Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Fed up with the Mac, I spent six months with a Linux laptop

cfenollosa.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

571–580 of 834 posts

Re: Fed up with the Mac, I spent six months with a Linux laptop

#571

Post by kyledrake »

I have been a long term linux user, tried an M1 macbook air recently and actually switched back to linux (a 13" razer blade stealth). I found the linux laptop to actually be faster, more responsive, have better software for me (plenty of free alternatives that are Good Enough for my purposes, also it's linux and my servers run linux, so no weird OS crossover issues).

To my incredible surprise, I actually feel that the linux laptop's trackpad works better than the one on the macbook! This was one of the big reasons I wanted to switch back to a macbook and I was extremely disappointed with the results. I was having serious issues even just selecting text with the trackpad on the macbook air.

The author notes a 2-3 second delay in DNS lookups - I'm actually having that problem with my macbook, and not with my linux laptop, and I have no idea what weird Apple goop is causing it or how to fix it.

To each their own I guess. I tried the new macbooks because of what everyone has been saying but was pretty disappointed in the experience, so much so that I was wondering if my macbook air was damaged somehow. The battery life was solid, though.

Re: Fed up with the Mac, I spent six months with a Linux laptop

#572

Post by redshirtrob »

2muchcoffeeman wrote: post #167
jeswin wrote: post #142

If you're complaining about Linux drivers please do so after using a Laptop that supports Linux (Thinkpads for example). Just like it wouldn't be fair to complain about macOS on a Hackintosh - sound didn't work well and had to patch the DSDT. > but there are rough edges for the power user. > I am an extreme power user, ... > In the end, I was able to replicate most of my macOS power tools setup via input hooks and sh…

If you're complaining about Linux drivers please do so after using a Laptop that supports Linux (Thinkpads for example). So I Googled “laptops supported by Linux”. There is no official site. Ubuntu has a page. But it’s not on the first page of results. I only know about it because I’m familiar with it. Supporters keeps arguing people should jump through hoops. I’m on Linux right now, but people have better things to…

Out of curiosity, what would qualify as an "official site" for laptops supported by Linux? Would it be run by Linus Torvalds, Alan Cox, or some other maintainer? I think expecting anything official or authoritative from the Linux side is missing the boat.

What you're looking for is hardware vendors who support a Linux desktop environment on their laptops, which are not too difficult to find.

Re: Fed up with the Mac, I spent six months with a Linux laptop

#573

Post by ibiza »

Hamuko wrote: post #339
karateka wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Finder is unbelievably bad compared to Nautilus Whats so bad about finder?

Not having used Nautilus, there's a bunch of bad things about the Finder I can complain about. The tabs. First of all, they're Safari-style tabs and Safari has awful tabs. And then there's a preference called "open folders in new tabs instead of windows". Open up a Finder window, open Terminal and run `open /path/to/directory`. What happens? Directory opens in a new Finder window. There's no way to have Finder rememb…

Cut & paste is Copy followed by Option-Paste: Cmd-C, nav to destination, Opt-Cmd-V

Re: Fed up with the Mac, I spent six months with a Linux laptop

#574

Post by minimaul »

mroche wrote: post #569
minimaul wrote: post #368

From someone who tends to try this switch about once a year (because the lack of TLC the Mac was getting in the last 5 or so years was getting very very worrying - M1 feels like Apple actually care about the Mac again), I agree with a lot of these pain points. My biggest personal issues end up being (and these are super subjective!): - Preview on macOS is great and no other OS has anything remotely equivalent. First…

My chosen password manager (1password) still has a fairly awful linux experience. This is getting better - they're producing a native app now. Said native app needs to support the local browser extensions though! The desktop app is pretty good now, and if you’re using the Beta browser extension, it can talk to the desktop app to unlock. This feature is still in development, though, and has some restrictions.

