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Switching from macOS: The Basics

blog.elementary.io

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Re: Switching from macOS: The Basics

#141

Post by r3bl »

yoz-y wrote: post #97
endisukaj wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Considering how Elementary is a skin on top of Ubuntu with some shiny icons and animations... No thank you, I'd rather use Mint or Ubuntu if I want an easy distro.

It is progressively becoming quite more than a simple skin. They do have their own window manager and a quite comprehensive set of applications with simplified interfaces and consistent UI. To me it seems like a worthy goal, however it seems to create a separation between the typical Linux user/developer and their potential targeted users.

Not really. I developed on elementary quite a lot. I find its ease of getting around quite easy. Your text editor / IDE is at the front and everything else is completely tucked away + you can control basic things about your OS like music / notifications etc. without having to focus on some other app to make a change. And it's pretty lightweight.

Comparing that to GNOME, where everything is so damn big that it wastes half of my screen and KDE where the default apps are usually bloated and confusing and can do way too many things, I call Pantheon as a win for the developers.

EDIT: Also, one neat trick that I've never seen any other terminal emulator doing other than Pantheon Terminal, is that you get a desktop notification every time you're not focused on the terminal when it finishes its job. For example, let's say I do something like "sudo apt install netbeans". Since the download is large, I'm going to focus on something else in the meantime and I'll get a desktop notification when the installation is finished.

Re: Switching from macOS: The Basics

#142

Post by pavelludiq »

driverdan wrote: post #74

Every few years I investigate switching back to a Linux laptop. Every time I find there are still issues. Last time it was poor GPU support (no fast switching) and buggy sleep. What issues still exist with using Linux on laptops?

It highly depends on the laptop you're talking about specifically. Some will just work, others will steal your soul with frustration. I've had very few issues on my thinkpad x240 with Kubuntu. It's an older model, but back when it was less than a year old I still had very few issues with it. Mostly with the touchpad, but that particular model is horrible even with good drivers, so I don't use it in general. I had to fiddle with some bearded parts when I wanted my battery to only charge to 70%, rather than keep a full charge while plugged in as the lenovo bits are windows only(I vaguely remember having to set up shell scripts of some sort). Bluetooth didn't work in the beginning, but upgrading to a newer Kubuntu fixed that, and I don't use that very often either, so I didn't mind. Also generally battery life is slightly worse than windows but this also varies. And although Windows 10 is a fairly snappy, it spins my fans much more than Kubuntu does.

The last computer I had significant hardware problems with on linux had a Pentium 4, but I've been vary careful with hardware choice in the last decade. Do your research and you'll be fine.

Re: Switching from macOS: The Basics

#143

Post by noir_lord »

Playing with it in VirtualBox.

First impressions, it's very very pretty, the design out the box is nice though it's completely the antithesis of how I work (3 screens, panel on each, window buttons only for windows on that screen).

The level of integration is nice, it feels cohesive.

That said XFCE4 with some tweaking is pretty much perfect for me, it exactly works the way I want things to work.

Re: Switching from macOS: The Basics

#144

Post by kbart »

driverdan wrote: post #74

Every few years I investigate switching back to a Linux laptop. Every time I find there are still issues. Last time it was poor GPU support (no fast switching) and buggy sleep. What issues still exist with using Linux on laptops?

"What issues still exist with using Linux on laptops?"

It depends on laptop model, some are worse than others. Just google " linux problem" and see what others encounter. Personally, I don't have any problems with my 5 years old Dell laptop running Kubuntu.

Re: Switching from macOS: The Basics

#145

Post by jordigh »

r3bl wrote: post #133
jordigh wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But I think it's counterproductive, because it looks adversarial. Apparently the best way to get the donation is to bring up the payment screen after the download has happened. This is because risk-averse buyers can first try the product and then feel less pressured to decide how much it's worth: https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/53376/

It's kind of difficult to do that when you are talking about the OS, isn't it? First of all, it's a rather large download, so you're probably going to close the website as soon as you click on the download button. Second of all, to consume the product in this case, you have to install it. And yet again, after you do so, if you get greeted with the "donate" window right away, you're going to dismiss it because you sti…

> It's kind of difficult to do that when you are talking about the OS, isn't it?

