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OS X 10.9: A downward spiral or a new hope?

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Re: OS X 10.9: A downward spiral or a new hope?

#11

Post by blacksmith_tb »

rayiner wrote: post #4
stormbrew wrote: post #2

I think a lot of technical mac users would be better off at least trying a switch to Ubuntu or one of the minimalist variations thereof (xubuntu). A lot of the reasons those people switched to OSX are evaporating and Linux as a desktop or laptop development environment has improved hugely. If you're using vim or sublime you don't even need to change your editor.

I don't think Linux has gotten any better on the desktop since 2007 or so. Hardware support still isn't perfect, sleep/wakeup still isn't perfect, battery life is still lower than on OS X/Windows, 3D acceleration is still iffy. It's a total disaster.

My experience is somewhere in between - I still use OSX often, but have a laptop with Ubuntu on it. There are some things that I miss, but for most purposes Ubuntu is fine. Hardware support is not bad, and this on an ultrabook that shipped with Win8. Ubuntu lacks a little of the polish of OSX (or even Win7), but it is perfectly usable for most of what I need (most of the apps I use are the same anyhow, FF and Chrome, Sublime, VLC, etc.)

Re: OS X 10.9: A downward spiral or a new hope?

#12

Post by LaSombra »

kmfrk wrote: post #6
stormbrew wrote: post #2

I think a lot of technical mac users would be better off at least trying a switch to Ubuntu or one of the minimalist variations thereof (xubuntu). A lot of the reasons those people switched to OSX are evaporating and Linux as a desktop or laptop development environment has improved hugely. If you're using vim or sublime you don't even need to change your editor.

My biggest peeve with Ubuntu was that I always had to download a billion software updates every few days.

I personally think this is a good thing. The worst thing is when someone (developer, OS manufacturer, etc) takes forever to fix a bug or deliver better performance through a kernel update for example.

Re: OS X 10.9: A downward spiral or a new hope?

#13

Post by rayiner »

wereHamster wrote: post #5
rayiner wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think Linux has gotten any better on the desktop since 2007 or so. Hardware support still isn't perfect, sleep/wakeup still isn't perfect, battery life is still lower than on OS X/Windows, 3D acceleration is still iffy. It's a total disaster.

[citation needed] I've never had problems with sleep/wakeup (except bugs in the firmware). Battery life is equal if not better than under windows. Developers rarely need 3D acceleration, and for most webgl demos and games the intel open source driver does just fine.

http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2012/11/hands-on-with-the-dell-sp... (reports 4-5 hours)

http://randomtristan.blogspot.com/2013/01/my-review-of-dell-... (reports around 3 hours)

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2400986,00.asp (tested at 6 hours).

Re: OS X 10.9: A downward spiral or a new hope?

#14

Post by innguest »

stormbrew wrote: post #2

I think a lot of technical mac users would be better off at least trying a switch to Ubuntu or one of the minimalist variations thereof (xubuntu). A lot of the reasons those people switched to OSX are evaporating and Linux as a desktop or laptop development environment has improved hugely. If you're using vim or sublime you don't even need to change your editor.

Here are the reasons I switched to OSX:

- Image installers (.dmg files) and complete installers (.pkg files, that bring dependencies with them). I have never seen either of those fail, ever. I have seen installations from .tar.gz -> ./configure && make && make install fail countless times. This is the number one reason for me, and it's so much more important than anything else that I have trouble thinking of other reasons. I absolutely dislike the model that linux package managers use to handle dependencies and I do believe in bringing all libraries/dependencies needed with the installer and compiling them with disable-shared on. To do otherwise is to suffer a whole day trying to install ImageMagick when it should be a one-click task.

- Any other reasons pale in comparison to the first reason. I guess it's nice to have decent trackpad gestures... but I'd forgo everything for easy installers that bring dependencies with them.

Re: OS X 10.9: A downward spiral or a new hope?

#15

Post by pointyhatuk »

wereHamster wrote: post #5
rayiner wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think Linux has gotten any better on the desktop since 2007 or so. Hardware support still isn't perfect, sleep/wakeup still isn't perfect, battery life is still lower than on OS X/Windows, 3D acceleration is still iffy. It's a total disaster.

[citation needed] I've never had problems with sleep/wakeup (except bugs in the firmware). Battery life is equal if not better than under windows. Developers rarely need 3D acceleration, and for most webgl demos and games the intel open source driver does just fine.

