31–40 of 531 posts
I've been using OS X since 10.2, though I keep a Windows box around for games. I also feel that OS X has become less stable and performant in recent years, and every now and then I spin up a Linux distro on a spare hard disk just to try it out. These experiments rarely last very long, and almost always end because the video/graphics support is just so terrible. I have yet to find a reliable way to play videos without…
The general rule is to wait until at least 10.x.1 (or later), but even now, there are still bugs that indicate that there is little to no structure release or QA process at Apple, and it's likely that few teams have gotten the religion of testing.
* In 10.0.0, systems on Exchange in our office would
freeze after anywhere from 5-60 minutes. Only a hard
reboot would make them responsive.
* smart mailboxes no longer live update for me. I just
have to trut that the messages I've deleted or moved
will be gone when I manually reload the mailbox.
* replying to calendar events in Mail no longer provides
any indication that some action has been performed.
(Maybe this is related to the smart mailbox issue
above).
* Calendar will just stop drawing every once in a while
requiring a restart.
* Calendar frequently barfs on event updates and requires
reverting to the server version for any hope of
reconciling the changes.
* Safari frequently consumes all memory and all CPU for
lighter workloads than I used to run (because I know it
will go out of control at somepoint).
* The background of the login screen frequently has
graphical glitches which are likely caused by
overwriting areas of graphic or texture memory (this
seems to happen on Intel or dedicated graphics cards)
* iPhoto forced a database update, crashed in the middle
of the migration, and corrupted a decade old library.
This happened immediately after time machine told me
that it needed to start a new a backup and deleted my
most recent good backup.
Edit: formatting
It's important to notice that he's switching to a desktop running linux. Running linux on laptops is still a gamble. Sometimes things work great. Sometimes you spend months trying to fix basic stuff like screen brightness[1][2] on hardware certified by Ubuntu.[3] I think there's a market for a linux distro that targets a limited set of premium hardware. I'd gladly pay money for an OS that worked out of the box on any…
It's important to notice that he's switching to a desktop running linux. Running linux on laptops is still a gamble. Sometimes things work great. Sometimes you spend months trying to fix basic stuff like screen brightness[1][2] on hardware certified by Ubuntu.[3] I think there's a market for a linux distro that targets a limited set of premium hardware. I'd gladly pay money for an OS that worked out of the box on any…
- Backlight bugs are usually related to ACPI tables in the BIOS. Doing a BIOS upgrade will often fix them. This is especially true on the Thinkpad line where Lenovo explicitly supports Linux in its BIOS.
- Be careful with switchable graphics. While they have gotten a lot better, especially with open source drivers, they are still a pain (even on Windows). Choose a laptop with an Intel, or AMD APU. Or, barring that, make sure all of the scanouts are connected to the Intel card, like in my Thinkpad W540. The new Macbook Pro Retina 15" is exactly what you want to avoid - it forces all inputs to be connected to the discrete card when you boot Linux.
- Make sure you have a good wifi card. Intel or Atheros is the best.
- Do a bit of research before buying, like on the arch wiki.
- If you buy a bleeding edge laptop chipset, expect to need to use a bleeding edge distro for complete support.
It's important to notice that he's switching to a desktop running linux. Running linux on laptops is still a gamble. Sometimes things work great. Sometimes you spend months trying to fix basic stuff like screen brightness[1][2] on hardware certified by Ubuntu.[3] I think there's a market for a linux distro that targets a limited set of premium hardware. I'd gladly pay money for an OS that worked out of the box on any…
My solution is booting to Windows for the driver support, battery, etc. then VMware. No hardware issues ever, plus additional security.
If you don't like it just remove the Launchpad icon from the dock and don't hit the F4 key.
It's important to notice that he's switching to a desktop running linux. Running linux on laptops is still a gamble. Sometimes things work great. Sometimes you spend months trying to fix basic stuff like screen brightness[1][2] on hardware certified by Ubuntu.[3] I think there's a market for a linux distro that targets a limited set of premium hardware. I'd gladly pay money for an OS that worked out of the box on any…
My solution is booting to Windows for the driver support, battery, etc. then VMware. No hardware issues ever, plus additional security.
I did this once. Biggest waste of time, ever. Went from NetBSD to OS X in 2002, then to Linux in 2008, then back to OS X in 2011. I spend almost all of my time in cross-platform apps, but the little inconveniences of Linux on a laptop just weren't worth the trouble back in 2011, and I'd be surprised if anything has changed since then. OS X at its ugliest and least stable wipes the floor with Linux at its best, imo.