Switching from macOS: The Basics(blog.elementary.io)
blog.elementary.io
Switching from macOS: The Basics
http://blog.elementary.io/post/152626170946/switching-from-macos-the-basics
608 comments
I have been a Linux user for a long time ( ArchLinux with Xfce ). Recently, I switched jobs and my employer issued me with a Mac. I am having the same problem : the fucking OS. Why do I need to press multiple buttons to see how many applications I have open ? Why does command + tab cycle through every open application ? Why does it not limit itself to the applications in the current space ? What are spaces for anyway ? Why does clicking on an already open application's icon in the dock take me to a random window for the application ? Is there some logic to it ? Is it random ? I think I understand why so many people wax on about tiling window managers now, they have never seen proper window managers. Also why do I have to press Command + whatever when there is a perfectly functional control key on the keyboard ? If I am remoted into a Windows machine now I have to remember to press Control + whatever and revert back to Command + Whatever when I am back on my Mac. Also don't even get me started on the docker networking issues.
But it would be unfair for me to blame Apple's OS for most of these faults.
But it would be unfair for me to blame Apple's OS for most of these faults.
<Command> + <Tab> cycles open applications, but
<Command> + <~> cycles windows in the current application context
I find this two-dimensional switching incredibly useful for multitasking, whereas Windows just flattens all windows to the alt-tab list, which quickly becomes overwhelming if you're a power user who doesn't like to close windows.
I find this two-dimensional switching incredibly useful for multitasking, whereas Windows just flattens all windows to the alt-tab list, which quickly becomes overwhelming if you're a power user who doesn't like to close windows.
I have to believe you but this exact feature is possibly my biggest issue with Mac: breaking the stack.
In some of my workflows I jump back and forth between programs a lot. Example (not everything I do is this tedious : ) Alt + tab, tab, ctrl + shift + end, ctrl + c, alt + tab, ctrl + v.
When I was on Mac it felt like this would break down multiple times a day: CMD + tab, oh wait, another Window of the same App, that means CMD - tab to go back, then something I have forgotten, possibly CMD + | on my keyboard back then, then the same insanity next time.
Basically for someone like me who works quick but has lots of things to keep in mind this breaks down immediately.
I don't want to stop and think if this is another Window or another App, I just want to go back to that second last thing I worked on.
As I said, I have to believe you guys actually like it but for me this particular (mis- IMO)feature was one of the main reasons why I will ask nicely to get a Windows or Linuzx laptop instead of a Mac.
In return I ask that you believe me when I say that I haven't come across one of those jarring font issues that Mac people complain about in Linux. My touchpad is good enough, - I try to use my keyboard most of the time anyway etc etc.
In some of my workflows I jump back and forth between programs a lot. Example (not everything I do is this tedious : ) Alt + tab, tab, ctrl + shift + end, ctrl + c, alt + tab, ctrl + v.
When I was on Mac it felt like this would break down multiple times a day: CMD + tab, oh wait, another Window of the same App, that means CMD - tab to go back, then something I have forgotten, possibly CMD + | on my keyboard back then, then the same insanity next time.
Basically for someone like me who works quick but has lots of things to keep in mind this breaks down immediately.
I don't want to stop and think if this is another Window or another App, I just want to go back to that second last thing I worked on.
As I said, I have to believe you guys actually like it but for me this particular (mis- IMO)feature was one of the main reasons why I will ask nicely to get a Windows or Linuzx laptop instead of a Mac.
In return I ask that you believe me when I say that I haven't come across one of those jarring font issues that Mac people complain about in Linux. My touchpad is good enough, - I try to use my keyboard most of the time anyway etc etc.
Get Witch: https://manytricks.com/witch/
You should be all set. I've used it for years because I also prefer Windows' flat window switching.
Also, only $14--less than the price of most dongles. ;)
You should be all set. I've used it for years because I also prefer Windows' flat window switching.
Also, only $14--less than the price of most dongles. ;)
> Also why do I have to press Command + whatever when there is a perfectly functional control key on the keyboard ?
Of all the OS X criticism, this is the most absurd. Command, Control, they are all arbitrary choice, why even whinge about it. Is like going to France and complaining everyone speaks French
Of all the OS X criticism, this is the most absurd. Command, Control, they are all arbitrary choice, why even whinge about it. Is like going to France and complaining everyone speaks French
Also, the Mac was released long before Windows. Not Apple's fault that Windows differs.
>Also why do I have to press Command + whatever when there is a perfectly functional control key on the keyboard ? If I am remoted into a Windows machine now I have to remember to press Control + whatever and revert back to Command + Whatever when I am back on my Mac
It's worth pointing out that Apple is the odd one out when it comes to modifier keys. Switching between Linux and Windows, alot of the keyboard shortcuts remain exactly the same. Going from Windows to OS X is a really frustrating from that aspect.
It's worth pointing out that Apple is the odd one out when it comes to modifier keys. Switching between Linux and Windows, alot of the keyboard shortcuts remain exactly the same. Going from Windows to OS X is a really frustrating from that aspect.
What is really frustrating is to go back. You never get that shortcut consistency like it is between different osx apps. Not to mention that my leftmost finger stopped being sick, because Cmd is just below thumb, not in the dead corner. Many linuxoids even remap control on capslock for that reason.
Protip: use karabiner to bind command to control when you're using a windows VM ;)
I discovered Karabiner too late, after upgrading to Sierra, now I'm waiting for it to work on Sierra :-(
Speak for yourself. Linux is a perfectly viable option for non-lazy people, who don't complain about everything. And Windows 10 is excellent too if you don't care about privacy. And it's Ubuntu not Ubuttnu.
>> a sneering fuck you directed at not just me, but everybody remotely like me.
You overpaid 8k for a machine so why should Apple care? You are clearly going to buy their next product.
>>But we're mostly all gonna buy the new shitty MacBook Hipster, or gut it out with our old ones
According to Netmarketshare stats at least 2% have abandoned OSX since May 2016.
>> a sneering fuck you directed at not just me, but everybody remotely like me.
You overpaid 8k for a machine so why should Apple care? You are clearly going to buy their next product.
>>But we're mostly all gonna buy the new shitty MacBook Hipster, or gut it out with our old ones
According to Netmarketshare stats at least 2% have abandoned OSX since May 2016.
See Linux people always say that, "it's coz your lazy", "Linux works great". I've tried pretty much every year for the last 10 years to get Linux working.
When I go into a brand new elementary installation to try it out, and I can't set the proxy, i shake my head and wonder how anybody can take this OS seriously.
Not even that the proxy setting didn't work, I actually couldn't set it in the GUI, it would just wipe my setting.
Yeah... linux is not perfectly viable, its a mess.
When I go into a brand new elementary installation to try it out, and I can't set the proxy, i shake my head and wonder how anybody can take this OS seriously.
Not even that the proxy setting didn't work, I actually couldn't set it in the GUI, it would just wipe my setting.
Yeah... linux is not perfectly viable, its a mess.
Non-lazy or should I say ok-to-deal-with-all-this-shit
http://itvision.altervista.org/why.linux.is.not.ready.for.th...
> And it's Ubuntu not Ubuttnu.
oh. well, as long as that's been cleared up.
oh. well, as long as that's been cleared up.
> Linux is a perfectly viable option for non-lazy people, who don't complain about everything.
And that right there is the problem. Laziness is a good thing, it means the software is being more useful. And you should encourage complaints and fix the problem, which can only make things better for everyone.
And that right there is the problem. Laziness is a good thing, it means the software is being more useful. And you should encourage complaints and fix the problem, which can only make things better for everyone.
> Nothing works right, on any of them. Copy/paste, batteries, wireless networking, drag and drop, high-res displays, multilingual input, even like fucking word processing and email and image editors and terminal programs...
Can you be more specific? i.e. - copy paste with a highlight+middle mouse button is frankly awesome in GNOME.
- Batteries - yeah, Windows laptops usually don't have amazing battery life and it can even be slightly worse under Linux, however if you're working in a mode where you laptop is 99% plugged in and you just need occasionally a couple of hours from it, it's quite doable, which I'd imagine is the use-case for most "workstation" usage scenarios.
- wireless networking - works great if you're willing to do a bit of research before buying, instead of just dropping Linux on any garbage PC and expecting it to work flawlessly, (why won't you try that with macOS and report back?)
- drag and drop - that seems... highly unlikely, unless you're dragging/dropping from/to some weird, wrapped wine port that doesn't communicate with your desktop
- high-res displays - not as good as macOS, but works quite well in GNOME 3 and improving all the time, (far better than Windows)
- multilingual input, even like fucking word processing and email and image editors and terminal programs - things like multilingual input work well, word processing works well, but certainly there's no MS Office, (which isn't that great on a Mac either), there's no Photoshop, but I find it strange that Krita, GIMP etc. won't suffice you for many tasks, mail works well and terminal programs work amazingly well as well. In addition gaming on Linux is now miles better than on macOS, in addition to the far superior customisability and superior package management, not to mention not being under the will of a single company that does whatever it feels like that day, which matters to some.
Can you be more specific? i.e. - copy paste with a highlight+middle mouse button is frankly awesome in GNOME.
- Batteries - yeah, Windows laptops usually don't have amazing battery life and it can even be slightly worse under Linux, however if you're working in a mode where you laptop is 99% plugged in and you just need occasionally a couple of hours from it, it's quite doable, which I'd imagine is the use-case for most "workstation" usage scenarios.
- wireless networking - works great if you're willing to do a bit of research before buying, instead of just dropping Linux on any garbage PC and expecting it to work flawlessly, (why won't you try that with macOS and report back?)
- drag and drop - that seems... highly unlikely, unless you're dragging/dropping from/to some weird, wrapped wine port that doesn't communicate with your desktop
- high-res displays - not as good as macOS, but works quite well in GNOME 3 and improving all the time, (far better than Windows)
- multilingual input, even like fucking word processing and email and image editors and terminal programs - things like multilingual input work well, word processing works well, but certainly there's no MS Office, (which isn't that great on a Mac either), there's no Photoshop, but I find it strange that Krita, GIMP etc. won't suffice you for many tasks, mail works well and terminal programs work amazingly well as well. In addition gaming on Linux is now miles better than on macOS, in addition to the far superior customisability and superior package management, not to mention not being under the will of a single company that does whatever it feels like that day, which matters to some.
> copy paste with a highlight+middle mouse button is frankly awesome in GNOME
Oh my gosh, this is my least favorite thing about using gnome! I accidentally paste all the time and can't turn it off particularly easily. Very sad.
Oh my gosh, this is my least favorite thing about using gnome! I accidentally paste all the time and can't turn it off particularly easily. Very sad.
It’s a generic feature of X available in all desktop environments (essentially there’s two copy-paste mechanism which you can use independently). Much easier to use than manual C-c C-v, especially if you have a third mouse button also on your laptop.
And this is the problem. There is zero thought being given to different usage scenarios, and when it is, it's a chaotic solution that works some of the time. How do you middle-click-paste if you are on a trackpad with only two buttons, for example?
I'm only picking on this to illustrate the point: things are hacked together at almost every level for a workstation. This is why "The Year of the Linux Desktop" never happened.
In stark contrast, I am much, much happier with Linux as a server machine than as a workstation, and prefer it to any others.
I'm only picking on this to illustrate the point: things are hacked together at almost every level for a workstation. This is why "The Year of the Linux Desktop" never happened.
In stark contrast, I am much, much happier with Linux as a server machine than as a workstation, and prefer it to any others.
I know for sure that in CDE with SunOS and HP-UX middle click was for paste. I think also on SGI with Irix, but that is going back to 1994 when I was a young teen so I don't remember exactly. Middle click to paste also worked on some linuxes, which is why it was important to get a 3 button mouse even though the middle button did nothing on windows. I want to say that "middle click to paste" is and old unix convention, but I only have the 2.5 examples.
Middle click to paste is indeed an old convention. Xterm supports it, so I suspect it goes all the way back to the early days of the X Window System, c. 1984.
I don't have a problem with middle click being a backwards-compatible convention. It's that the option to change it is non-obvious, and therefore excludes laptop users.
As a counter-example: Much earlier versions of Windows had a menu in the top left corner. The shortcut to close a window used to be double-clicking in that corner. In Windows 7 (not sure about 8 or 10), that menu button/icon is gone. Of course, you can close a windows with the X in the right corner, but the old shortcut still works even though there is seemingly nothing there.
I can't remember where I read this, but I always think of it when it comes to UX design:
Always have more than one way to do the same thing in a UI. Users will pick whichever works better for their worklow.
As a counter-example: Much earlier versions of Windows had a menu in the top left corner. The shortcut to close a window used to be double-clicking in that corner. In Windows 7 (not sure about 8 or 10), that menu button/icon is gone. Of course, you can close a windows with the X in the right corner, but the old shortcut still works even though there is seemingly nothing there.
I can't remember where I read this, but I always think of it when it comes to UX design:
Always have more than one way to do the same thing in a UI. Users will pick whichever works better for their worklow.
I wasn't defending it. I'm familiar with it and use it occasionally, but I don't think I would have made that design choice.
hmm, horses for courses. I thought popular thinking had moved on from the perl philosophy of "there's more than one way to do it" to "let's reduce complexity and errors by just having one way to do it". While having a CLI and GUI might be good for two different UIs what's the point of having two ways to do the same thing?
The windows X is more of a backwards compatibility thing I imagine, because it makes no sense to have an invisible menu in the top left corner.
The windows X is more of a backwards compatibility thing I imagine, because it makes no sense to have an invisible menu in the top left corner.
There are two ways of doing copy/paste. The middle clicking and Ctrl+C/V.
>How do you middle-click-paste if you are on a trackpad with only two buttons, for example?
Tap twice and drag on the second tap to select.
Tap with three fingers to paste.
Don't use the buttons.
Tap twice and drag on the second tap to select.
Tap with three fingers to paste.
Don't use the buttons.
Why on earth is there not a way to turn this off? I could be a bit understanding if there was just no UI option for this and I had to make an edit to an X conf file, but it's baffling that there just doesn't seem to be a way at all to turn it off. Some applications like Firefox let you change middle-click to autoscroll but that doesn't help outside of Firefox. I'm so worried I'm going to highlight my password and then absent-mindedly middle click and paste it into a chat twenty minutes later!
You can turn it of in gnome-tweak-tool
> Batteries - yeah, Windows laptops usually don't have amazing battery life and it can even be slightly worse under Linux, however if you're working in a mode where you laptop is 99% plugged in and you just need occasionally a couple of hours from it, it's quite doable, which I'd imagine is the use-case for most "workstation" usage scenarios.
Unfortunately, it turns out this usage pattern is terrible for the battery.
Unfortunately, it turns out this usage pattern is terrible for the battery.
> Unfortunately, it turns out this usage pattern is terrible for the battery.
If you let it sufficiently (not fully!) discharge at least once a month, I don't see why it would be particularly terrible for the battery, what am I missing?
If you let it sufficiently (not fully!) discharge at least once a month, I don't see why it would be particularly terrible for the battery, what am I missing?
As far as I am aware, letting it discharge is only for calibration purposes (to ensure the battery gauge reads correctly).
I've been using my laptop battery for about three years with exactly this pattern, and what once lasted ~4 hours on a charge now lasts about 25 minutes.
I've been using my laptop battery for about three years with exactly this pattern, and what once lasted ~4 hours on a charge now lasts about 25 minutes.
>- wireless networking - works great if you're willing to do a bit of research before buying, instead of just dropping Linux on any garbage PC and expecting it to work flawlessly, (why won't you try that with macOS and report back?)
Why doesn't Linux track actual hardware proved to be compatible. Each year the same 'bit of research' with no guarantees at all. Oh, wait, Linux does not — because it isn't a Product.
Why doesn't Linux track actual hardware proved to be compatible. Each year the same 'bit of research' with no guarantees at all. Oh, wait, Linux does not — because it isn't a Product.
> Why doesn't Linux track actual hardware proved to be compatible.
Sure it does [1]. The "bit of research" involves finding out if your desired machine has one of the many chips known to work flawlessly, which shouldn't be a problem, unless you don't mind what you spend your money on and just buy impulsively.
There are also chipset manufactures which are known to be more friendly than others, for example almost any modern Intel Wireless chip will work just fine.
Even for generally unfriendly OEMs, you can find amazingly clear documentation [2].
> Oh, wait, Linux does not
Again, you just asserted stuff without any evidence, see above.
> because it isn't a Product
Not sure by what definition of "product" you're going by, (if any), but you can absolutely get commercial support from a number of companies i.e. Canonical, RedHat, SuSE and even Oracle if you so desire.
[1] - https://help.ubuntu.com/community/WifiDocs/WirelessCardsSupp... [2] - https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/broadcom_wireless
Sure it does [1]. The "bit of research" involves finding out if your desired machine has one of the many chips known to work flawlessly, which shouldn't be a problem, unless you don't mind what you spend your money on and just buy impulsively.
There are also chipset manufactures which are known to be more friendly than others, for example almost any modern Intel Wireless chip will work just fine.
Even for generally unfriendly OEMs, you can find amazingly clear documentation [2].
> Oh, wait, Linux does not
Again, you just asserted stuff without any evidence, see above.
> because it isn't a Product
Not sure by what definition of "product" you're going by, (if any), but you can absolutely get commercial support from a number of companies i.e. Canonical, RedHat, SuSE and even Oracle if you so desire.
[1] - https://help.ubuntu.com/community/WifiDocs/WirelessCardsSupp... [2] - https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/broadcom_wireless
Must confess that 10 years ago I lost around 5 years in deep linux setup & programming, and I know all that you say. Neither [1] nor [2] do not list recent specific hardware models, I mean, notebooks and PCs, not chips or boards. Regular user has to unpack the device and `lspci -vnn -d 14e4:` (amazingly clear for regular user?), or something in live-usb system console at the store under manager's sight to maybe estimate whether this wifi is able to work with specific distro, which alone is a big question until you try it. Repeat these steps for all the hardware in potential purchase, and good luck to find all the specs, because often it is just i5/16Gb/13". There also are unresearchable timebombs like fast battery discharge and sleep issues under non-supported OSes.
"Product" is at least a site like easylinux.com, where you see that in late 2016 you can buy compatible X,Y and almost compatible Z (bios-only fan control), and in 2015 there were A,B,C, and in 2014 D was the best choice. Please click on direct link, torrent or ftp to download a distro image that already contains all the specific drivers and software.
Obviously, I'm unable to provide any evidence for something that doesn't exist.
"Product" is at least a site like easylinux.com, where you see that in late 2016 you can buy compatible X,Y and almost compatible Z (bios-only fan control), and in 2015 there were A,B,C, and in 2014 D was the best choice. Please click on direct link, torrent or ftp to download a distro image that already contains all the specific drivers and software.
Obviously, I'm unable to provide any evidence for something that doesn't exist.
> Must confess that 10 years ago I lost around 5 years in deep linux setup & programming, and I know all that you say.
I am afraid you'll find the Linux of today is much different than a decade ago.
In regards to known working laptops, you mean something like this[1], this[2], this[3] or this[4] ?
Also you can just buy from [5] or [6] and have Linux preinstalled with all the correct drivers.
[1] - https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Category:Laptops [2] - https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Dell_XPS_13_(2016)#XPS_... [3] - https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/HP_Spectre_x360_ap012dx [4] - https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/MacBook [5] - https://system76.com/laptops [6] - https://www.entroware.com/store/laptops
And honestly you can just ask the community on Reddit/IRC/Distroo forums etc. about their experience with the model you want to buy, is that really a problem if you're a "Pro" user spending serious money on the machine?
It honestly just looks like you're too lazy to look. Or maybe you just made up your mind and refuse to budge even when provided evidence to the contrary - I honestly do not understand why you engage in a discussion then, you've already made up your mind.
I am afraid you'll find the Linux of today is much different than a decade ago.
In regards to known working laptops, you mean something like this[1], this[2], this[3] or this[4] ?
Also you can just buy from [5] or [6] and have Linux preinstalled with all the correct drivers.
[1] - https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Category:Laptops [2] - https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Dell_XPS_13_(2016)#XPS_... [3] - https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/HP_Spectre_x360_ap012dx [4] - https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/MacBook [5] - https://system76.com/laptops [6] - https://www.entroware.com/store/laptops
And honestly you can just ask the community on Reddit/IRC/Distroo forums etc. about their experience with the model you want to buy, is that really a problem if you're a "Pro" user spending serious money on the machine?
It honestly just looks like you're too lazy to look. Or maybe you just made up your mind and refuse to budge even when provided evidence to the contrary - I honestly do not understand why you engage in a discussion then, you've already made up your mind.
I'm interested in Ubuntu LTS or Debian stable, not in school-rolled Arch that is known to be broken on each update. Second, it's wiki is filled with anecdotal tips (not even tips) that cover no real issues and provide no idea from which hardware to select. You should click on every configuration to check it, but no one will do. Because it is just words without any customer review or experience. Call it lazy, don't mind.
I'm watching local linux community for years despite not using it, and from what I see, Arch and blah-blah-wiki are still no Products. Curious if you really use this Arch and selected hw by its wiki, or you just googled for me, writing from ubuntu on 10-year old thinkpad. Locals can't really tell what to buy, because virtually everyone except those having ancient thinkpads have at least one issue. Some sit with charger always attached, some can't sleep, some have crashes because nvidia-blob, some because nouveau-blob, others just bought macbook and have no problems trolling linuxoids from osx.
5-6 seem to be not presented in my country.
I can spend some money on recent notebook (but don't get that 'serious' and 'pro' arguments, because we talk about regular user and regular hw) after just your hype, but what an idiot will I feel myself when it will lose wifi too often or fail to sleep on close. I understand you, arguing for linux on desktop is hard, because desktop is still few% of enthusiasts. Statistics prove it all.
I'm watching local linux community for years despite not using it, and from what I see, Arch and blah-blah-wiki are still no Products. Curious if you really use this Arch and selected hw by its wiki, or you just googled for me, writing from ubuntu on 10-year old thinkpad. Locals can't really tell what to buy, because virtually everyone except those having ancient thinkpads have at least one issue. Some sit with charger always attached, some can't sleep, some have crashes because nvidia-blob, some because nouveau-blob, others just bought macbook and have no problems trolling linuxoids from osx.
5-6 seem to be not presented in my country.
I can spend some money on recent notebook (but don't get that 'serious' and 'pro' arguments, because we talk about regular user and regular hw) after just your hype, but what an idiot will I feel myself when it will lose wifi too often or fail to sleep on close. I understand you, arguing for linux on desktop is hard, because desktop is still few% of enthusiasts. Statistics prove it all.
> Arch that is known to be broken on each update
Arch has been rock solid for me for 5 years. You just seem to repeat stereotypes.
> Because it is just words without any customer review or experience.
The words have been written from experience.../head against wall/
> still no Products.
WTF is with this "products" - every Linux distro is a "product", even the kernel is a "product" if you will. I told you if you want professional support pay Canonical or RedHat, but you shouldn't need it if you have basic comprehension skills.
> Curious if you really use this Arch and selected hw by its wiki, or you just googled for me, writing from ubuntu on 10-year old thinkpad.
I indeed run it on VERY modern HW and am typing this from [this baby][1] and even run my home server on Arch, because it's been super stable for me, (on [2] if you're interested...)
[1] - https://www.obsidian-pc.com/en/portatil-clevo-p751dm2-g [2] - http://www.intel.co.uk/content/www/uk/en/nuc/nuc-kit-nuc6i7k...
> Locals can't really tell what to buy, because virtually everyone except those having ancient thinkpads have at least one issue.
Buy any Clevo or a Dell Dev Edition or even a modern HP laptop and you'll be fine.
> others just bought macbook and have no problems trolling linuxoids from osx.
As someone who has to use a MBP for iOS dev, I'll be very careful with the trolling, since there was no release of macOS since 10.6 without major issues, including Sierra. Not even talking 10.7, which was worse than Vista.
> I can spend some money on recent notebook (but don't get that 'serious' and 'pro' arguments, because we talk about regular user and regular hw)
You do what you will - we're talking about a pro here, because this is a post in context of people being disappointed with the newest MBP not being Pro enough for the "Pros".
> what an idiot will I feel myself when it will lose wifi too often or fail to sleep on close.
You have NO IDEA of the irony of this - my 2015 MBP randomly looses WiFi every second day or so, google, "macbook pro loses wifi", it as I am far from alone.
> arguing for linux on desktop is hard
It is in some ways, but I don't care what OS you run and have no desire to "convert you ", I just want to disprove the perceptions that were true a decade ago and have long since been resolved.
Just to give an example of how frustrating this is, i.e. "I tried PulseAudio in 2005 and it sucked, PulseAudio suckzzz!", yeah, it's 2016 and it no longer sucks, in fact it's pretty awesome.
Arch has been rock solid for me for 5 years. You just seem to repeat stereotypes.
> Because it is just words without any customer review or experience.
The words have been written from experience.../head against wall/
> still no Products.
