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

shkspr.mobi

421–430 of 740 posts

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

#421
post #365

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I just need to build iOS apps without any added absurdity. It can run at 640x480 VGA for all I care.

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

#422
post #409
post #392

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The catch is, with enough 3rd party apps MacOS can do all that stuff but no amount of 3rd party apps and utilities can make Ubuntu match the MacOS experience. To match macOS on Ubuntu you will need a full time Linux guru as PA to smooth things out for your. You will need another one for the after hours. Therefore, Ubuntu is great for really rich people or people who need that one thing that Ubuntu excels at and nothi…

> no amount of 3rd party apps and utilities can make Ubuntu match the MacOS experience What kind of experience are we talking about?

Stuff designed with workflows in mind and work well almost all the time in a consistent fashion and when they don't, there's an easy fix kind of experiences.

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

#423

As a new mac user (~4 weeks with new employer) my biggest N are: 1) inability to ask the window manager "which workspace/desktop am I on" - it also seems like this ability has been progressively removed with newer versions (judging from stackoverflow/askdifferent questions) - after some hacking I've found a workaround for this 2) clicking on a browser notification just brings me to _any_ window of the browser, not th…

Am I the only one who actually finds more desktop a drawback then a benefit? I clearly haven't mastered multiple desktops -- do you split between projects and just leave it there always? I haven't figured out how to best optimize that which I feel I am leaving real value on the table.

I have a browser profile per workspace and git/aws/maybe some other env vars that are set up on a per workspace basis. To switching from project 1 to project 2 or personal I just click on the appropriate desktops in the status bar.

Which reminds me, another missing thing is the ability to have desktops displayed in the status bar and click on the one you want to jump to.

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

#425

Seems like the obvious tradeoffs you'd expect, mostly lack of control/ability to change things, which I'd expect of MacOS. In return you get stability, Apples locked down approach means the OS is far more predictable. Linux in my view takes the reverse approach, you lose stability relative to MacOS in exchange for complete control. Historically Windows has sat somewhere in the middle, though in recent years with all…

I am currently using M1 at work and it sucks Ass. The two main painpoints are the unpredicble window manager and the keyboard layout. WM: 1. There is no deterministict layouts available 2. You can not tab between windows of the same application, (problematic if you use multiple chrome profiles) 3. Switching to a window USUALLY opens the wrong one. In my case, I somehow always endup in VS Code when tabbing to Teams 4. Switching between workspaces (or maximized windows if) sometimes causes the computer to hang.

The second painpoint is the keyboard layout, which also sucks ass; 1. ~|"@, are all in the wrong places. 2. Some idiot decided to prioritice control keys ahead of functions keys, so I have to press fn to use standard debugging keys.

My i3/arch setup is far more reliable and ergonomic.

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

#426

As a new mac user (~4 weeks with new employer) my biggest N are: 1) inability to ask the window manager "which workspace/desktop am I on" - it also seems like this ability has been progressively removed with newer versions (judging from stackoverflow/askdifferent questions) - after some hacking I've found a workaround for this 2) clicking on a browser notification just brings me to _any_ window of the browser, not th…

Am I the only one who actually finds more desktop a drawback then a benefit? I clearly haven't mastered multiple desktops -- do you split between projects and just leave it there always? I haven't figured out how to best optimize that which I feel I am leaving real value on the table.

I tend to only use multiple desktops when I'm on a single screen or working on the laptop directly. In that case it's sorta a task thing, one desktop is chat clients (Slack and/or Discord), one is my editor, another is the browser, and a third is for terminals (for git etc). I use Rectangle to handle moving windows around.

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

#428

As a new mac user (~4 weeks with new employer) my biggest N are: 1) inability to ask the window manager "which workspace/desktop am I on" - it also seems like this ability has been progressively removed with newer versions (judging from stackoverflow/askdifferent questions) - after some hacking I've found a workaround for this 2) clicking on a browser notification just brings me to _any_ window of the browser, not th…

1) inability to ask the window manager "which workspace/desktop am I on" - it also seems like this ability has been progressively removed with newer versions (judging from stackoverflow/askdifferent questions) - after some hacking I've found a workaround for this I just swipe up with three fingers on the Trackpad to see what desktop I'm on, are you looking for something different?

Yeah, wanted to be able to programmatically ask the window manager such that I can tell new shells to source "~/.bashrc.d/{desktopname}.sh".

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

#429
post #420
post #402

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who uses both, I have to say I am not sure what's so special about the 'macOS experience'. I mean the desktop is not even a decent window manager imo, I have to get something like PathFinder for a decent file manager etc, yes there are some nice apps for macOS but it's not like the OS experience itself is some unbeatable benchmark.

Good for you. Good experience essentially means good defaults, stuff work reliably as expected and when things break you fix them easily. That usually require good edge case handling and justified restrictions. Notice how OP complains about not being able to change the default font and text size? Well, he is technically right but the thing is that Apple has already addressed the reason behind changing fonts by design…

Yes, some of these make sense. I agree with you on fonts. On the other hand what makes the windows snapping behavior/lack of thereof without fiddling a good default?

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

#430

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting. I recently started using an M1 Mac and found the fullscreen workspaces a bit weird (coming from i3), but kinda grew to like it? I got the external trackpad and use gestures a lot (before it was Control + arrows) to navigate the workspaces. My main issue is that all the different "Terminals" have subsets I like on them, but none have all the features I like lol. It's not a big deal though. FWIW I'm trying…

I'd be interested to know what features iTerm2 doesn't have. It's a big plus for macOS for me!

Yes, iTerm2 is one of the best macOS apps. It's the first thing we have new developers install if they're new to macOS.

On the 120Hz MacBook Pros, there's an advanced iTerm2 setting that lets you change the maximum frame rate to 120 or above (adaptive frame rate also needs to be disabled).

For monitors with a high refresh rate, it's worth checking out. You can see the difference by running:

  $ cat /dev/random | hexdump
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