Earlier quoted context omitted.
The XPS series is no pillar of Linux support. Turn to Thinkpads for this[0]. In case you can't be bothered with the upcoming wall of text: Dell seems to have entirely different definitions of "support" for the paid OS, vs. the free one. I could pick my own hardware for work, and I went with an XPS 13 9333 "Ubuntu edition" + superspeed dock for over 1300 GBP ($2K USD). I shouldn't have sponged on the extra hundred or…
Ditto with coil whine on laptops. (Not same brand.) My laptop is noticeably whiny a large chunk of the time. Seems to predominantly occur when scrolling image-heavy webpages, or graphics demos with no framerate limiters, but happens other times as well.
Why I Quit OS X – Geoff Wozniak
201–210 of 531 posts
Re: Why I Quit OS X – Geoff Wozniak
#202I haven't quit it, but the problems, annoyances, surprises, seeming ineptitude, and creeping iOSification of OS X that the author describes sure do resonate. Every new major release of OS X is a day or week spent disabling things, shutting down Spotlight again, trying to restore things back to the way they were instead of the way some Designer with a capital D thinks they should be, for no other reason than, "Beauty.…
Desktop Linux is mostly install an work. I have not done any tinkering for a long time. But the Yosemite upgrade on laptop brought back my memories of initial Ubuntu distributions. I had disable few setting to get some performance. I had to change few UI setting to get a decent look. It looks a transition phase OS.But ubuntu on that m/c had few touch pad issues otherwise it would have been the default OS for me on th…
It is...until it isn't. Nine out of ten Ubuntu or Mint installs will go off without a hitch, with no weird issues or regressions, and a warm, friendly, comfortable development environment welcomes you. Then there's that one time you install it on your laptop so you have a to-go environment that matches your workstation, and BOOM! your wifi isn't recognized (what year is it again??) or your sound card sputters (damn you PulseAudio!), or your hybrid graphics screws the pooch. Hell, I built this workstation I'm typing on with GNU/Linux and BSD compatibility first in my mind, and I still had issues with some hardware right off the bat. Nothing that can't be fixed with some fiddling, but it's annoying as hell.
Yes, all of the above issues can be fixed, just like the issues you dealt with in OS X. It's a computer, after all; Garbage In (Apple/Linux/BSD developers), Garbage Out. And don't get me started on Windows 8.x; it's finally becoming usable daily, but there are a million reasons I chose to stick with 7 for Windows-specific work, and wait it out until 10 ships.
Apple broke the cardinal rule: If it isn't broken, stop fixing it! They want to innovate and improve and conquer the world, fine; but they need to remember that they had the best OS X release with Snow Leopard (and in my personal opinion, that was the best desktop OS period). In their rush to wow the masses, they broke their OS for those of us who use it to be productive and creative.
At this stage, I feel that a good old fashioned, stable OS like FreeBSD or Slackware Linux or Debian is the best choice for a solid 'nix workstation, something you can get real work done on. But ever since Lion was released, I would rather use Windows Vista on a Core Solo machine than OS X on any Mac.
Re: Why I Quit OS X – Geoff Wozniak
#203Re: Why I Quit OS X – Geoff Wozniak
#204Earlier quoted context omitted.
OS X upgrades are free, more like Windows Service Packs in a way. Microsoft also drops support for pre-SP versions of Windows after a time. The clock is ticking for Windows 8.0; you have to upgrade to 8.1.
Windows 7 will be supported through 2020 according to http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/lifecycle The updates are free.
> Support for Windows 7 RTM without service packs ended on April 9, 2013.
Re: Why I Quit OS X – Geoff Wozniak
#205I feel like I'm taking crazy pills, as Yosemite has been the best OS X release since Snow Leopard for me. Runs brilliantly, added a lot of nice features (Continuity and nicer widgets than Dashboard), looks better than Mavericks (and much better than Lion or ML). Then again, I use a MacBook Air, which doesn't usually seem to be the Mac of choice for people on here, so... shrug
You're not taking crazy pills. The difference is you're not a Linux hacker that switched because it was hip and who never bothered to put 1/10th of the effort into understanding OS X, and now is complaining because it's not linux and switching back (which is now hip since google declared Apple evil for innovating) This is just another in the weekly 5 minutes of hate on Apple that Hipster News loves to perpetuate.
Re: Why I Quit OS X – Geoff Wozniak
#206Earlier quoted context omitted.
My solution is booting to Windows for the driver support, battery, etc. then VMware. No hardware issues ever, plus additional security.
Yes, I use vagrant and virtualbox and haven't had any issues running a centos or ubuntu. Best of both worlds, and heaven compared to cygwin (oh, the scripts I've written to deal with cygwin).
The single biggest problem with Cygwin is performance: forking is very slow. When I need to rewrite a script for Cygwin, it's almost invariably to reduce the number of processes spawned.
But almost all of the time, it just works, even building third-party stuff from source. On my home setup, I spend about half my terminal time with Cygwin, the other half in ssh sessions to Linux boxes, and there's no real mental context switch required.
Re: Why I Quit OS X – Geoff Wozniak
#207I'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…
Re: Why I Quit OS X – Geoff Wozniak
#208Earlier quoted context omitted.
So Windows has become more sane than OS X in terms of security updates? EDIT: Windows 7 was released in 2009 and is still receiving security updates. 10.6 was released in 2011 and has been EOL'd. Seeing as both people still want to use these products, but one group is being forced not to, that's why I'm saying OS X is taking a less sane stance than Windows. Is this false?
OS X upgrades are free, more like Windows Service Packs in a way. Microsoft also drops support for pre-SP versions of Windows after a time. The clock is ticking for Windows 8.0; you have to upgrade to 8.1.
Multi-monitor full-screen was broken from 10.7 through 10.8. Thousands complained, Apple claimed it a feature.
Not fixable, not tweakable, not reversible. 10.6 or one full-screen monitor at a time.
Fuck off, Apple.
Re: Why I Quit OS X – Geoff Wozniak
#209Earlier quoted context omitted.
I've been running linux on a variety of laptops for 15+ years without any issues that were outside my comfort level. If you are looking for a locked-down consumer appliance of a computer then linux really isn't for you. That's really the most extraordinary part of the whole movement. 20 years into it it's become mainstream on phones, set top boxes, and embedded devices everywhere but it hasn't also necessarily become…
This is all true and I love it on a theoretical level. But I write code for a living and I really can't justify ever having my laptop out of commission because of hardware/OS issues. "Hey, boss. I'm not going to have my work done today because I installed an $DISTRO update and now my laptop is having driver issues."
Re: Why I Quit OS X – Geoff Wozniak
#210Earlier quoted context omitted.
So Windows has become more sane than OS X in terms of security updates? EDIT: Windows 7 was released in 2009 and is still receiving security updates. 10.6 was released in 2011 and has been EOL'd. Seeing as both people still want to use these products, but one group is being forced not to, that's why I'm saying OS X is taking a less sane stance than Windows. Is this false?
OS X upgrades are free, more like Windows Service Packs in a way. Microsoft also drops support for pre-SP versions of Windows after a time. The clock is ticking for Windows 8.0; you have to upgrade to 8.1.