WTF is with this "products" - every Linux distro is a "product", even the kernel is a "product" if you will. I told you if you want professional support pay Canonical or RedHat, but you shouldn't need it if you have basic comprehension skills.
> Curious if you really use this Arch and selected hw by its wiki, or you just googled for me, writing from ubuntu on 10-year old thinkpad.
I indeed run it on VERY modern HW and am typing this from [this baby][1] and even run my home server on Arch, because it's been super stable for me, (on [2] if you're interested...)
[1] - https://www.obsidian-pc.com/en/portatil-clevo-p751dm2-g [2] - http://www.intel.co.uk/content/www/uk/en/nuc/nuc-kit-nuc6i7k...
> Locals can't really tell what to buy, because virtually everyone except those having ancient thinkpads have at least one issue.
Buy any Clevo or a Dell Dev Edition or even a modern HP laptop and you'll be fine.
> others just bought macbook and have no problems trolling linuxoids from osx.
As someone who has to use a MBP for iOS dev, I'll be very careful with the trolling, since there was no release of macOS since 10.6 without major issues, including Sierra. Not even talking 10.7, which was worse than Vista.
> I can spend some money on recent notebook (but don't get that 'serious' and 'pro' arguments, because we talk about regular user and regular hw)
You do what you will - we're talking about a pro here, because this is a post in context of people being disappointed with the newest MBP not being Pro enough for the "Pros".
> what an idiot will I feel myself when it will lose wifi too often or fail to sleep on close.
You have NO IDEA of the irony of this - my 2015 MBP randomly looses WiFi every second day or so, google, "macbook pro loses wifi", it as I am far from alone.
> arguing for linux on desktop is hard
It is in some ways, but I don't care what OS you run and have no desire to "convert you ", I just want to disprove the perceptions that were true a decade ago and have long since been resolved.
Just to give an example of how frustrating this is, i.e. "I tried PulseAudio in 2005 and it sucked, PulseAudio suckzzz!", yeah, it's 2016 and it no longer sucks, in fact it's pretty awesome.
Copy is Ctrl+C in your browser, in your notepad, in your IDE, but it's Ctrl-Shift-C in your terminal.
Paste is Ctrl+V in your browser, in your notepad, in your IDE, but it's Ctrl-Shift-V in your terminal.
Now copy a bunch of IPs from your AWS page into terminal to ssh into them for an hour or so.
Fuck that shit, I'm getting a second mortgage for the MBP and a set of 19 dongles.
Paste is Ctrl+V in your browser, in your notepad, in your IDE, but it's Ctrl-Shift-V in your terminal.
Now copy a bunch of IPs from your AWS page into terminal to ssh into them for an hour or so.
Fuck that shit, I'm getting a second mortgage for the MBP and a set of 19 dongles.
It's been years since I've used linux, but my muscle memory for copying/pasting in the terminal is still there, to the point of it being the reason I can't use non Mac layout keyboards in OSX. I'll just keep pressing shift if I'm in the terminal.
Bravo sir, I could not have said it better myself. I purchased a brand new XPS15 ubuntu 14.04 and it was a disaster -
The battery lasted about three hours, the $300 graphics card did not function at all because of poor drivers (graphics switching is still theoretical on even user friendly linux os' because of dark age xserver)
I had to spend two weeks to get the wifi working by messing around with conf files
The concept of hardware/software integration seems to evade the general purpose computing industry to the detriment of us all, I am not sure why someone hasn't built a tightly integrated linux laptop yet.
At this point the GUIS look pretty decent and there is plenty of software (most people only use browsers anyway) we just need to get the basics working well.
The battery lasted about three hours, the $300 graphics card did not function at all because of poor drivers (graphics switching is still theoretical on even user friendly linux os' because of dark age xserver)
I had to spend two weeks to get the wifi working by messing around with conf files
The concept of hardware/software integration seems to evade the general purpose computing industry to the detriment of us all, I am not sure why someone hasn't built a tightly integrated linux laptop yet.
At this point the GUIS look pretty decent and there is plenty of software (most people only use browsers anyway) we just need to get the basics working well.
Did the machine come with Ubuntu out of the box, or did you install it yourself? That is one of the reasons my company went with System76. They ship with Ubuntu installed and will provide support, drivers for all the hardware, etc. The OryxPro is a nice desktop replacement.
Dell XPS 13 has a special "developer" edition, which comes with Ubuntu 14.04 pretested and preinstalled.
Shipped with it from dell
Shipped with Dell but wifi not working? I don't buy it.
The Broadcom wireless card my XPS 13 (9343) Developer Edition shipped with absolutely does not play well with Linux. Including the Ubuntu 14.04 version it shipped with.
It's a known issue, and that's not all. When the machine originally launched there were huge problems with the audio, the trackpad, the bluetooth, and the screen brightness control.
You don't have to buy it. I did... for $1100, and now it mostly sits on a shelf. I had to go back to my MacBook Air to get multi-modal work done. I can use Linux as a primary machine if the only thing I ever use is Emacs. The instant I have to venture across different applications and different modes of content creation (docs, code, slide decks, etc.) it's a very bespoke and inefficient experience.
It's a known issue, and that's not all. When the machine originally launched there were huge problems with the audio, the trackpad, the bluetooth, and the screen brightness control.
You don't have to buy it. I did... for $1100, and now it mostly sits on a shelf. I had to go back to my MacBook Air to get multi-modal work done. I can use Linux as a primary machine if the only thing I ever use is Emacs. The instant I have to venture across different applications and different modes of content creation (docs, code, slide decks, etc.) it's a very bespoke and inefficient experience.
The Broadcom fix is literally one apt-get install command. The driver issues keep happening because companies are loathe at releasing drivers for Linux or even provide support and assistance for third party drivers. Here's looking at you Realtek.
Also I don't understand how something can be bespoke and inefficient at the same time. With MacOS, you learn the Apple way, with Linux you have the freedom to create your own workflow. This freedom is what stops Linux from being a noon friendly OS, and frankly, I am happy about that.
Also I don't understand how something can be bespoke and inefficient at the same time. With MacOS, you learn the Apple way, with Linux you have the freedom to create your own workflow. This freedom is what stops Linux from being a noon friendly OS, and frankly, I am happy about that.
The driver itself is horribly, horribly unstable.
Also. I definitely do not have "the freedom to create my own workflow". No amount of my trying, including digging into window manager, UI toolkits, and application code for KDE, GNOME, or Xfce resulted in my being able to provide consistent keyboard shortcuts across the board. So I wasn't able to get to a point where I could use 30-years of muscle memory and predictability in and across the UX to facilitate my work.
I'm not a noo[n]. I'm a distributed systems engineer and functional programmer.
This "Linux is open source, so it can do anything!" trope is really annoying.
Also. I definitely do not have "the freedom to create my own workflow". No amount of my trying, including digging into window manager, UI toolkits, and application code for KDE, GNOME, or Xfce resulted in my being able to provide consistent keyboard shortcuts across the board. So I wasn't able to get to a point where I could use 30-years of muscle memory and predictability in and across the UX to facilitate my work.
I'm not a noo[n]. I'm a distributed systems engineer and functional programmer.
This "Linux is open source, so it can do anything!" trope is really annoying.
I did not intend to call you a noo[n] (and neither to misspell it that way. Typing on the phone is hard). Neither did I mention anything related to open source to cause you any annoyance.
Linux offers a lot of pick your own adventure style options for everybody. Yes, it takes a bit of time to get used to it, but so does getting used to the cmd/ctrl abomination in Macs. I don't see people complaining about that.
The only application that by default violates the normal keyboard shortcuts is the terminal and even that has menu options for changing them to what you like. I don't know what application doesn't respect common shortcuts to break your muscle memory but I then I am not a distributed systems engineer so what do I know.
Linux offers a lot of pick your own adventure style options for everybody. Yes, it takes a bit of time to get used to it, but so does getting used to the cmd/ctrl abomination in Macs. I don't see people complaining about that.
The only application that by default violates the normal keyboard shortcuts is the terminal and even that has menu options for changing them to what you like. I don't know what application doesn't respect common shortcuts to break your muscle memory but I then I am not a distributed systems engineer so what do I know.
I haven't hand-configured a laptop since 2009, when I switched to Mageia Linux. I don't know how they do what they do for hardware support, but it's frickin' brilliant.
What I find really laughable is when people say macOS Sierra or the new MBP2016 is underwhelming, and then they start talking about something as inferior as Elementary OS and laptops that doesn’t even have a useable touchpad.
Meh. I was issued a Macbook with some version of Mac OS X by my employer as well. Shitty screen, no trackpoint. Very very sharp edge on the front making it very difficult to rest your hands nicely. Chaotic GUI, outdated software (esp. Bash etc.), weird keyboard with missing keys. No proper package manager, no proper development software (Intel Compiler?) and not even a compiler at all if I don’t sign up with an Apple account.
Honestly if you put together fancy slides in Keynote, it might work (though Beamer is still nicer). I even managed to set up the email client and read emails occasionally when my workstation was rebooting. After two years I asked for a laptop with Linux and nicer keyboards and I couldn’t be happier.
Honestly if you put together fancy slides in Keynote, it might work (though Beamer is still nicer). I even managed to set up the email client and read emails occasionally when my workstation was rebooting. After two years I asked for a laptop with Linux and nicer keyboards and I couldn’t be happier.
You can get laptops with extremely good hardware at a better price than the MBP. For example, Dell's XPS series is the best example. Fantastic screen, fantastic trackpad, good build quality, and equivalent specs despite being a model year behind. In terms of hardware, the MBP is pretty bad value.
The OSes are miles behind though.
The OSes are miles behind though.
I've had several Dell laptops over the years (4 from ~2003-2012), and while things may have changed in the last 4 years, I would be very surprised to see even a halfway decent trackpad, build quality, and battery life from Dell. I also have the HP Spectre x360 (from Microsoft Build 2015), which was considered to be one of the best Windows laptops available at the time, and its trackpad is one of the most awful devices I've ever had to use. The rest of the laptop is great (screen, keyboard, build quality, even battery), but if I hadn't gotten the laptop for free, I would've returned it for the trackpad alone.
I feel the need to respond here because in every thread about MBPs people mention the Dell XPS line as an alternative, and after buying one I can NOT recommend it as a good buy.
The Dell XPS laptops have got one thing going for them: relatively good build quality. They don't feel or look cheap, which already puts it ahead of most PCs in the market. Just walk into your local Best Buy and see the junk they are selling to people.
From my experience the most recent Dell XPS 15" has several issues, but I'll mention the two object and non-anecdotal issues:
- They suffer from "coil whine," which is when internal components resonate and cause an audible high frequency noise. It is super annoying, and a huge disappointment for a ~$2k purchase. Even the new Dell XPS 13" which just got refreshed with the new Intel Kaby Lake processors still suffers from this, which shows Dell didn't care to fix a widely documented issue that has been known for a long time. Just Google "dell xps coil whine."
- The 4K screen has way too much glare, and they quickly strained my eyes. The low resolution version don't suffer from this, but I imagine most people are getting the 4K touch display.
I won't get into the Mac vs Windows vs Linux debate, because you won't be enjoying the XPS with buzzing noises and glares in your eyes with any OS.
Ater wasting time with the Dell XPS, I went and happily paid the Apple "premium" for the 2016 MBP. And don't get me started on Thinkpads, they are simply not what they used to be.
> MPB is a pretty bad value
You show me laptop with the level of hardware/software integration as a MBP, and a no-BS *nix desktop experience, and I promise you I'll be the first one in line to buy one.
The Dell XPS laptops have got one thing going for them: relatively good build quality. They don't feel or look cheap, which already puts it ahead of most PCs in the market. Just walk into your local Best Buy and see the junk they are selling to people.
From my experience the most recent Dell XPS 15" has several issues, but I'll mention the two object and non-anecdotal issues:
- They suffer from "coil whine," which is when internal components resonate and cause an audible high frequency noise. It is super annoying, and a huge disappointment for a ~$2k purchase. Even the new Dell XPS 13" which just got refreshed with the new Intel Kaby Lake processors still suffers from this, which shows Dell didn't care to fix a widely documented issue that has been known for a long time. Just Google "dell xps coil whine."
- The 4K screen has way too much glare, and they quickly strained my eyes. The low resolution version don't suffer from this, but I imagine most people are getting the 4K touch display.
I won't get into the Mac vs Windows vs Linux debate, because you won't be enjoying the XPS with buzzing noises and glares in your eyes with any OS.
Ater wasting time with the Dell XPS, I went and happily paid the Apple "premium" for the 2016 MBP. And don't get me started on Thinkpads, they are simply not what they used to be.
> MPB is a pretty bad value
You show me laptop with the level of hardware/software integration as a MBP, and a no-BS *nix desktop experience, and I promise you I'll be the first one in line to buy one.
It boggles the mind that no "PC" manufacturer has done what Apple has done with hardware design and integration. Apple has been hitting it out of the park for at least 4-6 years, plenty of time for some other company to do it themselves. Even Microsoft is struggling (although the "Surface" products are really good)
The only thing I can think is that it's really difficult and expensive to iron out all those little hardware bugs.
The only thing I can think is that it's really difficult and expensive to iron out all those little hardware bugs.
It is without a doubt not easy task to release a product with the polish of a MBP, but as you said, you would think there would be something competing at an equal level by now.
I don't think Lenovo's efforts lived up to the glory of the Thinkpad line, but I will give them credit for the X1 Carbon. Though the Carbon only comes in a 14" model.
From an industrial design standpoint, the Surface Book is fantastic and demands respect. I bought the Surface Book when it first came out, and that thing was always overheating, which is a no-go for something trying to be a tablet/notebook. It also suffered from various issues when it launched. Microsoft actually asked Best Buy to stop selling them for a brief moment while the issues were fixed.
I don't think Lenovo's efforts lived up to the glory of the Thinkpad line, but I will give them credit for the X1 Carbon. Though the Carbon only comes in a 14" model.
From an industrial design standpoint, the Surface Book is fantastic and demands respect. I bought the Surface Book when it first came out, and that thing was always overheating, which is a no-go for something trying to be a tablet/notebook. It also suffered from various issues when it launched. Microsoft actually asked Best Buy to stop selling them for a brief moment while the issues were fixed.
> It is without a doubt not easy task to release a product with the polish of a MBP, but as you said, you would think there would be something competing at an equal level by now.
I feel Ubuntu could have been there if they had continued their effort to create a rock-solid Gnome 2 experience instead of starting to copy Mac for no good reason (dock, window decorations, alt-tab handling etc).
Now Ubuntu has lost a few years of development time and what once made a hardcode KDE fan like Gnome now feels completely alien to the point where I have stopped even testing the LTS releases.
I feel Ubuntu could have been there if they had continued their effort to create a rock-solid Gnome 2 experience instead of starting to copy Mac for no good reason (dock, window decorations, alt-tab handling etc).
Now Ubuntu has lost a few years of development time and what once made a hardcode KDE fan like Gnome now feels completely alien to the point where I have stopped even testing the LTS releases.
A friend of mine returned his surface pro 4 after 48 hours. A software update bricked it and it would not turn on. It really put me of buying one. My current laptop is ten years old an still going strong with a ram and sad upgrade
If it died tomorrow I don't know what I would replace it with.
I do agree that you can pick up a good linux laptop that will run circles around today's MBP (system76 fully spec'd lemur or gazelle) but, imo the overall industrial design leaves a bit to be desired.
I have a Dell XPS Developer edition - I definitely think it's a step in the right direction. I agree with you in terms of screen and build quality. The battery life is mediocre at best. The trackpad isn't terrible but it's certainly not something I'd compare to my MacBook (even a 2010 model). OS complaints aside, mac trackpads really stand out.
I have a Dell XPS Developer edition - I definitely think it's a step in the right direction. I agree with you in terms of screen and build quality. The battery life is mediocre at best. The trackpad isn't terrible but it's certainly not something I'd compare to my MacBook (even a 2010 model). OS complaints aside, mac trackpads really stand out.
I don't know man, I've been more-or-less following this discussion of the last several days, and keep seeing all this "nothing compares to MacOS because... Woo". I work on a fucking mac all day, every day, impatiently waiting to get back home to my Ubuntu desktop. Oh yes, I dislike laptops with their small screens and toy keyboards. I carry this macbook from work back and forth, only to plug it into real peripherals when I actually have to use it. Because no, Photoshop on a coffee shop is not realistic, it's dumb. Also this "Nothing works right, on any of them." Funny, that is what I think of MacOS. I'll restrain from ranting. In short, I absolutely, completely, strongly, disagree with you here.
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I'm in the same boat, however, I've always dual-booted Linux using OSx for casual use and Linux for work. I'm not sure what I'll do hardware wise, because the terrible keyboard, lack of: function keys, esc key, and lack of magsafe make it unusable for my workflow. However, I've recently moved from awesomeWM to KDE Plasma as a DE with the Arc Dark theme. I have to say, I finally don't miss OSx with this setup.
Very useful, intuitive UX, Alfred like functionality out of the box, very nice UI (not just for linux, for anything!), productive workflow, and gets out of your way when you need to get things done.
I still have to find a hardware replacement with a great keyboard, solid trackpad, killer battery, and great display, but my OS concerns are finally resolved.
Edit: Repo with screenshots: https://github.com/varlesh/Arc-Dark-KDE
Very useful, intuitive UX, Alfred like functionality out of the box, very nice UI (not just for linux, for anything!), productive workflow, and gets out of your way when you need to get things done.
I still have to find a hardware replacement with a great keyboard, solid trackpad, killer battery, and great display, but my OS concerns are finally resolved.
Edit: Repo with screenshots: https://github.com/varlesh/Arc-Dark-KDE
As a security analyst I make use of Linux, MacOS, and a few different versions of Windows on a daily basis. They all have issues that I find incredibly frustrating and they all have aspects that I really enjoy.
You apparently have a strong preference for MacOS. Lots of people do, but many people dislike it. IMO, there isn't a clear winner.
You apparently have a strong preference for MacOS. Lots of people do, but many people dislike it. IMO, there isn't a clear winner.
Windows? It's really not that bad.
I would go so far as saying it's actually rather good now, and I replaced the Windows OS on every laptop and workstation I got from 1999 (Slackware :) to 2013 with Linux and a highly customized FVWM config, so I consider myself having a high bar.
Although I did use a Mac as a workstation for a couple years ~ 2010, and found that particularly trying, so that may factor in to how people receive my assessment. It was close to what I wanted, but still far enough away to just generally annoy me by not being configurable enough to actually do what I wanted.
Although I did use a Mac as a workstation for a couple years ~ 2010, and found that particularly trying, so that may factor in to how people receive my assessment. It was close to what I wanted, but still far enough away to just generally annoy me by not being configurable enough to actually do what I wanted.
I can see the marketing now. "Switch back to Windows: it's really not that bad."
I'll say this: I switched to MacOS after smashing my last Windows (XP) laptop to pieces on the wall in a fit of rage ten years ago. Since then, I'd honestly completely forgotten how a computer could possibly drive a person to physical violence, until I bought a Windows (10) laptop recently just to play some games, and OH MY GOD. It is so, so unbelievably mindbogglingly fucking terrible.
I've been dying for details about Windows 10 and the linux subsystem, and don't actually know anyone who uses it for serious work. Is it actually a replacement for the BSD-based goodness of OSX? Do you get GCC, Make, instantly-functional Python, etc. etc. etc.? Or are there a ton of rough edges? Seriously considering jumping ship to Microsoft and buying a Surface here...
It's certainly worth playing with, but I'm not sure I'd depend on it actually working for any given task yet. YMMV of course, but you really want to give it a spin before you put any purchasing choices behind it.
e.g., for my uses, I am constantly running into 'rough edges'. Huge swathes of /proc are missing, which breaks a lot of tools I simply expect to work. As an example, I have a very simple script for tooling with my raspberry pis. It does an ipv6 broadcast ping (ff02::1) on my ethernet interface, and ssh's to the address that returns. Nice easy way to solve the chicken & egg of sshing to a device that has no address configured yet.
On 'Bash on Ubuntu on Windows', it fails because I can't use the -I(interface) option with either ping or ping6 - setsockopt(SO_BINDTODEVICE): Protocol not available. (and you can't broadcast without that, because the broadcast address is the same on every interface, so it can't figure it out itself).
Then I can't list my own IP address, either the new way (ip addr show - SO_SNDBUF: Invalid Argument) or the traditional way (ifconfig - /proc/net/dev doesn't exist), which was my script's other requirement - because if I broadcast on my own interfaces, I'll also reply to them, so I need to know my own address to exclude it from the replies.
Most of this may be very situational, or may be me doing things the wrong way, and may not affect what you expect to run on a linux subsystem. But it did hammer home for me quite quickly, that this isn't a unix environment - it's a very shallow veneer.
e.g., for my uses, I am constantly running into 'rough edges'. Huge swathes of /proc are missing, which breaks a lot of tools I simply expect to work. As an example, I have a very simple script for tooling with my raspberry pis. It does an ipv6 broadcast ping (ff02::1) on my ethernet interface, and ssh's to the address that returns. Nice easy way to solve the chicken & egg of sshing to a device that has no address configured yet.
On 'Bash on Ubuntu on Windows', it fails because I can't use the -I(interface) option with either ping or ping6 - setsockopt(SO_BINDTODEVICE): Protocol not available. (and you can't broadcast without that, because the broadcast address is the same on every interface, so it can't figure it out itself).
Then I can't list my own IP address, either the new way (ip addr show - SO_SNDBUF: Invalid Argument) or the traditional way (ifconfig - /proc/net/dev doesn't exist), which was my script's other requirement - because if I broadcast on my own interfaces, I'll also reply to them, so I need to know my own address to exclude it from the replies.
Most of this may be very situational, or may be me doing things the wrong way, and may not affect what you expect to run on a linux subsystem. But it did hammer home for me quite quickly, that this isn't a unix environment - it's a very shallow veneer.
Have an upvote just for the most creative and heartfelt rant I've read in a while.
I'm still amazed at your impression though, as I'm happily using Linux on my laptops and feel like everything works as it should (because I can get my work done).
I'm still amazed at your impression though, as I'm happily using Linux on my laptops and feel like everything works as it should (because I can get my work done).
Exactly. In addition to the functional problems you outlined, every Linux GUI I've tried feels fake and plasticky, like it was designed for kids. Gnome is miles ahead of where it used to be, but design-wise it is now at about Windows 98-level.
Is there a problem attracting quality graphic designers to open source projects?
Is there a problem attracting quality graphic designers to open source projects?
I think it requires a change of mindset. I've been using Linux exclusively on all of my machines since 2004. I started with KDE and then switched to Gnome 2 and finally Gnome 3. Everything looks clean and normal to me. On the other hand, every time that I need to use Windows (even Windows 10) it feels strange. So I guess it's a matter of perspective.
You make a good point. Sounds like we are at a crossroads: do we cater to what's familiar or are we trying to attract new users (like this post aims to do)?
In my opinion, there is no reason the design can't be made to look better while still maintaining the familiarity (like OS X mavericks did, for better or worse).
In my opinion, there is no reason the design can't be made to look better while still maintaining the familiarity (like OS X mavericks did, for better or worse).
That's fine that you love macOS so much. Seriously. I can even forgive the condescension towards other OSes.
But believe it or not, people exist that prefer other operating systems.
I myself am a gamer as well as a developer, so my primary OS at home is Windows 10. My secondary one which I use for development and writing is Ubuntu 16.10. I recently began abandoning Mac - not because the OS is horrible or Apple is a bad company, but because it no longer syncs with my personal flow. Well, that, and I can no longer justify the pricetag.
But believe it or not, people exist that prefer other operating systems.
I myself am a gamer as well as a developer, so my primary OS at home is Windows 10. My secondary one which I use for development and writing is Ubuntu 16.10. I recently began abandoning Mac - not because the OS is horrible or Apple is a bad company, but because it no longer syncs with my personal flow. Well, that, and I can no longer justify the pricetag.
> being stuck with USB 2
FYI there are macOS compatible PCI-E USB 3 cards available. Apparently some of the newest USB-C PCI-E cards work too though I haven't tried it myself.
FYI there are macOS compatible PCI-E USB 3 cards available. Apparently some of the newest USB-C PCI-E cards work too though I haven't tried it myself.
Yes, I have 2009 Mac Pro (which cost me all of $300 on craigslist, and now also has 32GB of ram, raided SSDs, and GTX 750Ti ) with a usb3 card in it that works just fine. That said, I have Gnome 3 on my laptops and I find it be pretty practical, too.
The OS market is just too concentrated. If you want a modern OS with decent support you have basically three options: Windows, iOS/Mac, or Android. Even the car industry beats that and no one talks about the car industry leading innovation. (You can add Linux via RedHat and Ubuntu to that list and it's still only four options)
Windows is the better OS. Microsoft never dropped support for power users. They give you options to do everything that you want to do, way more than macOS. It's also got the better business model. That's why every business in the world runs on Windows and not on Apple's OS.
