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Lima: Linux-on-Mac

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Re: Lima: Linux-on-Mac

#191
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 have two MacBooks now given to me by work. I loathe these things. The two finger scroll is awful. I'm constantly getting what feels like palm rejection mid-scroll. Everything is mouse driven, including split windows and if you want to use your mouse to split your windows it shifts the window and you over to a new virtual desktop. MacOS is constantly roosterblocking me from installing any apps not from the App Store…

I definitely agree with the trackpad complaints. Pre-2016 MacBook trackpads were basically perfect. But the newer ones are truly junk. I'm holding onto my 2015 Air as long as possible, for this and other reasons related to the hardware.

Re: Lima: Linux-on-Mac

#192

With time, difference between Apple devices and the Playstation is shrinking. I am fine with using any OS that gives me a terminal emulator with vim and unixy friends. However, I detest artificial platform limitations and software that wants to "nudge" and manipulate users, hostile defaults and "optimized expiriences". My last used Apple device was from 2015.

[deleted]

Re: Lima: Linux-on-Mac

#193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>I don't have to fight my OS. > 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 > pad out your desktop to be You've just described fighting your OS. I mean, sure, if you like customizing things and "padding your desktop", knock yourself out. The last thing I want to do on my machine is spending any time doing that. > I don't really see how…

> You've just described fighting your OS. It's only fighting if it wasn't designed for it in the first place, which isn't true. Linux (and the software designed for it) will always be modular. Once you have your desktop however you like it, you can backup your dotfiles and call it a days work. Bare git repos do the job almost perfectly. > You listed package manager, coreutils, and VPN. That.... That is a minuscule pa…

> It's only fighting if it wasn't designed for it in the first place

You've completely ignored this: "I mean, sure, if you like customizing things and "padding your desktop", knock yourself out. The last thing I want to do on my machine is spending any time doing that."

I have other things in my life than fiddling with arcane configs.

> If coreutils and a package manager are "miniscule parts" of a programmers workflow, I'd sure like to see someone program on a Mac without them.

Yes. Here you assume that everyone is like you and has the same workflows and desires from a desktop like you. Nope, not everyone.

For the past 7 to 8 years brew has served me as a good-enough package manager. It's not perfect, but no package manager is.

No idea what your gripe with coreutils is. All of these [1] exist and work just fine out of the box.

So yes. Those are incredibly minuscule parts of a programmer's workflow. I've yet to remember any pain points concerning these two in the past 10 years of working on anything from backend in Erlang, Java, C#, Python, Go to frontend in Javascript and Typescript [2].

Granted, one thing you might not want to do is do C/C++ development on a Mac. I don't know the details, a friend of mine does embedded development, and needs a Linux machine for that.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_GNU_Core_Utilities_com...

[2] Well. Two or three times in these 10 years I needed a version that wasn't immediately available in brew, so I had to find out how to install the specific version I required. Installing also involved brew. Installing arcane versions isn't a better experience in Linux either. And LTS versions of Linux can rarely properly install new versions of required packages, much less arcane ones.

Re: Lima: Linux-on-Mac

#196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't feel that I have to fight the operating system at all. In order to get the package manager and a modern version of coreutils you have to run three commands: $ sudo xcode-select --install $ /bin/bash -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/HEAD/install.sh)" $ brew install coreutils The upside is getting a system where most of what I need works out of the box with fairly sensible def…

I can't tell if you're being sarcastic, and I say this as a Mac fan, but your 3 commands are: - Install a whole IDE, so you can... - Install an unofficial package managar, so you can... - Install coreutils

"sudo xcode-select --install" doesn't install the whole IDE, just some cli tools.

Re: Lima: Linux-on-Mac

#197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry, I was referring to an older setup I had where I kept multiple copies of Xcode for project testing. Either way, 20 gigabytes is still way too large for a program running on a laptop that starts at 256 gigs of storage (220 after the worlds largest operating system gets comfortably situated). As for Metal, I think my statement still stands. I can't think of a single developer who would prefer to write shaders in…

Perhaps the command line tools are all you need? They are much smaller than Xcode.

And easier to install as well, without even the need to log on to the Mac App Store. Just typing cc or some other similar command should start the installation.

Re: Lima: Linux-on-Mac

#198
post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 ma…

You're extrapolating from Debian's packaging concept to other distros, though your argument does not apply to most of the rolling distros out there.

On a rolling distro (e.g. using pacman, or say yast2 and others for sake of argument) you typically ship the header files included with the libraries, so that you don't need multiple versions of the same library installed. On Debian/Ubuntu, however, it will always end up with that mess of dozens of versions of the same library because all PPAs are somewhat outdated and used different versions of specific libraries once they were published.

Re: Lima: Linux-on-Mac

#200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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-…

> I could see myself delving into writing a macOS-clone DE (which as a sidenote, GNOME and Pantheon doesn't go far enough with) How do they not go far enough with it? The only thing that I can think of them not emulating is the menu bar in the top left, but the Gnome team is already flying pretty close to the sun with their recreation. Even still, there are ways to implement a global menu bar into Gnome with a little…

Global menubar is indeed a big part. The biggest issue with implementations of this feature on the Linux desktop is that support of it varies wildly between apps (which is where some of the mentioned modifications come into play).

There's also a huge pile of small features that go beyond the scope of a comment to list, which are either implemented inconsistently or not at all. For example, in GNOME and Pantheon, window minimization is disabled by default and even when enabled lacks integration with whatever dock you may be using.

GNOME generally is rather odd, even if it's one of the more polished options. It strikes me more as a somewhat-desktop-adapted iOS than it does macOS.

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