Citation from me - stuff that hasn't worked properly for me in the last 5 years:

Acer Timeline 1810TZ, Acer Timeline 3810TZ, Sony Vaio VPC-J1, Lenovo ThinkPad T61, Dell Precision 390, Dell Precision T3500.

All have irritating bugs, hibernation and sleep problems, random crashes despite being absolutely bog standard Intel hardware across the board supposedly fully supported by Linux. The same kit doesn't exhibit any problems under Windows.

The Timeline series machines under Windows 7 got a whopping 8-10 hours battery life of average load OUT OF THE BOX. Under Ubuntu, even with all the powertop tweaks etc, 3 hours was pushing it.

Current Ubuntu, CentOS and Debian were tried on each machine at the time.

Just can't be bothered any more. Linux (Debian) sits inside a VirtualBox VM on Windows on my T61 where ironically the battery lasts longer when it's in a VM than on bare metal...

Re: OS X 10.9: A downward spiral or a new hope?

#16

Post by cpursley »

stormbrew wrote: post #2

I think a lot of technical mac users would be better off at least trying a switch to Ubuntu or one of the minimalist variations thereof (xubuntu). A lot of the reasons those people switched to OSX are evaporating and Linux as a desktop or laptop development environment has improved hugely. If you're using vim or sublime you don't even need to change your editor.

+ I think going to a cloud IDE is the future. I've been experimenting with www.action.io - it's pretty awesome to just open that up in a browser on any OS and get coding without local configurations.

Re: OS X 10.9: A downward spiral or a new hope?

#17

Post by rayiner »

LaSombra wrote: post #7
rayiner wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think Linux has gotten any better on the desktop since 2007 or so. Hardware support still isn't perfect, sleep/wakeup still isn't perfect, battery life is still lower than on OS X/Windows, 3D acceleration is still iffy. It's a total disaster.

I agree, but some brand new laptops are fully supported out of the box. I have a brand new Lenovo ThinkPad T530 and it's running Fedora 18 flawlessly. Wi-Fi, headphone plugged-in sensor, OSD, media keys, dual-monitor support, webcam, 3D acceleration, sleep/wakeup, all working since day 1 out of box. I think the more business oriented laptops are safe to run Linux and the new XPS 13 doesn't look bad at all except for…

I exclusively used Linux on the desktop from 2002-2006. Font rendering sucked back then too.

Re: OS X 10.9: A downward spiral or a new hope?

#18

Post by pointyhatuk »

cpursley wrote: post #16
stormbrew wrote: post #2

I think a lot of technical mac users would be better off at least trying a switch to Ubuntu or one of the minimalist variations thereof (xubuntu). A lot of the reasons those people switched to OSX are evaporating and Linux as a desktop or laptop development environment has improved hugely. If you're using vim or sublime you don't even need to change your editor.

+ I think going to a cloud IDE is the future. I've been experimenting with www.action.io - it's pretty awesome to just open that up in a browser on any OS and get coding without local configurations.

That's fine but for some of us, connectivity is not ubiquitous and it isn't necessarily legal to ship our code or data somewhere else unknown on the Internet...

Re: OS X 10.9: A downward spiral or a new hope?

#19

Post by pointyhatuk »

innguest wrote: post #14
stormbrew wrote: post #2

I think a lot of technical mac users would be better off at least trying a switch to Ubuntu or one of the minimalist variations thereof (xubuntu). A lot of the reasons those people switched to OSX are evaporating and Linux as a desktop or laptop development environment has improved hugely. If you're using vim or sublime you don't even need to change your editor.

Here are the reasons I switched to OSX: - Image installers (.dmg files) and complete installers (.pkg files, that bring dependencies with them). I have never seen either of those fail, ever. I have seen installations from .tar.gz -> ./configure && make && make install fail countless times. This is the number one reason for me, and it's so much more important than anything else that I have trouble thinking of other re…

Agreed.

We've got them on Windows too - .msi files :)

The main advantage of standalone packages is I can choose whatever version of package XYZ I want and push it out rather than being stuck with the package version the repository ships with until either the maintainer updates it or you patch it yourself or argue with some shoddy backport.

Re: OS X 10.9: A downward spiral or a new hope?

#20

Post by pistacchioso »

oh, the irony. one line he says that he's a clever user that understands business, the other line suggests that what apple should do is change the filesytem. can you picture it? tim saying "one more thing to excite you" and announce a new filesytem instead of, say "Siri on your desktop"? I image 95% of the user base thinking "you updated the WHAT?!"
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