Build your own dream workstation, run osx86: http://www.osx86project.org
Works with laptops too, just be super careful what you buy. Might work on a Thinkpad P70, not sure.
Works with laptops too, just be super careful what you buy. Might work on a Thinkpad P70, not sure.
You're just used to osx. I had the same feeling the other way around. Install a distro and give it some time, you'll get used to it.
I suspect the political-correctness dogs around here might bark at your wording, but I still think you've nailed it.
I try Ubuntu about once a year, in the hopes of getting rid of OSX. But each time, the reason for going back to Apple ID is interoperability: Try dragging stuff (images, fotos, links, files, formatted text ...) from one program to another, including the "dreaded" Finder; Works nearly always in OSX. While Ubuntu has come a long way with these things, I think it's still an even longer way away from what OSX can do.
So while I haven't tried Elementary, I'd be astonished if it's any better at interoperability than Ubuntu...
So while I haven't tried Elementary, I'd be astonished if it's any better at interoperability than Ubuntu...
I've used Ubuntu for work development for some time now, and I would never consider it for home use. It just kind of sucks from a usability perspective. Lots of little things are just randomly broken or difficult compared to what I'm used to.
That's the exact same complaint I have about Windows.
Sadly, that problem is as old as Windows and hasn't really gotten better. For a company that's specialized on software, that's a pretty abysmal bottom line.
I would strongly disagree. Windows works pretty flawlessly nearly all the time these days. My only real complaint with it at this point is that so little of my dev stuff runs natively. If that weren't the case, I'd probably switch over.
And I'll have to disagree with you on that. I have to use "vanilla" Windows 10 at work and the various missing tools and kinks in the OS drive me borderline insane at times.
How can it be that in 2016, the default "quick, dispensable" file editor (notepad) lacks pretty much every feature under the sun? The command line is still abysmal - even with the improvements of Win10. Powershell is not much better. Simple tasks have to be done using clicks all over the place, instead of just editing the according file from a cmd. The registry is still in heavy use (eww). The new virtual desktop feature (which *NIX systems had for decades) is clunky at best. IE is borderline unusable. Edge is worse. I could go on for ages.
In fact, if you subtract the gazillion of little 3rd party tools you have to install to make Windows usable, the actual OS is a disappointment, and if you can use those tools you still have to install them through a wizard - by hand. Microsofts dev tools (i.e. Visual Studio) also seem to suffer from the same symptoms, although that seems to be changing slowly.
One could argue that you have to install many tools via a package manager on other OSes, but at least, you get most of them (neatly organised) just by trusting one source (Canonical, Debian, whatever).
In fact, if you subtract the gazillion of little 3rd party tools you have to install to make Windows usable, the actual OS is a disappointment, and if you can use those tools you still have to install them through a wizard - by hand. Microsofts dev tools (i.e. Visual Studio) also seem to suffer from the same symptoms, although that seems to be changing slowly.
One could argue that you have to install many tools via a package manager on other OSes, but at least, you get most of them (neatly organised) just by trusting one source (Canonical, Debian, whatever).
I concur. For development Ubuntu is definitely superior, but for everything else Windows works pretty great.
Eh, that functionality has a tendency to break after being used a few times in OSX.
Specifically, dragging images from your browser to the finder works the first few times, providing an overlay image which becomes a file icon as you hover over the finder window. A few transfers later, the file icon stops appearing. Then the semi-transparent image stops appearing; though the files are still being copied. Then, silently, the copying starts to fail completely. Not fun.
Specifically, dragging images from your browser to the finder works the first few times, providing an overlay image which becomes a file icon as you hover over the finder window. A few transfers later, the file icon stops appearing. Then the semi-transparent image stops appearing; though the files are still being copied. Then, silently, the copying starts to fail completely. Not fun.
Macs have become a lot worse at this sort of thing - weird, intermittent user interface failures - over the last few years.
Sometimes I can't drag attachments out of emails (which is about the only damn reason I don't use Mutt for everything) on the first few attempts; I thought for a while it was because the attachment hadn't completely downloaded, but no, it doesn't seem to be as predictable as that.
Moving files around in the Finder in general seems problematic, especially dragging between directories in the list view. This often causes much cursing.
The worst thing about Macs for me now is how much guff pops up entirely unbidden - messages about not having done any backups in 90 days, messages about an update which hasn't been able to be completed (but has caused iTerm to try and quit, which, in itself, causes a dialog to appear that I need to get rid of), iCloud approval nonsense (which also happens on both of my iPhones periodically), iTunes Store requests that I may or may not have made days ago that have failed with an unknown error, etc. The list goes on. I'm sure all of these things in isolation are very clever and should help improve my life, but in toto it's immensely frustrating.
Sometimes I can't drag attachments out of emails (which is about the only damn reason I don't use Mutt for everything) on the first few attempts; I thought for a while it was because the attachment hadn't completely downloaded, but no, it doesn't seem to be as predictable as that.
Moving files around in the Finder in general seems problematic, especially dragging between directories in the list view. This often causes much cursing.
The worst thing about Macs for me now is how much guff pops up entirely unbidden - messages about not having done any backups in 90 days, messages about an update which hasn't been able to be completed (but has caused iTerm to try and quit, which, in itself, causes a dialog to appear that I need to get rid of), iCloud approval nonsense (which also happens on both of my iPhones periodically), iTunes Store requests that I may or may not have made days ago that have failed with an unknown error, etc. The list goes on. I'm sure all of these things in isolation are very clever and should help improve my life, but in toto it's immensely frustrating.
I have similar thoughts. I feel the Mac has gone from an environment that was great for developers and creative people to a kitchen appliance that tries to micromanage its users. If there were any viable alternative, I might have switched yesterday (and Windoze doesn't cut it). As it stands, I have to split up: Linux for development, and Mac for the movies, games and email. Slowly migrating away might work better than all in one swoop.
Not being a Mac user, a similar thing that always struck me as strange is that those Mac users I know all seem to have a huge amount of windows open in the background (multiple Finders etc.).
I found that being interesting because it is the first habit I got rid of when starting out in the new Gnome Shell: I have a workspace for every task going on, and each workspace contains no more than two windows, that are neatly aligned - or maximized if there's only one.
I switched to AwesomeWM a while ago, and the first thing I changed in the RC is that it replicated Gnome's automatic/endless workspaces behavior.
Of course that is highly subjective, but i always thought that going for a window hunt everytime you have to switch context is pretty backward, and I can't figure out why even the more sophisticated Apple users I know won't use workspaces for their benefit. On Windows, I get it - if only because that sort of workflow was impossible without special tools before Win10.
Does anyone have thoughts on this? Is this a "culture thing", or is it because users that switched over from Windows never even thought of the workspaces feature?
I switched to AwesomeWM a while ago, and the first thing I changed in the RC is that it replicated Gnome's automatic/endless workspaces behavior.
Of course that is highly subjective, but i always thought that going for a window hunt everytime you have to switch context is pretty backward, and I can't figure out why even the more sophisticated Apple users I know won't use workspaces for their benefit. On Windows, I get it - if only because that sort of workflow was impossible without special tools before Win10.
Does anyone have thoughts on this? Is this a "culture thing", or is it because users that switched over from Windows never even thought of the workspaces feature?
I've gotten in the habit of screenshotting. With one hot key (cmd shift 4) I pick a region and a file is placed on my desktop. This turns out to be far more useful in more circumstances for me. (The only image dragging I do is within chrome to send someone an image through hangouts.)
Just FYI, screenshotting is taking a limited-resolution, imperfectly cropped PNG from what is usually a compressed JPG. You just need to get into the habit of right clicking and "save as" and the resulting image with have perfect fidelity with the original.
That doesn't really help me when I'm, for example, sharing a flash ad or a video or any number of other things, like my Hearthstone state.
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My biggest gripe with OS X right now is that Safari doesn't play nice with some website when it comes to dragging pictures and pasting them in from the clipboard.
Part of this is sites like Facebook intentionally subverting proper click and drag behavior with photos, links, etc. It's incredibly annoying, and we should be shaming sites that do it.
Safari is following in the iTunes and Preview in the "what's wrong with this once pretty decent piece of software??" thing
Among web devs Safari is considered "the new IE" (which among web devs is probably the lowest insult)
TL;DR avoid Safari. It's rubbish.
Among web devs Safari is considered "the new IE" (which among web devs is probably the lowest insult)
TL;DR avoid Safari. It's rubbish.
I can't personally justify using chrome over safari on my macbook though, I don't last the entire day with chrome but do with safari. Any other alternatives?
I also can't stand the lack of plugin support on Safari. Is uBlock origin or similar available on that platform yet?
There are adblocking plugins available now, yes. Though last time I checked uBlock Origin wasn't one of them, unfortunately.
uBlock is available for Safari, but uBlock Origin is not.
This works in Gnome. And if it doesn't you can just copy/paste stuff instead of dragging. In any case that's no reason to switch OS, whatever the direction.
I would suggest you try "Synapse" - its really good at being a Finder alternative - https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/synapse
I'm really hoping this is just a phase. Hoping that Apple will reduce prices of new laptops and we'll be back to normal.
Right now everybody is using Macs. Walk into the Bay Area coffee shop, you see Macs everywhere. I love that.
I build desktop software for Macs (focuslist.co). My apps are prettier than any others. They are easier and faster to use. This is the reason why people pay me $5 while they can get the job done with paper and pen.
This is thanks to Mac as a platform. Mac developers don't want to just get the job done. They want to get the job done while winning an Apple Design Award. That's why Mac apps are the best.
Take Mac away and high quality desktop apps will go away. We'll have to endure multi-platform Electron stuff. Ugh.
Right now everybody is using Macs. Walk into the Bay Area coffee shop, you see Macs everywhere. I love that.
I build desktop software for Macs (focuslist.co). My apps are prettier than any others. They are easier and faster to use. This is the reason why people pay me $5 while they can get the job done with paper and pen.
This is thanks to Mac as a platform. Mac developers don't want to just get the job done. They want to get the job done while winning an Apple Design Award. That's why Mac apps are the best.
Take Mac away and high quality desktop apps will go away. We'll have to endure multi-platform Electron stuff. Ugh.
The USB-C ports and the processor + RAM limitations will be fixed by time.
As soon as Intel rolls out their full Kaby Lake line, the Macbook Pro will get a rev that will improve speed and permit 32GB of RAM. Counting in design and manufacturing time, that could be about a year from now.
And USB-C is clearly the future for connectors. In a year or two a lot more peripherals will be shipping with USB-C as the default cord.
This is why Apple carries a huge amount of cash around on their books: so that they can make long-term decisions even if it hurts in the short term.
As soon as Intel rolls out their full Kaby Lake line, the Macbook Pro will get a rev that will improve speed and permit 32GB of RAM. Counting in design and manufacturing time, that could be about a year from now.
And USB-C is clearly the future for connectors. In a year or two a lot more peripherals will be shipping with USB-C as the default cord.
This is why Apple carries a huge amount of cash around on their books: so that they can make long-term decisions even if it hurts in the short term.
> As soon as Intel rolls out their full Kaby Lake line, the Macbook Pro will get a rev that will improve speed and permit 32GB of RAM.
Can you comment on why you think this is true? A cursory look at Kaby Lake does not seem to indicate any sort of intrinsic change that would allow the MBP to have more memory.
Can you comment on why you think this is true? A cursory look at Kaby Lake does not seem to indicate any sort of intrinsic change that would allow the MBP to have more memory.
I believe that Kaby Lake brings support for LPDDR4, whereas Skylake doesn't have it. Apple only uses LPDDR on its laptops, so you can't get 32 GB as this would mean DDR4 and higher power consumption.
KBL supports LPDDR4 and SKL doesn't. The current Macbook runs SKL.
Optimism
I think you're mostly right. The RAM problem will go away. The USB-C thing I think is a total misnomer; it's clearly the future of connectors.
My biggest problem is the obsession with "Thin and Light" crippling system specs. I get that a 11-13" laptop isn't gonna have the best GPU in the world, but I'd like a decent one in my 15" 'Pro' model please...and I'll take a little less thin and light to get it.
This is even more true on desktop. I don't really care about how bulbous you make the back of my iMac or Mac Pro, just give me SLI GTX1080s.
I get it, I'm the niche, I'm a gamer with a Mac, but I still exist.
My biggest problem is the obsession with "Thin and Light" crippling system specs. I get that a 11-13" laptop isn't gonna have the best GPU in the world, but I'd like a decent one in my 15" 'Pro' model please...and I'll take a little less thin and light to get it.
This is even more true on desktop. I don't really care about how bulbous you make the back of my iMac or Mac Pro, just give me SLI GTX1080s.
I get it, I'm the niche, I'm a gamer with a Mac, but I still exist.
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> Mac developers don't want to just get the job done. They want to get the job done while winning an Apple Design Award.
Well, thats kind of a narcissistic statement. How many people develop for Windows? How many for Linux? How many for Mac? oh.
I try to make my software as beautiful as I can, and keep a simple and usable UX. There are developers who don't care about guidelines, or design. That's not a platform fault, is just that there are developers who just want the job done, even in a ugly fashion.
Well, thats kind of a narcissistic statement. How many people develop for Windows? How many for Linux? How many for Mac? oh.
I try to make my software as beautiful as I can, and keep a simple and usable UX. There are developers who don't care about guidelines, or design. That's not a platform fault, is just that there are developers who just want the job done, even in a ugly fashion.
I'm not sure you've done enough macOS/iOS development to know where that feeling comes from. In every Apple developer conference, in much of the UI API, and in input from the community, the idea of creating beautiful apps is something that gets repeated over and over until it is ingrained in us. It has nothing to do with trying to be better looking than other platforms but rather trying to match the aesthetics and quality of other apps on the same platform. People tend to notice when your one utility app stands out as the ugly duckling on macOS/iOS.
I'm fine with that. My problem is statements like this:
"Take Mac away and high quality desktop apps will go away."
As if all the world's high quality apps are only developed on and for the Mac.
"Take Mac away and high quality desktop apps will go away."
As if all the world's high quality apps are only developed on and for the Mac.
> "There are developers who don't care about guidelines, or design. That's not a platform fault, is just that there are developers who just want the job done, even in a ugly fashion."
And that is the biggest problem in software world, that's why our computers are full of half-baked, ugly, poor documented and uncompatible programs - because someone "just wanted to get job done".
And that is the biggest problem in software world, that's why our computers are full of half-baked, ugly, poor documented and uncompatible programs - because someone "just wanted to get job done".
But is the desktop Mac app market still profitable?
i.e. are you able to sustain yourself with this app?
> Take Mac away and high quality desktop apps will go away.
Well... no. Ubuntu, Gnome, KDE, XFCE; they are all high quality desktops. Don't mix the desktop with the applications you're running on it.
> We'll have to endure multi-platform Electron stuff.
Now that is indeed a real issue, and yes, ugh.
Edit: I've misread the original, sorry, so adding a few things: if you're using the default apps or the ones built for that specific environment only, you're good to go with GTK3, QT, whatever. The trouble comes when you mix these, but that is true even for the MacOS. Personally I really dislike the approach of Chrome, not giving a s* how it _should_ look like to look at least a little native.
Well... no. Ubuntu, Gnome, KDE, XFCE; they are all high quality desktops. Don't mix the desktop with the applications you're running on it.
> We'll have to endure multi-platform Electron stuff.
Now that is indeed a real issue, and yes, ugh.
Edit: I've misread the original, sorry, so adding a few things: if you're using the default apps or the ones built for that specific environment only, you're good to go with GTK3, QT, whatever. The trouble comes when you mix these, but that is true even for the MacOS. Personally I really dislike the approach of Chrome, not giving a s* how it _should_ look like to look at least a little native.
I don't know why, but MacOS feels more high-quality than the other desktops. I use Unity on all my computers and haven't run MacOS in years, but I think there's more "tearing" in Linux WMs. Things just don't feel like they stick together as much, sometimes the decorations will hang, the menus will disappear, there are blank icons in my notification bar, etc.
It looks great in screenshots, but the feeling is much inferior, a fact I lament.
It looks great in screenshots, but the feeling is much inferior, a fact I lament.
I know exactly what you mean. Are the technical issues because of X or because of design decisions? I have to think it's because of X because I haven't seen an OS GUI that was as stable and as predictable as Windows/OSX. Edit: Or put another way, I always run into weird graphical/display issues using Linux desktop flavors, whether they've been on a desktop PC or in a VM.
Massive +1 to this. And enabling vsync manually in any flavor of linux I've ever used makes the framerate tank.
I don't know what magic MacOS does under the hood, but no other linux distro I've EVER used comes close, with the possible exception of Gnome. Unfortunately Gnome is ugly as sin.
I don't know what magic MacOS does under the hood, but no other linux distro I've EVER used comes close, with the possible exception of Gnome. Unfortunately Gnome is ugly as sin.
I think his point was that the Apple/Mac ethos foster high quality design and attention to detail, which is applied when developers build apps for the Mac.
To be fair, so does elementaryOS. They really try to encourage developers to adopt their HIG.[1]
So much so that most developers using or targeting elementaryOS integrate their design really well.[2] For those that don't but still use GTK3, they also integrate quite well out of the box.
[1] - https://elementary.io/docs/human-interface-guidelines
[2] - https://quassy.github.io/elementary-apps/apps/
So much so that most developers using or targeting elementaryOS integrate their design really well.[2] For those that don't but still use GTK3, they also integrate quite well out of the box.
[1] - https://elementary.io/docs/human-interface-guidelines
[2] - https://quassy.github.io/elementary-apps/apps/
> Well... no. Ubuntu, Gnome, KDE, XFCE; they are all high quality desktops. Don't mix the desktop with the applications you're running on it.
Sure, but since last time I've started KDE, I got a ton of segfaults errors coming from all over the place (and not just nepomuk)... Well, if the desktop is fine but the wifi interface or the notification tray is segfaulting, I'm just gonna throw the whole thing.
Sure, but since last time I've started KDE, I got a ton of segfaults errors coming from all over the place (and not just nepomuk)... Well, if the desktop is fine but the wifi interface or the notification tray is segfaulting, I'm just gonna throw the whole thing.
They meant "apps that are high quality", not "apps for high-quality desktops".
Not really.
GNU/Linux doesn't have desktop stack capable of matching Objective-C, Swift frameworks both in feature set and related GUI tooling.
GNU/Linux doesn't have desktop stack capable of matching Objective-C, Swift frameworks both in feature set and related GUI tooling.
Because most people using linux on the desktop (thus the development target) value functionality over aesthetics.
Do I like it when things are pretty? Sure.
Do I need them to be pretty to get shit done? No
Do I like it when things are pretty? Sure.
Do I need them to be pretty to get shit done? No
> Because most people using linux on the desktop (thus the development target) value functionality over aesthetics.
I know that is what drove me away.
Most just want a window manager for xterms.
Designers get bashed because they don't know what people want.
Performance on GUIs gets bashed, because what matters is doing xterms over remote X connections.
I know that is what drove me away.
Most just want a window manager for xterms.
Designers get bashed because they don't know what people want.
Performance on GUIs gets bashed, because what matters is doing xterms over remote X connections.
>value functionality over aesthetics.
Not much in that department, either. Nothing that beats the proprietary software staples, especially for creatives, that I happen to use: no Cubase, Pro Tools, Photoshop, Premiere, etc. Lots of apps ranging from "close but no cigar" to "why even try?".
Not much in that department, either. Nothing that beats the proprietary software staples, especially for creatives, that I happen to use: no Cubase, Pro Tools, Photoshop, Premiere, etc. Lots of apps ranging from "close but no cigar" to "why even try?".
If you're a developer, almost all the killer apps support Linux first. But you're right that this is the deal breaker
I am a developer and most of my killer tools have their place on macOS and Windows.
Compiling or getting the latest version of any kind of CLI dev tools on either platforms is considerably more difficult than Linux.
Not all developers care about UNIX CLI tools.
I care about CLI tools developed for macOS and Windows in mind, that take advantage of the respective OS APIs.
I care about CLI tools developed for macOS and Windows in mind, that take advantage of the respective OS APIs.
LLVM and vim work amazingly well on OS X.
Considering vim has no required dependencies, I would be very concerned if it didn't work on OS X.
GTK? QT? And, since we're talking elementary, Vala?
GTK has been fairly hostile to non-Gnome usage since the GTK 3 era; they keep on breaking backwards compatibility for applications that use it, don't care about whether apps can be used on non-Gnome desktop environments, etc. I don't think it's all that polished either.
I instantly believe you, based on my experience of the fiasco that is Gnome 3, but can you share some examples of this?
Have fun reading,
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10757985
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10757985
Wish I hadn't asked now. Talk about snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.
Not really, they don't even cover half of these ones
https://developer.apple.com/reference/
Not to mention the related GUI tooling.
Where is Instruments on QtCreator, for example.
https://developer.apple.com/reference/
Not to mention the related GUI tooling.
Where is Instruments on QtCreator, for example.
You have valgrind and many other tools instead of "Instruments".
The GNOME project itself [1] has a lot of projects which compete with what you linked. Sure, Apple has a few billion dollars to dump into development every year, so you have to adjust for scale.
[1] https://developer.gnome.org/references
The GNOME project itself [1] has a lot of projects which compete with what you linked. Sure, Apple has a few billion dollars to dump into development every year, so you have to adjust for scale.
[1] https://developer.gnome.org/references
None of them has the polish of a full working desktop stack like macOS.
Once upon a time, around 2000-2, I did some minor contributions to Gtkmm.
Once upon a time, around 2000-2, I did some minor contributions to Gtkmm.
Yeah. See my other comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12854983
> GNU/Linux doesn't have desktop stack capable of matching Objective-C, Swift frameworks both in feature set and related GUI tooling.
Qt alone exceeds the feature set, has more GUI tooling, and is multi-platform. That's just Qt, and the same could be said for GTK. I'm not slinging mud at Obj-c and the frameworks Apple maintains, but they are not unique snowflakes without equal.
Qt alone exceeds the feature set, has more GUI tooling, and is multi-platform. That's just Qt, and the same could be said for GTK. I'm not slinging mud at Obj-c and the frameworks Apple maintains, but they are not unique snowflakes without equal.
Sorry but no,
https://developer.apple.com/reference/
I can find tons of entries without parity in Qt.
And their current trend to invent a different flavor of JavaScript every few releases, no thanks.
https://developer.apple.com/reference/
I can find tons of entries without parity in Qt.
And their current trend to invent a different flavor of JavaScript every few releases, no thanks.
GTK+ supports both of those languages. Also, macOS's "tooling" is XCode, so Linux's tooling is superior by default.
If you think that, then you don't have any idea of what a fully working desktop stack for GUI developers looks like.
GTK+ is no competition for these APIs:
https://developer.apple.com/reference/
GTK+ is no competition for these APIs:
https://developer.apple.com/reference/
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well the not-fully-working desktop stack for Linux devs seems to work just fine for them. I've certainly never had a problem with it. I've never had a problem with the Apple kit either but it's nothing to write home about. The only thing I've seen Apple do that I did think was really cool is the package signing.
"well the not-fully-working desktop stack for Linux devs seems to work just fine for them"
Because they don't care about stuff like GUI. And it shows.
Because they don't care about stuff like GUI. And it shows.
Sorry, but this old argument never washed with me. Certainly before Gnome 3 and Unity, the UX was considerably nicer than on my Mac, and in fact those old DEs are still much nicer to use than Yosemite, and the new ones are much worse precisely because they abandoned good design in favour of the Apple kool-aid.
I'm going to leave it there before the mist descends, but basically as far as I'm concerned Apple couldn't design a paper bag without fucking it up.
Where Linux sucked was in the distros' constant "improvement" of core features that weren't broken in order to be first past the post. For example PulseAudio was introduced before it actually worked with most hardware configurations, and nobody cared about the cool new features it came with. Ubuntu deciding to adopt KDE4 before it was ready for general release was another stupid decision. In fact, I'm basically talking about Ubuntu and Gnome.
I'm going to leave it there before the mist descends, but basically as far as I'm concerned Apple couldn't design a paper bag without fucking it up.
Where Linux sucked was in the distros' constant "improvement" of core features that weren't broken in order to be first past the post. For example PulseAudio was introduced before it actually worked with most hardware configurations, and nobody cared about the cool new features it came with. Ubuntu deciding to adopt KDE4 before it was ready for general release was another stupid decision. In fact, I'm basically talking about Ubuntu and Gnome.
Hence why no one bothers with desktop GNU/Linux, as for many even Electron apps are good enough.
How thorough of a survey have you done?
I have used Gtk+, wxWidgets, Qt, KDeveloper, once upon a time between 1995 and around 2004.
Still use GNU/Linux on my travel netbook and of course, some of our servers run it. Last time I used Qt in anger was 5.3, while trying to do a mobile project that I eventually ported to pure native APIs.
Do you know of any other frameworks, besides those that cover all of these ones?
https://developer.apple.com/reference/
Still use GNU/Linux on my travel netbook and of course, some of our servers run it. Last time I used Qt in anger was 5.3, while trying to do a mobile project that I eventually ported to pure native APIs.
