotli

cairo

cargo

cargo-bootstrap

cargo-c

cctools

cmake

... etc

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