Ask HN: Switching from OS X to Linux • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: Switching from OS X to Linux

#81

Post by johnward » Thu, Feb 19, 2015, 5:46 PM UTC

Can anyone explain why OSX apps don't have a maximize button? The full screen button is just terrible.

Re: Ask HN: Switching from OS X to Linux

#82

Post by neilellis » Thu, Feb 19, 2015, 5:47 PM UTC

lorenzfx wrote: post #47

rwbaskette wrote: post #10

I have not had luck finding an equal to iTerm2 on Linux. While there are many to choose from, few combine all the features (color support, themes, layouts, configurable hot-keys for navigating panes, etc.) in one package. The one thing I miss the most is having nearly border-less panes for differing font sizes. To my knowledge, that can't be done on tmux or screen. I'd welcome any suggestion of a terminal with the fe…

Or give a tiling window manager [0] a try. My favorite is i3 [1]. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiling_window_manager [1] http://i3wm.org/

+1 i3 is pretty darn good. Would be great if it was a little more user friendly though :-)

Re: Ask HN: Switching from OS X to Linux

#83

Post by rohansingh » Thu, Feb 19, 2015, 5:48 PM UTC

mntmn wrote: post #34

Good! I switched to Debian Linux on my Retina MBP about 4 months ago fulltime and after a few weeks of twiddling and fiddling it's super fun, fast and nice. I'm really enjoying it. I normalized all the keyboard shortcuts using several methods, the most important one is to switch Cmd and Ctrl keys. I documented that here: http://mntmn.com/Hipster%20Linux#keyboard-cmd-ctrl-copypaste... I use Terminator for Terminal and…

Did you do anything for trackpad gestures? My last attempt using Linux on a MBP (~3 years ago) was abandoned because I couldn't get over not being able to do three-finger swipes, etc.

Re: Ask HN: Switching from OS X to Linux

#84

Post by cheald » Thu, Feb 19, 2015, 5:49 PM UTC

NateDad wrote: post #20

Ubuntu 14.04 Trusty Tahr is where you want to be. It Just Works, plus there's a huge and awesome community to help out if you have questions. I haven't tried the derivatives, like Mint or Elementary, but I've heard good things. Note that even though Ubuntu is based on Debian, you do not want Debian... It's release cycle is a lot slower, the UI is much less polished, and you'll be stuck with versions of software that…

Fedora's another solid option; it's much more bleeding edge than the Ubuntu LTS releases, but it upgrades cleanly and tends to be very developer-friendly.

Re: Ask HN: Switching from OS X to Linux

#85

Post by spike021 » Thu, Feb 19, 2015, 5:49 PM UTC

johnward wrote: post #81

Can anyone explain why OSX apps don't have a maximize button? The full screen button is just terrible.

Hold 'alt' when you click the green full-screen button and it'll maximize.

Re: Ask HN: Switching from OS X to Linux

#86

Post by neilellis » Thu, Feb 19, 2015, 5:50 PM UTC

johnward wrote: post #81

Can anyone explain why OSX apps don't have a maximize button? The full screen button is just terrible.

Press alt while clicking the green button.

In general I don't like the window management of OS X - it's a great OS that is (in my mind) mostly let down by bloat ( system apps that take all your CPU or memory) and window management.

Re: Ask HN: Switching from OS X to Linux

#87

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Feb 19, 2015, 5:50 PM UTC

johnward wrote: post #81

Can anyone explain why OSX apps don't have a maximize button? The full screen button is just terrible.

[deleted]

Re: Ask HN: Switching from OS X to Linux

#88

Post by smoyer » Thu, Feb 19, 2015, 5:50 PM UTC

mntmn wrote: post #34

Good! I switched to Debian Linux on my Retina MBP about 4 months ago fulltime and after a few weeks of twiddling and fiddling it's super fun, fast and nice. I'm really enjoying it. I normalized all the keyboard shortcuts using several methods, the most important one is to switch Cmd and Ctrl keys. I documented that here: http://mntmn.com/Hipster%20Linux#keyboard-cmd-ctrl-copypaste... I use Terminator for Terminal and…

I'm running Linux Mint 17 XFCE with newer kernel and can confirm that everything works well. Switching to a >3.16.x kernel provides the Thunderbolt support I needed for my Cinema display ... everything else just works[1].

[1] With usual caveat that pulseaudio is horrible. With wired headphones it only crashes about once a week ... with bluetooth headphones it's at least once a day. It doesn't appear to like the device "coming and going".

Re: Ask HN: Switching from OS X to Linux

#89

Post by vezzy-fnord » Thu, Feb 19, 2015, 5:51 PM UTC

crazychrome wrote: post #76

dakoon2003 wrote: post #3

Try Elementary OS, its based off ubuntu and is almost a dead ringer for OSX. It has the window management you are looking for as well as a couple of apps. Try Synapse as a replacement for Alfred.

elementary os is quite stable. the only problem i have w/ it is the dev team promoting yet another lang to code apps. why not rust/nim/go?

Vala predates all these, and it's been a de facto GNOME standard for a while now.

Re: Ask HN: Switching from OS X to Linux

#90

Post by cheald » Thu, Feb 19, 2015, 5:54 PM UTC

dakoon2003 wrote: post #3

Try Elementary OS, its based off ubuntu and is almost a dead ringer for OSX. It has the window management you are looking for as well as a couple of apps. Try Synapse as a replacement for Alfred.

The recent kerfluffle in which the ElementaryOS team changed their download page to try to hide the "free" option and said "We want users to understand that they're pretty much cheating the system when they choose not to pay for software" makes me super hesitant to even try it. I'm not sure I want to be using a Linux distro produced by people who think that free-as-in-beer is a bug.