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I Miss BSD/Linux

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Re: I Miss BSD/Linux

#101

Post by ginko »

I mainly use linux day to day for a good 20+ years now but also own a macbook air for a couple of years (and now have a work macbook. I have to say I just don't see how it's supposed to be so much better than linux. Working with it feels like having one arm bound behind my back. Most things work, but everything takes twice as many clicks and some things are just not configurable (There's no mouse follows focus at all for instance).

Open source software has to be installed with separate package managers like homebrew that don't properly integrate into the overall system like a distro package manager does. (it also requires the xcode toolchain which is a >1GB update every month or so)

Re: I Miss BSD/Linux

#102

Post by vundercind »

cqqxo4zV46cp wrote: post #25
hnlmorg wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Each year I spend close to zero hours dealing with edge case bugs and incompatibilities in Linux and BSD despite all of my personal devices running one form of FOSS OS or another. My personal laptop is ArchLinux and it definitely took longer to set up than macOS would have, but it’s been just as rock solid since. In fact, perhaps ironically, I’ve had more problems with my work MacBook Pro than I have with my personal…

20 years brings you to 2004. You’ve either being dishonestly hyperbolic, or your experience is so slim or insanely lucky that it’s not useful as a representative account. That’s TWENTY YEARS. Not a chance in hell. Sometimes I think that desktop Linux users get so used the background noise of system maintenance that they forget that they’re even doing it. I say this as an ex heavy Linux desktop user. Distributions I u…

> Sometimes I think that desktop Linux users get so used the background noise of system maintenance that they forget that they’re even doing it.

This was me for a decade. Since I left, any time I check in on Linux it’s like “how did I live like this?!” I was absolutely blind to how many little things I had to do to keep it happy, or how often I was avoiding using my computer ways that should have been fine but that bugs had trained me not to. I still have to force myself to remember drag-n-drop for anything other than moving files around is an option, and will probably work fine and do something reasonable on the platform I use now—though to be fair Windows also helped train me to avoid that particular thing, not just Linux. Took me more than a year to stop feeling anxious when I just closed my laptop without first doing some manual dance to be sure it went to sleep.

Re: I Miss BSD/Linux

#103

Post by maximilianburke »

I hear this. I have Asahi sitting on a partition on my Mac and I'm itching to make it my primary. Once microphone support lands, I'll be able to move over. It's a real pain right now to have to reboot in order to join video calls, heh.

Re: I Miss BSD/Linux

#104

Post by babypuncher »

sumuyuda wrote: post #75
Philpax wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Apple Silicon MacBooks are very, very good. They're efficient, fast, well-built, have great peripherals, don't power themselves back on when you close the lid, and are generally the best laptops I have ever used. The worst part of them is macOS, and I hope that either Asahi Linux can get all of the hardware working correctly or the other laptop manufacturers can get their act together. Unfortunately, I suspect th…

There’s still no USB-A support, so the dongle book was never truly fixed.

I blame perhipheral manufacturers for clinging to USB-A for no reason. It's been 8 years, please let this connector die already.

Re: I Miss BSD/Linux

#105

Post by ginko »

bozey07 wrote: post #5

> Why doesn’t a great MacBook alternative exist? I really don't get this either. Every laptop I've looked at has some wart somewhere - battery life, webcam, structural integrity, display, CPU, temperatures, speakers, IO, repairability (not that Macbooks are good here either). Some of these things aren't even hard to get right. It's like laptop manufacturers just don't care.

Why even bother with working on a laptop and not just get a proper desktop workstation PC?

Re: I Miss BSD/Linux

#106

Post by yjftsjthsd-h »

cqqxo4zV46cp wrote: post #25
hnlmorg wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Each year I spend close to zero hours dealing with edge case bugs and incompatibilities in Linux and BSD despite all of my personal devices running one form of FOSS OS or another. My personal laptop is ArchLinux and it definitely took longer to set up than macOS would have, but it’s been just as rock solid since. In fact, perhaps ironically, I’ve had more problems with my work MacBook Pro than I have with my personal…

20 years brings you to 2004. You’ve either being dishonestly hyperbolic, or your experience is so slim or insanely lucky that it’s not useful as a representative account. That’s TWENTY YEARS. Not a chance in hell. Sometimes I think that desktop Linux users get so used the background noise of system maintenance that they forget that they’re even doing it. I say this as an ex heavy Linux desktop user. Distributions I u…

> Sometimes I think that desktop Linux users get so used the background noise of system maintenance that they forget that they’re even doing it.

