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Back on Linux (after one year of Apple and OS X)

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Re: Back on Linux (after one year of Apple and OS X)

#221

Post by ldh »

_delirium wrote: post #32
CJefferson wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel you are being unfair about the uninformed rant. Picking at a couple of things I know about: 1) I've tried installing both Macports and homebrew, and some utils did not work, as whichever got put in the path first, confused the other. I suppose I could have made a seperate symlink directory, for just the binaries I wanted. 2) I found 'brew install coreutils' broke some build scripts , which expected proper mac…

I agree on package management; I haven't used Homebrew, but I definitely find MacPorts breakage much more often than I find Debian breakage, even in Debian sid/unstable.

My experience with Homebrew has been a world of improvement over MacPorts. Every time I'd try to update things with MacPorts I might as well have started filing an issue ahead of time. Homebrew rarely requires additional intervention.

Re: Back on Linux (after one year of Apple and OS X)

#222

Post by sophacles »

chrisrhoden wrote: post #141
_delirium wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree on package management; I haven't used Homebrew, but I definitely find MacPorts breakage much more often than I find Debian breakage, even in Debian sid/unstable.

I have literally never had a problem with Homebrew.

I have had a few, but largely they were easy to resolve. One thing I dislike about about homebrew over apt (and similar) is that it requires a fairly unpolished workflow to do personal mods and patches on a package, while the apt tool-chain allows for this stuff in a fairly polished (if idiosyncratic) way.

Re: Back on Linux (after one year of Apple and OS X)

#223

Post by rbanffy »

calloc wrote: post #209
jvm wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who administers a lot of Macs and a few LInux machines, package management on Macs is simply indefensibly bad. There is no getting around it. Apple chose not to provide this as a service to their users. I use a Mac laptop and would never have written this post. But I don't have to pretend that the package installation setup on OSX is remotely acceptable. It is horrible. Stuff breaks or won't install all th…

Apple's users are not people that dive into the command line. Apple's users are people that open the App Store and have their "package management" solution.

It's been a long, long time command line tools are not required to use package management. Synaptic is a very easy interface to add new software and Ubuntu's Software Center, while a bit rough around the edges, is a very App Store like experience.

Besides that, package management also offer an easy way to keep your system updated. On a Mac, App Store excepted, there is no central way to keep your system up-to-date - Software Update will update Apple's software (often by downloading huge packages) and you are on your own to update whatever is left. Red Hat and Debian mastered this in the early 2000's.

Re: Back on Linux (after one year of Apple and OS X)

#224

Post by rbanffy »

ciparis wrote: post #180

That's a pretty self-indulgent rant. I've got nothing against the ultimate decision by any means, but that decision is being rationalized -- and rationalized poorly. 8GB of RAM costs $39. If the OPs time is worth so little that they'd rather stew for 5-10 minutes every day waiting for repair permissions to finish, then that's simply their choice. FWIW, I haven't done anything like that on my 4GB MB Air since I bought…

8GB would reduce battery life and, in some computers, it's not even an option. My Dell notebook is maxed out at 4. And I don't want the extra memory because I prefer long battery life.

Re: Back on Linux (after one year of Apple and OS X)

#225

Post by mturmon »

slowpoke wrote: post #150
RBerenguel wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the problem is that you used OS X for a year. I've been using my Mac for 4 years, and Linux for another 4. And I have Python (in fact I have at the same time Python 2.5, 2.6, 2.7, 3 and 3.1 for testing purposes), I have installed so many packages I already lost the count. You only need to be sure the path is correct when doing it. And I have 2 Gigs of RAM. Mac OS can be a bit hungry, but there's an "easy" sol…

>Closing unused applications. That's not a solution, that's a workaround. I'm sitting here with a 4GB RAM machine running Arch Linux with XMonad. I usually run the following applications in day to day usage: - Firefox Nightly with 50-100 tabs (largest memory hog, the rest doesn't even come close) - Thunderbird - Pidgin - XChat - smplayer, which I usually keep open - deluge - mpd + ncmpcpp - half to one dozen of termi…

No. Re-read the comments above about the OS X caching setup. Rather than have a bunch of memory marked "free", it is using this RAM as caches.

