Ask HN: Who Went Mac –> Linux?
A lot of people do the switch from Something -> Mac,
but who's going the other way? and why?
I personally just bought a Macbook, worked like a charm for 3 months but then I figured out Apple hardware do not like tea, and all Apple shops just suggested me to buy a new Macbook - which seems a little crazy expensive to me.
So I went back to Linux, and fell in love with Linux again. It seems much more productive for my work with Linux, except when I update and my drivers stop working again.
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[ 3.3 ms ] story [ 68.0 ms ] threadMacbook Pros more resistant to fluids than non-pro hardware?
I wanted something repairable and open and although I'm still convinced that the Apple M-series devices are ahead of everything else, my development work does not really suffer from a little less battery life or a little less performance. The hardest problem to solve was the sheer amount of options you have when choosing linux. There are not 3 options, not 10 options, but hundreds of them. Hardware compatibility, different distributions, UI Frameworks, Window Managers, Filesystems, etc. etc. How could anyone new to this stuff find a solution for this in a week?
After tinkering around about 4 months I made a final decision to use Fedora on a used Lenovo T480s with a replaced glass touchpad (Today, I would probably go for a Ryzen Framework Notebook), and so far it is great. High resolution screen, good battery life, replaceable parts / repairable notebook and still good performance. Fedora with GNOME really feels most similar to macOS. I also considered Pop!OS and Debian.
However, my workflow still has some issues. The things I miss most are the touchpad (although with libinput-config the experience comes really close to macOS), the default Apps Suite (Mail, Calendar, Preview, Contacts) and the ability to deploy software to other Apple devices (e.g. iOS). Since I also switched to GrapheneOS on a Pixel 4a recently (long live the audio jack), it is no longer a problem, but working with PDFs and documents is really a pain. Window Management issues are not that present, but sometimes there are minor problems like the apps overlapping the screen, moving in a strange way, etc.
I still thing that the switch was worth it. Never having to deal with hardware repair issues or apples other shenanigans let me feel walking the extra mile takes half the time :-)
So I got a used Dell 9360.
Sway and wayland.
Changed the way I use the computer. Switched back to Mac with the ARM MacBook (and working keyboard).
I use both very similarly and am comfortable on both OSes. But for now, Apple Silicon is _very_ nice.
Also, just having all the devices and suspend work. I will take that as a side benefit.
OS X was the reason why I moved from Windows to Mac many, many years ago. macOS is the reason I moved to Linux.
My work offers me a laptop, and I chose a MacBook I have to say. I cannot yet justify spending time tinkering during work hours on unrelated problems.
And boy do I wish anyone would (could?) compete on a hardware level with Apple. Their new MacBooks are just the best on the market.
But after using Linux daily for my private life, I wish they would fix macOS. I love how easy and straight forward everything is with Linux.
Initially I hated macos, as there were no tiling window managers but later on I got accustomed to it, even though I miss using linux.
Now I just want everything that works out of the box, But I do plan onto getting myself cheap Thinkpad and might run linux on it.
On macOS, the alt key is often very useful, try e.g. alt+shift+volume to increase / decrease volume in smaller steps than default or when you mute notifications.
1: https://ianyh.com/amethyst/
2: https://rectangleapp.com/
My MacBook serves its main purpose really well though, I use it for research and writing essentially, and I do a little bit of my business stuff on it, but nothing fancy since it’s mainly all just done through accounting software and my accountant sorts the other shit…
But I’m wanting to explore a little more of the software/programming side of stuff and experimenting with that sort of thing so I’m going to use Linux for that, and basically I just want to see what I can achieve with basically just a raspberry pi and Linux, and build on it from there. I’m very much winging it so I know I sound like an idiot.
My current "equilibrium" that works well is Mac for my desktops and laptops, and Linux for all my other systems in my homelab (Plex server, NAS, app servers, touch controls for home automation, home surveillance systems, etc).
As long as the Linux track pad experience remains crappy, I doubt I will ever move over to Linux as my primary desktop.
By the way, I gave up completely on Ubuntu. Fedora is the "new Ubuntu" for me. Easy to setup and use.
However, if looking for a laptop Macbooks are just so much better built and the M series have such superior battery life it would be insane to use anything else in my opinion.
I just can't decide between a macbook air, thinkpad and msi windows machine with a nice NVIDIA card.