That's probably true, but it's true of everything; the stupid papercuts that Linux users are used to are different from the stupid papercuts that Windows users are used to, but it is not clear to me that they're worse.

Re: I Miss BSD/Linux

#107

Post by babypuncher »

pjmlp wrote: post #16

Around Windows 7 timeframe, I came to peace with FOSS UNIX clones never going to be as mature as proprietary OSes on laptops. Sure, the situation has improved a lot, but they still require compromises of not having everything supported like on desktop PCs, even when buying from Linux OEMs, my experience hasn't been that great. For a brief period, netbooks seemed to be on track, but then they suffered multiple attacks…

It makes sense when you follow the money.

Tons of resources are poured into Linux development by private companies who effectively dictate what features get prioritized. These organizations aren't using Linux as a consumer desktop OS, they're using it for servers, supercomputers, embedded devices and other similar jobs. This is where all the investment goes, so features that support these use cases are by far the most polished.

Re: I Miss BSD/Linux

#108

Post by e12e »

cqqxo4zV46cp wrote: post #25
hnlmorg wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Each year I spend close to zero hours dealing with edge case bugs and incompatibilities in Linux and BSD despite all of my personal devices running one form of FOSS OS or another. My personal laptop is ArchLinux and it definitely took longer to set up than macOS would have, but it’s been just as rock solid since. In fact, perhaps ironically, I’ve had more problems with my work MacBook Pro than I have with my personal…

20 years brings you to 2004. You’ve either being dishonestly hyperbolic, or your experience is so slim or insanely lucky that it’s not useful as a representative account. That’s TWENTY YEARS. Not a chance in hell. Sometimes I think that desktop Linux users get so used the background noise of system maintenance that they forget that they’re even doing it. I say this as an ex heavy Linux desktop user. Distributions I u…

According to Wikipedia [1], Debian Woody came out in 2002, Sarge in 2005 and Etch in 2007.

The first Ubuntu lts was 2006.

This timeframe sounds about right to me - that's when things started to get better than windows hw support in some sense.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debian_version_history

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ubuntu_version_history

Re: I Miss BSD/Linux

#109

Post by tracker1 »

jwells89 wrote: post #94
mattpallissard wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> reduced by 30% on Linux with default settings With the default settings being the key there. I had the exact same laptop and was able to get idle power down under 3W. But to your point, that's a fair amount of friction for someone that understands all the moving points. It's insurmountable for the average user.

Power/battery tuning differing between manufacturers, models, and even specific SKUs within models is perhaps the greatest hurdle to be overcome. It makes baking those settings into distros by default impractical and means there isn’t an easy string of commands that anybody can run to improve battery life on their Linux laptop.

One thing that bit me, was trying to get a trackpad working on a xxx-xx17-xxx model (17 for 17" display)... out of a lark, I tried searching for xxx-xx15-xxx and found the answer... I added a comment on the 17" model number to help anyone else that may not have otherwise seen the page. It was adding a few options to the boot loader that fixed it.

I've also seen issues with wifi drivers, but those are usually fixed booting up wired with a widely supported USB to ethernet dongle, not too bad, but still annoying.

For me, that is about it for my biggest issues, aside from getting an RX 5700 at launch, where the drivers didn't stabilize until the next LTS releases (about 6 months later). I'd run alpha/beta kernels, which generally worked, and even tried Arch (btw) and both I got a black screen after updates. I went back to windows for a while, and then switched my main boot back to linux and haven't looked back after the Ads in start menu search results on my Windows Insiders install.

For the most part, I've had very few issues in general, and only on initial setup. I've mostly used PopOS, and been exceedingly happy with it.

Re: I Miss BSD/Linux

#110

Post by tracker1 »

dmz73 wrote: post #71
DoingIsLearning wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Debian: something I can trust, that gets out of my way, and changes slowly. Wholeheartedly agree. Debian has won the distro wars in my opinion. Their massive effort in safety and not breaking things means I can use stable as a "it just works" tool and focus on my actual work/fun.

Unfortunately, Debian is like Linux on desktop, always 80% there. You just cannot trust that plain Debian will get it right, even if it works that one time you install it. Two most recent issues that made me change to something else: 1) VLC in Debian is modified so it cannot play RTSP streams so you cannot watch video from your security camera. Windows VLC wroks. Flatpak VLC works. 2) Debian kernel update in point re…

I've been pretty happy with Pop (downstream from Debian/Ubuntu) myself. Not sure why it doesn't get much love compared to say Mint.
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