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The Mac Pro Lives

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Re: The Mac Pro Lives

#731

Post by mwill »

Keyframe wrote: post #628
mwill wrote: post #523

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Linux running Windows. Recent Linux kernels and have added the ability to pass through PCI devices to QEMU guests. I run NixOS with Windows 10, Windows 7, and Ubuntu guests. Only one guest can be run at a time. I have a second GPU with a second screen that gets passed directly to the VM. I use numactl and nice to half surrender half my CPU cores to the VM and static huge pages to hand over a chunk of memory. The VM a…

Thanks! This sounds almost exactly like something I need. Why separate keyboard and mouse though? Only difference that I would prefer is to retain the same keyboard/mouse/tablet and monitors (three of them) and to be able to easily switch between the two, preferably to have copy and paste working between the two. Alternative, I'm pursuing right now, is a KVM with synergy, but I have limited deskside space (for machin…

To get the performance benefits the VM can't be run with a spice / vnc interface, so there is no virtual screen or virtual input. You have to pass the VM its GPU and some USB ports and can only see/interact through those and the network bridge.

My keyboard and mouse can pair to multiple different machines at the same time and switch with a button press so I just do that.

Synergy also works fine, you just need to temporarily pass a real keyboard in to set it up.

There is also a newish feature in QEMU that allows they physical devices to be swapped back and forward by pressing both CTRL keys [1]. It works reasonably well with a few quirks (Extra mouse buttons dont work in guest, for example)

Same thing apples to the screen, I surrender an entire monitor to whatever VM is running, but you could use a KVM switch.

It's a little work to get set up and tuned but it is 100% a dual boot killer. The next time I reconfigure this machine, I won't be installing a native Windows partition, I simply don't need it anymore.

Heres a video demoing and explaining it a bit: https://youtu.be/16dbAUrtMX4

[1] https://www.kraxel.org/blog/2016/04/linux-evdev-input-suppor...

Re: The Mac Pro Lives

#732

Post by MaulingMonkey »

jamescostian wrote: post #726
MaulingMonkey wrote: post #704

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I pull out the real scripting languages for real jobs. I only use shells for quick things. It's my experience that the latter eventually morphs into the former "without question". And go figure, the build server doesn't have python installed. Or only has python 2. Or only python 3. Ditto for a coworker - this being game development, a lot of those coworkers aren't programmers, and won't be able to debug "hey python…

> It's my experience that the latter eventually morphs into the former "without question". I suppose we do vastly different things with our shells. Looking through my history, it's mostly things like "cd", "ls", "vi", "make", etc. and my longest bash script that's stood the test of time is 12 lines long, with the most complex part of it being an if statement in a string (trust me, there's a reason for that). I've ran…

> But if I'm on someone else's computer and they don't have Python or anything like it, then I would honestly just install Python.

The problem is scaling this to many coworkers. At some point it becomes "wait for I.T. to get around to automating the install across the fleet" or make your scripts install python, ninja-like. But it sounds like you're more able to rely on python, so that probably makes more sense for you (if only so you don't have to rewrite the same script for non-Windows boxes.)

> Here's my horror story. This is the reason I swore off PS, as stupid and emotionally-driven as that sounds

It sounds bad enough I can totally get where you're coming from. Heck, it's basically the exact same place I'm coming from with the "strings shot my dog" quip ;)

> Perhaps the issue was something about encoding?

Something to do with e.g. UTF-8 BOMs or line endings (\r\n vs \n) would be top of my paranoia list. I'd break out a hex editor or binary diffing tool (I've used 010 Editor a couple times for this) if you find yourself in the same situation again. Understanding exactly when I have a single string with newlines vs when I have an array of strings with implicit newlines when joined isn't something I've got my head perfectly wrapped around yet in powershell, and could be another possible cause.

> Sorry if what I'm saying does not seem very concrete.

You're offering what you know, and I appreciate it :). Sorry for the short reply (I need to be somewhere...)

Re: The Mac Pro Lives

#733

Post by Whitestrake »

notduncansmith wrote: post #357
issa wrote: post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My number one complaint about OSX is also window management. I've never found anything comparable to the way Windows 7 let you use the left/right arrows to line up windows on half the screen. That is the only thing I miss about Windows, but it's a pretty big one. Also, when dis/connecting monitors on OSX, windows often get lost. ps- if anyone has any suggestions or recommendations, I'd love to hear them!

I use Spectacle for this, simplest thing I've found so far: https://www.spectacleapp.com

I've found Spectacle leaves a bit of padding space under where the dock folds out - potentially useful, but unwanted in my case, and I wasn't able to find a setting to change that behaviour.

I use BetterSnapTool instead, which seems to have a better collection of settings and solves my (admittedly minor) gripe with Spectacle.

Re: The Mac Pro Lives

#734

Post by thomastjeffery »

veidr wrote: post #398
adtac wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>32/64GB RAM I'm genuinely curious - why do you need 64 GB of RAM on a laptop? Are there industries where this is a necessity? At that point, wouldn't you be better off having remote machines?

