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Finding an Alternative to Mac OS X

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Re: Finding an Alternative to Mac OS X

#211

Post by h4waii »

vermaden wrote: post #185
rectangleboy wrote: post #50

Where's the commentary on FreeBSD? It certainly seems like the right idea (to replace OS X), but I want to know their experience.

I use FreeBSD as a desktop/laptop/workstation since years and it works great for me. Total control over the system You work on is priceless. Everything on my hardware works (ThinkPad W530). The WWAN(3g) connection, Wifi, SD Card Reader, Power Management, multi monitor setup, external disk in the Modular Bay ... Also having ZFS and ZFS Boot Environments on a system is great for updates/changes. You are literally bulle…

How is a non-tangible filesystem making you "literally" bulletproof?

The BSDs are great for very specific tasks, but I find more general use users will prefer Linux with GNU userland. It has wider hardware support and a larger community for resources such as documentation and troubleshooting.

Re: Finding an Alternative to Mac OS X

#212

Post by therealmarv »

slowrabbit wrote: post #137
khazhou wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, except that OSX's iterm2+Karabiner is so much better than any terminal on Linux. Awesome full-screen switching (⌘-Enter), easy shortcuts to create subwindows, natural clipboard support, great keyboard compatibility with Emacs (after futzing with keyboard settings and Karabiner mappings). On Ubuntu, all of these have been lacking. Hell, I can't even use the terminal for a single session without accidentally trig…

Terminology, the Enlightenment terminal is better than iterm2+Karabiner imo especially when you consider Karabiner doesn't properly work on Sierra.

Karabiner Elements + khd https://github.com/koekeishiya/khd replaced Karabiner for me on Sierra.

Re: Finding an Alternative to Mac OS X

#213

Post by optimuspaul »

applecore wrote: post #206
nnain wrote: post #193

If you're an iOS/Mac developer, there's no alternative. If you want an alternative for graphics work (or other development), try Windows. For other web development, in general, you'll be able to work well with Linux. Keeping work on different machines quickly starts to become unmanageable, that's why MacOS still leads. It gives the best of most options on the best hardware. P.S. - I tried ElementaryOS last month, for…

Best hardware, really?

best I've used (which isn't saying much)... but really depends on what you mean by best. Not necessarily the best performing specs on the market, but pretty good from off the shelf.

Re: Finding an Alternative to Mac OS X

#214

Post by untog »

applecore wrote: post #206
nnain wrote: post #193

If you're an iOS/Mac developer, there's no alternative. If you want an alternative for graphics work (or other development), try Windows. For other web development, in general, you'll be able to work well with Linux. Keeping work on different machines quickly starts to become unmanageable, that's why MacOS still leads. It gives the best of most options on the best hardware. P.S. - I tried ElementaryOS last month, for…

Best hardware, really?

IMO, the Apple unibody laptop design is still the best out there. And the (non-latest) keyboard and trackpad have no comparison in Windows laptops.

Re: Finding an Alternative to Mac OS X

#215

Post by peatmoss »

massysett wrote: post #41
codeka wrote: post #20

> The first option I tried was an i3 based desktop. However whilst I wanted to like tiling window managers I decided it wasn’t for me. It took me a week or so to get used to i3, but once I did I can't see myself ever going back. I've been using i3 at work and at home for about year now, and every time I get on my (Mac Book) laptop it's a frustrating experience: I feel like I spend more time trying to figure out how t…

i3 is great, until you try to do something simple like change the time zone for your desktop clock or add some wallpaper. I switched from Linux to Mac because I was too well acquainted with making symlinks to /usr/share/ somewhere just to change my clock when I traveled, and then figuring out just how few processes I had to restart so it would take effect. Unfortunately the Linux desktops were actually worse than the…

I've had good luck in the past with XFCE (in Xubuntu & OpenBSD) together with XMonad for this use case. Even now, where I don't use any of the panels and whatnot, I will occasionally fire up an XFCE control panel to do whatever it is that needs doing.

