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Sick of Windows but can't afford a Mac? The cynic's guide to desktop Linux

theregister.com

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Re: Sick of Windows but can't afford a Mac? The cynic's guide to desktop Linux

#31

Post by kitsunesoba »

jitl wrote: post #22

I think my ideal Linux OS is probably Ubuntu/CentOS + something like macOS’s .app bundle file format for distributing end-user applications. When running personal Linux, I want things to generally “just work”, which means staying away from the distro package managers on Debian/Redhat derivatives. Given enough “hobby time” I manage to twist my base system’s packages into pretzels and/or break workflow critical softwar…

>I think my ideal Linux OS is probably Ubuntu/CentOS + something like macOS’s .app bundle file format for distributing end-user applications.

> When running personal Linux, I want things to generally “just work”, which means staying away from the distro package managers on Debian/Redhat derivatives. Given enough “hobby time” I manage to twist my base system’s packages into pretzels and/or break workflow critical software by noodling around. Back in the day I inflicted a lot of pain on myself trying to get newer Apache running on older Debian or similar. Third-party package repos, PPAs, or installing from source are all false prophets that eventually swamp the system in strangeness.

I’ve also had this experience, and would also appreciate a more direct analogue of macOS .app packages. Package manager integration for those .app packages would be cool though — it’d be like brew cask where you’ve got .app packages managed by homebrew, where the worst case scenario is a single app getting botched instead of accidentally breaking sound or something.

Re: Sick of Windows but can't afford a Mac? The cynic's guide to desktop Linux

#32

Post by tootie »

iLoveOncall wrote: post #2

I honestly cannot believe that a person that uses both Windows and Mac frequently in 2022 would choose Mac if they had to choose a single platform. Not even a developer. MacOS is a masterclass in bad design and lackluster features. I always considered buying a Mac but was always hesitant to change. Once I got one for work I swore to never ever spend a dime on a Mac. People that will disagree haven't used Windows in y…

I literally only choose Mac because I'm a developer. Why? Because it is physically impossible to build and test iOS apps or run Safari without one. So long as a huge percentage of our users are on iPhone, we are obligated via Apple's relentless vertical integration to buy macs.

Re: Sick of Windows but can't afford a Mac? The cynic's guide to desktop Linux

#33

Post by raesene9 »

paol wrote: post #17

> It is a truth universally acknowledged that all operating systems suck. This could be engraved in stone. I know the title isn't really serious, but not being able to afford a Mac is not a good reason to use Linux. Use what you want/need/feel comfortable in, otherwise the experience will be miserable.

Well it has been immortalised in song https://youtu.be/YRlPTbKHIPQ

Re: Sick of Windows but can't afford a Mac? The cynic's guide to desktop Linux

#34

Post by thetinguy »

throw93232 wrote: post #20

Macbook air is like $1000. People can afford it. Problem is shitty hardware. SSD soldered to motherboard, bad cooling, no touchscreen, broken keyboard, no way to replace battery...

The MacBook Air has an SOC. It’s literally not possible to socket the ram. It’s all one big package.

Re: Sick of Windows but can't afford a Mac? The cynic's guide to desktop Linux

#35

Post by emptyfile »

throw93232 wrote: post #20

Macbook air is like $1000. People can afford it. Problem is shitty hardware. SSD soldered to motherboard, bad cooling, no touchscreen, broken keyboard, no way to replace battery...

The cheapest MacBook Pro I could find in my country is like 3500 USD and the cheapest Air is like 2000.

I maybe saw like 5 macbooks in 30 years of living here (in a poor EU country, so much richer then the average citizen of the world).

Re: Sick of Windows but can't afford a Mac? The cynic's guide to desktop Linux

#36

Post by sascha_sl »

nix23 wrote: post #23

Terrible article with lot's of errors: >So it bought CentOS, then killed it, as it did with CoreOS https://www.centos.org/ https://getfedora.org/en/coreos?stream=stable >SUSE Linux Enterprise – which is to say it has a painfully slow release cycle. 1 year is painfull? >"Tumbleweed", has a rolling release model, which means the exciting potential of breaking changes every single day. No, that's why tumbleweed is not e…

Did you really miss RedHat killing CentOS 8? The support was supposed to last to 2029 if I remember correctly. It was cut to end of 2021. Stream is a different product for a different audience.

And CoreOS from the company CoreOS is actually dead. Fedora CoreOS is built from scratch. It's very similar to Fedora IoT (runs rpm-ostree, podman, ignition), but it downstreams to RHCOS, which you only get with OpenShift. Neither resemble CoreOS. The biggest fork of real CoreOS is Flatcar Linux.

Also, Leap minor upgrades do not come with upstream version bumps, so in a sense, yes, the release cycle of Leap and SLES is 3-4 years. RHEL 8 and RHEL 8.1 are not different releases either.

Re: Sick of Windows but can't afford a Mac? The cynic's guide to desktop Linux

#37

Post by kitsunesoba »

throw93232 wrote: post #20

Macbook air is like $1000. People can afford it. Problem is shitty hardware. SSD soldered to motherboard, bad cooling, no touchscreen, broken keyboard, no way to replace battery...

Cooling isn’t really an issue on the M1 models. They don’t run particularly hot and don’t throttle unless you run them full-bore (e.g. synthetic benchmarks with all cores maxxed out) for at least 10 minutes straight, which would be a pretty uncommon thing for the vast majority of the target market of the Air.

It’s battery life pretty hard to compete with too. Apple claims 17 hours with typical usage and that mostly holds up in testing.

Re: Sick of Windows but can't afford a Mac? The cynic's guide to desktop Linux

#38

Post by GeekyBear »

throw93232 wrote: post #20

Macbook air is like $1000. People can afford it. Problem is shitty hardware. SSD soldered to motherboard, bad cooling, no touchscreen, broken keyboard, no way to replace battery...

> Problem is shitty hardware.

Lifetime Windows users do not agree.

>Apple M1 MacBook Air - Long Term User Review

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_i_XWx05FTw

>11 Things My Macbook Does Better Than My Windows Desktop

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q8Xjz5v0jDw

Re: Sick of Windows but can't afford a Mac? The cynic's guide to desktop Linux

#39

Post by timbit42 »

leephillips wrote: post #6

I’ve installed Debian on several different kinds of servers and personal computers and it’s been great. The political drama doesn’t affect me. The versions with nonfree drivers, it’s true, are not linked from the Debian website, but there is no problem in finding them. Software versions are not too old, and if I need a more recent release of a program that what’s in the package manager, so far I’ve had no problem fin…

Linux Mint is also a great option that uses dpkg/apt. Not issues with non-free drivers and also no SNAPs.

I also previously used Xubuntu and Kubuntu but now have Debian on my desktop and Linux Mint on my laptop and media center, and my wife's and parent's PCs.

Re: Sick of Windows but can't afford a Mac? The cynic's guide to desktop Linux

#40

Post by Nursie »

leephillips wrote: post #6

I’ve installed Debian on several different kinds of servers and personal computers and it’s been great. The political drama doesn’t affect me. The versions with nonfree drivers, it’s true, are not linked from the Debian website, but there is no problem in finding them. Software versions are not too old, and if I need a more recent release of a program that what’s in the package manager, so far I’ve had no problem fin…

Equally though, you can use snaps if you want to, as I do on my Debian workstation for a few pieces like IntelliJ.

Debian's amazing. I've been using it on and off for more that 25 years now. I've used it on x86/amd64, ARM, Sparc and even S390. I've tried Ubuntu, I've worked with various flavours of RH and SLES. But I keep coming back to Debian.

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