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Apple of 2019 is the Linux of 2000

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Re: Apple of 2019 is the Linux of 2000

#321

Post by stefano »

liquid-monthly wrote: post #110
stefano wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Regarding the first point, I had to give up on using an external monitor because fonts look blurry and give me a headache after a while. The same monitor with Windows and Linux shows perfectly fine fonts. I tried all sort of incantations found on forums, and nothing works.

This should do the trick. https://github.com/LumingYin/macOSLucidaGrande Note for me, this makes the ••• dots go away when typing passwords into system prompts. Fine!

Thanks, but I already tried that in the past. I didn't notice any difference. Maybe it looks decent if you have a screen with high enough resolution, but ony my 1080p screen it still looks bad.

Re: Apple of 2019 is the Linux of 2000

#322

Post by puranjay »

jonwinstanley wrote: post #264
mattigames wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Opinions are a funny thing, I find MacOs vastly inferior to Windows, but I grew up with Windows so I'm biased that way; I'm betting you and people claiming 'the good old days of mac' are biased too.

I grew up using Windows and after 20 years switched to Mac and could not believe I had waited for so long. What parts of Windows do you prefer over MacOS?

I use both Windows and Mac. I find Windows file management and window management to be much better. Love the preview you get when you hover over an app icon in the taskbar. Also love how windows don't automatically take up the entire screen. I like to have two windows open simultaneously. This is much smoother on Windows than Mac.

I also prefer Windows' taskbar instead of Mac's dock.

The negative is changing preferences and the general ugliness of Windows. Mac is just prettier.

The two systems seem to be built for different things. Mac prioritizes single application, focus based work. Windows is better when you're multitasking.

I do most of my writing and creative work on Mac. But when I have to do some heavy duty productivity work with multiple apps/windows, I switch to my Windows desktop.

Re: Apple of 2019 is the Linux of 2000

#323

Post by stefano »

desdiv wrote: post #243
ascagnel_ wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple redid font smoothing with Mojave, and now it looks like garbage on non-retina displays. Most 4K displays seem to be bigger, rather than denser, so you can't do much to fix it.

I brought an Apple PowerBook G4 back in 2005, and one of the standard system configs allowed you to calibrate the subpixel rendering parameters of fonts for the built-in display, as well as any external displays. It remembers each external display by serial model so that it could load the correct calibration profile for that particular display each time it's plugged in. I must have obsessively calibrated each of my d…

I tried. It didn't help, the root issue is that Apple removed anti-aliasing, which is the only thing that can make fonts look readable on a 1080p resolution display. An old MacBook running OSX 10.6 looks perfectly fine on my external monitor.

Re: Apple of 2019 is the Linux of 2000

#324

Post by mfer »

There are some call outs in this worth talking about...

> Apple 2019: only a limited number of hardware works out of the box, even for popular devices like Android phones.

Is the Android issue on Apple or on Google. Each is very much into ecosystem lock-in. Who is failing to write the integration software?

IMHO, it would be far better for consumers if these things were like plumbing or electrical. You can mix and match from different manufacturers because of standard sizes and interfaces.

> Apple 2019: if your problem is not google-trivial, there's nothing you can do. Calling Apple's tech support line does not help, because they will just type your problem description into Google and read the first hit.

How much of this is UX and expectations. I imagine the person writing this isn't an average consumer. Is the expectation someone who can do level 4 tech support rather than the tech support reps on the front lines? Those front line people trained to handle general consumers rather than people who read HN.

