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So Long, Macbook. Hello Again, Linux

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Re: So Long, Macbook. Hello Again, Linux

#431

Post by criddell »

hacknat wrote: post #373
Tehchops wrote: post #42

End-user Linux has definitely improved in the last few years. It offers a lot of attractive features for what I imagine to be the typical HN demographic. That being said, it's still got rough spots that OSX doesn't. It works great when it works, but when it doesn't.... Font rendering, display/compositor fragmentation etc... Inb4 the anecdotal "well it works for me I just had to download the xf86 font library and comp…

I agreed with everything you said except this: > but there are still things that just going to be less painful on Apple. Of course OSX is more user friendly now , but Linux desktop has improved by leaps and bounds. 4 years ago you needed to be a developer or extremely savvy to run the average desktop distro, now I would say you just need to be tech sdavvy. I would argue that for the ho hum business cases (not extreme…

> not extreme use case profiles like design and video production

There are a lot of use case profiles that are very ho hum for which Linux is a non-starter. I'm thinking specifically of basically any time you need to use Mac-only software. Likewise, I'm sure there's Linux-only software that would make OSX a non-starter.

IMHO, all of the major modern operating systems are good enough and have been for a while now. Pick the applications you want then find the OS that best supports those applications.

It would be nice if the Purism guys would open some retail stores. Once you can walk in some place and get help it gets to be a lot easier to recommend those machines to less tech-savvy relatives.

Re: So Long, Macbook. Hello Again, Linux

#432

Post by kgwxd »

AdmiralAsshat wrote: post #23

I find the fetish for terminal-based music players a bit odd. I associate terminals with doing work , so the idea of having one whose sole purpose is playing music (presumably in the background while you do other stuff) to feel like a waste of screen real-estate and something I'm likely to accidentally pull up while trying to cycle between my other terminal windows where I'm doing stuff. I much prefer something that…

Command line interfaces can be put in the background just as easily as any GUI.

Re: So Long, Macbook. Hello Again, Linux

#433

Post by mmgutz »

Am I the only one that uses Linux in a virtual machine as their daily driver? I do this whether I'm on Windows or MacOS.

Linux with a lightweight window manager, like i3, works great in a virtual machine. Docker works flawleslly inside a VM as well.

Re: So Long, Macbook. Hello Again, Linux

#434

Post by AnIdiotOnTheNet »

sangnoir wrote: post #289
rezeroed wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's a "middle click"?

Clicking with the middle mouse button - nowadays, it's typically a clickable scroll-wheel, but it used to be a plain button between left and right mouse buttons back in the day.

After mice had mostly standardized on two buttons but scroll wheels didn't exist yet, it was common to map a simultaneous click of both mouse buttons to simulate a middle click.

Re: So Long, Macbook. Hello Again, Linux

#435

Post by anongraddebt »

loudmax wrote: post #354
csomar wrote: post #301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I might be unlucky but Linux had been a nightmare on the few laptops I've tried it on. It is not that I have not tried. I did. Some of the problems I had: Very slow UI, not recognizing my Wifi Card, Chrome stopping support for CentOS, Problems with the Graphic Card and multiple monitors, problems with most printers I try, problem with my Bluetooth mouse... Linux and the multiple variants have been horrible. Also, you…

Your experience running Linux on a laptop is highly dependent on how well it supports the hardware that happens to be in your device. If you're able to research the driver support ahead of time, you may find that Linux runs flawlessly on the laptop you bought. If you install Linux on a random laptop, then getting wifi, audio, etc working can be hit or miss, depending on the drivers. As far as installing apps, I guess…

This.

I had an Asus laptop that would only pickup wifi if I hibernated it first. I have a Dell touchscreen model that took a full day to get the touchpad to work at all as Ubuntu kept defaulting to the screen. Too afraid to do a fresh install of the current (or any other) distro because I can't remember how I fixed the touchpad issue.

Re: So Long, Macbook. Hello Again, Linux

#436

Post by wasted_intel »

caconym_ wrote: post #291
mrspeaker wrote: post #67

This is most definitely selection bias, but it seems like there's something in the air at the moment with people jumping off the "mainstream tech" ship. Lots of talk of nostalgia for 90s internet culture, switching to Linux (I also switched to Linux (and Emacs!) after a decade+ on Mac), more secure/transparent tech with phones etc. More willingness to put up with "rough spots" and "less shiny" for greater access to t…

For me it's because the big tech companies (one of which I work at) are making everything way too complicated, gimmicky, and over-integrated for me. I want a keyboard, not half a keyboard and a weird touch display that does nothing useful for me I want a directory that's synced to durable cloud-based storage, not a monolithic service product that tries to work its hooks into every corner of my computer(s) and digital…

Well said. I switched to an XPS-based Arch build for many of these reasons.

