Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Switching from macOS to Pop_OS

support.system76.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 380 posts

Re: Switching from macOS to Pop_OS

#41

Post by themodelplumber »

Normille wrote: post #19

All very pretty I'm sure. But, at the end of the day, much though I enjoy twiddling with Linux and poking around different distros, I'm stuck with MacOS because [like a lot of folks who use MacOS for work reasons and not to be 'hipster cool'] I work in the design industry and that means the Adobe suite is a must. Linux has nothing that comes close. And the customary recommendations; The Gimp and Inkscape are so pitif…

Back about a decade ago when I was doing similar work that required Adobe tools, I used Virtualbox and really enjoyed the compromise. The desktop flexibility of XFCE was enough reason for me at the time, being kind of tired of all the third party commercial tools I was using for the same conveniences in Mac OS that didn't work as well.

Turns out I also wanted to play with my work more, and I ended up writing scripts to do a lot of the work I thought I would use Adobe for.

It was also pretty funny to start getting "share flowchart template pls" requests from my colleague who used InDesign, when I had created the flowcharts in LibreOffice and Inkscape.

So IDK, tools and results are one thing, but fun new processes are often fun and also end up getting results that were worth it in different ways.

Re: Switching from macOS to Pop_OS

#42

Post by ejj28 »

linux_is_nice wrote: post #36
howdydoo wrote: post #33

This is a little off-topic, but I've been wanting to switch from Windows to Linux and the one thing stopping me is the lack of a good package manager. WAIT, let me explain. On Windows, you can just `scoop install ripgrep fzf jq` and you're in business. And updating all installed packages is one command away. Meanwhile on Debian, the system packages are often years out of date. So authors have started making their own…

Arch Linux :)

Indeed, after pacman and yay I'm never going back to Debian-based systems for personal use. The Arch User Repository is so much more hassle-free than trying to install stuff on Debian from 3rd-party repos.

Re: Switching from macOS to Pop_OS

#43

Post by Hermitian909 »

criddell wrote: post #21

I guess I don't get how operating systems are still something that people have such strong opinions on. All of the major operating systems are good enough or can be made good enough by installing a few packages. Pop may be great, but it's useless if you need to run Final Cut Pro. macOS is wonderful, but not if you want to play a lot of AAA games. Windows is fine, but if you are doing a lot of Ruby on Rails you may ha…

> I guess I don't get how operating systems are still something that people have such strong opinions on. All of the major operating systems are good enough or can be made good enough by installing a few packages.

The phrase "good enough" is doing a lot of heavy lifting here as people have different priorities. For some people, having their dev environment broken by updates is a huge negative, something MacOS has done to myself and others frequently over the past few years. Others, like myself, don't care so much and so indeed MacOS is "good enough" for me but certainly not for everyone.

Re: Switching from macOS to Pop_OS

#44

Post by coldtea »

smoldesu wrote: post #32
coldtea wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Is it finally the year of Linux on the desktop? Considering that the hope behind this term was about winning the desktop user share from Windows, and not just "being usable" on the desktop, or "being used" on the desktop, no.

Now that Windows 11 is a thing, I think winning desktop user share from Windows will be easier than ever before. What else is the average Joe going to do with their TPM-less devices?

Keep them on 10, and eventually throw them and upgrade when the time comes.

Re: Switching from macOS to Pop_OS

#45

Post by mise_en_place »

howdydoo wrote: post #33

This is a little off-topic, but I've been wanting to switch from Windows to Linux and the one thing stopping me is the lack of a good package manager. WAIT, let me explain. On Windows, you can just `scoop install ripgrep fzf jq` and you're in business. And updating all installed packages is one command away. Meanwhile on Debian, the system packages are often years out of date. So authors have started making their own…

You could use pkgsrc or Nix.

Re: Switching from macOS to Pop_OS

#46

Post by themodelplumber »

howdydoo wrote: post #33

This is a little off-topic, but I've been wanting to switch from Windows to Linux and the one thing stopping me is the lack of a good package manager. WAIT, let me explain. On Windows, you can just `scoop install ripgrep fzf jq` and you're in business. And updating all installed packages is one command away. Meanwhile on Debian, the system packages are often years out of date. So authors have started making their own…

You can search distros based on the exact kind of packaging solution you want. The diversity is pretty amazing.