The Thinkpad will weigh twice as much, it be about 3x the volume of a Macbook Pro (with the extended battery), the trackpad will half the size (and suck), and finally it will get hot and need to spin up the fans constantly. Oh and the screen and speakers will probably suck compared to the Macs. And you won't have mag-safe. And you'll need to carry around a massive and heavy power adapter.
My Thinkpad weighs approximately 1.2 pounds more than my MacBook Air, or about a half pound more than a 14” MacBook Pro. My MacBook Air doesn’t have MagSafe, so that’s a wash, and the thinkpad uses USB-C to charge, just like the Mac. I usually use the same small 30W charger for both laptops. Screen/speakers are probably marginally worse on the thinkpad. And you’re correct that it’s thicker, though I’d doubt that it’s 3x the volume. In exchange for the above cons, I get:
* The ability to use 64GB of memory and an SSD of my choosing, purchased for reasonable market prices
* The ability to easily run any distribution of Linux that I want
* The ability to replace the battery easily when it wears out by simply buying a new one and snapping it in
* A large ecosystem of parts (aftermarket and OEM) for doing my own repairs and upgrades
I’ve considered my options and find that these tradeoffs are worth it for me a lot of the time. Though these benefits may not be important for other people, I’d encourage you not to say things like “it’d be insane to use anything else.”
Stayed for the stability, ethos and openess.
I think the only reason I'd go Linux today is if I needed a beefier computer then what I can get out of a $2000 MacBook.
As far as I can tell, MacBooks are some of the most durable laptops out there. I don't personally have any concern about them needing more repairs than others.
I disagree that Mac OS is somehow “more standard” (whatever that means).
In addition, if you are a web developer, chances are you’re either deploying your software to Linux or to a container platform that’s native to Linux. Having your dev and prod environments match can be helpful.
Not all that stable: honestly an outright lie. Windows is stable. Linux is stable. Mac is stable. They’re all fine.
Ads for Apple products: they absolutely can be disabled and never come up after the first time they’re dismissed. By the way, not all Linux is non-commercial and the most popular distributions like Ubuntu and Red Hat are commercial distributions.
https://linuxiac.com/ubuntu-once-again-angered-users-by-plac...
I think the parent comment to yours was saying “more standard” in the sense that more software (especially commercial software) knows what to do with a Mac and works well with it. There are a whole bunch of commercial applications that have a Mac and Windows version but no Linux version.
macOS is also only one distribution while there are hundreds of flavors of Linux. If you’re on a Mac then someone targeting your platform knows what components you have. People who make accessories consider your existence and test their products with your platform.
Finally, most people aren’t web developers. But even if they were, I would argue that making your workstation exactly match the production server environment isn’t going to work that well even if you’re on a Linux desktop and is probably the wrong approach anyway. If I’m using an Arch Linux workstation and my application is running on Amazon EKS backed by Amazon Linux, there’s no possible way to make my container environment perfectly match the production technology.
And to directly refute your second point, here are two examples of Apple ads that you can’t disable: 1) if you’re close to the free limit of your iCloud storage, there’s a prominent block trying to upsell you to a paid plan in the iCloud settings. 2) if you press the “play” button on any connected pair of non-Apple headphones when nothing is currently playing, the Apple Music app opens, which, on launch, will attempt to sell you on a subscription if you don’t already have one. There’s no way to disable this ad, or even to tell the OS to open a different app or none at all, short of an open source hack that nukes Music.app entirely until your next reboot.
I never said anything against an OS being commercial.
And to be clear, I am only talking laptop/desktop workstations. I'm aware that server Linux is just about the most stable thing around, but you can't tell me with a straight face that someone on a workstation with an Nvidia graphics card is having a more stable exprience on Linux than a user on Windows with the same hardware. As another example, dist-upgrade has failed many, many Ubuntu users in the past, including myself.
iCloud storage warning: This is a message related to an entirely optional service. You only get this message if you are using iCloud storage and filling it up. The alternative is a bunch of confused users wondering why they can't save files anymore. Yes, it's an upsell, but it's exactly what a user in that situation needs to hear. It is a message that all of its competitors like Dropbox, OneDrive, Google, etc will give you because it's a rather important message.
