Thanks Mr. Jobs, But it Seems I Can Use a Linux Laptop Now • Hacker News Board

Re: Thanks Mr. Jobs, But it Seems I Can Use a Linux Laptop Now

#171

Post by gbog » Fri, Sep 21, 2012, 2:26 AM UTC

endlessvoid94 wrote: post #156

gbog wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I, for one, find it refreshing to see a community of hackers (HN) going back to its roots and upvoting the struggles of a major anti-hacker corporation (Apple). Because, sorry, but Apple's spirit is in direct opposition with the natural grain of hackers, even in a broad and "entrepreneurial" sense of the word.

I'm pretty blown away by your opinion that Apple's spirit is in opposition to hackers. It's the only beautiful unix environment that's easy to use; I can worry about things when I want to, but when I don't want to, I don't have to, and it continues to work . For some reason, people have begun confusing "hacker" with "tinkerer".

> "easy to use"

I don't think it is in the hacker spirit to trade any bit of said "ease of use" against their control over the hardware or software tools they own.

Heck, even Windows is much more in line with hacker spirit than Apple. In PC boxes you could plug your own cards, develop your own driver, etc. Just look at an Apple product, from last month or from 10 years ago: you cannot open it, you are not supposed to install another OS, you can't even change the battery on their phones. And I even didn't start scratching the surface.

Re: Thanks Mr. Jobs, But it Seems I Can Use a Linux Laptop Now

#172

Post by antiterra » Fri, Sep 21, 2012, 4:46 AM UTC

expralitemonk wrote: post #140

antiterra wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

#2 also applies to most Macs, which is why I paid extra for a matte display on my Macbook Pro.

Hmmm...I live in Florida so our outside glare is pretty bad. I have a one year old MacBook Pro and have never had a problem (even outside in the shade in the summertime). I'm sure there are very good Windows laptops. As the previous poster wrote, if you do your research, you can find one. I don't want to do research.* I want to walk into a store and say "I'll take that one," and have it work. * Useful, accurate onlin…

Your "a good Windows laptop is hard to find" statement is a non-sequitur. I wrote that glare is an issue on Macbooks. It is. It doesn't matter if Windows laptops are very good or very bad or don't even exist.

I believe that you're able to deal with the display, but I'm not making anything up. Check out this photo from an AnandTech review[1] of the Retina MBP : http://images.anandtech.com/reviews/mac/retinaMacBookPro/DSC... From left to right, it's MBP, MBP retina, and MBP with matte display.

[1]http://www.anandtech.com/show/6023/the-nextgen-macbook-pro-w...

Re: Thanks Mr. Jobs, But it Seems I Can Use a Linux Laptop Now

#173

Post by christopherorr » Fri, Sep 21, 2012, 10:10 AM UTC

Yet another vote for the Thinkpad X220. Made the move from a Macbook myself about six months ago. Tried out a long list of distributions and just about everything works out of the box if you're using a desktop environment like KDE. I'm now running Arch and Openbox which takes a bit of configuring but it makes for the quickest laptop I've ever owned. I won't deny OSX is a good, polished operating system but I can honestly say there's nothing I miss about it. I love the simplicity and the control Linux gives you over the system and I think Apple bury a lot of the nitty gritty but that's quite understandable really. Sure, there's been plenty of roadblocks along the way but I've enjoyed solving problems when they come up. More than anything, running Linux has provided a valuable learning experience.

Re: Thanks Mr. Jobs, But it Seems I Can Use a Linux Laptop Now

#174

Post by [deleted] » Fri, Sep 21, 2012, 12:35 PM UTC

antiterra wrote: post #172

expralitemonk wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hmmm...I live in Florida so our outside glare is pretty bad. I have a one year old MacBook Pro and have never had a problem (even outside in the shade in the summertime). I'm sure there are very good Windows laptops. As the previous poster wrote, if you do your research, you can find one. I don't want to do research.* I want to walk into a store and say "I'll take that one," and have it work. * Useful, accurate onlin…

Your "a good Windows laptop is hard to find" statement is a non-sequitur. I wrote that glare is an issue on Macbooks. It is. It doesn't matter if Windows laptops are very good or very bad or don't even exist. I believe that you're able to deal with the display, but I'm not making anything up. Check out this photo from an AnandTech review[1] of the Retina MBP : http://images.anandtech.com/reviews/mac/retinaMacBookPro/…

[deleted]

Re: Thanks Mr. Jobs, But it Seems I Can Use a Linux Laptop Now

#175

Post by [deleted] » Fri, Sep 21, 2012, 1:08 PM UTC

antiterra wrote: post #172

expralitemonk wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hmmm...I live in Florida so our outside glare is pretty bad. I have a one year old MacBook Pro and have never had a problem (even outside in the shade in the summertime). I'm sure there are very good Windows laptops. As the previous poster wrote, if you do your research, you can find one. I don't want to do research.* I want to walk into a store and say "I'll take that one," and have it work. * Useful, accurate onlin…

Your "a good Windows laptop is hard to find" statement is a non-sequitur. I wrote that glare is an issue on Macbooks. It is. It doesn't matter if Windows laptops are very good or very bad or don't even exist. I believe that you're able to deal with the display, but I'm not making anything up. Check out this photo from an AnandTech review[1] of the Retina MBP : http://images.anandtech.com/reviews/mac/retinaMacBookPro/…

[deleted]

Re: Thanks Mr. Jobs, But it Seems I Can Use a Linux Laptop Now

#176

Post by iflowfor8hours » Wed, Sep 26, 2012, 10:13 PM UTC

I've been running mint on my x220 for about a year with absolutely no issues. Prior to that I was running ubuntu on an x61 for 3 years, also with no issues. I use an external monitor every day and unplug it every night and don't have to change a thing. It 'just works'.

Re: Thanks Mr. Jobs, But it Seems I Can Use a Linux Laptop Now

#177

Post by mironathetin » Fri, Sep 28, 2012, 9:32 AM UTC

unhammer wrote: post #26

induscreep wrote: post #2

Can someone explain to me what exactly is wrong with the OS X terminal?

For me it was a combination of things. For one, I use emacs and a Norwegian keyboard layout, and Apple handily ensures that '\' is only possible to type using both shift, option and 7. Now, since I'm an emacs user, typing meta+\ should mean command+option+shift+7. As if that wasn't bad enough, I never found a way to configure neither Terminal.app nor iTerm2 or whatever it's called such that I could get both option fu…

use an english keyboard, problem solved :o). I know, there are special keys ( I am german and we have special keys too). But that is solved with a handy tool named ukelele, that allows to change keyboard profiles. Very useful. Have you ever seen such a thing on linux?