> As a developer, I spend almost 80% of the time in my terminal
In which case then sure, pretty much anything will suit you fine. It's not a universal rule though - I spend the vast majority of my time in TextMate or an IDE and probably 10% of time in my terminal, so the comfort of the Mac UI is a more significant factor.
Also, even if I would spend 100% of my time in a terminal, iTerm offers such a better experience than Linux terminals (that’s just my personal experience, I used various Linux distributions for ~6 years)
I use iTerm2 when I'm on MacOS, but I basically use it like I use a Linux terminal. I just don't need so many features from the terminal itself... I do need Unicode, with RTL, and colors, and a nice scrollback buffer.
For example, I don't use tabs in the terminal. I usually open a new window and use the WM from outside the terminal, or use tmux inside the terminal. Tabs in the terminal itself are not that useful in my workflow.
Wait, you use iTerm2 on macOS, but you need RTL support? Is there a way of making that work? I’ve long wanted to switch to iTerm2, but its treatment of Arabic script is so janky, I just can’t do it. I’m still using the default Terminal app as a result.
This. I love iTerm2 and hadnt found an acceptable replacement on Linux until I installed Terminator, which I would say is 70% there.
Other than that I use Linux (Mint) for my main Desktop OS, but I still deal with plenty of rough edges. The latest ones:
- Wifi doesn't work after suspend wakeup.
- After upgrading OS to next version using recommended UI method, PC us unable to start graphics mode bc it doesn't find some random UI package... i had to login in TTY and manually install it.
- CS:GG, a game with Linux native port suddenly decided to get choppy lagged sound. Same game works well in Windows in same PC
- Connecting bluetooth headphones sometimes works, sometimes doesn't
So yeah, plenty of rough edges. Still I use it because I love the programming workflow and use docker with Linux containers.
I recently switched from using a Mac professionally for 8 years to Ubuntu and used iTerm on the Mac, and I honestly have no idea what you're talking about. iTerm was good, but I miss nothing about it. The default terminal with Ubuntu 18 is just as good. Well, better, because it has Ubuntu underneath it all ;)
I had colleagues who returned their company-issued X1 Carbons and bought a Mac with out-of-pocket money, so they could use iTerm2. Some of its features are indispensable and not found anywhere in Linux, although YMMV of course.
I use iTerm to connect to Ubuntu and I feel like I have the best of both worlds, a great terminal emulator and Ubuntu beneath it.
I think the problem is the vague use of the word "developer."
Some people develop programming languages. For them, a GUI-less environment may be ideal.
I do web development. So I need the GUI, not just for testing, but for dealing with image and video assets that come in from the art department, or creating mockups, or presentations, or maps, etc.
It's still "development," but unsuited for a 100% command line experience.
As is often the case, it's easy for someone in one field of "development" to forget that it's a broad category of experiences.
No, we have an art department for that. But if a map needs to be replaced on the site or a new director headshot or making documentation or training people how to use the site I built for them, those are all better assisted or accomplished with the UI than from the command line.
My preference for Linux over macOS is actually the UI. I like having a real package manager and such, but it’s not like I care much about kernel subsystem differences. I have used macs a lot and I just find their UI cumbersome.
To each his own. For me, I appreciate the way most applications interoperable and the consistency of the experience.
Lately, for me, the killer app has been the ability to cut and paste content between machines and devices automatically and seamlessly. I once I started using it in my workflow, it became indispensable.
Really no OS can. Tiling window managers are Linux's (and the BSDs) killer exclusive. I've been using Linux full time for 3 years now and it's been a struggle at times. i3 is the sole reason why.
All the people I've seen who praise i3 and tiling managers seem to spend way more time finding the proper windows between dozens of tiles on half a dozen desktops than I do on a very minimal setup with Divvy on one desktop.
If you set up your workspaces for different modes, then this rarely becomes an issue.
While some spaces I use are more flexible for their use, certain spaces are designated for specific tasks. I use a space for communication/chatting, a space for my music/email, a space for my calendar/task planning, etc. These don't deviate so for these common tasks it becomes second nature.
Funny thing, given all the emphasis on doing things via terminal in Linux community, is that I cannot find a decent Linux application to manage SSH conections. My work laptop is a Windows 10 machine, where I installed pro version of MobaXTerm (used to access/manage about 50 linux servers), and I fell in love with it. No Linux application that I know of comes close. Any suggestions?
.ssh/config is awesome, and together with a decent shell (with tab-completion for ssh command, e.g. host completion based on your known_hosts file) I find it hard to understand why these applications even exist.
In 2019 you still cannot get a decent macOS-like modifier key setup on Linux where OS-keys are mapped to Super (e.g. Super-C being copy) and such that Control works like it does on macOS, so I still always find these kinds of articles nice but you're in for lots of surprises if you try to switch.
And I say this as someone with both macOS and Linux laptops that I work from, but because of the above and other similar things I think you're always up for disappointment if you expect to get Linux to be exactly like macOS.
This is my gripe too, as someone who’s recently switched back to Linux after a 10 year OSX hiatus. My current Linux system is designed and developed by thousands of developers who were just trying to get their stuff working for them, each of them working on a small piece. OSX has a lot more consistency because it was decreed by a few UX designers, alas, that is the price you pay for flexibility.
You apply the consistency, you degree what you want. People decide to use Linux and still expect to be told what they want. Decide what you want and make it so, Linux is fundamentally a user-centric system and for it to work best it needs a creative guiding force in the middle: you, the user.
I'm not sure this really addresses the point. macOS manages to have both user-configurability for keyboard shortcuts and consistency out of the box.
On macOS, you can also define consistent keyboard shortcuts universally and per-application. This is achieved via a very simple interface in System Preferences -> Keyboards -> Shortcuts. This will apply to all applications because they must all respect and populate the macOS menu bar, the mechanism through which keyboard shortcuts and processed and thus made modifiable. Easy, friendly, user-centric.
But on Linux? Good luck. Between all the various user interface libraries with their own mechanisms for defining and modifying keyboard shortcuts, not to mention those apps that hardcode the shortcuts in order to avoid the utter mess of the mixed desktop environments that so many users are forced to use in order to get certain jobs done.
In this sense, Linux is not a user-centric system because nobody who makes a distribution, even the better ones, gives a toss about the user; it's all about the developer's manifestos and freedoms long before it's ever about the user. The average user who just wants to work, not sit there slaving over a billion different and wildly inconsistent configuration file formats each in different locations, who just wants the damned Copy command to require the same two-finger salute in one program as another, is resolutely not the one being catered for.
Linux distributions are just as opinionated as Windows and macOS; DIY distros are utterly irrelevant to the vast majority of people, including the HN crowd who, just like the technically illiterate we sometimes hold our noses up to, also have lives to live.
Because Ctrl is for sending control codes, Command is for issuing commands. You need to have one keystroke that means "copy", "paste", "print", help, etc. everywhere in the system.
It's not as simple as swapping the keys. On macOS you use the "win key" for system shortcuts but you can also use the Ctrl key for emacs-style movement systemwide.
For example I can type Ctrl-b while editing the URL in the browser omnibar to move the cursor back a character or alt-b to move it back a word, just like you can in the terminal and then use "Win"-b to bookmark a page.
And your command changes the keys you use for moving the cursor in the terminal.
In GTK2 and 3, you can switch to the emacs key theme and then edit the files in /usr/share/themes/Emacs/ to have meta instead of ctrl. Alternatively, use a key rebinding daemon like https://github.com/snyball/Hawck to rebind the specific keys globally. Long-term I don't think this is worth it though because the programs are not built to support it like they are on a native Cocoa environment. You kind of just have to suck it up and get used to different key bindings in different environments.
No one wants to fiddle with keybindings. Occasionally using Ctrl-c in the terminal (which forces me to redo my text selection or worse) or Ctrl-Shift-c in the browser (which brings up the dev tools that I have to close with Ctrl-Shift-i) is just the cost of using Linux.
MacOS's system is a better system that will never be adopted because there no will (just suck it up as you say), market pressure or authority that would impose it.
The one that gets me every day is ^W — erase word — against the handful of programs that refuse to let me configure that away from ‘close window’ (I'm looking at you, Chrome).
You (yes you) could patch the toolkits to do what you want right now, all the code is free and open source. But if you lack the will to do it, and see it as unimportant in the grand scheme of things... well maybe that's an indicator that the keybindings really aren't that much better and are mostly up to a matter of taste. I personally don't really care much for "market authorities" trying to force me to do things.
Well, that's not the cost of using Linux. It's one possible cost. I haven't ever done either because I use the primary selection (select is automatically copied, middle click dumps it at the pointer).
And when I can't or don't want to do that, I right click and choose Copy.
If I want to use another operating system - Windows or MacOS, it drives me batty that I have to keep going around copy pasting things.
I tend to agree with you that having a difference between Ctrl and Command is nice. But it doesn't actually solve the problem - it works _because_ MacOS is a minority, the last holdout.
In your web browser, Cmd-A will select all the available text but Ctrl-A will move your cursor to the start of the line. In your terminal, perhaps Cmd-A will select all the visible text but Ctrl-A will increment the number under the pointer (since you're running VIM in it).
If the Meta key hadn't died of death and Linux developers had kept expecting it to be around, there could also be clashes between Cmd and Meta.
All of them honor Ctrl+Insert for copy and Shift+Insert for paste. This will work on browsers, editors , shells, etc.
FYI this will also work on Windows XP cmd.
Linux has its own set of standards that has evolved to work on keyboards that do not have the super modifier (e.g. in India), but has far more consistency built into it that the Mac
This way or another, the IBM standard was authored in 1980s with major IBM systems (mainly MS-DOS and OS/2) in mind, and it has not aged nicely. Windows mostly went its own way. Keys like F1-F10, PrtScn, PgUp/PgDn have never been easy to find or use on laptops (or anywhere except 101-key keyboards). Start or Win modifier key, on the contrary, is universal, but Linux ignores it for the most part.
The only consistent system around is Mac OS X, where Cmd-C is universal copy, Ctrl-C stops the current program in terminal, Cmd-V is universal paste, Ctrl-V opens a vertical block in Vim, Ctrl-A goes to the beginning of the line, and Cmd-A selects all. This works anywhere, from browser to terminal.
i have a Dell XPS 13 - its smaller than a macbook air. It has an insert key.
Whether you like it or not is your prerogative entirely. However, it is not true that Linux and Windows dont have a standard. They do. And the keys are universal (where universal has a different connotation to your usecase - we are talking non-Western countries and hardware that includes weird little keyboard to debug airplane display units)
You are fully entitled your choice+opinion whether you prefer a different one.
The nice thing about standards is that you have so many to choose from.
This of course says nothing about whether this particular standard fits you. For me, having to keep a flag in mind whether I'm working in a terminal application (with one set of shortcuts), or GUI application (with a different set of shortcuts), is not acceptable, if I can have a setup where the same set works everywhere.
I just installed Pop OS!, and while not perfect, it sets a lot of default super keys which you can turn off and set the super variants in Gnome shell, etc. Unfortunately I still haven't gotten emacs-like ctrl-a to work by default, though I've tried. Especially in Firefox which doesn't seem to follow any Gtk settings.
I switched from Linux to OSX/MacOS around eight years ago, and the better and (to me) more intuitive modifier keys have been one of the features that have kept me there; along with the convenience of Emacs/Readline keybindings for text editing everywhere.
Getting keybindings to work the same way in Linux currently involves a Rube Goldberg setup of GTK3 key themes [1] and AutoKey [2] for me, and some things still don't work right (Super-W closing a single tab in Firefox/Chrome, etc.) Also, it looks like key themes are going away in GTK4 [3].
The Hawck daemon cited elsewhere in the conversation looks promising, maybe that'll work better.
If, in about:config, you set ui.key.accelKey to 91, then Super-W will close a single tab (and Super-T will open a single tab etc.). This obviously won't work in Chromium, though.
It’s weird to me to use Super to close a tab rather than for the desktop environment. Super is very consistent on my DE of choice: it’s not for application specific keyboard shortcuts, but for keyboard shortcuts of the window manager. That way there are never any collisions and things are easy to remember.
I suggest you try out Sway, which is pretty much i3 for Wayland. Also, Arch Linux has some great documentation for setting up things like screenshots. You'll have to get used to the flags for forcing xcb for a few Qt applications though, but totally worth it and not difficult at all once you understand it. I do miss rofi though, but am waiting for a Wayland version or the next best thing.
Thanks, looks pretty nice. I primarily just miss a few specific features, like shortcut to switch modis, ssh modi, and I had one for chromium to search and go to my open tab on any screen, as well as an emoji selector with search and integrated color emoji font. Unfortunately I don't see this providing those features, and it has a lot more dependencies.
I recent switched to a Mac laptop and tmux CC mode is iterm2’s killer feature. Tmux niceness without it taking a key prefix, and with real scroll bars. It’s worth the cost of a Mac!
Any tmux CC mode supporting terminals for Linux or Windows?
Have used a Mac before for work, and run Arch with Sway for home and work now. The only thing worth the cost of a Mac is having money to spend on a Mac and feeling like that it is best for you. If you use i3 or Sway on Linux and like it, you'll likely never want to go back. Especially with an Arch-based distro with the AUR.
It's interesting to see how broadly the same experiences lead people in different directions. I loved iTerm2's window splitting and resizing so much I wanted it for all my windows. That lead me directly to install i3 on my Linux machine, and I absolutely love it.
iMessage and iCloud integration is still missing. I can’t image to reach for a phone every time I’m getting text when working on a computer. I’m surprised that such synergy is still not covered by community.
[edit]
My killer app is iTerm. There isn’t anything even close to it on Linux. (features _and_ documentation)
There are alternatives for those of us not obsessed with the Apple universe. Android supports Android Messages which can be read/responded to from the browser/an app. iCloud may be substituted with any number of offerings, some will keep files on the cloud and sync as needed to preserve space. If you are invested in the Apple ecosystem, you're out of luck.
Perhaps I misunderstand your issue, but you may want to investigate this more: I don't remember what I did to set it up, but I text with Messages from my Mac without issue, and the system keeps Mac Messages and the iPhone messaging app in sync (I can see all conversations on both).
I can also make and receive calls from my Mac, provided the Mac and iPhone are on the same network.
Ah, yes, a fourth read makes that clear. I read "iMessage and iCloud integration is still missing" as "I haven't been able to get iMessage to integrate with iCloud" instead of as "there is nothing comparable on Linux", which, given context, makes much more sense.
I don't know if KDE connect is available on iOS, but that provides phone integration without effort. Copy/paste across devices, file access/browsing/sharing across devices, remote input, media player control, notification synchronisation and text messaging is all available through KDE connect. If you run Gnome instead of KDE, GSConnect also works very well.
iMessage integration won't happen because Apple has closed down their API. There have been reverse engineering efforts but such a system is never reliable enough for comfortable desktop integration imo.
I've never come across iMessage lock-in as everyone I know either uses WhatsApp, Telegram or plain old SMS so I don't know what limitations you might run into in your setup.
Come to think of it, KDE connect on iOS won't happen (GPL conflict with app store, restrictions to apps, limitations on background execution). I suppose I shouldn't have expected anything else from the Apple ecosystem.
Tinkering with GUI is not just about looks. It's also about workflow. So unless you mean that doesn't interest you either I'm not sure you stopped reading at the right point.
PS: I'm not telling you what you should or shouldn't read. Just trying to understand what you meant.
Years ago, I spent inordinate amount of time on that kind of thing. At some point I realised that while enjoyable no work gets done. Nowadays I don't have a work "flow". I just work which for me means reading and writing code or emails without interruptions. Any "flow" on top of that is a waste of time. My experince for whatever it's worth.
I'm with you on this one. Back in college I used to spend an absurd amount of time tinkering with XMonad, rainmeter, custom themes, but now my requirements for a computer are:
- it has a basic window manager (half screen left/right, full screen)
- it has emacs
- it has Firefox
- it has tmux
- (if the computer is really fancy) it has a calendar application
Over the last 20 years, I've heard this often. "I don't need to learn no VCS, I get work done by copying files". "I don't need no IDE and semantic navigation, I'm productive with Notepad+". "I don't need no ticket manager, a shared TODO file is more than enough".
Everyone has a work flow. It can be simple or complex, self-made or partly-compulsory. Some will try to always use better tools, other will try to keep the plainest environment. I believe it's a good practice to at least know what other people can do.
It took me many years to discover and build an environment where I feel confortable and productive. I spend many days working for this, but now it has hardly changed in 5 years. I think that time was an excellent investment.