Do you know of any other frameworks, besides those that cover all of these ones?
https://developer.apple.com/reference/
Nope. Desktop application development in Linux is indeed pretty terrible. I was honestly just curious as to your background.
Read my comment above (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12854556)
> Ubuntu, Gnome, KDE, XFCE; they are all high quality desktops.
well... no. Speaking as long-time Linux user who tried all of this and in the end using i3 to avoid constant stream of bugs from DE.
well... no. Speaking as long-time Linux user who tried all of this and in the end using i3 to avoid constant stream of bugs from DE.
> This is thanks to Mac as a platform. Mac developers don't want to just get the job done. They want to get the job done while winning an Apple Design Award. That's why Mac apps are the best.
This may be one of the most pretentious things I've ever read on HN.
This may be one of the most pretentious things I've ever read on HN.
I've read far worse and all I meant by that comment is praise to other Mac developers.
No offence intended but I took a look at your website (which is very neat and tidy BTW), and looked at the screenshots but I do not see how your app (consisting of mainly a listview control) is "prettier than any others".
I can see how having a simple UI with few controls on it can sometimes be translated as "pretty" in certain circles, but simply having few features and few controls doesn't magically mean your app is top of the pile on the entire Earth regarding "prettiness". It is quite an assertion to make.
EDIT: Again, this is not meant offensively but was more of a response to the assertion that the app is prettier than ANY others.
Furthermore, I certainly agree with the rest of the comment where they state that more attention is paid to UI etc. on MacOS than other platforms, typically.
I can see how having a simple UI with few controls on it can sometimes be translated as "pretty" in certain circles, but simply having few features and few controls doesn't magically mean your app is top of the pile on the entire Earth regarding "prettiness". It is quite an assertion to make.
EDIT: Again, this is not meant offensively but was more of a response to the assertion that the app is prettier than ANY others.
Furthermore, I certainly agree with the rest of the comment where they state that more attention is paid to UI etc. on MacOS than other platforms, typically.
Didn't mean to come out too proud.
Really this is just what users have been telling me last 6 months. "I bought it because it looks good."
Guess they're just used to worse.
Really this is just what users have been telling me last 6 months. "I bought it because it looks good."
Guess they're just used to worse.
That's good then (and it does look neat). I wasn't meaning to sound too critical either, my apologies.
Out of interest, how did you market it / raise awareness of it?
Out of interest, how did you market it / raise awareness of it?
You could quite easily make an application that looks like that in either GTK or Qt and fits with the current desktop theme on Linux
I mean, sure - the design is pretty, but OSX has been terrible for me quality wise. I know what you mean about pretty, but currently i'm feeling like i need to pick between pretty (OSX) and stable (Linux).
Worse yet, is if i pick a stable variety of Linux, it's likely to not be pretty. The pretty Linux OSs (in my experience) tend to be at least as unstable as OSX. Ugh.
(Note: I upgraded to Sierra, crash or have weird crap happen ~4times a week)
edit: Why the downvote? Note that i explicitly stated this was my experience. Furthermore, i had the same experience when my Macbook Pro Retina was new, and came with OSX Mavericks. Both Mavericks and Sierra have gave me the impression that Apple releases unstable OSs for major versions, and need time to make it stable again.
Worse yet, is if i pick a stable variety of Linux, it's likely to not be pretty. The pretty Linux OSs (in my experience) tend to be at least as unstable as OSX. Ugh.
(Note: I upgraded to Sierra, crash or have weird crap happen ~4times a week)
edit: Why the downvote? Note that i explicitly stated this was my experience. Furthermore, i had the same experience when my Macbook Pro Retina was new, and came with OSX Mavericks. Both Mavericks and Sierra have gave me the impression that Apple releases unstable OSs for major versions, and need time to make it stable again.
Personal experiences of the Apple product that is negative is bad. Personal experiences of the Apple product that is positive is good.
Weird. I've been on MacBookPro since 2011 and have not experienced any crashes so far. What do you do to crash it?
Clearly something, but no idea what. I only use a small number of apps (iterm2, neovim, chrome, spotify, etc). Spend most of my day in iterm2, and avoid using new programs because i prefer cli programs.
Well, usually when an application crashes in macOS, it offers you send a crash report, so you should know what exactly crashed.
Not sure about the last crash reports (the os froze until i force restarted it), but other weirdness are things like the keyboard going apeshit. Spazzing out like a variety of buttons are being held down. That's happened 3 times since updating, never before. Another one is all input not working, etc. Both keyboard/pad related though, i assume there's a wonky driver in Sierra but i haven't researched it (and frankly don't want to atm).
I'm not complaining/etc, just saying i'm not getting a crash report on the last two items - and i'm unsure about if i received one the times the OS actually crashed.
I'm not complaining/etc, just saying i'm not getting a crash report on the last two items - and i'm unsure about if i received one the times the OS actually crashed.
Total phase. The "only Mac update for the next 3 years" meme is just fanning the drama flames. Once you back out of HN into the real world the vast majority of people aren't going to hop into a laptop using Linux. Maybe some will go back to Windows but I think Apple's brand is strong enough that majority would feel dirty buying a Dell, etc. It's akin to someone who usually buys clothes at high end boutiques opting to switch to Walmart because they don't like this season's line. You also need to consider how long the current crop of Mac books last. If you maxed one out over the last 3 years it's hard to even defend the need for a new one.
I don't really see any issue with Electron apps -- Slack and Atom, both Electron-based, are some really good looking apps that really get the job done.
For me, even as a Mac user, I avoid Mac-only apps as much as I possibly can because I want the freedom to switch platforms in the future. I will happily have all my apps be slightly less pretty if it means they work on any OS.
For me, even as a Mac user, I avoid Mac-only apps as much as I possibly can because I want the freedom to switch platforms in the future. I will happily have all my apps be slightly less pretty if it means they work on any OS.
I like Electron apps too, and I am running a handful of them as I type this message, but they are notorious for hogging system resources (especially memory).
I wish Electron apps would load faster. Pulling up a new window in VS Code is a 10 second endevour.
Slack is electron done right - it even has a background process which delivers notifications. But they generally integrate really badly into the UI.
I'm with you but to be objective Apple hasn't done significant efforts for the pro market in last years. They have stated the future is in the iPad. Their pro line is stagnant or receding (where is Mac OS X server, Final Cut pro dumbed down, etc.).
Times are changing
Times are changing
> Times are changing
Times are always changing. Markets grow rapidly, and then they mature and growth gets flatter.
Specifically looking at Apple, while I agree that their focus has shifted away from the Mac platform somewhat and towards iOS, wasn't that to be expected with the huge growth in mobile and tablets over the last 10 years? Now, mobile growth is slowing[0] and tablet sales are flat/dropping[1].
Laptops aren't going anywhere... the vast majority of white collar workers use a laptop or desktop everyday. And while I can't predict what Apple is going to do (who can?), it seems unlikely that they'd completely drop a market that generated $5.7B in revenue in Q4 of 2016 [2].
[0]: http://www.businessinsider.com/smartphone-growth-is-slowing-... [1]: http://www.digitaltrends.com/mobile/tablet-decline-q2-2016/ [2]: http://www.macworld.co.uk/news/apple/apple-q4-2016-financial...
ETA: Btw, macOS Server is over here: http://www.apple.com/macos/server/
Times are always changing. Markets grow rapidly, and then they mature and growth gets flatter.
Specifically looking at Apple, while I agree that their focus has shifted away from the Mac platform somewhat and towards iOS, wasn't that to be expected with the huge growth in mobile and tablets over the last 10 years? Now, mobile growth is slowing[0] and tablet sales are flat/dropping[1].
Laptops aren't going anywhere... the vast majority of white collar workers use a laptop or desktop everyday. And while I can't predict what Apple is going to do (who can?), it seems unlikely that they'd completely drop a market that generated $5.7B in revenue in Q4 of 2016 [2].
[0]: http://www.businessinsider.com/smartphone-growth-is-slowing-... [1]: http://www.digitaltrends.com/mobile/tablet-decline-q2-2016/ [2]: http://www.macworld.co.uk/news/apple/apple-q4-2016-financial...
ETA: Btw, macOS Server is over here: http://www.apple.com/macos/server/
Cofeeshop people will still buy Macs, as well as those looking for status symbols. So there is no danger of Macs going away from demand side.
The issue is that Apple is alienating early adopters by removing ports, charging double for obsolete hardware and introducing gimmicks instead of real innovation. And there is a decrease in OS quality from Apple.
The issue is that Apple is alienating early adopters by removing ports, charging double for obsolete hardware and introducing gimmicks instead of real innovation. And there is a decrease in OS quality from Apple.
Sidenote, that is indeed a pretty app! If i was sure i was staying on OSX (probably migrating to Linux), i'd purchase this! Shame i never found it sooner. I use a combination of Todoist and a Pomodoro timer on my phone.
Doesn't change the fact that Mac marketshare is around 7%. Just because they're targeting the coffee shop crowd doesn't mean everyone's using Macs.
Like with iOS, it's not just a question of market share, but of revenue share.
Questions to ask when deciding what platforms to support:
Of Android and iOS, which has the users willing to spend money on apps? More than $0.99?
Of Windows, Linux, and macOS, which has the users willing to spend money on apps? More than a few dollars?
Questions to ask when deciding what platforms to support:
Of Android and iOS, which has the users willing to spend money on apps? More than $0.99?
Of Windows, Linux, and macOS, which has the users willing to spend money on apps? More than a few dollars?
In the USA it's 13.5%, and I'm willing to bet that in urban US areas it's even much higher. Here in London (UK) it has to be at least 20%-30%.
But yeah, not everyone's using Macs. It's the biggest vendor, but there are more non-Macs than Macs.
But yeah, not everyone's using Macs. It's the biggest vendor, but there are more non-Macs than Macs.
Another distinction to make is business vs private users. Unless something has changed recently, Macs are basically unheard of in offices (aside from maybe the receptionist), so if 50% of the market is businesses where there's 0% market share, "how many people use a Mac at the coffee shop" will overstate their overall market share by 50%.
I not sure about the office bit though. In my office there are some macs although they are a minority. I'm also not sure offices account for 50% of the computers.
But yeah, many other variables to consider. Age as well, it's mostly younger people in coffee shops.
But yeah, many other variables to consider. Age as well, it's mostly younger people in coffee shops.
Everyone at our company who isn't a developer is on a Mac...
Personally I think this is just a phase triggered by those that actually aren't developers invested into Apple, rather people that want UNIX with a pretty GUI.
I think the emphasis including that in the article on pretty is a fundamental misunderstanding of why developers like macOS.
For me and a lot of others what I really want is a UNIX that just works.
Meaning it just works with its hardware in all ways... audio and video playing, recording, editing and everything else all work very well, without having to recompile the kernel or hunt down and install alpha drivers without source hosted on sketchy sites, which is what drove me away from other UNIXes.
Also macOS is a good platform for developing native iOS apps. Why iOS and not Android? Mostly because the version adoption curve of Android is pretty bad.
The point is it's more about functionality and getting stuff done than it is about pretty. With other UNIXes there was always too much fighting with the system.
For me and a lot of others what I really want is a UNIX that just works.
Meaning it just works with its hardware in all ways... audio and video playing, recording, editing and everything else all work very well, without having to recompile the kernel or hunt down and install alpha drivers without source hosted on sketchy sites, which is what drove me away from other UNIXes.
Also macOS is a good platform for developing native iOS apps. Why iOS and not Android? Mostly because the version adoption curve of Android is pretty bad.
The point is it's more about functionality and getting stuff done than it is about pretty. With other UNIXes there was always too much fighting with the system.
The single thing that keeps me with macOS is a universal key that is truly universal. Apps on mac are built around the command key. The windows key and the linux super key don't have anywhere near the consistency across applications that the command key does. `cmd + shift + [` flips through tabs in every application I have. In linux, it works only if I set up the keys for that application, and only if that application has the ability to set those keys. I spend more time in xkb config files than I do programming.
I had a very similar experience. I switched for the pretty fonts, and stayed for the key bindings. You can even add your own key bindings to (almost) any menu item in (almost) any Cocoa app using System Preferences. After I discovered that, I just dug in even more.
BetterTouchTool is also fantastic.
Yeah, everyone is over complicating the issue. Why is it so hard to understand that people want UNIX without the pain?
Unfortunately that doesn't exist apart from macOS right now.
Unfortunately that doesn't exist apart from macOS right now.
Maybe because when I see people using UNIX systems in 2016, I can hardly see a difference with people using 21' monitors with Aix full with xterms in 1994, as if nothing has changed.
I want to dislike you for your statements of the truth, but I can't.
I'm a multi-plat guy who has a Macbook and a Windows machine. This makes me want to get a real open source initiative going on Windows to enable better UI assembly. Xaml is great but it has a ways to go.
I'm a multi-plat guy who has a Macbook and a Windows machine. This makes me want to get a real open source initiative going on Windows to enable better UI assembly. Xaml is great but it has a ways to go.
>I'm really hoping this is just a phase. Hoping that Apple will reduce prices of new laptops and we'll be back to normal.
Because there's some price spike? If anything things are as cheap or expensive as ever.
Because there's some price spike? If anything things are as cheap or expensive as ever.
Prices have climbed quite a bit. Seems like they jumped $200-300 when Retina was introduced, and now a similar increase for the Touch Bar.
bork_laser(1)
But you have to realize that those applications on Macs are not for everyone. Which basically means that if Mac were to continue having their monopoly, developers like YOU would never look to provide the same kinds of services to people who prefer something else. Not everyone uses software that just because they look pretty.
So I went to their main page to download an ISO to give it a try in a VM.
They hid the download button really well: You have to type in "0" into the "how much you'd like to pay" field for the "Purchase" button to change to "Download".
I mean I understand that open source projects need funding. But if you want people to try your niche OS at least make it obvious how to download it. Ask for money later after people had to chance to try it out.
I only typed in 0 because I know that "trick" from other websites. If I hadn't known I would have just left the website and would possibly never return.
They hid the download button really well: You have to type in "0" into the "how much you'd like to pay" field for the "Purchase" button to change to "Download".
I mean I understand that open source projects need funding. But if you want people to try your niche OS at least make it obvious how to download it. Ask for money later after people had to chance to try it out.
I only typed in 0 because I know that "trick" from other websites. If I hadn't known I would have just left the website and would possibly never return.
They caught a lot of flak when they first introduced it. Not only did they introduce this, but they also shamed the people who did not pay
http://m.slashdot.org/story/213469
http://m.slashdot.org/story/213469
They retracted that and apologized. It's unreasonable to just hold this over their heads, and in general use it to dismiss their entire project, which they have been working on for half a decade, mostly with no salary, because of one badly phrased sentence from one contributor which was then retracted.
I also think if you read the rest of what they're saying, it's probably is true that we will only get Linux GUIs which are competitive with Windows or Mac when people are willing to fund their professional development. OSS works exceptionally well for lower level components, or for components targeted at developers, because everyone involved benefits. For a professional developer a contribution acts as a good mechanism to raise your profile within the community and improve your ability to earn a decent salary elsewhere. For a company, running open source projects means they can solicit contributions and improve their profile; they contribute to other projects because it gives them a base to be able to build their products. We don't expect or find that OSS developers of high profile projects are starving in garrets, they are in fact leaders of their communities, highly prized and in-demand.
But these mechanisms do not have the same force when the consumer of the software is a general user, not a developer in the same field. i.e. when you're writing software in C++ which is then going to be used by graphic designers or artists, or by a casual user. In those case, the direct reputational benefits just aren't there, and that's why those sort of projects often struggle to take off. And on top of that those projects also involve a lot of painstaking and arguably boring work to get everything polished to a fine sheen. Krita for instance is excellent, but it has found a way to fund development through yearly crowdfunding. I think the same applies to Linux GUI's, that ultimately you need some pot of money able to support developers, which moves around according to the desires of informed consumers. In my opinion, that's what it will take for desktop Linux to become a serious mass market alternative to Mac and Windows.
I also think if you read the rest of what they're saying, it's probably is true that we will only get Linux GUIs which are competitive with Windows or Mac when people are willing to fund their professional development. OSS works exceptionally well for lower level components, or for components targeted at developers, because everyone involved benefits. For a professional developer a contribution acts as a good mechanism to raise your profile within the community and improve your ability to earn a decent salary elsewhere. For a company, running open source projects means they can solicit contributions and improve their profile; they contribute to other projects because it gives them a base to be able to build their products. We don't expect or find that OSS developers of high profile projects are starving in garrets, they are in fact leaders of their communities, highly prized and in-demand.
But these mechanisms do not have the same force when the consumer of the software is a general user, not a developer in the same field. i.e. when you're writing software in C++ which is then going to be used by graphic designers or artists, or by a casual user. In those case, the direct reputational benefits just aren't there, and that's why those sort of projects often struggle to take off. And on top of that those projects also involve a lot of painstaking and arguably boring work to get everything polished to a fine sheen. Krita for instance is excellent, but it has found a way to fund development through yearly crowdfunding. I think the same applies to Linux GUI's, that ultimately you need some pot of money able to support developers, which moves around according to the desires of informed consumers. In my opinion, that's what it will take for desktop Linux to become a serious mass market alternative to Mac and Windows.
My problem with their project funding argument is that I'm not an investor. An investor has lots of money, and so is more willing to accumulate risks for the payoff of creating a stable enterprise.
It's not rational for me as a consumer to fund such an unsure bet, especially when changing an operating system has lots of friction. I assume that the proposed talent of an individual investor is in the ability to sieve good from bad in a sea of maybe. But I also don't understand the market well enough to see how such an unproven bet might succeed in a very stale market dominated by arguably one entity (you can't really buy macOS) -- maybe two.
I'd also say that while software work is expensive and requires talented labor, and while operating system work takes an intense amount of effort, there's something to be said about the fact that Elementary OS could even build their OS to begin with. How did they do it? On the backs of billions of dollars of free labor. I can't imagine how it would be if the whole world hid their source code with proprietary-only software, and Elementary had to start from ground 0.
What rational model governs this situation?
It's not rational for me as a consumer to fund such an unsure bet, especially when changing an operating system has lots of friction. I assume that the proposed talent of an individual investor is in the ability to sieve good from bad in a sea of maybe. But I also don't understand the market well enough to see how such an unproven bet might succeed in a very stale market dominated by arguably one entity (you can't really buy macOS) -- maybe two.
I'd also say that while software work is expensive and requires talented labor, and while operating system work takes an intense amount of effort, there's something to be said about the fact that Elementary OS could even build their OS to begin with. How did they do it? On the backs of billions of dollars of free labor. I can't imagine how it would be if the whole world hid their source code with proprietary-only software, and Elementary had to start from ground 0.
What rational model governs this situation?
Your argument would make sense if it weren't pay what you like, with the option to pay zero, and the default option being less than the price of a sandwich.
You mention that investors have lots of money and are therefore able to take on risks. I suspect that nearly everyone who would consider downloading this operating system has a lot of money relative to the $5 suggested donation, and certainly relative to the $1 you could choose instead. And if you truly don't have that, then you can do $0 instead.
You can make the risk to yourself arbitrarily low, selecting whatever you think fits your profile of cost vs potential reward. That is their rational model.
You mention that investors have lots of money and are therefore able to take on risks. I suspect that nearly everyone who would consider downloading this operating system has a lot of money relative to the $5 suggested donation, and certainly relative to the $1 you could choose instead. And if you truly don't have that, then you can do $0 instead.
You can make the risk to yourself arbitrarily low, selecting whatever you think fits your profile of cost vs potential reward. That is their rational model.
I was really disappointing with how the elementary guys handled that whole situation.. really turned me off to their distribution.
Here is the correct link to the full text of that blog post.
http://blog.elementary.io/post/110645528530/payments
http://blog.elementary.io/post/110645528530/payments
you cant really have a "choose what you pay" plan and be upset when (many) people pay 0.
I wish I had known that trick. I payed some money for it, which isn't unusual since I often donate money to open source or activism.
But this time I regret every cent. Coming from Mac OS, or even Fedora, Elementary seems unpolished and unstable.
But this time I regret every cent. Coming from Mac OS, or even Fedora, Elementary seems unpolished and unstable.
I really wish someone would start a paid OS based on Linux and OSS tools. I'd happily pay $100/y (year being, new versions/etc) for a stable and awesome UI/UX.
As it is, my Macbook Pro Retina has been crashing a lot and doing weird things frequently since i upgraded to Sierra. Between that and the latest Macbook Pro notebooks, i just don't like Apple anymore. I'm pretty set on buying a highend laptop _(similar build quality to Apple)_ and putting Linux on it... but that's where the fun stops. Linux UIs tend to lag behind significantly.
I want a for-profit UI company working on a Linux UI. OSS just can't compete with Apple on design it seems.. and in my opinion, users shouldn't have to choose between OSS and pretty design.
It's bad enough that if/when i leave OSX, i lose a lot of my apps due to them not supporting (or not supporting competently) Linux, but losing apps and UX.. well, it's a tough pill to swallow.
As it is, my Macbook Pro Retina has been crashing a lot and doing weird things frequently since i upgraded to Sierra. Between that and the latest Macbook Pro notebooks, i just don't like Apple anymore. I'm pretty set on buying a highend laptop _(similar build quality to Apple)_ and putting Linux on it... but that's where the fun stops. Linux UIs tend to lag behind significantly.
I want a for-profit UI company working on a Linux UI. OSS just can't compete with Apple on design it seems.. and in my opinion, users shouldn't have to choose between OSS and pretty design.
It's bad enough that if/when i leave OSX, i lose a lot of my apps due to them not supporting (or not supporting competently) Linux, but losing apps and UX.. well, it's a tough pill to swallow.
You just described elementary (fwiw, it is a for-profit LLC).
I think you're massively underestimating the magnitude and difficulty of what you're seeking. elementary has been at this for 5 years and made an immense amount of progress, though. But it's definitely still not at the level of Apple, which has had decades and billions of dollars poured into this.
It's not a "paid OS" in that it doesn't force you to pay a particular dollar amount, though. (People tend to lose their minds when you charge them for open-source software.)
https://elementary.io/docs/human-interface-guidelines
f/d: I was on the elementary core team
I think you're massively underestimating the magnitude and difficulty of what you're seeking. elementary has been at this for 5 years and made an immense amount of progress, though. But it's definitely still not at the level of Apple, which has had decades and billions of dollars poured into this.
It's not a "paid OS" in that it doesn't force you to pay a particular dollar amount, though. (People tend to lose their minds when you charge them for open-source software.)
https://elementary.io/docs/human-interface-guidelines
f/d: I was on the elementary core team
I think this is one big problem with the OSS community: there is no concept of 'value'.
People complain about iOS' race to the bottom, but in the OSS community, I frel like this has been there for a long time. "You want to _charge me for it_ ?! Pffft!"
We may complain about macOS now with Sierra but for thr most part, macOS has been stable for a long time. I haven't seen a kernel panic in probably a decade. Not saying it's perfect, but there's a point you hit when people are paid to make things happen and macOS hit that point yeats ago.
I would argue Elementary provides a lot of value and should therefore weed out the complainers and worst of the bunch by charging. I would remove the 'pay what you want' and just charge $30 or $40.
We don't live in the Star Trek universe yet, so people still need money to live. I fully believe in and support companies, individuals, and groups that provide a good value for what they charge.
I _want_ those people making great things and doing it full time. Otherwise, you just get abandonware or crappy products where people don't fix bugs because they have a day job to deal with. That's the reality in my mind.
People complain about iOS' race to the bottom, but in the OSS community, I frel like this has been there for a long time. "You want to _charge me for it_ ?! Pffft!"
We may complain about macOS now with Sierra but for thr most part, macOS has been stable for a long time. I haven't seen a kernel panic in probably a decade. Not saying it's perfect, but there's a point you hit when people are paid to make things happen and macOS hit that point yeats ago.
I would argue Elementary provides a lot of value and should therefore weed out the complainers and worst of the bunch by charging. I would remove the 'pay what you want' and just charge $30 or $40.
We don't live in the Star Trek universe yet, so people still need money to live. I fully believe in and support companies, individuals, and groups that provide a good value for what they charge.
I _want_ those people making great things and doing it full time. Otherwise, you just get abandonware or crappy products where people don't fix bugs because they have a day job to deal with. That's the reality in my mind.
Ironically, Elementary might have an easier time charging money for it if they positioned it less as an open source project. macOS is built largely atop open source software, and while they do make the GPL'd sources available for download they're not nearly enough to compile an OS with an experience approaching macOS.
For me it feels a bit different
I can throw $XX at a linux distro, pray that it goes to the right things and gets improved proper, and then wait until it becomes good, or I could throw $XX at a closed source solution, and have something that works good right now.
