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From macOS to Arch Linux

juxt.pro

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Re: From macOS to Arch Linux

#121

Post by pmontra »

ubermonkey wrote: post #76
popey wrote: post #49

"There are still many things I need to set up on the new laptop, for example: suspension/hibernation on closing the lid doesn’t always work" For me, this is one of those things that should work out of the box. I appreciate Arch is one of those distros you configure manually, and can thus choose whether to implement this or not. But I'd rather not have my laptop burn out in my bag because the system didn't suspend pro…

True fact: proper sleep/wake on lid close is probably 40% of why I switched from Windows to Mac in about 1999 -- and that was when the Mac was on OS 9, not the BSD-based OSX. I can't imagine going to a system where it wouldn't work. That's baseline, out of the box functionality for me.

I press the resume/suspensd button on my laptop. I explicitly disabled the suspend and resume on lid close. Maybe I suspend and don't close the lid (hot machine after something CPU intensive) or maybe I fail to fully close it? A button is safer.

Re: From macOS to Arch Linux

#122

Post by extr »

I currently run a dual boot with Arch and Windows 11 on an XPS 13. There are positives to each:

* Windows has much better support for handling the Hi/Multi DPI setup that is my laptop + 2 4K screens. Wayland gets there, but unfortunately the font rendering is annoying bad, and the fractional scaling doesn't quite look right. And of course it's a very "just works" experience if you stay on the happy path. The Windows OneDrive + Office integration is great, and I have some photo software I run that is Windows-only.

* Arch gives a much better "pure laptop" experience. Hotkeys make everything easy, tiling WMs are just infinitely superior if you're working off one small screen. Also I get BETTER battery life on Arch, the laptop runs totally cool (and fans never spin up), and closing the lid puts it into true S3 sleep. It's very snappy and I use less RAM.

Also, I think people have this idea that if you use Arch the only "right" way to do it is to spend a million hours setting up a whole universe of CLI apps and becoming a wizard with hotkeys. I only use the CLI if it's truly easier than a GUI or something I don't use often. I basically just install the regular google-chrome-stable binary from AUR and then do everything on the web. Email? I set up a desktop link to fastmail. Spotify? Don't bother with native linux app, just set up a desktop link to the web player. Need to use Excel and don't feel like switching to windows? Just go use the web version, etc...Seriously, the move to webapps is doing more for the linux desktop experience than anything else.

Re: From macOS to Arch Linux

#123

Post by belthesar »

I'm super pleased with my Linux desktop. I'm now full time Linux on the desktop, having run Windows, dual booting Windows/Hackintosh, and then Windows/Linux for quite some time. I still have a Windows partition, but I haven't been in it in half a year at this point. The experience on my desktop hasn't been flawless, but it has been pretty nice on the whole. I can't say the same for my laptop, which has been a 2 year experiment at this point. When I was using it predominantly to do light work in the office, it worked out well, but I find it more and more difficult to use from a non-coding productivity standpoint.

When I do work, I generally remote into my desktop via VSCode anyway at this point (and I really like this workflow tbh), but because I don't daily drive the laptop, there's less time spent to improve the tooling, and the ratio of time spent working to time spent fixing a weird issue is much lower than on my desktop. With some of my work potentially benefiting from the new Apple SoCs, the reversal in direction back to good sane defaults in hardware layout, and the far greater likelihood that my ratio of work to fix ratio would significantly increase, I'm pretty sure that an Apple Silicon laptop is in my near future.

Re: From macOS to Arch Linux

#124

Post by jatone »

tanjiro wrote: post #29

Its not just the initial setup that's painful with Arch, the whole rolling update model means things break often and I no longer have the patience to patch them. But I do agree that linux provides a better env for development compared to macOS. On Ubuntu atm and works like charm with flexibility to extend it as I like.

rolling updates isn't actually a problem in practice. the maintainers do test the applications before releasing the updates.

i encounter usually 2-3 bugs (and almost always they are minor) per year due to rolling updates and usually its in the software I'm developing relying on old behaviors. and a simple package downgrade fixes it almost every time.

