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

shkspr.mobi

361–370 of 740 posts

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

#361
post #306

I'm always amazed at how many little third party utilities or programs people recommend downloading or buying just to bring the desktop experience on macOS up to parity with Linux (or even Windows!). The lack of snapping/tiling at this point is just a deliberately malicious decision. I can't fathom why they will not implement some version of this better than that half-hearted split screen view that requires a separat…

Mac users eagerly recommend importing Linux tools (Docker, Brew) to make MacOS a tolerable dev environment. But they completely miss the fact that Apple makes it illegal to do the reverse: I can not run a MacOS VM on Linux.

I can't understand the mindset that makes that kind of company behavior acceptable or the tradeoff worth it.

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

#362
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…

Wrt audio:

What any pulseaudio or pipewire-based desktop can do, is to route streams from separate applications to separate devices. You can have one application playing into your headphones, second into your speakers and third streaming over bluetooth to your soundbar. Never managed to do anything similar with Mac (also I never explored any 3rd-party apps to do it, they might exist, but with PA/Pipewire, it is built-in).

You can also mark some devices as not to use - i.e. DisplayPort advertises audio out, but the monitor has no speakers? So does your dock, but you don't intend to connect any speakers to it? Easy, disable that device. Not so easy on mac, just be sure to never select it for output, there's only one global output device anyway.

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

#363

I don't use a Mac often (mainly Linux), but I do troubleshoot my significant other's. I'll add on my gripes: - SMB shares are wonky and will randomly disconnect with vague errors. - A large USB drive formatted with NTFS can't be mounted as read/write natively, you have to pay for a third party tool for that. - Mac's built in gatekeeper software is inferior to Windows Defender. While there's less malware available, th…

My experience with SMB shares is that pretty much any client works ok with Samba, but only Windows is really reliable connecting to Windows over SMB.

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

#364
post #312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Stability ???? Ubuntu is far more stable. Have never had issues wrt stability. I have had issues with support as in some software do not work on linux (Turbo Tax , Games etc) but never in stability. Have been using linux desktops since 2010

Just had a coworker who had to wipe out his laptop to upgrade ubuntu version. Literally never happened to me on mac

in the old days I would format before upgrading osx. if you use a bunch of developer tools, they would often break with osx versions. remember macports? wiping every year or so isn’t a big deal when everything is in the cloud. haven’t needed to in years, though

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

#365
post #306

I'm always amazed at how many little third party utilities or programs people recommend downloading or buying just to bring the desktop experience on macOS up to parity with Linux (or even Windows!). The lack of snapping/tiling at this point is just a deliberately malicious decision. I can't fathom why they will not implement some version of this better than that half-hearted split screen view that requires a separat…

Mac users eagerly recommend importing Linux tools (Docker, Brew) to make MacOS a tolerable dev environment. But they completely miss the fact that Apple makes it illegal to do the reverse: I can not run a MacOS VM on Linux. I can't understand the mindset that makes that kind of company behavior acceptable or the tradeoff worth it.

You don't want to anyway. OSX is slow without hardware graphics acceleration.

EDIT: I've hit my comment quota, here's my response: You don't need OSX for that, just their headers and libraries. People have built the build chain for Linux but it's useless without those and they cannot be redistributed.

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

#366

Before using a Mac I was told how glorious it was and a feat of engineering. Reality is that the Mac and associated products are not as perfect as Apple fans make it out to be. The window manager on Mac makes me want to scream. Navigating the file system in Finder is not intuitive and don't get me started on the Magic Mouse and it's charging port...

I work on a Macbook, play games on a Windows machine, carry around a Chromebook, and use Linux in various places (web hosting, WSL, etc.). I agree that the Mac is a nice machine but not everything is intuitive.

When I had a PowerMac, every time I needed to burn a CD/DVD I had to look up the steps. Dragging a window from one monitor to the other often doesn't display the window, and if a window is full-screen, Option-Tab won't bring any other windows on top of it.

The hardware is nice, and generally high quality, but my battery started to bulge and the repair (replace keyboard and new batter) was over $500.

I like it, but I wouldn't turn up my nose at alternatives. Since most of my job is typing, and web browsing, almost anything short of a Commodore VIC-20 would be fine.

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

#367
post #217

My biggest bug bears with macOS: - No way to fullscreen a window without moving it into a separate workspace. All a new workspace achieves is making it difficult for me to switch between this app and my other apps! (individual apps can implement this, and some like VLC do, but most apps don't) - No native support for containerisation. Containers/Docker are a great technology, but even on my M1 mac where literally eve…

For those who don't mind "full screen" still including the top bar, I find https://www.hammerspoon.org/ to be a good compromise. I set up option+shift+f to full screen my window instantly.

If the top bar is still there, is this different to the built in "double click title bar" maximise?

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

#369
post #312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Stability ???? Ubuntu is far more stable. Have never had issues wrt stability. I have had issues with support as in some software do not work on linux (Turbo Tax , Games etc) but never in stability. Have been using linux desktops since 2010

Just had a coworker who had to wipe out his laptop to upgrade ubuntu version. Literally never happened to me on mac

I guess he wanted to upgrade to the newly released 22.04, am I right? upgrade is temporarily disabled due to some bug they're sorting out. Guess he didn't read the release notes and did a full reinstall out of frustration. https://discourse.ubuntu.com/t/jammy-jellyfish-release-notes...

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

#370
post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And yeah PulseAudio is just so much better than everything macOS can offer. The PulseAudio that is one of the factors that drove me off desktop linux in 2013? :)

Shockingly, years of continued development can indeed resolve a lot of issues with software.

Not only development of PA itself.

Since the message that PA was here to stay was received, everyone got the point that the only way forward was to fix all the buggy audio drivers. It's no surprise, that it helped. Sure, it sucked for the affected users at the time, but in the long run, we all are better off.

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