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I Miss BSD/Linux

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Re: I Miss BSD/Linux

#241

Post by skydhash »

gizmo wrote: post #218
skydhash wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Linux Mint is basically what Windows should have been. An OS for productive use. Defaults are good enough that you’re almost never tempted to change them. Just install your software and do work. XP (SP3?) was it and Win7 was it too. Everything after that is fighting against you. macOS is close too, but there’s a couple of painful points. Some basic windows management (solved by rectangle), iCloud doing too many thing…

Font rendering (kerning specifically) is horrific. Scaling for 4k monitors doesn't work right. Multimonitor doesn't work properly. Paddings/margins, font sizes, and icons are all over the place and lack consistency/polish. It also doesn't have a reliable backup system included (rsync is not reliable; backups should use snapshots) and you can't roll back system updates if something breaks (which will happen). Bluetoot…

Linux is a power user tool and I think that's great. Linux Mint and others are trying to lower the learning curve, but they don't have the same resources that Microsoft and Apple have. But they do manage to do well.

You can create a distro that do all these things well. But that would require coordination across the board and result in something close to Android or Chromebooks.

> Bluetooth, audio and suspend/resume still don't work consistently.

That's a hardware problem. Most manufactures don't bother building drivers for linux or releasing the specifications for their devices.

You can't do rally without knowledge in cars. Linux for the most part is raw computing so having some computer knowledge is a necessity.

Re: I Miss BSD/Linux

#242

Post by wkat4242 »

I moved from macOS to FreeBSD because I couldn't handle the lock-in, opinionated design and the feeling of not being in control of my computer.

Despite what Michal Sapka says, it was just the thing for me. In fact most of the drawbacks he mentions are advantages to me. Which is probably the point behind his article. I really like that my OS is not changing stuff with every update as even Linux vendors do now.

Re: I Miss BSD/Linux

#243

Post by rpigab »

MathMonkeyMan wrote: post #231
rpigab wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a T480/Ubuntu-Gnome at work and a T480/Debian-KDE at home, both work fantastic, however for some reason the Lenovo Universal USB-C docks with 2 1080p external displays connected (1 HDMI and 1 DP) cause a lot of Gnome crashes when docking, and when it happens, I lose external displays and/or the usb keyboard, and have to spend 15 minutes fiddling around deactivating and reactivating in settings, or unplugging t…

Fair points. I've had some frustrations with bluetooth; but, to be fair, same things happen for me on my Windows box (can't use high quality playback and mic at the same time). Gaming I don't even attempt on Linux, though I've met two or three people now who are convinced you can 100% do it these days with Wine-based platforms and the right drivers. Docks, in my limited experience, are a shit show on any system. I us…

Nice to know MacBooks also can have this kind of problems, I was under the impression that if you paid the price, walled gardens and controlled hardware would make life easy.

Computers are hard. Could be worse, though, in alternate universes, major OSes never agreed on USB and other standards.

Re: I Miss BSD/Linux

#244

Post by TheRoque »

fragmede wrote: post #33
TheRoque wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry, but this is still true IMO. For example no good driver is available for the GTX 1080 which will result in a buggy experience. Not even talking about software availability and functionalities. I have had other issues, but anyways I don't want to list them all. I also find it misleading to claim that Arch Linux is "rock solid", just look at the news to see the amount of "manual intervention needed" listed. I lov…

> For example no good driver is available for the GTX 1080 which will result in a buggy experience. If you have a GTX 1080. For everyone else that has moved on from an 8 year old graphics card, they won't run into that particular issue. Hence some people reporting a rock solid experience with Arch Linux.

Well guess what, old GPUs are still used a lot. According to steam hardware survey https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/videocard/ The GTX 1060 is more used than any RTX 40XX, and the 1080 is about as used as the 4080.

Re: I Miss BSD/Linux

#245

Post by INTPenis »

klondike_klive wrote: post #219
INTPenis wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The worst thing about windows booting up is being lied to that the system is ready to use, when in fact everything is still sluggish for another 2 minutes and default apps are starting up. While on my Linux computer I consistently can immediately start using the system once I've logged in.

Not to mention all the focus-stealing from apps that I can't work without.

Just the other day I heard a noise I couldn't identify, nothing in notification center, nothing in task manager. I'll die without knowing what that noise meant.

Thankfully I recently switched jobs to one where I'll be 100% linux.