Re: From macOS to Arch Linux

#126

Post by ubercow13 »

nonameiguess wrote: post #40
gbrown wrote: post #7

Can an Arch person explain to me why their approach is worth it over something with a more comprehensive package manager like apt or dnf? I don’t mind compiling programs myself when needed, but for most things I’m happy to not have to hand-hold my OS when it comes to updates. From the wiki: > Before upgrading, users are expected to visit the Arch Linux home page to check the latest news, or alternatively subscribe to…

I'm honestly not sure what you mean by apt or dnf being more comprehensive. The feature set of all Linux package managers are pretty similar. The major difference with Arch is you're heavily recommended not to do partial upgrades, but pacman will do it if you really want to. That's a difference in update philosophy between batched releases and rolling releases, not a difference in the package managers. If you mean co…

> package managers are pretty similar. The major difference with Arch is you're heavily recommended not to do partial upgrades, but pacman will do it if you really want to. That's a difference in update philosophy between batched releases and rolling releases, not a difference in the package managers.

No it’s a difference in package managers. Pacman doesn’t take into account library versions when resolving dependencies, it’s why partial upgrades aren’t supported because the only way to ensure every package you have installed is linked against the version of its dependencies you have installed is to have every package on your system come from a snapshot in time of the whole repo package tree.

Better package managers don’t have this problem and understand how to not break your system with partial upgrades. This matters as soon as a new version of a package has a bug and you want to downgrade it, or you build and install a package from the AUR which, when you later update your system, could need rebuilding to continue working, but pacman has no way to tell you when this is the case.

Re: From macOS to Arch Linux

#127

Post by jjoonathan »

d3nj4l wrote: post #87
jjoonathan wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I tried Manjaro the other day and had to try 3 kernel versions before I found one that woke from sleep without crashing, the display wouldn't hold its resolution through display sleep, bluetooth wouldn't connect without writing a custom config file, and CUPS auto-detected the wrong drivers. I went back to Ubuntu and it all Just Worked. My conclusion: yeah, the Debian stale package problem sucks, but it doesn't suck a…

I had several issues with waking from sleep on Ubuntu based distros as well, and had to wait ages for updates that would fix it. It’s not all green on the other side!

Me too, but that was 15 years ago. Manjaro was a trip back to the Bad Old Days.

I'm sure we're deep in YMMV territory, but I gave Manjaro a spin based on the recent hype wave so whenever I see an echo of that wave I feel obliged to share my experience. Shrug.

Re: From macOS to Arch Linux

#128

Post by stnikolauswagne »

pkulak wrote: post #85
sunaurus wrote: post #10

I just completed my migration in the opposite direction after using Arch Linux as my daily driver for ~10 years. I think Arch Linux is by far the better OS for pretty much all power users, but when using multiple devices, the benefits of the "Apple Ecosystem" outweigh the benefits of an amazing desktop OS for me, which is why I ended up switching to Mac OS. Some key points which I believe are much worse on Mac: * No…

Whoa now, don't leave me hanging. What are the benefits of the "Apple ecosystem"? I'm using a Macbook right now because it's tiny and light and has amazing hardware, but once I need to get things done, it's closed and charging. If you have multiple devices, why do they all need to be identical?

Having my phonecalls automatically forwarded to my laptop is a huge benefit. Being able to use my iPad pro as a secondary monitor for when I have to go into the office is very useful as well. Painless copy-paste between devices is also a huge bonus.

I‘m sure there are ways to get all of that running on linux but I‘d rather spend the time that it would take setting all that up working and let my company pay a bit more on my equipment.

Re: From macOS to Arch Linux

#129

Post by AnIdiotOnTheNet »

rahimnathwani wrote: post #101
calferreira wrote: post #71

Arch is like the IKEA version of Linux. Thanks to their WIKI, i feel that i can troubleshoot most issues by myself despite not having huge linux experience.

Arch Wiki is useful even if you're using a different distro.

In many cases I think the Arch wiki is superior even to the official documentation. Which I think says a lot about the state of most documentation.

Re: From macOS to Arch Linux

#130

Post by vbarrielle »

lmohseni wrote: post #106
pkulak wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whoa now, don't leave me hanging. What are the benefits of the "Apple ecosystem"? I'm using a Macbook right now because it's tiny and light and has amazing hardware, but once I need to get things done, it's closed and charging. If you have multiple devices, why do they all need to be identical?

I have a macbook and and Iphone, so one handy thing I use is the clipboard is shared between devices on the same LAN that are signed into the same icloud accont. so I can select some text with my mouse, hit "paste" in my phone, and it works instantaneously. definitely one of those "wow we live in the future" moments.

This feature is available for the linux/android combination using kdeconnect. Unfortunately I don't think there's an iOS app for that.
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