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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

#141

Post by parski »

ixwt wrote: post #57
parski wrote: post #45

Being an OS X user myself I would lie if I said the thought hadn't hit me to switch to another Unix or Unix-like OS. Most notable candidates for me were: Elementary OS Looks great and Ubuntu based so there's a thriving community around it. Sort of. Crunchbang Linux Looks interesting. Didn't look into it much more than just click around on their website. FreeBSD My weapon of choice for servers. I bed it'd make a mean…

> Crunchbang Linux looks interesting... I thought I should point out the core developer of Crunchbang linux has ceased development[0]. 0) http://crunchbang.org/forums/viewtopic.php?pid=416493#p41649...

This is true. There is also this:

https://crunchbangplusplus.org

Hopefully the OS is more stable than it's development.

Re: Ask HN: Switching from OS X to Linux

#144

Post by bketelsen »

I switched from OS X to Linux a few months back, and I'm never going back. I thought like you did originally, that I needed something "standard" like Ubuntu, but found Ubuntu does too many things and installs too many things. Instead I'm now using Arch Linux and i3 Window Manager. It's a long stretch from the beautiful Mac UI that I used for the past 15 years, but as a programmer I can't stress enough how awesome it is not to move my hands off the keyboard for 95% of the operations I do. Almost no mousing required at all. It got even better when I hacked in a few Gnome bits (gnome-session & gnome-keyring) so I could have a more comfortable experience. Nothing will replace the well-written apps you expect on your Mac, but generally if you can live with working-but-uglier apps on Linux you'll be fine. And given that unless you specifically develop apps for Macs, you're probably deploying on Linux anyway, you'll enjoy developing closer to the production metal.

Re: Ask HN: Switching from OS X to Linux

#145

Post by 0942v8653 »

bketelsen wrote: post #144

I switched from OS X to Linux a few months back, and I'm never going back. I thought like you did originally, that I needed something "standard" like Ubuntu, but found Ubuntu does too many things and installs too many things. Instead I'm now using Arch Linux and i3 Window Manager. It's a long stretch from the beautiful Mac UI that I used for the past 15 years, but as a programmer I can't stress enough how awesome it…

Thank you for the comment! I've installed Arch Linux and i3 in VirtualBox and it is really fast. I don't mind the looks really—in fact, I like them much better than the flashy animations of OS X. It all feels much more focused.

I'm wondering, though, what terminal emulator do you use? I tried terminator first because it seemed the most featureful, but its central feature seems to be duplicating a lot of functionality that i3 already has. A few people have suggested gnome-terminal, which I like.

Re: Ask HN: Switching from OS X to Linux

#146

Post by bketelsen »

0942v8653 wrote: post #145
bketelsen wrote: post #144

I switched from OS X to Linux a few months back, and I'm never going back. I thought like you did originally, that I needed something "standard" like Ubuntu, but found Ubuntu does too many things and installs too many things. Instead I'm now using Arch Linux and i3 Window Manager. It's a long stretch from the beautiful Mac UI that I used for the past 15 years, but as a programmer I can't stress enough how awesome it…

Thank you for the comment! I've installed Arch Linux and i3 in VirtualBox and it is really fast. I don't mind the looks really—in fact, I like them much better than the flashy animations of OS X. It all feels much more focused. I'm wondering, though, what terminal emulator do you use? I tried terminator first because it seemed the most featureful, but its central feature seems to be duplicating a lot of functionality…

I've used LilyTerm, Terminator, and a few others. I've been using gnome-terminal for maybe a month now, and haven't found a reason to change.

Re: Ask HN: Switching from OS X to Linux

#147

Post by bitshepherd »

After over a decade of fiddling, twiddling, tweaking, breaking, fixing and generally trying to use Linux on a desktop, I gave up and went the opposite direction, and I couldn't be happier.

I no longer actively fight my package manager because it decides that my kernel needs to be broken at this very moment (looking at you, openSUSE). I don't have to deal with the twiddling that one must do to get a working laptop setup. Drivers just work. Suspend/resume just works out of the box. Best of all, I can get shit done without fighting with the OS.

When I ran Linux as my desktop of choice, I floated between most distros with a pulse, trying out the ecosystem to find something that suited me. RPM, DEB, source, you name it I ran it. I avoided the forks of forks, sticking to mostly popular projects. In doing so, I learned that I really dislike KDE and Gnome, and I'm not too crazy about Xfce. I've tried the minimalistic approach (starting as far back as blackbox days) and something felt not quite right, like there was always something missing, and no amount of fiddling, tweaking or twiddling could rectify it.

I guess my point, if there is a point to this, is that your mileage will vary with Linux. Caveat emptor and all that.

Re: Ask HN: Switching from OS X to Linux

#148

Post by likeclockwork »

eligundry wrote: post #53

I use Manjaro[0] because it's got all the advantages of Arch (rolling release and AUR for pretty much any package you'd need) with none of the setup time. I use the XFCE version, which, if you weren't aware, is one of the most stable DEs ever. I've yet to have it crash on me in the three years I've been using it. Also, all the keyboard shortcuts are modifiable, so you shouldn't have any problems with it. To replace A…

I find that Konsole works well in XMonad.. but I use a lot of the KDE application suite in XMonad (Konsole, Okular, Dolphin, GwenView, others..) so I don't mind the KDE packages.

Re: Ask HN: Switching from OS X to Linux

#149

Post by [deleted] »

coldpie wrote: post #75
deong wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Arch is arguably worse than most about this, because their rolling repositories dump versions after a couple of updates are available. So if you wait too long to update, it can't even figure out how to get started, because it no longer has the slightest idea what the packages you have installed even mean. Don't get me wrong, I like Arch a lot, and I've been using it as my main Linux distribution for the past five yea…

I guess I'm kind of surprised that people are OK with updating infrequently. Don't your distros distribute security updates? How long do you wait before applying them?

[deleted]

Re: Ask HN: Switching from OS X to Linux

#150

Post by toadi »

bitshepherd wrote: post #147

After over a decade of fiddling, twiddling, tweaking, breaking, fixing and generally trying to use Linux on a desktop, I gave up and went the opposite direction, and I couldn't be happier. I no longer actively fight my package manager because it decides that my kernel needs to be broken at this very moment (looking at you, openSUSE). I don't have to deal with the twiddling that one must do to get a working laptop set…

I'm like you. I started using linux round the time the kernel hit version 1. It was ok because when I was young I could not afford a recent computer and linux worked best on my hardware :)

First years of my proffesional life I installed linux on all my laptops. Broken kernels, not working hibernate/sleep, battery life that sucked,... Every time I bought a new laptop some new tinkering followed.

I always laughed with macbook fanboys paying for their overpriced hardware. I switched and couldn't be more happier. Hardware is ok, OSX has a good terminal and as long as I can access this I'm happy. Decent and nice looking applications (I don't mind paying developers a good price for this) which are not on windows or linux. There are points of complaint but the overal experience of the mac and osx is still positive.

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