Daily-driving a Mac, one year later • Hacker News Board

Re: Daily-driving a Mac, one year later

#131

Post by sph » Mon, Mar 28, 2022, 6:24 AM UTC

_8j50 wrote: post #92

vladvasiliu wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Unpopular opinion: Linux desktops needs to be proprietary software friendly. As in accept blob installers that can install desktop applications that work well on any major DE and without consideration for package managers. Paid apps should also be a thing on Linux. Isn't this already the case? I'm running Spotify and Steam games with no issues here. While I agree with your greater point that a system that gets out…

They have to do a lot of work coming up with custom installers or packages for distros. If you have gentoo+kde for example you can't just download a blob, open it and just have it work. It depends on what you are doing I guess. I remember getting frustrated at windows too. Linux is the best at being configurable and controllable from an administrative workload perspective but not from a productivity or entertainment…

> custom installers or packages for distros

Heard of Flathub?

Re: Daily-driving a Mac, one year later

#132

Post by _8j50 » Mon, Mar 28, 2022, 6:24 AM UTC

awilfox wrote: post #70

_8j50 wrote: post #32

I have found time to be the biggest factor. I use to have hours every day to tinker with Linux, I enjoy the tinkering personally and I can endure the lack of features. But at some point I began spending more than 8h on average on my work and really needed a break each day to not get burned out and take care of *health,on top of which I have a backlog of things to study up on for $work, any platform (including windows…

Time is one of the big factors for me, too. One of my favourite stories to tell about my initial migration is when still had a laptop running Linux, I noticed that the Lock Screen was "stuck" for about 5 seconds every time I opened the lid. The Mac didn't do that; it was immediately ready for input when I opened it. Multiply that by three lid events per day and I wasted six hours of my life on a lock screen . I don't…

That's a good point, it all adds up. Small inconveniences multiply over time.

Even windows vs mac, a mac with less resources than windows performs much better for me and I am so much more productive. On windows everything lags, crashes, freezes when monitors are plugged in, hardware changes, wakes up from sleep and it is horrible at the amount of disk i/o it uses. I constantly have to reboot it else it falls apart. I could go months without rebooting a mac.

Re: Daily-driving a Mac, one year later

#133

Post by sph » Mon, Mar 28, 2022, 6:27 AM UTC

andyfleming wrote: post #108

koprulusector wrote: post #16

I’ll keep my tiling window manager and keyboard driven workflow, along with the ability to sudo to root and modify my system as I please, rather than banging my head against the wall because Apple has literally locked me out of parts of my own file system, or have some obscure launcher/service management that’s poorly documented. Or the fact that servers all run Linux and apples non-posix, slightly different, proprie…

I’ve never understood the window tiling complaint. While MacOS doesn’t have tiling built in, it’s readily available for free. Are there features that aren’t available in those applications?

macOS window management is incredibly worse than the other two operating system, and that's if you use Spectacle and other helper tools. Without them, it's even worse.

I loved my time with macOS but window management was definitely the worst thing about the OS for me.

Re: Daily-driving a Mac, one year later

#134

Post by SuperSandro2000 » Mon, Mar 28, 2022, 6:35 AM UTC

Tehchops wrote: post #41

I'm honestly torn. I was a big Linux proponent for a while, then Apple won me over with Macs for a time. They did "just work" for my day-to-day(DevOps). However, last spring, I bought a new personal system for freelance work/side projects, and have been running Ubuntu as my daily driver. Funny enough, it seems like during that same period the my UX on my work-supplied Mac(2019-era MBP) has been steadily declining. I'…

Mac's aren't even that great for DevOps. You get horrible out of date GNU things like bash 3 and are almost forced to upgrade and install a lot of stuff via brew at which point you also could have installed a Linux.

Re: Daily-driving a Mac, one year later

#135

Post by vmception » Mon, Mar 28, 2022, 6:41 AM UTC

diffeomorphism wrote: post #124

Sporktacular wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And then there are used options for both PC and Mac, if they're really keen.

Not really. Just have a look at ebay: Macbooks from 2015 are still expensive. Partially because Apple's naming is useless, e.g. would you like to buy a macbook air or a macbook air or a macbook air? All very different machines from different years.

please, the market is efficient enough to know to ask for year and model, even which season of that year, for macbooks.

Re: Daily-driving a Mac, one year later

#136

Post by vmception » Mon, Mar 28, 2022, 6:44 AM UTC

_8j50 wrote: post #32

I have found time to be the biggest factor. I use to have hours every day to tinker with Linux, I enjoy the tinkering personally and I can endure the lack of features. But at some point I began spending more than 8h on average on my work and really needed a break each day to not get burned out and take care of *health,on top of which I have a backlog of things to study up on for $work, any platform (including windows…

Time has been what I liked about MacOS. Just get right to business. I'm not sure how much of that is true any more, and most linux distributions that boot into a GUI have been nice enough for me too without having to tinker with settings, but I do know that Windows is still a cluster of immediately needing to go into settings before I get anything done, almost every time.

Re: Daily-driving a Mac, one year later

#137

Post by diffeomorphism » Mon, Mar 28, 2022, 7:13 AM UTC

_8j50 wrote: post #129

diffeomorphism wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> you can't just download a blob, open it and just have it work Isn't that exactly what appimages are? E.g. download Krita, double click, done. Also, I thought with mobile people finally realized that "download blobs" is much worse than just installing from stores/repos? Even Windows has winget by now.