If all you do is reading and writing code and processing emails, and you don't want to waste time, workflow is very important, since it minimises interruptions.
Maybe you mixed up "tinkering" for workflow improvement with "tinkering" for the sake of it.
The advantage of GNU/Linux here is that once you nail it, you never have to change it again. Your OS will outlive your hardware; you simply transplant it, together with your workflow.
If tiling is what you are after, was Spectacle not a good enough solution on OSX?
I use a QMK-based keyboard (although I am sure you can achieve similar levels of functionality with Karabiner) where choosing my window placement is a 2-key macro.
The biggest deal breaker is that you can't programmatically move a window to a new workspace (I think?); and that you can't disable the animations for switching workspaces (biggest problem).
Is it a case where perfect is the enemy of good enough? I've never felt the need to move anything programatically e.g automatically without it being triggered by my intention.
Spectacle has "next/previous display" shortcut.
To disable animations on workspace switching:
defaults write com.apple.dock workspaces-swoosh-animation-off -bool YES && killall Dock
I would suggest checking out Yabai (https://github.com/koekeishiya/yabai) which is functionally similar to bspwm and allows quick switching workspaces (no animation or fade) and throwing windows to different workspaces or monitors.
I'd like to recommend Amethyst [1], it's a window manager that takes control of all windows, compared to Spectacle where you have to "move" each window automatically.
I've been using Amethyst for multiple years at this point, and it has been great for my workflow.
One of the major things I missed (and eventually brought me back to MacOS) were things like maximising a window means it becomes its own virtual desktop, and the touchpad gestures that would let you move between them. I tried a lot of hacks to replicate those features effectively but never came close, and it ultimately pushed me back to Macs.
Yeah that's the thing about Linux that is both nice and awful.
It can pretty much do anything you want, given enough time and configuration... but when that configuration breaks: good luck.
Some people prefer "it just works" over losing some control.
Personally I dislike macOS's "virtual desktops" and much prefer being able to swap between different desktops in i3, and being able to send windows wherever, control tiling, etc.
Whereas on macOS if you have a use-case not supported by Apple, you're either out of luck completely, or it's going to cost you. macOS still doesn't have even window snapping, nor a decent file manager.
It has an awkward pseudo-tiling “snapping” thing that’s useless compared to a real tiling WM or even Windows. Do macOS users manually drag their windows around and align them just right to fit everything on the display?
That's pretty much what I do. It's a different way of thinking about windows. A tiler is more like feeds from a security camera, where you have everything in focus at once and your gaze shifts accordingly, but your attention is nonetheless divided among however many things you are tiling and compromises are made if you have a smaller screen. A mac desktop behaves very much like an actual desk. My windows are like papers, sized as the devs intended or how the paper is laid out and cut. Sometimes things are in neat little piles or spread around on an external monitor. Overlapping happens but isn't a deal breaker, just like having one paper slightly on top of another on your desk. Swiping with three fingers spreads out all my papers on my desk, and shows me what's going on with my other desks or what I've got stashed in my dock.
On my macbook, most of my windows are shifted to the right side of the screen, exposing about an inch and a half of desktop containing all my aliases to currently relevant files, drives, and folders. Icons are sized down to line height to maximize space. Sometimes I want to keep that stretch open and the files handy, other times not.
I've tried tilers and I could see how some people like them and could get quick with them, but they just weren't great for how I personally manage and think about using my computer. I'm a papers all over the desk kind of guy, not a security guard. I also have a 13" display, sometimes in practice smaller if I want my desktop files exposed, so tiling on top of each other makes windows too short, and tiling to the sides often makes them too skinny. I'm sure on a 17" laptop or a large monitor tiling isn't so constricting. Lots of apps these days are optimized for using most of a 13" display size, and lots of websites turn into a mobile site if your window is too small. I was spending more time fighting with the tiler, cycling through different tiling layouts, and changing parameters than I was just quickly and loosely dragging windows around as needs changed (After all, it only takes <1 second to move a window, and <1 second to resize, and I don't have to think about it at all, just like laying down a piece of paper on top of my desk). And I was using the tiler that was supposedly the best and most like the famous linux tilers (amethyst).
> It can pretty much do anything you want, given enough time and configuration... but when that configuration breaks: good luck.
You can say the opposite of Macs: "the stuff that is designed to work in a certain way by Apple works perfectly, if you want to anything outside of that beautiful box, good luck"
Yeah I understand having same defaults over customization. I just don’t find all the mac defaults to be all that sane. The maximization putting windows in their own workspace at the very end of the workspace list is one of the stranger decisions of the mac UI
In GNOME you can four-finger swipe to switch workspaces. Maximising won't automatically put the app on a workspace, but you can use a keyboard shortcut to shift the current window to the next workspace until you get to a blank workspace, then maximise it. Or you can drag and drop the window to a new workspace in the overview.
Swiping feels awful in Linux though. Linux still doesn't have proper animation mapping to swiping, so moving workspaces happens after the swipe gesture, not during. Scrolling in Linux using a trackpad feels terrible too. I almost switched away from Linux just because scrolling in Firefox felt so bad.
You’re painting this as a fault with Linux, but it’s almost certainly the fault of a desktop environment. Were you using GNOME? You can adjust the way that trackpad scrolling works in Firefox and in GNOME Tweak Tool, IIRC.
The fact you have to configure anything for scrolling to work smoothly on a web browser paints linux in a bad light itself.
The main reason i do not watch to switch to linux [apart from missing adobe catlogue and sketch] is stuff like the track pad, being able to navigate around using various gestures, having little things like invisible scroll bars etc. Subtle animations and visual queues really make the experience smooth. Its not even about eye candy, just seemlessness so your mind doesnt notice the workflow - which is what you want.
The latest ubuntu doesnt even let you drag drop on the desktop? i really want linux but it still seems miles away from sleekness of osx
In gnome under wayland the swiping tracks, i think. Its new - might not be in the version in ubuntu yet. Also, wayland has its issues so im not using it yet.
Isn't a F11 supported as a shortcut in most of applications to switch to full-screen mode? I remember it was supported over vast majority GUI applications I used, when I was complaining on small screen, but now personally, I don't understand why somebody would need it make windows be maximized-to-workspace as in macOS. There isn't such huge dock, and application menus were redesigned to be in-app-hamburger-menus and finally displays manufactures now provide monitors with higher resolution than few years ago. If you really notice lack of focus / working space, you shouldn't look for typical GNOME/KDE DEs but for a WM (windows managers) like Sway/i3 or AwesomeWM, which helped me to be more productive, when I dab in multiple applications at once.
F11 works in almost all apps, but it is dependent on the app and not the window manager, so it's not completely universal. All gtk and qt apps will be fine, but I had to configure my terminal (alacritty) to support it.
Haha. And that is the one thing I HATE about OSX. I would change the default maximize behaviour to be the same add the double-click top bar if I could. The only thing I do with the maximize to VD behaviour is lose the application windows.
This comment shows me how these type of threads are useless and sound as random whining to everyone. Your experience and use case is so perpendicular to mine and 100% as valid as mine. But one person love for something is another person hate.
You used to be able to disable the sliding animation when switching desktops in Lion. They undid that and for six years switching desktops meant waiting for the animation (finally fixed again in Sierra). That alone was enough for me to stop using OSX.
Ditto here - this article captured my own reasons for moving from macOS to Linux. My Mac Pro tube (late 2013) now runs Pop!_OS (~Ubuntu) natively for my Web and cloud development. macOS isn't a bad OS per se, but it's designed for people who fear technology, not developers like me.
I come at this from a productivity perspective after using Mac's for several jobs - Linux boosts my productivity by 30-40%. Anecdotal, sure, but things just work in Linux and your not constantly having to fiddle around and click through things. It could also be that Mac's have declined in quality and I can put Linux on nearly anything and it lasts forever, especially when you put it on high quality gear that just doesn't exist at Apple.
I'm curious to this as well. I recently got a desktop computer to supplement my MacBook, and am now using Ubuntu as my more-or-less primary OS. I'm quite enjoying it, but I certainly wouldn't claim that it works better out of the box than MacOS. Perhaps it's because I've used Mac for so long, but I can't think of anything that I find difficult to set up. Ubuntu on the other hand has several issue that I've just sort of ignore - keybindings don't always work, you can't drag to/from the Desktop for some reason, some startup programs don't always run, little things like that.
I think the productivity aspect would only be true in that case, as the things that “just work” are (for me) external libraries, GitHub readmes, sdk examples, etc.
Yes and I agree that is the case. Came from DevOps, so Linux still feels natural. Though I use it for everything now from developing, image/video editing, browsing. Literally, I feel like the only thing I can't do is IOS development.
As a developer and hobbyist photographer and maker, I'm between two worlds. Linux is perfect for development but nothing Adobe or Autodesk runs on it, which is extremely frustrating. I don't even have to reboot to game, but I do need to reboot to edit a photo.
> Linux is perfect for development but nothing Adobe or Autodesk runs on it, which is extremely frustrating.
True for Adobe, technically false for Autodesk if you aren’t in CAD. Maya and MotionBuilder (acquired from Alias in mid 2000s) run on Linux for the film/VFX industry.
Though to be fair, I’m pretty sure they are the only applications in AD’s entire portfolio that run on Linux, and it wasn’t because of them.
> I'm curious to this as well. I recently got a desktop computer to supplement my MacBook, and am now using Ubuntu as my more-or-less primary OS.
I have used macOS as my primary OS from 2007 to ~2017 (before that BSD and Linux). I am now mostly back on Linux, though I also have a MacBook Pro that I use every now and then. Primary reasons for switching back to Linux:
* MacBook hardware limitations: too few ports, keyboard problems, expensive upgrades.
* Competitive hardware prices for Linux. I got a NUC8i5, which was somewhere between 300-400 Euro and has the same quad core CPU as my 2000 MacBook Pro. I added a 500GB SSD I had lying around and 16GB RAM. I have more resources for a fraction of the price, and can always bump up the SSD or memory relatively cheaply.
* Nix. There is package/system management before and after Nix. I actually started with Nix on macOS, but being able to manage your whole system declaratively is awesome.
* The subscription disease on macOS. I am fine with buying good applications. Overall I have probably spent thousands of Euros on licenses for macOS software. But I will not use an application with a subscription model. Period. [1] It transfers a huge amount of control from me to the software vendor. Unfortunately, more and more macOS applications are switching to subscriptions.
* Linux is generally faster than macOS.
There are also things that I like about macOS: Apple's strong push for security (including sandboxing of applications, T2, etc.), fewer issues with drivers and random paper cuts, better support for hardware decoding throughout applications, traditionally strong 3rd-party applications (OmniGraffle, Little Snitch, LaunchBar/Alfred, Things, OmniFocus, etc.), integration through AirPlay, handover, et al.
[1] Admittedly, there is one exception: 1Password, we like using it for password sharing and arguably, you are paying for a cloud service.
Docker has been my biggest gripe lately but admittedly has gotten better.
Update environment. MacOS requires reboots and nags you constantly until you do. Whereas, apt and dnf are simple and can be automated in the background.
Doing anything 'interesting' requires you to reboot and fiddle with the firmware. Where linux sudo works as expected.
Outdated software due to licensing issues. See GPL and bash. Not to mention you will be much closer to a production environment and you will find less bugs developing due to differences in OS.
Lots more but this is a good start. All of these things are small and mostly can be worked around but they add up I'm a big way.
The road on Linux isn't completely rosy and can take more learning if you need to do anything really complicated. Tools are great but not necessarily pretty, etc.
Docker [was] off on macOS through no fault of the OS. Particular software dev teams taking shortcuts is on themselves.
Linux also requires reboots for certain updates (plus you can disable checks for updates entirely and run one only when you want to on macOS, or even use `softwareupdate` for finer-grained control, so if it was "nagging you constantly" that's kind of on you).
`sudo` works "as expected" for everything that doesn't involve conflict with the built-in System Integrity Protection, which is most things (in the past three or so years on macOS I've only run up against it twice). There isn't any "fiddling with firmware" going on. Plus if you want total freedom to delete your entire `/bin` folder or something, again you can disable SIP and move on with your life.
I'm currently running Bash 5 on my MBP, so I don't get your outdated software complaint either. macOS doesn't have any magical power to force you to use the versions of (third-party!) software it ships with.
If these are the first complaints that come to mind it just sounds like you haven't used the OS much and entirely refused to explore it or give it a chance in the time that you did. I mean, not even trying to set your own update preferences?
There are a few low-hanging improvements (updates almost never require you to restart). But it's a lot of tiny things that add up, some of which are hard to put into words. If I had to pick one thing that encompassed a lot of them, it would be that when I use Mac I feel like I'm adjusting my work-style to what Apple thinks it should be. In other words, my Linux setup now feels like it's a professional tool, and the Mac I use for work feels like a consumer-grade OS that happens to have work tools bundled on it.
This is hard to put into words. If I'm an artist, my tools are very, very focused and robust. I might have specific pens and brushes that I know the feel of very well. They're not flashy and they don't have advertisements written on them, and they don't change their properties behind my back. Everything about them is designed to help me draw. If I'm a musician, I spend a lot of money to buy an instrument, and I get to know it very well. I have particular brands of reeds that are consistent that I'm likely preparing or sanding myself. I know my instrument so well that I can tell you which notes trend slightly flat or sharp, and after a while adjusting to that becomes instinctive.
So if I'm a professional programmer, I likewise want a computing environment that I understand completely and can service myself, and that is very customized to my own preferences. It's no different from any other professional field -- the point of the computer is to help me get work done, everything else is secondary.
You'll get different answers if you ask someone why Linux makes them productive, because the benefit of Linux is that it adapts to you. For me, personally, the biggest upgrades to my productivity have been:
1. Switching to Linux in general
2. Switching to Emacs/Spacemacs (Emacs works best on Linux)
3. Switching to Arch as my main distro (which is hard to do unless you already know Linux)
4. Most recently, switching to EXWM as a window manager (which is a lot easier to do on Arch)
Each step of this process has been me getting rid of things that distract me from work, and each step has built on the last. Switching to Linux gives me a setup that is much more customizable and stable, switching to Emacs gives me an editor that is very tightly integrated into the host operating system, switching to Arch allows me to have a very minimal setup (its easier to debug because there's less going on), and switching to EXWM allows me to focus the entire setup on work.
On the other hand, I have an old Surface Pro 3 that's running Manjaro/Gnome that I use for drawing. It's a very different setup from my main computer, because I use it for different things. Again, my computer should adapt to my workflow, not the other way around. The Surface setup is actually interesting, because it suffers from driver issues (unreliable Wifi, bad suspend support). And yet I'm still more productive on it than I was on Windows. I think people underestimate how much time and energy can get lost to distractions, surprise updates, stuff like that. Specialized devices are really stinking good for getting stuff done.
But everyone is different. I know people that get frustrated by the initial setup times or needing to dig more into the OS internals, and I get that -- it's reasonable. For me, once I got past that I found Linux to be really stable, because it doesn't change until you tell it to. Linux is the only OS I'll set up for someone who's not tech-savy, because putting in more work up front means I won't need to do as much regular maintenance.
How is pen support for your Surface using Manjaro? Is it as good as it is on Windows (which is decent at best). I have a Surface 3 sitting around. I would love to repurpose it for drawing using Linux. I imagine battery life is probably terrible though.
Pen support is great, touch support is adequate, HDPI support is bad. Most of this comes down to individual apps -- Linux devs just don't think about touch or responsive design, and the frameworks they use are buggy or need config options set. Occasionally on Krita I'll get issues where I'll need to hit the tablet home to jump out of the app and back in to reset the touch "mode" that the app thinks I'm in. Kind of annoying.
I would say that it is not nearly as good as the touch support in Windows 8.1, but is comparable or potentially a little better than the touch support in Windows 10. Gnome's touch UI is good, but that's more just a testament to how much worse touch support got in Windows 10.
Krita is not amazing, but is still surprisingly good. When I first started using it, Krita was a massive pain and I missed Clip Studio all the time. It's gotten way, way better, and I now only rarely miss Clip Studio.
I'm honestly not sure what battery life is like. I will regularly use it for about 4-5 hours a day unplugged, but usually I'm at a desk and everything I own is plugged in. I still have Windows 10 on an old partition just to make it easier to calibrate the pen hardware (https://www.sony.com/electronics/support/downloads/W0009338), but I've never taken the time to compare the battery life for both.