Its all fine to donate $XX, but buying for $XX to get something significantly worse than its competitors is a bit weird, and can only really be justified through "I support free software even if it has binary blobs", which is still a bit weird
I can throw $XX at a linux distro, pray that it goes to the right things and gets improved proper, and then wait until it becomes good, or I could throw $XX at a closed source solution, and have something that works good right now.
Its all fine to donate $XX, but buying for $XX to get something significantly worse than its competitors is a bit weird, and can only really be justified through "I support free software even if it has binary blobs", which is still a bit weird
Current solution is close to perfect:
Allows students, poor etc, still manages to weed out the most entitled ones it seems ;-)
Allows students, poor etc, still manages to weed out the most entitled ones it seems ;-)
Which is why, sadly, there is no money to be made on desktop GNU/Linux.
I believe elementary OS is the closest thing to what you're looking for. They're an LLC with the team that focuses on building a good looking UI and a nice UX. Pantheon is the only desktop environment which I wouldn't call outdated in the Linux world and somewhat stable and easy to get (Solus project is attempting to do the same, but I think they just don't have enough man power to pull it off).
I wish them the best of luck but recall Eazel (?) attempting to do this with Gnome back in the day and ended up folding as not enough people were willing to pay.
I am not sure why you think that Pantheon is the only one in this category. Have you not seen the Cinnamon DE?
I agree, been using mint linux (Debian based, borrows some "just works" stuff from Ubuntu) plus the Cinnamon Desktop, is a dream, on high end hardware or not. I will concede though, most people coming from iOS/Mac will want something tailored and curated for them, even though *nix offers unlimited possibilities in customization and software.
Really? :P
I'm right there with you. The only thing that keeps me on a Mac is the combination of Unix + Half decent UX. If someone built a paid Unix/Linux distro that could run Mac Apps, I'd give away my extra kidney for it.
Windows almost has me sold with their new Ubuntu subsystem.
Windows almost has me sold with their new Ubuntu subsystem.
I've come to a conclusion that if you have high standards, you can't look to other people for happiness. Even if I had a dream system for a while, at some point they'd follow a new trend that annoyed me and I'd feel left out again. Or they'd fail to follow a trend, and I'd complain that they'd fallen behind.
I've been orphaned from several platforms. OSX surprised me. It appeared to be the dream commodity unix. But then a release broke my workspace usage.
Eventually, I completely switched to a stripped-down unix. I use a bash menu for controlling things like wireless and screen lock. Tmux/dwm are my window managers, I use whatever the latest browser is.
All this required effort to learn and set up. People who look to the big companies for fashion would sneer at this. But it's a sharp tool, and it'll never be made obsolete by shifting trends.
I've been orphaned from several platforms. OSX surprised me. It appeared to be the dream commodity unix. But then a release broke my workspace usage.
Eventually, I completely switched to a stripped-down unix. I use a bash menu for controlling things like wireless and screen lock. Tmux/dwm are my window managers, I use whatever the latest browser is.
All this required effort to learn and set up. People who look to the big companies for fashion would sneer at this. But it's a sharp tool, and it'll never be made obsolete by shifting trends.
Good luck porting the mac libraries to Linux [1] :P
[1] https://www.darlinghq.org/project-status/
[1] https://www.darlinghq.org/project-status/
Supporting GUI apps will be magnitudes harder.
> Windows almost has me sold with their new Ubuntu subsystem.
Anything in particular you are missing?
Anything in particular you are missing?
I gave that up in 10 minutes. I really tried spinning up a basic docker project (docker compose) without luck. Sure, having a bash is a step forward and I see it getting better but it's no way near to a developer's basic needs.
Aha. I tried as well.
I use Docker for Windows.
It works tolerably well, but the hyper-v thing that it runs on is currently my #1 suspect when Windows takes > 30 seconds to connect to any network :-/
I use Docker for Windows.
It works tolerably well, but the hyper-v thing that it runs on is currently my #1 suspect when Windows takes > 30 seconds to connect to any network :-/
Is that not what Red Hat is? I thought that's what the Red Hat license provided?
>> ... and awesome UI/UX.
> Is that not what Red Hat is? I thought that's what the Red Hat license provided?
I won't say anything bad about Red Hat, but calling the UX awesome isn't something I would do based on my experience. Then again, they might have changed but I haven't heard anybody mentioning it.
(This used to be Canonicals niche before they picked up the assumption that Mac-like == Good ; )
> Is that not what Red Hat is? I thought that's what the Red Hat license provided?
I won't say anything bad about Red Hat, but calling the UX awesome isn't something I would do based on my experience. Then again, they might have changed but I haven't heard anybody mentioning it.
(This used to be Canonicals niche before they picked up the assumption that Mac-like == Good ; )
I may have skipped over the awesome UX. More of the stable and paid dev work.
I'll agree most UX on Linux isn't great. But GUI is such a pain in the ass that most people really don't want to work on it. Plus, plenty of Linux users aren't casual users and will accept or prefer function over form.
I myself am a heavy terminal user and pretty much limit my GUI use to the occasional image editor and the browser.
I'll agree most UX on Linux isn't great. But GUI is such a pain in the ass that most people really don't want to work on it. Plus, plenty of Linux users aren't casual users and will accept or prefer function over form.
I myself am a heavy terminal user and pretty much limit my GUI use to the occasional image editor and the browser.
Agree. It was just the singling out of RH when GP asked for awesome UX.
Fedora is ahead of RedHat server, kernel and package-wise. That's the point: pish the edge with the desktop, keep the server conservative and very stable.
RedHat makes their money on support licensing for the server. Employees are paid to work on Fedora, but it is not the RedHat product.
RedHat makes their money on support licensing for the server. Employees are paid to work on Fedora, but it is not the RedHat product.
Fedora is also the only mainstream distro I ever gave up on, admittedly 5 or so years ago but still.
Why?
Graphics failed in KDE spin and I was unable to figure out why.
Ah okay. Yeah, Fedora is really focused on GNOME :/
That's really sad to hear.. if you think the GNOME 3 UI is buggy, childish, opinionated, and hard to customize (I've yet to get a downloaded theme to work right the first time) Fedora is a non-starter.
Which is really too bad. It's the only RPM distro I've seen that's reasonably well put together.
Which is really too bad. It's the only RPM distro I've seen that's reasonably well put together.
Actually I think gnome 3 is (at least wasn't) too bad compared to Unity, UX wise - I just personally preferred KDE.
Edit: this -
> Which is really too bad. It's the only RPM distro I've seen that's reasonably well put together.
Anything specific I should be aware of wrt OpenSUSE?
Edit: this -
> Which is really too bad. It's the only RPM distro I've seen that's reasonably well put together.
Anything specific I should be aware of wrt OpenSUSE?
Well, this is about switching from macOS which hasn't theme support at all IIRC.
Awesome UI/UX is where everything falls apart. Everyone wants something different and just about everything beyond a rectangle with a few handy buttons on it actually slows productivity. Nothing's worse than waiting for an animation to complete so you can click a button you have to click 100 more times today. On top of that, people get bored really fast and then everything has to be overhauled for absolutely 0 gain.
I'm a KDE user / occasional contributor. I love the new Breeze theming and all the effort that went into the icon set along with it. I've used Macs in the past, and find the UI garish and much more intuitive, and way less customizable.
It is definitely a case of "to each their own", but the only issue with KDE right now is developer churn. As the writers and more experienced developers in some applications reduce their participation due to time constraints, it is incredibly hard for anyone to step into those shoes in often millions of LOCs code bases. A lot of UI rot isn't because we don't have technologies (Kirigami, Qt Quick Controls 2, Plasmoids, etc) that enable fantastic UI and UX experiences, it is because porting forward hundreds of applications comes down to who has the time and willpower to either continue maintaining their 10 year old project or someone having the willpower to learn what can often be very ugly C++ or ancient PyQt codebases.
I also have no problem with what Gnome is doing. Their applications may not be for me, but I can recognize the beauty in what they are trying to accomplish, and still think they have a much better design language than anything MS / Apple is putting out. Whenever I sit down at OSX / Windows I feel like both are stuck in the 90s, often because half their applications (especially system management) were written then and never updated since, and because they just make random UI splits every release to look shiny and new by just changing the shell look and keeping the rest jarringly legacy.
It is definitely a case of "to each their own", but the only issue with KDE right now is developer churn. As the writers and more experienced developers in some applications reduce their participation due to time constraints, it is incredibly hard for anyone to step into those shoes in often millions of LOCs code bases. A lot of UI rot isn't because we don't have technologies (Kirigami, Qt Quick Controls 2, Plasmoids, etc) that enable fantastic UI and UX experiences, it is because porting forward hundreds of applications comes down to who has the time and willpower to either continue maintaining their 10 year old project or someone having the willpower to learn what can often be very ugly C++ or ancient PyQt codebases.
I also have no problem with what Gnome is doing. Their applications may not be for me, but I can recognize the beauty in what they are trying to accomplish, and still think they have a much better design language than anything MS / Apple is putting out. Whenever I sit down at OSX / Windows I feel like both are stuck in the 90s, often because half their applications (especially system management) were written then and never updated since, and because they just make random UI splits every release to look shiny and new by just changing the shell look and keeping the rest jarringly legacy.
It's all subjective but I find that KDE apps need a lot of work in terms of control flow, UI hierarchy, white space usage. To me, these are some of the things that macOS and most third party applications for it get very much right, and coming from it KDE feels... jarring. In some ways it feels modern but in others I feel like I'm using Win9x, complete with overcrowded windows and dialog tunnels, with a new coat of paint. It would greatly benefit from someone sitting down and giving it all a rethink.
GNOME sits on the other side of the spectrum on these issues but I personally find it and in fact most GTK+ apps more aesthetically pleasing and more well organized even if all the buttons are too huge and its white space is like a football field.
GNOME sits on the other side of the spectrum on these issues but I personally find it and in fact most GTK+ apps more aesthetically pleasing and more well organized even if all the buttons are too huge and its white space is like a football field.
Check out Linux Mint... Cinnamon version... it's a pretty happy middle ground between windows and osx.
> I'd happily pay $100/y (year being, new versions/etc) for a stable and awesome UI/UX.
The problem is that many people have differing ideas of what the UI/UX would look like.
If you asked me to provide such a thing I'd just use Debian. Others might prefer RedHat, or similar. But copying an existing distribution, and keeping up to date with new versions would be a full-time job in itself, and that wouldn't leave any room for actual development.
The GNOME project, and KDE project for that matter, have spent years creating a unified environment, and even with their funds and developers the project is never-ending.
I wouldn't say a minimal & unified distribution is impossible, but it would require a lot more users to pay, up-front.
The problem is that many people have differing ideas of what the UI/UX would look like.
If you asked me to provide such a thing I'd just use Debian. Others might prefer RedHat, or similar. But copying an existing distribution, and keeping up to date with new versions would be a full-time job in itself, and that wouldn't leave any room for actual development.
The GNOME project, and KDE project for that matter, have spent years creating a unified environment, and even with their funds and developers the project is never-ending.
I wouldn't say a minimal & unified distribution is impossible, but it would require a lot more users to pay, up-front.
https://www.redhat.com/wapps/store/catalog.html
or, you can get the Dell XPS Developer Edition with Ubuntu pre-installed.
or, you can get the Dell XPS Developer Edition with Ubuntu pre-installed.
You can always pay for Ubuntu. BTW, that is probably the one closest to what you're describing, not elementary, but they have a tendency to focus in fixing not the broken things.
As a daily Linux user I feel your pain, but have you considered Windows 10 with their Ubuntu coop install? I'm seriously considering it for user-space apps.
It doesn't work for GUI apps yet.
Well, you can run VcXsrv on Windows and run X apps, but the GPU acceleration won't be any good.
[deleted]
>I'd happily pay $100/y (year being, new versions/etc) for a stable and awesome UI/UX.
Good luck with that. The problem is that no one will make a UI/UX that's both awesome and stable. It's not like the resources aren't there: there's a ton of DEs for Linux, and they've been working on them for 20 years now. But the problem is they can't ever agree on anything, and they can't ever just leave well enough alone: every time they get something stable, they abandon it and make up something completely new and unstable. It's easily the 2nd biggest hindrance to Linux-on-the-desktop adoption (the biggest of course being application compatibility/inertia with Windows).
>but that's where the fun stops. Linux UIs tend to lag behind significantly.
That's the Linux community's fault. It's not the features that lag, either; KDE, feature-wise, has always been far ahead of the commercial UIs. For one simple example, I can't middle-click and vertically maximize a window on any other DE that I know of, but in KDE that's been a standard feature for at least 15 years. For another simple example, multiple desktops have been standard on Unix UIs for over 30 years, but never in Windows or Mac. The problem with Linux UIs isn't design, it's stability: everyone's constantly revamping stuff (Gnome3, KDE4, KDE5, etc.) and never spending any time fixing bugs. For instance, I have the Dvorak keyboard set on my LM17.3/KDE desktop, but several KDE apps don't respect that and go back to Qwerty. (To be fair, Windows is even worse: I have my work Win7 desktop set so I can switch between Qwerty and Dvorak, and the stupid thing is constantly switching back and forth randomly.)
Good luck with that. The problem is that no one will make a UI/UX that's both awesome and stable. It's not like the resources aren't there: there's a ton of DEs for Linux, and they've been working on them for 20 years now. But the problem is they can't ever agree on anything, and they can't ever just leave well enough alone: every time they get something stable, they abandon it and make up something completely new and unstable. It's easily the 2nd biggest hindrance to Linux-on-the-desktop adoption (the biggest of course being application compatibility/inertia with Windows).
>but that's where the fun stops. Linux UIs tend to lag behind significantly.
That's the Linux community's fault. It's not the features that lag, either; KDE, feature-wise, has always been far ahead of the commercial UIs. For one simple example, I can't middle-click and vertically maximize a window on any other DE that I know of, but in KDE that's been a standard feature for at least 15 years. For another simple example, multiple desktops have been standard on Unix UIs for over 30 years, but never in Windows or Mac. The problem with Linux UIs isn't design, it's stability: everyone's constantly revamping stuff (Gnome3, KDE4, KDE5, etc.) and never spending any time fixing bugs. For instance, I have the Dvorak keyboard set on my LM17.3/KDE desktop, but several KDE apps don't respect that and go back to Qwerty. (To be fair, Windows is even worse: I have my work Win7 desktop set so I can switch between Qwerty and Dvorak, and the stupid thing is constantly switching back and forth randomly.)
Totally agree with this. Except, I've never liked the KDE look and feel. It's like the worst glossy cartoon ui ever. Yuk. To be fair, I haven't looked at it recently, so the gloss might have been toned down or removed.
But to your point of bug fixing, I absolutely agree. macOS is plagued by this as well, but mot to the degree Linux DE's are.
I've used multiple desktops since the 90's and loved it. macOS has had support for a while, but the animation switching from desktop to desktop was horrendous. I got a utility to fix that, but it's a joke they don't just include a checkbox to toggle the animations. This is one huge UX fail in my mind.
But to your point of bug fixing, I absolutely agree. macOS is plagued by this as well, but mot to the degree Linux DE's are.
I've used multiple desktops since the 90's and loved it. macOS has had support for a while, but the animation switching from desktop to desktop was horrendous. I got a utility to fix that, but it's a joke they don't just include a checkbox to toggle the animations. This is one huge UX fail in my mind.
KDE's changed its look, but more importantly, it's not set in stone: it's entirely possible to change its settings and theme. It's the most configurable DE out there.
I really wonder sometimes why distros don't use it more, and make their own custom themes for it, instead of just leaving it at the default. It wouldn't take that much work to make themes to make it look almost like anything you want. Or you could even make a different version of Plasma which emulates some other OS/DE if you needed to, leaving all the underpinnings intact.
I really wonder sometimes why distros don't use it more, and make their own custom themes for it, instead of just leaving it at the default. It wouldn't take that much work to make themes to make it look almost like anything you want. Or you could even make a different version of Plasma which emulates some other OS/DE if you needed to, leaving all the underpinnings intact.
XFCE is pretty stable, solid and fast.
[deleted]
Some of you Mac guys are a weird bunch IMO:
Talk more than others about usability - happily gloss over all kinds of weirdness[0] in your expensive setups.[1]
Happily pays quite a lot for your Macs - "regret every cent" after donating peanuts for the development of a Linux distro.
Just saying.
Edit: downvotes welcome! I cannot buy anything for my Internet points here in Western Europe.
A textual description of my wrongdoings would be even more awesome!
Edit2: you don't need to upvote me! Instead just tell me what I did wrong!
[0]: Yes, there is. If you cannot spot it I won't recommend you for any lead UX role.
[1]: Not saying it is bad or not worth the price though. Just expensive (given that you have to have a Mac to run it legally) and far from perfect.
Talk more than others about usability - happily gloss over all kinds of weirdness[0] in your expensive setups.[1]
Happily pays quite a lot for your Macs - "regret every cent" after donating peanuts for the development of a Linux distro.
Just saying.
Edit: downvotes welcome! I cannot buy anything for my Internet points here in Western Europe.
A textual description of my wrongdoings would be even more awesome!
Edit2: you don't need to upvote me! Instead just tell me what I did wrong!
[0]: Yes, there is. If you cannot spot it I won't recommend you for any lead UX role.
[1]: Not saying it is bad or not worth the price though. Just expensive (given that you have to have a Mac to run it legally) and far from perfect.
OSX has plenty of weirdness, but in my experience it's still more usable by far than Windows and a million miles away from any desktop Linux distro. I use it because it's the best available, not because it's perfect in every possible way. It's not, and nothing is. But it's a generally excellent GUI around a UNIX core, which is perfect for me.
I hackintosh so I'm less well-placed to answer your second point, but I'll try: A Mac is expensive, but you know exactly what you're getting and you know it will work well (recent dongle madness notwithstanding).
Meanwhile, eOS markets itself (previously implicitly and now apparently explicitly) as a potential replacement for OSX. But it's nowhere near. It's an outdated version of Ubuntu with some basic custom apps on top (a calculator, another basic wrapper around webkit, a slightly cleaned up fork of a file browser, etc).
And then you stray to the third party apps, and as always with desktop Linux, they're awful. Everything uses a slightly different toolkit, the UI elements are ugly, UX seems to be devs' lowest priority item, and of course you can't completely interact with industry standard formats (DOCX, PSD). The Intel Mesa driver still tears and/or stutters (actually all drivers do except Nvidia's) so watching videos is an awful experience.
Most of those items above are not fatal by themselves, but together they make for a miserable experience. I used desktop Linux (mainly Ubuntu) for over a year since I needed to do some dev and couldn't run OSX at the time. I won't try again unless there's a revolution in the desktop FOSS world. (Good video drivers, standard well-designed toolkit, UX as a priority, deeper integration of things like WINE.)
I do have some family members who use ancient core2duo laptops and do absolutely everything in Chrome. I pop Ubuntu MATE on their machines so they can avoid malware. I also always keep a live USB stick handy for flexible troubleshooting. As far as I'm concerned, this is basically the limit of usefulness for desktop Linux.
I understand some people value the flexibility above everything else and thrive under desktop Linux. I'm not trying to devalue their views or say that their setup is wrong. Use whatever works for you- but if you haven't gave OSX a serious shot yet, do try it.
I hackintosh so I'm less well-placed to answer your second point, but I'll try: A Mac is expensive, but you know exactly what you're getting and you know it will work well (recent dongle madness notwithstanding).
Meanwhile, eOS markets itself (previously implicitly and now apparently explicitly) as a potential replacement for OSX. But it's nowhere near. It's an outdated version of Ubuntu with some basic custom apps on top (a calculator, another basic wrapper around webkit, a slightly cleaned up fork of a file browser, etc).
And then you stray to the third party apps, and as always with desktop Linux, they're awful. Everything uses a slightly different toolkit, the UI elements are ugly, UX seems to be devs' lowest priority item, and of course you can't completely interact with industry standard formats (DOCX, PSD). The Intel Mesa driver still tears and/or stutters (actually all drivers do except Nvidia's) so watching videos is an awful experience.
Most of those items above are not fatal by themselves, but together they make for a miserable experience. I used desktop Linux (mainly Ubuntu) for over a year since I needed to do some dev and couldn't run OSX at the time. I won't try again unless there's a revolution in the desktop FOSS world. (Good video drivers, standard well-designed toolkit, UX as a priority, deeper integration of things like WINE.)
I do have some family members who use ancient core2duo laptops and do absolutely everything in Chrome. I pop Ubuntu MATE on their machines so they can avoid malware. I also always keep a live USB stick handy for flexible troubleshooting. As far as I'm concerned, this is basically the limit of usefulness for desktop Linux.
I understand some people value the flexibility above everything else and thrive under desktop Linux. I'm not trying to devalue their views or say that their setup is wrong. Use whatever works for you- but if you haven't gave OSX a serious shot yet, do try it.
I also never thought that the UX was particularly good. It looks pretty, but some fundamental stuff is hidden and when I was new to OS X I never knew when I had to switch to terminal. To me the real reason to run OS X is that I never have to fight with drivers or my xconfig. On Ubuntu plugging in a projector to give a presentation was always more exciting than it should have been. I more often than not had to borrow someone else's Windows laptop. I also can't count the times apt-get update replaced my proprietary Nvidia driver with an much worse, open source one. Last time I gave Ubuntu a try a few years ago it actually managed to destroy the firmware on my external screen. I just want a Unix based system that works.
> I also can't count the times apt-get update replaced my proprietary Nvidia driver with an much worse, open source one.
I don't think it's fair to compare OS X (with runs on a very limited set of hardware) with a Linux distribution running on a random not-well-supported system. If you want an apples-to-apples comparison I'd suggest to test Ubuntu on one of the officially supported systems - see https://certification.ubuntu.com/desktop/ for a list.
I don't think it's fair to compare OS X (with runs on a very limited set of hardware) with a Linux distribution running on a random not-well-supported system. If you want an apples-to-apples comparison I'd suggest to test Ubuntu on one of the officially supported systems - see https://certification.ubuntu.com/desktop/ for a list.
It's fair when you consider the usual value proposition of "do I buy a PC and put linux on it or do I buy a Mac".
But you are right, some people mix these different issues up. My next laptop will come with Linux pre-installed - so I expect to report that all the bits work correctly (except Linux will be running on top of Qubes rather than on the metal, so...)
But you are right, some people mix these different issues up. My next laptop will come with Linux pre-installed - so I expect to report that all the bits work correctly (except Linux will be running on top of Qubes rather than on the metal, so...)
I don't think anybody is saying that macOS is perfect. It's more that historically for most of us, the set of trade offs that come with it are much easier to swallow than those that come with $DESKTOP_LINUX_DISTRO. In fact, that's the core of the problem: even now, after all that he missteps Apple has taken and after all the improvements desktop Linux has seen, macOS is still the more appealing option. This is frustrating because it suggests that there may never be another desktop platform with a set of pros and cons similar to those of macOS.
I felt the same way ultimately despite my original enthusiasm. To be honest now that I have some experience with the eco-system as a whole, I mean Linux, it's really unreasonable to expect a few developers, even very good ones, to produce a desktop operating system that rivals OS X or Windows or even Fedora because they are competing against very large and well funded teams at huge corporations that by now have at least three decades of experience building desktop operating systems. In short, Elementary OS is a nice idea but it's a somewhat Quixotic endeavor.
I tried a few times to contribute to their project, but all of their apps (at the time, at least) were hacked together with no tests and poor documentation. This is all fine, everyone has to start somewhere, but they were openly hostile to suggestions of testing or new architecture. In my opinion, they had a very "we know best" attitude for a group of (almost entirely) amateur developers. :/
[deleted]
Everybody in the FOSS community gets really mad at that decision... I thought it was intuitive.
"How much do you want to pay?"
"0 Dollars."
"Great!"
Why is that so horrible?
"How much do you want to pay?"
"0 Dollars."
"Great!"
Why is that so horrible?
Don't ever rely on your own perception of what's intuitive to evaluate a user experience. Someone has given specific feedback to the contrary, which means that there will be others. If I was the site's maintainer, I'd be heading straight for the analytics to see if they support this feedback.
This part wasn't that horrible as the quote from Elementary blog was (apparently they removed the old blogpost, but it's easily googlable):
"We want users to understand that they’re pretty much cheating the system when they choose not to pay for software. We didn’t exclude a $0 button to deceive you; we believe our software really is worth something."
"We want users to understand that they’re pretty much cheating the system when they choose not to pay for software. We didn’t exclude a $0 button to deceive you; we believe our software really is worth something."
This. They tried to shame people for downloading without paying, Foss community shamed them for that because they don't pay anything for the parts they get from Ubuntu, Debian, gnu, Linux etc.
>> we believe our software really is worth something.
That's why you let users decide after they've used the software. You don't tell someone that up front and expect a payment when you haven't been able to try and test the software for yourself and your team.
If it's worthy, then users will come back and offer a payment or contact you to find out how they can contribute if they feel its really worth it.
