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

shkspr.mobi

291–300 of 740 posts

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

#291

I’m embarrassed to say that I’ve been using Mac for years and still don’t know how to make an application fullscreen like Windows does. The green button hides the menu bar, and alt clicking the green buttom makes the app bigger but doesn’t fill the whole screen. Either I am stupid or Mac is bad at discoverability.

Option + double click on the corner of the window (where your mouse changes to the diagonal resize arrow).

I switched from Win10 to macOS recently and had to search the web to find this, so discoverability is certainly an issue. I suppose Apple would rather you just fullscreen a window than maximise a la Windows.

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

#292
post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

It's annoying that Apple doesn't implement DDC control alright (neither volume nor brightness). I'm just trying to be helpful and point to solutions that I use daily for these use cases, not making a case, barely pointing out that things claimed to be impossible are not (and not argumentatively, only because folks may stop at that and have to endure something when there are solutions that would fit their use case)

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

#293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

NFS mounts are supported in macOS natively SSH mounts are done with osxfuse MTP support is also available: https://github.com/ganeshrvel/openmtp This article feels a bit like the author didn’t look very hard for solutions to a lot of their problems, but instead skipped straight to writing an article to complain about things they didn’t understand.

osxfuse is not a reasonable answer. The author says “without unsupported 3rd party tools”. I have severe problems with osxfuse on M1: janky behaviour and system crashes. This stuff should be native.

How many of the functionalities the author misses and doesn't want to install "unsupported 3rd party tools" are NOT 3rd party tools in ubuntu?

Ubuntu linux is a distribution, and only a very very small set of tools and functionalities is "Ubuntu", all the others are simply packaged up 3rd party tools

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

#294
post #255
post #227

Apart from written in the article, my 2 cents: - cannot invert scrolling just for mouse (I use normal mouse with wheel, not apple mouse) -> I have an app for that - cannot connect Mac to a low dpi screen (like 1080p) without macOS looking like crap On the other hand, macOS can run MS Office, or professional video and photo editing apps, which Linux cannot do. Alternatives exist, but are IMO worse.

IIRC, there's a horrible work-around for the first item: hook up a magic mouse, invert the direction, and then plug in your mouse.

Since I don't have (nor plan to have) Magic mouse, that's kinda expensive solution :)

I use this instead: https://github.com/pilotmoon/Scroll-Reverser and it works well. Generally my preferred settings is like this: natural scrolling (ie. the mac default) for trackpad, but inversed (ie. linux/windows default) scrolling for mouse.

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

#295
post #255
post #227

Apart from written in the article, my 2 cents: - cannot invert scrolling just for mouse (I use normal mouse with wheel, not apple mouse) -> I have an app for that - cannot connect Mac to a low dpi screen (like 1080p) without macOS looking like crap On the other hand, macOS can run MS Office, or professional video and photo editing apps, which Linux cannot do. Alternatives exist, but are IMO worse.

IIRC, there's a horrible work-around for the first item: hook up a magic mouse, invert the direction, and then plug in your mouse.

So if you connect a Magic Mouse and change the scrolling direction for the mouse it DOESN'T change the scrolling direction of the Trackpad?

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

#296
post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

We can split hairs and hold our breath til we're blue discussing design decisions we don't control.

I'm just trying to be helpful, possibly barely pointing out that things claimed to be impossible are not (and not argumentatively, only because folks may stop at that and have to endure something when there are solutions that would fit their use case)

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

#297
post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 / rece…

[deleted]

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

#298

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.

I agree with you 100%. This software accomplishes that: https://pilotmoon.com/scrollreverser/

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

#299

I’m embarrassed to say that I’ve been using Mac for years and still don’t know how to make an application fullscreen like Windows does. The green button hides the menu bar, and alt clicking the green buttom makes the app bigger but doesn’t fill the whole screen. Either I am stupid or Mac is bad at discoverability.

You can set it to not hide the menu bar in fullscren mode. By default it will show up when you move the mouse near the top of the screen.

https://osxdaily.com/2022/03/17/keep-menu-bar-visible-mac-fu...

rectangleapp.com enables the classic fullscreen with ctrl+opt+enter (or via snap to top).

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

#300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

osxfuse is not a reasonable answer. The author says “without unsupported 3rd party tools”. I have severe problems with osxfuse on M1: janky behaviour and system crashes. This stuff should be native.

How many of the functionalities the author misses and doesn't want to install "unsupported 3rd party tools" are NOT 3rd party tools in ubuntu? Ubuntu linux is a distribution, and only a very very small set of tools and functionalities is "Ubuntu", all the others are simply packaged up 3rd party tools

These 3rd party tools are tested and supported by the distribution though.

It's a big strength of Linux distributions. There is one central, easily reachable place where you can report and track bugs for pretty much everything you do on the computer.

Obviously there are no guarantees that things will be fixed (fast) if you don't pay some sort of support but that's fair enough and still, the maintainers usually want the stuff they package to work reasonably well (they wouldn't spend their time packaging it otherwise) so one can expect a minimum level of functionality for most things unless explicitly stated otherwise.

The supported area for Windows and macOS from Microsoft and Apple is small in comparison to BSD and GNU/Linux distributions and good luck reaching them anyway.

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