Fed up with the Mac, I spent six months with a Linux laptop • Hacker News Board

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

#661

Post by Fire-Dragon-DoL » Sat, Apr 03, 2021, 4:49 PM UTC

robenkleene wrote: post #475

Fire-Dragon-DoL wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used a macbook for 2 years and the key binding is definitely less consistent than windows or linux. If nothing something as important as word navigation and word selection (ctrl+arrows and ctrl+shift+ arrows on linux and windows), is located in different modifiers (can't remember which), something along the lines of: move with command+arrow and select with option+shift+arrows. Drives me crazy every time, given that…

> If nothing something as important as word navigation and word selection (ctrl+arrows and ctrl+shift+ arrows on linux and windows), is located in different modifiers (can't remember which), something along the lines of: move with command+arrow and select with option+shift+arrows. I think you’re misremembering here, I don’t think there are any macOS keyboard shortcuts that work like this. It’s always shift plus the o…

It could be! There is one that's hostile, but I can't remember which. I know for sure because my colleague switched back to a Mac and it's complaining about it

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

#662

Post by toyg » Sat, Apr 03, 2021, 4:49 PM UTC

jackcviers3 wrote: post #649

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…

I had a Linux IdeaPad p400 for like 12 years with Ubuntu. 0 issues. I now have a system 76 gazelle. No problems. Ubuntu 20.04 is really easy to use. I can't stand the mbp. Hoops to jump through for everything with a cli. Extra permissions to make build tools work. Extra additions to file permissions that are incompatible with docker. Special gui with extra settings to make docker work. vpns that have to run inside th…

It’s amazing to me how Docker became the devops tool of choice, when its experience on Mac and Windows was just so horrible for so long.

Linux users have more power than they realize, in certain sectors.

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

#663

Post by tambourine_man » Sat, Apr 03, 2021, 4:49 PM UTC

blunte wrote: post #613

tambourine_man wrote: post #599

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> when I cmd-tab to a window There’s no such thing. You command-tab to an application, which can have many or no windows. The different mental model is probably the reason for your frustration.

Tomato Tomato. As another person clarified, I'm probably trying to switch to the most recent window of a given application. For all practical purposes, the window and the application are the same thing. There may be additional windows of that app, but they are all that app.

> For all practical purposes, the window and the application are the same thing

Not at all. That's a very unique thing about the Mac that trips Windows people. It's a subtle but crucial difference, unless you grasp it, you'll always be a bit lost on the Mac, as I am when I use Windows.

On the Mac, for instance, Photoshop can be frontmost and have no windows, panels, while you're seeing your whole desktop. The only hint you have is the menu on the top left. Photoshop on Windows covers your whole screen all the time when it's frontmost. If you think that's tomato tomato, you haven't understood the difference.

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

#664

Post by linuxdesktopfo » Sat, Apr 03, 2021, 4:49 PM UTC

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)

I bought a Lenovo specifically since they mentioned all their laptops will support Linux in the future.

Note that historically Lenovo didn't really "support" Linux. Remember the Windows tax and how most Thinkpads came with Windows and most still do? Thinkpads supported Linux in spite of Lenovo / IBM.

Anyhoo, my new Lenovo had to wait a few months until the trackpad worked! Turns out Lenovo only meant that business laptops (or some other sub-category) will support Linux out of the box. Silly me.

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

#665

Post by cmehdy » Sat, Apr 03, 2021, 4:50 PM UTC

oplav wrote: post #612

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…

I switched from Windows to OS X over 7 years ago and this is the first time I've ever learned about Quicklook. Looks like a great feature.

If you know about brew you can also find a bunch of extra quicklook plugins: https://github.com/sindresorhus/quick-look-plugins

Works on and off for some things (video previews for example) but overall worth a quick "brew install" in my opinion.

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

#666

Post by Fire-Dragon-DoL » Sat, Apr 03, 2021, 4:52 PM UTC

dmitriid wrote: post #136

Fire-Dragon-DoL wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used a macbook for 2 years and the key binding is definitely less consistent than windows or linux. If nothing something as important as word navigation and word selection (ctrl+arrows and ctrl+shift+ arrows on linux and windows), is located in different modifiers (can't remember which), something along the lines of: move with command+arrow and select with option+shift+arrows. Drives me crazy every time, given that…

Option + arrows: move by word Option + Shift + arrows: select by word Cmd + arrows: move to the end of the line Cmd + Shift + arrows: select to the end of the line Additionally you can still use the decades old Ctrl+A/Ctrl+E shortcuts almost everywhere (some custom text input reimplementations ignore this).