It was kind of a pain to get everything set up, but that was years ago, and now that it is set up I just don't think about it any more. I'm very happy with its performance as a drawing tablet; at least for the type of illustration work I personally do. If you're comfortable with Linux, I'd say go for it. If not, you're probably better off with a Wacom tablet that won't force you to fight with Linux drivers.
Thanks. Yeah, I'm not super comfortable with Linux, but agree with your mindset. I want a professional tool that works for me without constantly demanding updates. I also dabble in Clip Studio, primarily for comic inking. I really like it. It was unfortunate to see it go to a subscription model for iOS.
I didn't want to go into details there, but Magit is wildly good. Line-by-line git-blame an entire file with 3 keystrokes, time travel back-and-forth over commits for a single file, quickly preview any file in the repo from any branch/commit using fuzzy-search. This kind of stuff really shines when you're working on a large company repo -- it meant if someone from another department called me up to talk about some obscure feature branch, I could open the relevant files without switching branches or stashing my current changes.
Aside from Magit, I also get a lot of use out of Org-mode (Emacs pure-text notetaking/todo-list client). I'm syncing to Android with Orgzly. Org-mode was the original feature that got me to try out Emacs, and for a while it was the biggest reason I stuck with it, since I'd never used Vim keybindings before. Vim keybindings made me less productive until I learned them, but were balanced by just how good Org-mode was.
I've even grown to appreciate packages like Calc (Emacs calculator). Dang if RPN style input isn't actually faster to use once you get used to it.
I do as well. If you're on Mac, you should still totally look into Emacs, it's great. Heck, if you're on Windows you should still at least think about Emacs.
Emacs overall works slightly better on Linux, because it's primarily optimized for that system. One big area where you'll notice that is if you start embedding X windows into buffers. EXWM is definitely not something I'd try to set up on Mac.
If you're not trying to do stuff like that, then Emacs on Mac is fine. I use a Mac at work and Emacs is a big productivity boost.
Unfortunately, as Apple tries to integrate more and more of the supply chain, and other computer-makers are copying Apple's business model, I predict that generic computers (the ones you install Linux on) will slowly disappear from the market.
I always wonder where apple is going to proprietary hardware. For example the “t2” chip, which seems to be a “computer in a computer” and only Apple. I suspect other hardware manufacturers just want windows to work for the most part.
From Wikipedia “Thge Apple T2 chip is a SoC from Apple first released in the iMac Pro 2017. It is a 64-bit ARMv8 chip (a variant of the A10, or T8010), and runs a separate operating system called bridgeOS 2.0,[95] which is a watchOS derivative.[96] It provides a secure enclave for encrypted keys, gives users the ability to lock down the computer's boot process, handles system functions like the camera and audio control, and handles on-the-fly encryption and decryption for the solid-state drive.[97][98][99]”
> I predict that generic computers (the ones you install Linux on) will slowly disappear from the market.
It seems the be going the opposite way, since by far and large there's more offering hardware wise than there has ever been, so what you see is manufacturers catering to niches more than before.
Here in Germany, the majority of DIY PC shops have died or are connected to the machine selling parts over the Internet.
Everyone just buys laptops with pre-installed OSes, phones and tablets.
Most parts shops are now targeting the Maker movement, aka Arduino, Raspberry and friends and even gamers prefer solutions like Asus Republic of Gamers series.
So actually it looks like the return of the vertical integration of 8 and 16 bit home markets of yore.
Apple's market share is tiny. They don't have any significant influence on generic computers. I don't really see other vendors following Apple's model. I still can build PC from different parts, like 20 years ago and it just works. While I did not closely followed non-Apple laptops, I believe that they are the same, just ordinary computers with ordinary parts which can run Linux just fine, if drivers are implemented. Glued batteries and welded SSDs are cancer, yeah, but that's more about overall quality of the product, rather than restricting Linux to run. There are enough "Enterprise" laptops which you can disassemble with screwdriver and they are not going anywhere because enough people understand their value.
Well, I still can't install Linux on a phone. This tells me than once freedoms are lost, they don't easily come back and as we get new technology, it doesn't necessarily allow to run Linux.
Agree with vbezhenar that Apple doesn't really budge the needle to make this happen. And then you have vendors like Dell that are specifically catering to the Linux market.
Yes, but what prevents Dell from becoming more like Apple, e.g. by installing vendor lock-in features at the BIOS level, or work with Intel to install such features at the CPU level.
Also, you can buy a GPU but in some ways it is locked down (by NVidia), so as technology progresses we might be moving away from the "generically useful computer" model.
Because competition. It would only limit their market, not increase it. Dell competes with other laptop vendors in this "generic" market vs. the lock Apple has on their OS. And do you really think Intel would work with one specific vendor in this space to given them exclusive CPU features that nobody else would get?
NVidia has always been locked down so that is not news. If you are concerned about the GPU, buy AMD and enjoy their open drivers. Intel is entering this space too with open drivers as well. And who knows, perhaps NVidia might be opening up a bit after all vs. going the other way?
“Generic computers” were never a thing. For decades, every computer shipped with Windows, the drivers were for Windows, the hardware was only tested on Windows, and to make it work, Linux would usually have to pretend to be Windows (e.g. when evaluating ACPI). Except for Macs, which were the same but with macOS. Most hardware was not documented. If Linux support existed, it was thanks to the work of reverse engineers; it often didn’t exist. If you bought a random laptop, you could expect some of the hardware to be unsupported.
These days… I’d say things aren’t all that different. On one hand, Linux has better hardware support overall, and Dell and some smaller manufacturers are offering Linux laptops. On the other, a lot of hardware still doesn’t work, or doesn’t work well. Some laptops have been getting more custom hardware, including Apple’s and others, and Linux has fallen behind a bit in supporting it. But it’s nothing new for Linux to take time to support new hardware.
My experience is somewhat opposite. I love Linux. I've used it for over a decade in various roles. But it always ends up the same - either some obscure Bluetooth or graphics bug frustrates me to the point I can't stand it anymore, or I get fed up with 2 hours of battery life and go back to macOS.
In this case, I'm measuring my productivity by the time it takes to mess around with the OS to get the desired result, and the fact that the stability baseline just never seems to get there.
I get and support the attraction to Linux on the desktop, but find YMMV to be very much true.
> or I get fed up with 2 hours of battery life and go back to macOS.
Not sure about the Bluetooth part (i had this kind of issue once in like 10 years) but the battery life, getting 2 hours is not common anymore. Sure, you won't get as long as Windows on the same hardware more of the time, but 5 to 7 hours on a full charge is what you can expect, if not longer.
This and it's come a long way in the last 10yrs but it's more dependent on hardware. Optimus still an issue with nvidia (3hrs) vs 630(5hrs) and have to switch between. However, just bought a pair of (used) x270's to travel with - one has Fedora and the other windows 10. Linux lasts 8-9 hours and the Windows about the same (maybe less).
Maxed out X250 had been reported to last 26h hours online, with plain debian install, no tricks like Macs' "oh, you look outside, I'll go to sleep now"
Anecdotally, my cheapo $500 linux laptop gets a full work day (so 6-8 hours depending on what I'm doing, unless I run docker, then it gets maybe 3 hours tops) while my previous 2017 $2000 macbook pro typically got around 4 hours for the same type of work.
I did spend about 2 hours optimising for battery when I got the laptop, but it was a once-off thing.
I try to move over every six months to a year or so, and it's the same gripes every time at this point.
Driver support's reasonable now, and the desktop environments are generally solid enough, but things like mixed DPI work really badly on Linux, my browser nearly always tears when scrolling on my secondary display, etc.
But... the single biggest killer for me though is how badly Linux copes with very low amounts of free memory. Put 32G in a machine and it still periodically runs completely out under my dev workload and when that happens, the whole system becomes unusable and I have to hard reboot it. I'm not sure what macOS and Windows do differently, but it just doesn't happen on either of those two OSes.
I really want to have the freedom to pick and choose my hardware more, but at the moment I keep falling back to macOS.
It's a UNIX environment so it has the tooling I want and a solid GUI that works well.
There are discussions happening on LKML right now about how to solve this. I don’t have a link handy, but saw them either here or on LWN recently.
I used to have that problem too, but it went away when I stopped using JetBrains products :). Not for any reason other than the contract I was working on ended.
I saw it as more of a Java problem on Linux than a Jetbrains one with Android Studio.
When Android Studio is run with large code base on emulator, memory issues were frequent in Linux with halting issues. SO has several such cases.
No such issues with macOS, even with mutiple Jetbrains IDEs in parallel(Same memory config).
I wonder how Android Studio is doing on ChromeOS, considering many of those are low end machines. I'm sure they had to optimize it, but I assume the issue would persist till the Linux kernel itself is fixed.
To elaborate a bit based on my understanding of the issue: VirtualBox seems like a great program to tickle the issue.
During a memory pressure scenario, the kernel starts looking around for things that it can get out of RAM to free up space. If swap is enabled and not saturated, paging out some data to disk is a likely option. Reducing disk cache size works too. But... when the usual candidates run out, things have to get more clever. Things like shared libraries can get paged out! If one of those pages is requested, it can be reloaded from disk. Or, in the VirtualBox case, the mmap'd disk image can be removed mostly from RAM and have those pages loaded from disk as needed. Performance sucks terribly, but it keeps trucking on.
The wrinkle in all of this is SSDs. The out-of-memory (OOM) killer heuristically watches the system and kills off processes that cause memory pressure problems. These heuristics, however, are expecting these page-in and page-out operations to be slow (as they were on HDDs). On newer SSDs, the disks are too fast to trip the OOM killer into action! This is why, when this problem manifests, your disk activity light goes on solid, even if you don't have swap enabled. The kernel is sitting there trying every trick in the book, and the OOM killer doesn't see what's happening. Every individual page fault is handled quickly, there's just waaaaaay too many of them.
Yep, this is an accurate description according to my understanding of the issue too.
The lesson I've recently learned is that, for now, swap is necessary on Linux machines with SSDs. I've enabled zswap and added a 4 GB swap file to my machine with 16 GB of RAM, and the problem hasn't reoccurred for me since then. Supposedly, the memory pressure measure in the kernel gets a more accurate reading when swap is enabled, but I don't know for sure that that's true. At the very least, you can page out the memory you're using the least instead of file-backed pages, which is what happens in memory pressure situations on SSDs (as opposed to OOM killing).
I find that for low RAM situations that zram is very handy and allows for a graceful reduction in performance under memory stress rather than a cliff edge that you get with a swap partition.
And this is why many people like me stick to Mac. Yes there's a solution for it on Linux, but no I don't want to look for it, maintain it, and at some point when a new 'best solution' is available keep up to date with all that...
On Linux, the distributions do that for you. You don't have to, but if you want, you can.
On Mac, you can't, even if you want. So you won't see discussions like these, because Mac does not have that kind of visibility inside. If something is broken (and Mac has its share of broken things), you get to keep all the pieces.
+1 to this as a workaround until the kernel finally addresses the issue. Earlyoom is a user space OOM-killer that kicks in before the system starts the mad paging dance.
It seems likely that something can be done to make the behavior less perverse but I'm not convinced that the behavior CAN be better than something like earlyoom.
What makes earlyoom useful is the fact that you can tell the machine what is low value and likely to be problematic. I'm not sure that information can be determined automatically. I'm further not sure what a better strategy than start killing low value problematic processes when we reach a threshold looks like.
Another alternative for people who still love macOS but can't tolerate the dumpster fire that is the butterfly keyboard is to get a new Mac Mini, then get a monitor of your choice and righteous clickety-clack buckling spring keyboard to go with it.
I had the same issue. The solution I settled on (and have been very happy with) has been a Mac Mini as a polished front end/web browsing machine, and then a Threadripper workstation running Ubuntu that I ssh into and do all dev work on. The pleasure of OS X without being so limited by Apple’s hardware options (and extreme markup).
I've been in a couple of interesting discussions about Linux memory management lately that enlightened me somewhat, and I won't claim to be an expert now, but I've been around the low-memory block enough to understand now that, there's no simple right answer to the question of "Do you have swap?"
"The Linux kernel has overcommit baked into the fiber of its being." I've begun to understand that this idea is so deeply engrained in the kernel that in a multi-tenant or desktop workstation, you simply can't extract it back out and "just provide enough RAM," unless you know the performance characteristics and you really mean it when you say "that should be enough RAM." If you don't have any swap and the kernel starts to run out of memory, it's going to start evicting whatever pages it can back to disk.
(Wait, pages back to disk? I told you I didn't have swap) Yes – the linux kernel can page things back to disk even if you don't have swap, remember all of the binaries you're running have originally come from that disk, and the kernel knows it doesn't strictly need to have them in memory until they are volatile, or you tried to read those pages again.
Having some swap gives the kernel something else to evict, so have a healthy amount of swap and Linux will find the occasion to use it for the least frequently used pages that are not already on disk. This will improve your "nearly out of memory" performance.
The second worst thing that you can do is put your swap on fast SSD or NVMe, and it's not why you think. The kernel is making decisions based on a heuristic which is complicated and well-documented, but inscrutable. If the solid disk is 50x faster than the spinning disk that the swap was originally designed to use, then swapping will cost less overall and the heuristic will lean on it as a strategy to keep the OOM killer away even more often. You may find your cache recycle rates going through the roof because things can be paged out to disk and re-loaded faster than should be possible. I don't fully understand this part, but I suspect the answer is "try to use Swap less, and be aware of when you are using it."
The kernel does really not want to kill off your processes, and it has more opportunities than ever to ensure it keeps too many balls in the air when you have asked it to do so. So, find a way to stay ahead of the kernel and know better. If you have a dock widget that tells when you are going above 50% swap usage, you can close some tabs before it gets to be an unrecoverable situation. It's a mystery to me why modern computers don't come with disk activity lights, as this problem we didn't need dock widgets to solve 20 years ago when literally every computer came equipped with one.
The best advice is to have enough RAM for whatever you're doing, and at 32GB "I think you've had enough." At any rate the one suggestion that I could give is, if you anticipate running out of memory (ever, and it looks like you still do), then you should be sure to have a healthy amount of swap, to me that's probably at least 5 or 6GB but YMMV.
But, 32GB for a desktop workstation really ought to be enough IMHO, so try to find a way that you don't run out? If you're eating all that memory up with VMs, try a lighter weight solution for your ephemeral workloads like footloose, which behaves like a VM in the ways you generally tend to want for your dev workloads, (like for example, it can run systemd like your deploy target most likely does, if you're using VMs to match the deploy target). Footloose doesn't impose the "VM's" whole footprint upfront due to actually being a container, so when you run out of memory it will be because your application workloads used too much, not because your virtual machine manager has grabbed much more than it needed.
Same. I use Linux (specifically Ubuntu) on my work/study computer and I love it.
But, weird hardware issues popped up now and then which I didn't have to deal with on my MacBook, such as the wifi card that had to be manually installed, the headphone jack sometimes doing weird things, the processors overheating.
I was able to solve those problems by searching online and finding others who had the same issue which lead to instructions to fix the problem, but I just can't imagine my family members who have never used the Terminal in their entire life having the same success.
The fact is that with my old MacBooks (and the computers I've given to my family) the only hardware related issue we've had over the last 10+ years is the battery related issues from the MBP.
As I'm typing this, I got 14hours and 33minutes of battery left and it's only charged to 83%. In hardcore scenarios out of the grid for a few days (where I go sailing) I got a few spare batteries. (the laptop is the Lenovo X270)
> In this case, I'm measuring my productivity by the time it takes to mess around with the OS to get the desired result, and the fact that the stability baseline just never seems to get there.
The time investment goes down significantly over time. After a decade using linux on as a daily driver, I don't remember the last time I've tweak anything.
> fed up ... and go back to macOS.
Same thing but the other way around. I stay away from my Mac except for:
- making sure my applications look good enough on a Mac and are usable
- making music as I'm not patient enough to relearn everything on a different platform but that's just laziness from my end
I'm in my fourth decade of technical activity. I'm leveraging skills and tools I learned in my first day using Unix, in the mid-1980s.
Over the same time, I've gained, and obsoleted, skills on CPM, MacOS, VM/CMS, MVS, VMS, DOS, Windows 3x, WinNT, and classic Macintosh.
Yes, there are a few flavours of Unix -- BSD, SysV4, Solaris, HPUX, Irix, AIX, FreeBSD, and numerous Linux flavours. Those, and even OSX/MacOS share far more in common than all the other platforms.
Unix knowlege has proved extraordinarily durable, as have the tools. Though there are new utilities and environments coming out frequently, old standards remain available and still work. I'm not forced onto that treadmill, most especially not for my personal work.
GRRM still uses Wordstar. Works for him.
