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Moving from Macbook to Linux

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Re: Moving from Macbook to Linux

#281

Post by busterarm »

taylodl wrote: post #273

I do more with my Mac than just develop software. I also do photography, videography, and make music. For me Macs are hands-down the best for all of these activities. I had considered switching to Linux as my 2012 MBP is getting long in the tooth and I figured the Apple silicon Macs were going to be a disaster. Well I was wrong about that! I had looked at Ubuntu Studio, but honestly, everything feels like a giant wor…

I do all of these things with Linux quite handily.

Videography: Blackmagic DaVinci Resolve runs very well in Linux. FFmpeg speeds up my workflows a lot already anyway and Linux makes that easier.

Photography: rawtherapee, darktable, lensfun, gimp (gimp is probably the weakest here, but I don't do a ton of touchup). I've heard good things about Krita.

Music: Reaper (my preference) & Ardour

I can even use all of these in Windows if I'm desperate. Or even Mac. Most of the mac-native software for doing the things you mention has gotten worse right along with the hardware...

Re: Moving from Macbook to Linux

#282

Post by romanoderoma »

gonehome wrote: post #102
radlad wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I truly believe that the argument for switching to Linux has never been stronger. Windows has embedded bloatware, and Apple allows no control over your hardware. There's really no other option if you care about these things. (Full disclosure - I do own a Macbook for photography work, and use Bootcamp for gaming.) Like you, my Linux installs have been incredibly stable for a long time, even with a rolling release dist…

Linux on a desktop is okay, linux on a laptop is bad. I think Linux is cool and grew up playing with different distributions (starting around Fedora Core 4). I spent most of my time on Ubuntu because it worked the best, but also used Yellow Dog Linux (my first laptop was a 12in Apple power pc powerbook g4), Arch, and some others. Things that often gave me issues: - Suspend rarely worked without hacks, even with hacks…

I had complicated experiences with Linux in the past, but I was young and the problem solver in me loved it.

But, honestly, at lest in the past 5 years, I had no problems especially if we consider laptops that usually have more or less the same standard hardware.

4 years ago I bought an Xiaomi 13' laptop to use it as a browsing machine and occasionally as a media player.

It came with a Chinese windows preinstalled.

Without even looking at the specs I installed Ubuntu on it and I've never had a problem.

I upgraded it from Ubuntu 16.04 to 18.04 to 20.04 and I'm using it right now to watch the 4th season of Fargo

I never had to tweak the configuration or change a single .conf file, it simply worked

The battery lasts 8 hours and if I close the lid it automatically goes on suspend

It's been the best setup I ever had.

Unfortunately it's too underpowered to use it as a working device, but if I could I would be the happiest man in the World.

Re: Moving from Macbook to Linux

#283

Post by kaba0 »

DoofusOfDeath wrote: post #217
horsawlarway wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't buy their shit. Period. Wayland already has trackpad support that's nearly identical to macOS. Gnome with a dock is basically the same desktop experience - Pick a distro of your choice. I can honestly say I prefer my linux XPS to my work macbook, by a large margin. Plus - It doesn't spy on me. I actually own it. I can release software through channels that aren't entirely abusive. Basically - The only thing App…

> Wayland already has trackpad support that's nearly identical to macOS. I never really understood how input-driver responsibilities are divided between the Linux kernel and X/Wayland. If you're talking about Macbook's reputation for a pleasant trackpad experience, are you saying that in Linux the relevant code resides within Wayland but not X?

The relevant code resides in libinput, and it can be used as “input source” for xserver as well.

Re: Moving from Macbook to Linux

#284

Post by marcus_holmes »

cafed00d wrote: post #242
horsawlarway wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't buy their shit. Period. Wayland already has trackpad support that's nearly identical to macOS. Gnome with a dock is basically the same desktop experience - Pick a distro of your choice. I can honestly say I prefer my linux XPS to my work macbook, by a large margin. Plus - It doesn't spy on me. I actually own it. I can release software through channels that aren't entirely abusive. Basically - The only thing App…

Well of course! How many people who walk into Apple stores are reading hacker news to learn about Wayland, Gnome and XPS running Linux? I can see you’re frustrated and lashing out with “Don’t buy their shit”. Honestly I would be too if I had to read another hn post on apple & their policies. But the biggest gap here isn’t technology. Rather it’s empathy. Empathy for all those people who don’t read hn and would walk i…

20 years ago they all bought Windows machines.

Apple didn't change that by suddenly being excellent and having great marketing. Developers changed that by realising that Macs were good dev machines and writing software that ran on Macs.

Non-tech people ask their tech-savvy friends for advice on what tech to buy. For years that was "buy Apple; it costs more but they're more reliable, the support is great, and they're way cooler".