Re: Finding an Alternative to Mac OS X

#216

Post by untog »

DavideNL wrote: post #190
mrweasel wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not exactly sure why this happens, but when I try to use Windows my hand (mouse hand) cramps up and I get angry and frustrated. In my view, Windows 10 is still miles away in consistency across the entire system, compared to macOS. Windows 10 actually made it worse, because it's trying to accommodate both Windows 7 and Windows 8 design. Currently I don't think we have alternatives to macOS. I understand that I sou…

> but when I try to use Windows my hand (mouse hand) cramps up and I get angry and frustrated Same here! Also i start to suffer from 'update-fatigue' when using Windows. The endless updates, reboots, and god knows what it's doing in the background which consumes resources... it all just feels so clumsy. I've never experienced anything like this in OSX.

Really? Because OS X pesters me about pending updates via the App Store all the time, and the only deferment option it provides is "wait until tonight".

Re: Finding an Alternative to Mac OS X

#217

Post by freehunter »

DavideNL wrote: post #190
mrweasel wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not exactly sure why this happens, but when I try to use Windows my hand (mouse hand) cramps up and I get angry and frustrated. In my view, Windows 10 is still miles away in consistency across the entire system, compared to macOS. Windows 10 actually made it worse, because it's trying to accommodate both Windows 7 and Windows 8 design. Currently I don't think we have alternatives to macOS. I understand that I sou…

> but when I try to use Windows my hand (mouse hand) cramps up and I get angry and frustrated Same here! Also i start to suffer from 'update-fatigue' when using Windows. The endless updates, reboots, and god knows what it's doing in the background which consumes resources... it all just feels so clumsy. I've never experienced anything like this in OSX.

That's probably the only thing that truly irritates me about Windows these days. Everything else is just a design decision that, as a technical user, I am easily able to adapt to. But not knowing if my machine is going to decide to reboot itself at any random moment without me having the option to stop it from doing that? Unacceptable. Completely unacceptable.

I know you should save often and bad things can happen like a power outage or a glitch or something, but those things are rare. My Windows 10 machine choosing to reboot itself without telling me? At least once a week.

Imagine if you had random power outages once a week, and having a UPS plugged in couldn't stop it.

Re: Finding an Alternative to Mac OS X

#218

Post by optimuspaul »

kagamine wrote: post #154
ourcat wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've never really understood why people use Sketch. I recently worked on a project where I had asked for some basic vanilla templates of a mobile site from the designers and was sent a huge Sketch file. It was utterly useless and I had to code everything by hand myself, since the 'designers' very clearly had zero clue about HTML+CSS or any notion of responsiveness, thanks to apps like Sketch which teach nothing of th…

If you asked for templates you should have gotten templates, not mockups and not wireframes and not a demo. In my experience there is a common misunderstanding between designers, project managers and coders about what word or phrase is used to describe those very different things. And instead of learning what they are and being specific I have been told the equivalent of "just do your thing" ie, stop bothering me. Th…

template is an ambiguous term, clear communication and definitions of terms would help.

Re: Finding an Alternative to Mac OS X

#219

Post by untog »

ourcat wrote: post #145
z1mm32m4n wrote: post #126

Many articles about wanting to leave the macOS ecosystem mention Sketch. Sketch is macOS only (and will be for the forseeable future), so it's understandable that people want to consider the implications of switching away from it. Recently, however, I stumbled upon Figma, a web-based, real-time collaborative interface design app (i.e., a competitor of Sketch). After convincing my group to experiment with it for a sch…

I've never really understood why people use Sketch. I recently worked on a project where I had asked for some basic vanilla templates of a mobile site from the designers and was sent a huge Sketch file. It was utterly useless and I had to code everything by hand myself, since the 'designers' very clearly had zero clue about HTML+CSS or any notion of responsiveness, thanks to apps like Sketch which teach nothing of th…

I think the problem here is that you asked for the wrong thing.

Of course you had to code everything by hand yourself - you didn't ask for code, you asked for design templates.

Re: Finding an Alternative to Mac OS X

#220

Post by ldev »

applecore wrote: post #206
nnain wrote: post #193

If you're an iOS/Mac developer, there's no alternative. If you want an alternative for graphics work (or other development), try Windows. For other web development, in general, you'll be able to work well with Linux. Keeping work on different machines quickly starts to become unmanageable, that's why MacOS still leads. It gives the best of most options on the best hardware. P.S. - I tried ElementaryOS last month, for…

Best hardware, really?

Not only teraflops and ram size defines "best"; MBP's touchpad is the only touchpad on any laptop that I can work with without pluging in a mouse after a minute. Screen is good. General feeling of quality is just the best.
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