(That's ... one of the editors I've used as well, though I vastly prefer vim these days -- one of those "first day on Unix" skillsets I'm still earning dividends on.)
I'm not exactly sure the GRRM point hold true. He might write on Wordstar, but the distraction free writing environment hasn't exactly helped him finish books in a decade.
There's also Stephen Bourne, who had initially programmed in Algol, and has a bunch of Algol-like macros that he uses when programming in C. I'm not finding an original source, though several references turn up.
Muscle memory is a real beast to change. The local optimum is always "stick to what I know".
Yeah sure, I've heard it all. Let me guess: What you conveniently forgot to mention is how you only use terminal applications with a minimal window manager, which makes a comparison to MacOS or Windows completely pointless since their desktop environments are 40 years advanced and thus have to do a lot more computation.
There's very little net gain to changes in GUI. Most of the fundamental metaphors actually date from the MoaD, December of 1968, fifty-one years ago this year.
Actually, that still has capabilities lacking from "modern" GUIs.
I watch "normal" computer users struggling to keep up with even very modest changes to MacOS UIs. Which, for the record, are remarkably consistent with the first iteration, deployed in 2001, eighteen years ago. It's older now than the Classic Mac interface was when OS X was introduced (1984 - 2001: 17 years).
What is the point of advances if not to provide greater end-user utility, functionality, ease of use, etc?
Again: changes in GUI demonstrably do not deliver that.
And good GUIs don't change.
Because in large part of the institutional cost of breaking shell scripts, TUIs don't change often (and tools violating this principle are quickly and sharply deprecated and/or replaced with those that don't). Which means that as a user (or administrator or programmer), the investment you put into using console tools tends to have an exceedingly long half life.
Mind: I'd given this deliberate and conscious thought in the mid-1990s when I was faced with a few possible directions to take my own computing career and use. I'd already seen numerous platforms, notably proprietary and GUI ones, change substantially, or die entirely. Seemed to me that the skill-preserving route would be with Linux or the BSDs. That's proved a good decision and rationale.
Even a "minimal window manager" -- say, twm or vtwm, provides extensive functionality and does not change. There's a hell of a lot to be said for learning a skill once and not having to either replace it with another, or keep obsoleting previously acquired knowledge and habits.
I don't use twm myself, outside occasional testing. One of the best and most skillful programmers I've ever known did use it, and had a highly tricked out configuration, almost completely keyboard driven, that let him fly around his display and workspaces with an amazing faculty. The fact that the windowmanager itself is flyweight and bedrock stable only added to this.
My own preference is WindowMaker, based on the design principles of NextStep (1988), and largely static since the late 1990s. It has capabilities modern WMs and DEs still lack, is extremely high performance, and extraordinarily stable. Graphically, it's nonobtrusive. I might swap it for a tiling WM, but it's served me well for over two decades.
>The time investment goes down significantly over time. After a decade using linux on as a daily driver, I don't remember the last time I've tweak anything.
So, it gets stable after the first 4-5 years of tweaking. Doesn't that make the parent's point?
And after those 4-5 years, wont one have to get a new laptop at some point, upgrade to newer OS version, and adjust to whatever changes the FOSS projects like Gnome/KDE/etc did in the previous years all from the beginning?
>- making music as I'm not patient enough to relearn everything on a different platform but that's just laziness from my end
Just laziness? As if Linux has anything remotely as powerful/coherent as Live/Cubase/Logic/etc, Native Instruments, Arturia, and all the other VSTs?
> And after those 4-5 years, wont one have to get a new laptop at some point, upgrade to newer OS version, and adjust to whatever changes the FOSS projects like Gnome/KDE/etc did in the previous years all from the beginning?
But that's part of what I love about linux, my text-based configuration doesn't have to change because I upgrade, unlike on Mac where the name of some `defaults write` key suddenly renames or disappears altogether.
In the rare cases that something in a Linux distribution changes so much it upends your config, you're just a package install away from getting the old behaviour back until you want (if ever) to deal with it.
I've been using Linux full time for 3 years now and I agree. Linux comes with lots of little, edge casey bugs. Like a thousand paper cuts, they add up and hamper productivity.
I can finally say Ubuntu MATE 18.04 for me is pretty solid. There's still two issues I wrestle with, but other than that it's been very dependable for me.
When it comes to OSes these days, I feel like you have to pick the least bad one. A truly rock solid OS just doesn't exist in my experience.
I've not had obscure graphics or bluetooth problems for like 4 years now. Graphics problems have not been a problem for the last decade.
I've been running linux desktops and laptops for about 20 years, starting with early/pre-RHEL redhat, and moving around to many others. My first laptop was a pentium thing at 75 MHz, and I triple booted Linux, OS2, and Windows/DOS on it. I wound up kicking off the last two, as I used them only infrequently.
Battery life is an issue for me, but its not linux specific. The laptops I have, all have power hungry ram and GPU cards. I get 2 hours on them, or if I play with the brightness and other things, I can stretch it to 4 hours. My old 2010 laptop (still in use, still running linux) is a 16GB ram, 0.5TB SSD affair with an NVidia GTX560m card. My 2018 laptop is a 48GB ram, 1.5 TB SSD (0.5 + 1.0) with an M2 256GB SSD for the included windows 10 home, and a GTX 1060m card. Windows 10 on the newer laptop lasts about 2.5 hours before it shuts down. I now run the pre-installed windows 10 via a kvm with passthrough of the M2 into the instance.
All of these are currently running late model Linux Mint 19.2 with accelerated graphics.
Work laptop is a Mac 16 GB ram, 512GB SSD with an intel/AMD hybrid graphics bit. This will last 5 hours with significant tweaks to aggressive power off, and me not running any builds on it.
I like the mac for its physical fit and finish, weight, etc. But I need to bring the power supply with me, as I can burn through much of the power in a 2 hour meeting.
I like the linux machine for work, and everything else. It just works. The drivers just work. The networking just works. Single/multi displays just work. I have cinammon (display manager) set up to a very comfortable configuration.
I am hopeful that the day job will enable me to trade up to a bigger machine with linux and nvidia graphics at some point ... 32GB is bare minimum for a functional machine for me, 48->64GB is better.
My home office deskside is an older Sandy Bridge machine with 16 cores, 128 GB ram, old GTX750ti card, running the same environment as on my laptop.
Sounds more like AMD dropped support for Linux. It's shitty, but I'm not sure what you can expect from distributions if AMD stops updating their drivers for newer versions of xserver.
I don't have laptops with older AMD. My current laptop has the ability to switch between CPU and discrete GPU, but it doesn't work well even under windows, so I disabled it in BIOS.
AMD drivers have been hit and miss for a while, which is one of two reasons I tend to prefer NVidia cards. NVidia took time to make sure their whole stack works reasonably well.
This is a Sager Notebook NP8156. There are newer models, including better NVidia cards. Up to 64 GB ram. I bought mine with 16GB and added 32GB. Very expandable. Battery life is 2-ish hours, though can be increased by reducing brightness.
Lenovo has a 32 GB max model, and HP has a 64 GB max model.
I've been using Linux for the last two years, having switched from macOS, and I haven't had a single weird problem. Not one.
I use Arch Linux, and a combination of KDE and i3 so one would expect me to have a ton of rediculous problems. But I haven't had a single problem. It took me a single day to set up my computer how I wanted it (I've used Linux before) and I haven't had to touch a config file since.
Part of this might be that in using a Dell XPS DE, which is designed to work well with Linux, but I think it might just be a YMMV situation. And I do a lot of back end, applications, web and front end development (mostly in my spare time), so I think I've hit a lot of programmer use-cases.
Also, I get 15 hour battery life streaming 4K video on my 4K touch screen, and more doing other stuff.
I also used an Apple Magic Touchpad or whatever over Bluetooth with it, including gestures and it worked really well. Better, actually, as far as Bluetooth, than my Mac. I only stopped because it wasn't good for my hand and wrist health.
Just adding my anecdata. Overall my experience with Linux has been hugely positive.
It also works excellent on low quality gear, I have some Point of Sales with very old computers, they just need internet, a browser and a thermal printer.
Installed Xubuntu and forgot about those for years, the experience is still smooth, fast and the computers turn-on fast.
“Things just work in Linux” - please do share this magical setup you have because my experience over the last 20 years is that nothing just works. MacOS mostly works, Windows sometimes works, Linux never works.
I'm actually being driven to Linux by the absolute crappiness of Windows 10 and OS X. Oh, how the wheel turns ...
> Windows sometimes works
I'm going to take exception to this. Windows 10 has been a disaster for me.
Effectively, Windows 10 treats me like a "supplicant". "Oh, great computer, can you please do some work for me right now?" "I say NAY! I must now commence my Update Ritual. Please come back and ask again. But I make no guarantees."
Every ... single ... time. WTF!
> MacOS mostly works
Unless you want to do modern graphics and then you get the "joy" of learning Metal (or not). Or, you can simply throw in the towel and switch to Windows/Linux where you can use OpenGL and Vulkan. Valve is funding MoltenVK (a Vulkan shim on top of Metal) because it is more cost effective than dealing with Metal. Let that sink in for a minute.
And OS X hardware is a disaster. We've actually stockpiled used-2015 era OS X laptops in the office. At this point we have enough if someone has a laptop that goes down.
I didn't use Windows XP or anything since. I'm now using Windows 10 due to a work situation. But seriously. The Update Ritual happens out-of-ours when you're not using your computer. It seems to take a few days longer than it needs to (why not do it tonight? why must you ask me for days and days, and then finally do it overnight?). But it's generally quite reasonable.
I don't fully understand why Linux is able to do its system updates as one of several tasks, but Windows has to take over the computer to do it though. Is it just that if a Linux box gets stuffed during update, the user is probably able to recover, so the relative risks are different?
I've never had a minor update on Linux break the entire graphics stack like osx 10.14.4 did. And I've certainly never waited month(s) for a major breakage to be fixed. For an ecosystem with the smallest variety of hardware, they sure are bad at supporting it...
Upgrading to Ubuntu 18.04 broke my graphics stack. I couldn't even log on. The only option was to roll back to a snapshot of the previous system. The problem was acknowledged but not deemed important.
I find that many people who say things like this have never actually tried to boost their productivity on Mac in the first place. As someone who uses Alfred, Karabiner Elements, Keyboard Maestro, Spectacle, Omnifocus, and a host of plugins on fish shell besides, it baffles me how slow my peers are at doing basic stuff they do twenty times a day. Just set up a shortcut, it's trivial.
Not so trivial on Linux. The fact that the author considers Firefox add-ons (!) a Linux feature is a clear indicator they never even tried on a Mac and were enamored by Linux due to the lionisation in the particular subreddits they follow.
Kind of like here! Not that there is anything wrong with getting excited about something. Just don't make sweeping generalizations.
Also, a small tip: You can put your Mac apps and configurations in Dropbox and they will show up and work as you expect across your multiple machines.
One thing I sorely miss after switching from Linux to Mac is i3. Spetactle gets close, but something as trivial(?) as switching window focus with the keyboard I couldn't figure out a solution for... Can Keyboard Maestro do it?
I haven’t used i3, but I missed good keyboard context switching support when I started using macOS. There’s some reasonable solutions out there, but my current favorite interface customizer is BetterTouchTool, which is setup to let you customize any input for any kind of OS function you might want. I have a 4-monitor setup so easy window/tile management is important to me. I have a handful of keyboard chords to put windows on the screen/quadrant combo that I want. My TouchBar is permanently set to media keys with media info + notification area + emoji keyboard. For keyboard control over focus, I use the Contexts app inter-app and ShortCat within app.
I personally use Contexts (https://contexts.co) for switching between applications. It functions similar to rofi's application switcher (fuzzy keyboard driven switching).
Yabai doesn't handle window switching on its own but it can use SKHD (https://github.com/koekeishiya/skhd) or any other application that can bind terminal commands to keyboard shortcuts such as Hammerspoon (https://www.hammerspoon.org) or BetterTouchTool (https://folivora.ai) or even Keyboard Maestro. The commands are context-aware of spaces and the placement of windows on the x-y plane so you can move between windows relative to their position on the screen.
I find the opposite (and I've used Linux since 1997, plus several other unices starting from Sun OS).
Things tend to just work on the Mac, even though I use it for a wide variety of tasks (programming mainly, writing, music, and video secondarily, plus some photo work). Music and Video (DAWs and NLEs) are almost a joke in Linux.
You have to be cautious to buy compatible laptop hardware, and still there's always something not working on new setups, usually sleep, sound, GPU compositor, bluetooth, etc.
> You have to be cautious to buy compatible laptop hardware, and still there's always something not working on new setups, usually sleep, sound, GPU compositor, bluetooth, etc.
Technically, there are more 100% Linux compatible laptops than macos dito...
That is true even if you limit yourself to thinkpads
Things tend to just work on the Mac, even though I use it for a wide variety of tasks (programming mainly, writing, music, and video secondarily, plus some photo work).
I'm pretty sure that would be my problem if I tried to move (back to) Linux. A lot of the HN crowd is (understandably!) focused on development, and the chances are your favorite dev environment is going to be good-or-better on Linux as it is on the Mac. But I can't find a screenplay writing program on Linux I personally like as much as Highland for the Mac, or a Markdown editor that I like as much as iA Writer or BBEdit for the "heavy lifting" of technical writing at work, or a graphics editor I like as much as Acorn, or a Twitter client I like as much as Twitterrific, or a Markdown previewer/converter I like as much as Marked, and and and. I know it's all subjective, but it's a sticking point. And the last I checked, at least, I couldn't find good equivalents to OS X Services/Quick Actions, which can be just amazing.
I'm sure if Apple really tanks, I could make the switch and hit a happy place, but it'd be turbulent for a while.
> I'm pretty sure that would be my problem if I tried to move (back to) Linux. A lot of the HN crowd is (understandably!) focused on development, and the chances are your favorite dev environment is going to be good-or-better on Linux as it is on the Mac.
Those of us into graphics programming, UI/UX are better served with macOS/Windows tooling, development enviroments and SDKs.
That is what triggered my move back into those platforms.
Those of us into graphics programming, UI/UX are better served with macOS/Windows tooling, development enviroments and SDKs.
That's been my observation and occasional experience. I'm more of a technical writer these days, but I've done light graphics and UX work at various points over the years and prefer what's available on the Mac. (My experience on Windows is pretty limited.)
To start on a new laptop in an office on OSX I just list my brew packages on my previous laptop, copy my ~/ and move that to the new laptop and I'm set up in the time it takes for it to install all my brew packages and casks.
(designer/developer) I too have finally switched to linux from osx. The final decision came down to the current models of Macbook Pros. I’m currently using a Lenovo P1 Thinkpad with Ubuntu 18. So far it’s worked out great!
I remember the first time I used Linux. A few years later I got a Macbook Air. I love the flexibilities Linux offers. The way you can just change the look and feel of the OS felt empowering. While OS X look and feel is beautiful, I do miss that customizability.
I've always thought about doing this but keep on running into reasons (or excuses) not to.
Right now I've gone half in and have Fedora Server on an Intel NUC that I SSH into. So not quite a desktop replacement, but a nice linux environment for doing dev in. Disadvantage is you rely on a network connection for this approach, but it will do for now
The majority of paid for DAWs are also missing (Bitwig & Reaper only I think), then on top of that the vast majority of plugins are not built for Linux either, additionally lots of pro-spec hardware doesn't have Linux support. Of course your argument still holds true, in that most users (especially here) won't be pro-audio users, but hopefully in time the support for pro-audio users will increase on Linux, because Apple and Microsoft seem to be making the experience steadily worse.
One big blocker for me the last time I tried Linux was that I couldn't get Serum's installer to run in Wine. Helm is the closest Linux-supporting synth to Serum in usability and quality, but the gap between them is too great.
I was blown away the last time I tried Darktable as a Lightroom replacement. I can see why you might not like GIMP instead of Photoshop (and using Blender as a video editor has a pretty big learning curve), but most of the functionality you’d need is actually there.
If the proprietary media apps are a must, having a Windows VM works good (with GPU pass through if you need it), as does dual-booting with Windows or a Hackintosh system (which is actually pretty easy these days).
Ooh, I see darktable is finally available on Windows too! I'm still running an antiquated version of Lightroom I purchased something like 10 years ago - very keen to give darktable a try!
how do you type an em dash, a mu, an eszett, et c on linux without looking up arcane codes each time? (option dash, option m, option s, respectively). how do you do color calibration? how do you do messaging? how do you get non-ugly fonts?
