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Lima: Linux-on-Mac

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Re: Lima: Linux-on-Mac

#91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honest question, what's wrong with Finder? I use ForkLift for the heavy lifting (lol), but it works just fine for "navigate to file, open/move/delete file, sort by size/date, tag files, find files".

Finder still can't handle SFTP connections. In 2021. I feel like I'm going insane, or I've missed some sort of critical update, but no, it's just sitting there.

It hardly handles SMB/CIFS connections correctly, and it's been fucked up for years.

Re: Lima: Linux-on-Mac

#92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple clearly has evaluated Window Snapping and decided not to add it for whatever reason. Rumor has it Microsoft patented it.

That's untrue though, because Linux DEs have been doing 4-way snapping for decades now.

It reminds me of how my old Nokia phone could do such basic things as use custom ringtones, whereas iPhones of the time did not have this functionality.

Apple seems to have this thing where they treat basic functionality as a premium or an upgrade. Things like window snapping, or being able to compile and distribute software...

Re: Lima: Linux-on-Mac

#93

I always thought “Windows Subsystem for Linux” was phrased backwards and should have been “Linux Subsystem for Windows”. It threw me for a loop when I read that phrasing on the readme.

"Because we cannot name something leading with a trademark owned by someone else." -- Rich Turner, former PM of WSL

https://twitter.com/richturn_ms/status/1245481405947076610

Re: Lima: Linux-on-Mac

#94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's why I moved away from Linux to macOS: - I'm sorry, but no Linux DE I've ever used beats macOS in terms of stability. The file explorers are also a joke and frequently changing. - I've never booted to a black screen when upgrading macOS. - 99% of the work I do never needs anything that has to be virtualized under macOS. - Macbooks are solid laptops. Every other laptop I've owned hasn't stood the test of time as…

Not that I'll say Linux filesystem managers are any real good (last one I liked I think was replaced by nautilus), but Finder is no great piece of software. It actively opposes me finding hidden folders and files. It intermingles folders and files, with (AFAIK) no way to to change it. It won't show to-the-byte files sizes (AFAIK). Cut and paste and moving files is annoying. It constantly forgets I want details and no…

Hidden file/folder visibility can be toggled with ⌘-Shift-. and zip files can be previewed with QuickLook after BetterZip is installed.

Re: Lima: Linux-on-Mac

#95
post #13

It's just a "better integrated" virtual machine: "Lima launches Linux virtual machines on macOS" This might be a controversial opinion, but I find developers flocking to macOS really bewildering. As a developer, why do you want to fight your operating system to get basic things done? This Lima thing, docker running in a virtual machine, Apple being actively hostile with the default coreutils requiring you to layer mu…

I kind of think similarly on the subject. They make some beautiful hardware, but I've never been able to get comfortable on macos. I love linux, but that also has some drawbacks when running that as your desktop or laptop. I have been really liking WSL on windows 10. I don't need to worry about installing stuff on windows, but having linux as my shell has been pretty great. I wouldn't call it just a better integrated VM, it's almost like having a chimera of an OS that is both linux and windows.

e.g. I have this in my .bashrc in my centos container. It runs the windows powershell executeable to write to my windows clipboard. Not sure how they're doing it but, seems pretty magical.

function cb () { powershell.exe -command "\$input | set-clipboard" }

echo "hello" | cb # hello written to windows clipboard

All that being said, I'd be really interested in how well this project integrates the container on macs. Maybe this will be a good option for the future.

Re: Lima: Linux-on-Mac

#96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's untrue though, because Linux DEs have been doing 4-way snapping for decades now.

It reminds me of how my old Nokia phone could do such basic things as use custom ringtones, whereas iPhones of the time did not have this functionality. Apple seems to have this thing where they treat basic functionality as a premium or an upgrade. Things like window snapping, or being able to compile and distribute software...

It's especially heartbreaking when they take that same functionality and lock it behind APIs that most developers can't use.

