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Lima: Linux-on-Mac

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Re: Lima: Linux-on-Mac

#151

Post by soheil »

Naac wrote: 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…

Not sure what alternative you might have in mind, but none comes close to macOS if you want a half descent desktop experience based on unix. Ubuntu Desktop is an utterly terrible user experience, people who advocate for it generally still believe for example the mouse should have never been invented and those lesser people who find it useful should be happy with Ubuntu Desktop. Windows is also a no go, if you think Apple is hostile wait until you're presented with Internet Explorer or a slew of administrative layers meant to control you on a Windows box.

Re: Lima: Linux-on-Mac

#152

Post by sethhochberg »

f6v wrote: post #101
Naac wrote: 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…

> As a developer, why do you want to fight your operating system to get basic things done? I've been using Macs for development since 2013. I've done Android, Ruby on Rails, React, data science with Python and R. Apart from Docker, I don't remember "fighting" the system.

Same story as you. Nearly a decade of professional software development, most of it on company-supplied Apple hardware. I spent... maybe a week or two getting used to macOS with my first laptop after coming from linux and Windows, and don't really recall fighting much in the decade since.

I used to be a heavy desktop linux user, and can kind of empathize with the idea of being frustrated with less control. But at the same time... I feel like if you're legitimately fighting with an operating system, you're just picking a fight because you're unwilling to adjust your workflow even the smallest amount.

If I had to use a Windows laptop for work tomorrow, I'd probably spend a couple of weeks annoyed about relearning it, and then I'd be fine again (though I'd miss unlocking with my Apple Watch and having iMessage). Life is too short to get worked up over stuff like this.

Sometimes I'm frustrated by AWS and miss being able to SSH into bare metal. Sometimes I'm also annoyed by payroll software. Confluence's text editor has a habit of freezing input if it thinks I'm offline. No tools are perfect. Imperfect tools still let you earn a living, and you can even do it without fighting holy wars in internet comments.

There have got to be dozens of us around here who are competent technologists without the zealousness.

Re: Lima: Linux-on-Mac

#153

Post by dkarras »

TimTheTinker wrote: post #147
phamilton wrote: post #2

Is IO still going to be horrible here? Docker on a linux VM, with all code on the linux VM, is significantly faster than Docker for Mac. Generally just because of IO.

This is why I run my dev environment in an Ubuntu VM on Parallels Pro.

I use vagrant boxes (virtualbox) with nfs shares, works well. I'd still do it if I was on linux to be honest. My VMs are provisioned in a way that they have everything installed for the particular project and they are "stateless" in a way that I can and sometimes do reset them to their post-provision state (as virtualbox / vagrant supports snapshots) and my experience with the project stays the same. They are meant to be the perfect environment for a given project and nothing else. The "mutable" stuff is just mounted as nfs shares from my host machine.

Re: Lima: Linux-on-Mac

#154

Post by smoldesu »

leadingthenet wrote: post #104
smoldesu wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you try to deviate at all, it becomes a fight. Exactly this. Linux scares people because many people are allergic to choice, and the concept of actually developing an opinion on something other than the sum of their total experience on MacOS. Linux is frustrating, because there are a lot of different places you can point to as underdeveloped, but only because you can see the entire thing. When something breaks o…

Beyond the choice vs lack of choice issue, Linux is also frustrating because it just lacks the high quality apps macOS has. Period. I use Arch btw.

"High quality" depends on how you measure quality. If you're judging by looks and how many buttons it has, then yes, I think it takes the cake. But I honestly appreciate the current Linux design paradigm. GTK and QT are both awesome GUI toolkits, and compliment each other nicely. GTK does a wonderful job of filling the MacOS gap, by making it easy to create simple but effective UIs. QT, on the other hand, offers a more stable and "complete" experience, pretty much catered towards people familiar with the Windows/.NET development workflow.

Like the other commenter said, I just don't see anywhere Linux is particularly lacking. It has first class support with DAWs like Reaper and Bitwig, it has pretty great video editing chops with apps like Davinci Resolve and Kdenlive, and it almost has a complete photography setup, at least once GIMP switches to GTK+ and Darkroom gets a few more features. All of those are "high quality" apps, and they're also free: a pretty massive distinction from the MacOS software you might pit against it.

Re: Lima: Linux-on-Mac

#155

Post by leadingthenet »

OJFord wrote: post #135
leadingthenet wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Beyond the choice vs lack of choice issue, Linux is also frustrating because it just lacks the high quality apps macOS has. Period. I use Arch btw.

I sort of simultaneously see that that's true, but also don't personally feel I'm missing anything except Fusion360. But maybe that's just the extra motivation I need to use something else like FreeCAD or OpenSCAD with more git-able files anyway. (I also use Arch btw.)

Sure, you might only miss one or two apps. And I might only miss one or two apps. But it's probably different apps for both of us, and I think that probably generally holds true for the vast majority of people.