I don’t manually type the Unicode characters for any of that because I’m usually using TeX, where typing three dashes becomes an em dash and there are commands for Greek and other characters. You can also configure the right alt key to be used for this kind of stuff.
As for messaging, I’ve heard good things about KDE Connect. Not sure if it works with iOS though.
For pretty user-interface and default fonts, you can edit a fontconfig file that will let you specify aliases for fonts and some pretty complex configuration to get the right font in each saturation. See https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Font_configuration
I don’t manually type the Unicode characters for any of that because I’m usually using TeX, where typing three dashes becomes an em dash and there are commands for Greek and other characters.
I use xetex for a little project, and while some of those character mappings are very convenient others are not. Vulgar fractions, for instance, work in some fonts but not others. For instance LTC Californian Pro has the unicode glyphs for the vulgar fractions, but xetex doesn't translate e.g. 3/8 to ⅜. Goudy Oldstyle is missing many vulgar fractions (e.g. ⅜), but the tex mappings work. Go figure.
Granted, fractions aren't mapped to keys in OSX, but I use plenty of those mappings on a regular basis including the bullet (•, ·), degree (°), accented characters (á, é, í, ó, ü, ö, ñ), currency characters (£, ¢, €), and the section character — §. I can get all of these with simple keystrokes and, best of all, zero fiddling with keybindings.
> how do you type an em dash, a mu, an eszett, et c on linux without looking up arcane codes each time?
Probably Compose - - -, Compose s s, and Compose m u respectively. Or, if they wanted the Mac layout, they'd run ‘setxkbmap us mac -print | xkbcomp - $DISPLAY’ or tick the equivalent box in their favourite GUI settings. (Option-SHIFT-dash for an em dash, BTW; option-dash is an en dash.)
X and Mac keyboard layout systems have similar power; I slightly prefer the Mac one because you can define arbitrary dead keys, but on the other hand X has Compose.
I also switched from macOS to Linux and am happy. I wrote a blog post titled "Home and Hotel" about this once [1]. TL;DR: macOS is like a hotel - stylish but you can't bring your own furniture. Linux feels like home. You have to do the dishes, but it's yours.
What are some of the advantages of windows window management? Other than snapping I find it clunky. To be fair I tried out a tiling desktop as well and didn't really like it. Too orderly and forced for me. I like piles of papers all over my desk and windows all over my desktop I guess.
Interesting. What I’ve found is that it’s a lot of work to move windows around on a Mac when I want to see all of them at once. I just feel inefficient when I have to do a lot of clicking or Cmd-tab to get the window I want visible. Judging by the number of third party window management stuff for macOS there seem to be a lot of people who appreciate it either way.
Would you kindly provided details? Is it window management as snazz has noted, or is it something else, like the fact that windows can now have linux available with it as well???
Every so often I get excited about doing the same, and ditching my MBP and getting a shiny XPS or X1 Carbon. Then I look at a few pieces of software I can't find good replacements for (for example, Transmit for working with S3) or software where the replacements require giving up functionality or ease of use (thinking of Screenflow or Pixelmator). Maybe one day ....
No, I like the MBP hardware (keyboard notwithstanding, but I spend 80% or more of my time on an external). However if I was to go Linux, I'd probably go with one of the options I listed, where there's compromises to be made when you Hackintosh.
A lot of my use cases are massive storage of data files like CSVs and the like, so ease of use in searching and previewing are what I look for. Will remember to give Cloudberry another look however.
The game changer for me is the multitasking on macos. I pile windows of all shapes and sizes on top of eachother, and I swipe 3 fingers up on the trackpad and there it is like I've laid out all my papers on my desk. I use multiple desktops as well and sometimes assign things to certain desktops. command+space is also fantastic and saves me boatloads of time.
I had a PC at my old job and it was painful to use. All you have is alt-tab really, and that felt like a little half assed script an undergrad whipped up on a lark. Also everything was on network drives which were never indexed for search, so that was painful too. As well as all the usual pain points from every new windows version functioning as a reskinned windows xp in practice.
Also made the switch from MacOS X to Linux with i3 and mostly happy with the result.
Things I miss the most are consistent key bindings for the clipboard and Spotlight.
I made the switch from macOS to elementary OS and the keybindings are all I really miss. Apple seems to have the most-complete and most-consistently-implemented keyboard shortcuts by far.
There's a guy at the office who has to tinker and customise everything. He can't use anything that touts itself as opinionated because he has his own opinions.
Kind of reminds me of this article. You say you're more productive but honestly: how much time have you spent working on and customising your OS and is it a continuous project? Can you really say you're more productive than the people who open their lid and just work?
You can if the people who are just working do manual steps that I do in one step. I write TONS of bash functions that end up automating everything my peers do manually.
Bash scripts are definitely needed. It’s not optimum to atrophy over time and have to rely on those scripts though. I have coworkers who want to turn seemingly any useful combination of posix commands into a script. I’m not sold on that being the best use of time.
I definitely believe in knowing the most about your tools - regardless of profession. I’m less sure on where this line sits for OS choice. There are or at least were professionals who really needed Mac OS to get their work done properly along with the Adobe suite. Giving them Linux and OSS alternatives would almost certainly hinder them too greatly. But being able to hop onto just about any box and quickly get whatever done is itself a demonstration of broad knowledge.
You absolutely should know your tools so you can actually trace problems and troubleshoot by yourself, which saves you time from researching and finding expert opinion. This is the exact reason why I don't use linux. I know my tools pretty well (macOS and bash), and I can troubleshoot my own problems.
But there are always going to be exceptions, new problems will arise that will slow you down. That's another reason why I'm on a mainstream OS and not linux, because when I do encounter a problem that slows me down, devs work at breakneck speed to fix bugs and there is extensive documentation because the community is much larger than the linux community. I'd be spending waaay too much time in the weeds on ubuntu, sifting through pages of SEO crap search results to find the one sage forum post from 10 years ago with now deleted screenshots, just trying to run the software and workflows I know like the back of my hand on macos. I don't want to start over and be a dumbass again, I've found my niche.
It's a good point, it can be true, if done well. You have to have an abstract/productive view on tinkering. Not just bike shedding.. otherwise yeah it's just constant costs.
ps: one talk that I find a pretty strong example is "the unix chainsaw" by Gary Bernhardt (of wat js fame). He shows how to using tools `against` themselves, as data, to help your work. It's not rocket science, but it's 1) something I rarely do truly 2) easy to fall back as tools as silos instead of .. `objects` collaborating.
Contrary to the popular belief that Linux has no games, Arch includes many fun games such as "find out why the audio decided to stop working today for no reason"
I use Spotify for hours every day and I've had absolutely zero issues with it since I moved to Arch 3 or so years ago.
Agreed on the fonts, that has always been a pain. That being said, I recently installed Arch on a new laptop and the fonts weren't too bad out of the box - times change.
I update at least twice a week and I've only had one breakage in 3 years - I didn't update a config file with some new settings.
All in all, your response comes across a little FUDdy IMO.
My experience of Arch is that it's fun as a home computer tinkering exercise but I don't trust it for my work computer since I can't resist a version number bump and the amount of time spent faffing around would be a nightmare.
I think it can definitely differ between individual systems - the fact that Arch is so flexible also means that each system can have individual little foibles. Personally speaking, I've used Arch for work for the 3 years mentioned previously with no problems. At my previous job I used to be oncall for a week at a time and I wouldn't upgrade during those periods just in case, but that was the extent of my caution.
I used a variety of GNU/Linux distros: Ubuntu, Debian, and Arch, Slackware, Frugalware, Fedora and more recently openSUSE Tumbleweed.
Honestly, I don't understand what makes Arch so special.
I have mostly learned things on Ubuntu and I can use Arch just fine, and I think I have a decent understanding how things work.
Really, I think there is nothing fundamentally different across these distributions technically speaking.
Their biggest differences lie in their package and release management and policies (and, agreed, this is huge).
I'm not sure what skill you would learn on Arch and not on Ubuntu. It seems some vocal Arch users are lying to themselves and to the rest of the world about this.
Gentoo (or LFS) might probably be more educational, but I haven't used Gentoo enough, and haven't tried LFS enough to say.
(Kudos for Arch's documentation though, useful even when using another distro)
I'm not a zealot or anything, I just like Arch because of certain good aspects. Great documentation for everything I could want to do (though it used to be better). Rolling release. Upstream, latest packages. AUR. On that note, I tend to prefer Manjaro unstable nowadays because it works out of the box and still gets me the latest packages.
I don't particularly care for the whole DIY aspect. I spend enough time tinkering with Emacs and other tools that I don't want to waste any time on configuring/tweaking the OS itself. The different Manjaro versions are pretty decent (currently using the Awesome WM one), and I really like the Manjaro CLI installer (manjaro-architect) if I want a bit more control over my installation.
I was initially very cynical about Arch, assuming that it was basically a form of role play for people who didn't actually need to get anything done with their machines but wanted to feel clever. And while that's 100% true, I did eventually realise that I could stop trying to install it on my laptop, and instead put it on a tiny meaningless server instead. Now I get all the hard-won lessons without actually having to think about X config again for the first time in 10 years.
Now, don't put Arch on your servers either because there's no real security story for Arch, but in that time I have learned tons about systemd, and you can't put a price on that.
I have been using Arch from Windows/Ubuntu at home (I run Ubuntu in a VM at work) since the beginning of the year on 2 personal latpops Asus/Dell and didn't have any issue.
On the Asus Nvidia updates broke my Windows manager on Ubuntu it not happen with Arch.
The Arch install is a little bit more complex but you can do exactly what you want which was for me: use systemd boot instead of grub, and cipher only the home partition.
Once the setup is done, I did not have any issue, fiddling to be done.
For me where I lost time on Linux was when I tried to customize my desktop environment to my liking with i3/polybar/etc. Now I just run Gnome3 on Wayland, far from perfect but it is a good compromise TBH between setup ease/integrated UI components and features.
I think that archlinuxs advantage is that it's minimalistic, the philosophy is simple, you know what is running on your computer and generally why.
Tinkering with arch itself isn't that time consuming because the package management is so incredibly good, along with the AUR and wiki. These are invaluable.
I really do think the difficulty is overhyped though, it's really not hard at all.
This is something I sometimes also ponder. I think the answer is yes, as long as you keep your ultimate business goal in mind and optimize for workflow rather than looks. Yes, you do take longer to get going but once your setup is honed in you gain a little more time every minute you use your system.
1. Do you know what the end state is, and do you know that you'll be significantly more productive? If so, then spend some real time on it.
2. Do you not know what the end state is, OR are you not sure what the best setup is? If so, then do the absolute minimum amount of work to make your changes functional and no more. Then use the incomplete setup for a while and see how it feels.
3. Are you not sure of the end state, AND are you not sure it will make you more productive? Then put it off and keep using your current setup, or at most try it out on a separate computer in your free time.
It's not unlike working on software architecture. You can get so focused on good architecture and clean code that you never get any real work done. Some code is fine to leave ugly. But not all code -- the art is knowing when code actually needs to be refactored, and figuring out how to refactor it in a way that doesn't lock you out of developing new features for a month.
> Can you really say you're more productive than the people who open their lid and just work?
I don't know if overall all the tinkering I've done over the years was a net positive in terms of efficient use of working hours.
But I can for sure tell you that if I've just opened my lid and worked, I would have been much less satisfied while working when I would constantly run into unnecessary limitations of my tools. Hard to put a quantifier on work satisfaction.
As a professional, using the right tools for your job should be part of your job. You wouldn't trust a workman hammering a nail into the wall with a screwdriver just because that's the only tool in his tool belt.
And this isn't even an exaggerated metaphor. For decades Windows was unusable OOTB for any serious development. OSX is still handicapped by a decades old userspace (better than nothing but not good).
I'm using a very similar desktop environment (mainly i3 + terminal + vim). What I really like about this setup is that it's compatible with every project I work on. I rearely have to learn new tools and I honestly did before spent more time getting used to new IDEs and stuff than configuring my current work environment. Configuring it is an ongoing project, but I commit changes to my dotfiles, so it's no lost time.
I see customisation as a form of optimisation. Optimising tasks that you perform hundereds of times a day will make you more productive. Optimising everything is a waste of time.
That’s a good question. Then again, it seems that for some people tinkering serves more as a hobby that they just like doing.
By tinkering and customizing you might gain a productive work environment but the way I see it is that some people just want to tinker because it makes them happy. The ’increased productivity’ seems to be more of a way to rationalize it to oneself.
> Can you really say you're more productive than the people who open their lid and just work?
- I do open a laptop and just work. Using configuration that I’ve already created to suit my work.
- Other people is a big group, and one that doesn’t matter so much here. I’m more productive using what I’ve opted to change than without. Yes, the minor time investment was worth it.
I loathe tinkering/ driver set up. I was using a MacBook, but when it came time to replace..
I bought a pre configured Linux computer (laptop). They’re not very common but common enough.
I haven’t had to spend any time with setup, and frankly I’ve been pleased that everything just works. My main complaint it Battery life isn’t terrible but isn’t great but for what I do it’s good enough.
If tinkering/customising my OS was still my hobby, I wouldn’t consider it wasted time.
Agreed, this doesn’t apply to everyone. Years ago, every 6 months I’d switch to Linux/hackintosh purely out of frustration (or envy) as OSX looked sooo much better than anything else (antialiasing!) AND supported Adobe CC.
Nowadays I’m a Mac user and I’m unlikely to switch, because I’ve grown a bit tired of my tweaking marathons and need a proper *nix system.
I wish Windows just became a GUI layer on top of Linux though.
It's a multiplicative effect. Spend a few hours setting it up just right for your own workflow, and it tightens up your productivity going forward.
It may not be by 30-40% as some people claim, but even at 1% that's around 20 hours in a year assuming a light schedule (40 hours a week 48 weeks a year).
Well, I think asking a Gentoo guy if the compile times are worth the performance boost is quite valid (I used Gentoo for several years).
But just because you are using Linux, doesn't mean you have to spend a lot of time customizing. Actually, customizing can be a lot quicker on Linux than on Windows for example (due to the well-integrated package managers).
That said, I do think that some customizations help with productivity, but you should know your limits. If you are trying something completely new, which nobody has done before, you are unlikely to find huge productivity boosts. But if you cautiously follow some best practices you might find some productivity treasures.
Docker is the way. Darwin is a mess for development, but it doesn't matter. Start with a 137 MB bare-bones Debian image, add just what you need, Docker is the way.
I'm coming from a web development perspective. When the browser is your gui, or your app doesn't need one, Docker (running on Linux, Mac, or, cough, Windows) just takes away your concerns about environment consistency. Like a VM, but not really. A "container", a minimal Linux image, running a "service" for your app, is a beautiful and portable thing! (Looks like running guis on Mac from Docker is messy: https://cntnr.io/running-guis-with-docker-on-mac-os-x-a14df6...)
Not unless you have a HiDPI display and rely on some non-Wayland-native apps. Causes blurry apps which can be headache inducing. It is a known issue being worked on though.
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[ 4.2 ms ] story [ 333 ms ] threadThat doesn’t bode well
In which case then sure, pretty much anything will suit you fine. It's not a universal rule though - I spend the vast majority of my time in TextMate or an IDE and probably 10% of time in my terminal, so the comfort of the Mac UI is a more significant factor.
For example, I don't use tabs in the terminal. I usually open a new window and use the WM from outside the terminal, or use tmux inside the terminal. Tabs in the terminal itself are not that useful in my workflow.
My current favorite Linux terminal is kitty (https://sw.kovidgoyal.net/kitty/), and before that I used rxvt-unicode.
Maybe you can give it a try.
Other than that I use Linux (Mint) for my main Desktop OS, but I still deal with plenty of rough edges. The latest ones:
- Wifi doesn't work after suspend wakeup. - After upgrading OS to next version using recommended UI method, PC us unable to start graphics mode bc it doesn't find some random UI package... i had to login in TTY and manually install it. - CS:GG, a game with Linux native port suddenly decided to get choppy lagged sound. Same game works well in Windows in same PC - Connecting bluetooth headphones sometimes works, sometimes doesn't
So yeah, plenty of rough edges. Still I use it because I love the programming workflow and use docker with Linux containers.
I use iTerm to connect to Ubuntu and I feel like I have the best of both worlds, a great terminal emulator and Ubuntu beneath it.
- Grep for things that look like IP address and color them in blue, or MAC address in green, or errors in red
- Auto-Complete based on the text in terminal (this leaves people watching me `docker rmi f7<Cmd-;>` breathless)
- Broadcast same keypresses into several panes (having SSH sessions to several servers)
- Making an icon jump when a long running command just finished
- etc.etc.etc.