Re: Apple of 2019 is the Linux of 2000

#325

Post by rayiner »

nkoren wrote: post #190

Meh. I bailed out of the Mac ecosystem last year, as my mid-2012 retina Macbook was finally getting too creaky, and the latest Mac hardware was a regression in many respects, while simultaneously utterly unaffordable. I'm now dual-booting Ubuntu/Windows 10 on a Dell XPS 15". What this experience has taught me is that computing in 2019 basically sucks. The problems with 2000-era Linux, as described in the article, are…

Yes. My 2012 retina MacBook was getting long in the tooth last year, so I got an X1 Carbon with all the bells and whistles. Remarkably, the on board LTE just plain never worked. (It would randomly die after a few uses requiring a hard reboot.) The screen bezel delaminated and has to be replaced. Developed three dead pixels after a few months of use. Recently started rebooting randomly with a full battery. My dad had similar problems with an X1 Carbon which he bought on my recommendation.

And Windows 10 is still bad. So many apps are not DPI aware. Windows Store apps are better in this regard, but often are stripped down and bereft of features. (Out of the box it was unusable. I installed LTSC which made things better. But I haven’t had to reinstall my OS, except to sell a machine, since I first moved to Mac from Linux in 2007.)

My wife, by contrast, bit the bullet and got a 2018 MacBook Pro to replace her 2012 retina. It took her a bit to adjust to the new keyboard, but she’s a much happier camper than I am.

Re: Apple of 2019 is the Linux of 2000

#326

Post by hibbelig »

stefano wrote: post #94
threeseed wrote: post #20

1. Never once seen an issue with USB-C to HDMI or VGA connections. It doesn't even make any sense since MacBook Pro users with external, third party monitors are an extremely common combination. 2. I just downloaded Caret (Markdown editor) from their website and used Homebrew to install a CLI tool. Nothing has changed between the current OSX and previous ones. 3. If you have a tech support issue go into the Apple Sto…

Regarding the first point, I had to give up on using an external monitor because fonts look blurry and give me a headache after a while. The same monitor with Windows and Linux shows perfectly fine fonts. I tried all sort of incantations found on forums, and nothing works.

Is your Mac running the external monitor in its native resolution?

I have a 4k display, and when I select the "Looks like 3840 x 2160" option, UI elements are too small. Selecting "Looks like 2560 x 1440" results in blurry fonts. So I've selected "Looks like 1920 x 1080", and thanks to Retina, fonts are crystal clear. Unfortunately, UI elements (such as the menu bar at the top of the screen) are pretty gigantic now, but I live with it.

Re: Apple of 2019 is the Linux of 2000

#327

Post by fiddlerwoaroof »

quincunx wrote: post #237
kn100 wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

W.r.t your hidpi/non-hidpi issue - a 'proper' solution is slowly making its way out of the woodwork. Wayland apparently will allow us to solve this problem, but in the meantime here's my solution if it'll help you. I have a 4k dell xps 13 and a 2k monitor. I have this script set up to run on boot. https://gist.github.com/kn100/7193667d393fcf34d4d5c6c359a695... What this does is it forces your internal display to run…

You're very kind to offer help like this, but from the article: "... the only way to fix it is to find terminal commands from discussion forums, type them in and hope for the best" quote seems apt.

There's a tool called arandr that'll let you do most of this visually: I use it everytime I rearrange my monitors.

Re: Apple of 2019 is the Linux of 2000

#328

Post by vetinari »

disiplus wrote: post #239
splittydev wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can use xrandr to load your specific layout at startup. If you don't wanna be bothered with crafting an xrandr command, you can use arandr to generate the script for you. Scaling is a mess though, totally agree with that.

the problem for me is having mixed dpi monitors and fractionql scaling. for laptop monitor 150% to work it scales everything 2x, that also means that my external 27" 2560 which should be 1x is rendered to 5120 and that is causing stuttering and lag, at least i think it is, tried different drivers and so on. if i set the external monitor to 125 scaling then the rendered resolution is 4k and that works better, ni shutt…

Becasue X11 doesn't support mixed dpi monitors, so you are using a hack where it pretends to have the same dpi and downsample where necessary.

For proper mixed dpi under Linux, you must use Wayland. But then, under Wayland, the fractional scaling is still not done (the wayland apps will work fine at given fractional scale, but x11 app will be @1 upsampled, i.e. blurry. That includes the browsers).

