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Daily-driving a Mac, one year later

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Re: Daily-driving a Mac, one year later

#31

Post by goosedragons »

throwaway284534 wrote: post #15
goosedragons wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Besides running the latest and greatest MS Office and Photoshop (which is entirely out of the hands of Linux developers) what can't you do? You can browse the modern web, do office and productivity tasks, develop, game, watch a movie etc. Most of people's complaints with Linux are things entirely controlled by 3rd parties like specific software and DRM for crap like Blu-rays and 4K Netflix. Modern DEs like KDE and GN…

In my opinion as a Linux and Mac user, a lack of consistent user experience. And I’m not talking about raw functionality, but the character and demeanor of a Linux computer. Here’s a short laundry list of personal gripes: I don’t know why HiDPI support is still so flakey, especially so with multi-monitor setups. Sometimes apps just work, and other times the UI is comically small or oversized. The only *nix adjacent O…

Is Macintosh really a better name than Elementary, Ubuntu or Fedora? And what big distro has Tux anywhere still?

If you do a bit of research you can get a Linux laptop with working sleep and a good trackpad or just buy one from an OEM like System76 if you can't be bothered. You wouldn't expect a good macOS experience on a random $600 HP laptop so why do you expect that from Linux? The fact that so much DOES work is impressive.

Re: Daily-driving a Mac, one year later

#32

Post by _8j50 »

I have found time to be the biggest factor. I use to have hours every day to tinker with Linux, I enjoy the tinkering personally and I can endure the lack of features. But at some point I began spending more than 8h on average on my work and really needed a break each day to not get burned out and take care of *health,on top of which I have a backlog of things to study up on for $work, any platform (including windows) that gets out of my way is welcome.

Not FOSS in general, but specifically the Linux desktop ecosystem is very chaotic. There is this rush to get a close-enough adoptation of features from other desktops which in itself adds chaos. I did learn a lot from dealing with the chaos but even when I had free time, practical things like editing government forms or sending a resume in a specific format (converting botches the formatting) made me almost pull my hair out.

Unpopular opinion: Linux desktops needs to be proprietary software friendly. As in accept blob installers that can install desktop applications that work well on any major DE and without consideration for package managers. Paid apps should also be a thing on Linux.

Re: Daily-driving a Mac, one year later

#33

Post by ricardobeat »

xaduha wrote: post #30
gurjeet wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I bet Linux, whatever distro you use, wasn’t right for you to begin with; but you made it yours by tweaking it to your liking. Trust me, you can tweak macOS to your liking, as well. I used to be a Linux lover, but after trying for almost a decade, for my desktop needs, I’ve given up on Linux, and adopted macOS. macOS is a POSIX environment, and you have almost the whole GNU ecosystem available to you, if you want.

> I bet Linux, whatever distro you use, wasn’t right for you to begin with; but you made it yours by tweaking it to your liking. In my case, absolutely not. I'm using Solus (Budgie) on my notebook and that's because it suits me basically OOTB. What I do have though is a headless NixOS server to which I connect with VSCode for a dev environment. But I wouldn't use NixOS on desktop when Solus is a much better choice, b…

What’s special about Solus? Looking at its website, it looks like any other standard Linux distro.

Re: Daily-driving a Mac, one year later

#34

Post by ricardobeat »

loloquwowndueo wrote: post #23
gurjeet wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I bet Linux, whatever distro you use, wasn’t right for you to begin with; but you made it yours by tweaking it to your liking. Trust me, you can tweak macOS to your liking, as well. I used to be a Linux lover, but after trying for almost a decade, for my desktop needs, I’ve given up on Linux, and adopted macOS. macOS is a POSIX environment, and you have almost the whole GNU ecosystem available to you, if you want.

Well- one of my main gripes was that I had to spend a lot of time and work getting macOS to behave like Linux did - so at some point I decided to stop wasting my time and use the real thing :) so “whatever distro you use, wasn’t right for you to begin with; but you made it yours by tweaking it to your liking.” You’re not entirely wrong but it was far less painful than tweaking macOS. “ you can tweak macOS to your lik…

Homebrew is a much more reliable package manager than macports. Trying to make OSX into Linux might have been the problem there, it’s just a little different in many aspects. What kind of tools did you miss?

Re: Daily-driving a Mac, one year later

#35

Post by vladvasiliu »

_8j50 wrote: post #32

I have found time to be the biggest factor. I use to have hours every day to tinker with Linux, I enjoy the tinkering personally and I can endure the lack of features. But at some point I began spending more than 8h on average on my work and really needed a break each day to not get burned out and take care of *health,on top of which I have a backlog of things to study up on for $work, any platform (including windows…

> Unpopular opinion: Linux desktops needs to be proprietary software friendly. As in accept blob installers that can install desktop applications that work well on any major DE and without consideration for package managers. Paid apps should also be a thing on Linux.

Isn't this already the case? I'm running Spotify and Steam games with no issues here.

While I agree with your greater point that a system that gets out of your way is nice, I always find myself swearing when using Windows and trying to bend macOS to do things the way I want. In the end I just gave up and went back to Linux on a "basic" PC (no Nvidia or multiple GPUs on my laptop).

