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

#671

Post by BruceEel » Sat, Apr 03, 2021, 5:04 PM UTC

chrisweekly wrote: post #654

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…

Similar experiences (eg w my 2012 mpb15r). You'll be happy to learn that your "#1 hate" is easily resolved: cmd-tab then hold option key down while releasing cmd-tab. Voila, the minimized window is restored with focus. :)

Somebody needs to make a bot/AI that regularly posts semi-contentiously titled articles like the above because they spawn some of the best discussion threads on HN, I learn something new (or try something new) every time.. Thanks for the 'option-tab' trick!

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

#672

Post by linsomniac » Sat, Apr 03, 2021, 5:08 PM UTC

I'm a Linux fan, but I'm toying with the idea of getting one of the new Macs to replacement my Chromebook...

For work I am very happy with my Linux setup. ~5-6 years ago I got a good chromebook as an experiment, and I really like it in general. Long battery life, good build, high res screen, good security model, not much mucking around on it. It's a $1K chromebook that I got almost half price because refurb.

The double edged sword is that it's limited. There are benefits to that I don't expect much from it. But for anything beyond web browsing I just use it as an ssh terminal. It works fine there, but I haven't found a programming environment I can use on it. Note: It apparently will never support the Linux apps.

Sometimes I make movies, and borrow my wife's Windows laptop to run Resolve on. It's worlds better than any of the video editors I've used on Linux, and I was never able to get Resolve working on Linux.

So with the new Mac I was thinking maybe I should try one of those instead of the Chromebook? At the lower end of the spectrum, the price is comparable to a good Chromebook (and I was dissatisfied with the lower end Chromebooks). But, if I actually want to do video editing I need 1-2TB of storage, which pushes the price up close to $2K. But if I avoid upgrading both my laptop AND personal desktop because of it... One option would be a lower end Mac and an external SSD. At least until I accidentally unplug it on the couch while editing a video.

But for 95% of my personal use, the Chromebook is just great.

What's a fella to do...

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

#673

Post by mistersquid » Sat, Apr 03, 2021, 5:10 PM UTC

barrkel wrote: post #651

mistersquid wrote: post #644

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And if there is no such window left, and I told system that I want to switch to the app, then yes, of course I want the most recent window unminimized. If one is screensharing or presenting to an audience and the only windows in the target app are minimized but contain sensitive information, one most certainly would not want one of those minimized windows to reveal. As a sibling to your comment points out, the solu…

Alt-tabbing in the middle of a presentation risks displaying random information no matter what. You could tab to browser showing mail, or to Slack, or a PDF viewer showing your latest payslip, or whatever. If you have sensitive information or something which might show alerts in the middle of an important presentation, you should probably close such apps and / or mute their notifications.

> Alt-tabbing in the middle of a presentation risks displaying random information no matter what.

When presenting, I keep close track of what information I have minimized and unminimized.

It would severely hamper my work (all of which is disclosed) to quit apps that have minimized windows with information I do not want to show to undisclosed parties.

To be clear, command-tabbing on macOS may not behave the same "Alt-tabbing" on other platforms (I honestly don't know). Specifically, command-tabbing does not give focus to apps that are hidden until they are selected and does not reveal minimized windows without user intervention (holding option down while releasing command.)

Automatically disclosing minimized windows for command-tabbed apps that have no disclosed windows would actually remove a privacy feature rather than enhancing command-tab app switching.

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

#674

Post by 908B64B197 » Sat, Apr 03, 2021, 5:10 PM UTC

toyg wrote: post #660

2ion wrote: post #629

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It does not stop at PDF / Acrobat. Windows sucks for media and document management. No thumbnails for random media / file types. No playback for random media types. Metadata may be in the files, but who cares? --- the OS makes no sensible use of them except in the details view of "library" folders to show the title and an obscure tab in Explorer's file properties dialog. Calendaring? Sorry, we don't support CalDAV. E…

Microsoft had to walk a tight rope, historically, for fear of antitrust action. If they had improved Windows too much, big developers would have gone ballistic and dragged them in the courts again. Apple never had to care about this, and it shows.