Not necessarily. It's not like you expect the buyer to do a careful analysis of what it's worth before they pay. You can usually decide this sort of thing based on very quick impressions. Also, there's the aspect of it just seeming nicer to ask after the download has happened. Then it's clear that you already have the product, now it's up to you to decide what to pay for it, if anything at all. Here people have been tricked into thinking they had to pay and begrudge the author.

Re: Switching from macOS: The Basics

#146

Post by asadkn »

Void_ wrote: post #39

I'm really hoping this is just a phase. Hoping that Apple will reduce prices of new laptops and we'll be back to normal. Right now everybody is using Macs. Walk into the Bay Area coffee shop, you see Macs everywhere. I love that. I build desktop software for Macs (focuslist.co). My apps are prettier than any others. They are easier and faster to use. This is the reason why people pay me $5 while they can get the job…

Doesn't change the fact that Mac marketshare is around 7%. Just because they're targeting the coffee shop crowd doesn't mean everyone's using Macs.

Re: Switching from macOS: The Basics

#147

Post by matzipan »

matthewking wrote: post #54
kornakiewicz wrote: post #35

I'm long term Linux user and I played with Elementary sometime ago. While just after installation everything is great and beautiful, it changed shortly when I need to install apps outside the ecosystem. Experience gives you feeling I could compare to using old-java application on Windows 10.

Along with seemingly everyone else, I had a quick look at my options to migrate away from Apple over the last few days. First thing I looked for was a decent mail app, was immediately put off the whole idea, exactly as you describe.

Well Geary (and the elementary fork Pantheon Mail) are quite good for basic use. There are still a few bugs and their codebases are quite hell to work with (see [1] for my review of them). This document motivates my little side project, but, lately, it hasn't seen much direct attention as I've been working on some stuff upstream, in elementary and Evolution, for this project.

[1] https://github.com/matzipan/envoyer/blob/master/README.md#re...

Re: Switching from macOS: The Basics

#148

Post by 2muchcoffeeman »

driverdan wrote: post #74

Every few years I investigate switching back to a Linux laptop. Every time I find there are still issues. Last time it was poor GPU support (no fast switching) and buggy sleep. What issues still exist with using Linux on laptops?

My pet peeve with Linux: Wifi.

I have a HP laptop for work running Ubuntu that appears on their Certified hardware list. Wifi is buggy, using an external monitor is buggy, there are always "Internal Errors", sleep simply does not work, it crashes regularly.

Re: Switching from macOS: The Basics

#149

Post by criddell »

FrankBlack wrote: post #47

Perhaps I am just dense, but the article references, specifically, the "Pro" market. For most pros that I know (and I am among them), our OS choice is often based on our tools, not the other way around. If I need Photoshop, Lightroom, Logic Pro, Visual Studio, etc., switching will be quite a chore. For the average user, this is probably a much more appealing argument.

I think over the past 15 years, lots of Linux users migrated to macOS because it was a pretty, usable Unix. Those users might not be terribly loyal to Apple and will move to back to Linux if it's better for them.

If you use macOS because you need to run Mac software, then you probably aren't going anywhere.

Re: Switching from macOS: The Basics

#150

Post by serf »

r3bl wrote: post #115
divanvisagie wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't this a dark pattern though?

No, it's not. It says "pay what you want" and you can literally pay what you want (including nothing).

Well, I think it is.

If I pay nothing, I don't pay.

I don't say "I paid zero." or "I paid nothing" unless someone asks the specific question "How much did you pay for that?"

It's obviously a way to nudge people into paying something.

edit: I made an aside about the use of the word 'donation' by cannabis collectives in the U.S. to denote 'payment' (as a way to operate as non-profits and avoid federal problems) as a reference to similarly weak wording used in a nefarious way, but I thought the relationship to the pattern here was weak, so I removed it.

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