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Moving from Macbook to Linux

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Re: Moving from Macbook to Linux

#381

Post by 1_player »

peterangular wrote: post #27
DarmokJalad1701 wrote: post #8

The trackpad is still a dealbreaker for me. Nothing I have tried so far comes close to the trackpad on a macbook with the sensitivity turned up to max.

Apple's mouse/trackpad/touch drivers are out of this world. Anecdotally as someone who collects laptops - you can't beat them. There's polish there that doesn't exist on any other solution on the market!

Apple's trackpad drivers on macOS are out of this world.

Apple's trackpad drivers on Boot Camp are absolute ass, pardon the French.

Any Boot Camp driver from Apple is garbage, actually (I had tons of issues with my iMac Pro audio drivers on Windows)

Re: Moving from Macbook to Linux

#382

Post by arvinsim »

nitrogen wrote: post #325
csomar wrote: post #323

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure what you do, so you should check. I do web dev + Rust, and so far I have had no issues.

The latest top of the line AMD gaming CPUs seem to beat out the last top of the line Intel gaming CPUs on almost all games. You can also get more cores for the same price on AMD, and they bench much higher on e.g. 3D rendering, so AMD should be faster for dev work, too. Gamers Nexus is a pretty good YouTube channel with detailed benchmarks, but there are others, too.

The only problem with the latest Ryzen CPUs is that they are out of stock everywhere.

Re: Moving from Macbook to Linux

#383

Post by chongli »

marcus_holmes wrote: post #288
rched wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your fears seem to come down to the idea that Apple will eventually try to force apps to go through the mac app store. I can understand why people would feel that way seeing what they have done on their mobile platforms but I don't actually think there is any evidence to suggest they want to do that on the mac. I am not at all convinced Apple wants to go that route so the future of the mac doesn't look scary to me it…

I have no idea why you think this, when Apple are clearly clamping down on what software gets on "their" machines. They have to tread carefully because anti-trust, and they'll make all the relevant noises, but I think it's clear that the end-goal is only allowing app store apps to be installed. But tbh the same is true of Windows. They're further away, because history, but they've already played with this once and wi…

Apple only has about 10% marketshare with macOS. There is no judge in the US that would rule against them in an anti-trust case over that. It's another story with iOS but that's not what we're talking about here.

Apple has no reason to turn the Mac into a total walled garden. They already have that in the iPad. Walling off macOS would mean getting rid of the Terminal and all of the other developer tools. For what? They would be cutting off their nose to spite their face.

Re: Moving from Macbook to Linux

#384

Post by stjohnswarts »

vbezhenar wrote: post #370
hacknat wrote: post #154

I would strongly recommend the following combination for beginners: Thinkpad + Fedora Fedora stays on the cutting edge of the kernel, which means that driver support is quite good. Additionally, most of the Linux kernel developers use Thinkpads, so the drivers for Thinkpad are always good. I've never had to download drivers individually. Here's a list of things that just "worked" without me having to do anything: 1.…

What about mobile workstations like Dell Precision, HP Zbook, Thinkpad P53? Those workstations usually claim to support Linux officially, they are really powerful workhorses, they allow using of server-grade components (Xeons, ECC RAM, Quadro GPUs). Do people avoid them because they are expensive, bulky or do not run long on battery? If I would buy laptop today, I would look into those machines first, they seem to ma…

Anything that supports linux officially will likely support the major distros just fine.

Re: Moving from Macbook to Linux

#385

Post by everybodyknows »

kitsunesoba wrote: post #260
senko wrote: post #68

I find it funny when people complain Linux is not ready for desktop. Sometimes it's because Windows software doesn't run on it, sometimes because Apple makes a fast chip... Dunno. Been using it on desktops (well, laptops, mostly) since early 2000s, then some 6-year hiatus with OSX, then back to Linux. Works/worked great for me. So, Year of Linux Desktop is really old news for some. For most, it'll never arrive. And t…

It's an incredibly personal choice. I've daily driven macOS for well over a decade, but periodically dip my toe into the Linux world just to get a feel of it's "there" yet or not. Unfortunately for my purposes, it never is, and so I end up returning to macOS. The biggest problem is that none of the DEs really fit my tastes — they all have to be poked and prodded into kinda doing what I want them to do, but they're ne…

> "typical" floating WM with titlebars and the like

My preference also. Currently maintaining a script of calls to 'gsettings set ...', plus a patch to gtk.css, on top of Ubuntu 18.04 Gnome Adwaita.

