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Switching from macOS to Pop_OS

support.system76.com

261–270 of 380 posts

Re: Switching from macOS to Pop_OS

#261
post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My strategy has been to stick to everything Gnome on Ubuntu. In gnome tweaks you can even turn on ctrl-a and ctrl-e! Everything feels consistent Really wish Linux followed macs example of using super instead of ctrl for copy/paste/etc in general though…

Many window managers, especially tiling, use super key extensively for shortcuts. This feels more like an acquired taste/habit than anything. Making applination-level shortcuts follow Windows make more sense for onboarding. Many keyboards have dip switches to swap the keys if you really cared.

I just disagree on this front, at least as a power user. Mac is able to have window manager shortcuts as well!! The problem is that I want to have copy/paste and I want to have my emacs-style movement keys, but because of Linux DMs choosing to use the same key for both we end up with ctrl-shift-c

Re: Switching from macOS to Pop_OS

#262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s more about how on MacOS, Apple gets to dictate what signal that gesture is going to send to the applications and you can’t configure it to send anything else. So either the application recognizes that signal and it works for every system, or it doesn’t and it doesn’t work for every system. This makes it a lot more likely that apps are going to recognize that signal so it works for every system. It’s the paradox…

Not really. On macOS, trackpad swipes produce a series of horizontal scroll events, not a simple back/forward event. An app can do whatever it wants with the scroll events. Safari, when the scroll position is at the end of the horizontal outer edge of the document, does an interactive back/forward animation that tracks your fingers while they remain on the trackpad.

As far as I know you’re supposed to use the NSGestureRecognizer system to recognize this kind of gestures and it’ll automatically make it work like you write. If you try to handle all the events yourself you end up doing a lot of work for probably a worse result.

Re: Switching from macOS to Pop_OS

#263
post #13

Absolutely love the work system76 is doing. My only regret is that I run pop on a Razer rather than one of their machines. Hopefully they get their in-house laptops up and running soon :)

Condolences. Razer is pretty hostile towards Linux. I can't believe BIOS and firmware upgrades can only be done through a green-accented Windows 10+ GUI: opposed to upload to Linux Vendor Firmware Service, no *.bin files flashable from the BIOS, no Windows PE support, no FreeDOS.

Re: Switching from macOS to Pop_OS

#264
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…

Personally I prefer alt-tab (cmd+tab) on macOS is prefer over other operating systems. It makes it easier to work with multi window applications like browser, spreadsheets etc. If you never minimize windows, only hide them it makes life easier.

Re: Switching from macOS to Pop_OS

#265

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…

Regarding Ruby on Rails on Windows, using Docker is probably the way to go. As a bonus, deployment will become easy, as well.

Or just WSL and be done

Re: Switching from macOS to Pop_OS

#266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quite possibly. Their Lemur Pro laptop is really amazing, and I consistently grab it over my Macbook Pro or Macbook Air because it is lighter, faster, gets better battery life, and the PopOS UI is better than the lipsticked pig that Mac OS has become these days.

Why does the Lenmur have so much batter battery life than the Galago? The Galago lasts maybe 3-4 hours web browsing or watching videos.

The Lemur has a 73 Wh battery, while the Galago is 49 Wh, so 50% more battery. I'll also guess that the Lemur has much lower resting power consumption, since it doesn't have fancy graphics and has a lot of firmware designed to minimize power usage and turned on by default.

Re: Switching from macOS to Pop_OS

#267

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…

Kinto is the best solution I've found for a Mac keyboard and key-bindings on both Linux and Windows!

Re: Switching from macOS to Pop_OS

#268

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…

https://github.com/rbreaves/kinto comes close for keyboard shortcuts

Huge upvote for Kinto!

Works flawlessly on Windows and Ubuntu for me :-)

Makes life worth living! ;-)

Re: Switching from macOS to Pop_OS

#269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really not a good idea to remap super for copy and paste though.. that is just a very surface level thing to do I think and recommend to any mac user transitioning to Linux and is why I built Kinto.sh so that hacks like "remap Super+c/v" for copy and paste don't have to exist. https://github.com/rbreaves/kinto The proper way is remap the modifier keys and then remap further based on the app on focus. Gives you covera…

I came to this thread just to post that System 76 should hire you to work on their keyboard shortcuts if they are serious about attracting macOS users. Muscle memory is the only thing keeping me on macOS now, I’ve tried using an IDE on both Windows and Linux and gave up after a couple minutes. I tried kinto on Pop about a year ago and it worked pretty well but conflicted with their workspace and tiling key commands s…

Yea, I am not surprised. I actually was trying to target Pop_OS! to use as a daily on a desktop of mine, but... I had issues with the installer due to it not liking a network ethernet device I believe. I did get past that, but then I had an issue with wanting to use btrfs for snapshot features - the installer though does not setup your partitions correctly for that.

It felt like Pop_OS! went out of their way to rewrite the own custom installers and then just decided not to support btrfs for whatever opinionated reason? I dunno - but it made me rather unhappy with the situation and I switched back to my Ubuntu Budgie distro of choice. Sad - because I would have dog fooded Kinto.sh seriously on Pop_OS! had they supported btrfs properly w/ snapshot support. Most Ubuntu based distros don't change the installer so much that proper btrfs support is broken.

I do support them though and may purchase one of their laptops in the future and sure - I would love to work for System76 - despite not yet using their OS on anything besides a VM. I do think they get a lot right, and love that they open sourced their BIOS for their laptops. We need more companies like them selling Linux pre-installed.

Re: Switching from macOS to Pop_OS

#270

I can't say much about the MacOS side of things (I do use a Mac at my day-job, but only because the choice is Mac or Windows, no Linux option). But as far as PopOS goes... I've been using it full-time on my personal laptop for several months now, and I'm very happy. Surprisingly so, you might say. Why "surprising?" Well TBH, I always looked at PopOS as kind of a niche / oddball thing, along with any other distro that…

Which System76 laptop are you using, and how has your experience been with it?

I have an old oryx4 (intel8th gen/ nvidia graphics). Its my daily driver. Its been quite durable, (I did have to replace a fan which wasn't too bad. In fairness I think my environment may have caused that. But its basically a clevo model laptop rebadged, so getting a part wasn't bad.).

The screen/keyboard/ trackpad are decent. It can run steam/ unreal engine/ jetbrains/). Lots of ports. Its a great development machine. Its always been great with the auto updates and software installs for the most part. (although right now, its in some state where its got some libc packages ahead of where the next upgrade thinks it should be. so it fails.... my first real linuxy state issue).

My main gripes are battery life when using the nvidia graphics and having to reboot to switch from nvidia to intel. For me its mostly a lugable hooked up to external monitors. They have a "hybrid mode" now, but when I tried last year it didn't seem to be great. Battery is much much better without the graphics card running.

I'd buy another.

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