Some people develop programming languages. For them, a GUI-less environment may be ideal.
I do web development. So I need the GUI, not just for testing, but for dealing with image and video assets that come in from the art department, or creating mockups, or presentations, or maps, etc.
It's still "development," but unsuited for a 100% command line experience.
As is often the case, it's easy for someone in one field of "development" to forget that it's a broad category of experiences.
And this is from someone who loves the iPhone.
Lately, for me, the killer app has been the ability to cut and paste content between machines and devices automatically and seamlessly. I once I started using it in my workflow, it became indispensable.
I can't copy something from my Android phone to a Mac, but I can copy something from my Android phone into KDE.
>In which case then sure, pretty much anything will suit you fine.
I thought the same. I’m married to Photoshop. How good is graphic acceleration support inside a VM these days?
I need to run the latest version, fast and glitch free. Wine will never be a solution unfortunately, unless Adobe supports it officially.
If you enjoy the tiling window, with nearly everything driven by the keyboard way of working, then Mac OS can’t come close from a UI perspective.
The other stuff that the OS featured was great and still missing on UNIX clones.
While some spaces I use are more flexible for their use, certain spaces are designated for specific tasks. I use a space for communication/chatting, a space for my music/email, a space for my calendar/task planning, etc. These don't deviate so for these common tasks it becomes second nature.
And I say this as someone with both macOS and Linux laptops that I work from, but because of the above and other similar things I think you're always up for disappointment if you expect to get Linux to be exactly like macOS.
When I switched over from Mac my initial thought was “get this working like my Mac”. After about a day that changed to “learn the Linux way.”
Switched 2 years ago and the only thing I miss after 10 years on OSX is OmniGraffle.
I have gone the other way. One of the thumb-buttons on my Ergodox EZ is"Super + C" makro. The other is "Super + V".
One-thumb copy/paste.
On Mac it's Command+C everywhere.
On macOS, you can also define consistent keyboard shortcuts universally and per-application. This is achieved via a very simple interface in System Preferences -> Keyboards -> Shortcuts. This will apply to all applications because they must all respect and populate the macOS menu bar, the mechanism through which keyboard shortcuts and processed and thus made modifiable. Easy, friendly, user-centric.
But on Linux? Good luck. Between all the various user interface libraries with their own mechanisms for defining and modifying keyboard shortcuts, not to mention those apps that hardcode the shortcuts in order to avoid the utter mess of the mixed desktop environments that so many users are forced to use in order to get certain jobs done.
In this sense, Linux is not a user-centric system because nobody who makes a distribution, even the better ones, gives a toss about the user; it's all about the developer's manifestos and freedoms long before it's ever about the user. The average user who just wants to work, not sit there slaving over a billion different and wildly inconsistent configuration file formats each in different locations, who just wants the damned Copy command to require the same two-finger salute in one program as another, is resolutely not the one being catered for.
Linux distributions are just as opinionated as Windows and macOS; DIY distros are utterly irrelevant to the vast majority of people, including the HN crowd who, just like the technically illiterate we sometimes hold our noses up to, also have lives to live.
I think some other terminal emulators might also let you do this.
Usually, pressing Control-c will copy the content of the primary selection to the clipboard.
Only macOS gets this right.
I too prefer the MacOS copy/paste shortcuts, but I find that MacOS and Mac apps mix up Ctrl/Cmd just like other systems.
For example I can type Ctrl-b while editing the URL in the browser omnibar to move the cursor back a character or alt-b to move it back a word, just like you can in the terminal and then use "Win"-b to bookmark a page.
And your command changes the keys you use for moving the cursor in the terminal.
MacOS's system is a better system that will never be adopted because there no will (just suck it up as you say), market pressure or authority that would impose it.
And when I can't or don't want to do that, I right click and choose Copy.
If I want to use another operating system - Windows or MacOS, it drives me batty that I have to keep going around copy pasting things.
I tend to agree with you that having a difference between Ctrl and Command is nice. But it doesn't actually solve the problem - it works _because_ MacOS is a minority, the last holdout.
In your web browser, Cmd-A will select all the available text but Ctrl-A will move your cursor to the start of the line. In your terminal, perhaps Cmd-A will select all the visible text but Ctrl-A will increment the number under the pointer (since you're running VIM in it).
If the Meta key hadn't died of death and Linux developers had kept expecting it to be around, there could also be clashes between Cmd and Meta.
All of them honor Ctrl+Insert for copy and Shift+Insert for paste. This will work on browsers, editors , shells, etc. FYI this will also work on Windows XP cmd.
Linux has its own set of standards that has evolved to work on keyboards that do not have the super modifier (e.g. in India), but has far more consistency built into it that the Mac
MacBook and it's wannabes (xiaomi,etc) are the only ones that dont.
The only consistent system around is Mac OS X, where Cmd-C is universal copy, Ctrl-C stops the current program in terminal, Cmd-V is universal paste, Ctrl-V opens a vertical block in Vim, Ctrl-A goes to the beginning of the line, and Cmd-A selects all. This works anywhere, from browser to terminal.
Whether you like it or not is your prerogative entirely. However, it is not true that Linux and Windows dont have a standard. They do. And the keys are universal (where universal has a different connotation to your usecase - we are talking non-Western countries and hardware that includes weird little keyboard to debug airplane display units)
You are fully entitled your choice+opinion whether you prefer a different one.
The nice thing about standards is that you have so many to choose from.
This of course says nothing about whether this particular standard fits you. For me, having to keep a flag in mind whether I'm working in a terminal application (with one set of shortcuts), or GUI application (with a different set of shortcuts), is not acceptable, if I can have a setup where the same set works everywhere.
I switched from Linux to OSX/MacOS around eight years ago, and the better and (to me) more intuitive modifier keys have been one of the features that have kept me there; along with the convenience of Emacs/Readline keybindings for text editing everywhere.
Getting keybindings to work the same way in Linux currently involves a Rube Goldberg setup of GTK3 key themes [1] and AutoKey [2] for me, and some things still don't work right (Super-W closing a single tab in Firefox/Chrome, etc.) Also, it looks like key themes are going away in GTK4 [3].
The Hawck daemon cited elsewhere in the conversation looks promising, maybe that'll work better.
[1] http://shallowsky.com/blog/linux/gtk3-emacs-key-theme.html
[2] https://github.com/autokey/autokey
[3] https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gtk/issues/1669
If, in about:config, you set ui.key.accelKey to 91, then Super-W will close a single tab (and Super-T will open a single tab etc.). This obviously won't work in Chromium, though.
It was a relief when I didn't have to use a mac for work anymore.
[1] https://ulauncher.io/
Any tmux CC mode supporting terminals for Linux or Windows?
Have used a Mac before for work, and run Arch with Sway for home and work now. The only thing worth the cost of a Mac is having money to spend on a Mac and feeling like that it is best for you. If you use i3 or Sway on Linux and like it, you'll likely never want to go back. Especially with an Arch-based distro with the AUR.
I can also make and receive calls from my Mac, provided the Mac and iPhone are on the same network.
Thanks for the clarification.
iMessage integration won't happen because Apple has closed down their API. There have been reverse engineering efforts but such a system is never reliable enough for comfortable desktop integration imo.
I've never come across iMessage lock-in as everyone I know either uses WhatsApp, Telegram or plain old SMS so I don't know what limitations you might run into in your setup.
Come to think of it, KDE connect on iOS won't happen (GPL conflict with app store, restrictions to apps, limitations on background execution). I suppose I shouldn't have expected anything else from the Apple ecosystem.
Stopped reading at this point. Nothing wrong with tinkering with your GUI, but my priorities differ.
PS: I'm not telling you what you should or shouldn't read. Just trying to understand what you meant.
- it has a basic window manager (half screen left/right, full screen)
- it has emacs
- it has Firefox
- it has tmux
- (if the computer is really fancy) it has a calendar application
Back to square one.
Everyone has a work flow. It can be simple or complex, self-made or partly-compulsory. Some will try to always use better tools, other will try to keep the plainest environment. I believe it's a good practice to at least know what other people can do.
It took me many years to discover and build an environment where I feel confortable and productive. I spend many days working for this, but now it has hardly changed in 5 years. I think that time was an excellent investment.
Maybe you mixed up "tinkering" for workflow improvement with "tinkering" for the sake of it.
The advantage of GNU/Linux here is that once you nail it, you never have to change it again. Your OS will outlive your hardware; you simply transplant it, together with your workflow.
I use a QMK-based keyboard (although I am sure you can achieve similar levels of functionality with Karabiner) where choosing my window placement is a 2-key macro.
The biggest deal breaker is that you can't programmatically move a window to a new workspace (I think?); and that you can't disable the animations for switching workspaces (biggest problem).
Spectacle has "next/previous display" shortcut.
To disable animations on workspace switching:
defaults write com.apple.dock workspaces-swoosh-animation-off -bool YES && killall Dock
I've been using Amethyst for multiple years at this point, and it has been great for my workflow.
1: https://github.com/ianyh/Amethyst
Lets give it a try...
It can pretty much do anything you want, given enough time and configuration... but when that configuration breaks: good luck.
Some people prefer "it just works" over losing some control.
Personally I dislike macOS's "virtual desktops" and much prefer being able to swap between different desktops in i3, and being able to send windows wherever, control tiling, etc.
https://magnet.crowdcafe.com/
On my macbook, most of my windows are shifted to the right side of the screen, exposing about an inch and a half of desktop containing all my aliases to currently relevant files, drives, and folders. Icons are sized down to line height to maximize space. Sometimes I want to keep that stretch open and the files handy, other times not.
I've tried tilers and I could see how some people like them and could get quick with them, but they just weren't great for how I personally manage and think about using my computer. I'm a papers all over the desk kind of guy, not a security guard. I also have a 13" display, sometimes in practice smaller if I want my desktop files exposed, so tiling on top of each other makes windows too short, and tiling to the sides often makes them too skinny. I'm sure on a 17" laptop or a large monitor tiling isn't so constricting. Lots of apps these days are optimized for using most of a 13" display size, and lots of websites turn into a mobile site if your window is too small. I was spending more time fighting with the tiler, cycling through different tiling layouts, and changing parameters than I was just quickly and loosely dragging windows around as needs changed (After all, it only takes <1 second to move a window, and <1 second to resize, and I don't have to think about it at all, just like laying down a piece of paper on top of my desk). And I was using the tiler that was supposedly the best and most like the famous linux tilers (amethyst).
You can say the opposite of Macs: "the stuff that is designed to work in a certain way by Apple works perfectly, if you want to anything outside of that beautiful box, good luck"
I'll have to dig into it more
This comment shows me how these type of threads are useless and sound as random whining to everyone. Your experience and use case is so perpendicular to mine and 100% as valid as mine. But one person love for something is another person hate.
I think the productivity aspect would only be true in that case, as the things that “just work” are (for me) external libraries, GitHub readmes, sdk examples, etc.
True for Adobe, technically false for Autodesk if you aren’t in CAD. Maya and MotionBuilder (acquired from Alias in mid 2000s) run on Linux for the film/VFX industry.
Though to be fair, I’m pretty sure they are the only applications in AD’s entire portfolio that run on Linux, and it wasn’t because of them.
Plenty of us are developers in other platforms.
I have used macOS as my primary OS from 2007 to ~2017 (before that BSD and Linux). I am now mostly back on Linux, though I also have a MacBook Pro that I use every now and then. Primary reasons for switching back to Linux:
* MacBook hardware limitations: too few ports, keyboard problems, expensive upgrades.
* Competitive hardware prices for Linux. I got a NUC8i5, which was somewhere between 300-400 Euro and has the same quad core CPU as my 2000 MacBook Pro. I added a 500GB SSD I had lying around and 16GB RAM. I have more resources for a fraction of the price, and can always bump up the SSD or memory relatively cheaply.
* Nix. There is package/system management before and after Nix. I actually started with Nix on macOS, but being able to manage your whole system declaratively is awesome.
* The subscription disease on macOS. I am fine with buying good applications. Overall I have probably spent thousands of Euros on licenses for macOS software. But I will not use an application with a subscription model. Period. [1] It transfers a huge amount of control from me to the software vendor. Unfortunately, more and more macOS applications are switching to subscriptions.
* Linux is generally faster than macOS.
There are also things that I like about macOS: Apple's strong push for security (including sandboxing of applications, T2, etc.), fewer issues with drivers and random paper cuts, better support for hardware decoding throughout applications, traditionally strong 3rd-party applications (OmniGraffle, Little Snitch, LaunchBar/Alfred, Things, OmniFocus, etc.), integration through AirPlay, handover, et al.
[1] Admittedly, there is one exception: 1Password, we like using it for password sharing and arguably, you are paying for a cloud service.
Update environment. MacOS requires reboots and nags you constantly until you do. Whereas, apt and dnf are simple and can be automated in the background.
Doing anything 'interesting' requires you to reboot and fiddle with the firmware. Where linux sudo works as expected.
Outdated software due to licensing issues. See GPL and bash. Not to mention you will be much closer to a production environment and you will find less bugs developing due to differences in OS.
Lots more but this is a good start. All of these things are small and mostly can be worked around but they add up I'm a big way.
The road on Linux isn't completely rosy and can take more learning if you need to do anything really complicated. Tools are great but not necessarily pretty, etc.
If you mean SIP, can't you just disable it for good? Then you should be in a situation similar to Linux.
Docker [was] off on macOS through no fault of the OS. Particular software dev teams taking shortcuts is on themselves.
Linux also requires reboots for certain updates (plus you can disable checks for updates entirely and run one only when you want to on macOS, or even use `softwareupdate` for finer-grained control, so if it was "nagging you constantly" that's kind of on you).
`sudo` works "as expected" for everything that doesn't involve conflict with the built-in System Integrity Protection, which is most things (in the past three or so years on macOS I've only run up against it twice). There isn't any "fiddling with firmware" going on. Plus if you want total freedom to delete your entire `/bin` folder or something, again you can disable SIP and move on with your life.
I'm currently running Bash 5 on my MBP, so I don't get your outdated software complaint either. macOS doesn't have any magical power to force you to use the versions of (third-party!) software it ships with.
If these are the first complaints that come to mind it just sounds like you haven't used the OS much and entirely refused to explore it or give it a chance in the time that you did. I mean, not even trying to set your own update preferences?
This is hard to put into words. If I'm an artist, my tools are very, very focused and robust. I might have specific pens and brushes that I know the feel of very well. They're not flashy and they don't have advertisements written on them, and they don't change their properties behind my back. Everything about them is designed to help me draw. If I'm a musician, I spend a lot of money to buy an instrument, and I get to know it very well. I have particular brands of reeds that are consistent that I'm likely preparing or sanding myself. I know my instrument so well that I can tell you which notes trend slightly flat or sharp, and after a while adjusting to that becomes instinctive.
So if I'm a professional programmer, I likewise want a computing environment that I understand completely and can service myself, and that is very customized to my own preferences. It's no different from any other professional field -- the point of the computer is to help me get work done, everything else is secondary.
You'll get different answers if you ask someone why Linux makes them productive, because the benefit of Linux is that it adapts to you. For me, personally, the biggest upgrades to my productivity have been:
1. Switching to Linux in general
2. Switching to Emacs/Spacemacs (Emacs works best on Linux)
3. Switching to Arch as my main distro (which is hard to do unless you already know Linux)
4. Most recently, switching to EXWM as a window manager (which is a lot easier to do on Arch)
Each step of this process has been me getting rid of things that distract me from work, and each step has built on the last. Switching to Linux gives me a setup that is much more customizable and stable, switching to Emacs gives me an editor that is very tightly integrated into the host operating system, switching to Arch allows me to have a very minimal setup (its easier to debug because there's less going on), and switching to EXWM allows me to focus the entire setup on work.
On the other hand, I have an old Surface Pro 3 that's running Manjaro/Gnome that I use for drawing. It's a very different setup from my main computer, because I use it for different things. Again, my computer should adapt to my workflow, not the other way around. The Surface setup is actually interesting, because it suffers from driver issues (unreliable Wifi, bad suspend support). And yet I'm still more productive on it than I was on Windows. I think people underestimate how much time and energy can get lost to distractions, surprise updates, stuff like that. Specialized devices are really stinking good for getting stuff done.
But everyone is different. I know people that get frustrated by the initial setup times or needing to dig more into the OS internals, and I get that -- it's reasonable. For me, once I got past that I found Linux to be really stable, because it doesn't change until you tell it to. Linux is the only OS I'll set up for someone who's not tech-savy, because putting in more work up front means I won't need to do as much regular maintenance.
