Switching from macOS: The Basics • Hacker News Board

Re: Switching from macOS: The Basics

#431

Post by kitsunesoba » Wed, Nov 02, 2016, 4:39 PM UTC

reitanqild wrote: post #241

INTPenis wrote: post #111

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 don't think anybody is saying that macOS is perfect. It's more that historically for most of us, the set of trade offs that come with it are much easier to swallow than those that come with $DESKTOP_LINUX_DISTRO. In fact, that's the core of the problem: even now, after all that he missteps Apple has taken and after all the improvements desktop Linux has seen, macOS is still the more appealing option. This is frustrating because it suggests that there may never be another desktop platform with a set of pros and cons similar to those of macOS.

Re: Switching from macOS: The Basics

#432

Post by javajosh » Wed, Nov 02, 2016, 4:42 PM UTC

falcolas wrote: post #254

fnl wrote: 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…

Eh, that functionality has a tendency to break after being used a few times in OSX. Specifically, dragging images from your browser to the finder works the first few times, providing an overlay image which becomes a file icon as you hover over the finder window. A few transfers later, the file icon stops appearing. Then the semi-transparent image stops appearing; though the files are still being copied. Then, silentl…

I've gotten in the habit of screenshotting. With one hot key (cmd shift 4) I pick a region and a file is placed on my desktop. This turns out to be far more useful in more circumstances for me. (The only image dragging I do is within chrome to send someone an image through hangouts.)

Re: Switching from macOS: The Basics

#433

Post by javajosh » Wed, Nov 02, 2016, 4:44 PM UTC

highace wrote: post #427

veidr wrote: post #357

My own burning hatred towards Apple runs a little hotter than most, and I have been seriously googling (and trying) alternatives since 2012. That was when my $9000 Mac Pro — which had been a great machine, and still was, except for the little detail about not having been updated since 2009 and thus being stuck with USB 2 (!!!) to say nothing of Thunderbolt and any kind of modern accoutrements — started to feel like a…

Windows? It's really not that bad.

I can see the marketing now. "Switch back to Windows: it's really not that bad."

Re: Switching from macOS: The Basics

#434

Post by st3v3r » Wed, Nov 02, 2016, 4:45 PM UTC

marrs wrote: post #397

pjmlp wrote: post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you think that, then you don't have any idea of what a fully working desktop stack for GUI developers looks like. GTK+ is no competition for these APIs: https://developer.apple.com/reference/

well the not-fully-working desktop stack for Linux devs seems to work just fine for them. I've certainly never had a problem with it. I've never had a problem with the Apple kit either but it's nothing to write home about. The only thing I've seen Apple do that I did think was really cool is the package signing.

"well the not-fully-working desktop stack for Linux devs seems to work just fine for them"

Because they don't care about stuff like GUI. And it shows.

Re: Switching from macOS: The Basics

#435

Post by at-fates-hands » Wed, Nov 02, 2016, 4:45 PM UTC

skoczymroczny wrote: post #184

xd1936 wrote: 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?

This part wasn't that horrible as the quote from Elementary blog was (apparently they removed the old blogpost, but it's easily googlable): "We want users to understand that they’re pretty much cheating the system when they choose not to pay for software. We didn’t exclude a $0 button to deceive you; we believe our software really is worth something."

>> we believe our software really is worth something.

That's why you let users decide after they've used the software. You don't tell someone that up front and expect a payment when you haven't been able to try and test the software for yourself and your team.

If it's worthy, then users will come back and offer a payment or contact you to find out how they can contribute if they feel its really worth it.

I think a lot of people have this misconception that everybody who uses open source software just assumes it should be free. In my own experience, it's quite the opposite. Most people who use open source are actually more willing to pay for something they feel is valuable to them without hesitation. They're also usually willing to pay a little more then perhaps is necessary in order to make sure its maintained and supported.

Re: Switching from macOS: The Basics

#436

Post by smallnamespace » Wed, Nov 02, 2016, 4:46 PM UTC

hajile wrote: post #380

RandomOpinion wrote: post #364

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> As an OSS contributor, I _do_ begrudge him for it - and this is why. If you were to email Elementary and ask for support with a non-working 'sg' kernel module, I would be highly surprised if they offered you any support. More likely, they would tell you to contact one of the authors, who did not receive one dime for our work. He takes your money, and shirks off supporting you to people that _didn't_ take your money…

That's kinda the point. He pushes for donations, but doesn't offer support. It's not illegal for him to not offer support and it's not illegal for me to not pay him. I would prefer to pay a reasonable subscription fee with a support contract which is also not illegal, but benefits all parties.

