Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Back on Linux (after one year of Apple and OS X)

dywypi.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

301–310 of 334 posts

Re: Back on Linux (after one year of Apple and OS X)

#301

Post by gnosis »

chimeracoder wrote: post #271
surrealize wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Part of the rationale for package management with dependencies in linux is so that libraries are shared (only loaded into memory once) between different executables. If OS X is giving up some of that sharing in exchange for simpler installation, I wonder how much that has to do with the memory usage complaints in the comments here.

> If OS X is giving up some of that sharing in exchange for simpler installation, I don't really see how OS X has 'simpler' installation than any well-structured Linux distro. What could be simpler than typing pacman -S or apt-get install , using a single, built-in package manager that automatically fetches, builds, (possibly) compiles, and installs all dependencies at the same time? Even if you're terrified of the c…

"Even if you're terrified of the command line, it's not like you can't build a GUI that makes that process look more appealing."

Just FYI, you don't have to build one yourself. Plenty of GUI front-ends to Linux package managers already exist.

Re: Back on Linux (after one year of Apple and OS X)

#302

Post by astrange »

newhouseb wrote: post #64
astrange wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Inactive memory is good for you. Purging it just means that the disk cache is gone and files have to be read back from disk next time you access them. The author of the article might have seen problems with swapfiles growing, but he certainly does not have the tools or experience needed to accurately find the cause of those problems. So I wouldn't trust what he says very much. If you have a situation where it seems l…

One of the most irritating things about OSX memory management is that it appears to swap out inactive memory well beyond the point where OSX itself begins to yell at you for low disk space. Admittedly, I need to free up some disk space, but it's irritating that by rebooting (which I'm assuming is equivalent to purging) I can go from 500mb free to 9gb - and then back within a day.

How much memory do you have installed? I'm guessing most of that is taken up by /var/vm/sleepimage, not the swapfile.

There is a way to disable sleepimage, but I'd rather not say it, since you should really clean up your disk.

Re: Back on Linux (after one year of Apple and OS X)

#303

Post by fauigerzigerk »

dagw wrote: post #246
calloc wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am a software developer and I use Mac OS X. I develop Unix backend server systems. I use Mac OS X as my primary build platform, then actually run on top of FreeBSD. I use homebrew for almost all of the dependencies that I have, there are one or two that I compile by hand. I've not had any issues. Best of all, I don't need the g* stuff to do my builds. I am perfectly happy with clang and the BSD tools available. I d…

I don't understand why people purchase Mac OS X based computers then want to run GNU coreutils on top of it Because only Apple has figured out how to make and sell great laptops running Unix at a (relatively) reasonable price and where all the hardware and drivers just works out of the box. If I could have bought a computer as good as the macbook Air in every way, but with Linux instead of OS X and guarenteed zero dr…

My wifi is still broken after the Lion upgrade. I tried everything and no one has been able to figure it out, including Apple's support. The only thing that works is replacing the Atheros driver with the Snow Leopard one. So much for drivers just working.

Re: Back on Linux (after one year of Apple and OS X)

#304

Post by astrange »

sounds wrote: post #232
Craiggybear wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really? Glad in many ways I am still using 10.5 then. I've no problem with stability. As you mention it seems quite rock solid. I had no idea that the memory requirement for 10.6 or 10.7 was so high (I've heard anecdotal comments from non-tech friends). But then I'd also heard the official Apple line that 10.6 was meant to be better at memory management and slightly faster than 10.5 because the binaries were no longe…

10.6 adds a lot of new frameworks, which get loaded by Apple's apps, so memory usage goes up. 10.6 does free up disk space (but that's not as useful as memory). Obligatory: I also went back to 10.5 after spending some time on 10.6, fwiw.

10.6 switched the architecture from i386 to x86-64. Since many third party applications were still i386 binaries at the time of its release, both versions of every system library had to be loaded. That did increase memory use in some ways, but it's not really a problem anymore unless you use Word 2008.

But that's about it; 10.6 is much faster and more stable in every other way, that being the entire point of the release.

Of course, I should say 'was', since it's not even the current version. Unless you're posting from a time warp.

Re: Back on Linux (after one year of Apple and OS X)

#305

Post by seclorum »

2mur wrote: post #166
seclorum wrote: post #15

After two decades of Unix use, in 2000 I switched to Apple and OSX - the only reason I considered it was because of the design of the Titanium Powerbook, which I saw in those days as an amazing piece of hardware design, which - amazingly - gave me a Unix workstation in a fantastic portable package. I simply couldn't believe that Apple, of all people, were delivering what I'd wanted for years - a smart, functional, fu…

How is the power management of Ubuntu on the Macbook and does close-lid-to-sleep work flawlessly? Those are the two non-starters for me with linux on a laptop. OSX just does an awesome job with both of these.

Works for me without any hassle whatsoever.

