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Ask HN: Switching from OS X to Linux

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Re: Ask HN: Switching from OS X to Linux

#131

Post by yellowapple »

cheald wrote: post #90
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.

To be honest, I don't see that as too much of a problem; Ardour, for example, is free-as-in-speech and technically free-as-in-beer (since you don't have to buy Ardour to get the source code and compile it yourself, and it is indeed available as a package for most distros), but still only provides binary downloads via the website to users who pay for them. There are also plenty of distros - like RHEL and SUSE - that are only officially available in their paid-for versions (though both of those have corresponding free-as-in-beer development/testing versions - Fedora and openSUSE, respectively - and CentOS also exists as a theoretically-drop-in RHEL replacement).

Software has to be monetized somehow. SUSE and RHEL and Oracle Linux are monetized by subscriptions to support contracts. Slackware is monetized by sales of double-sided DVDs. Ubuntu is monetized by a mix of support contracts and begging for donations on the download page. OpenBSD is monetized by a a mix of donations and merchandise sales (including install CD packs and t-shirts and such). I'm not one to believe that ElementaryOS is any more or less sinful than any of those examples.

Re: Ask HN: Switching from OS X to Linux

#132

Post by yellowapple »

lectrick wrote: post #113
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.

Be careful when updating packages. As an OS X user used to blithely updating anything and everything because it always "just works," I've gotten into shocking situations where I've actually bricked my Elementary install simply by doing an update. When I approached Linux users about this, their response was something along the lines of "Yeah... don't do that." (Seriously?) As a result I've had to run Elementary in a V…

It depends on the distro. Some distros can and will mangle themselves if you blindly upgrade everything without doing at least some research beforehand (Ubuntu and Arch are notorious for this; Arch because it's bleeding-edge and has absolutely zero consideration for compatibility between packages, and Ubuntu because... well... who the hell knows). Others do a much better job of making sure all packages are well-tested both in isolation and in integration before making them available as upgrades; Debian Stable, Slackware, and openSUSE are good examples of systems where you can usually do a blind upgrade of everything without problems.

And then you have NixOS, which - while not really mainstream yet - is probably a good indicator of the future of configuration and package management, and - I think - will someday be the gold standard here. Upgrade fucked up your system? No problem; just select your last-known-good configuration at boot, then try again (or don't try again, if that's your prerogative).

Re: Ask HN: Switching from OS X to Linux

#133

Post by yellowapple »

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/

I second this recommendation, though I personally prefer XMonad or bspwm for my own tiling WM needs.

Re: Ask HN: Switching from OS X to Linux

#134

Post by cheald »

yellowapple wrote: post #131
cheald wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

To be honest, I don't see that as too much of a problem; Ardour, for example, is free-as-in-speech and technically free-as-in-beer (since you don't have to buy Ardour to get the source code and compile it yourself, and it is indeed available as a package for most distros), but still only provides binary downloads via the website to users who pay for them. There are also plenty of distros - like RHEL and SUSE - that a…

I don't have any problem with monetizing FOSS - I think it's awesome, in fact. I have a ton of respect for RedHat and their business model. Ardour's model is great, too - the product is free, but we'll sell you convenience. It's entirely possible to have a saleable product coexist with a FOSS license.

My issue with the eOS team wasn't that they said "we want to make money for this", but that they accused their users of being cheats for not paying them for the software, the vast majority of which they didn't write or maintain. I want OSS devs making money. Heck, I want the eOS guys making money, if they're making a product that people like and want to see continued. But their tack was pretty amazingly hypocritical.

Re: Ask HN: Switching from OS X to Linux

#135

Post by cheald »

yellowapple wrote: post #129
cheald wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Fedora's also a buggy mess at least 99% of the time. It's not something I would readily recommend to even an experienced user, let alone one new to GNU/Linux, unless they're prepared to use an operating system which is in no way meant to be stable.

This is true if you're running pre-releases, but what kinds of issues have you had elsewhere?

I've been running Fedora for over a decade, and while it suffers from being bleeding edge sometimes, I don't think I've ever had stability issues or things I'd describe as a buggy mess.

Re: Ask HN: Switching from OS X to Linux

#137

Post by bigger_cheese »

I switched from Linux to OS X around 2004/2005 and switched back again late 2011-ish. I use Fedora with Cinnamon DE currently.

I loathed the OS X interface I really only used it because the Macbok Pro was a really good piece of hardware (I still think the MBP's trackpad was the best I've used on a laptop) and OS X was "Unix enough" for me to put up with the short commings - adding an app store icon to the dock after an update (without asking me) was the straw that finally made me quit - My laptop is not a phone Apple.

Linux's strength and it's weakness is the myriad of choice it offers, there's enough flexability on offer such that you can usually get it setup how you'd like it, the downside is you may need to spend time configuring it to get it into this state.

Things like your terminal request - all I can say is don't feel obligated to use the distro defaults try a few different terminals until you find one your happy with. That's a good rule of thumb for all things linux - just because the distro defaults one way it doesn't mean you are obligated to adopt those defaults.

Re: Ask HN: Switching from OS X to Linux

#138

Post by gp7 »

I installed Linux Mint on a laptop a couple weeks ago and I used it about 8? hours over all before it had a kernel panic that screwed up its boot sequence (my diagnosis got as far as MDM or upstart itself being the culprit but I wasn't exactly gonna continue using it). I went to Arch instead--the setup time might look a bit tedious but I think it's invaluable in demystifying how to make linux behave the way you want it, rather than trying to prod a distro into something workable for you

Re: Ask HN: Switching from OS X to Linux

#139

Post by neilellis »

greggyb wrote: post #100
neilellis wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I'm just curious what parts you find not quite user friendly enough?

Oh it would be nice to have reminders for keyboard shortcuts, in status bar when you press the meta key etc. Since you're relying on a lot of memorising - that would be a huge asset.

Re: Ask HN: Switching from OS X to Linux

#140

Post by Scarbutt »

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…

Do you use an external monitor with your MBP? If so, how well does it work?

Also your docs don't mention how much battery life you get ;)

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