> why do you need 64 GB of RAM I see this question often, and I totally don't get it. I do use 64GB for work, and in light of this news that no new Mac Pro will arrive any time soon, I'm considering bumping that to 128GB[1]. But I don't do high-frequency corporate hegemony work, or video editing, or any of that — I'm just a programmer . Moreover, you could delete IDEA and Xcode and my 5 browsers and 7 text editors an…

> Do they fastidiously quit applications even though they'll probably use the app again within a few days?

s/days/minutes/

It's an old habit of mine that stems from spending most of my pre-adult life with old equipment, and using others' equipment with As for using less than 64gb of ram... Ha! I have never had more than 8gb of ram! I have never needed more than 8gb of ram! 8gb is a lot of memory! 64gb? Are you kidding me? I've considered several times over the past few years getting another 8gb (for 16gb total), and ended up realizing I would never use it.

Re: The Mac Pro Lives

#735

Post by thomastjeffery »

komali2 wrote: post #591
hota_mazi wrote: post #584

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Am I the only one that sees OS X as the biggest reason to switch to Mac? Not any more. Mac OS looks and feels very antiquated compared to Windows today. As a developer, Windows has caught up to MacOS for the shells and beats it in pretty much all the other areas (UI of the OS, keyboard shortcuts everywhere, great file manager(s), much more productivity tools available, etc...). And of course, Windows laptops are an…

Can you tell me more about your bash setup? It seems silly, but to me two big annoyances are 1. I can't figure out how to easily open up the bash/ubuntu thing where I need it. I'd love to just have a dedicated "github stuff" folder that it opens into by default (and can edit). I always seem to put stuff where bash ubuntu isn't allowed to touch, or I'm manually CDing around until I find that weird place where the C dr…

> it's fuckugly. The colors, the fonts, lack of transparency. Copying/pasting/etc all suck.

No kidding. cmd has not meaningfully changed since its original version. It just sucks. No matter how nice the shells are.

Re: The Mac Pro Lives

#736

Post by thomastjeffery »

onmobiletemp wrote: post #701
csomar wrote: post #178

Am I the only one that sees OS X as the biggest reason to switch to Mac? I mean Windows is good, but nowhere good as OS X. And please, don't tell me Ubuntu or other linux flavors. They look good (and are good if you are programming on them) but the UX is still lacking a lot. (Never mind the confusion of the different flavors, packaging systems, and configurations). Also god forbid you have a problem (especially a har…

Try elementaryos. Just buy intel hardware and youll be set for drivers. Try it and tell me its bad

And if you do, that does not mean every other Linux distribution is bad. Try [kxl]Ubuntu. (Not normal Ubuntu unless you honestly think you would like unity. Most of us do not.)

Re: The Mac Pro Lives

#737

Post by thomastjeffery »

theodorton wrote: post #666
wishinghand wrote: post #563

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The first two points are, but not really the RAM. It's going to be an ounce at most. If they go from two 8GB sticks to two 16GB sticks, it wouldn't change size/weight at all.

Except you're not able to get LPDDR3 with more than 16GB of RAM, so you'll need more power..? I might be wrong.

You aren't wrong.

Re: The Mac Pro Lives

#738

Post by thomastjeffery »

chaostheory wrote: post #441
unethical_ban wrote: post #306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ubuntu Unity is actually pretty slick, and enables tiling prety easily. I agree Canonical should have first-party laptops and demand quality. But Apple not having an open package management ecosystem, where people can manage/create their own repositories, kills it for me.

> But Apple not having an open package management ecosystem It's not from Apple but Mac OS has Macports and Brew for this just like Windows has Chocolatey Unity makes the Linux desktop usable now, but I still wouldn't call it slick. Even if it leaned more on KDE instead of Gnome it still doesn't feel right compared to either Mac OS or Windows. Going on a tangent, I still wish Apple would release a screenless iMac. No…

Homebrew is nice, but source based packages suck, especially on underpowered Apple hardware..

Re: The Mac Pro Lives

#739

Post by kartickv »

ynniv wrote: post #65

a pro machine that demanded placement on your desk, not under your desk ... and that's how Apple lost the professionals. The desk is a clean space for a huge monitor / keyboard / mouse, and MY work. It's good to make a workstation that looks nice, but it's ten times as good to make one that's flexible and powerful. The only people who want that workstation on the desktop are the designers at Apple, and stroking your…

Great point, and the entire Mac lineup needs to be more flexible and configurable to meet customers's needs:

- I want to configure a laptop with a 1TB spinning hard disc, so that I get a lot of space without paying $3000. I can get such a Dell for $1500 with a UHD screen. I'd prioritise disk space over weight and battery life.

- I want to configure the Mac Mini with a 6TB spinning desktop hard disc, rather than a portable one, which is costlier and has limited capacity. To reduce footprint, make the machine vertical. I also want to be able to configure the Mac Mini to drive a 5k monitor via Thunderbolt 3, and 32GB memory. All of this should be upgradeable. It's a shame that the Mac Mini isn't. It doesn't even have the "thin and light" excuse laptops have.

None of this is sexy. It won't make tech reviewers go ooh and aah. It won't earn a place in the MoMA. But it will be more useful to customers.

Re: The Mac Pro Lives

#740

Post by kartickv »

michaelbuckbee wrote: post #167
whatusername wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe I'm not doing enough development.... As a development machine - what is a top spec iMac/MBP missing that you would need a hackintosh?

The biggest thing is greater than 16GB of RAM.

iMacs support 32GB.
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