I think a lot of people have this misconception that everybody who uses open source software just assumes it should be free. In my own experience, it's quite the opposite. Most people who use open source are actually more willing to pay for something they feel is valuable to them without hesitation. They're also usually willing to pay a little more then perhaps is necessary in order to make sure its maintained and supported.
That's why you let users decide after they've used the software. You don't tell someone that up front and expect a payment when you haven't been able to try and test the software for yourself and your team.
If it's worthy, then users will come back and offer a payment or contact you to find out how they can contribute if they feel its really worth it.
I think a lot of people have this misconception that everybody who uses open source software just assumes it should be free. In my own experience, it's quite the opposite. Most people who use open source are actually more willing to pay for something they feel is valuable to them without hesitation. They're also usually willing to pay a little more then perhaps is necessary in order to make sure its maintained and supported.
Because for most people, "0 dollars" is not a sensible answer to that question. Getting something for free is perceived as a separate kind of action from purchasing something, even if you can ultimately boil it down to the same "exchange $X for Y" process.
When principles and reality clash, reality wins. In principle the website should make perfect sense to everyone.
When BetterTouchTool forced the switch to a "pay-as-you" want version (they even forcefully expired existing versions of the app, it simply stopped working unless you fork over money), their minimum was 4$ or so, because apparently if it was less, then the payment processing would be too high in relation.
So apparently in the bait-and-switch mentality of the mac world, that you can pay '0 dollars' is not obvious.
So apparently in the bait-and-switch mentality of the mac world, that you can pay '0 dollars' is not obvious.
Because it isn't intuitive.
On their blog [1] and repository [2] there were some clarification about this "trick".
[1]: http://blog.elementary.io/post/110645528530/payments
[2]: https://github.com/elementary/website/pull/655
It is a shame for Elementary OS Team, because this issue was many times discussed on GH issues / IRC about implementing just a "$0" button. As I remember in launchpad there is also a task or discussion about suggestion of the dialog which will remind about donation after certain time duration.
Edit:
Found https://blueprints.launchpad.net/elementaryos/+spec/donation...
[1]: http://blog.elementary.io/post/110645528530/payments
[2]: https://github.com/elementary/website/pull/655
It is a shame for Elementary OS Team, because this issue was many times discussed on GH issues / IRC about implementing just a "$0" button. As I remember in launchpad there is also a task or discussion about suggestion of the dialog which will remind about donation after certain time duration.
Edit:
Found https://blueprints.launchpad.net/elementaryos/+spec/donation...
I don't think this is a trick - especially as it states "Pay What You Want". They need money to develop the OS and apps. And asking later will result in more hate.
They should include more videos and screenshots so people have a better idea of what they are buying.
They should include more videos and screenshots so people have a better idea of what they are buying.
I agree this is kinda frustrating, but judging from other comments it seems like ElementaryOS is maintained by a for-profit company. Driving conversions is probably more important to them rather than optimizing for total total number of downloads. I personally think this strategy is limited in scope as it ignores the life-time value of users that donate after using for a period of time, but always interesting to play devil's advocate.
This is a long-standing criticism of Elementary. I think they initially didn't even provide a way to get a free download, and eventually settled for the current UI. Basically the founder-owner is adamant that someone has to pay for his time, and tbh I don't begrudge him.
As an OSS contributor, I _do_ begrudge him for it - and this is why.
If you were to email Elementary and ask for support with a non-working 'sg' kernel module, I would be highly surprised if they offered you any support. More likely, they would tell you to contact one of the authors, who did not receive one dime for our work. He takes your money, and shirks off supporting you to people that _didn't_ take your money.
edit: typo
If you were to email Elementary and ask for support with a non-working 'sg' kernel module, I would be highly surprised if they offered you any support. More likely, they would tell you to contact one of the authors, who did not receive one dime for our work. He takes your money, and shirks off supporting you to people that _didn't_ take your money.
edit: typo
>As an OSS contributor, I _do_ begrudge him for it - and this is why.
If you were to email Elementary and ask for support with a non-working 'sg' kernel module, I would be highly surprised if they offered you any support. More likely, they would tell you to contact one of the authors, who did not receive one dime for our work. He takes your money, and shirks off supporting you to people that _didn't_ take your money.
By voluntarily contributing to an OSS-licensed project, you don't have the moral right to begrudge him for it. What they are doing is completely permitted by the license; RMS has spelled it out over and over. So, no sympathy from me.
By voluntarily contributing to an OSS-licensed project, you don't have the moral right to begrudge him for it. What they are doing is completely permitted by the license; RMS has spelled it out over and over. So, no sympathy from me.
That's kinda the point. He pushes for donations, but doesn't offer support. It's not illegal for him to not offer support and it's not illegal for me to not pay him.
I would prefer to pay a reasonable subscription fee with a support contract which is also not illegal, but benefits all parties.
I would prefer to pay a reasonable subscription fee with a support contract which is also not illegal, but benefits all parties.
Why are you only willing to pay for support, but not actual contributions?
I do make contributions to some projects (can't support them all), but if the project is being too pushy, they can count me out. The idea that I can get support in return is just a nicer model of exchange. There's a good chance that I won't even use that support, but it's nice to know that my contributions have a direct impact on how usable the project is for my needs.
Oh, I don't begrudge him either.
I run a small software company myself. We're selling our software on the internet. But our website focuses on getting people to download the free trial first. The "asking for money" is then done once the trial period ends.
It's already hard to get people to download your stuff for free. With obviously visible download buttons.
If we did what Elementary is doing we would be closing our shop rather soon.
I run a small software company myself. We're selling our software on the internet. But our website focuses on getting people to download the free trial first. The "asking for money" is then done once the trial period ends.
It's already hard to get people to download your stuff for free. With obviously visible download buttons.
If we did what Elementary is doing we would be closing our shop rather soon.
As far as I know the GPL does not allow trial periods and asking for money later on, but feel free to correct me. That's why elementary cannot do such a thing.
GPL doesn't prohibit payment. It just implicitly undercuts payment because the first to pay can redistribute for less or nothing.
Yet some projects still squeak out some money: Synergy, DOSBox Turbo, etc.
Yet some projects still squeak out some money: Synergy, DOSBox Turbo, etc.
GPL just requires source to be available to anyone who receives the binary. It has to be available on request. You can ask them to pay for the cost of postage to ship it to them.
Hell, you can ask them to pay anything, like RedHat does, regardless of costs. It's perfectly legal and GPL-compliant. You just have to provide sources.
No, I didn't mean a trial version. I just suggested they should ask for a donation once people actually had the chance to find out if they'd consider donating worth it.
The GPL and payment are orthogonal. They could GPL a piece of software that stops working after 30 days if you don't pay. You decide if to compile out the code that checks for the payment (and possibly distribute your version) or pay them those money.
If it stops working it violates the GPL:
Freedom 0: "The freedom to run the program as you wish, for any purpose."
Freedom 0: "The freedom to run the program as you wish, for any purpose."
If Elementary wants to alter some program to add a time bomb, the GPL cannot stop them. The GPL only ensures that the user can take the time bomb out (either by themselves or by following instructions on the internet, or by hiring somebody to do it).
No. Gpl has no such thing. But you'll have to provide the source code with your software, so I'll just modify the source to give myself infinite trial.
_that's why it won't work_
_that's why it won't work_
It'll work, it just won't get quite as many conversions as it might otherwise. The same principle applies to closed-source software, after all: you have to provide the binary, so I'll just modify the binary to give myself an infinite trial. This is entirely doable, but enough people still pay to make it a viable business in many cases.
The number of people that would bother to do that is relatively small. If it's a good product, and reasonably priced, people would much rather just pay to have it. (See music streaming.)
[deleted]
In the previous design of the website, there was a small "...or download for free" button tucked away below the payment options. IIRC that meant that the number of users who payed for the OS was something below 1%. Now, after that switch, it's still rather low, but combining with the amount of money they get from other places (like Patreon[0]) it's enough to have two (again, IIRC) full time developers and one part time developer.
From what I can remember, there was never a time where they disallowed a way of downloading the OS for free, they just made it more difficult to figure out over time.
[0] https://www.patreon.com/elementary
From what I can remember, there was never a time where they disallowed a way of downloading the OS for free, they just made it more difficult to figure out over time.
[0] https://www.patreon.com/elementary
The argument is that the potential user needs to be aware of his action when he's entering in "0". Otherwise, it's just automatic - you don't even think about it.
But I think it's counterproductive, because it looks adversarial. Apparently the best way to get the donation is to bring up the payment screen after the download has happened. This is because risk-averse buyers can first try the product and then feel less pressured to decide how much it's worth:
https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/53376/
https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/53376/
It's kind of difficult to do that when you are talking about the OS, isn't it?
First of all, it's a rather large download, so you're probably going to close the website as soon as you click on the download button. Second of all, to consume the product in this case, you have to install it. And yet again, after you do so, if you get greeted with the "donate" window right away, you're going to dismiss it because you still haven't tested out the product.
So, what you need is a timer, something that says like "after 30 minutes (or an hour, or two hours) of usage, display the window", but that would require the OS to make calls to external servers without the user consent, and, because we are talking about a Linux-based operating system, people would be complaining that this is a a privacy violation.
First of all, it's a rather large download, so you're probably going to close the website as soon as you click on the download button. Second of all, to consume the product in this case, you have to install it. And yet again, after you do so, if you get greeted with the "donate" window right away, you're going to dismiss it because you still haven't tested out the product.
So, what you need is a timer, something that says like "after 30 minutes (or an hour, or two hours) of usage, display the window", but that would require the OS to make calls to external servers without the user consent, and, because we are talking about a Linux-based operating system, people would be complaining that this is a a privacy violation.
> It's kind of difficult to do that when you are talking about the OS, isn't it?
Not necessarily. It's not like you expect the buyer to do a careful analysis of what it's worth before they pay. You can usually decide this sort of thing based on very quick impressions. Also, there's the aspect of it just seeming nicer to ask after the download has happened. Then it's clear that you already have the product, now it's up to you to decide what to pay for it, if anything at all. Here people have been tricked into thinking they had to pay and begrudge the author.
Not necessarily. It's not like you expect the buyer to do a careful analysis of what it's worth before they pay. You can usually decide this sort of thing based on very quick impressions. Also, there's the aspect of it just seeming nicer to ask after the download has happened. Then it's clear that you already have the product, now it's up to you to decide what to pay for it, if anything at all. Here people have been tricked into thinking they had to pay and begrudge the author.
It does seem nicer to ask after, but then again, 99% of us simply close the tab after the download starts. We just do it automatically.
> 99% of us simply close the tab after the download starts.
Really? On most sites that I visit, I 'Save As' every link that I care to download, so that there is no separate tab to close. (But maybe you were referring only to this specific site.) Maybe the solution is just to make sure that there's more of interest on your download page than just the download button?
Really? On most sites that I visit, I 'Save As' every link that I care to download, so that there is no separate tab to close. (But maybe you were referring only to this specific site.) Maybe the solution is just to make sure that there's more of interest on your download page than just the download button?
It's a tradeoff between getting more users and getting more money, which I'm sure he knows. He's chosen to be more towards the "money" end of the scale, which is fair enough.
Incidentally, it's the same tradeoff Apple may have made.
Stare into the abyss etc.
Stare into the abyss etc.
Isn't this a dark pattern though?
No, it's not. It says "pay what you want" and you can literally pay what you want (including nothing).
Well, I think it is.
If I pay nothing, I don't pay.
I don't say "I paid zero." or "I paid nothing" unless someone asks the specific question "How much did you pay for that?"
It's obviously a way to nudge people into paying something.
edit: I made an aside about the use of the word 'donation' by cannabis collectives in the U.S. to denote 'payment' (as a way to operate as non-profits and avoid federal problems) as a reference to similarly weak wording used in a nefarious way, but I thought the relationship to the pattern here was weak, so I removed it.
If I pay nothing, I don't pay.
I don't say "I paid zero." or "I paid nothing" unless someone asks the specific question "How much did you pay for that?"
It's obviously a way to nudge people into paying something.
edit: I made an aside about the use of the word 'donation' by cannabis collectives in the U.S. to denote 'payment' (as a way to operate as non-profits and avoid federal problems) as a reference to similarly weak wording used in a nefarious way, but I thought the relationship to the pattern here was weak, so I removed it.
I'm very curious to try it out, and came to comments in hopes of seeing some comments about what it's like. Instead there's a bunch of comments about the pricing situation. So it's definitely affected my chance of giving it a shot.
I'm using it and it's pretty good. I don't really agree with the scheme of 1. Tricking you into paying something. 2. Feeling guilty for entering $0...but the ui is not bad at all imho.
Considering how Elementary is a skin on top of Ubuntu with some shiny icons and animations...
No thank you, I'd rather use Mint or Ubuntu if I want an easy distro.
No thank you, I'd rather use Mint or Ubuntu if I want an easy distro.
It is progressively becoming quite more than a simple skin. They do have their own window manager and a quite comprehensive set of applications with simplified interfaces and consistent UI. To me it seems like a worthy goal, however it seems to create a separation between the typical Linux user/developer and their potential targeted users.
Not really. I developed on elementary quite a lot. I find its ease of getting around quite easy. Your text editor / IDE is at the front and everything else is completely tucked away + you can control basic things about your OS like music / notifications etc. without having to focus on some other app to make a change. And it's pretty lightweight.
Comparing that to GNOME, where everything is so damn big that it wastes half of my screen and KDE where the default apps are usually bloated and confusing and can do way too many things, I call Pantheon as a win for the developers.
EDIT: Also, one neat trick that I've never seen any other terminal emulator doing other than Pantheon Terminal, is that you get a desktop notification every time you're not focused on the terminal when it finishes its job. For example, let's say I do something like "sudo apt install netbeans". Since the download is large, I'm going to focus on something else in the meantime and I'll get a desktop notification when the installation is finished.
Comparing that to GNOME, where everything is so damn big that it wastes half of my screen and KDE where the default apps are usually bloated and confusing and can do way too many things, I call Pantheon as a win for the developers.
EDIT: Also, one neat trick that I've never seen any other terminal emulator doing other than Pantheon Terminal, is that you get a desktop notification every time you're not focused on the terminal when it finishes its job. For example, let's say I do something like "sudo apt install netbeans". Since the download is large, I'm going to focus on something else in the meantime and I'll get a desktop notification when the installation is finished.
elementary OS has evolved a lot from just a simple skin on top of Ubuntu. You can see here [1] all the projects which are maintained by the team.
[1] https://launchpad.net/elementary
[1] https://launchpad.net/elementary
Ubuntu is doing something very similar: https://www.ubuntu.com/download/desktop/contribute?version=1...
[deleted]
Hasn't the Ubuntu page been doing that for years?
Sad. I tried to modify elementary OS entry in italian wikipedia for this (and... it is not open software, but 'free' if it is distribuited via GPL...). I did not be able to modify the wiki, anda banned for 24h... EDIT: for 'personal attacks'... LOL, it's all written, where are my personal attacks? LOL
Perhaps I am just dense, but the article references, specifically, the "Pro" market. For most pros that I know (and I am among them), our OS choice is often based on our tools, not the other way around. If I need Photoshop, Lightroom, Logic Pro, Visual Studio, etc., switching will be quite a chore. For the average user, this is probably a much more appealing argument.
I think over the past 15 years, lots of Linux users migrated to macOS because it was a pretty, usable Unix. Those users might not be terribly loyal to Apple and will move to back to Linux if it's better for them.
If you use macOS because you need to run Mac software, then you probably aren't going anywhere.
If you use macOS because you need to run Mac software, then you probably aren't going anywhere.
That's exactly my case, I went from Gentoo to Mac about 10 years ago. I loved Gentoo when I was a student but getting it to work perfectly on a laptop was a hassle and while I loved customizing fvwm, macOS had great UI right out of the box.
I think this is the sort of person that elementary are trying to capture. i.e. those who don't want the hassle of customizing the UI, who want a well thought out UI out of the box. And combine that with the underlying flexibility of Linux. They're not quite there yet, but the vision is right.
that's basically me. i went from linux to osx ~9 years ago because it was pretty, worked out of the box and it was a *nix.
now i'm back to linux because i can't stand the decisions apple took. plus, it feels like osx (now macOS) is less and less table on every iteration. i had a BSOD while trying to plug my external monitor ffs.
now i'm back to linux because i can't stand the decisions apple took. plus, it feels like osx (now macOS) is less and less table on every iteration. i had a BSOD while trying to plug my external monitor ffs.
Unfortunately, Linux lacks in the creative market. There's no way this can change soon without support from big players, like, for example, Adobe.
I'm not sure what toolkit Adobe use but I have a feeling it's not easily portable to Linux.
Inkscape and Gimp are the stalwarts, but for someone coming from Sketch or Photoshop they feel quite ancient and somewhat messy.
https://www.figma.com is cross-platform (web based), and a pretty good Sketch competitor
For a Lightroom replacement, Darktable is actually quite good (though I really miss the high quality shadows/highlights algorithm from ACR)
Inkscape and Gimp are the stalwarts, but for someone coming from Sketch or Photoshop they feel quite ancient and somewhat messy.
https://www.figma.com is cross-platform (web based), and a pretty good Sketch competitor
For a Lightroom replacement, Darktable is actually quite good (though I really miss the high quality shadows/highlights algorithm from ACR)
Check out Krita sometime as a Gimp alternative. It's geared toward digital painting a bit more, but it works for general image editing too.
I've played around with it a bit - someone packaged Krita as a snap for Ubuntu and I wanted to test installing it. Looked good, more for painting like you say but looked powerful enough for basic image editing. I've seen people produce beautiful digital art with it
That depends on what kind of creative pro you are. In general I'd completely agree with you, but the major VFX vendors all run on Linux - with Nuke, Maya, Houdini, Modo, Clarisse, Mari, etc.
If you get lucky with your particular combination of hardware and drivers, yes this can be true for some people.
I think you can forget Adobe porting all their stuff to Linux. They have a ton of different projects and teams going on at the same time, they certainly are not going to bother increasing that by 50% to support an open source platform with 1.x% market penetration.
Depends on what work you're doing. My (slowly improving) programmer art workflow is based on Blender, Substance Designer, and Substance Painter, all of which are available on Linux as of a few months ago.
Since the Linux release of SD I've been dual booting elementary on my desktop and have had a pretty solid experience. For me it's games that make me keep a Windows installation around.
Since the Linux release of SD I've been dual booting elementary on my desktop and have had a pretty solid experience. For me it's games that make me keep a Windows installation around.
One nice thing though is that the "Pro" market for developers is mainly centered around Unix, not OSX. Sure, some devs might like OSX specific tools like a GUI for Git or some such.. but at its heart, most tools are Unix oriented, with plenty of crossover between OSX and Linux.
Yes, even for a developer looking to switch from OSX to Linux, it's much more relevant to discuss how he will be working with his usual tools (git, IDE/editor, installing with apt-get, docker, etc) than whether the dock or the notification bar will behave the same as on OSX.
There are also pros who primarily do web development. They need a terminal window, a text editor, and a web browser -- making switching to a different platform not as painful.
Yes, exactly. I've read that people are expecting photographers to move to Linux because the new MBP doesn't include an SD slot.
They're actually claiming I'm going to give up Photoshop, Pixelmator, Lightroom, CaptureOne rather than buying an external card-reader. And that's ignoring that most of us already prefer 3rd-party external card readers for speed alone ..
They're actually claiming I'm going to give up Photoshop, Pixelmator, Lightroom, CaptureOne rather than buying an external card-reader. And that's ignoring that most of us already prefer 3rd-party external card readers for speed alone ..
If you need Adobe stuff, the alternative is Windows (where it's more stable) not Linux. If you need Logic, you are stuck on macs. For everything else you MAY be able to get away with linux, but simple stuff like Evernote or Google Drive are not available
I'm long term Linux user and I played with Elementary sometime ago. While just after installation everything is great and beautiful, it changed shortly when I need to install apps outside the ecosystem. Experience gives you feeling I could compare to using old-java application on Windows 10.
Along with seemingly everyone else, I had a quick look at my options to migrate away from Apple over the last few days. First thing I looked for was a decent mail app, was immediately put off the whole idea, exactly as you describe.
> a decent mail app
This is probably the most painful thing on desktop at the moment, because no one gives a s* to desktop mail apps these days.
I recently switched back to evolution from Thunderbird, but where one if great, the other falls short ( in this case, GPG with Evolution is _painful_ ). Geary is... well, not mature, Claws and Sylpheed are a bit too oldschool and mutt is ... well, mutt.
I'd love to see something like Rainloop[1] as a real desktop app. Mailpile[2] is a nice idea, but is nowhere even close to the usability of Rainloop.
[1]: http://www.rainloop.net/ [2]: https://www.mailpile.is/
This is probably the most painful thing on desktop at the moment, because no one gives a s* to desktop mail apps these days.
I recently switched back to evolution from Thunderbird, but where one if great, the other falls short ( in this case, GPG with Evolution is _painful_ ). Geary is... well, not mature, Claws and Sylpheed are a bit too oldschool and mutt is ... well, mutt.
I'd love to see something like Rainloop[1] as a real desktop app. Mailpile[2] is a nice idea, but is nowhere even close to the usability of Rainloop.
[1]: http://www.rainloop.net/ [2]: https://www.mailpile.is/
Check my comment above (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12854312)
Well Geary (and the elementary fork Pantheon Mail) are quite good for basic use. There are still a few bugs and their codebases are quite hell to work with (see [1] for my review of them). This document motivates my little side project, but, lately, it hasn't seen much direct attention as I've been working on some stuff upstream, in elementary and Evolution, for this project.
[1] https://github.com/matzipan/envoyer/blob/master/README.md#re...
[1] https://github.com/matzipan/envoyer/blob/master/README.md#re...
I recently switched to Mint Cinnamon and I'm completely satisfied. There is not one thing I miss from Mac OS X and many where GNU/Linux is much better.
As for mail, Thunderbird is not so bad.
As for mail, Thunderbird is not so bad.
Mint is much more polished than Elementary, I've never had a problem in my (limited) experience with it.
I did, very recently, with Mint 18, and never before. ( random lockups with Cinnamon, app crashes, etc. )
I'm still on the very same install, just switched to xfwm4 and tint2, and I'm quite happy.
I'm still on the very same install, just switched to xfwm4 and tint2, and I'm quite happy.
Mint is better than most Linux desktops, but it still looks like a poor Windows XP skin from 9 years ago...
another problem is that you can't just upgrade when a new version comes out, you have to reinstall as if nothing happened, it was a turn off for me.
The software is there, but what about the hardware to go with it?
The only laptops comparable to Macbook Pro hardware quality and battery life are the Dell XPS series and the Thinkpad X1.
I feel there is a serious shortage of good laptops with linux pre-installed that the non-technical user can pickup and start using.
The only laptops comparable to Macbook Pro hardware quality and battery life are the Dell XPS series and the Thinkpad X1.
I feel there is a serious shortage of good laptops with linux pre-installed that the non-technical user can pickup and start using.
The other problem is that laptops are being built like mobile phones, with everything soldered to the board and the whole thing either sealed shut or taped down. Upgradeable & portable laptops just dont seem to exist at the price points they used to.
I think this is not going to change, basically the industry is going back to the whole package concept that was common when the PC took off.
Think about Atari, Acorn, Amiga and such. While there were a few Pro like models, the majority of the home users were using the full packaged ones, with connection ports for external extensions.
Apple was the last one with this mindset, and thanks to their survival and success, that is the trend the industry is now returning to.
Specially given that computers have reached a plateau for 90% of the users out there.
Think about Atari, Acorn, Amiga and such. While there were a few Pro like models, the majority of the home users were using the full packaged ones, with connection ports for external extensions.
Apple was the last one with this mindset, and thanks to their survival and success, that is the trend the industry is now returning to.
Specially given that computers have reached a plateau for 90% of the users out there.
Fwiw, i sort of like that. I understand it really sucks not being able to replace chips, especially something as simple as adding RAM, but i've not really seen a super compact laptop also allow me to replace RAM easily. My Macbook Pro Retina is quite compact, and it's proven to be a really important trait.
If someone makes them as compact and replaceable i'm on board, i just haven't seen it. Not saying it's not possible of course :)
If someone makes them as compact and replaceable i'm on board, i just haven't seen it. Not saying it's not possible of course :)
I personally value far more the possibility to easily replace hw (battery for sure, cpu, ram, and ssd at minimum, but even looking also for screen, keyboard and wlan cards). For me is a good compromise in exchange of even 1-2 cm more in thickness.
Just recently I was looking for a new laptop and ended up buying a refurbished thinkpad t430 (270e with 8gb [gonna become 16] ram, ssd and i5 3rd gen)just because I am sure I can change basically every part of it whenever I want for a low price.
Just recently I was looking for a new laptop and ended up buying a refurbished thinkpad t430 (270e with 8gb [gonna become 16] ram, ssd and i5 3rd gen)just because I am sure I can change basically every part of it whenever I want for a low price.
Nowadays, and most "fancy" brands.
