Live data from Hacker News

Switching from macOS: The Basics

blog.elementary.io

311–320 of 610 posts

Re: Switching from macOS: The Basics

#311
post #308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> ... and awesome UI/UX. > Is that not what Red Hat is? I thought that's what the Red Hat license provided? I won't say anything bad about Red Hat, but calling the UX awesome isn't something I would do based on my experience. Then again, they might have changed but I haven't heard anybody mentioning it. (This used to be Canonicals niche before they picked up the assumption that Mac-like == Good ; )

I may have skipped over the awesome UX. More of the stable and paid dev work. I'll agree most UX on Linux isn't great. But GUI is such a pain in the ass that most people really don't want to work on it. Plus, plenty of Linux users aren't casual users and will accept or prefer function over form. I myself am a heavy terminal user and pretty much limit my GUI use to the occasional image editor and the browser.

Agree. It was just the singling out of RH when GP asked for awesome UX.

Re: Switching from macOS: The Basics

#312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wish I had known that trick. I payed some money for it, which isn't unusual since I often donate money to open source or activism. But this time I regret every cent. Coming from Mac OS, or even Fedora, Elementary seems unpolished and unstable.

Some of you Mac guys are a weird bunch IMO: Talk more than others about usability - happily gloss over all kinds of weirdness[0] in your expensive setups.[1] Happily pays quite a lot for your Macs - "regret every cent" after donating peanuts for the development of a Linux distro. Just saying. Edit: downvotes welcome! I cannot buy anything for my Internet points here in Western Europe. A textual description of my wron…

I also never thought that the UX was particularly good. It looks pretty, but some fundamental stuff is hidden and when I was new to OS X I never knew when I had to switch to terminal. To me the real reason to run OS X is that I never have to fight with drivers or my xconfig. On Ubuntu plugging in a projector to give a presentation was always more exciting than it should have been. I more often than not had to borrow someone else's Windows laptop. I also can't count the times apt-get update replaced my proprietary Nvidia driver with an much worse, open source one. Last time I gave Ubuntu a try a few years ago it actually managed to destroy the firmware on my external screen. I just want a Unix based system that works.

Re: Switching from macOS: The Basics

#313
post #186
post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everybody in the FOSS community gets really mad at that decision... I thought it was intuitive. "How much do you want to pay?" "0 Dollars." "Great!" Why is that so horrible?

Don't ever rely on your own perception of what's intuitive to evaluate a user experience. Someone has given specific feedback to the contrary, which means that there will be others. If I was the site's maintainer, I'd be heading straight for the analytics to see if they support this feedback.

The contributions actually increased. Which is why they kept it.

Re: Switching from macOS: The Basics

#314
post #274

Please don't be so gullible, folks! When you see an article marketing a product, and they claim people are looking to switch to their product in droves, take it with a grain of salt! This is purely a promotional article, pretending to be a help article. Look at the unattributed quotes it uses. Pretty sure the part about anybody switching from anything to anything is made up. Sure people switch sometimes. Sure people…

Do you really think HN readers are so gullible as to not realize this, and that you are the only one to catch on?

I would never think that. But I was taken aback by many of the comments on this thread.

Re: Switching from macOS: The Basics

#315

So I went to their main page to download an ISO to give it a try in a VM. They hid the download button really well: You have to type in "0" into the "how much you'd like to pay" field for the "Purchase" button to change to "Download". I mean I understand that open source projects need funding. But if you want people to try your niche OS at least make it obvious how to download it. Ask for money later after people had…

On their blog [1] and repository [2] there were some clarification about this "trick".

[1]: http://blog.elementary.io/post/110645528530/payments

[2]: https://github.com/elementary/website/pull/655

It is a shame for Elementary OS Team, because this issue was many times discussed on GH issues / IRC about implementing just a "$0" button. As I remember in launchpad there is also a task or discussion about suggestion of the dialog which will remind about donation after certain time duration.

Edit:

Found https://blueprints.launchpad.net/elementaryos/+spec/donation...

Re: Switching from macOS: The Basics

#316
post #227
post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

GTK has been fairly hostile to non-Gnome usage since the GTK 3 era; they keep on breaking backwards compatibility for applications that use it, don't care about whether apps can be used on non-Gnome desktop environments, etc. I don't think it's all that polished either.

I instantly believe you, based on my experience of the fiasco that is Gnome 3, but can you share some examples of this?

Have fun reading,

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10757985

Re: Switching from macOS: The Basics

#317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wish I had known that trick. I payed some money for it, which isn't unusual since I often donate money to open source or activism. But this time I regret every cent. Coming from Mac OS, or even Fedora, Elementary seems unpolished and unstable.

I really wish someone would start a paid OS based on Linux and OSS tools. I'd happily pay $100/y (year being, new versions/etc) for a stable and awesome UI/UX. As it is, my Macbook Pro Retina has been crashing a lot and doing weird things frequently since i upgraded to Sierra. Between that and the latest Macbook Pro notebooks, i just don't like Apple anymore. I'm pretty set on buying a highend laptop _(similar build…

https://www.redhat.com/wapps/store/catalog.html

or, you can get the Dell XPS Developer Edition with Ubuntu pre-installed.

Re: Switching from macOS: The Basics

#318
post #211

I try Ubuntu about once a year, in the hopes of getting rid of OSX. But each time, the reason for going back to Apple ID is interoperability : Try dragging stuff (images, fotos, links, files, formatted text ...) from one program to another, including the "dreaded" Finder; Works nearly always in OSX. While Ubuntu has come a long way with these things, I think it's still an even longer way away from what OSX can do. So…

I've used Ubuntu for work development for some time now, and I would never consider it for home use. It just kind of sucks from a usability perspective. Lots of little things are just randomly broken or difficult compared to what I'm used to.

That's the exact same complaint I have about Windows.

Re: Switching from macOS: The Basics

#319
post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really wish someone would start a paid OS based on Linux and OSS tools. I'd happily pay $100/y (year being, new versions/etc) for a stable and awesome UI/UX. As it is, my Macbook Pro Retina has been crashing a lot and doing weird things frequently since i upgraded to Sierra. Between that and the latest Macbook Pro notebooks, i just don't like Apple anymore. I'm pretty set on buying a highend laptop _(similar build…

I believe elementary OS is the closest thing to what you're looking for. They're an LLC with the team that focuses on building a good looking UI and a nice UX. Pantheon is the only desktop environment which I wouldn't call outdated in the Linux world and somewhat stable and easy to get (Solus project is attempting to do the same, but I think they just don't have enough man power to pull it off).

I wish them the best of luck but recall Eazel (?) attempting to do this with Gnome back in the day and ended up folding as not enough people were willing to pay.

Re: Switching from macOS: The Basics

#320

So I went to their main page to download an ISO to give it a try in a VM. They hid the download button really well: You have to type in "0" into the "how much you'd like to pay" field for the "Purchase" button to change to "Download". I mean I understand that open source projects need funding. But if you want people to try your niche OS at least make it obvious how to download it. Ask for money later after people had…

On their blog [1] and repository [2] there were some clarification about this "trick". [1]: http://blog.elementary.io/post/110645528530/payments [2]: https://github.com/elementary/website/pull/655 It is a shame for Elementary OS Team, because this issue was many times discussed on GH issues / IRC about implementing just a "$0" button. As I remember in launchpad there is also a task or discussion about suggestion of t…

Not a $0.

An "I would like to try it first" button.

Post reply on HN