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Things I can’t do on macOS which I can do on Ubuntu (2020)

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Re: Things I can’t do on macOS which I can do on Ubuntu (2020)

#281

Post by oorza »

pastacacioepepe wrote: post #240
rodelrod wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This list is personal and far from exhaustive (which is fine). If I quickly scanned looking for things I care about, I'd find very little. However, as a Linux user I could very quickly come up with an equally long list of things that I do care about and that does not overlap much with this one. I think the larger point is: in Linux, some things are complicated but most things are possible. On Mac and Windows, some th…

Why do we need a trade off between stability and control? I'd argue we could have both if not for commercial reasons. Apple deliberately chooses to limit control, Microsoft too. With all the resources they have, you really think they couldn't give you more control without sacrificing stability?

> Why do we need a trade off between stability and control?

There isn't infinite time and money in the world. Every hour making one feature more stable means an hour not invested in another. Flexibility and control are just additional features. If you want to change the system font, you have to test (and support) a much wider array of things, especially if your UI guidelines are as restrictive as Apple's. Every piece of control you expose to the user increases the engineering cost of writing and maintaining the software.

And frankly, if more people wanted that level of control, this year TRULY would be the year of linux on the desktop. But they don't.

Re: Things I can’t do on macOS which I can do on Ubuntu (2020)

#282

Post by GlassKingdom »

lloeki wrote: post #206
GekkePrutser wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

macOS has never had full-screen maximisation. It maximises "for the content". Which means some windows will never be full screen because they don't have more to show. What you get when you hold Option is the way that was the previous "maximisation" option, before they added the full screen mode which I also abhor.

If you want such maximisation (and not fullscreen as was described), you can use apps like Moom or Magnet.

That this functionality is not builtin is the most baffling MacOS design choice I have ever seen.

Re: Things I can’t do on macOS which I can do on Ubuntu (2020)

#283

Post by dsego »

sseagull wrote: post #182

Since we are all airing grievances - how about the ability to set different scroll directions for the touchpad and a mouse. I dunno, I guess my brain is just wired differently from what apple expects.

This is such a glaring omission, but I guess they don't sell a mouse with scroll-wheel so they don't care. Luckily there are a few 3rd party apps that sit in the menu bar, I'm using Scroll Reverser.

Re: Things I can’t do on macOS which I can do on Ubuntu (2020)

#284

Post by BruceEel »

cmrdporcupine wrote: post #213

I'm not a MacOS user but I recall using early versions of OS X finder for connecting to SSH shares, like early 2000s. Did they remove this feature?

FTPS yes, no SFTP in macOS 11.6 as far as I can tell. It's possible to add it though, as 3rd party apps can 'hook' this feature.

Re: Things I can’t do on macOS which I can do on Ubuntu (2020)

#285

Post by jraph »

petercooper wrote: post #231
yodelshady wrote: post #201

> Read MTP devices > Mount an SSH or NFS drive I know fanboy debates are tiresome, but... I really do struggle to comprehend taking a device that can't do these things seriously as a computer. As a toy yes, or as a specialised tool for video or audio rendering, which... fair enough. But moving bytes is something any general purpose computing device should be good at. It's almost something you have to actively design…

I'd not heard of MTP before, so looked it up: " MTP is part of the "Windows Media" framework and thus closely related to Windows Media Player. " I wonder, can Windows natively work with APFS volumes..? I know with extra software it can, but then with extra software macOS can do all the things in the blog post too. There is at least one thing I can do on macOS though that I can't on Ubuntu: run the latest version of P…

> I'd not heard of MTP before, so looked it up: "MTP is part of the "Windows Media" framework and thus closely related to Windows Media Player."

This comes from [1] which is an interesting page.

It's a de facto standard though. And now specified in the USB standard. Android devices expose themselves using MTP when connected with USB for instance. I think the goal was to allow devices to expose their media data / receive media stuff from the computer while still being able to be used. Exposing as a mass storage device was problematic because conflict could happen when both the device and the computer tried to access the drive, so at the time, most mp3 players just couldn't be used both as a mass storage devices and as an mp3 player at the same time. You can still use your Android phone while it is plugged as an MTP device (fortunately).

Though it seems something like Samba, NTP or sshfs could have been possible. I don't know what is the full rationale behind the choice of developing a custom protocol. MTP probably provides some features that makes it easier to manage media stuff. I've not looked into it much. It does extend the Picture Transfer Protocol (PTP) (used in digital cameras) which is an ISO standard so it's not completely custom neither.

Apple went with their custom iTunes-related protocol with the iPod, the iPhone and the iPad, because why not.

