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

721–730 of 834 posts

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

#721

Post by bengale »

This is my exact experience. My current setup involves a powerful Linux rig under my desk that I use remotely over SSH for development work but my Mac is my ‘frontend’. But for a while I tried to use that Linux box exclusively.

This has been working really well for me, docker runs faster and I can get a lot more bang for my buck performance wise. Plus I get to keep using things like fantastical. I much prefer the Mac UI as well tbh and seem to not run into whatever bugs people seem to complain about.

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

#722

Post by bengale »

tokamak-teapot wrote: post #681
chrisweekly wrote: post #654

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. :)

Whenever I’m doing something in MacOS and the option / action I was hoping to find isn’t there, I try the same but with Option held down. The philosophy seems to be that the UI is kept clean and easy to understand but the power is always there if you need it.

This is always one of my top tips for power users moving over to macOS.

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

#723

Post by themadsens »

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…

You may want HyperDock[1] which enables that behaviour. There is also HyperSwitch[2] which switches windows, not apps. It's a beta, but still works great on Big Sur.

[1] https://bahoom.com/hyperdock

[2] https://bahoom.com/hyperswitch

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

#724

Post by atribecalledqst »

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…

Preview is a great program, but unfortunately when I upgraded from Mavericks to High Sierra on my 2012 Macbook Pro, I started to notice that Preview rendering is now blurry. And I never figured out how to fix it -- nothing I found online worked. What a bummer.

xpdf satisfies most of my PDF reading needs now instead. It has tabs too, which is handy.

The change to High Sierra also broke some nice iTunes behavior I had been exploiting previously that let me connect to my home iTunes share over a VPN connection. Ah well.

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

#725

Post by technosmurf »

cmehdy wrote: post #665
oplav wrote: post #612

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yeah, that repository's README is a little bit outdated.

Here's what I found works or is broken in macOS Catalina and above:

Works: --------------------

  # Preview source code files with syntax highlighting (like colored .JS files)
  brew install qlcolorcode

  # Preview Markdown files
  brew install qlstephen 

  # Preview JSON files with syntax highlighting
  brew install quicklook-json 

  # Preview plaintext files with unknown extensions, like README, CHANGELOG, etc.
  brew install qlstephen 

  # Preview the content of .IPA files
  # Installs inside /Applications folder
  brew install suspicious-package 

  # Preview iOS/macOS provisioning information for .ipa and .xcarchive
  # For 'mobileprovision' files, Xcode has Quick Look plugin collision:
  # https://github.com/ealeksandrov/ProvisionQL/issues/20
  brew install provisionql 

  # Preview the content of macOS apps
  # Installs inside /Applications folder
  brew install apparency 

  # Preview WebP images
  brew install webpquicklook
Broken: --------------------

  # Display image size and resolution in windo titlebar of Quick Look
  # Doesn't work due to API change from Apple
  # https://github.com/Nyx0uf/qlImageSize/issues/45#issuecomment-610852166
  #brew install qlimagesize 
  
  # Preview Adobe ASE color swatch files from Photoshop, Illustrator
  # Doesn't work in macOS Catalina
  #brew install quicklookase 
  
  # Preview the content of Android .APK files
  # Doesn't work in macOS Catalina
  #brew install quicklookapk
As listed in the README, you also need to unset the quarantine attribute. To see the changes, you need to restart the Quick Look Server after the install, and sometimes requires logging out and in again. Here's a script I made, let me know if it works for you:

https://github.com/spiritphyz/Save-the-Environment/blob/main...

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

#727

Post by sergeykish »

dsego wrote: post #480
dschuetz wrote: post #349

I've heard that a lot: "If you complain about Linux then you installed it on the wrong computer, and you're using it wrong." Basically it's your fault when Linux doesn't work. Doesn't matter if 1 of 2000 packages or libraries has a system breaking bug. It's your fault if you "updated too soon", or "did not update yet". It's even your fault when bug reporting doesn't work the way the distribution maintainers designed…

"You're using Ubuntu, you should use Pop OS/Mint/Fedora/new Fedora/new/old Debian, it's flawless". And "you are using Gnome, I haven't had any issues with KDE, Plasma, XFCE, i3, Mate, oh Enlightenment, Enlightenment is the best."Why are you using Geary/Thunderbird/LibreOffice, I do all my email/coding/music in emacs/vim, you never have to leave the terminal and it has worked fine for over 30 years." "Everyone knows V…

And that's it, Linux allows to craft experience.

Different philosophy. Linux — everything is possible, some achievable. macOS/Windows — some things allowed.

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

#728

Post by guessbest »

Wowfunhappy wrote: post #102
guessbest wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Macports is a system that installs in the /opt root folder to run along side your native applications without overwriting them, but it compiles each application as you install. Installations can be very slow. It seems like it was adopted from FreeBSD's ports system. Fink is more apt like but I haven't used it in years. All the packages are precompiled and the installations are much faster, but it seems out of date. F…

> but it compiles each application as you install. No it doesn’t. Hasn’t been that way for years.

I use it and it clearly compiles each package. Please read the FAQ.

https://trac.macports.org/wiki/FAQ

> Is MacPorts Universal? MacPorts works on Apple Silicon as well as Intel- and PowerPC-based Macs, but, by default, the ports you install will be compiled only for the architecture you're currently running on. This means that if you migrate from, say, a PowerPC Mac to an Intel one and use Migration Assistant to copy your data to the new machine, you should reinstall all your ports on the new machine to rebuild them for Intel.

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

#729

Post by Delk »

com_kieffer wrote: post #478
michaelcampbell wrote: post #447

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it's nigh impossible to eliminate tearing on multimonitor setups with X11, I haven't seen tearing in longer than I can remember, and can't remember anyone even mentioning it, so I think you're overplaying this point JUST a tad. I tend to use older laptops with Linux, and older screens (VGA, DVI), so maybe that's the reason. I hate touchpads. I don't do PDF editing. Everything's a tradeoff.

If you rotate a monitor (portrait mode) screen tearing becomes very frequent.

Out of curiosity (not to question), is this on Xorg or Wayland?

I rarely use my external monitor, and I can't even remember the last time I had used it in portrait mode, so these comments made me realize there could be use cases (and not just hardware or drivers) that trigger tearing that I just hadn't encountered. But I just took a quick shot at it, and I didn't see tearing, at least not on YouTube, nor when moving a window around.

I'm on Wayland with Intel graphics.

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

#730

Post by wander_homer »

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…

When I bought my Thinkpad (one year after its release and with lots of recommendations) it took more than a year before it worked reliably without any kernel panics and weird lockups. External monitor support when docked was broken for even longer. Now I fear the day this notebook stops working and I might have to go through similar trouble again.
Post reply on HN