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Switching from macOS to Pop_OS

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Re: Switching from macOS to Pop_OS

#191

Post by zamalek »

im_down_w_otp wrote: post #53

All I want in life is a Linux distro with a package repo full of meticulously reworked & reconfigured packages that make all the keyboard shortcuts across the entire system and every application be like and be as consistent as my old Macs. I've been full-time Linux (Kubuntu) for a few years now, and I've hobbled together something that only irritates me to death about 30% of the time rather than the 100% of the time…

I watched a pretty old Q&A with Linus, and he called out distros for breaking "app space" all the time as the main reason why the Linux Desktop hasn't happened. I think he's definitely identified one of the bigger issues (but not all of them).

NixOS, by accident or intention, inherently circumvents this problem. It also has actual non-existent UX: you need to manage your own home-manager configs (for now, I want to change that). The maintainers have put good effort into being able to express tons of preferences in your nixfile (to the degree of Firefox plugins).

You may get nerdsniped by it.

Re: Switching from macOS to Pop_OS

#192

Post by eitland »

im_down_w_otp wrote: post #184
eitland wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> and be as consistent as my old Macs. Would it help if I point out that this is just rose tinted glasses? ;-) Or at least, when I used Mac full time back in 2009 - 2012, it was the least consistent thing I ever used: even such basic shortcuts as moving a word forward or backwards was inconsistent. Same with home/end: in one app it would be CMD + arrow left/right, in another it would be fn + arrow left/right. In Safa…

Definitely not rose tinted glasses. I regularly use an old SE/30 to write notes in Word 5 just as an escape from distractions when I'm trying to get thoughts down and organized.

Sounds older than what I worked on, one of the beloved (by Mac fans) 2009 Macbook Pros.

Re: Switching from macOS to Pop_OS

#193

Post by smoldesu »

eitland wrote: post #158
saurik wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Mac is the only thing where alt-tab falls on its face. Even if you remind yourself that you're on Mac and use cmd-tab... But alt on a Windows keyboard layout and and command on a Mac keyboard layout are the same key location, so I don't understand how you can be confused by this... maybe stop looking at the keyboard?

Mac differs between switching windows and applications. So if you work in an IDE, keep reading docs in one Firefox window and test your application in another Firefox window then in KDE or XFCE or another sane windowing system[1] - even Windows - you just use alt - tab. On Mac you have to stop an think: Should I switch to another browser Window? Ok, that is CMD - backtick. Switch to or from IDE? That is CMD - tab. Pr…

> but starting with Unity and now also Gnome has copied this to be bug comptible with Mac

This is simultaneously one of the saddest and funniest things I've read about GNOME in a while (which has a surprisingly high bar on both accounts)

Re: Switching from macOS to Pop_OS

#194

Post by itazula »

xenomachina wrote: post #153
saurik wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Mac is the only thing where alt-tab falls on its face. Even if you remind yourself that you're on Mac and use cmd-tab... But alt on a Windows keyboard layout and and command on a Mac keyboard layout are the same key location, so I don't understand how you can be confused by this... maybe stop looking at the keyboard?

The bigger issue is that command-tab switches between apps, not windows, and command-` switches between windows in the same app, and neither work across spaces. I ended up installing https://alt-tab-macos.netlify.app/ which adds a keystroke that will cycle through all windows in all apps on all spaces. It's a huge improvement.

Command left/right arrow, for example, switches between terminal windows in different spaces, and to terminal windows within the same space as well. Press the shift key as well to shift between tabs. (At least on my MacBook Pro's Japanese keyboard.) I don't recall have modded this behavior.

Re: Switching from macOS to Pop_OS

#195

Post by nomel »

Steltek wrote: post #131
taeric wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find this funny, in that I struggle with Mac all the time. The worst grievance lately is that I don't know how to just pop back and forth between three windows. Something about the way command tab works just kills my ability to reason about what the window stack currently is. And, for the life of me, I never get copy paste from a terminal to work like I want it to.

Headed in the other direction (Linux at home to Mac at work) for years now, I can't understand what the fuss is about with Mac keyboard shortcuts. In my experience, I don't find them consistent, useful, or pleasant to use. You hit the nail on the head with alt-tab. alt-tab is universal. Hell, alt-tab works on Android if you hook up a keyboard to it. Mac is the only thing where alt-tab falls on its face. Even if you r…

I use hyperswitch: https://bahoom.com/hyperswitch

Unrelated, I also use Hyperdock, from the same developer, to get the dock into the 21st century.

Re: Switching from macOS to Pop_OS

#196

Post by eitland »

geraneum wrote: post #188
eitland wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> and be as consistent as my old Macs. Would it help if I point out that this is just rose tinted glasses? ;-) Or at least, when I used Mac full time back in 2009 - 2012, it was the least consistent thing I ever used: even such basic shortcuts as moving a word forward or backwards was inconsistent. Same with home/end: in one app it would be CMD + arrow left/right, in another it would be fn + arrow left/right. In Safa…

I’ve been using Macs since 2009 for programming and have always used _by default_ Option+arrows in all apps for jumping between words and Cmd+arrow for beginning and end of line/file. I have never experienced “fn” to be used for moving the cursor around. It’s interesting that you had a different experience since these have been OS defaults and you can change them of course. I wonder if these was another software whic…

The things I remember using for work back then was eclipse, Textedit(not sure about the name, but at least the simple text editor that came with Mac), Safari, Firefox and Chrome.

Re: Switching from macOS to Pop_OS

#197

Post by shortformblog »

This doesn’t mention the Mac’s approach to special characters, which is actually pretty doable in Pop_OS! if you set the keyboard as English (Macintosh) and set up Gnome Tweaks so that the Windows key is set as the third-level keys. (I generally move the Win key to the Caps Lock for my use case.)

Pop_OS! is a decent Linux OS for switchers, though I recently switched to Garuda Linux as my secondary Linux OS and am finding it a good balance.

Re: Switching from macOS to Pop_OS

#198

Post by dmitriid »

It's somewhat weird that many of the "alternatives" listed are also available on MacOS. Or that in the games section Steam is listed for both MacOS and PopOS (whereas Spotify or VS Code are only listed for PopOS).

Otherwise it's a nice high-level overview

Re: Switching from macOS to Pop_OS

#199

Post by b5n »

GekkePrutser wrote: post #70
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…

If you want up to date everything you simply chose the wrong distro. It's not really the package manager's fault. Debian goes for stable versions during a release and backports security patches. It's one of their main design philosophies. It really shines for boxes you want to run something for years with minimal maintenance. Get arch, manjaro or another rolling distro and you'll have what you want :) Or perhaps Ubun…

Or just use a fresher Debian release. Testing and unstable are often more dependable than other distro's version of stable.

Re: Switching from macOS to Pop_OS

#200

Post by astrec »

icambron wrote: post #27

I bought a desktop from System76 (it's wonderful) so I gave Pop_os a spin. It's pretty clean but there were just too many little things that didn't _quite_ work right. Customizing keyboard shortcuts never quite got me what I wanted. UI elements in the status bar that would stop being clickable. Buggy config screens. I eventually gave up. I love the idea and I wish them the best of luck, but as of a couple months ago,…

I've run Pop!_OS on a Lenovo X395 for over 2 years, and on a custom build PC for the last year. I've have had the opposite experience -- it just works. Granted the Pop!_Shop isn't very good.
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