There is no iCloud service on Mac that can't be 100% replaced by an alternative. iCloud is not required to use Mac, and an Apple ID is not required to use Mac.
You are also not correct about the Apple Music service. In the Music app, go to Music > Settings... > Show: and uncheck "Apple Music" and "iTunes Store" if you don't want to see Apple's paid services within the Music app. In that case, pressing play on your bluetooth headphones will open up Apple Music in its role as the traditional MP3/AAC Jukebox app, no ads for anything.
I agree that there should be a way to customize what happens when you press the play button on your third party headphones, but let's also be real: you're pressing the play button without playing anything. Opening the included music application is a reasonably sensible default.
All Macs are basically the same so if there is a popular app X that people are using, I know I can simply run X too.
On Linux, there are many distros and versions out there that support for apps is not as straightforward.
Put another way, I've never had to fiddle around the get an app to work on Mac. I've spent plenty of time fiddling around to get apps working on Linux.
That’s fine, of course! I do, so I was offering that example as a disadvantage (for me) of owning a Mac.
> All Macs are basically the same so if there is a popular app X that people are using, I know I can simply run X too.
This is 100% not true, as there are often features shipped on the Mac that are not available on certain machines. For example, when Sidecar was first released (the feature that lets you extend your Mac’s display to an iPad), I saw a friend using it, but I could not. I can’t remember now, but either the Mac or the iPad was too old and it wasn’t supported. So all machines are not the same.
It’s true that there is sometimes fiddling on Linux, but I prefer my environments 100% free of ads and customized how I like them. Thanks to the distro I use, I typically only need to tweak/experiment to get something right once, and then I never have to worry about that thing again.
I've used apple computers for work stuff later, but wouldn't purchase one for myself again unless I needed to.
Even a modular laptop like a Framework will end up with the user replacing a whole lot of components in that situation. It will be less wasteful but the cost will still be high.
People love to criticize OSes, but the fact is that it is extremely interesting to understand how they work and what the differences are.
Windows is the king of business productivity; I've never seen someone with a mac do what I qualify as real business work using any applications outside of the Adobe ecosystem- If you took someone who works heavily in Microsoft & gave them a Windows machine, they'll be vastly more productive then they are in Mac OS even though Microsoft works on both platforms.
I suspect this is a core design issue more then anything as in Windows the work you do is forefront, in Mac using the Mac OS is forefront, and with Linix open source is forefront. I can tweak my Debian all day long but it won't ever run Rufus; while my Mac might run some windows applications it also won't give me the same terminal power as Debian will. Debian however won't allow me to run windows apps, will have driver issues (like my completely incompatible-still audio drivers for a laptop from 2008). Package management is and likely always will be a nightmare in Debian. However if I baby Debian and focus on particular workflows, I can set up a workflow for what I want-aka a writing environment or my golang environment but it lacks the robustness of jumping between applications seemlessly like Windows has. Linux continues to fail by not providing a superior desktop environment, however I'll still take Linux over Mac OS for any real work.
My next personal desire is to move my home computing towards purposed servers- one for writing, one for programming, etc while going either super-light laptop or portable screen & usb keyboard / mouse for maximum flexibility. That way I can setup at the multi-monitor command center if I want, or move out to the porch lightly.
I'd even go so far as to say that with the exception of gaming setups, beefier laptops / desktops isn't needed at all- just build home servers.
I agree but I feel that’s a very unpopular statement. There’s also counter examples. The OpenAI teams run on Macs, and it’s VERY hard to say they’re not productive. But in general, if you use excel or outlook, yah, there’s no way to replace that with a Mac. Even if, as you said, the apps are available.
Why do you need to run Rufus instead of using dd or mkisofs?
> if I baby Debian and focus on particular workflows, I can set up a workflow for what I want-aka a writing environment or my golang environment but it lacks the robustness of jumping between applications seemlessly like Windows has
This sounds like something solvable by switching to a different desktop environment or using a window manager with more configurable options
> Debian however won't allow me to run windows apps, will have driver issues (like my completely incompatible-still audio drivers for a laptop from 2008)
Perhaps this is a Debian-specific issue because of restricting non-free repos by default and other less principally stanced distros wouldn't suffer from that issue? Also many Windows apps that don't even run on Windows anymore will run perfectly fine under Linux with Wine or other compatibility layers.