Re: I Miss BSD/Linux

#246

Post by vermaden »

I had a ‘side’ journey to the Mac wonderland as I got opportunity to use Macbook Pro with Mac OS X Leopard for a year. That allowed me to get real ‘feel’ of the Mac ecosystem and their hardware (and philosophy) so I will not repeat same stereotypes over and over again like a lot of anti-apple people. But after I switched back to FreeBSD system at work it just felt better. I used Terminal.app on Mac a lot but the xterm(1) at FreeBSD just felt more natural.

More here with details:

https://vermaden.wordpress.com/2018/09/07/my-freebsd-story/

Re: I Miss BSD/Linux

#247

Post by juliangmp »

e12e wrote: post #118
fragmede wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How supported does that Linux have to be? Does Asahi Linux on Apple Silicon ARM count?

Still waiting for support for external display :/

Honestly even if asahi linux ran perfectly, I'm not going to spend twice the money on hardware I can't ever repair.

Re: I Miss BSD/Linux

#248

Post by lproven »

Jasper_ wrote: post #226
lproven wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How long have you got? • The tiling is clunky, and underneath it's still GNOME, my #1 most hated Linux desktop. • systemd-boot is clunky, does not play well with others, does not dual boot well at all, and it needs a huge ESP yet does not supply tooling to resize the ESP -- and Gparted can't resize FAT32 partitions as small as the typical ESP. • It replaces Snap with Flatpak, which is not an improvement in any meanin…

> architecturally, OStree is a Lovecraftian horror. What makes you say this?

OStree describes itself as "Git for binaries".

Git is a Lovecraftian horror.

QED.

I mean, this is the stuff of jokes:

https://xkcd.com/1597/

Or

https://x.com/agnoster/status/44636629423497217

"git gets easier once you get the basic idea that branches are homeomorphic endofunctors mapping submanifolds of a Hilbert space."

Re: I Miss BSD/Linux

#249

Post by lproven »

tracker1 wrote: post #227
lproven wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How long have you got? • The tiling is clunky, and underneath it's still GNOME, my #1 most hated Linux desktop. • systemd-boot is clunky, does not play well with others, does not dual boot well at all, and it needs a huge ESP yet does not supply tooling to resize the ESP -- and Gparted can't resize FAT32 partitions as small as the typical ESP. • It replaces Snap with Flatpak, which is not an improvement in any meanin…

Generally I dedicate a drive to Linux and a separate drive to Windows, using a full disk option for Linux install. So, you are right, I'm unlikely to see a lot of the issues you mention. I rsync my home directory, at least the subdirectories that matter to me, to my NAS and have scripts to do the inverse on a new config. A lot of what is important to me is either in my Dropbox directory, or in git(hub|lab) repositori…

OK. But as a general design principle, it's vital to understand what people actually do with your product, as opposed to what you intended them to do. See the concept of "Chesterton's fence".

> I appreciate what Pop has done above/beyond Gnome

As it happens, as far as GNOME goes, I agree with you!

I like GUIs. I like WIMPs. I am adept at managing my own windows, apps, and files, thanks. I like a desktop that makes it easy for me to manage it as I wish.

GNOME is not. GNOME is a desktop inspired by smartphones and tablets, and it hides window management and app switching as much as possible. No buttons for minimise/maximise. No visual list of windows or apps, unless summoned with a keystroke or a mysterious ambiguous keyword ("Activities") now replaced with an inscrutable symbol.

GNOME is a desktop for people who don't manage windows and who live in a few maximised ones all the time. I do not, so I don't want that.

Pop tries to take that and turn it into a tiling environment, with smart automatic window placement. I don't want that -- I know where I want my windows, thanks -- but I appreciate that they tried and I think as a result it's better than GNOME which tries to make the whole issue go away.

But I tried it, and I wouldn't use it from choice.

Re: I Miss BSD/Linux

#250

Post by DEADMINCE »

bitsandboots wrote: post #36

I feel the author's grief over lack of time, but it has lead me to very different solutions. All around the idea of the OS should not interrupt, should not change rapidly, and my interaction with programs should not be much different from OS to OS. At work, I opted for a mac due to how terrible the windows options were. But macos itself fought me all the way so the way to be happy at work was to replace finder, to re…

> replace finder, to replace the dock with a taskbar, and to rebind the keys, so that everything acted like linux/windows

What apps did you use to accomplish this?

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