Few weeks back I upgraded a 2010 laptop by replacing the CPU, RAM, Battery, adding SSD (instead of the DVD).
The end result was glorious.
Looking at current generation of soldered CPU and glue as building solution is off putting at best. It feels like a cheap toy produced in a sweat shop.
Looking at current generation of soldered CPU and glue as building solution is off putting at best. It feels like a cheap toy produced in a sweat shop.
Get used to it. This is the way the industry is going, for very good reasons. Increased demands for more (or same) performance at lower power means you want more connections with shorter traces, and more functionality in the same chip or package. It seems likely that eventually all components except primary storage (SSD) will be in a single package.
On the flip-side, we've gotten external GPUs through Thunderbolt. So we've gotten the ability to extend laptop GPUs.
Another positive development is that SSDs are likely to continue getting faster. Maybe RAM won't be upgradeable anymore, but if Intel can push out their Octane/3D XPoint tech, you might get SSDs so fast that you can get almost the same benefit swapping to a faster SSD as upgraded RAM.
I mean, you've never been able to upgrade your CPU cache. If RAM is a glorified cache for the SSD, why complain that you can't upgrade that anymore?
Maybe one day SSDs will be soldered on in laptops too though :/
On the flip-side, we've gotten external GPUs through Thunderbolt. So we've gotten the ability to extend laptop GPUs.
Another positive development is that SSDs are likely to continue getting faster. Maybe RAM won't be upgradeable anymore, but if Intel can push out their Octane/3D XPoint tech, you might get SSDs so fast that you can get almost the same benefit swapping to a faster SSD as upgraded RAM.
I mean, you've never been able to upgrade your CPU cache. If RAM is a glorified cache for the SSD, why complain that you can't upgrade that anymore?
Maybe one day SSDs will be soldered on in laptops too though :/
>>I mean, you've never been able to upgrade your CPU cache
More L3 cache will hardly do anything for you either way.
But upgrading the CPU may mean upgrading the CPU cache, if it's a socket one instead of soldered, it ain't hard at any rate. However, even overclocking the CPU cache has beyond minuscule results.
>>If RAM is a glorified cache for the SSD This 'really' depends on your workloads and it's not always the case, even though it's often the RAM is mostly used as disk cache.
>>If RAM is a glorified cache for the SSD This 'really' depends on your workloads and it's not always the case, even though it's often the RAM is mostly used as disk cache.
System76 is a solid choice (I love my four year old Gazelle, with 16Gb or RAM from the start), although ordering a laptop there is slightly cumbersome if you are living outside of North America.
https://system76.com/laptops
The build quality of their offerings seems to get better with each successive generation too, and of course everything works out of the box.
I just wish they would partner with someone in the EU; that way shipping costs, VAT, and tariffs can be handled more transparently.
https://system76.com/laptops
The build quality of their offerings seems to get better with each successive generation too, and of course everything works out of the box.
I just wish they would partner with someone in the EU; that way shipping costs, VAT, and tariffs can be handled more transparently.
Those are nowhere near comparable to a MBP. Plastic, thick, heavy. No thanks.
Where in the EU are you? Several companies sell essentially the same laptops under a different brand name:
https://www.pcspecialist.co.uk/laptops/
and
https://www.mysn.de/
where the first two I found with some quick googling
https://www.pcspecialist.co.uk/laptops/
and
https://www.mysn.de/
where the first two I found with some quick googling
Those appear to be laptops preloaded with Windows with an option to ship without an OS. The benefit of ordering from System76 is that the hardware all just works with Linux.
Here's a company in Sweden that sells Clevo laptops with Ubuntu pre-installed: http://www.ggsdata.se/index-en.php
What makes system76 laptops better than the XPS 13?
Not much. Both System76 and Dell's Sputnik spend quite a bit of time getting good support for their laptops under Linux.
I personally think XPS has a much better design for a laptop.
I personally think XPS has a much better design for a laptop.
It is actually available to buy right now. The Xps 13 developer edition is not available and the Windows edition has different hardware which is not Linux compatible (WiFi).
Yes, it is available: http://www.dell.com/us/business/p/xps-13-9360-laptop/pd?3x_n...
Excellent I've been trying to buy one for a while. Now to find it in the UK site...
>different hardware which is not Linux compatible (WiFi).
link? I heard they had crappy broadcom chipsets but would be good to get some specific info.
TBH the sites i looked at last night seemed to say the current hardware that ships with windows is well supported...
link? I heard they had crappy broadcom chipsets but would be good to get some specific info.
TBH the sites i looked at last night seemed to say the current hardware that ships with windows is well supported...
It used to be that you had to use Windows to update the bios and that grub didn't work so dual boot was not possible. Also broadcomm.
Glad if that has changed!
Glad if that has changed!
Can't speak for the xps13 but I got a xps15 (Windows, no Linux option) about 6 months ago and everything works as expected.
Depends on what you care about. If you want are willing to sacrifice a bit of performance for longer battery life and lower weight, then the XPS 13 wins handily. If on the other hand you're willing to sacrifice (quite a lot of) battery life and accept (a lot) heavier weight in exchange for performance, then System 76 will sell you some of the fastest laptops money can buy.
>If on the other hand you're willing to sacrifice (quite a lot of) battery life and accept (a lot) heavier weight in exchange for performance
Then you're not really into this mobility thing?
Then you're not really into this mobility thing?
Mobility is relative. They may want desktop level performance that can be moved more easily than lugging around a tower/monitor/keyboard/mouse. Not everyone needs (or cares about) the ability to work away from a power source for more than a few hours.
Mobility is relative. Back when I split my time between two offices and occasionally worked from home I would have loved to have a decently powerful workstation that I could easily transport in a backpack.
Check the Razer blade series
The new MacBooks are so lackluster that for the first time in 11 years I'm actually considering Windows options, and I also arrived at Razer as the best option out there. They look amazing and performance and connectivity wise blow the new macs out of the water.
In the end, its macOS that's still holding me back. Haven't decided yet tough.
In the end, its macOS that's still holding me back. Haven't decided yet tough.
Windows is getting better, but it will still make you very angry. The update system makes me howl. The shell is pale shadow of the MacOS terminal (you can kind of fix this with other shells, but the app-restore behavior after a reboot? Gone, and Windows reboots a lot compared to MacOS).
I'm curious if you've tried PowerShell. MS has been pushing it as a command prompt replacement since Windows 7. It's a little annoying to have to relearn the syntax, but it seems about a capable as osx terminal.
When you say shell I assume you mean terminal. The Windows terminal is utter garbage, and I've not found a decent one (i've not looked very hard to be fair) but you can install bash (the shell) and have all the functionality you've got in OSX (also a bash shell, a really really old bash shell).
> The Windows terminal is utter garbage, and I've not found a decent one
I install http://cmder.net/ on every Windows machine. Makes my life more pleasant
I install http://cmder.net/ on every Windows machine. Makes my life more pleasant
Git Bash + ConEmu + Chocolatey is pretty close to perfection IMHO.
> but the app-restore behavior after a reboot? Gone, and Windows reboots a lot compared to MacOS
It's annoying enough on my gaming machine, I can't imagine using Win10 on a device I use for serious work. Reboots seemingly every 36 hours or so. Their update system is totally out of control.
It's annoying enough on my gaming machine, I can't imagine using Win10 on a device I use for serious work. Reboots seemingly every 36 hours or so. Their update system is totally out of control.
You can disable that, you know. It's one of the first things I do after an install.
>They look amazing and performance and connectivity wise blow the new macs out of the water.
So, in the two things that matter less for laptops? Because on the go you can do with less performance and you don't need as much connectivity, if that means less weight and more battery life.
So, in the two things that matter less for laptops? Because on the go you can do with less performance and you don't need as much connectivity, if that means less weight and more battery life.
Rolling into a creative 'pro' setting with a laptop from a company that tweets about sucking dicks does not telegraph a particularly professional image.
They are really annoying on Linux.
I've never gotten them to work well on laptops running Linux. I have limited patience for fiddling around with drivers, releases, different laptops, so perhaps I just haven't spent enough hours trying to get them to work; in the end, I've always given up and just thrown a small mouse in my bag.
For me, the palm rejection has never worked as well as it does on Macs and the scrolling and multi-touch gestures are so pathetic under Linux on a laptop that its better to just disable the touchpad and stick with a mouse.
Even the glassy smooth feel of the Mac touchpad is superior to other laptops and the new haptic touchpad on the newer macs makes clicking on any part of the touchpad wonderful.
I do have a question for HN: with enough practice, does a keyboard with the pointing stick ever feel adequate? I've never seemed to get the hang of it in the numerous times I've had to use them (each time for only a few minutes).
For me, the palm rejection has never worked as well as it does on Macs and the scrolling and multi-touch gestures are so pathetic under Linux on a laptop that its better to just disable the touchpad and stick with a mouse.
Even the glassy smooth feel of the Mac touchpad is superior to other laptops and the new haptic touchpad on the newer macs makes clicking on any part of the touchpad wonderful.
I do have a question for HN: with enough practice, does a keyboard with the pointing stick ever feel adequate? I've never seemed to get the hang of it in the numerous times I've had to use them (each time for only a few minutes).
How so?
What about Apple's hardware quality really makes that much of a difference? Is it really that important for a tool which is meant to be replaced in 3 years to be made from machined aluminum and beautifully designed (sometimes even at expense of usability)? Up until 5 years ago we were perfectly happy and productive using laptops with 3-4 hours battery life. Did our habits and requirements changed that much that anything below, what, 12 hours of battery life is scandalous and unacceptable?
That's 12 hours of battery life in optimal settings. Being connected to wifi/downloading, watching videos, playing games, or doing anything computationally expensive will significantly reduce that battery life to a couple of hours.
It's the multi touch trackpad for me. Nothing else compares.
How about the Surface?
There is no 15" version and I doubt you can install Linux without a hack.
Some are pretty Linux friendly, see http://reddit.com/r/SurfaceLinux
archlinux has a wikipage on surface pro 3 https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Microsoft_Surface_Pro_3
my mac's battery backup is of 8+ hrs and it is a 2012 model, it depends what I do on it, sometimes I get a 12+ hr backup. I don't think there is any other laptop which is as slim and has such a nice battery backup
So USB-C is what it takes to get you to switch to Linux?
What are you going to do when all other laptop manufacturers follow suit - switch back?
Mac users who make this threat sound just like people who threaten to move to Canada every election cycle.
What are you going to do when all other laptop manufacturers follow suit - switch back?
Mac users who make this threat sound just like people who threaten to move to Canada every election cycle.
Most of the laptop manufacturers are mixing the legacy ports with the new usb-c ports. That'll probably continue for a while, and not sure if you'll see things like sd card readers disappear anytime soon. Apple's DNA is to make upsetting changes quickly (often to their benefit), but that's not how a lot of users like things to go down, so this feels like a legitimate gripe.
As for when the escape key / function row is going to disappear from windows computers, I'd say that one is a ways off / never.
As for when it's going to be impossible to get a nice nvidea graphics card, but given the track record, I'd say this trends towards "never" as well.
As for when the escape key / function row is going to disappear from windows computers, I'd say that one is a ways off / never.
As for when it's going to be impossible to get a nice nvidea graphics card, but given the track record, I'd say this trends towards "never" as well.
> not sure if you'll see things like sd card readers disappear anytime soon
I hope they don't. I love to open my camera, put the SD card in my computer and copy all the pictures.
The camera also has a WiFi chip, which would let me download pics and control it with a very invasive mobile app (lots of unnecessary permissions). I just disabled it. Needless to say the desktop application runs only on Windows and Mac. I could have installed it in a VM but the SD card is just faster.
I hope they don't. I love to open my camera, put the SD card in my computer and copy all the pictures.
The camera also has a WiFi chip, which would let me download pics and control it with a very invasive mobile app (lots of unnecessary permissions). I just disabled it. Needless to say the desktop application runs only on Windows and Mac. I could have installed it in a VM but the SD card is just faster.
Personally, USB-C is the least of my problem. I care about having a fast, powerful laptop with 32 or 64GB ram (I run a lot of VMs for my work, I could offload it to the cloud but then it's more of a hassle).
I complain because Apple decided to make the macbook pro 15 inch lighter and thinner resulting in 25% less battery (going from 99.5 watt-hour to 76.0-watt-hour), this means that they have to make more compromises to keep a good battery life and instead of having a decent graphic card like the nvidia gtx 1080 or 32GB ram, the new macbook pros are underpowered.
Since, apple is unlikely to decide to go back to the previous form factor, they are unlikely to ever sell a laptop with decent performances compared to their competitors.
And to add insult to the injury, switching to usb-c forces users (at least for a year or two) to carry a lot of extra adapters which makes the weight loss moot.
I complain because Apple decided to make the macbook pro 15 inch lighter and thinner resulting in 25% less battery (going from 99.5 watt-hour to 76.0-watt-hour), this means that they have to make more compromises to keep a good battery life and instead of having a decent graphic card like the nvidia gtx 1080 or 32GB ram, the new macbook pros are underpowered.
Since, apple is unlikely to decide to go back to the previous form factor, they are unlikely to ever sell a laptop with decent performances compared to their competitors.
And to add insult to the injury, switching to usb-c forces users (at least for a year or two) to carry a lot of extra adapters which makes the weight loss moot.
> Since, apple is unlikely to decide to go back to the previous form factor, they are unlikely to ever sell a laptop with decent performances compared to their competitors.
Once the next generation of Intel processors land, I bet we'll see Macbook Pros with faster processors and 32GB or more of RAM. At that point they will catch up to their competitors.
But it's important to remember who Apple considers their competitors. They've never competed on the cheap end--everyone knows that--but they've also never competed on the high-power end. For at least the past 8 years it's been possible to buy laptops that deliver more horsepower than a Macbook Pro, by caring less about size, weight, and battery life. I think that will always be true.
Once the next generation of Intel processors land, I bet we'll see Macbook Pros with faster processors and 32GB or more of RAM. At that point they will catch up to their competitors.
But it's important to remember who Apple considers their competitors. They've never competed on the cheap end--everyone knows that--but they've also never competed on the high-power end. For at least the past 8 years it's been possible to buy laptops that deliver more horsepower than a Macbook Pro, by caring less about size, weight, and battery life. I think that will always be true.
It's true, but I don't remember having ever seen such a big gap in term of performance (or at least since apple switched to intel). The macbook pro 17 inch used to be not bad when compared to competitors.
I think once Apple detaches iOS development from macOS all bets are off.
Which adapters do you need to carry?
I would love a 32G or 64G machine too, but did you see what Phil Schiller said about the 32G issue? It sounded like it wasn't a matter of a little bit more power, it was a LOT more. We really don't know how much more. Apple does know. If the new design was two inches thick people would be complaining about that.
Personally I'm expecting that no matter what the vendor. desktops will always be more powerful than laptops, and some people will always complain that the gap is too large.
For your VMs it might help that the new SSDs are reportedly quite fast in this generation.
I would love a 32G or 64G machine too, but did you see what Phil Schiller said about the 32G issue? It sounded like it wasn't a matter of a little bit more power, it was a LOT more. We really don't know how much more. Apple does know. If the new design was two inches thick people would be complaining about that.
Personally I'm expecting that no matter what the vendor. desktops will always be more powerful than laptops, and some people will always complain that the gap is too large.
For your VMs it might help that the new SSDs are reportedly quite fast in this generation.
> Which adapters do you need to carry?
USB-A adapter for my wireless Logitech keyboard and mouse.
A gigabit ethernet adapter.
Mini-DP x2 adapter, for my desktop screens. I may be able to leave those attached to the screens, though. I'd need another one for home in that case.
Power adapter, HDMI adapter and two USB-A, for attaching to any external screens, speakerphones, and webcams when in a conference room.
If I include my hobbies, I will also be needing a USB-C to USB-B cable for my USB hub (or a few new USB-C to Mini- and Micro-USB cables), and a SD card adapter.
> For your VMs it might help that the new SSDs are reportedly quite fast in this generation.
Not compared to memory. You don't want to put your computer in a constant state of swap - something easy to do with VMs.
USB-A adapter for my wireless Logitech keyboard and mouse.
A gigabit ethernet adapter.
Mini-DP x2 adapter, for my desktop screens. I may be able to leave those attached to the screens, though. I'd need another one for home in that case.
Power adapter, HDMI adapter and two USB-A, for attaching to any external screens, speakerphones, and webcams when in a conference room.
If I include my hobbies, I will also be needing a USB-C to USB-B cable for my USB hub (or a few new USB-C to Mini- and Micro-USB cables), and a SD card adapter.
> For your VMs it might help that the new SSDs are reportedly quite fast in this generation.
Not compared to memory. You don't want to put your computer in a constant state of swap - something easy to do with VMs.
> Not compared to memory. You don't want to put your computer in a constant state of swap - something easy to do with VMs.
Perhaps not compared to memory, but that gap continues to look smaller and smaller.
The new PCIe/NVME drive's bandwidth looks to be within 1(-ish) order of magnitude of ddr3. Apple is claiming ~3GB/s read ~2GB write and iirc 1600mhz ddr3 is somewhere around 20GB/s rw. I don't know what the latency numbers are, but I know the NVME/PCIe bus is a dramatic improvement -- not saying it will be measured in nanoseconds, however.
I have some fusion ioDrives at work that have about 3GB/s r 2.5 w with ~30 microsecond latency over the PCIe bus. Exciting times we live in for io :)
Perhaps not compared to memory, but that gap continues to look smaller and smaller.
The new PCIe/NVME drive's bandwidth looks to be within 1(-ish) order of magnitude of ddr3. Apple is claiming ~3GB/s read ~2GB write and iirc 1600mhz ddr3 is somewhere around 20GB/s rw. I don't know what the latency numbers are, but I know the NVME/PCIe bus is a dramatic improvement -- not saying it will be measured in nanoseconds, however.
I have some fusion ioDrives at work that have about 3GB/s r 2.5 w with ~30 microsecond latency over the PCIe bus. Exciting times we live in for io :)
> Perhaps not compared to memory, but that gap continues to look smaller and smaller.
And when that gap is gone (or maybe even within 2-4x, given the advancements in L1-L4 cache mechanisms), we can re-write our OSes and rejoice. Sadly, they're not gone yet, and I can still bring my Mac to its knees by starting one too many VMs.
And when that gap is gone (or maybe even within 2-4x, given the advancements in L1-L4 cache mechanisms), we can re-write our OSes and rejoice. Sadly, they're not gone yet, and I can still bring my Mac to its knees by starting one too many VMs.
>USB-A adapter for my wireless Logitech keyboard and mouse.
You don't need that keyboard or mouse. And, as you said, they are wireless. But the real point is they are not needed. It's a laptop. No need to carry an extra keyboard around with it. Just keep those things at home, I would think. And the adapter for their wireless wires or whatever. Not a problem.
>A gigabit ethernet adapter.
WiFi? This one could be handy, in very rare cases. Better bring a cable too. And a small hub or switch in case there are no ports available. And power for the switch. And a second cable and adapter in case you want to do 2x 1GB... hmmmmm maybe this being prepared for everything bit can be carried too far, no? But let's blame Apple.
>Mini-DP x2 adapter, for my desktop screens. I may be able to leave those attached to the screens, though.
There. What you just said. Leave them attached. No problem.
>I'd need another one for home in that case.
Yep, not a problem.
>Power adapter, HDMI adapter and two USB-A, for attaching to any external screens, speakerphones, and webcams when in a conference room.
It already comes with a power cord. What laptop doesn't?
It has a camera built in.
It has speakers and a microphone.
For connecting to the big screen, AirPlay is wireless.
If all these don't work for you, any decently equipped conference room or company where the room is located should have the proper equipment available. Otherwise you have to make do with the fantastic quality of the built in AV components of the laptop. If they don't even have a screen, are you going to bring one just in case? Of course not; you'll present off the screen on the laptop, in a pinch. As with all the other stuff. But in most cases you won't even need to because they'll have the proper equipment on hand.
And you forgot about conferencing tools like Google Hangouts, which can be freely used by everyone if they simply decide to.
>If I include my hobbies, I will also be needing a USB-C to USB-B cable for my USB hub (or a few new USB-C to Mini- and Micro-USB cables), and a SD card adapter.
Those can stay at home. If you go on a trip to take lots of photos on an SD card, then of course for any such trip you are bringing an SD adapter. Big deal.
To sum up, of all these I see precisely one that while very optional might be nice to have sometimes: the ethernet adapter. The others seem like just moving the goalposts to justify hating on Apple.
You don't need that keyboard or mouse. And, as you said, they are wireless. But the real point is they are not needed. It's a laptop. No need to carry an extra keyboard around with it. Just keep those things at home, I would think. And the adapter for their wireless wires or whatever. Not a problem.
>A gigabit ethernet adapter.
WiFi? This one could be handy, in very rare cases. Better bring a cable too. And a small hub or switch in case there are no ports available. And power for the switch. And a second cable and adapter in case you want to do 2x 1GB... hmmmmm maybe this being prepared for everything bit can be carried too far, no? But let's blame Apple.
>Mini-DP x2 adapter, for my desktop screens. I may be able to leave those attached to the screens, though.
There. What you just said. Leave them attached. No problem.
>I'd need another one for home in that case.
Yep, not a problem.
>Power adapter, HDMI adapter and two USB-A, for attaching to any external screens, speakerphones, and webcams when in a conference room.
It already comes with a power cord. What laptop doesn't?
It has a camera built in.
It has speakers and a microphone.
For connecting to the big screen, AirPlay is wireless.
If all these don't work for you, any decently equipped conference room or company where the room is located should have the proper equipment available. Otherwise you have to make do with the fantastic quality of the built in AV components of the laptop. If they don't even have a screen, are you going to bring one just in case? Of course not; you'll present off the screen on the laptop, in a pinch. As with all the other stuff. But in most cases you won't even need to because they'll have the proper equipment on hand.
And you forgot about conferencing tools like Google Hangouts, which can be freely used by everyone if they simply decide to.
>If I include my hobbies, I will also be needing a USB-C to USB-B cable for my USB hub (or a few new USB-C to Mini- and Micro-USB cables), and a SD card adapter.
Those can stay at home. If you go on a trip to take lots of photos on an SD card, then of course for any such trip you are bringing an SD adapter. Big deal.
To sum up, of all these I see precisely one that while very optional might be nice to have sometimes: the ethernet adapter. The others seem like just moving the goalposts to justify hating on Apple.
Sounds like USB-C hubs / docking stations will make your life a lot easier in the long run.
A docking station would indeed make my life easier, but only with a significant investment of extra cash in addition to my new PC.
Even then I'll still need adapters to operate in the places where that cash has not yet been spent (i.e. conference rooms).
And perhaps it's just me lamenting a sunk cost, but it is going to suck to throw away hundreds of dollars worth of cables, hubs and adapters.
Even then I'll still need adapters to operate in the places where that cash has not yet been spent (i.e. conference rooms).
And perhaps it's just me lamenting a sunk cost, but it is going to suck to throw away hundreds of dollars worth of cables, hubs and adapters.
You're too easily accepting the premise of the article at face value. It's likely the premise just was made up as a rhetorical device to promote the OP's favorite Linux distribution.
It's not so much the presence of USB-C ports as it is the absence of anything else. For example, the Dell XPS 13 9350, has a USB-C port, but it also has 2 USB-A ports and a memory card reader.
Until USB-C becomes the universal standard it's meant to be, consumers are better served by having multiple ports on their PCs to choose from.
Until USB-C becomes the universal standard it's meant to be, consumers are better served by having multiple ports on their PCs to choose from.
Honestly I like the switch to USB-C. For me it's the price hike with year old processors, 16GB max for RAM, and that Touch Bar. And I only complain because this is supposed to be their 'Pro' version, while I see this is more focused toward general consumers.
I am sticking with Mac because it just works. I have had quite a few non-Mac laptops previously. They rarely stay in good working condition for more than a couple of years. I currently have the late 2012 13" retina Pro and it has shown no signs of stopping. The only other one that has the sort of quality I see in a MacBook is Dell's XPS. The developer edition has me intrigued, but I really think this new MacBook with a Touchbar is going to be the future. The lack of ESC or function keys has no bearing on my development so that isn't an issue for me either.
I think the keyboard is tipping me over the edge on the new MacBook Pro's, its horrendous. There's no travel at all, the keys just immediately click. Interested to see what other people think about them as they start getting their hands on the new models, as a developer this is a very important aspect, and on top of the unwanted touchbar, the massive price hike, the lack of standard ports etc its all just a bit too much this time around.
I typing this on my coffeeshop computer, a 12" MacBook, with the butterfly keys. I don't like them very much; my four year old MacBookPro Retina has much nicer keys and so does my Apple Magic Keyboard on my desktop system.
I'm curious about the new MacBook Pro keys, they allude to second generation butterfly keys. Have you had a chance to try the newly released system's keyboard?
I'm curious about the new MacBook Pro keys, they allude to second generation butterfly keys. Have you had a chance to try the newly released system's keyboard?