You are being downvoted but I think you are onto something.

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

#675

Post by JediPig » Sat, Apr 03, 2021, 5:14 PM UTC

the apple m1... is the only laptop anyone should be purchasing until the AMD 5900 HS is available to everyone.

I can't stress this enough, the $1400 laptop fully loaded MBA, completely smokes the competition, including the $2800 windows.

Until windows catches up with Unified Memory Arch, the m1 is the only logical choice.

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

#676

Post by 908B64B197 » Sat, Apr 03, 2021, 5:14 PM UTC

whywhywhywhy wrote: post #615

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've lost hope that Linux will ever be able to provide an experience on the level of the Mac, I'd like to move away from Apple myself too. Unfortunately the modularity of Linux, despite being it's strength means that it can never possibly provide a UI/UX as coherent and interoperable as the Mac. How can you provide things like spell checking, font rendering, copy/paste, drag and drop, password sync, across every widg…

> I completely disagree with this, I think Apple is aiming to have Macs running mostly iOS applications in the near future and MacOS will eventually be deprecated once we hit critical mass of that.

The Mac sits in an awkward position indeed, especially with Apple giving a touchpad and keyboard to the iPad Pro.

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

#677

Post by tomp » Sat, Apr 03, 2021, 5:18 PM UTC

aloer wrote: post #581

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…

Quicklook is such an amazing feature and it seems so basic that I just don’t get why windows hasn’t added anything like that. Are there patents on this? Just an example that I have about every day: before sharing a file via file select/open dialog I can double check if it’s the correct one. I can only speculate that quicklook prevents a substantial amount of accidental information leak across the entire world :)

You can easily enable this in Windows.

In Explorer, just go to the View tab/menu, enable Preview Sidebar, click on the image, resize the Preview Sidebar as necessary, look at the image, then disable Preview Sidebar again.

Easy /s

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

#678

Post by sandgiant » Sat, Apr 03, 2021, 5:22 PM UTC

smoldesu wrote: post #35

>apt-get was a revolution when it was released in 1998 and it is still the best way to manage software today. brew is a mediocre replacement. While apt still isn't the best package manager (my heart belongs to pacman, no matter what the haters say), I completely agree that brew is a failed imitation. I wanted to use MacOS for the longest time, because I've been told that it's a real "Unix system". Brew has distilled…

Can you explain briefly what the issues are around brew? I've been a Mac user for the past decade and I still remember the days of macports, so brew still feels like magic to me.

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

#679

Post by belthesar » Sat, Apr 03, 2021, 5:24 PM UTC

jek0 wrote: post #125

akra wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People state consistent shortcut mapping is an advantage of using Mac but after 2 years of being required to use a Macbook Pro I'm not really sure about that - often they are more complicated IMO. I still miss built in Linux and Windows key mappings. For example Windows + Left to move the window on the left side of screen for side by side apps on the same screen. Great for remote demo's and coding sessions. Ctrl + Sh…

On a mac I can't live without "Magnet" [1]. It lets you do organize your windows in half/thirds of screens with simple keystrokes. That should be part of the OS. [1] https://apps.apple.com/us/app/magnet/id441258766?mt=12

For Linux users on Gnome looking for similar functionality, I use the gTile extension to accomplish this. When I first got my ultrawide display on macOS, Divvy was critical to be able to do this. gTile was a similar enough replacement to get me my workflow back.

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

#680

Post by ochoseis » Sat, Apr 03, 2021, 5:26 PM UTC

smoldesu wrote: post #642

krotos wrote: post #623

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> - I like the various iCloud/multi device integration features Next time you give linux a try, you might want to check out https://kdeconnect.kde.org/ and https://syncthing.net/ . I'm not a Mac user but I'd be surprised if between these you'd be missing any features.

+1 for KDE Connect. I had a friend who nearly shit their pants when they realized that "Continuity Clipboard" and "Airdrop" weren't iPhone-exclusive features.

I just wish you could use KDE Connect on iOS... is there anything in that realm?