That's the problem with big picture thinking. You are right, in the grand scheme of things it is better. But as a consumer it sucks. Which repo? Now I have to maintain repos alongside apps? Why can't the app take care of its own compatibility and upgrade needs? Why am I involved? I just want to use the damn thing without interruption. On mac, I don't use their appstore, I just get dmg images and get going. Same on wi…

> Which repo? Now I have to maintain repos alongside apps? Why can't the app take care of its own compatibility and upgrade needs? Why am I involved? I just want to use the damn thing without interruption.

Which is exactly why distros have very big repos, iOS has exactly one store and so does android (yeah, yeah amazon, fdroid...; few people install these). So that you never, ever have to care about that.

Simple rule of thumb as a consumer: If it is not in the repo/store/steam then it does not exist. Same for iOS or android by the way: If you need to jailbreak/root for an app, for the average user it might as well not exist.

> On mac, I don't use their appstore, I just get dmg images and get going. Same on windows.

Yeah, same for appimages. And you don't use the mac appstore because it currently is much worse than the comparable linux offering. Yet, both apple and MS are clearly pushing in that direction.

> and now I have to build from source and figure out aclocal dev packages,deps,ugh...

Er, no you don't. If the mac .dmg has those same issues you don't do that, if the windows .exe has those same issues you don't do that. You simply say "that sucks" and go on with your life and install the "fixed" one half a year later. In fact for windows software that seems so much more painful (compared to linux) that I would not even attempt it. It is nice that linux is so much better at that, but still as a user you simply don't do that.

Re: Daily-driving a Mac, one year later

#138

Post by vbezhenar » Mon, Mar 28, 2022, 7:36 AM UTC

awilfox wrote: post #67

vbezhenar wrote: post #50

I’m a bit disappointed by current macOS state. Xcode breaks console: even man man starts throwing some warnings. softwareupdate —-install-rosetta reports success with error and doesn’t actually installs anything. Xcode still requires Rosetta. I unpacked JDK and every console command fails because macOS doesn’t trust it yada yada. I have to go to settings and allow every binary. And I need 4 JDKs… After compiling go h…

That's interesting. Xcode didn't require Rosetta for me. I also didn't have any issues installing Rosetta when I finally did need the functionality. Was this when the M1 was first released? I didn't have an M1 until August 2021.

It was few days ago on latest versions and M1 MacBook.

Re: Daily-driving a Mac, one year later

#139

Post by awilfox » Mon, Mar 28, 2022, 7:51 AM UTC

LeFantome wrote: post #118

dopeboy wrote: post #55

Ubuntu user since the 5.04 days. The vertical integration the apple ecosystem offers is incredible and not something linux can ever compete with. I see my fiancee use her iphone with her apple tv and her mac - everything connects together, seamlessly. There are walled garden elements to it but look, I'm done fighting the FOSS fight I waged in my late teens and early 20s. I got work to do, my life to live, etc. My adv…

I am not arguing really. I think you are mostly right. That said, I use Zoom daily on Manjaro and have not had that happen. It happened to me just last week on my iPhone though. While I love Airplay, I use Plex to stream media not only to my iPhone and the Apple TV downstairs but also to my Roku, my LG TV, an Amazon Fire stick, and my son’s Android tablet. Even after buying expensive apps, I could never get AirPlay w…

I found Jellyfin to be a great media server. Its client is so nice and works on Roku. Not sure about LG TVs. It's libre and .NET so it runs anywhere – including my Mac server :)

Re: Daily-driving a Mac, one year later

#140

Post by awilfox » Mon, Mar 28, 2022, 8:09 AM UTC

sph wrote: post #125

spacexsucks wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Patently a lie. I have been struggling to make mac os mine for last 6 years with 40hrs/wk on it. Compared to my personal linux where I barely spend 10-12 per week. Just cant. On top SIP filesystem integrity protections just get in the way. Mac gets int way when programming, video editing, data management, power system.

macOS is a great system to watch videos, collect photos, take notes and do casual and very common multimedia tasks. It is excellent and unrivalled at that. But for engineering and power users it becomes more restrictive the more your mastery and requirements increase. Linux is pretty crap at multimedia. But for computing, tinkering and pushing your hardware to its full capacity it is absolutely the best. Windows is a…

"Casual" is relative: digiKam choked on my 55K photo library where Lightroom Classic works fine. Adobe XD's only libre competitor that I knew of was Pencil, which died three years ago after Mozilla killed off XUL and they tried to convert to Node/Electron. And don't even get me started on the libre alternatives to InDesign. (Three years and counting since the last stable Scribus, despite nine beta releases.) I wanted so badly to do production work on Linux. I really, really did.

Engineering… depends on your definition. My preferred dev environments, CLion and Qt Creator, work fine on Mac as well. I'll agree that CAD has suffered since Autodesk went insane and FreeCAD, OpenSCAD, and the like work much better on Linux. On the science end, I find OsiriX Lite to be a much better experience than Kradview, and that's assuming you build all the KDE 4 libraries to even make Kradview work at all.