Re: Apple of 2019 is the Linux of 2000

#329

Post by llimllib »

harshitaneja wrote: post #318
llimllib wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was linux-only from 2002 to about 2009, on laptops, when I switched to Mac. I just set up a linux desktop for kicks the last couple of weeks, and it doesn't seem to me to be any better than it was a decade ago. * No way to adjust mouse scroll speed; official answer seems to be "don't want that". (Or install imwheel and change your mouse scroll to be equal to hitting the down button (!) which breaks other stuff) * T…

Which version of gnome are you on? >No way to adjust mouse scroll speed; official answer seems to be "don't want that". (Or install imwheel and change your mouse scroll to be equal to hitting the down button (!) which breaks other stuff) I just checked gnome settings and it has option to change touchpad speed. Don't have a mouse so can't comment for that but it should be there. >To make an icon on the favorites bar i…

> Which version of gnome are you on?

3.24 I think? whatever the ubuntu beta is using.

> I just checked gnome settings and it has option to change touchpad speed. Don't have a mouse so can't comment for that but it should be there.

I can assure you it is not

edit to add issue link: https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gnome-control-center/issues/3...

> Open the app and right click the app icon in dock(if that is what you mean by favorites bar) and it should have an option to add to favorites.

neat! that didn't work for kitty though, for example, I had to do it manually.

> I have found gnome to have the easiest way to edit all shortcuts. Settings>Devices>Keyboard should show you all the keyboard shortcuts and if you scroll to bottom you will find option to add custom shortcuts which you can set to any command. Much more extensive than the frustrating MacOS keyboard shortcuts in my opinion.

The shortcuts panel is indeed very nice, and the shortcuts that you can change there are nice. However, many aren't changeable there, and you have to install (!) and go to the very poorly designed keyboard modifications panel of gnome-tweaks, for example, to change caps lock to esc and tell gnome what you want your windows/mac key to do.

Where it falls down from karabiner is:

1. there's no way to have different settings for different keyboards. I have two that I use regularly, with fairly different layouts

2. it lacks the power of karabiner; I'd love to have a rule like "command-c equals ctrl-shift-c but command-t equals ctrl-t". Trivial in karabiner, impossible in gnome

> all you then have to do is click install while on the website

I'm glad they have that, but I don't want to give my browser that security hole, so I grant you that one's a bit on me. Should be easier to do a manual installation anyway.

> I agree linux was in a pretty bad shape a decade ago and we still need to improve a lot but to say it is still the same is ignoring all the hardwork of a large number of wonderful people who have been contributing to the codebase.

I do not at all mean to trash the hard work people have done, I really (truly!) respect it. However, from this particular user's perspective, the problems are about equal to what they were a decade ago.

Re: Apple of 2019 is the Linux of 2000

#330

Post by zenhack »

IggleSniggle wrote: post #219
DoofusOfDeath wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With respect, you post wasn't very condescending.

Here’s my fix: “Oh, please. People don’t _actually use_ macs while drinking their lattes anymore (except maybe ironically). Lenovo (running Windows with the Linux Subsystem enabled) is the only halfway decent way to get work done. Unless of course you’re one of those hipsters running Arch. I’ve been meaning to try that, actually.” -actual 2019 computing hipster, probably

Wait, is Arch back to being a hipster thing? I thought we'd graduated to well-known distro.

I've been using Arch since '06, back when Judd was still in charge and the repos were divided up in terms of "stuff Judd maintains" and "stuff other devs maintain." It was this small community project that nobody had really heard about, and I got so used to it just not being a thing that when (sometime in the range of '10 - '12?) folks started talking about it as a hipster thing, it really took me by surprise. A few years later it seemed like it was just one of the more well known "hands on" distros with great docs, and I was glad to have that phase be done with.

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