481–490 of 490 posts
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Macs are far better for power users now than they were 10 years ago. They're also faster!
"Better" is highly dubious. Less user-serviceable, forced to endure lead times at Apple Stores to procure parts. Death of macOS Server. Shall I continue?
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Headset does not work on Linux: “This is crap, I’ll tell everybody I know to stay away from Linux!” Headset does not work on Windows: “This is crap, I’ll tell everybody I know to stay away from these headphones!”
I’m actually trying to convince my current employer to let us use Linux laptops instead of windows ones (with Linux vms for all development). My comment was in reply to someone saying Linux just works without needing to tinker, and as much as I’d prefer to be using a Linux based laptop, those are 3 things I have spent countless hours tinkering with to try and get working without success.
If not, then why do you do that for Linux?
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I’m actually trying to convince my current employer to let us use Linux laptops instead of windows ones (with Linux vms for all development). My comment was in reply to someone saying Linux just works without needing to tinker, and as much as I’d prefer to be using a Linux based laptop, those are 3 things I have spent countless hours tinkering with to try and get working without success.
I assume that there is reasonable PC laptops out there which also have problems with “ power management, screen sharing […] and certain Bluetooth headsets ” …on Windows. If you were to encounter such a laptop, would you also consider Windows to “not work” with these three things? If not, then why do you do that for Linux?
I don’t encounter such laptops except when they run Linux.
Other OSes have their own litany of issues, however the topic under discussion was how well Linux just worked without tinkering, and these things are still pain points for Linux that I don’t encounter on other platforms.
This is not to imply that Linux is bad out that you shouldn’t use it, just that it is still not tinker free.
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Have you ever heard of something called "hyperbole"?
Just trying to help really. Using the wrong products has done a great deal of damage to me. Using windows instead of a nix back in the day blocked my progress. Android shares a number of windows like traits. Being a commercial imitation of an Apple product for instance. Or serving the user last. Or just being crap software full of bugs. If you can't listen, your punishment is to keep using imitation product. Harsh. B…
The only OS I don't have much experience with is iOS. I've stayed with Android the whole time - largely with Samsung. A high end Samsung phone is an absolute powerhouse, while also looking pretty sleek, if I may say so. I personally think that iOS and iPhones are quite limiting in certain ways. But I would never knock on someone for using iOS. The OS and the phone look very nice and trendy, the whole experience is very well optimized and, at least in the U.S., you'll get certain social perks by having one. Even for older folks, it could be a great choice, because their grandkids will be able to fix most problems that could arise in their phones.
Let me revisit a prior point about iPhones - they're not very customizable. On my Samsung, I have a number of customizations: a custom "launcher" ("Nova"), which enables me to tweak things like icon sizes, density, and many many other things (my favorite feature is to use a custom icon set). I could easily keep naming countless other aspects that Android allows me to customize, even if I only customize a few of them. The default experience of a Samsung phone is quite solid, other than maybe having a few too many Samsung-specific apps pre-installed (though at least I never buy through a carrier, so I don't have to worry about any of that bloat). But it's very trivial to nerf them by disabling them or even simply uninstalling them using "pm-uninstall" through ADB. For me, it takes maybe 20 minutes total to apply various tweaks I like to a brand new phone. I have them all written down neatly and they haven't changed much for a while, so applying those customizations is not bother for me at all. But for others? It would be an unimaginable punishment. Many people prefer to buy an iPhone not only for all the benefits I listed out earlier, but also because it is more restrictive. Because of this, you don't have to deal with any of the 'pain' of trying to decide what should be customized and whether you should do so in the first place. But would I judge anyone for taking either route: 1) a Samsung that you customize to a reasonable extent - without rooting or unlocking the bootloader - vs 2) an iPhone that is effectively at stock settings, other than the apps you've downloaded? No, I absolutely would not. Which brings me to my last point..
I think we live in amazing times in terms of technology (aside from the obvious issues related to privacy and social media, which are discussed at great lengths here and elsewhere). We have many choices in terms of hardware and software and our devices can do things we could hardly fathom a few decades ago. I rather arbitrarily chose to focus on smart phones in my rant, but I could have easily discussed laptops, desktops, servers, or some other type of device to make the same point. So I say, "Live and let live."
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Hear hear for Homebrew, who in my mind is single-handedly responsible for getting Apple to stop shipping old versions of scripting languages. We can soon, with Ventura, link the Brew version of Python, and Ruby, and everything. Hear hear !
