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KDE beats macOS

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Re: KDE beats macOS

#81
post #46
post #20

To be honest I stopped caring what OS I'm running as long as it is not windows. I have a terminal open 99% of the time and I almost never open finder or Gnome Files. pacman or brew? really I don't care. Both install what I want with one command. VS Code is basically the same on every system. Gnome/KDE/MacOS all of them have there pros and cons. Right now what wins for me is the apple silicon. I can develop stuff with…

I almost agree with this, except that the shared clipboard between my phone and computer on iOS/MacOS is so useful I'll often switch to my MacBook from my Linux desktop because of it. Once you've got used to it you just can't go back.

What you're looking for is KDE Connect or GSConnect. The pairing mechanisms are also extremely more flexible than what MacOS allows. The iOS client just launched this year.

Re: KDE beats macOS

#82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

According to https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-server/pricing a license costs 500 dollars. Linux is free as in beer and MacOS is a free complementary feature if you have the proper hardware.

Yeah, if cost is a matter, then Linux always wins. Just saying if you really need Windows, there's an option that's not adware still. It is also the same as the consumer editions in that the only limitation if you don't activate is the watermark and inability to customize the desktop.

Correct me here but Server and Enterprise/LTS have a proper evaluation period (180 day?) that upon expiration shutdowns the machine after 1 hour of use.

Re: KDE beats macOS

#83
post #70
post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I have no idea what you mean, but you can drag lots of stuff in windows to different places and stuff happens. On macOS, there's a concept called "Proxy Icons". These are little icons that are shown in a title bar of a document-based applications (e.g. "[ICON] My File.txt"). You can interact with these icons as if they are an actual file on the disk. For example, you have "My File.txt" open in TextEdit, and you want…

And yet they redesigned preview and hid the damn icon. You can still get the drag thing sometimes, but every time I struggle to find what to drag... is it the title text or just next to it? Sometimes it doesn't work with anything, did I forget where to drag from or does it not work from this file? Who knows, it's very frustrating.

It was very frustrating when they hide the proxy icon behind an obscure modifier key trigger and a delay in Monterey. Thankfully enough complains were made, and they've since added a toggle in Monterey 12.1 to always show proxy icon (Accessibility -> Display -> [ ] Show window title icons).

Re: KDE beats macOS

#84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, if cost is a matter, then Linux always wins. Just saying if you really need Windows, there's an option that's not adware still. It is also the same as the consumer editions in that the only limitation if you don't activate is the watermark and inability to customize the desktop.

Correct me here but Server and Enterprise/LTS have a proper evaluation period (180 day?) that upon expiration shutdowns the machine after 1 hour of use.

It seems you're right and I was mistaken.

https://digitalitskills.com/how-to-stop-windows-server-auto-...

Re: KDE beats macOS

#85
post #69
post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm the opposite. Just the other day I was trying to find if I could keep an application running without any window on KDE Plasma :-) I want to keep some applications running so it continue to receive its own thing in the background, but I do not want to accidentally open the window during Alt-Tab, e.g. my email client, my chat application. (On macOS it's still showing up on Cmd+Tab, but selecting the application doe…

> On Windows and Linux, applications can have no window open by installing a background service (ugh) or hide to status bar, but application need to explicitly implement the behavior. On macOS, this is the expected behavior. Yeah, but the number of apps which require this behavior is far less than those which don't. Hence in my view, not a good reason to default to it.

Personally, I found the opposite to be true. Given more and more applications require constantly polling backend server (not only social apps, e.g. a TODO list, note-taking application, a time tracker, etc.) I much more prefer this behavior being the default.

That said, I still like KDE Plasma more than macOS as a desktop. But this and the proxy icons are two things that I missed the most.

Re: KDE beats macOS

#86
post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you haven't, then it makes absolutely no sense. In the Lion era I was issued a Mac as a work laptop on a contract. Plugged into an external monitor, and that worked fine. Maximised one screen and... the other one displayed only the brushed metal background. Because, obviously, intuitively, you would only be able to have one maximised app at a time, right? Right? For a Linux (by choice) and Windows (under duress)…

Lion was a bit of a stinker in that regard, prior to that there was no “full screen” applications in that more traditional sense, only borderless full screen for video and games - anything else used “smart maximise” where the window size would increase to fit the content (again a bit of a poor choice, but that’s my personal opinion)

That makes sense in context - but I think it reinforces the parent's point; if you don't arrive with that context it's just plain weird!