That's great! I've seen it make superb progress over the last year or so. Looking forward to it hitting feature-parity with mac and windows :)

Re: Fed up with the Mac, I spent six months with a Linux laptop

#575

Post by usaphp »

blunte wrote: post #567

Preview is one of the most underrated pieces of software in the world today. I make the assumption that Quicklook uses Preview (because surely it must). Being able to hit spacebar on just about any kind of selected document/image type file and see a near instant look, multiple pages and all, is so important. Once you don't have that (move to the Windows world), you realize how much you miss it. And you can, with a sm…

> What is the f*cking point of cmd-tabbing to an application if you don't make its window visible!?

What if you have multiple windows of the same application, and you minimize one of them, then auto opening of that window everytime you switch back to the app will be super annoying.

Re: Fed up with the Mac, I spent six months with a Linux laptop

#576

Post by pjmlp »

joana035 wrote: post #562
pjmlp wrote: post #544

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I judge my Linux experience starting in Summer 1995, the year I got my first Linux distribution, Slackware 2.0, that makes a couple of years in experience.

I wish you can give another try, much has changed since then. For me Debian Testing with Gnome is being a very nice experience (enjoyable ride).

Again don't assume you know anything about me, I have enough Linux appliances and the office has enough distributions to try out.

Re: Fed up with the Mac, I spent six months with a Linux laptop

#577

Post by notyourday »

dmm wrote: post #350
gknoy wrote: post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That sounds a little like telling someone that their problems are that their cows are not spherical. For graphics drivers specifically, having tochoose between FOSS and something that works is very frustrating.

The FOSS amd and intel drivers work great and have for years.

> The FOSS amd and intel drivers work great and have for years.

Intel has a random lock up in the Mesa. It had this lock up for several years. It has not been fixed. I have a 4k laptop with it, it is incredibly frustrating that I cannot use kitty or alacritty on it because of that crash.

AMD driver crashes on modern cards every few weeks.

If you want to have a "What are you talking about, it just works?" experience, you buy an NVidia card with proprietary drivers, slap X11 on it and you are off to the races. It just works (currently driving 4x 4k monitors). Last crash was about 11 months ago. The crash manifested in a freeze for about 20 seconds, followed by it recovering by itself.

OSS graphics drivers are just not as good as people claim.

Re: Fed up with the Mac, I spent six months with a Linux laptop

#578

Post by Fatalist_ma »

masswerk wrote: post #388
minimaul wrote: post #368

From someone who tends to try this switch about once a year (because the lack of TLC the Mac was getting in the last 5 or so years was getting very very worrying - M1 feels like Apple actually care about the Mac again), I agree with a lot of these pain points. My biggest personal issues end up being (and these are super subjective!): - Preview on macOS is great and no other OS has anything remotely equivalent. First…

> I'm far too used to the macOS touchpad gestures It's a bit ironic that the Mac is now the epicenter of multi-touch, while its use on mobile platforms has seen some of a decline. Also, I full-heartedly consent to the praise of Preview.

Hmm what decline? The only thing that comes to mind is the removal of force-touch but that's not a multi-touch gesture.

Re: Fed up with the Mac, I spent six months with a Linux laptop

#579

Post by pjmlp »

joana035 wrote: post #549
pjmlp wrote: post #545

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My dear, maybe you should stop assuming you know anything about the experience of others.

Experience as in "things you are facing" not as "knowledge" or "know how" ;) What I mean is more like "I would have a bad experience if I put my hand in the fire". I edit my post to be more clear

I get it, you are happy with your Linux experience and think you know better than someone with 30 years UNIX experience, no more to discuss.

Re: Fed up with the Mac, I spent six months with a Linux laptop

#580

Post by christophilus »

joelellis wrote: post #561
christophilus wrote: post #498

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure what OS you’re running (my guess is Ubuntu). I’ve had no issues with wake from sleep when using Fedora, FYI. My biggest complaint is the Nautilus file browser’s address bar being mostly worthless, the Gnome terminal’s inability to move tabs into a new window, and the inability to use normal copy / paste in the terminal (Elementary OS gets this right, and I run their terminal on Fedora now... I may look into…

FYI, you can use ctrl+l to get the path bar as just plain text that you can edit.

!!! Well, I’ll be.
Post reply on HN