I would say that it is not nearly as good as the touch support in Windows 8.1, but is comparable or potentially a little better than the touch support in Windows 10. Gnome's touch UI is good, but that's more just a testament to how much worse touch support got in Windows 10.
Krita is not amazing, but is still surprisingly good. When I first started using it, Krita was a massive pain and I missed Clip Studio all the time. It's gotten way, way better, and I now only rarely miss Clip Studio.
I'm honestly not sure what battery life is like. I will regularly use it for about 4-5 hours a day unplugged, but usually I'm at a desk and everything I own is plugged in. I still have Windows 10 on an old partition just to make it easier to calibrate the pen hardware (https://www.sony.com/electronics/support/downloads/W0009338), but I've never taken the time to compare the battery life for both.
It was kind of a pain to get everything set up, but that was years ago, and now that it is set up I just don't think about it any more. I'm very happy with its performance as a drawing tablet; at least for the type of illustration work I personally do. If you're comfortable with Linux, I'd say go for it. If not, you're probably better off with a Wacom tablet that won't force you to fight with Linux drivers.
Just to echo this: Magit (Emacs git client) alone has given me a large boost in productivity.
Aside from Magit, I also get a lot of use out of Org-mode (Emacs pure-text notetaking/todo-list client). I'm syncing to Android with Orgzly. Org-mode was the original feature that got me to try out Emacs, and for a while it was the biggest reason I stuck with it, since I'd never used Vim keybindings before. Vim keybindings made me less productive until I learned them, but were balanced by just how good Org-mode was.
I've even grown to appreciate packages like Calc (Emacs calculator). Dang if RPN style input isn't actually faster to use once you get used to it.
Emacs overall works slightly better on Linux, because it's primarily optimized for that system. One big area where you'll notice that is if you start embedding X windows into buffers. EXWM is definitely not something I'd try to set up on Mac.
If you're not trying to do stuff like that, then Emacs on Mac is fine. I use a Mac at work and Emacs is a big productivity boost.
From Wikipedia “Thge Apple T2 chip is a SoC from Apple first released in the iMac Pro 2017. It is a 64-bit ARMv8 chip (a variant of the A10, or T8010), and runs a separate operating system called bridgeOS 2.0,[95] which is a watchOS derivative.[96] It provides a secure enclave for encrypted keys, gives users the ability to lock down the computer's boot process, handles system functions like the camera and audio control, and handles on-the-fly encryption and decryption for the solid-state drive.[97][98][99]”
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple-designed_processors
Things do not look as good in mobile space (mainly thanks to Qualcomm)
It seems the be going the opposite way, since by far and large there's more offering hardware wise than there has ever been, so what you see is manufacturers catering to niches more than before.
Everyone just buys laptops with pre-installed OSes, phones and tablets.
Most parts shops are now targeting the Maker movement, aka Arduino, Raspberry and friends and even gamers prefer solutions like Asus Republic of Gamers series.
So actually it looks like the return of the vertical integration of 8 and 16 bit home markets of yore.
https://www.dell.com/en-ca/shop/dell-laptops-netbooks-and-ta...
Also, you can buy a GPU but in some ways it is locked down (by NVidia), so as technology progresses we might be moving away from the "generically useful computer" model.
NVidia has always been locked down so that is not news. If you are concerned about the GPU, buy AMD and enjoy their open drivers. Intel is entering this space too with open drivers as well. And who knows, perhaps NVidia might be opening up a bit after all vs. going the other way?
https://github.com/NVIDIA/open-gpu-doc
Or should I rather write Android/Linux, ChromeOS/Linux, PuppyLinux, Xandros then?
These days… I’d say things aren’t all that different. On one hand, Linux has better hardware support overall, and Dell and some smaller manufacturers are offering Linux laptops. On the other, a lot of hardware still doesn’t work, or doesn’t work well. Some laptops have been getting more custom hardware, including Apple’s and others, and Linux has fallen behind a bit in supporting it. But it’s nothing new for Linux to take time to support new hardware.
In this case, I'm measuring my productivity by the time it takes to mess around with the OS to get the desired result, and the fact that the stability baseline just never seems to get there.
I get and support the attraction to Linux on the desktop, but find YMMV to be very much true.
Not sure about the Bluetooth part (i had this kind of issue once in like 10 years) but the battery life, getting 2 hours is not common anymore. Sure, you won't get as long as Windows on the same hardware more of the time, but 5 to 7 hours on a full charge is what you can expect, if not longer.
I did spend about 2 hours optimising for battery when I got the laptop, but it was a once-off thing.
I try to move over every six months to a year or so, and it's the same gripes every time at this point.
Driver support's reasonable now, and the desktop environments are generally solid enough, but things like mixed DPI work really badly on Linux, my browser nearly always tears when scrolling on my secondary display, etc.
But... the single biggest killer for me though is how badly Linux copes with very low amounts of free memory. Put 32G in a machine and it still periodically runs completely out under my dev workload and when that happens, the whole system becomes unusable and I have to hard reboot it. I'm not sure what macOS and Windows do differently, but it just doesn't happen on either of those two OSes.
I really want to have the freedom to pick and choose my hardware more, but at the moment I keep falling back to macOS.
It's a UNIX environment so it has the tooling I want and a solid GUI that works well.
I used to have that problem too, but it went away when I stopped using JetBrains products :). Not for any reason other than the contract I was working on ended.
And I didn't even have a JetBrains product in the loop, it was a mix of virtualbox and VS code, along with browser, mail client, etc.
When Android Studio is run with large code base on emulator, memory issues were frequent in Linux with halting issues. SO has several such cases.
No such issues with macOS, even with mutiple Jetbrains IDEs in parallel(Same memory config).
I wonder how Android Studio is doing on ChromeOS, considering many of those are low end machines. I'm sure they had to optimize it, but I assume the issue would persist till the Linux kernel itself is fixed.
During a memory pressure scenario, the kernel starts looking around for things that it can get out of RAM to free up space. If swap is enabled and not saturated, paging out some data to disk is a likely option. Reducing disk cache size works too. But... when the usual candidates run out, things have to get more clever. Things like shared libraries can get paged out! If one of those pages is requested, it can be reloaded from disk. Or, in the VirtualBox case, the mmap'd disk image can be removed mostly from RAM and have those pages loaded from disk as needed. Performance sucks terribly, but it keeps trucking on.
The wrinkle in all of this is SSDs. The out-of-memory (OOM) killer heuristically watches the system and kills off processes that cause memory pressure problems. These heuristics, however, are expecting these page-in and page-out operations to be slow (as they were on HDDs). On newer SSDs, the disks are too fast to trip the OOM killer into action! This is why, when this problem manifests, your disk activity light goes on solid, even if you don't have swap enabled. The kernel is sitting there trying every trick in the book, and the OOM killer doesn't see what's happening. Every individual page fault is handled quickly, there's just waaaaaay too many of them.
The lesson I've recently learned is that, for now, swap is necessary on Linux machines with SSDs. I've enabled zswap and added a 4 GB swap file to my machine with 16 GB of RAM, and the problem hasn't reoccurred for me since then. Supposedly, the memory pressure measure in the kernel gets a more accurate reading when swap is enabled, but I don't know for sure that that's true. At the very least, you can page out the memory you're using the least instead of file-backed pages, which is what happens in memory pressure situations on SSDs (as opposed to OOM killing).
On Mac, you can't, even if you want. So you won't see discussions like these, because Mac does not have that kind of visibility inside. If something is broken (and Mac has its share of broken things), you get to keep all the pieces.
https://github.com/rfjakob/earlyoom
Packages are available in Debian Stable (Buster), so they should be available in most child distros by now as well.
What makes earlyoom useful is the fact that you can tell the machine what is low value and likely to be problematic. I'm not sure that information can be determined automatically. I'm further not sure what a better strategy than start killing low value problematic processes when we reach a threshold looks like.
I've been in a couple of interesting discussions about Linux memory management lately that enlightened me somewhat, and I won't claim to be an expert now, but I've been around the low-memory block enough to understand now that, there's no simple right answer to the question of "Do you have swap?"
"The Linux kernel has overcommit baked into the fiber of its being." I've begun to understand that this idea is so deeply engrained in the kernel that in a multi-tenant or desktop workstation, you simply can't extract it back out and "just provide enough RAM," unless you know the performance characteristics and you really mean it when you say "that should be enough RAM." If you don't have any swap and the kernel starts to run out of memory, it's going to start evicting whatever pages it can back to disk.
(Wait, pages back to disk? I told you I didn't have swap) Yes – the linux kernel can page things back to disk even if you don't have swap, remember all of the binaries you're running have originally come from that disk, and the kernel knows it doesn't strictly need to have them in memory until they are volatile, or you tried to read those pages again.
Having some swap gives the kernel something else to evict, so have a healthy amount of swap and Linux will find the occasion to use it for the least frequently used pages that are not already on disk. This will improve your "nearly out of memory" performance.
The second worst thing that you can do is put your swap on fast SSD or NVMe, and it's not why you think. The kernel is making decisions based on a heuristic which is complicated and well-documented, but inscrutable. If the solid disk is 50x faster than the spinning disk that the swap was originally designed to use, then swapping will cost less overall and the heuristic will lean on it as a strategy to keep the OOM killer away even more often. You may find your cache recycle rates going through the roof because things can be paged out to disk and re-loaded faster than should be possible. I don't fully understand this part, but I suspect the answer is "try to use Swap less, and be aware of when you are using it."
The kernel does really not want to kill off your processes, and it has more opportunities than ever to ensure it keeps too many balls in the air when you have asked it to do so. So, find a way to stay ahead of the kernel and know better. If you have a dock widget that tells when you are going above 50% swap usage, you can close some tabs before it gets to be an unrecoverable situation. It's a mystery to me why modern computers don't come with disk activity lights, as this problem we didn't need dock widgets to solve 20 years ago when literally every computer came equipped with one.
The best advice is to have enough RAM for whatever you're doing, and at 32GB "I think you've had enough." At any rate the one suggestion that I could give is, if you anticipate running out of memory (ever, and it looks like you still do), then you should be sure to have a healthy amount of swap, to me that's probably at least 5 or 6GB but YMMV.
But, 32GB for a desktop workstation really ought to be enough IMHO, so try to find a way that you don't run out? If you're eating all that memory up with VMs, try a lighter weight solution for your ephemeral workloads like footloose, which behaves like a VM in the ways you generally tend to want for your dev workloads, (like for example, it can run systemd like your deploy target most likely does, if you're using VMs to match the deploy target). Footloose doesn't impose the "VM's" whole footprint upfront due to actually being a container, so when you run out of memory it will be because your application workloads used too much, not because your virtual machine manager has grabbed much more than it needed.
Bluetooth? I don't even use it. Battery life? I'm on a desktop.
But, weird hardware issues popped up now and then which I didn't have to deal with on my MacBook, such as the wifi card that had to be manually installed, the headphone jack sometimes doing weird things, the processors overheating.
I was able to solve those problems by searching online and finding others who had the same issue which lead to instructions to fix the problem, but I just can't imagine my family members who have never used the Terminal in their entire life having the same success.
The fact is that with my old MacBooks (and the computers I've given to my family) the only hardware related issue we've had over the last 10+ years is the battery related issues from the MBP.
As I'm typing this, I got 14hours and 33minutes of battery left and it's only charged to 83%. In hardcore scenarios out of the grid for a few days (where I go sailing) I got a few spare batteries. (the laptop is the Lenovo X270)
> In this case, I'm measuring my productivity by the time it takes to mess around with the OS to get the desired result, and the fact that the stability baseline just never seems to get there.
The time investment goes down significantly over time. After a decade using linux on as a daily driver, I don't remember the last time I've tweak anything.
> fed up ... and go back to macOS.
Same thing but the other way around. I stay away from my Mac except for:
- making sure my applications look good enough on a Mac and are usable
- making music as I'm not patient enough to relearn everything on a different platform but that's just laziness from my end
I mean, this is hardly an endorsement for people early in their careers who haven't already concluded the Linux is the best path forward.
I'm in my fourth decade of technical activity. I'm leveraging skills and tools I learned in my first day using Unix, in the mid-1980s.
Over the same time, I've gained, and obsoleted, skills on CPM, MacOS, VM/CMS, MVS, VMS, DOS, Windows 3x, WinNT, and classic Macintosh.
Yes, there are a few flavours of Unix -- BSD, SysV4, Solaris, HPUX, Irix, AIX, FreeBSD, and numerous Linux flavours. Those, and even OSX/MacOS share far more in common than all the other platforms.
Unix knowlege has proved extraordinarily durable, as have the tools. Though there are new utilities and environments coming out frequently, old standards remain available and still work. I'm not forced onto that treadmill, most especially not for my personal work.
GRRM still uses Wordstar. Works for him.
(That's ... one of the editors I've used as well, though I vastly prefer vim these days -- one of those "first day on Unix" skillsets I'm still earning dividends on.)
There's also Stephen Bourne, who had initially programmed in Algol, and has a bunch of Algol-like macros that he uses when programming in C. I'm not finding an original source, though several references turn up.
Muscle memory is a real beast to change. The local optimum is always "stick to what I know".
Actually, that still has capabilities lacking from "modern" GUIs.
https://www.invidio.us/watch?v=yJDv-zdhzMY
jwz observed that "UI is different" years ago when discussing Safari vs. Firefox interface changes. (Wayback link to avoid his "special greeting" for HN visitors): https://web.archive.org/web/20120511115213/https://www.jwz.o...
I watch "normal" computer users struggling to keep up with even very modest changes to MacOS UIs. Which, for the record, are remarkably consistent with the first iteration, deployed in 2001, eighteen years ago. It's older now than the Classic Mac interface was when OS X was introduced (1984 - 2001: 17 years).
Again: changes in GUI demonstrably do not deliver that.
And good GUIs don't change.
Because in large part of the institutional cost of breaking shell scripts, TUIs don't change often (and tools violating this principle are quickly and sharply deprecated and/or replaced with those that don't). Which means that as a user (or administrator or programmer), the investment you put into using console tools tends to have an exceedingly long half life.
Mind: I'd given this deliberate and conscious thought in the mid-1990s when I was faced with a few possible directions to take my own computing career and use. I'd already seen numerous platforms, notably proprietary and GUI ones, change substantially, or die entirely. Seemed to me that the skill-preserving route would be with Linux or the BSDs. That's proved a good decision and rationale.
Even a "minimal window manager" -- say, twm or vtwm, provides extensive functionality and does not change. There's a hell of a lot to be said for learning a skill once and not having to either replace it with another, or keep obsoleting previously acquired knowledge and habits.
I don't use twm myself, outside occasional testing. One of the best and most skillful programmers I've ever known did use it, and had a highly tricked out configuration, almost completely keyboard driven, that let him fly around his display and workspaces with an amazing faculty. The fact that the windowmanager itself is flyweight and bedrock stable only added to this.
My own preference is WindowMaker, based on the design principles of NextStep (1988), and largely static since the late 1990s. It has capabilities modern WMs and DEs still lack, is extremely high performance, and extraordinarily stable. Graphically, it's nonobtrusive. I might swap it for a tiling WM, but it's served me well for over two decades.
So, it gets stable after the first 4-5 years of tweaking. Doesn't that make the parent's point?
And after those 4-5 years, wont one have to get a new laptop at some point, upgrade to newer OS version, and adjust to whatever changes the FOSS projects like Gnome/KDE/etc did in the previous years all from the beginning?
>- making music as I'm not patient enough to relearn everything on a different platform but that's just laziness from my end
Just laziness? As if Linux has anything remotely as powerful/coherent as Live/Cubase/Logic/etc, Native Instruments, Arturia, and all the other VSTs?
Vsts though... people use Carla that’s based on wine to use windows vsts. Results vary.
But that's part of what I love about linux, my text-based configuration doesn't have to change because I upgrade, unlike on Mac where the name of some `defaults write` key suddenly renames or disappears altogether.
In the rare cases that something in a Linux distribution changes so much it upends your config, you're just a package install away from getting the old behaviour back until you want (if ever) to deal with it.
I can finally say Ubuntu MATE 18.04 for me is pretty solid. There's still two issues I wrestle with, but other than that it's been very dependable for me.
When it comes to OSes these days, I feel like you have to pick the least bad one. A truly rock solid OS just doesn't exist in my experience.
