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From macOS to Arch Linux

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Re: From macOS to Arch Linux

#191

Post by pxc »

remolueoend wrote: post #95
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…

Your last point is interesting. When I switched from macOS to Linux, the tool is missed most was definitely Karabiner-Elements. I got nightmares from xkb & related tools.

What remappings do you use?

Re: From macOS to Arch Linux

#192

Post by voltaireodactyl »

zdragnar wrote: post #139
shbooms wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Setting up ergonomic custom keyboard shortcuts is painful and requires (multiple?) third-party applications to do well. Take a look at Hammerspoon[0] for this if you haven't already. It requires some work to get it working the way want (you'll be writing some basic Lua code) but it's by far the best, all-in-one solution I've found for this problem on macOS. It has a ton of built-in modules for automating things inc…

Hammerspoon is what makes macOS usable for me (plus karabiner for caps lock twiddling). The randomly rearranging layout of mission control has to be the most user hostile annoyance I have ever experienced in an OS to date. Ironically, there isn't anything equivalent to it in linux land, and once I had gotten some really nice customizations, going back makes me a little sad.

If you’re talking about spaces automatically swapping around, you can disable that functionality in System Preferences-Mission Control, just fyi.

Re: From macOS to Arch Linux

#193

Post by pxc »

Offpics wrote: post #37
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…

Im going to switch from arch to mac in one month. What I should consider installing on it beside homebrew?

only use Homebrew for ‘Casks’ (GUI .apps)— `brew cask` subcommand

Nix or pkgsrc for reliable management of CLI tools (both, if you want to try Nix but want an escape hatch)

don't forget to install GNU coreutils, grep, find, and bash. (BSD coreutils are weird and anemic if you're used to GNU. macOS bash is ancient, etc.)

disable cursor acceleration (barely works, but it's the only thing that works): https://plentycom.jp/en/cursorsense/index.html

the only mature terminal emulator on the platform that performs okay (provided you enable GPU acceleration): https://iterm2.com/

recover basic key remapping functionality: https://karabiner-elements.pqrs.org/

recover basic audio controls like per-app volume mixing: https://github.com/kyleneideck/BackgroundMusic

recover FUSE support: https://osxfuse.github.io/

recover configurability for a whole host of missing functionality, like global keyboard shortcuts, through automation (Lua scripting): https://www.hammerspoon.org/

recover clipboard management: https://hluk.github.io/CopyQ/

if you don't use some hack to get window tiling, you might also want to...

recover basic window management functionality: https://github.com/rxhanson/Rectangle

recover modifier key window drag: https://github.com/dmarcotte/easy-move-resize

good luck.

Re: From macOS to Arch Linux

#194

Post by pxc »

manquer wrote: post #186
deadbunny wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Macs Just Work. Sorry, just found it funny with the big list of applications you're recommending to install to do basic thing in OSX when the usual argument against Linux on HN is "Macs just work".

They do for regular users who use typical end user apps it doesn't just work for devs. Apple is not designing OS for devs their vast majority of users are not devs or even professionals these days, while macs can be used for development with some wrangling to get a POSIX like environment without too much performance loss, it is not linux. Docker will run in a VM and be slower and some basic stuff like procfs would be…

> Apple is not designing OS for devs their vast majority of users are not devs or even professionals these days

yeah. So why are so many devs more or less forced to use MacBooks? someone tell their CTOs

Re: From macOS to Arch Linux

#195

Post by pxc »

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…

> 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.

People who like Arch because they think the AUR is actually good hate doing repo management. What they like about the AUR is that it's One Big Repo, and it (unlike the barren Arch repos themselves) is pretty comprehensive.

> > Before upgrading, users are expected to visit the Arch Linux home page to check the latest news, or alternatively subscribe to the RSS feed or the arch-announce mailing list > Like… why?

Because Arch's interpretation of ‘keep it simple, stupid’ means they are allergic to engineering in their distro tools. As a result, their package manager has deficient dependency resolution behavior. This is exacerbated by the fact that the devs make relatively little use of things like transitional packages, for some reason. But Pacman is fast, because by choosing not to have a complete dependency solver, it avoids tackling a problem with high computational complexity. For some people, that part of the user experience is good enough that it allows them to forgive Pacman for doing insane things like pointlessly breaking installed software every now and again.

Re: From macOS to Arch Linux

#196

Post by randomluck040 »

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…

I just got my first Mac ever: a MacBook Air M1. Coming from Arch I thought I would handle it easy. How bad can it be? It just works, right?… right?

So I wanted a laptop instead of a desktop computer and Framework isn’t available where I’m from so I went for the MacBook. In terms of performance, all is fine. Some OS based decisions make me want to put everything back into the packaging and send the thing back.

1) I might be alone with this but how is there no forward delete (del) button? I’ve never noticed but apparently I use it quite a lot. cmd + Backspace solves that.

2) The entire OS feels more trackpad-centric than other OS‘s I’ve used which confuses me. The gestures and the trackpad are top notch though.