The two major things I miss are HD streaming on PrimeVideo and Photoshop, both of which work well on Windows and macOS. For the former I bought I firetv stick and for the latter, I dual boot (I only need it occasionally).

Re: Daily-driving a Mac, one year later

#36

Post by xaduha »

ricardobeat wrote: post #33
xaduha wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I bet Linux, whatever distro you use, wasn’t right for you to begin with; but you made it yours by tweaking it to your liking. In my case, absolutely not. I'm using Solus (Budgie) on my notebook and that's because it suits me basically OOTB. What I do have though is a headless NixOS server to which I connect with VSCode for a dev environment. But I wouldn't use NixOS on desktop when Solus is a much better choice, b…

What’s special about Solus? Looking at its website, it looks like any other standard Linux distro.

I thought so too, but every time I tried to move on to something else it didn't last and I always went back to Solus. It's just well put together, a recipe like any other, but with a pinch of love I guess. Something you wouldn't get just by looking at a menu.

Re: Daily-driving a Mac, one year later

#37

Post by Kwpolska »

number6 wrote: post #24
jdrc wrote: post #13

Linux desktop is a very low bar to clear for nearly everything

Yes. It's only undermatched by the windows desktop. Who has a file manager that's also the window manager ah and the shell...

Explorer isn’t the window manager. And does it really matter it’s serving as the shell? What technical benefits would a split bring?

Re: Daily-driving a Mac, one year later

#38

Post by throwaway284534 »

goosedragons wrote: post #31
throwaway284534 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my opinion as a Linux and Mac user, a lack of consistent user experience. And I’m not talking about raw functionality, but the character and demeanor of a Linux computer. Here’s a short laundry list of personal gripes: I don’t know why HiDPI support is still so flakey, especially so with multi-monitor setups. Sometimes apps just work, and other times the UI is comically small or oversized. The only *nix adjacent O…

Is Macintosh really a better name than Elementary, Ubuntu or Fedora? And what big distro has Tux anywhere still? If you do a bit of research you can get a Linux laptop with working sleep and a good trackpad or just buy one from an OEM like System76 if you can't be bothered. You wouldn't expect a good macOS experience on a random $600 HP laptop so why do you expect that from Linux? The fact that so much DOES work is i…

Respectfully, I believe we have different standards of a “good trackpad.” You’re absolutely right that a premium price would command a better experience. I’m just not seeing it. System76 is selling a rebranded Clevo shell with all the issues I expressed above, with all models starting around the $1,500 price range.

The closest thing to a Mac experience on Linux I’ve experienced was a Chromebook Pixel running a chroot, and even that has its own limitations.

Re: Daily-driving a Mac, one year later

#39

Post by mbreese »

goosedragons wrote: post #31
throwaway284534 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my opinion as a Linux and Mac user, a lack of consistent user experience. And I’m not talking about raw functionality, but the character and demeanor of a Linux computer. Here’s a short laundry list of personal gripes: I don’t know why HiDPI support is still so flakey, especially so with multi-monitor setups. Sometimes apps just work, and other times the UI is comically small or oversized. The only *nix adjacent O…

Is Macintosh really a better name than Elementary, Ubuntu or Fedora? And what big distro has Tux anywhere still? If you do a bit of research you can get a Linux laptop with working sleep and a good trackpad or just buy one from an OEM like System76 if you can't be bothered. You wouldn't expect a good macOS experience on a random $600 HP laptop so why do you expect that from Linux? The fact that so much DOES work is i…

> You wouldn't expect a good macOS experience on a random $600 HP laptop so why do you expect that from Linux?

Because we are lead to believe that Linux will run on anything. And if it doesn’t, then because it’s open source we can just add support ourselves. One of the main avenues for Linux adoption is predicated on the notion that you can install it on hardware you already own.

But those two notions are wildly unrealistic. Mac provides an outstanding user experience because of the coupling of software and hardware. It’s a lot easier to support a select handful of hardware drivers. And because of that, the system tends to work better as a whole (quality trumps quantity).

“Doing a bit of research” to find a compatible Linux laptop is not something just anyone can do. But anyone can walk into an Apple store (or buy online) and be guaranteed to walk out with a working Mac.

The number of voices working for a “Linux desktop” is staggering and no one has a unifying vision. It has been this way for decades. That’s okay. Linux doesn’t need to “win” the desktop. It just has to be useful for those who decide that they are more productive (or just enjoy) using Linux over something else.

I’d even argue that the most successful user-facing Linux projects were done by a group completely outside of the traditional Linux desktop world: Android and ChromeOS. In both cases, they were driven by a single entity (Google) where they could be opinionated as to what to keep and how things should be designed.

Re: Daily-driving a Mac, one year later

#40

Post by chrisseaton »

2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote: post #22

They left Linux because they want stability and portability so they jumped to macOS? I don't understand. Also: I just punched directions into GNOME Maps and it worked flawlessly and cast my entire desktop to my Shield TV via Chrome browser.

> They left Linux because they want stability and portability so they jumped to macOS? I don't understand.

Which bit don’t you understand? macOS is stable with fantastic professional QA and support, and it lets you run more cross-platform ported software than Linux does.

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