So Long, Macbook. Hello Again, Linux • Hacker News Board

Re: So Long, Macbook. Hello Again, Linux

#221

Post by ams6110 » Thu, Jan 10, 2019, 5:28 PM UTC

_emacsomancer_ wrote: post #102

jwr wrote: post #48

I so wish the Linux community would get its act together and implement a working usable clipboard. It's the one thing I miss the most whenever I switch from Mac OS to Linux. On a Mac, you can cut/copy/paste using predictable keystrokes in any application, anywhere. And there is a single clipboard. On Linux, you have to deal with a multitude of behaviors (middle mouse button, Ctrl-C, others, and does it paste where th…

There are clipboard applications which will pull everything into a single clipboard. KDE Plasma, for instance, has a great built-in clipboard which does this and which also handles at least images as well. > The second dream wish would be for consistent keybindings in all text input boxes, like in Mac OS. Such as make Ctrl-A always go to the beginning of line, Ctrl-E always to the end, and Ctrl-K always kill whatever…

It's a NEXTSTEP legacy. Any MacOS application that uses the standard UI text field classes (NSText, NSTextView, etc) will get the emacs-like key shortcut behaviors.

The NS prefix on those classes means "NEXTSTEP"

Microsoft Office probably implements its own text box classes so it's different.

Re: So Long, Macbook. Hello Again, Linux

#222

Post by pjmlp » Thu, Jan 10, 2019, 5:28 PM UTC

Tehchops wrote: post #42

End-user Linux has definitely improved in the last few years. It offers a lot of attractive features for what I imagine to be the typical HN demographic. That being said, it's still got rough spots that OSX doesn't. It works great when it works, but when it doesn't.... Font rendering, display/compositor fragmentation etc... Inb4 the anecdotal "well it works for me I just had to download the xf86 font library and comp…

Pretty much this, as UI focused developer I abandoned my Linux zealotry back to Windows.

Yes Hollywood is pretty much sold on Maya and Houdini on Linux, but they use their own in-house distributions and have no issues dealing with binary blobs for performance.

Meanwhile my Asus netbook sold with Linux still can't do video decoding on hardware nor OpenGL 4 support, in spite of DirectX 11 class hardware, because AMD decided to reboot their driver development.

Re: So Long, Macbook. Hello Again, Linux

#223

Post by kingofhdds » Thu, Jan 10, 2019, 5:28 PM UTC

Strictly speaking, almost nothing in the article is about Linux. It's about tools which work perfectly on FreeBSD, OpenBSD, or Illumos. Some of them work on OSX too, btw.

Re: So Long, Macbook. Hello Again, Linux

#224

Post by danans » Thu, Jan 10, 2019, 5:29 PM UTC

For the software development aspects of my work, I've developed a strong aversion to manual mouse-based management of overlapping windows, as provided by the traditional Mac, Windows and Linux desktop environments. They require too much manual effort to position/resize/organize windows, which are IMO a dated skeumorphic affordance which provides limited productivity. That starts to matter more when you are dealing with early symptoms of RSI.

Instead, I've found that a tiling WM like XMonad[1] + its virtual desktops is a great way to organize my separate tasks and minimize extraneous window management. Each workspace contains the "windows" for a particular long running task, and if I ever need more screen real estate for a particular window, I cycle through the layout modes until I find one that works - usually just a few key presses away.

However, unlike the author, I keep my non-programming compute tasks (email, media, etc.) separate from my programming tasks by using a traditional desktop environment for those, because there are a lot of things in the traditional desktop that are optimized for those tasks (i.e. desktop notifications, media controls, etc.) This requires running 2 different machines, but there are plenty of good ways, either via hardware or software, to make the switches between the two environments mostly seamless.

[1] https://xmonad.org/

Re: So Long, Macbook. Hello Again, Linux

#225

Post by rorygibson » Thu, Jan 10, 2019, 5:29 PM UTC

I just - last week - moved from a 2012 retina MBP 13" to a new XPS 13" with Ubuntu 18. Loving it.