The Linux Desktop is 95% of the way there, no question about it. But that 5% is different for each individual, and ultimately, it matters.

Re: Lima: Linux-on-Mac

#156

Post by kelnos »

aequitas wrote: post #103
ravenstine wrote: post #44

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…

Dont' forget: - Multi- and highres monitor support out of the box with proper scaling and readable fonts - A package manager with up to date packages (granted there are Linuxbrew and things like Snap now for Linux.) - Applications that have a consistent UI/UX and all use the same keyboard shortcuts > All the customization doesn't offset the trouble that desktop Linux can bring. It's nice you can customize almost ever…

> It's nice you can customize almost everything on Linux, but most of the time I feel I must customize everything to get to a basic standard.

The last time I had to customize everything was like 10 years ago, and now I just copy my $HOME from machine to machine when I get a new one and everything just works and looks like it did on my previous machine.

Re: Lima: Linux-on-Mac

#157

Post by irateswami »

__jem wrote: post #144
aequitas wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dont' forget: - Multi- and highres monitor support out of the box with proper scaling and readable fonts - A package manager with up to date packages (granted there are Linuxbrew and things like Snap now for Linux.) - Applications that have a consistent UI/UX and all use the same keyboard shortcuts > All the customization doesn't offset the trouble that desktop Linux can bring. It's nice you can customize almost ever…

> A package manager with up to date packages (granted there are Linuxbrew and things like Snap now for Linux.) On what planet is is homebrew better than Linux package managers? I agree with many of the other items in these lists, but this makes literally no sense to me. Homebrew is probably one of the worst things about doing dev on a mac.

Homebrew is more transparent and approachable, I can easily customize what is being installed, it's versioning, and control it's dependencies better than apt.

Apt, more often than not, acts as a gatekeeper for the latest version of whatever software packages I'm trying to install. I end up just having to adding various libraries and repos to my sources list to get the version I need, or go to an outside dependency manager like gvm, sdkman, etc which is basically homebrew anyway.

Homebrew is for devs that need to get shit done, apt is for computer scientists that love the tool more than solving problems with a tool. For the record, I'm on both linux and mac and there's plenty of upside and downside to both.

Re: Lima: Linux-on-Mac

#158

Post by moshmosh »

__jem wrote: post #144
aequitas wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dont' forget: - Multi- and highres monitor support out of the box with proper scaling and readable fonts - A package manager with up to date packages (granted there are Linuxbrew and things like Snap now for Linux.) - Applications that have a consistent UI/UX and all use the same keyboard shortcuts > All the customization doesn't offset the trouble that desktop Linux can bring. It's nice you can customize almost ever…

> A package manager with up to date packages (granted there are Linuxbrew and things like Snap now for Linux.) On what planet is is homebrew better than Linux package managers? I agree with many of the other items in these lists, but this makes literally no sense to me. Homebrew is probably one of the worst things about doing dev on a mac.

Homebrew's very up to date, without that cutting-edge quality risking system stability (since that's totally separate) and has an incredible number of supported packages, including tons of closed-source stuff, out of the box. No hunting down PPAs or obscure unofficial back-port packages or anything. The only Linux package managers I've seen even approach it (not match, but approach) are from bleeding-edge distros like Arch or Gentoo, but those come at a harsh stability cost since they also manage the rest of your system, including all the shared libs (ugh) and system-level packages (I gather that's the case on Arch, it sure was on Gentoo when I used it for many years, mostly because I loved Portage and OpenRC)

Re: Lima: Linux-on-Mac

#159

Post by swiley »

ravenstine wrote: post #44
Naac wrote: 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…

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…

>o Linux DE I've ever used beats macOS in terms of stability.

Maybe this is because I exclusevely use naked WMs with Xterms but OSX is horribly unstable. The GUI is fantastic though in every way you would expect a good gui to be that Windows and kde/gnome disapoint you.

>macOS is fundamentally the same as it was 10 years ago

It's way more service focused and a lot less performant. Opening apps sometimes pops up a "verifying authenticity" dialog with a progress bar for example.

>Windows and macOS solved vsync issues long ago.

If the tearing really does bother you then yes you should use OSX.

Re: Lima: Linux-on-Mac

#160

Post by dkarras »

user3939382 wrote: post #130
vvanpo wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are many ways macOS improves over Linux desktops, but file explorers is not one of the arguments I would have made. Finder is practically unusable.

I have to use TotalFinder to be able to cut and paste files which I find very strange after all the years of experience on other OSes. I also resent not being able to conduct basic file management in file selection dialogs. Other missing features I have to hack around with scripts or add-ons: Copy terminal-friendly path, open current folder in terminal, create a blank text file here. Probably more.

you can move (cut + paste) in finder, it is hidden for some reason. instead of cmd + v, you need cmd + option + v and the file you copied will be pasted just like it was "cut".
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