I'm probably misremembering.

How to delete word (back and forward?), maybe it's that one.

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

#667

Post by 29athrowaway » Sat, Apr 03, 2021, 4:53 PM UTC

Some things not mentioned in this article:

The Pantheon desktop environment (default in elementaryOS, a Linux distro) is the most similar to macOS, in case that's what you are looking for.

Kupfer is an alternative to Alfred. Tilix is an alternative to iTerm2. Instead of using Crossover, just use SoftMaker FreeOffice.

I would use Xournal++ rather than Xournal.

Gimp has a lot of annoyances right now, notably: uses GTK 2 which doesn't support HiDPI. Gimp 2.99.2 (development version) adds support for GTK 3 but it's unstable and crashes often. Hopefully Gimp 3 is released soon. For now, I use Krita.

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

#668

Post by redshirtrob » Sat, Apr 03, 2021, 4:53 PM UTC

2muchcoffeeman wrote: post #636

redshirtrob wrote: post #541

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I got a System76 Darter Pro for work, preinstalled with Ubuntu. It worked perfectly. It booted directly into a graphical display manager. All drivers worked out of the box. Not sure what else there is to say here. That sounds like what you're after. For reasons, I ended up installing Arch on the same laptop. It was your typical Arch experience, but I was able to get everything working, including fiddly stuffy like ke…

System 76 is not cheap. Worse if you’re international. Dell has limited options available and none that are available with their discounts. So if you want a nice and powerful dev machine... back to researching and tinkering. Is the cheapest way and if something is messed up, you still have the Windows license.

> System 76 is not cheap.

I acknowledged as much. However, the OP's comparison is with a Mac so I don't think discussing the cheapest approach is in the scope of the discussion.

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

#669

Post by caslon » Sat, Apr 03, 2021, 4:59 PM UTC

2muchcoffeeman wrote: post #657

caslon wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not to give an argument along the lines of "You're holding it wrong," but...okay, yeah, I'm going to do that. You hold a gun in one way. If you mess that up in any fashion, you probably won't hit what you're trying to, and, worse, might shoot yourself. Saying things like "There is no official site" is holding Linux wrong. Linux isn't an operating system. Linux is just a kernel. So phrase your search the right way: "l…

With my latest Linux machine I actually picked some easy to get laptops on a steep discount and then started googling to find other people’s experience. I’ve been using some Linux distribution or other for a long time. But that’s not what a newbie or outsider sees. And until there is the kind of assurance from some Linux distribution or whatever, all criticisms of the difficulty of getting a Linux machine running are…

> And until there is the kind of assurance from some Linux distribution or whatever, all criticisms of the difficulty of getting a Linux machine running are valid.

Great, they're invalid! Off the top of my head, System76 and KDE both sell laptops running it. As both of them have distributions, and selling something is more or less as close to assurance as you can get, by your own logic here the criticisms are worthless.

I don't even care about "le Linux on the desktop meme", personally, I just find these criticisms incredibly lazy and transparently without merit.

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

#670

Post by redshirtrob » Sat, Apr 03, 2021, 5:03 PM UTC

fulafel wrote: post #595

redshirtrob wrote: post #572

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The poster wasn't using Linux to refer to the Linux kernel here - they used it to mean "a Linux distribution". Distributions have their own hardware compatibility documentation systems. Eg Ubuntu has this: https://certification.ubuntu.com/ and Red Hat has https://catalog.redhat.com/hardware .

Hence my question. Per site guidelines I assumed the most generous interpretation of the poster's comment, which to me means they found those sites and do not consider them official. In that light, I was curious what they would consider official.

I prefer to take a hardware vendor's opinion as to whether that hardware is supported by Linux. They have some skin in the game, and have the resources to test the hardware, whereas many Linux distros will rely on user reports.

I imagine Ubuntu and Redhat have more resources to validate hardware and so those sites are likely more reliable, but once you get to niche distros YMMV on their compatibility matrices.