Why are you only willing to pay for support, but not actual contributions?

Re: Switching from macOS: The Basics

#437

Post by threatofrain » Wed, Nov 02, 2016, 4:48 PM UTC

Brakenshire wrote: post #386

mohanmcgeek wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They caught a lot of flak when they first introduced it. Not only did they introduce this, but they also shamed the people who did not pay http://m.slashdot.org/story/213469

They retracted that and apologized. It's unreasonable to just hold this over their heads, and in general use it to dismiss their entire project, which they have been working on for half a decade, mostly with no salary, because of one badly phrased sentence from one contributor which was then retracted. I also think if you read the rest of what they're saying, it's probably is true that we will only get Linux GUIs whi…

My problem with their project funding argument is that I'm not an investor. An investor has lots of money, and so is more willing to accumulate risks for the payoff of creating a stable enterprise.

It's not rational for me as a consumer to fund such an unsure bet, especially when changing an operating system has lots of friction. I assume that the proposed talent of an individual investor is in the ability to sieve good from bad in a sea of maybe. But I also don't understand the market well enough to see how such an unproven bet might succeed in a very stale market dominated by arguably one entity (you can't really buy macOS) -- maybe two.

I'd also say that while software work is expensive and requires talented labor, and while operating system work takes an intense amount of effort, there's something to be said about the fact that Elementary OS could even build their OS to begin with. How did they do it? On the backs of billions of dollars of free labor. I can't imagine how it would be if the whole world hid their source code with proprietary-only software, and Elementary had to start from ground 0.

What rational model governs this situation?

Re: Switching from macOS: The Basics

#438

Post by nicolas_t » Wed, Nov 02, 2016, 4:48 PM UTC

snowwrestler wrote: post #231

nicolas_t wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Personally, USB-C is the least of my problem. I care about having a fast, powerful laptop with 32 or 64GB ram (I run a lot of VMs for my work, I could offload it to the cloud but then it's more of a hassle). I complain because Apple decided to make the macbook pro 15 inch lighter and thinner resulting in 25% less battery (going from 99.5 watt-hour to 76.0-watt-hour), this means that they have to make more compromises…

> Since, apple is unlikely to decide to go back to the previous form factor, they are unlikely to ever sell a laptop with decent performances compared to their competitors. Once the next generation of Intel processors land, I bet we'll see Macbook Pros with faster processors and 32GB or more of RAM. At that point they will catch up to their competitors. But it's important to remember who Apple considers their competi…

It's true, but I don't remember having ever seen such a big gap in term of performance (or at least since apple switched to intel). The macbook pro 17 inch used to be not bad when compared to competitors.

Re: Switching from macOS: The Basics

#439

Post by erikbye » Wed, Nov 02, 2016, 4:55 PM UTC

veidr wrote: post #357

My own burning hatred towards Apple runs a little hotter than most, and I have been seriously googling (and trying) alternatives since 2012. That was when my $9000 Mac Pro — which had been a great machine, and still was, except for the little detail about not having been updated since 2009 and thus being stuck with USB 2 (!!!) to say nothing of Thunderbolt and any kind of modern accoutrements — started to feel like a…

What I find really laughable is when people say macOS Sierra or the new MBP2016 is underwhelming, and then they start talking about something as inferior as Elementary OS and laptops that doesn’t even have a useable touchpad.

Re: Switching from macOS: The Basics

#440

Post by matzipan » Wed, Nov 02, 2016, 4:56 PM UTC

throwsincenotpc wrote: post #414

matzipan wrote: post #400

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, not all people have the expertise or willingness (in case of volunteers) to work on this. Switching to Rust would allow them to leverage somebody else's work. Also, GObject itself made a lot of sense in an era when C was dominant. Maybe now, not so much.

Switching to Rust isn't going to solve Gnome management problems. You could make the case that they should ditch Gtk and adopt Qt, it would actually make more sense than rewriting Gtk in Rust given the amount of work it represents. But you complaining about the tools that don't exist is still ridiculous, the problem is why these weren't developed at first place.

Obviously, it won't. But it would at least free up some manpower.