Re: Back on Linux (after one year of Apple and OS X)

#306

Post by bborud »

95% of my problems with any computer occur as a result of me wanting to use a piece of software that requires me to upgrade something. be it the OS or just some library.

in the old days when I ran Red Hat Linux this was the main reason my system would rot: I would want to run some piece of software, the developer had decided to depend on some very recent version of a library not present on my system and I would have to roll the dice and install it. usually it would be okay, occasionally things would break, but eventually it would lead to my system becoming unusable from all the dodgy packages that were installed.

things got a bit better with Debian. and even better with Ubuntu.

to this day I still have this problem. this weekend I had to upgrade my laptop to the latest OS and in the process I managed to brick it. I spent most of my weekend getting it on its feet again.

the thing is: I spend perhaps 1/10 as much time dicking around with my system now as I did when I was running Ubuntu on a Thinkpad. and more of the system works more of the time. I think most of this is down to Macs and OSX being a much less diverse environment. the hardware is well defined, the OS releases are far fewer and thus more defined etc.

that being said: when things go wrong on a Mac it is much more of a pain to sort things out. it is much easier to find solutions online for Linux problems -- and Linux is much easier to diagnose. I'm not entirely sure why.

Re: Back on Linux (after one year of Apple and OS X)

#307

Post by seclorum »

CJefferson wrote: post #25
lloeki wrote: post #23

Inactive memory is not an OS X specific, and it's actually implemented in a number of other OSes, including FreeBSD. > when it's on disk, it definitely is not made active quickly. If an application is unloaded then many operations need to be taken to initialize stuff, reading the disk for various stuff, processing some data, allocating memory (which will be zeored out, then initialized with whatever struct and data t…

I feel you are being unfair about the uninformed rant. Picking at a couple of things I know about: 1) I've tried installing both Macports and homebrew, and some utils did not work, as whichever got put in the path first, confused the other. I suppose I could have made a seperate symlink directory, for just the binaries I wanted. 2) I found 'brew install coreutils' broke some build scripts , which expected proper mac…

A great way to run Linux on Apple hardware: boot native.

Bonus points for then using working, legal, VM's for the OSX moments. Or, if you like, just boot from a removable linux SSD for work, reboot for OSX.

Re: Back on Linux (after one year of Apple and OS X)

#308

Post by danbee »

super_mario wrote: post #123

I really can't understand bitching about memory in this day and age. First thing I do when getting a new machine is to max out the RAM. My Mac Pro has had 32 GB since 2008, iMac all have 16 GB and Macbooks 8 GB. It's such a cheap thing to do and it improves your daily life so much, it's essentially free in the end.

My MacBook Pro maxes out at 16Gb. Putting that much in would have cost me 4-5x as much as going for 8Gb! RAM is cheap, but there's a definite sweet spot much of the time.

8Gb is more than enough for the time being.

Re: Back on Linux (after one year of Apple and OS X)

#309

Post by newhouseb »

astrange wrote: post #302
newhouseb wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of the most irritating things about OSX memory management is that it appears to swap out inactive memory well beyond the point where OSX itself begins to yell at you for low disk space. Admittedly, I need to free up some disk space, but it's irritating that by rebooting (which I'm assuming is equivalent to purging) I can go from 500mb free to 9gb - and then back within a day.

How much memory do you have installed? I'm guessing most of that is taken up by /var/vm/sleepimage, not the swapfile. There is a way to disable sleepimage, but I'd rather not say it, since you should really clean up your disk.

4GB installed. I looked at /var/vm/sleepimage before and after a reboot and it was 4GB in both cases (at least according to ls). The variation in free memory is greater than the memory I have installed anyway. I didn't however realize that /var/vm existed and contains pointers to the other swapfiles that I can monitor to see how they change. Thanks for the tip!

Re: Back on Linux (after one year of Apple and OS X)

#310

Post by mike-cardwell »

cs702 wrote: post #126

I agree with the author: Apple has by far the best hardware in the PC business -- here's a great example of the extremes they go to in order to manufacture superior machines: http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/apples-supplychain-secr... Alas, Apple's #1 target user is not the developer; it's Aunt Tillie. And this shows in the choices they make for OS X. IMO Linux distributions have vastly superior software installa…

I've never had any of the hardware in my three Thinkpads fail on me. My Macbook, in the space of three years, had its plastic casing start to flake off, its battery failed, its power adapter failed, its hard drive failed. The other piece of Apple hardware I owned is a TimeCapsule. That lasted a couple of years before it conked out. Luckily this was a known problem and I got a free replacement. I have a friend who went through three iPhones, that all just conked out on him before upgrading to an Android device, which he has had no problems with.

Apple hardware looks good, but it's limited in function, and poor quality.

A Thinkpad keyboard kicks the shit out of a Macbook keyboard. My Thinkpad has a built in smart card reader, gps and a 3g modem. All work flawlessly under Ubuntu. It has both a nipple as well as the trackpad. The nipple on my Thinkpad is much better than the trackpad on my Macbook was.

Post reply on HN