Doesn't quite get me back to what gtk-2 could do with a bit of its well supported, (even encouraged!) customization options. So the struggle continues.

Re: Moving from Macbook to Linux

#386

Post by stjohnswarts »

michaelmrose wrote: post #359
driverdan wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That future looks extremely scary. What can we do, now, as developers ? Stop buying, using, and supporting the Apple ecosystem. Vote with your money. The new chips are faster. So what? The laptop you have today works fine, you don't need the latest and greatest hardware.

It's not even necessarily faster so much as liable to have a better battery life.

My guess from what I've seen 2X any other laptop of "similar" size and capabilities. It looks great from a technical standpoint.

Re: Moving from Macbook to Linux

#387

Post by totony »

busterarm wrote: post #245
hacknat wrote: post #154

I would strongly recommend the following combination for beginners: Thinkpad + Fedora Fedora stays on the cutting edge of the kernel, which means that driver support is quite good. Additionally, most of the Linux kernel developers use Thinkpads, so the drivers for Thinkpad are always good. I've never had to download drivers individually. Here's a list of things that just "worked" without me having to do anything: 1.…

Not just any thinkpad! Stick to the X, T & to some extent P series. Avoid nvidia graphics if you can. Arch Linux (and to some extent OpenBSD) probably has the best support/documentation/fixes for any ACPI/APM management issues you have. I have a top-end 2017 MBP and I just recently bought a brand new 7th Gen X1 Carbon for very cheaply (like $800) and it _screams_ in comparison to the Mac.

Thinkpads all have soldered ram which is a pratice I can't support, is there a model I missed that has ram slots?

Re: Moving from Macbook to Linux

#388

Post by chii »

bsaul wrote: post #25

The fact that many people reading this post title (including me) look at it with sarcasm is telling on how apple scored big points with its new cpu. Keeping up with mac OS and the trackpad was already quite hard, but CPU could be the killing blow. Which could lead us in a few years to a situation where mac developers will face the same fate as ios developers : forced to buy hardware to sign their app, forced to push…

> What can we do, now, as developers ?

create a killer app for the average person that _only_ works on linux, and force users to move.

If your app is attractive enough, and there is enough developers doing this, it will force users to slowly migrate.

To compete, walled-gardens will court you, and you can then negotiate conditions to make it better (instead of taking just money that they will offer).

Re: Moving from Macbook to Linux

#389

Post by stjohnswarts »

romanoderoma wrote: post #261
heavyset_go wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Plasma Desktop does fractional scaling correctly, is stable and comes with sddm as a display manager instead of gdm. I found the GNOME ecosystem to be bug prone and opinionated in ways that I disagree with, and have been impressed with KDE 5's stability and versatility.

Same here. Plasma is great and it feels lightweight compared to Gnome

They've had some pretty good memory decreases over the past couple of years actually in Plasma, it rivals a similarly configured xfce nowadays. Gnome is bloated in comparison.

Re: Moving from Macbook to Linux

#390

Post by 1over137 »

rched wrote: post #241
bsaul wrote: post #25

The fact that many people reading this post title (including me) look at it with sarcasm is telling on how apple scored big points with its new cpu. Keeping up with mac OS and the trackpad was already quite hard, but CPU could be the killing blow. Which could lead us in a few years to a situation where mac developers will face the same fate as ios developers : forced to buy hardware to sign their app, forced to push…

Your fears seem to come down to the idea that Apple will eventually try to force apps to go through the mac app store. I can understand why people would feel that way seeing what they have done on their mobile platforms but I don't actually think there is any evidence to suggest they want to do that on the mac. I am not at all convinced Apple wants to go that route so the future of the mac doesn't look scary to me it…

>I don't actually think there is any evidence to suggest they want to do that on the mac

Gatekeeper, requiring Developer ID, deprecating kexts, T2 chip, deprecation of the inclusion of Tk/python/PHP. We are slowly boiling frogs here. It's being squeezed into the direction of iOS.

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