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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)

#671

Post by flaxton »

I've been using Linux for more than 20 years. For many years it was my primary computer platform, until I moved to the Mac.

I recently put the latest Ubuntu LTS Linux on a spare laptop, as I needed a laptop. Sure, it was fun configuring everything for a day or so. But then it started to grind me down, as Linux always seem to do (for a personal computer - it's fantastic on servers).

Then I had a new, big project come in and bought a new MacBook Pro 13" with the M1 chip.

Wow.

I have never had a computer anywhere near as nice as this. Very fast. Light. Days of battery. Screen is fantastic. Best keyboard I've ever used. Best trackpad I've ever used by far. Never gets hot, barely warm, fan rarely comes on. I can do things like extend my screen to my iPad Pro 12.9" OR use Universal Control to control both from either keyboard/mouse/trackpad.

It has the Touchpad, which I'm undecided about but mostly like.

I work on Linux servers all the time, and the free/open source iTerm2 is a really really good terminal app.

It's BSD Unix under the hood, so most Linux commands also work here, and there's Homebrew to install whatever you like.

And the productivity apps are fantastic, many of which only exist on the Apple platforms, like Omnifocus.

So yes, I like Linux, but I'm so much more productive using a Mac these days.

So I don't really get where the OP is coming from.

Like window tracking - yes, I've used that on Linux but I actually find it equally annoying. If it's on, I don't like it. If it's off, I sometimes miss it ;-)

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

#672

Post by 9935c101ab17a66 »

paradox_sphere wrote: post #468
tristor wrote: post #448

2 of these 3 things, I have done multiple times on a Mac. Mounting NFS is natively supported in macOS and has been for nearly a decade. Mounting SSH is supported by 3rd-party tools, yes, but they're the same cross-platform 3rd-party tool you'd use in Linux... sshfs, which is built on top of FUSE, which is something you can install on a Mac and is not installed by default in most Linux distributions (although fair eno…

I created an HN account just to second this comment. I still can’t understand the thought processes that goes into similar blogs that like to trash one OS for another or another. If you like something, awesome! But making something else look bad because you didn’t like it does not make your thing any better.

The article uses the phrase “objective fact” in the introduction which, to me, is a huge red flag, and it ultimately served as an accurate predictor of what was to follow. There are plenty of things to criticize in macOS, but the complaints in this piece were inane, inaccurate or overwhelmingly nit-picky.

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

#673

Post by goosedragons »

tristor wrote: post #448

2 of these 3 things, I have done multiple times on a Mac. Mounting NFS is natively supported in macOS and has been for nearly a decade. Mounting SSH is supported by 3rd-party tools, yes, but they're the same cross-platform 3rd-party tool you'd use in Linux... sshfs, which is built on top of FUSE, which is something you can install on a Mac and is not installed by default in most Linux distributions (although fair eno…

MTP is used by basically every single Android phone and tablet. It's also used by some other devices like MP3 players. Because of the first point it's actually extremely widespread...

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

#674

Post by a10c »

officeplant wrote: post #563
larrik wrote: post #467

I switched from Linux Mint desktop to an M1 Air last year. Performance-wise, the M1 is very impressive, probably feels about 80% as fast as my 6 year old desktop (that sounds like snark, but it isn't). Meanwhile, the battery life is insane (I've never brought the charger anywhere but my desk, and will often use it for a week out and about). I opted for the Magic Keyboard and Magic Touchpad, because I had a lot of tro…

>Also, the fact that everything I want to tweak requires buying an app? I find this is often the case with MacOS, sometimes with open alternatives available. I wanted windows/linux like window snapping and found a free solution called Rectangle[0], but discovered however they do it was causing mouse lag in games. Apple dev friend investigated into it with logs from my machine and discovered they are "just not doing i…

Rectangle is fully open source, so rather than working with the community to fix the problem you're having (about 1/10th the effort you went into debugging the problem), you instead opt for a paid app? What you do if you were using Linux?

https://github.com/rxhanson/Rectangle

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

#675

Post by divan »

mmcnl wrote: post #654
divan wrote: post #543

I switched from Linux to MacOS around 14 years ago. With Linux it's not only that I could change everything (system font, acceleration of the mouse pointer etc), but I literally HAD to do it. First days after buying new laptop and installing Linux I had to spend of configuring everything – from mouse pointers to Google calendar integration, often with obscure command line or config setups. That was fun. Until I bough…

True. But have you tried the latest Ubuntu for example? Everything works out of the box on my HP EliteBook. Touchpad works great as well. I didn't need to configure anything. Time hasn't stood still. Both Windows and Linux have improved tremendously.

