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Ask HN: Why is there no Linux distro that “just works” like macOS?

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Re: Ask HN: Why is there no Linux distro that “just works” like macOS?

#141

Post by rbreaves »

throwaway82652 wrote: post #131
smoldesu wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The issue is that Wayland isn't a replacement for X. It's become it's own thing entirely, with it's own goals and conflicts with the xorg ideology. On top of that, it doesn't have feature parity with the window server on Windows and certainly doesn't approach the capability of Quartz (and likely never will, judging by it's core values). This puts it in an awkward spot: certain developers are begging users to switch t…

You will be miserable and waiting forever because what you want is impossible for all practical purposes. Feature parity is a red herring when some newer features just can't be done properly on X. The "xorg ideology" is to basically not have security on anything and to consider GPUs to be an afterthought, as stated by a parent comment. From a user perspective, this situation is untenable and yet will never actually i…

The “security” of wayland is a bit of an illusion imo. I’ve already seen a user pick it apart awhile ago.

Regardless I don’t what they’re trying to do, but they do need to add in a proper method for granting higher privileges to apps to have more access to Wayland in the same way macOS grants access to Remote Desktop apps.

Re: Ask HN: Why is there no Linux distro that “just works” like macOS?

#142

Post by rbreaves »

throwaway82652 wrote: post #134
rvz wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Linux, as in "in the desktop environment", has a HUGE (a can't highlight and stress enough the word HUGE) technical debt. Well that is what makes defining official Linux Desktop support something of folklore. You can predictably support and target Windows and macOS users all the time with your app working on those systems for it being all taken care for you. But as for Linux, you will always need to exclude and dra…

That's an area where the community has consistently failed. There's clearly desire among companies to rally behind just one distro (in most cases this is Ubuntu, like it or not) and so if the community was thinking ahead, they would be using that as the standard and aiming for compatibility with it. Instead you get a countless number of distros taking pride in how they're not Ubuntu and they carelessly break Ubuntu s…

I base my work on Ubuntu Budgie, but I make efforts to support a few popular others for kinto.sh.

https://sourceforge.net/projects/sorunme/files/

Re: Ask HN: Why is there no Linux distro that “just works” like macOS?

#143

Post by rbreaves »

raffraffraff wrote: post #108

I dunno, I'm forced to use Mac OS and I find it a pain in the ass. You might think it "just works" and you "don't have to configure it" but there's a ton of stuff I'd like to be able to configure, but can't. Recently, I wanted to connect multiple VPNs (work, different data centers) and selectively resolve DNS queries / route traffic, but it doesn't seem possible without a lot of work. I'm not crazy on the app-switche…

Recently I needed to reorder my network devices priority & I yarned for macOS over Linux in that moment. I don’t have to Google how to change network priority on a Mac.. it’s literally drag & drop.. vs Linux requiring the CLI.

Re: Ask HN: Why is there no Linux distro that “just works” like macOS?

#144

Post by throwaway82652 »

rbreaves wrote: post #141
throwaway82652 wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You will be miserable and waiting forever because what you want is impossible for all practical purposes. Feature parity is a red herring when some newer features just can't be done properly on X. The "xorg ideology" is to basically not have security on anything and to consider GPUs to be an afterthought, as stated by a parent comment. From a user perspective, this situation is untenable and yet will never actually i…

The “security” of wayland is a bit of an illusion imo. I’ve already seen a user pick it apart awhile ago. Regardless I don’t what they’re trying to do, but they do need to add in a proper method for granting higher privileges to apps to have more access to Wayland in the same way macOS grants access to Remote Desktop apps.

No, you haven't. I'm fairly certain I know a blog article you're referring to and that article is a load of nonsense. I can debunk any claims you might remember. The security isn't an illusion, it was designed to fix very real and known problems that exist in X11 and likely won't ever get patched out from X11.

At least in GNOME and KDE, there is a proper method for granting higher privileges, that method is the xdg portal API. I don't know where people are getting this idea that the method doesn't exist, it has existed for quite some time now.

Re: Ask HN: Why is there no Linux distro that “just works” like macOS?

#145

Post by kcartlidge »

deng wrote: post #43
daneel_w wrote: post #20

To people commenting how "well if you install Linux the right way on the right hardware like this here purpose-built laptop, it also 'just works'", what the OP is trying to underline isn't just the technical aspect of the OS booting flawlessly and recognizing its periphery, but also the whole experience that comes after. One special part of this, which is easily overseen, is the fact that Apple has poured hundreds of…

OP writes: > I am talking about a distro, that you don't have to configure anything for. A distro that handles things like external devices screen recording without weird glitches. I don't read this as a plea for better HIG? This is HN, so I'm assuming most of us live in the terminal anyway. I'll never understand why people prefer MacOS for development. From my experience, it is clearly worse in pretty much every res…

> This is HN, so I'm assuming most of us live in the terminal anyway. I'll never understand why people prefer MacOS for development.

I've been a developer for over 3 decades, doing multiple languages/ecosystems across the full stack. I code in the evenings too. I'm pretty much a stereotypical geek.

I also do general, consumer, non-techie stuff too.

- If I only did development then yes, Linux is the obvious choice.

- If I only did consumer stuff then Windows is the obvious choice.

- However MacOS has the best combination for both sides of that equation and second place on both aspects is better for me than the combination of first and last place that both Linux and Windows offer.