I think computers are generally too complicated for lay users. People tolerated the quirks because there was no alternative. Even on a Mac, which wouldn't suffer from the same hardware compatibility issues as a PC/Windows machine, users would still need to understand how to organize files, properly close applications, and avoid running/opening arbitrary programs/files from the internet. And that's if they could connect to the internet at all.

iOS and its ilk solved all of that. And in that moment, the number of people who needed to be exposed to all of that underlying complexity shrank considerably. There is most certainly something lost for those people, but at the end of the day, there is a cognitive cost to understanding how those pieces work, and I think the mass market has shifted away from implementations that require (or allow for) that visibility. I think that's fine, provided there are still hardware options available to the rest of us. :)

Re: So Long, Macbook. Hello Again, Linux

#437

Post by AnIdiotOnTheNet »

ketralnis wrote: post #415
jwr wrote: post #48

I so wish the Linux community would get its act together and implement a working usable clipboard. It's the one thing I miss the most whenever I switch from Mac OS to Linux. On a Mac, you can cut/copy/paste using predictable keystrokes in any application, anywhere. And there is a single clipboard. On Linux, you have to deal with a multitude of behaviors (middle mouse button, Ctrl-C, others, and does it paste where th…

> I so wish the Linux community would get its act together and Be the change you want to see in the world. Open source developers are volunteers scratching their own itches, working on their own time. I wish someone would come build me a house for free too, and if they did I'd be hard pressed to complain about the number of windows.

But you might be inclined to complain about the leaking roof, the Escher-esq plumbing, or that the appliances only come in diy-kits with half the parts missing.

The thing about Linux is, there's all these evangelists out there who insist that everyone should use Linux (or that they are superior to you for doing so) and, when you tell them why you don't, insisting your preferences are wrong, your workflow is wrong, it works for them so you're a liar, or you should fix it yourself.

If it weren't for those people, I think the attitude towards Linux would be more like it is towards Haiku. No one really complains about it, they just don't use it.

Re: So Long, Macbook. Hello Again, Linux

#438

Post by hedning »

jwr wrote: post #48

I so wish the Linux community would get its act together and implement a working usable clipboard. It's the one thing I miss the most whenever I switch from Mac OS to Linux. On a Mac, you can cut/copy/paste using predictable keystrokes in any application, anywhere. And there is a single clipboard. On Linux, you have to deal with a multitude of behaviors (middle mouse button, Ctrl-C, others, and does it paste where th…

gtk supports emacs style bindings. Put `gtk-key-theme-name = Emacs` under `[Settings]` in ~/.config/gtk-3.0/settings.ini. Doing `gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.interface gtk-key-theme "Emacs"` might help too. That will work in firefox/chrome too.

Re: So Long, Macbook. Hello Again, Linux

#439

Post by jamie_ca »

dictum wrote: post #130
larrik wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would also say that Apple has plenty of rough spots that Linux doesn't as well. Font rendering the Apple way is a style choice at best. What does "display/compositor fragmentation" mean to end-user?

> Font rendering the Apple way is a style choice at best. Given how much of a hacker's usage of a computer is working with text (reading pages, writing code and documentation, taking notes) it's a style choice that actually has a significant impact. (By the way, macOS Mojave deprecates subpixel antialiasing — a poor decision when there are many non-hidpi displays still being used)

Yeah. I've got a 1440p 27" monitor that I connect via HDMI (USB-C adapter dock thingy) and the difference when I upgraded to Mojave was very stark. I actually prefer Windows rendering now to Mac.

Re: So Long, Macbook. Hello Again, Linux

#440

Post by Tsiklon »

base698 wrote: post #419
kilburn wrote: post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If your problem is over wifi, NetworkManager (the default in Ubuntu) should let you do this automatically. Networkmanager defines a "connection" for every (stored) wifi, which you can view: nmcli connection show Now, you can set the dns servers to use when any of these connections is activated. For instance, define google's servers by: nmcli conn mod ipv4.dns "8.8.8.8 8.8.4.4" This will override the DNS settings (whi…

This never works for me... can't ever get it to stick, tried all kinds of ways to mod with nmcli or systemctl restart/reload network manager. Debating on just doing a cron job to rewrite resolv.conf.

In the server environment at least, Ubuntu 18.04 makes use of `systemd-resolve`, running a dns server locally. Have you looked at setting DNS with that?
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