Re: Lima: Linux-on-Mac

#97
post #13

It's just a "better integrated" virtual machine: "Lima launches Linux virtual machines on macOS" This might be a controversial opinion, but I find developers flocking to macOS really bewildering. As a developer, why do you want to fight your operating system to get basic things done? This Lima thing, docker running in a virtual machine, Apple being actively hostile with the default coreutils requiring you to layer mu…

Just to address one part in detail, what "layer multiple third party tools" means in practice is: install brew, install gnu-utils, and add the relevant directory to $PATH.

It's fire and forget. I'm quite confident you can do it with ports, or even nix if you really want to.

I know it's subjective, but it doesn't feel like Apple is being "actively hostile" here. It's just configuring your system to be different from the default.

I don't even remember the steps in detail (like what does brew call the gnu utils?) because I did it, once, four years and three laptops ago. I actually did it seven years ago as well, but that laptop was stolen.

Edit: also, I didn't "flock to" OS X, I eagerly bought a G5 as soon as I could afford it, in 2003. I learned Unix on workstations (Sparcs mostly) and my Yggdrasil Linux partition was always a poor substitute in comparison. So when Apple started selling workstations? and they were Macs? Yes please!

Re: Lima: Linux-on-Mac

#98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

you can just use adb to forward a socks proxy through your phone. not sure why you would need a kext

If a Linux user suggested that, they'd be laughed out of the room. "Yeah, just use this semi-obscure command line tool to forward a port, then set your system to proxy through it" is a technically workable solution, but poor UX.

Exactly! I keep seeing this shit about how you have to fuck around with all these config files in Linux... Then when you have to do the same trash for basic things in OSX, nobody blinks an eye.

Re: Lima: Linux-on-Mac

#99
post #13

It's just a "better integrated" virtual machine: "Lima launches Linux virtual machines on macOS" This might be a controversial opinion, but I find developers flocking to macOS really bewildering. As a developer, why do you want to fight your operating system to get basic things done? This Lima thing, docker running in a virtual machine, Apple being actively hostile with the default coreutils requiring you to layer mu…

"I Just recently I learned you can't add more swap ( creating a swap file and adding it ). That seems incredible to me." At what point are you just approaching MacOS with the wrong mindset? MacOS isn't something you should or need to manage swap for or should really think about. It's the same reason you don't think about managing swap on Windows or your iPhone or your Android or your Smart TV.

>It's the same reason you don't think about managing swap on Windows

Except one of the first things I do on any Windows setup is to move the page file somewhere else or resize it.

Re: Lima: Linux-on-Mac

#100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I don't have to fight my OS. It works with my brain. I think that's a mantra that applies a little better to Linux than it does MacOS. Linux is well known for it's customization, and you can really pad out your desktop to be an ergonomic and customized place designed for you. MacOS, on the other hand, is practically the definition of fighting your OS: you aren't allowed to have a proper package manager, Apple has to…

Linux is more customisable, but macOS is much, much better out of the box. I use both every day for about the same amount of time, and macOS requires much less fighting to get the basics right (i.e. networking and Bluetooth just works, no need to tinker with X or Wayland, printing is much less problematic, OS updates are non-events, etc). I am happy to use Linux at work, but I would never put it on my main computer a…

It absolutely varies by workload and individual but I can be productive under macOS in a fraction of the time it takes with any Linux distro. Its defaults are much better aligned with what I expect of a desktop OS, and customizing Linux to behave similarly is both a fight and not possible to the fullest extent without breaking out the source code for existing projects and making modifications.

It's great that source-level customization is possible under Linux, but really, who has time for that? I could see myself delving into writing a macOS-clone DE (which as a sidenote, GNOME and Pantheon doesn't go far enough with) if I'm fortunate enough to be able to take a multi-month break from work but otherwise it's a lot easier to just keep using macOS.

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