Re: KDE beats macOS

#87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have to say that WSL is an absolute nightmare. I just cannot stand it. Not only that, but Microsoft has deeply embedded Hyper-V into Windows, to the point that you can't run another hypervisor. I tried to get away from WSL by using VMware Workstation and found that Hyper-V was still under the hood and bogging down the system. All the documents I could find, including recent official ones from Microsoft, on removing…

WSL was a nightmare for me too. Hacks piled on top of other hacks, required to make Linux CLI work on Windows but it's just that, a hacky way to use Linux. Sometimes the system broke, sometimes the filesystem limitations and the performance was always bad, especially with anything involving a large number of files. It was just an awful experience all around. I think anybody who uses WSL over real Linux is only doing…

Yeah, it doesn't have to be so hacky though. I really don't understand the architectural choices Microsoft made to make it so kludgy to work with, and half the problem is just that Hyper-V is slow and buggy compared to VMware's hypervisor. VMware Workstation just works, quite well, when it gets to use the proper VMware hypervisor.

Given the friction and cost involved in getting that working, it's probably smart to just run Linux bare metal unless you're doing work akin to what led me to that (e.g. needing to work with a Windows corporate environment while configuring Linux test clusters).

Re: KDE beats macOS

#88
post #4

Beats macOS ...at what? Serious, not facetious, question. The only answer I can think of is "running on non-Apple hardware"

Being usable out of the box? With KDE I don't need to go find a 3rd party app for decent window snapping, I don't need a 3rd party app to put files on my Android phone over USB, I don't need a 3rd party app to have the trackpad and scroll wheel mouse directions be "natural" and "unnatural" at the same time, I don't need a 3rd party app to be able to use the volume buttons to change the volume level of a sound device…

> Being usable out of the box?

It's interesting that you bring up this point in defense of KDE, because that's exactly my problem with it, especially when contrasted with macOS. Every issue I have with KDE boils down to: "there are too many options, and none of them make the system feel right".

> decent window snapping

In my opinion, no window manager gets it right. I've made a shot at it with my Hammerspoon config[1], it will move/resize/tile floating windows in a 2x2/3x3 grid using custom hotkeys. It's annoying though, that the code works on macOS only - I could probably refactor it to work with an X11 window manager.

[1]: https://github.com/rollcat/dotfiles/blob/master/.hammerspoon...

> put files on my Android phone over USB

I think integration within the Apple ecosystem is what really outshines all competition. I've never had to plug my iPhone over USB to a Mac, and yet I can just copy on the phone, and paste on the computer, like they are one device. Files, mail, contacts, calendar, photos, notes, todos, bookmarks, are all synced - heck I can use the phone camera as a webcam, all out of the box.

> I don't need to give my terminal permission to display my fucking documents folder

Sounds like you never had to fight SELinux or AppArmor. Personally I'm happy that desktop OS's are trying to improve end-user security (why do I have to type the root password to install a game, but I don't need one to run a cryptolocker?), but let's be honest, all attempts so far have ended up half-assed. The root of the issue is that desktop OS's must remain general-purpose tools, otherwise we could just as well call PCs glorified toasters.

Re: KDE beats macOS

#89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

WSL was a nightmare for me too. Hacks piled on top of other hacks, required to make Linux CLI work on Windows but it's just that, a hacky way to use Linux. Sometimes the system broke, sometimes the filesystem limitations and the performance was always bad, especially with anything involving a large number of files. It was just an awful experience all around. I think anybody who uses WSL over real Linux is only doing…

Yeah, it doesn't have to be so hacky though. I really don't understand the architectural choices Microsoft made to make it so kludgy to work with, and half the problem is just that Hyper-V is slow and buggy compared to VMware's hypervisor. VMware Workstation just works, quite well, when it gets to use the proper VMware hypervisor. Given the friction and cost involved in getting that working, it's probably smart to ju…

> (e.g. needing to work with a Windows corporate environment while configuring Linux test clusters).

I don't wanna imagine this. Would be too stressful for me to use Windows for development, PTSD.

Re: KDE beats macOS

#90

The only UI difference I find truly maddening is the inability to open a terminal in the current folder. On other operating systems, I can right click in the empty space to open a terminal in that directory; on macOS, I must instead right click on a subfolder, open a terminal in that subfolder, and then navigate up one directory (`cd ..`)... ...unless the current folder contains no folders, in which case I have to na…

Finder > View > Show Path Bar (Option + Command + P). Right click on the folder in the path bar > Open in Terminal.
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