That's no longer the case. There are manufacturers shipping great Linux laptops, that just work, and it is actually feasible to recommend one to a friend. And running Linux is way cooler these days - every muppet out there has a Macbook ;)

Re: Moving from Macbook to Linux

#285

Post by pxeboot »

pkaye wrote: post #278
busterarm wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not just any thinkpad! Stick to the X, T & to some extent P series. Avoid nvidia graphics if you can. Arch Linux (and to some extent OpenBSD) probably has the best support/documentation/fixes for any ACPI/APM management issues you have. I have a top-end 2017 MBP and I just recently bought a brand new 7th Gen X1 Carbon for very cheaply (like $800) and it _screams_ in comparison to the Mac.

So X1 Carbon works well with Linux?

Zero issues for me. They even released a firmware update for the fingerprint scanner to add Linux support a few months ago. I have a 7th gen.

Re: Moving from Macbook to Linux

#286

Post by busterarm »

wayne wrote: post #279
busterarm wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not just any thinkpad! Stick to the X, T & to some extent P series. Avoid nvidia graphics if you can. Arch Linux (and to some extent OpenBSD) probably has the best support/documentation/fixes for any ACPI/APM management issues you have. I have a top-end 2017 MBP and I just recently bought a brand new 7th Gen X1 Carbon for very cheaply (like $800) and it _screams_ in comparison to the Mac.

I setup a Thinkpad X-series with OpenBSD a few months ago and the hardware support was stellar. I researched ahead of time (lots of googling and reading HN and Reddit threads) and it seemed like the OpenBSD devs were using a handful of Thinkpad models so those worked perfectly. I've mostly used it to surf the web (Firefox) and code (Vim). No one would say it's as seamless as using a Macbook, but being able to tinker…

I have a 7th Gen X1 Carbon & a Thinkpad X270 running OpenBSD and they're both flawless (bluetooth, hyperthreading, fingerprint reader all disabled).

Being limited to 802.11n networking is fine.

Re: Moving from Macbook to Linux

#287

Post by gonehome »

monksy wrote: post #280
gonehome wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These are good points (thanks) - and it's always good to hear that things are better than I thought. Consistent UI is nice and recent M1 chip + good battery life I think is also a bonus of vertical integration. It sounds like linux is becoming more of an option though for people that don't care about those things. From your description it sounds like baseline functionality mostly works (particularly on a desktop). Th…

ARM support for a linux laptop is already there. Pinebook sells a laptop with it as the main processor.

ARM support without the vertical integration doesn't mean much, windows runs on ARM too.

It's Apple's M1 design plus ARM plus their software stack that makes it great. Their power also lets them force others to write high quality native software for their chip (along with their design just having way better performance).

Re: Moving from Macbook to Linux

#288

Post by marcus_holmes »

rched wrote: post #241
bsaul wrote: post #25

The fact that many people reading this post title (including me) look at it with sarcasm is telling on how apple scored big points with its new cpu. Keeping up with mac OS and the trackpad was already quite hard, but CPU could be the killing blow. Which could lead us in a few years to a situation where mac developers will face the same fate as ios developers : forced to buy hardware to sign their app, forced to push…

Your fears seem to come down to the idea that Apple will eventually try to force apps to go through the mac app store. I can understand why people would feel that way seeing what they have done on their mobile platforms but I don't actually think there is any evidence to suggest they want to do that on the mac. I am not at all convinced Apple wants to go that route so the future of the mac doesn't look scary to me it…

I have no idea why you think this, when Apple are clearly clamping down on what software gets on "their" machines.

They have to tread carefully because anti-trust, and they'll make all the relevant noises, but I think it's clear that the end-goal is only allowing app store apps to be installed.

But tbh the same is true of Windows. They're further away, because history, but they've already played with this once and will do so again.

Re: Moving from Macbook to Linux

#289

Post by adiM »

pkaye wrote: post #278
busterarm wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not just any thinkpad! Stick to the X, T & to some extent P series. Avoid nvidia graphics if you can. Arch Linux (and to some extent OpenBSD) probably has the best support/documentation/fixes for any ACPI/APM management issues you have. I have a top-end 2017 MBP and I just recently bought a brand new 7th Gen X1 Carbon for very cheaply (like $800) and it _screams_ in comparison to the Mac.

So X1 Carbon works well with Linux?

Yes! After using MacBook Pro for almost a decade, I moved back to Linux for my laptop two years ago. I installed the Manjaro i3 image and I was expecting that it will take almost a week to tweak the settings so that all the hardware works and was pleasantly surprised that everything worked out of the box (everything other than fingerprint scanner but that was a known limitation).

Re: Moving from Macbook to Linux

#290

Post by busterarm »

pkaye wrote: post #278
busterarm wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not just any thinkpad! Stick to the X, T & to some extent P series. Avoid nvidia graphics if you can. Arch Linux (and to some extent OpenBSD) probably has the best support/documentation/fixes for any ACPI/APM management issues you have. I have a top-end 2017 MBP and I just recently bought a brand new 7th Gen X1 Carbon for very cheaply (like $800) and it _screams_ in comparison to the Mac.

So X1 Carbon works well with Linux?

8th Gen might not be so hot yet from what I've heard. 7th Gen minor issues. 6th and prior are flawless.
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