Re: Back on Linux (after one year of Apple and OS X)

#226

Post by rbanffy »

zbuc wrote: post #187
Hackura wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're not really fair. Yes, it's true that osx has 3rd-party-package-manager. But it's also true that they can be very complicated, or simply broken. The easy'ness of a good linux-distribution is just not possibly with osx. The days where you need to hack yourself something togehter, just to get some basic applications, are gone...at least on linux.

As someone who uses both Linux(most familiar with Fedora and Ubuntu) and OS X regularly I have to say I completely disagree with you. My Linux systems are always a headache. Last week I pulled a recommended patch from the system updater and it broke Xorg. I had to remove it by hand and reinstall it.

The last time my X broke was a couple years back. Ubuntu pushed a defective update. Before that, the last time something like that happened was when I was using Debian Sid.

Breaking X is something you expect with Sid. And if you are running it, you re supposed to be able to fix it and submit a patch.

If you are breaking X, you are doing something wrong.

Re: Back on Linux (after one year of Apple and OS X)

#227

Post by Bud »

mrich wrote: post #89

Regarding hardware quality: "...why there's no PC manufacturers that would have the same overall quality of the hardware." In my experience, business ThinkPads beat MacBooks by a mile for working (e.g. programming). I am surprised to see so many coders use MacBooks. Thinkpads have better ergonomics, are more robust and better performance/configurable hardware (e.g. RAM).

This is a content-free comment. You claim ThinkPads have better ergonomics, but you say nothing about why. You say they are more robust (more robust than a solid aluminum shell? Not in my experience), but you don't back it up. You claim better performance and say something vague about RAM, which is similarly unsubstantiated.

The IBM has a vastly inferior, smaller, less responsive trackpad, inferior display, inferior overall fit and finish of the case, inferior trackpad buttons.

You'll have to do better than this.

Re: Back on Linux (after one year of Apple and OS X)

#228

Post by jgw »

eropple wrote: post #162
kahawe wrote: post #143

Just because homebrew wasn't your thing doesn't make macs or OSX "stupid". And I used to do Java development in eclipse/netbeans with db, ide and appserv all running on one machine that had 2GB and I never had any issues... memory hogs hello. I have and am developing on nix, OS X and windos and I can still simply not understand what this guy is all about - basically it comes down to: for his style of work, some nix d…

> And I used to do Java development in eclipse/netbeans with db, ide and appserv all running on one machine that had 2GB and I never had any issues... memory hogs hello. This matches my own experience pretty well. I have a MBP with 8GB of RAM and a Linux box with 16GB of RAM at work for Java development, but that's because our Java web app at work requires 7GB+ (!) to get off the ground. Most of my own personal devel…

I'm rather off-topic, but your monitor resolution comment made me smile.

I'm currently trying to squeeze the last dying days out of my 15.4" Dell Latitude D810 with its expansive 1920x1200 native res. It's a 7 year old machine, but I can't stand the thought of losing it, because the only laptop I know of with that resolution today is the massive MBP 17".

16x10 aspect ratio is pretty much a thing of the past now. It's a sad feeling to think that my next laptop will have lower resolution than what I've had since 2003.

Re: Back on Linux (after one year of Apple and OS X)

#229

Post by jff »

sho_hn wrote: post #6
gst wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why can't you just take a standard Ubuntu and install the KDE packages? As far as I understand Kubuntu it's exactly the same as vanilla Ubuntu, but just uses different default packages.

This is true, but realize that the Kubuntu team is maintaining those packages, so "taking a standard Ubuntu and installing the KDE packages" does nothing to remove one's dependence on them. For why this still is nothing to immediately panic about see my earlier reply to parent.

As long as the upstream Debian guys keep maintaining them, you should be able to do KDE pretty well still, right?

Re: Back on Linux (after one year of Apple and OS X)

#230

Post by alextingle »

cs702 wrote: post #126

I agree with the author: Apple has by far the best hardware in the PC business -- here's a great example of the extremes they go to in order to manufacture superior machines: http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/apples-supplychain-secr... Alas, Apple's #1 target user is not the developer; it's Aunt Tillie. And this shows in the choices they make for OS X. IMO Linux distributions have vastly superior software installa…

I think Apple's hardware is mediocre at best. Yes, it's way better than the vast majority of bargain basement plastic-shelled PC laptops, but it's nowhere near as good as Lenovo (ex IBM) Thinkpad X series.
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