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Re: Broken

#351

Post by gerdesj »

blunte wrote: post #203

It's all very depressing. Like most of us here, I have become increasingly frustrated with the state of Mac (touch bar, bad keyboards, odd choices that fit neither creators nor developers well, and so on). No point rehashing it all. But where does that leave us? I spent a year on Windows 10 not so long ago, on upper end laptop hardware with HiDPI screen, and it was less fun and more problem prone than macOS - especia…

I moved to Arch Linux a few years back. So did wifey but she doesn't care about what OS she uses. We both use KDE for a Window Manager, Libre Office and Evolution (Exchange is involved). Printing is of course CUPS, which is lovely and simply works. Lots of other things installed from the one set of repos.

KDE allows you to "lock" the desktop icons/widgets in place. That is a feature that is sorely missing from all other WMs (Mac/MS/ int al) and for me is a killer feature. Some of my end users have a habit of smearing icons (launchers) all over the place.

Desktop Linux is way better than say Desktop Windows (by OP metric). Updates take a few minutes rather than hours in some cases. Fixing things does not involve sfc /scannow but then neither does that work on any Windows box unless it has spinning rust and loses power regularly without battery backed cache.

I update my wife's laptop via SSH when she is using it and I throw a reboot job at it out of hours via cron.

My wife is happy with what she needs to get to - Facebook, email, some odd Flash games on FB and a few other things. I'm sure that Mac and Windows sysadmins can all say the same (I'm those as well.)

Re: Broken

#352

Post by jtanderson »

gonehome wrote: post #230
MisterOctober wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I switched from macOS to Linux [Fedora now] about a year and a half ago, out of the same frustrations that affect a lotta folks -- It took a little while to adjust, but since there are a lot of similarities between the Linux and Darwin command lines [and Linux package management being better than homebrew by my lights] , it wasn't very long before I was like "Damn, why didn't I switch 20 years ago!!!" Plus now my har…

Does the hardware actually work? I've used Linux several times over the years and the hardware never totally works. I've always had trackpad issues, issues with suspend and hibernate, wifi issues, screen resolution issues, battery life issues, sound issues, driver issues etc. It 'works' in terms of you can technically do work on it, but you have to make a huge number of concessions and this is before considering it h…

Isn't the whole point of OP one giant "it works flawlessly - except for xxx" post? Except in this case, the xxx is a much more seriously negative experience compared to a couple small up-front issues with getting hardware set up the correct way.

It's pretty clear that no OS is going to be perfect; but the message I take away is that Linux is to the point where you completely have the ability to tweak and adjust your system so that it works flawlessly after some effort (as in my case, switched ~1.5 years ago. Zero problems after initial checking of driver situations). On the other hand, macOS, even from a technically savvy point of view, is unfriendly and beyond the user's power to fix.

Re: Broken

#353

Post by __MatrixMan__ »

colmvp wrote: post #263
gonehome wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does the hardware actually work? I've used Linux several times over the years and the hardware never totally works. I've always had trackpad issues, issues with suspend and hibernate, wifi issues, screen resolution issues, battery life issues, sound issues, driver issues etc. It 'works' in terms of you can technically do work on it, but you have to make a huge number of concessions and this is before considering it h…

FWIW, I switched from using a Mac for a decade to using Ubuntu on a brand new Dell XPS and it works perfectly. Even though Linux users are a tiny minority of users, I find they are quite helpful at publishing their problems and eventual solutions. I did have issues setting up certain drivers (i.e. the bloody wifi which tbh is still a bit iffy on my machine) but otherwise it's been amazing.

I hear you about the community of Linux users.

I'd rather have 100 bugs that I could fix in principle than 1 bug that I just have to deal with because some company thinks it's a feature. And I'd rather be part of thousands of engaged tinkerer types interested in improving the support community than be part of millions that would rather convince me that their expensive hardware is proportionally better instead of actually talking about the tech.

I've been using Linux as a daily driver since high school (15 years ago). Lately though, I have noticed that we Linux types are insufferable in our own ways...

Re: Broken

#354

Post by ekianjo »

tracker1 wrote: post #350
ekianjo wrote: post #317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except Arch, which is miles better in hardware support because it is uses the very latest kernels

As long as the 38 step install process works. ;-) I tried, it locked up trying to load the GUI, specifically 5.3 kernel installer for navi support. Wound up reverting to Ubuntu LTS, will re-evaluate in 6 months when things for my hardware stabilizes.