I've been running linux desktops and laptops for about 20 years, starting with early/pre-RHEL redhat, and moving around to many others. My first laptop was a pentium thing at 75 MHz, and I triple booted Linux, OS2, and Windows/DOS on it. I wound up kicking off the last two, as I used them only infrequently.
Battery life is an issue for me, but its not linux specific. The laptops I have, all have power hungry ram and GPU cards. I get 2 hours on them, or if I play with the brightness and other things, I can stretch it to 4 hours. My old 2010 laptop (still in use, still running linux) is a 16GB ram, 0.5TB SSD affair with an NVidia GTX560m card. My 2018 laptop is a 48GB ram, 1.5 TB SSD (0.5 + 1.0) with an M2 256GB SSD for the included windows 10 home, and a GTX 1060m card. Windows 10 on the newer laptop lasts about 2.5 hours before it shuts down. I now run the pre-installed windows 10 via a kvm with passthrough of the M2 into the instance.
All of these are currently running late model Linux Mint 19.2 with accelerated graphics.
Work laptop is a Mac 16 GB ram, 512GB SSD with an intel/AMD hybrid graphics bit. This will last 5 hours with significant tweaks to aggressive power off, and me not running any builds on it.
I like the mac for its physical fit and finish, weight, etc. But I need to bring the power supply with me, as I can burn through much of the power in a 2 hour meeting.
I like the linux machine for work, and everything else. It just works. The drivers just work. The networking just works. Single/multi displays just work. I have cinammon (display manager) set up to a very comfortable configuration.
I am hopeful that the day job will enable me to trade up to a bigger machine with linux and nvidia graphics at some point ... 32GB is bare minimum for a functional machine for me, 48->64GB is better.
My home office deskside is an older Sandy Bridge machine with 16 cores, 128 GB ram, old GTX750ti card, running the same environment as on my laptop.
Of course, YMMV.
Except one happens to have a laptop with an older AMD card or Optimus Intel/NVidia combo.
The open source driver still doesn't provide feature parity with the proprietary one that Ubuntu LTS dropped support for.
https://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2016/03/ubuntu-drops-amd-catalys...
Namely hardware video decoding and OpenGL version.
So this thing about marvelous open source AMD support, depends pretty much how much luck one has.
AMD drivers have been hit and miss for a while, which is one of two reasons I tend to prefer NVidia cards. NVidia took time to make sure their whole stack works reasonably well.
Lenovo has a 32 GB max model, and HP has a 64 GB max model.
I use Arch Linux, and a combination of KDE and i3 so one would expect me to have a ton of rediculous problems. But I haven't had a single problem. It took me a single day to set up my computer how I wanted it (I've used Linux before) and I haven't had to touch a config file since.
Part of this might be that in using a Dell XPS DE, which is designed to work well with Linux, but I think it might just be a YMMV situation. And I do a lot of back end, applications, web and front end development (mostly in my spare time), so I think I've hit a lot of programmer use-cases.
Also, I get 15 hour battery life streaming 4K video on my 4K touch screen, and more doing other stuff.
I also used an Apple Magic Touchpad or whatever over Bluetooth with it, including gestures and it worked really well. Better, actually, as far as Bluetooth, than my Mac. I only stopped because it wasn't good for my hand and wrist health.
Just adding my anecdata. Overall my experience with Linux has been hugely positive.
It's true that Linux won't run with all hardware, but this is even more true for MacOS ;)
Installed Xubuntu and forgot about those for years, the experience is still smooth, fast and the computers turn-on fast.
> Windows sometimes works
I'm going to take exception to this. Windows 10 has been a disaster for me.
Effectively, Windows 10 treats me like a "supplicant". "Oh, great computer, can you please do some work for me right now?" "I say NAY! I must now commence my Update Ritual. Please come back and ask again. But I make no guarantees."
Every ... single ... time. WTF!
> MacOS mostly works
Unless you want to do modern graphics and then you get the "joy" of learning Metal (or not). Or, you can simply throw in the towel and switch to Windows/Linux where you can use OpenGL and Vulkan. Valve is funding MoltenVK (a Vulkan shim on top of Metal) because it is more cost effective than dealing with Metal. Let that sink in for a minute.
And OS X hardware is a disaster. We've actually stockpiled used-2015 era OS X laptops in the office. At this point we have enough if someone has a laptop that goes down.
I don't fully understand why Linux is able to do its system updates as one of several tasks, but Windows has to take over the computer to do it though. Is it just that if a Linux box gets stuffed during update, the user is probably able to recover, so the relative risks are different?
Not so trivial on Linux. The fact that the author considers Firefox add-ons (!) a Linux feature is a clear indicator they never even tried on a Mac and were enamored by Linux due to the lionisation in the particular subreddits they follow.
Kind of like here! Not that there is anything wrong with getting excited about something. Just don't make sweeping generalizations.
Also, a small tip: You can put your Mac apps and configurations in Dropbox and they will show up and work as you expect across your multiple machines.
https://puu.sh/E9qyC/cdbeb9ce4c.png
On another note, highly recommend Puush (https://puush.me/) for instantly taking and sharing screenshots without having to manually upload.
Anyhow, you're more likely looking for something like Amethyst.
https://github.com/ianyh/Amethyst
There are a couple of automatic tiling window managers for MacOS, the most notable being Yabai (https://github.com/koekeishiya/yabai) and Amethyst (https://github.com/ianyh/Amethyst).
Yabai doesn't handle window switching on its own but it can use SKHD (https://github.com/koekeishiya/skhd) or any other application that can bind terminal commands to keyboard shortcuts such as Hammerspoon (https://www.hammerspoon.org) or BetterTouchTool (https://folivora.ai) or even Keyboard Maestro. The commands are context-aware of spaces and the placement of windows on the x-y plane so you can move between windows relative to their position on the screen.
https://superuser.com/questions/299241/in-mac-os-what-is-the...
Things tend to just work on the Mac, even though I use it for a wide variety of tasks (programming mainly, writing, music, and video secondarily, plus some photo work). Music and Video (DAWs and NLEs) are almost a joke in Linux.
You have to be cautious to buy compatible laptop hardware, and still there's always something not working on new setups, usually sleep, sound, GPU compositor, bluetooth, etc.
Technically, there are more 100% Linux compatible laptops than macos dito...
That is true even if you limit yourself to thinkpads
I'm pretty sure that would be my problem if I tried to move (back to) Linux. A lot of the HN crowd is (understandably!) focused on development, and the chances are your favorite dev environment is going to be good-or-better on Linux as it is on the Mac. But I can't find a screenplay writing program on Linux I personally like as much as Highland for the Mac, or a Markdown editor that I like as much as iA Writer or BBEdit for the "heavy lifting" of technical writing at work, or a graphics editor I like as much as Acorn, or a Twitter client I like as much as Twitterrific, or a Markdown previewer/converter I like as much as Marked, and and and. I know it's all subjective, but it's a sticking point. And the last I checked, at least, I couldn't find good equivalents to OS X Services/Quick Actions, which can be just amazing.
I'm sure if Apple really tanks, I could make the switch and hit a happy place, but it'd be turbulent for a while.
Those of us into graphics programming, UI/UX are better served with macOS/Windows tooling, development enviroments and SDKs.
That is what triggered my move back into those platforms.
That's been my observation and occasional experience. I'm more of a technical writer these days, but I've done light graphics and UX work at various points over the years and prefer what's available on the Mac. (My experience on Windows is pretty limited.)
Also note that not every country is enamoured with Apple price levels, hence Windows for software that runs on both.
Then there are the games console SDKs, DirectX, high performance graphics with SLI cards, e-gaming, ...
Right now I've gone half in and have Fedora Server on an Intel NUC that I SSH into. So not quite a desktop replacement, but a nice linux environment for doing dev in. Disadvantage is you rely on a network connection for this approach, but it will do for now
=
no Linux if you want to do something serious with photography or video.
If the proprietary media apps are a must, having a Windows VM works good (with GPU pass through if you need it), as does dual-booting with Windows or a Hackintosh system (which is actually pretty easy these days).
Da Vinci Resolve (https://www.blackmagicdesign.com/products/davinciresolve/) is another professional video editor used for popular movies (Avengers: Infinity War, Deadpool 2 for example).
Both work on Linux.
these are the barriers to me switching.
So is Automator (which I wish more people knew about).
If you want to use GNOME, it includes a good color management interface that will look oddly familiar coming from macOS. There’s other ways to do it too: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linux_color_management
As for messaging, I’ve heard good things about KDE Connect. Not sure if it works with iOS though.
For pretty user-interface and default fonts, you can edit a fontconfig file that will let you specify aliases for fonts and some pretty complex configuration to get the right font in each saturation. See https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Font_configuration
I use xetex for a little project, and while some of those character mappings are very convenient others are not. Vulgar fractions, for instance, work in some fonts but not others. For instance LTC Californian Pro has the unicode glyphs for the vulgar fractions, but xetex doesn't translate e.g. 3/8 to ⅜. Goudy Oldstyle is missing many vulgar fractions (e.g. ⅜), but the tex mappings work. Go figure.
Granted, fractions aren't mapped to keys in OSX, but I use plenty of those mappings on a regular basis including the bullet (•, ·), degree (°), accented characters (á, é, í, ó, ü, ö, ñ), currency characters (£, ¢, €), and the section character — §. I can get all of these with simple keystrokes and, best of all, zero fiddling with keybindings.
Probably Compose - - -, Compose s s, and Compose m u respectively. Or, if they wanted the Mac layout, they'd run ‘setxkbmap us mac -print | xkbcomp - $DISPLAY’ or tick the equivalent box in their favourite GUI settings. (Option-SHIFT-dash for an em dash, BTW; option-dash is an en dash.)
X and Mac keyboard layout systems have similar power; I slightly prefer the Mac one because you can define arbitrary dead keys, but on the other hand X has Compose.
1: https://fman.io/blog/home-and-hotel/
I had a PC at my old job and it was painful to use. All you have is alt-tab really, and that felt like a little half assed script an undergrad whipped up on a lark. Also everything was on network drives which were never indexed for search, so that was painful too. As well as all the usual pain points from every new windows version functioning as a reskinned windows xp in practice.
Kind of reminds me of this article. You say you're more productive but honestly: how much time have you spent working on and customising your OS and is it a continuous project? Can you really say you're more productive than the people who open their lid and just work?
But there are always going to be exceptions, new problems will arise that will slow you down. That's another reason why I'm on a mainstream OS and not linux, because when I do encounter a problem that slows me down, devs work at breakneck speed to fix bugs and there is extensive documentation because the community is much larger than the linux community. I'd be spending waaay too much time in the weeds on ubuntu, sifting through pages of SEO crap search results to find the one sage forum post from 10 years ago with now deleted screenshots, just trying to run the software and workflows I know like the back of my hand on macos. I don't want to start over and be a dumbass again, I've found my niche.
Sure, it’s one thing to compare knowledge that you already have. But does macOS even have a counterpart to the Arch Wiki for those starting out?
ps: one talk that I find a pretty strong example is "the unix chainsaw" by Gary Bernhardt (of wat js fame). He shows how to using tools `against` themselves, as data, to help your work. It's not rocket science, but it's 1) something I rarely do truly 2) easy to fall back as tools as silos instead of .. `objects` collaborating.
- Knowing what happens if I have the audacity to update my computer without reading 3 different forum threads
- Understanding how to fix hilariously bad font rendering issues in a terminal, a software paradigm that's almost as old as computers themselves
- Tempering expectations that incredibly obscure apps like "Spotify" will "just work".
I think to imply Arch teaches much beyond the skills needed to deal with Arch Linux is a tenuous premise at best.
Agreed on the fonts, that has always been a pain. That being said, I recently installed Arch on a new laptop and the fonts weren't too bad out of the box - times change.
I update at least twice a week and I've only had one breakage in 3 years - I didn't update a config file with some new settings.
All in all, your response comes across a little FUDdy IMO.
Honestly, I don't understand what makes Arch so special.
I have mostly learned things on Ubuntu and I can use Arch just fine, and I think I have a decent understanding how things work.
Really, I think there is nothing fundamentally different across these distributions technically speaking.
Their biggest differences lie in their package and release management and policies (and, agreed, this is huge).
I'm not sure what skill you would learn on Arch and not on Ubuntu. It seems some vocal Arch users are lying to themselves and to the rest of the world about this.
Gentoo (or LFS) might probably be more educational, but I haven't used Gentoo enough, and haven't tried LFS enough to say.
(Kudos for Arch's documentation though, useful even when using another distro)
I don't particularly care for the whole DIY aspect. I spend enough time tinkering with Emacs and other tools that I don't want to waste any time on configuring/tweaking the OS itself. The different Manjaro versions are pretty decent (currently using the Awesome WM one), and I really like the Manjaro CLI installer (manjaro-architect) if I want a bit more control over my installation.
Now, don't put Arch on your servers either because there's no real security story for Arch, but in that time I have learned tons about systemd, and you can't put a price on that.
On the Asus Nvidia updates broke my Windows manager on Ubuntu it not happen with Arch.
The Arch install is a little bit more complex but you can do exactly what you want which was for me: use systemd boot instead of grub, and cipher only the home partition.
Once the setup is done, I did not have any issue, fiddling to be done.
For me where I lost time on Linux was when I tried to customize my desktop environment to my liking with i3/polybar/etc. Now I just run Gnome3 on Wayland, far from perfect but it is a good compromise TBH between setup ease/integrated UI components and features.
I think that archlinuxs advantage is that it's minimalistic, the philosophy is simple, you know what is running on your computer and generally why.
Tinkering with arch itself isn't that time consuming because the package management is so incredibly good, along with the AUR and wiki. These are invaluable.
I really do think the difficulty is overhyped though, it's really not hard at all.
1. Do you know what the end state is, and do you know that you'll be significantly more productive? If so, then spend some real time on it.
2. Do you not know what the end state is, OR are you not sure what the best setup is? If so, then do the absolute minimum amount of work to make your changes functional and no more. Then use the incomplete setup for a while and see how it feels.
3. Are you not sure of the end state, AND are you not sure it will make you more productive? Then put it off and keep using your current setup, or at most try it out on a separate computer in your free time.
It's not unlike working on software architecture. You can get so focused on good architecture and clean code that you never get any real work done. Some code is fine to leave ugly. But not all code -- the art is knowing when code actually needs to be refactored, and figuring out how to refactor it in a way that doesn't lock you out of developing new features for a month.
Environment customization is the same way.
I don't know if overall all the tinkering I've done over the years was a net positive in terms of efficient use of working hours.
But I can for sure tell you that if I've just opened my lid and worked, I would have been much less satisfied while working when I would constantly run into unnecessary limitations of my tools. Hard to put a quantifier on work satisfaction.
As a professional, using the right tools for your job should be part of your job. You wouldn't trust a workman hammering a nail into the wall with a screwdriver just because that's the only tool in his tool belt.
And this isn't even an exaggerated metaphor. For decades Windows was unusable OOTB for any serious development. OSX is still handicapped by a decades old userspace (better than nothing but not good).
By tinkering and customizing you might gain a productive work environment but the way I see it is that some people just want to tinker because it makes them happy. The ’increased productivity’ seems to be more of a way to rationalize it to oneself.
- I do open a laptop and just work. Using configuration that I’ve already created to suit my work.
- Other people is a big group, and one that doesn’t matter so much here. I’m more productive using what I’ve opted to change than without. Yes, the minor time investment was worth it.
I bought a pre configured Linux computer (laptop). They’re not very common but common enough.
I haven’t had to spend any time with setup, and frankly I’ve been pleased that everything just works. My main complaint it Battery life isn’t terrible but isn’t great but for what I do it’s good enough.
Agreed, this doesn’t apply to everyone. Years ago, every 6 months I’d switch to Linux/hackintosh purely out of frustration (or envy) as OSX looked sooo much better than anything else (antialiasing!) AND supported Adobe CC.
Nowadays I’m a Mac user and I’m unlikely to switch, because I’ve grown a bit tired of my tweaking marathons and need a proper *nix system.
I wish Windows just became a GUI layer on top of Linux though.
It may not be by 30-40% as some people claim, but even at 1% that's around 20 hours in a year assuming a light schedule (40 hours a week 48 weeks a year).
But just because you are using Linux, doesn't mean you have to spend a lot of time customizing. Actually, customizing can be a lot quicker on Linux than on Windows for example (due to the well-integrated package managers).
That said, I do think that some customizations help with productivity, but you should know your limits. If you are trying something completely new, which nobody has done before, you are unlikely to find huge productivity boosts. But if you cautiously follow some best practices you might find some productivity treasures.