Dtrace? systemtap is not close to dtrace performance and ease of use. I'd rather switch to freebsd or dragonfly than back to linux.
All three are excellent choices.
From OS X to Ubuntu
51–60 of 403 posts
Re: From OS X to Ubuntu
#52Earlier quoted context omitted.
I guess you can still find weird wireless cards, but in practice, I've gone a decade or so (3 upgrades) without issues. A really minimal research will likely give you a fully compatible choice. Anecdata: I have a wifi extender at home just so a MacBook doesn't disconnect every few minutes. ThinkPad with Intel wifi and Linux didn't need it.
Even that little bit of having to research is enough to deter mainstream users, and so we're back to OS X or Windows. A Linux distribution or two has to get to the point where it's stable, doesn't have some sort of possible compatibility issue with hardware, and is strongly supported and encouraged for mainstream use by a large PC manufacturer.
We're still far away for mainstream users. I mean, people on HN still seem to skip the quick component check. A big shift takes time.
Re: From OS X to Ubuntu
#53Earlier quoted context omitted.
Even that little bit of having to research is enough to deter mainstream users, and so we're back to OS X or Windows. A Linux distribution or two has to get to the point where it's stable, doesn't have some sort of possible compatibility issue with hardware, and is strongly supported and encouraged for mainstream use by a large PC manufacturer.
We're still far away for mainstream users. I mean, people on HN still seem to skip the quick component check. A big shift takes time.
I agree, but I think that big shift doesn't happen without big support from somebody.
Re: From OS X to Ubuntu
#54Is there a common high-level scripting tool for Gnome, like AppleScript?
For me it's all about the APIs. When I want to do something like:
tell application "iTunes" to return every track whose genre is "Rock" and rating > 3
then I don't want to mess around with API documentation for 10 hours and trying lots of different music managers, then importing my large library, just to lose all the tags.
I expect similar APIs in the file browser, text editor, photo library, contacts, calendar, and web browser apps too. A common API is what makes an ecosystem to me.
Re: From OS X to Ubuntu
#55Curious what the wifi, sleep, and battery life stories are like in comparison to Mac OS.
I just installed Xubuntu on my mother's aging MacBook. Wifi and sleep/resume worked out of the box (even during installation) and batter life has been good. Plus her internet browser and email are much snappier now.
Re: From OS X to Ubuntu
#56Not related to the blog post but why are the websites form lenovo + dell (and acer) so god damn awful? lenovo.com redirects me to https://www.lenovo.com/se/en/ since i'm currently in Sweden. I then get nice server error as greeting: 403 - Forbidden: Access is denied. If I try to access lenovo.de I get often no response... also for subsequent pages... On dells website it takes an awful lot of time to filter their lapt…
The other manufacturers also haven't figured out how to organize their models.
As far as I can tell, Dell has just a handful of models (XPS, Precision etc.), but if you go and look at the XPS 15, for example, it's a grid of dozens of SKUs with various specs instead of just a single page with customization options. It's not even a matrix -- with models varying by CPU and RAM and disk and such, you'd expect that at least they'd arrange them visually in some kind of table. It must be a nightmare for non-technical people.
They're all like this, and it becomes hilariously complicated when the manufacturer has, like Lenovo, dozens and dozens of models, and it's impossible to understand what the difference is between them and which ones are targeting which uses. (You have to ask why they're so unfocused, too. Is it an intentional tactic?)
Asus seems to be one of the few to understand this (aside from Apple); their Zenbook site is pretty friendly and focused. Though they still insist on nonsense model names like "UX390UA".
It's not just PCs, of course. It's all consumer electronics: TVs, sound systems, what have you.
Re: From OS X to Ubuntu
#57> So, is Linux ready for the desktop? > For me, the answer is yes. Honestly it's been ready for years on the desktop (of course, this does not apply if you are an expert user in Y software only available on Z platform and need to use it for your job/company, etc...). Ubuntu 16.04 did not bring anything significant on the table, it's just that most people have not noticed. I switched full Linux back in 2009~2010 and I…
I agree that desktop on linux is ready, with the main trade-off being: you have to spend more time setting things up, but you can customise your software/hardware to any level you want. ( and just like Y software, there's X hardware that might not work with linux. those damn printers... ) Btw, I also started with Ubuntu but I'm finding Arch a much better and up to date distro.
Arch is definitely the way most Linux users go once they get in a comfort zone with their existing distro (Ubuntu, Mint, Fedora, etc...) and want to get something with better hardware support or even better software support (with Arch's fantastic AUR!). Antergos makes it easier than ever to jump into Arch, too.
Re: From OS X to Ubuntu
#58> And now I see their latest MBP line with the Esc key removed...
What?! Ha. It almost seems like post-Jobs Apple "innovates" by removing classic user interfaces.
Re: From OS X to Ubuntu
#59Earlier quoted context omitted.
What keeps many people on Windows are games. Valve, through Steam, has made monetization of Linux games more viable. So now there are many titles available on Linux compared to years ago. There's still a gap, but I hope that Vulkan gets traction and becomes the de-facto standard rather than DirectX. DirectX was pushed through a lot of FUD controversy during the evil years of Microsoft (they claimed that in future Win…
As much as I hate to say it, opengl still has issues in comparison to DirectX. Just getting an opengl context is comparatively quite difficult and that still doesn't give you input or audio.
Yes, but the performance of OpenGL drivers for complex scenes has improved drastically in the past few years. nVidia is mainly to thank for that.
Re: From OS X to Ubuntu
#60Elementary OS is very similar to Mac OS in terms of UI. Of course the project is rather new, but is very promising. The desktop environment (Pantheon) is installable in Ubuntu, though. Once in a while you might end up with a messed up situation that might require some effort to fix.
XFCE can also be configured to mimic OS X enough where you won't really miss anything. It can also be configured to look like windows. In general, XFCE can be made to look like anything that's why I'm such a fan.