Sure, I have huge respect for Linux and confident that it provides decent experience nowadays. If I have had extra money, I would definitely buy some latest ultrabook and install one of the latest Linux distros. Not to much incentive though, as I'm a bit locked into Apple ecosystem now (M1 is sick, insane comfort with stuff like airdrop, copy/pasting text from phone/tabled into laptop, iCloud etc).

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

#676

Post by adamomada »

AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #578
haneul wrote: post #472

Earlier quoted context omitted.

defaults write .GlobalPreferences com.apple.mouse.scaling -1 Works on my M1 Max well enough to be satisfied with my mouse in SC2.

In the before-times, in the long-long-ago, we could modify basic system settings from a nice discoverable GUI control panel. Why is the future year of 2022, no doubt filled with flying cars and personal jetpacks, continually found to be unable to deliver features we took for granted in 1995?

No post body was provided.

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

#677

Post by AshamedCaptain »

sgjohnson wrote: post #499
AshamedCaptain wrote: post #436

Earlier quoted context omitted.

osxfuse/macfuse requires a kernel extension which is a _lot_ of troubles on newer macOS and apple is likely to forbid completely any day.

> apple is likely to forbid completely any day. You can always disable SIP and load unsigned kernel extensions, if they refuse to sign. If you’re a power user, you’ve probably already disabled SIP. A couple of releases ago files like /etc/hosts and /etc/sudoers were protected by SIP. That’s not the case anymore, though.

It's like claiming you can always install unsigned drivers on Windows if you disable secure boot. Sure _I_ can do it. No one else can/will.

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

#678

Post by adamomada »

jraph wrote: post #285
petercooper wrote: post #231

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…

MTP is necessary because Android uses ext4 (or maybe some use f2fs now) and so a Windows host would not be able to read the filesystem, as a mass storage device

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

#679

Post by pfranz »

goosedragons wrote: post #664
jkubicek wrote: post #605

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My secret to happiness on a Mac: focus your energy on figuring out how the designers want you to use a tool. Don't fight the design, work with it. Don't change the defaults, live with them. Some folks love to fiddle with settings and tweak configs to get everything just right... but this is a recipe for disappointment when an upgrade removes the secret config you found or hard-codes a setting that was previously avai…

Some of the defaults are just plain bad and assume you never want or need to use another computer. The scroll wheel thing is particularly bad. Like imagine if Apple decided all their laptops now were going to come with Dvorak keyboards instead of Qwerty. "Sorry Gram, I need to change your keyboard layout before I can solve your computer problem". Don't mess with users' muscle memories for your design for literally no…

Honestly, I think Apple just forgets people use a mouse. The default trackpad scroll direction matches iPads and touchscreens. Their oversight was coupling trackpad and mouse wheel scroll direction. Until I had a job where I needed both I didn't really care...and I found an open source utility that addressed it[1].

[1] https://github.com/Caldis/Mos

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

#680

Post by ask_b123 »

rsync wrote: post #639
Klonoar wrote: post #606

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh, wow. I thought I was going crazy but this comment makes me think maybe not. When I was skimming this thread last night I was positive this was an option at one point but when I went into System Preferences to look I could no longer find it. Was making me lose my mind. Or maybe we’re at a Berenstein/Berenstain situation here.

Well, again, I cannot look as I do not have any OSX running later than El Capitan ... but if anyone wants to poke around accessibility settings and look ...

I couldn't find the option but I did find out that I could right click by smiling, among other things.

EDIT: Although I have to admit that I'm not sure what focus-follows-mouse means. Do the windows come to the foreground when hovering over then?

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