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Switching from macOS: The Basics

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Re: Switching from macOS: The Basics

#451

Post by kbenson »

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 would go so far as saying it's actually rather good now, and I replaced the Windows OS on every laptop and workstation I got from 1999 (Slackware :) to 2013 with Linux and a highly customized FVWM config, so I consider myself having a high bar.

Although I did use a Mac as a workstation for a couple years ~ 2010, and found that particularly trying, so that may factor in to how people receive my assessment. It was close to what I wanted, but still far enough away to just generally annoy me by not being configurable enough to actually do what I wanted.

Re: Switching from macOS: The Basics

#452

Post by ianai »

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…

The OS market is just too concentrated. If you want a modern OS with decent support you have basically three options: Windows, iOS/Mac, or Android. Even the car industry beats that and no one talks about the car industry leading innovation. (You can add Linux via RedHat and Ubuntu to that list and it's still only four options)

Re: Switching from macOS: The Basics

#453

Post by erikbye »

keeganjw wrote: post #32
tambourine_man wrote: post #22

Unfortunately, no Photoshop, no go

You can use programs like Wine to run Windows applications. That makes switching a bit less painful, at least.

If you actually check Wine compatibility charts and user ratings you will see that there is a lof of garbage (the worst rating) ratings for the most popular Windows/Mac software. So it is not a viable option for the biggest applications like Photoshop, Premiere, After Effects, Pro Tools, Ableton Live, etc.

And certainly no option for a business, but rarely for your average Joe, either. It is often hit and miss.

Like I have said countless times, a lot of users are bound to using either Windows or Mac because of a few applications. There is Microsoft Office (cloud versions are not good enough). Visual Studio. Adobe products. Avid. Ableton. Apple’s own software (Logic, Final Cut).

Where there even is alternatives, they are just not good enough.

Where Linux has gotten some support, is from the VFX industry, especially from Autodesk. You can use Maya and Nuke and Linux. Actually, almost all VFX companies use Linux in their shop.

Re: Switching from macOS: The Basics

#454

Post by AsyncAwait »

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…

> Nothing works right, on any of them. Copy/paste, batteries, wireless networking, drag and drop, high-res displays, multilingual input, even like fucking word processing and email and image editors and terminal programs...

Can you be more specific? i.e. - copy paste with a highlight+middle mouse button is frankly awesome in GNOME.

- Batteries - yeah, Windows laptops usually don't have amazing battery life and it can even be slightly worse under Linux, however if you're working in a mode where you laptop is 99% plugged in and you just need occasionally a couple of hours from it, it's quite doable, which I'd imagine is the use-case for most "workstation" usage scenarios.

- wireless networking - works great if you're willing to do a bit of research before buying, instead of just dropping Linux on any garbage PC and expecting it to work flawlessly, (why won't you try that with macOS and report back?)

- drag and drop - that seems... highly unlikely, unless you're dragging/dropping from/to some weird, wrapped wine port that doesn't communicate with your desktop

- high-res displays - not as good as macOS, but works quite well in GNOME 3 and improving all the time, (far better than Windows)

- multilingual input, even like fucking word processing and email and image editors and terminal programs - things like multilingual input work well, word processing works well, but certainly there's no MS Office, (which isn't that great on a Mac either), there's no Photoshop, but I find it strange that Krita, GIMP etc. won't suffice you for many tasks, mail works well and terminal programs work amazingly well as well. In addition gaming on Linux is now miles better than on macOS, in addition to the far superior customisability and superior package management, not to mention not being under the will of a single company that does whatever it feels like that day, which matters to some.

Re: Switching from macOS: The Basics

#455

Post by bischofs »

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…

Bravo sir, I could not have said it better myself. I purchased a brand new XPS15 ubuntu 14.04 and it was a disaster -

The battery lasted about three hours, the $300 graphics card did not function at all because of poor drivers (graphics switching is still theoretical on even user friendly linux os' because of dark age xserver)

I had to spend two weeks to get the wifi working by messing around with conf files

The concept of hardware/software integration seems to evade the general purpose computing industry to the detriment of us all, I am not sure why someone hasn't built a tightly integrated linux laptop yet.

At this point the GUIS look pretty decent and there is plenty of software (most people only use browsers anyway) we just need to get the basics working well.

Re: Switching from macOS: The Basics

#456

Post by Karunamon »

reitanqild wrote: post #416
Karunamon wrote: post #403

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's really sad to hear.. if you think the GNOME 3 UI is buggy, childish, opinionated, and hard to customize (I've yet to get a downloaded theme to work right the first time) Fedora is a non-starter. Which is really too bad. It's the only RPM distro I've seen that's reasonably well put together.

Actually I think gnome 3 is (at least wasn't) too bad compared to Unity, UX wise - I just personally preferred KDE. Edit: this - > Which is really too bad. It's the only RPM distro I've seen that's reasonably well put together. Anything specific I should be aware of wrt OpenSUSE?

Probably nothing that can't be easily dismissed as personal preference. I recall YaST had a bad habit of unnecessarily cycling network interfaces when certain changes were made, but that was a long while ago.

Re: Switching from macOS: The Basics

#457

Post by tomtheelder »

AsyncAwait wrote: post #454
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…

> Nothing works right, on any of them. Copy/paste, batteries, wireless networking, drag and drop, high-res displays, multilingual input, even like fucking word processing and email and image editors and terminal programs... Can you be more specific? i.e. - copy paste with a highlight+middle mouse button is frankly awesome in GNOME. - Batteries - yeah, Windows laptops usually don't have amazing battery life and it can…

> copy paste with a highlight+middle mouse button is frankly awesome in GNOME

Oh my gosh, this is my least favorite thing about using gnome! I accidentally paste all the time and can't turn it off particularly easily. Very sad.

Re: Switching from macOS: The Basics

#459

Post by tomtheelder »

erikbye wrote: post #439
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.

You can get laptops with extremely good hardware at a better price than the MBP. For example, Dell's XPS series is the best example. Fantastic screen, fantastic trackpad, good build quality, and equivalent specs despite being a model year behind. In terms of hardware, the MBP is pretty bad value.

The OSes are miles behind though.

Re: Switching from macOS: The Basics

#460

Post by codelitt »

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…

I'm in the same boat, however, I've always dual-booted Linux using OSx for casual use and Linux for work. I'm not sure what I'll do hardware wise, because the terrible keyboard, lack of: function keys, esc key, and lack of magsafe make it unusable for my workflow. However, I've recently moved from awesomeWM to KDE Plasma as a DE with the Arc Dark theme. I have to say, I finally don't miss OSx with this setup.

Very useful, intuitive UX, Alfred like functionality out of the box, very nice UI (not just for linux, for anything!), productive workflow, and gets out of your way when you need to get things done.

I still have to find a hardware replacement with a great keyboard, solid trackpad, killer battery, and great display, but my OS concerns are finally resolved.

Edit: Repo with screenshots: https://github.com/varlesh/Arc-Dark-KDE

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