Re: Switching from macOS to Pop_OS

#47

Post by upbeat_general »

arsome wrote: post #22
upbeat_general wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Vnc works for the basic use case of viewing a remote screen. It’s a mess for interactive use, especially with the default implementations you can find on Linux imo. macOS’s built in screen sharing is the only vnc server/client combo that has acceptable latency but even it fails to support basic features like dynamic resolution for different clients. And I agree that SSH is definitely far more common; I of course use…

X forwarding via compressed SSH (ssh -XC) is likely the simplest bet, especially now that WSL has good support for it, if you need more advanced remote desktop you can take a look at x2go which is based on NoMachine's NX protocol.

I’m currently using NoMachine with their custom server/client.

X forwarding via SSH only works for single applications and not an entire desktop correct?

Re: Switching from macOS to Pop_OS

#48

Post by marcodiego »

My neighbor asked me to help him get rid of windows 10 and install Ubuntu on his old (2013) laptop. I helped. It was easy and fast to install. Of course, you needed to know what is an image and how to boot from a USB device, but it was easy nonetheless.

Since he doesn't depend on any windows-only software, hardware or service, I didn't expect any problem.

I was particularly happy the printer (an multifunction HP Deskjet 27XX series) needed no fiddle to work, neither did its scanner. The windows driver was EXTREMELY intrusive and required an HP account.

Bluetooth needed a fix: https://askubuntu.com/questions/1232159/ubuntu-20-04-no-soun... which was the first google result and very easy to fix. After that, he was impressed that by just turning on the bluetooth speaker was enough to have the audio routed through it.

Then he proceeded to install software. I then started watching like someone who is following an usability test. He googled to install chrome and asked me if he should download the .rpm or .deb, I answered he needed the .deb. Firefox downloaded it but didn't automatically opened it. I really don't know why. I also don't know if simply double-clicking it in nautilus would be enough, I just typed "dpkg -i" and that was done, but it was not the best experience in usability. This needs a fix.

I then told him that he should not expect to install things the old windows way: download an installer an run it. I then showed him "Ubuntu Software". Most users these days are used to something similar to that thanks to "stores" on smartphones (note that FLOSS was a pioneer with this concept). Things then went mostly downhill from there. It is not that he couldn't install what he needed, on the contrary: he did install what he needed but "Ubuntu Software" is very very buggy! Results are duplicated without clear differentiation, you couldn't tell the state of it just by looking at it, software was installed but didn't appear immediately, there was no clue when an installation finished, first time something was run took a long time without any indication what was happening... I'm glad I'm skilled to use the command line.

If linux want to have a chance on the desktop, the software installing experience still has some way to go. It is better now for novices, but still partly broken.

Conclusion: Much much better but still not there yet for complete novices. The good part: I don't know if windows or mac are "already there" for complete novices either.

Re: Switching from macOS to Pop_OS

#49

Post by sebow »

multiplegeorges wrote: post #2

Is it finally the year of Linux on the desktop? But seriously, the work System76 is doing is really great. PopOS is really nice to use. The attention it is getting is well deserved.

That depends on the definition.The year we break 1% market share (usually with the steam survey as reference)? Already happened.

I would say it's gonna be exploding after steam deck launches.I think it's gonna be higher than 2%,maybe 3% this year.Would be surprised if it gets past 5%, but that's a decent stretch(though not impossible at all).

Re: Switching from macOS to Pop_OS

#50

Post by renox »

upbeat_general wrote: post #15
flatiron wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Vnc? I think most people use ssh for remote for Linux which is why it probably doesn’t get much love

Vnc works for the basic use case of viewing a remote screen. It’s a mess for interactive use, especially with the default implementations you can find on Linux imo. macOS’s built in screen sharing is the only vnc server/client combo that has acceptable latency but even it fails to support basic features like dynamic resolution for different clients. And I agree that SSH is definitely far more common; I of course use…

On Windows tigerVNC has dynamic resolution which is very useful, but yes VNC’s latency is poor..
Post reply on HN