Can you expand on the Ventura news please? A quick google revealed nothing…
You have to install them yourself, just like Java was removed a while ago. Honestly it’s great news, since Apple has always shipped very old versions, and you always had to be careful when linking against the system versions. Ruby is particularly batshit insane to manage multiple versions, at least for me.
I absolutely believe that the ascendancy of Homebrew is single-handedly responsible for the removal of those languages. Homebrew is magnificent, and with its recent change of the default install location to the correct Unix location, it’s a nearly perfect package manager for macOS.
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I assume that there is reasonable PC laptops out there which also have problems with “ power management, screen sharing […] and certain Bluetooth headsets ” …on Windows. If you were to encounter such a laptop, would you also consider Windows to “not work” with these three things? If not, then why do you do that for Linux?
> If you were to encounter such a laptop I don’t encounter such laptops except when they run Linux. Other OSes have their own litany of issues, however the topic under discussion was how well Linux just worked without tinkering, and these things are still pain points for Linux that I don’t encounter on other platforms. This is not to imply that Linux is bad out that you shouldn’t use it, just that it is still not tin…
My point is that yes you do. You just immediately attribute the problem to the other parts, not to Windows. Myriads of Windows users everywhere have all sorts of problems with all sorts of hardware, and everyone just accepts it as some sort of problem that they’re having. But a problem where Linux is involved somewhere? Then it’s suddenly Linux which is prone to problems.
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I installed Ubuntu on my Acer laptop a few years ago. Fans didn't work after waking from sleep, so it'd overheat. Wifi was finicky. I didn't even try Bluetooth. Couldn't run Adobe Flash and thus couldn't watch the World Cup on the only legit website to watch in the US (Fox Sports). Yeah, "not the OS's fault" etc. But Windows did all of that fine.
Windows did all of that fine because the manufacturer made the machine with the intent of running windows and shipped it with drivers for its particular hardware. A System76 machine would be the same with linux, apart from the flash thing, so you aren't really saying anything meaningful about any operating system.
But speaking of laptops made for Linux, a lot of modern Lenovo Thinkpads have unpatched issues with Bluetooth audio, and my coworkers are constantly fighting with that. So even us techies have an easier time with Macs.
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Moved on to where? Windows has adverts in the start menu! Desktop Linux GUI is still painful and really only suitable for those who love to tinker. Since I moved to Mac from Windows I’m thankful for macOS even if it could be better, it’s still much more usable than the alternatives. I find myself spending more time on my professional work and less time fixing driver issues or fighting annoying in OS ads.
Linux has had an arguably FAR superior UX to Windows since Vista. Mac and Windows both have some great "power user" features - but I think for the average person, Ubuntu is far superior for usability. I remember 10 years ago when my friends would use my Linux laptop and expect it to be impossible and couldn't believe how easy it was to use and figure out. Maybe for a few rare laptops that have perfect driver support,…
Has had like 20 different maybe-superior UXes, often 2-3 for a single distro... which in a way is worse than one bad one that you get to know well. Like, I logged into my Linux machine at work one day, and the entire UI was suddenly different, ???
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Moved on to where? Windows has adverts in the start menu! Desktop Linux GUI is still painful and really only suitable for those who love to tinker. Since I moved to Mac from Windows I’m thankful for macOS even if it could be better, it’s still much more usable than the alternatives. I find myself spending more time on my professional work and less time fixing driver issues or fighting annoying in OS ads.
I've rarely found myself getting all that tied up in solving driver issues in linux especially after the first week of ownership of a new machine. Fighting annoying in OS ads, again, really a first week of ownership sort of thing. Linux I find what's painful about it is that some things will always be kind of broken, for me it was bluetooth, I used bluetooth all the time, it did work, but I had to fight it into submi…
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> If you were to encounter such a laptop I don’t encounter such laptops except when they run Linux. Other OSes have their own litany of issues, however the topic under discussion was how well Linux just worked without tinkering, and these things are still pain points for Linux that I don’t encounter on other platforms. This is not to imply that Linux is bad out that you shouldn’t use it, just that it is still not tin…
> Other OSes have their own litany of issues, however the topic under discussion was how well Linux just worked without tinkering, and these things are still pain points for Linux that I don’t encounter on other platforms. My point is that yes you do . You just immediately attribute the problem to the other parts, not to Windows. Myriads of Windows users everywhere have all sorts of problems with all sorts of hardwar…
No I don't.