Also running i3 (actually i3-gaps, + terminator, dmenu, emacs)

I also bought a 34" curved ultrawide Samsung, which powers the XPS over USB-C. Single cable, and my mechanical keyboard is plugged into the monitor as a hub.

Everything just works. It's ace.

Re: So Long, Macbook. Hello Again, Linux

#226

Post by MattyRad » Thu, Jan 10, 2019, 5:29 PM UTC

irq wrote: post #100

MattyRad wrote: post #33

This is a shameless plug, but if anyone wants a nudge toward Linux (Ubuntu), coming from Mac, I have a recent write up of things things that I personally gain by using Ubuntu over Mac. https://code.mradford.com/post/ubuntu-vs-mac/

Re: your article - there are no Thunderbolt monitors with an integrated GPU. There were rumors about this happening some day, but it hasn’t yet. Also, your review omits battery life... Why? It’s one of the most important considerations.

That's interesting... my Macbook Air sometimes struggles by itself, but never has issues performance-wise (especially with docker and npm) when it's plugged in to the thunderbolt. Surely some kind of magic happens, but I guess it could just be happenstance, or my imagination.

Re: So Long, Macbook. Hello Again, Linux

#227

Post by ufo » Thu, Jan 10, 2019, 5:30 PM UTC

jwr wrote: post #48

I so wish the Linux community would get its act together and implement a working usable clipboard. It's the one thing I miss the most whenever I switch from Mac OS to Linux. On a Mac, you can cut/copy/paste using predictable keystrokes in any application, anywhere. And there is a single clipboard. On Linux, you have to deal with a multitude of behaviors (middle mouse button, Ctrl-C, others, and does it paste where th…

If you pretend that the "middle mouse button" clipboard doesn't exist (it is a feature that many are not even aware of) you then using the the regular one instead is a piece of cake. In Linux, all applications use Ctrl+C and Ctrl+V. The exception is inside the terminal, where you need to use Ctrl+Shift+C and Ctrl+Shift+V (due Ctrl+C already having a meaning there).

Re: So Long, Macbook. Hello Again, Linux

#228

Post by pjmlp » Thu, Jan 10, 2019, 5:31 PM UTC

ajuc wrote: post #175

Tehchops wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Almost all my colleagues struggled with setting up python 2 und 3 correctly at some point, whereas this just worked for me on Linux. This is one area where I'd have to concede the Apple experience is objectively suboptimal. However, the Python ecosystem isn't doing anyone any favors here.

Languages and platforms generally are best supported on linux. Clojure, haskell, python, anything except the platform provided by the Apple/Microsoft is easier to configure on linux. C++ ecosystem sucks a lot when you have to build 5 libraries using 5 different building systems. Linux package managers do that for you.

Yet VC++ offers much better tooling, including pre-compiled headers, incremental compilation and linking, experimental support for modules, C++ friendly OS APIs, and a package manager actually written in C++.

Re: So Long, Macbook. Hello Again, Linux

#229

Post by MattyRad » Thu, Jan 10, 2019, 5:31 PM UTC

russfink wrote: post #52

MattyRad wrote: post #33

This is a shameless plug, but if anyone wants a nudge toward Linux (Ubuntu), coming from Mac, I have a recent write up of things things that I personally gain by using Ubuntu over Mac. https://code.mradford.com/post/ubuntu-vs-mac/

Well written, but the last sentence kind of trails off. (Perhaps there was a homicidal bunny in the room.)

Ha, yeah, thanks. Updated. This article went through a lot of iterations so make it sound least rant-y, so I had a lot of botched copy-paste.

Re: So Long, Macbook. Hello Again, Linux

#230

Post by molteanu » Thu, Jan 10, 2019, 5:32 PM UTC

jwr wrote: post #48

I so wish the Linux community would get its act together and implement a working usable clipboard. It's the one thing I miss the most whenever I switch from Mac OS to Linux. On a Mac, you can cut/copy/paste using predictable keystrokes in any application, anywhere. And there is a single clipboard. On Linux, you have to deal with a multitude of behaviors (middle mouse button, Ctrl-C, others, and does it paste where th…

Well, of course you can have consistent keybindings. You can define them yourself: https://github.com/mooz/xkeysnail