3) I don’t understand the Option key. Overall the Command, Option and CTRL keys do weird things in my opinion and growing up with Windows and Linux, I don’t understand what command does either. Which leads me to…

4) The keyboard shortcuts feel complicated for the sake of complicatedness.

5) Why can I not click an app on the dock to minimise it into the dock?

6) The delete key, man.

This sounds negative but there’s a lot of positive stuff with that thing (I’m good with the display and keyboard, the battery life is crazy compared to laptops I’ve had before, …). I’m not sure yet if I want to learn a whole new OS though so I’m undecided if I want to keep it yet. The main downside of using Linux for me is Adobe (effing) Photoshop and Lightroom not working.

Re: From macOS to Arch Linux

#197

Post by pxc »

apetresc wrote: post #26
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 think you're confusing Arch with Gentoo or something - the Arch package manager is not from-source, it ships binaries just like apt. Perhaps you're thinking of the AUR, which does usually just host the PKGBUILD which you run makepkg on directly to compile, but that's analogous to something like an Ubuntu PPA, not the core package manager. The main thing that people like about it is the rolling release model; new pa…

> The main thing that people like about it is the rolling release model; new packages for virtually everything are updated within hours or days of an upstream release, with incredible practical stability.

Fedora Rawhide and openSUSE Tumbleweed are both nearly as up-to-date[1] as the Arch repos but they have package managers with correct dependency solvers and continuous integration pipelines with tests produce their repos. NixOS Unstable is more up-to-date than Arch Linux[1], and its package manager never breaks your system on upgrades and features automatic rollbacks no matter what filesystem you use.

‘I want a rolling release’ doesn't really explain the choice to use Arch in particular, imo, and it's weird that this extremely common answer to ‘why Arch’ talks about a feature that isn't really specific to Arch

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1: https://repology.org/repositories/statistics/pnewest

Re: From macOS to Arch Linux

#198

Post by pxc »

II2II wrote: post #94
apetresc wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you're confusing Arch with Gentoo or something - the Arch package manager is not from-source, it ships binaries just like apt. Perhaps you're thinking of the AUR, which does usually just host the PKGBUILD which you run makepkg on directly to compile, but that's analogous to something like an Ubuntu PPA, not the core package manager. The main thing that people like about it is the rolling release model; new pa…

It is probably a reference to the AUR, but its use is not as common as some people seem to think and is somewhat discouraged (since, like PPA, the packagers are not necessarily trusted). I would also have a hard time claiming that programs from the AUR are compiled yourself. Yes, the software is usually compiled on your own hardware. On the other hand, the compilation process is handled by makepkg or an AUR helper. W…

> It is probably a reference to the AUR, but its use is not as common as some people seem to think and is somewhat discouraged

Arch proper has like 60% the package count of openSUSE, fewer than 1/2 as many packages as Fedora, fewer than 1/3 as many packages as Debian, and fewer than 1/6 as many packages as NixOS.[1]

Maybe some of this is Arch having larger packages (splitting fewer of them out), but whatever fudge factor you wanna add in, the Arch repos are extraordinarily small. You have to get into really niche shit like Solus or Exherbo to find a distro with a smaller software selection than the Arch repositories.

The idea that Arch is as usable as most Linux distros without leveraging the AUR is ridiculous.

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1: https://repology.org/repositories/statistics/total

Re: From macOS to Arch Linux

#199

Post by [deleted] »

randomluck040 wrote: post #196
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…

I just got my first Mac ever: a MacBook Air M1. Coming from Arch I thought I would handle it easy. How bad can it be? It just works, right?… right? So I wanted a laptop instead of a desktop computer and Framework isn’t available where I’m from so I went for the MacBook. In terms of performance, all is fine. Some OS based decisions make me want to put everything back into the packaging and send the thing back. 1) I mi…

[deleted]

Re: From macOS to Arch Linux

#200

Post by pxc »

stonemetal12 wrote: post #78
alexarnesen wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Arch is the first system I have been able to support, fully. As in, 100% of the issues I run across with my distro, I can resolve. I used to run Ubuntu as my gnome desktop distribution, and when it worked (99% of the time), it was a superior experience to Arch. However when running Ubuntu I would inevitably run across some issue that seemed to require a level of sysadmin chops that I never have possessed. For the pas…

Would you recommend Arch to someone without a lot of Linux experience? Ubuntu has me thinking of switching to a different OS.

Unpopular opinion: the only people I'd recommend Arch to are people without a lot of Linux experience (who are interested in learning).

Once you learn the basics of what goes into a distro and you know how to set things up and troubleshoot, there's no reason to use a distro with a package management story as backwards as Arch's.

After you're done with Arch, learn to write packages for a couple distros (practice building them on something like OBS[1], which lets you build and distribute packages for almost any distro). Then choose your distro based on the quality of the tooling it is built on and package whatever you need that isn't already in it.

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1: https://build.opensuse.org/

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