Done the install manually several times and it is crystal clear what you have to do once you understand how Linux works from boot to the OS. Of course not recommended for beginners and those who have no interest in how the internals work.

Sorry to hear it did not work for Navi, was the wiki any helpful to understand what goes wrong?

Re: Broken

#355

Post by dTal »

arboghast wrote: post #30
mherrmann wrote: post #22

Can I just say how happy I am with Xfce. It's a Linux desktop environment that looks like in the early 2000s. It's fast. There are no unnecessary frills. It just gets the job done. Its release cycles are measured in several years, and keep it minimal. I used to be on Windows, then macOS, then Ubuntu and now this. As a developer with soon to be 20 years of experience, it's the best environment I've had.

So was I until I switch to a 4k monitor and realize that there's no real, stable, functional fractional scaling on Linux, even less so on XFCE, unfortunately.

Protip: ignore "scaling".

Step 1: put 'xrandr --dpi ' in .xinitrc

Step 2: Use QT applications (Plasma is a fantastic QT desktop)

Step 3: Enjoy your reasonably sized everything.

"Scaling" is a broken concept to work around applications assuming 96 DPI (which is considered scale=1). You don't need it if you use programs that actually respect your real DPI. Unfortunately X11 doesn't properly compute DPI settings, even though EDID information generally contains the screen size - I imagine, for fear of breaking stuff.

(You can correct GTK3/GDK applications by setting GDK_DPI_SCALE=, but in my view it's a sin that you need to do that)

Re: Broken

#356

Post by boardwaalk »

Eesh, all this whinging about permissions dialogs is tiring. It's really not any different than what you would get on an iPhone, except that someone with an existing Mac probably has a saved session which a bunch of programs already running.

I clicked "allow" a maybe a dozen times and I was done. It was real, real hardship.

The only real weirdness I've had with Catalina is that I have some code where one thread wakes up another with an empty UDP packet, and that packet no longer arrives. Sending 1 arbitrary byte instead of 0 fixes it.

Re: Broken

#357

Post by weberc2 »

blunte wrote: post #203

It's all very depressing. Like most of us here, I have become increasingly frustrated with the state of Mac (touch bar, bad keyboards, odd choices that fit neither creators nor developers well, and so on). No point rehashing it all. But where does that leave us? I spent a year on Windows 10 not so long ago, on upper end laptop hardware with HiDPI screen, and it was less fun and more problem prone than macOS - especia…

Also—and this is the biggest deal for me—mac is the only trackbar that works.

Re: Broken

#358

Post by kevingadd »

eanzenberg wrote: post #323
snapples wrote: post #131

Things are so broken here at Apple. I joined about 4 years ago. I am awed by the fact that we manage to release any software at all, let alone functional software. The biggest problem is communication. No one fucking communicates. - No communication between orgs. Tons of bureaucratic tape to cut through just to get a hand on someone working on a different product - Barely any communication between teams. Literally ev…

You are probably segregated away from where the real work is happening. This is by design, because you haven't proven yourself yet or they don't trust you yet. Good work is being done in Apple every day. You're just not a part of it and are not seeing it.

After four years? Seriously? Why would a bad hire not be laid off at that point? What's the difference between "real work" and "not real work"? How many engineers are on-site at HQ who don't do real work?

Re: Broken

#359

Post by kevingadd »

macinjosh wrote: post #123

I've been using Catalina as a daily driver since the first beta. I did notice some bugs here and there but I have to say my take away was different. I did get the barrage of permission prompts but it was just like that the one time and while it was a bit overwhelming it made me feel good that my OS was keeping tabs on these things. With Apple's emphasis on privacy they had to build these sort of controls into macOS t…

OP didn't put betas on primary hardware, it was on testing hardware. The beta infected their other machines via iCloud.

Re: Broken

#360

Post by danellis »

kwhat4 wrote: post #343
dingus wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's frustrating because it's the "least worst" option. I use MacOS because it has a thoughtful, consistent, coherent, beautiful user interface and desktop environment. The things I use all day are basically a web browser, mail client, code editor, and terminal. I can do actual work on any BSD really, there is no proprietary app that causes lock-in, I don't use iCloud or any of their services. All I want is their des…

What makes the MacOS UI so much better than say Gnome or Enlightenment? I personally can't stand most of the Mac UI experience, however, I am very curious what you (and others) love about it that cannot be replicated on a different OS?

Font rendering for one. It's really nice. IME, text quality on a Linux desktop varies even between applications, depending on what toolkit they happen to be using.
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