(I do still maintain a separate laptop with Windows 10 and Linux Mint though).

Re: Ask HN: Why is there no Linux distro that “just works” like macOS?

#146

Post by kcartlidge »

ddaalluu2 wrote: post #73
john_the_writer wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mostly because we have no viable option. Most work places want to have one device for all staff. So the IOS team and the Android team and Marketing and API and JS team, all need one common system. Windows is out for the Rails/Elixir team, and IOS team need Macs. Marketing and Sales teams could live in Windows or Mac's The only Venn diagram match is Mac. Low powered or high powered, Mac is the answer. Honestly... Pack…

The ios being exclusive to MacOS is an Apple made problem though. So you're paying double in hardware cost because of some decision by Apple that no other platform may compile for ios.

> The ios being exclusive to MacOS is an Apple made problem though. So you're paying double in hardware cost ...

You're right, it is. However knowing that doesn't change it.

I don't believe that you're paying double the hardware cost though. To get a halfway decent non-Apple laptop you need to be paying close to the same price anyway. The current Macs (especially Apple Silicon ones) really are much better quality than virtually (perhaps literally) anything you can get for half their price.

Re: Ask HN: Why is there no Linux distro that “just works” like macOS?

#147

Post by smoldesu »

throwaway82652 wrote: post #144
rbreaves wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The “security” of wayland is a bit of an illusion imo. I’ve already seen a user pick it apart awhile ago. Regardless I don’t what they’re trying to do, but they do need to add in a proper method for granting higher privileges to apps to have more access to Wayland in the same way macOS grants access to Remote Desktop apps.

No, you haven't. I'm fairly certain I know a blog article you're referring to and that article is a load of nonsense. I can debunk any claims you might remember. The security isn't an illusion, it was designed to fix very real and known problems that exist in X11 and likely won't ever get patched out from X11. At least in GNOME and KDE, there is a proper method for granting higher privileges, that method is the xdg p…

> I can debunk any claims you might remember.

Listen, I don't care who you are or what your agenda is, but a line like this just confirms my suspicions that you're trolling. Quit it, please. Your constant bickering with anyone who disagrees with you is undermining the site's values of gratifying intellectual curiosity. It kills fruitful conversations, makes it harder to take your arguments in good faith, and colors your stance as simply contrarianism. I'm going to continue ignoring your comments if this is the basis of your conversation on this site.

Re: Ask HN: Why is there no Linux distro that “just works” like macOS?

#148

Post by throwaway82652 »

rbreaves wrote: post #142
throwaway82652 wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's an area where the community has consistently failed. There's clearly desire among companies to rally behind just one distro (in most cases this is Ubuntu, like it or not) and so if the community was thinking ahead, they would be using that as the standard and aiming for compatibility with it. Instead you get a countless number of distros taking pride in how they're not Ubuntu and they carelessly break Ubuntu s…

I base my work on Ubuntu Budgie, but I make efforts to support a few popular others for kinto.sh. https://sourceforge.net/projects/sorunme/files/

Wow, do people actually still use sourceforge? I found it to be really clunky and missing features compared to github or gitlab or something.

Re: Ask HN: Why is there no Linux distro that “just works” like macOS?

#149

Post by throwaway82652 »

smoldesu wrote: post #147
throwaway82652 wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, you haven't. I'm fairly certain I know a blog article you're referring to and that article is a load of nonsense. I can debunk any claims you might remember. The security isn't an illusion, it was designed to fix very real and known problems that exist in X11 and likely won't ever get patched out from X11. At least in GNOME and KDE, there is a proper method for granting higher privileges, that method is the xdg p…

> I can debunk any claims you might remember. Listen, I don't care who you are or what your agenda is, but a line like this just confirms my suspicions that you're trolling. Quit it, please. Your constant bickering with anyone who disagrees with you is undermining the site's values of gratifying intellectual curiosity. It kills fruitful conversations, makes it harder to take your arguments in good faith, and colors y…

My agenda is to explain how this stuff works to stimulate intellectual curiosity. That's literally all there is to it. I've seen a number of wrong claims posted about this in the past, if you can remember any of the claims I'll address them directly and we can have a fruitful conversation about it. If you feel that examining past claims under a critical light is "trolling" and "kills fruitful conversations" then I don't know why you're even bothering to discuss this, please just let me address the claims made by the other commenter. Feel free to ignore me.

Re: Ask HN: Why is there no Linux distro that “just works” like macOS?

#150

Post by bitcuration »

veqz wrote: post #15

My personal experience is that it's been like this for years already. I'm mostly using laptops (Dell XPS at the moment) with some Ubuntu-derived distro with KDE Plasma on top, bluetooth peripherals, external monitor, and external USB-connected drives, and it all just... works. Other people are reporting less good experiences, of course, so anecdotes aren't worth too much. I think the real answer is that macOS runs on…

Therefore it's not a problem of technology, but how to manage broader industry partnership, creating standards. Microsoft did it in its earlier days when there is a limited number of OS competitor. That window of opportunity has passed. Nobody can repeat MS Windows just like nobody can recreate ebay or facebook.

Contrary to the popular illusion, Apple is a hardware company, they've never positioned or good at making general purpose OS. Apple dominated by making hardware and "firmware" that exploits their hardware. A completely different lane of making.

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