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

Re: Things I can’t do on macOS which I can do on Ubuntu (2020)

#286

Post by GlassKingdom »

lloeki wrote: post #126
SXX wrote: post #88

I'll add some to the list: - Control external monitor sound volume. There are buggy paid and open source solutions, but they all trigger all kind of bugs with sound and macOS itself. - Capture game audio with OBS together with microphone input. - Being able to wait for files to copy and work Finder at the same time. Yeah I could find replacement for Finder, but why the hell? - Use Valve Proton. Yeah, Linux is great t…

control external monitor sound: if your monitor supports DCC, MonitorControl is FOSS and allows direct control. Also, see below. capture sound: there's a flury of apps that allow you to do that, Rogue Amoeba has a couple that go from simple to very advanced audio routing. This audio routing also allows you to set the output volume (so, indirectly volume sent to a monitor) using the standard macOS controls. > And yeah…

Having to install an app to control volume does seem like something from the early 1990s (and I’m a mac guy).

Re: Things I can’t do on macOS which I can do on Ubuntu (2020)

#287

Post by lloeki »

thanatos519 wrote: post #204
lloeki wrote: post #151

> Resize the system font I thought Accessibility settings had that, but: > I find the menu bar at the top too small. So not system font, menu bar size relative to the rest. Accessibility settings>Display>Menu bar size>Large > Focus Follow Mouse There used to be this, not sure if it works still: defaults write com.apple.Terminal FocusFollowsMouse -bool false Otherwise apps like AutoRaise can achieve that. > Change my…

> defaults write com.apple.Terminal FocusFollowsMouse -bool false I've heard that ffm is available on Terminal. Cute, but I need it for every window and between apps.

https://github.com/sbmpost/AutoRaise then, as mentioned before.

Although what you can't do (I think) is having (input) focus on a non-raised window, because that would break the focused-app-is-active-app-hence-menubar (because keyboard shortcuts) model imposed by the window manager.

Re: Things I can’t do on macOS which I can do on Ubuntu (2020)

#288

Post by fretn »

sseagull wrote: post #233
_benj wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It might or might not be what you are looking for but it’s possible to charge the scrolling direction on the trackpad preferences. It’s defaulted to “natural” something and it’s literally the first setting I change when I reinstall macOS

Ah sorry, I wasn’t clear. Setting the scroll direction there also changes the direction of the scroll wheel on a mouse. I don’t have a mac near me but when I did, I could not get them set to be the way I wanted.

this tool might solve this problem: https://pilotmoon.com/scrollreverser/

Re: Things I can’t do on macOS which I can do on Ubuntu (2020)

#289

Post by norman784 »

SXX wrote: post #88

I'll add some to the list: - Control external monitor sound volume. There are buggy paid and open source solutions, but they all trigger all kind of bugs with sound and macOS itself. - Capture game audio with OBS together with microphone input. - Being able to wait for files to copy and work Finder at the same time. Yeah I could find replacement for Finder, but why the hell? - Use Valve Proton. Yeah, Linux is great t…

> - Control external monitor sound volume. There are buggy paid and open source solutions, but they all trigger all kind of bugs with sound and macOS itself.

For me this is one of the most annoying missing feature of macOS, while there are 3rd party apps, I'd want to have it without installing anything extra. But as we know it hard (if not impossible) that Apple implements this feature for other than their supported devices (that is mostly their products and maybe some of the 3rd party displays that they sell in their official web store).

Re: Things I can’t do on macOS which I can do on Ubuntu (2020)

#290

Post by nottorp »

unicornfinder wrote: post #265
nottorp wrote: post #236

I wonder if the OP has switched from Windows to Linux initially. And did he write a piece complaining that everything isn't exactly how they're used to then? A lot of "i'd switch but" articles - in all directions - basically come down to "the destination doesn't work how i'm used to". Even though they're fundamentally as crappy in the background. When someone asks me why I use Mac OS as my main desktop I answer "it's…

I think you've hit the nail on the head. I'm happily using Windows now but used a Mac before and it took a long time for me to realise that my complaints about Windows largely boiled down to "it doesn't do things in the way that I'm used to". With that said, whilst I do like macOS overall I always found it infuriating how on macOS applications could steal focus. Something I do appreciate on Windows is that focus stea…

> With that said, whilst I do like macOS overall I always found it infuriating how on macOS applications could steal focus. Something I do appreciate on Windows is that focus stealing by and large isn't a thing.

Interesting... I think the last time I used Windows everyone and their extended family stole focus all the time. But then I moved to Linux as my main desktop OS in like 1998... and to Mac OS in 2013.

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