Yes its the brand new keyboard that I was referring to, a friend got one from his workplace, space grey looks amazing and the larger trackpad is nice but as mentioned, keyboard is a no go. I really hope the reasoning for it wasn't to shave off a few more mm!
I have the 2014 MBP so my comparison is skipping the first generation of butterfly keyboard that you mentioned, I've been told that its worse than that one too but I can't say myself.
I have the 2014 MBP so my comparison is skipping the first generation of butterfly keyboard that you mentioned, I've been told that its worse than that one too but I can't say myself.
I know I'm in the minority here, but I always bring a small mechanical keyboard anywhere I go. Usually something quiet, in case I'm working in a coffee shop or something. A Poker2/3 fits well over the MBP's keyboard without hitting any of the keys on accident.
Yes I've seen people doing that, and I do appreciate a mechanical keyboard, is the typing position a bit high though?
One thing I saw someone mention is that because the new keyboard is wider you might not be able to rest a poker on top anymore, possibly because it won't reach the edges to sit on them without sitting directly on the keys?
One thing I saw someone mention is that because the new keyboard is wider you might not be able to rest a poker on top anymore, possibly because it won't reach the edges to sit on them without sitting directly on the keys?
I find Apricity OS (Arch Linux) much better suited for developers. In fact at work I switched from Ubuntu to Apricity. Through yaourt (paceman frontend) and AUR (Arch User Repository) it's a breeze to install the latest versions of literally everything you need be it Docker, Java or IntelliJ. I think it's comparable with brew.
Plus Apricity looks so much better than Elementary in my opinion and almost manages to give you that macOS feeling.
Why not Manjaro? Does Apricity ship Arch packages passed through the its own repositories doing some testing and making sure core components are not broken and work well one with each other in the Apricity terms and in general? Manjaro does that, there is a kind of release cycle, every 1 or 2 week updates come, ie updates come not directly from the Arch repos (except AUR stuff obviously).
(sincerely) Why Manjaro and not just straight Arch?
I used pure Arch for a few last years as a main system on my laptop (installed and configured in console manually, so I'm not a full newbie), and have used other Linux distributives before that also as a main system. Arch is fine, but unfortunately I recently realized that I need more stability and that's why I switched to Manjaro. I'm still not sure, but seems they do some tests and polishing taking Arch packages, making sure core components work well, etc.
PS I installed Manjaro not using GUI installer, since it doesn't support disk encryption well enough, and I don't use GRUB (default Manjaro boot loader), but refind.
PS I installed Manjaro not using GUI installer, since it doesn't support disk encryption well enough, and I don't use GRUB (default Manjaro boot loader), but refind.
I love Arch and I've installed it on plenty of machines, but I've already grasped what little pedagogical value the install procedure contained and now mostly want to have the computer automate that process while I work on other things. Hence I installed Manjaro on my wife's laptop last night.
That is pretty!
I may have to give this a try when the time comes. By far the best looking Linux GUI i've seen yet.
I can't wait to see an a GUI layer made for NixOS though. I really want to be done with stateful OSs, NixOS is so tempting.
I may have to give this a try when the time comes. By far the best looking Linux GUI i've seen yet.
I can't wait to see an a GUI layer made for NixOS though. I really want to be done with stateful OSs, NixOS is so tempting.
From a previous discussion of Apricity: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11421395
From the screenshots I've seen it looks a lot like ChromeOS. Also the fonts looked hideous but that might be the particular set-up I saw.
Oh Apricity looks really nice. Might have to check that one out. Love Arch way more than Deb based distros.
So I am clueless here, how does swapping the OS rectify any issues people had with machine pricing or lack of desired new hardware features?
I don't get the angst. To me the disappointment is wholly related to the action bar/etc/whatever it is called. Its such a lame approach to adding additional functionality I would have never expected it from Apple. The Windows environment has many machines fully embracing touch screens right where the action is.
I don't get the angst. To me the disappointment is wholly related to the action bar/etc/whatever it is called. Its such a lame approach to adding additional functionality I would have never expected it from Apple. The Windows environment has many machines fully embracing touch screens right where the action is.
Please don't be so gullible, folks! When you see an article marketing a product, and they claim people are looking to switch to their product in droves, take it with a grain of salt!
This is purely a promotional article, pretending to be a help article. Look at the unattributed quotes it uses. Pretty sure the part about anybody switching from anything to anything is made up. Sure people switch sometimes. Sure people are complaining about Apple products, what else is new? Way to capitalize on our sincere discussions of platform choices.
If HN swallows this kind of marketing-masquerading-as-technical-advice article so easily, we're going to see a lot more of this writing pattern in the future. Which means more marketing noise. Please don't buy it so readily.
This is purely a promotional article, pretending to be a help article. Look at the unattributed quotes it uses. Pretty sure the part about anybody switching from anything to anything is made up. Sure people switch sometimes. Sure people are complaining about Apple products, what else is new? Way to capitalize on our sincere discussions of platform choices.
If HN swallows this kind of marketing-masquerading-as-technical-advice article so easily, we're going to see a lot more of this writing pattern in the future. Which means more marketing noise. Please don't buy it so readily.
I'm not sure what the problem is. It's an interesting link to an interesting article about an interesting operating system.
Perhaps you don't find it interesting, but as a developer, I like it.
Perhaps you don't find it interesting, but as a developer, I like it.
Do you really think HN readers are so gullible as to not realize this, and that you are the only one to catch on?
I would never think that. But I was taken aback by many of the comments on this thread.
Which, the angry griping about how the distro makers want money, or the yammering about how Photoshop users should just cowboy up and submit patches to Gimp until they find it usable? As far as I can tell, the "gullibility" you think you're seeing is anyone responding in any way, even skeptically, that's not just covering their ears and going, "La la la, I can't hear your marketing!"
Apparently, some readers do think exactly this of all other HN readers...
I love the work that the elementary project is doing. Really great stuff...
I tried running it this week since I have a lot of friends who use Macs. I figured I could help them out if they had questions, etc. But after a few minutes I went back to KDE as Elementary was horribly broken coming from Kububtu.
It probably assumes you'll be installing from fresh.
It probably assumes you'll be installing from fresh.
elementary is indeed not meant to be 'just a desktop environment like gnome / kde'. Installing it that way is not supported. It's a full operating system including default apps, etc. all sorts of things you probably didn't install.
You should indeed install it fresh. I hope you didn't give your friends a bad expression.
You should indeed install it fresh. I hope you didn't give your friends a bad expression.
But as others have stated, as you have access to all the giant repos, installing any other software than the elementary-oriented stuff instantly feels disjointed, as toolkits etc. don't match.
This isn't really a problem with Elementary OS itself, more the proliferation of toolkits available, but to pretend that it is a drop-in replacement for a Mac (with its unified Cocoa UI) isn't quite right. (Yes, I know you can run FLTK and X apps on Mac so it's ugly too).
This isn't really a problem with Elementary OS itself, more the proliferation of toolkits available, but to pretend that it is a drop-in replacement for a Mac (with its unified Cocoa UI) isn't quite right. (Yes, I know you can run FLTK and X apps on Mac so it's ugly too).
I didn't. I didn't tell them anything.
I just don't have any interest in installing it full. Instead I went with KDE Neon.
I just don't have any interest in installing it full. Instead I went with KDE Neon.
KDE Neon looks great too. I really respect their work.
I would highly recommend Xubuntu instead. Aesthetically I don't think there's a better Linux distro, and it's almost to the point quality-wise where I'd recommend it to my parents.
Playing with it in VirtualBox.
First impressions, it's very very pretty, the design out the box is nice though it's completely the antithesis of how I work (3 screens, panel on each, window buttons only for windows on that screen).
The level of integration is nice, it feels cohesive.
That said XFCE4 with some tweaking is pretty much perfect for me, it exactly works the way I want things to work.
First impressions, it's very very pretty, the design out the box is nice though it's completely the antithesis of how I work (3 screens, panel on each, window buttons only for windows on that screen).
The level of integration is nice, it feels cohesive.
That said XFCE4 with some tweaking is pretty much perfect for me, it exactly works the way I want things to work.
They need to watch out because apparently the Gnome foundation wants to ditch Vala for Rust to cut cost and "attract more developers" :
https://siliconislandblog.wordpress.com/2016/10/31/thoughts-...
> and support a preferred programming language (Vala)
https://launchpad.net/elementary
https://siliconislandblog.wordpress.com/2016/10/31/thoughts-...
> and support a preferred programming language (Vala)
https://launchpad.net/elementary
Oh dearie me... Everything depends on GObject, they wrote Vala to have a high-level programming language, they wrote GObject Introspection to generate bindings for all other languages, yet they think it's a good idea to ditch all of this and move to Rust (no inheritance, which is crucial for their Gtk+ widgets), only because it's so hip right now?
They lost their mojo because of their weird decisions in the past and not because their stack isn't hip. How many JavaScript developers did they attract by writing the Gnome Shell in JavaScript? And the Rust community is a tiny fraction of the JavaScript community.
They are trying to turn a donkey into a racehorse. And if they do a full rewrite, people will have forgotten about Gnome by the time they are finished. Someone give them Joel Spolsky's article on refactoring to read.
They lost their mojo because of their weird decisions in the past and not because their stack isn't hip. How many JavaScript developers did they attract by writing the Gnome Shell in JavaScript? And the Rust community is a tiny fraction of the JavaScript community.
They are trying to turn a donkey into a racehorse. And if they do a full rewrite, people will have forgotten about Gnome by the time they are finished. Someone give them Joel Spolsky's article on refactoring to read.
Gnome foundation: when you finally gain traction, you press reset, bravo.
lol right, I expect them to move to QT anyway ... /s
I agree with the article. Vala is a wonderful language, but it doesn't have the necessary tooling built around it.
> I agree with the article. Vala is a wonderful language, but it doesn't have the necessary tooling built around it.
Sure but they had like 10 years to do that, I remember a french guy who ever wrote a complete IDE with autocompletition + package manager for Vala on Windows. Support from the Gnome Foundation ? zip .
Oh, and I even found the link.
http://www.tarnyko.net/en/?q=node/24
So the tooling my ass, they just don't want to bother with Vala
Sure but they had like 10 years to do that, I remember a french guy who ever wrote a complete IDE with autocompletition + package manager for Vala on Windows. Support from the Gnome Foundation ? zip .
Oh, and I even found the link.
http://www.tarnyko.net/en/?q=node/24
So the tooling my ass, they just don't want to bother with Vala
No, I'm talking about gdb support, for example. I'm talking for a testing framework (right now you have to write your own build process capable of bundling the unit tests with your source).
They still had 10 years to do that. complaining about the lack of tooling they didn't develop is idiotic, they are in charge of the language themselves.
Well, not all people have the expertise or willingness (in case of volunteers) to work on this. Switching to Rust would allow them to leverage somebody else's work.
Also, GObject itself made a lot of sense in an era when C was dominant. Maybe now, not so much.
Also, GObject itself made a lot of sense in an era when C was dominant. Maybe now, not so much.
Switching to Rust isn't going to solve Gnome management problems. You could make the case that they should ditch Gtk and adopt Qt, it would actually make more sense than rewriting Gtk in Rust given the amount of work it represents. But you complaining about the tools that don't exist is still ridiculous, the problem is why these weren't developed at first place.
Obviously, it won't. But it would at least free up some manpower.
How does this compare to Ubuntu Desktop? Why would I use one over the other? I ask as somebody who used to use Ubuntu a few years ago, and wants to switch back to Linux in the next few months.
I'm (slowly) switching from Mac to Linux, and in the process I tried a lot of options. I settled on Ubuntu as my preferred distro for several reasons (although I liked a lot about Fedora too), but I think the choice of desktop is most personal preference. Unity, GNOME, MATE and Xfce all have offical Ubuntu flavo(u)rs and work well, while Elementary uses an Ubuntu base which is nearly the same thing. (Lately I'm mostly using Xfce/Xubuntu.)
The great thing is that they all use the same core system, so try them, or even install them at the same time (except Elementary), and use them until you find your favorite.
The great thing is that they all use the same core system, so try them, or even install them at the same time (except Elementary), and use them until you find your favorite.
I used Elementary for 3 months a year ago when I was very unstable.
Why would you use? I would list why I tried it and used it for 3 months - at work. I stopped using it because it became a little difficult to manage the stability issues, build problems (at that it was very unstable as I mentioned above) and then the start-up I worked for got funded and gave everyone the then latest Macbook Pro (I had been using an Air at home anyway).
I found it pretty. Simple. Not at all cluttered - very clean look. I was used to OSX and its look and feel was/is very much inspired from OSX (or a similar UX/UI design philosophy if I may say so). And it's open source.
I kept using it also because I kind of fell in love with Midori (the Elementary browser and that's one app from Elementary I still miss on OSX).
Why not Ubuntu? Honestly, everyone else in my team used Ubuntu and it worked perfectly fine for them and whenever I ran into issues I was just asked one question "why the h not Ubuntu?". It was mostly aesthetics. Elementary felt very simple and pleasing to my eyes (yes, even when compared to X/LUbuntu) and for some reason I never really liked Ubuntu after Unity and all that happened (that was back in college - can't recall all the reasons as of now). Also, it was definitely lighter then Ubuntu.
This may not be the answers you are looking for but I thought I will chip in with my own reasons. And yes, I am going back to Linux too. My Air is 5 years old now and is already showing its age. I don't think I would like to spend the latest Macbook Pro kind of money for another Apple laptop. Then most probably I will try one of these - Elementary or Solus or Apricity etc on a lightweight 13ish inch laptop.
Why would you use? I would list why I tried it and used it for 3 months - at work. I stopped using it because it became a little difficult to manage the stability issues, build problems (at that it was very unstable as I mentioned above) and then the start-up I worked for got funded and gave everyone the then latest Macbook Pro (I had been using an Air at home anyway).
I found it pretty. Simple. Not at all cluttered - very clean look. I was used to OSX and its look and feel was/is very much inspired from OSX (or a similar UX/UI design philosophy if I may say so). And it's open source.
I kept using it also because I kind of fell in love with Midori (the Elementary browser and that's one app from Elementary I still miss on OSX).
Why not Ubuntu? Honestly, everyone else in my team used Ubuntu and it worked perfectly fine for them and whenever I ran into issues I was just asked one question "why the h not Ubuntu?". It was mostly aesthetics. Elementary felt very simple and pleasing to my eyes (yes, even when compared to X/LUbuntu) and for some reason I never really liked Ubuntu after Unity and all that happened (that was back in college - can't recall all the reasons as of now). Also, it was definitely lighter then Ubuntu.
This may not be the answers you are looking for but I thought I will chip in with my own reasons. And yes, I am going back to Linux too. My Air is 5 years old now and is already showing its age. I don't think I would like to spend the latest Macbook Pro kind of money for another Apple laptop. Then most probably I will try one of these - Elementary or Solus or Apricity etc on a lightweight 13ish inch laptop.
In my very limited experience, Elementary is really minimal and tries hard to get out of the way, but it provides what is still fundamentally a desktop/mouse-oriented interface: you have a dock, a systray, and a "Start" menu.
Ubuntu veered towards the touch stuff, using nontraditional approaches; I honestly get lost these days when I have to use it.
Ubuntu veered towards the touch stuff, using nontraditional approaches; I honestly get lost these days when I have to use it.
[deleted]
It's a distribution based on Ubuntu 16.04 LTS, but with customized default applications and desktop. It's more Mac-like, simpler, but because of that also has significantly less customization features.
Here's a list to all the projects maintained by elementary [1]. Quite a few. What elementary gets from Ubuntu is the kernel, userland tools and package repositories but from the desktop environment up, it's different stuff (albeit based on the same toolkit, GTK, and many shared libraries with GNOME).
[1] https://launchpad.net/elementary
[1] https://launchpad.net/elementary
I switched from Ubuntu to Elementary OS several months ago and have never looked back. It's a lot faster and smoother, the UI is less orange, the file browser looks better, and I still get the entire Ubuntu package ecosystem.
The best answer to this would be to try out both using a live USB. You really have to use elementary to see the differences. But as mentioned, it's based on Ubuntu so all apps that run on Ubuntu will also run on elementary.
I prefer it over Ubuntu because the UI makes more sense to me than Ubuntu's Unity.
I prefer it over Ubuntu because the UI makes more sense to me than Ubuntu's Unity.
Elementary is quite nice on HiDPI until you use apps which need other graphics toolkits...
The Linux world should really get together and bang out a solution for the hiDPI problem that is consistent across X servers and window managers.
The Linux world[1] has got together and is banging out a solution for a somewhat bigger problem that the multitude of X toolkits and their different (non) approach to HiDPI.
It's called Wayland, it took some time to make and next week, new Fedora is coming out that uses it by default (until now you could "only" opt-in during login).
[1] Except Ubuntu, they have their own NIH solution, of course.
It's called Wayland, it took some time to make and next week, new Fedora is coming out that uses it by default (until now you could "only" opt-in during login).
[1] Except Ubuntu, they have their own NIH solution, of course.
Wayland, the solution where not only does every toolkit have a different and often incomplete approach to HiDPI, they now all have their own implementations of window titlebars and widgets too?
Toolkits always had their own implementation of widgets, that's not even Linux or X11 specific. The same applies to Windows and macOS: ever noticed that MS Office has different widgets than Photoshop? The only difference is, that Windows and macOS had one or more widget libraries supplied with the system and synced look&feel for them, while there was no canonical widget library or l&f for X11.
Title bars are up to compositor (it was up to window manager in X11). Even client side window decorations (i.e. mostly title bar combined with toolbar) are nothing new, if that is what you mean with custom implementation of window titlebars.
Title bars are up to compositor (it was up to window manager in X11). Even client side window decorations (i.e. mostly title bar combined with toolbar) are nothing new, if that is what you mean with custom implementation of window titlebars.
Not trying to downplay issues or shame another system, but if you compare Linux's HiDPI support to Windows, it doesn't look so bad anymore. For one, it's more likely to find apps that scale on Xorg/Wayland than on Windows, most Microsoft Windows official system apps included. Simple things like apps with list controls that have a huge number of entries where you're not able to resize the window while other more prominent MS apps waste white space like macOS and GNOME is an interesting phenomenon to observe.
X was designed for multiple DPI from the start; it was the ‘Linux world’ who abandoned everything from the ‘Unix world’ that wasn't immediately relevant to cloning the Windows desktop.
Most apps I use on Ubuntu work well on hidpi. The main problem I face is when I connect my laptop with 4k screen with some external monitor with 2k or 1080p display.
A couple of years or so ago, I managed to "solve" this issue in Ubuntu 14.04, if I remember correctly. I somehow figured out how to drive Unity at 162% scaling for my XPS 13 and scale it down to 100% for my external display. There definitely were some artefacts, but it basically worked.
I'm sorry to say though, that I don't remember how I did it, since I've been using mainly macOS and Windows for quite some time now.
I'm sorry to say though, that I don't remember how I did it, since I've been using mainly macOS and Windows for quite some time now.
Did that solution involve using xrandr scaling parameter? unfortunately that's not right solution IMO, as I observed it takes lot of CPU. Hacky and feels laggy.
My solution is to organize myself so that I don't have to move windows around. I mostly need browser, terminal and emacs. I open chrome in one monitor with specific scaling option, and when I move emacs or terminal around I manually decrease font size with Ctrl-+/-
My solution is to organize myself so that I don't have to move windows around. I mostly need browser, terminal and emacs. I open chrome in one monitor with specific scaling option, and when I move emacs or terminal around I manually decrease font size with Ctrl-+/-
What issues do you face, because I currently use that exact workflow with a MacbookPro retina, and a 24" dell monitor. Apart from windows not resizing/positioning automatically (so I have to manually re-layout everything whenever I switch from monitor to laptop), I haven't really suffered any problems so am curious to know what issues I'd face if I switched to Ubuntu.
I did face problem with macOS and having external low-DPI monitor: the Finder would act up sometimes: when you rename file the caret and edited text would be someplace else that the filename shown in Finder and dragging and droping files would stop working. Firefox had similar problems with addressbar and controls in web pages too.
All these things disappeared when I changed the external monitor for a HiDPI one.
All these things disappeared when I changed the external monitor for a HiDPI one.
I use a tiling window manager, so positioning is not a problem. Problem is that, on a my laptop (4k) screen things look normal, but on 2k external screen things look bigger by default. Ideally the GUI toolkit should be able to pick up per screen scaling factor.
I currently use xfce[1] with docky[2] and it feels pretty good. Probably not as polished but I know it's stable.
There were other distros in the past trying to copy macOS, pear os[3] was one of them.
I remember Lindows[4] trying to market itself as a windows replacement. I can't believe they got sued and actually lost[5]! Xandros[6] was also in this space. They probably went BK.
Every year is the year of Linux for the desktop but it's really not possible to capture this market. It'll have to come from someone like google. Why couldn't chrome os have been a legit linux distro instead of trying for a niche netbook market with a locked down OS?
[1] http://xfce.org/
[2] http://wiki.go-docky.com/index.php?title=Welcome_to_the_Dock...
[3] http://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=pear
[4] http://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=linspire
[5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Corp._v._Lindows.com....
[6] http://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=xandros
There were other distros in the past trying to copy macOS, pear os[3] was one of them.
I remember Lindows[4] trying to market itself as a windows replacement. I can't believe they got sued and actually lost[5]! Xandros[6] was also in this space. They probably went BK.
Every year is the year of Linux for the desktop but it's really not possible to capture this market. It'll have to come from someone like google. Why couldn't chrome os have been a legit linux distro instead of trying for a niche netbook market with a locked down OS?
[1] http://xfce.org/
[2] http://wiki.go-docky.com/index.php?title=Welcome_to_the_Dock...
[3] http://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=pear
[4] http://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=linspire
[5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Corp._v._Lindows.com....
[6] http://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=xandros
It's great timing for elementary. I'm having a lot of software problems with the Mac, and since I develop exclusively for Linux it seems like it'd be a lot easier if I could build and run everything on my target platform.
The elementary community would love feedback on how to solve pains with mac. There's a subreddit or you could post bug reports on launchpad.
No - Linux runs great, it's macOS I'm having issues with!
I think one needs to also highlight the differences.
mac OS is built by one major player and they have a clear direction of where they want to take this. Linux, in general, is built by communities of people who may or may not have diverging opinions, priorities and interests. While this gives you a lot diversity, it can be quite problematic.
The financial aspect is also important. elementary LLC itself, has only 2 full-time employees, while Apple is sitting on a pile of cash. Yes, elementary builds on a solid open-source base [1] built by thousands of developers world-wide, some volunteers, some employees, but it's still a significant difference.
Having a smaller scale, it means elementary can be more agile in its changes. This also means that there is smaller testing base, which means there will be more bugs. The nice part is that, when you find a bug, you can help fix it [2].
[1] https://elementary.io/open-source
[2] https://elementary.io/get-involved
mac OS is built by one major player and they have a clear direction of where they want to take this. Linux, in general, is built by communities of people who may or may not have diverging opinions, priorities and interests. While this gives you a lot diversity, it can be quite problematic.
The financial aspect is also important. elementary LLC itself, has only 2 full-time employees, while Apple is sitting on a pile of cash. Yes, elementary builds on a solid open-source base [1] built by thousands of developers world-wide, some volunteers, some employees, but it's still a significant difference.
Having a smaller scale, it means elementary can be more agile in its changes. This also means that there is smaller testing base, which means there will be more bugs. The nice part is that, when you find a bug, you can help fix it [2].
[1] https://elementary.io/open-source
[2] https://elementary.io/get-involved
Every few years I investigate switching back to a Linux laptop. Every time I find there are still issues. Last time it was poor GPU support (no fast switching) and buggy sleep.
What issues still exist with using Linux on laptops?
What issues still exist with using Linux on laptops?
It highly depends on the laptop you're talking about specifically. Some will just work, others will steal your soul with frustration. I've had very few issues on my thinkpad x240 with Kubuntu. It's an older model, but back when it was less than a year old I still had very few issues with it. Mostly with the touchpad, but that particular model is horrible even with good drivers, so I don't use it in general. I had to fiddle with some bearded parts when I wanted my battery to only charge to 70%, rather than keep a full charge while plugged in as the lenovo bits are windows only(I vaguely remember having to set up shell scripts of some sort). Bluetooth didn't work in the beginning, but upgrading to a newer Kubuntu fixed that, and I don't use that very often either, so I didn't mind. Also generally battery life is slightly worse than windows but this also varies. And although Windows 10 is a fairly snappy, it spins my fans much more than Kubuntu does.
The last computer I had significant hardware problems with on linux had a Pentium 4, but I've been vary careful with hardware choice in the last decade. Do your research and you'll be fine.
The last computer I had significant hardware problems with on linux had a Pentium 4, but I've been vary careful with hardware choice in the last decade. Do your research and you'll be fine.
[deleted]
"What issues still exist with using Linux on laptops?"
It depends on laptop model, some are worse than others. Just google "<latop_name> linux problem" and see what others encounter. Personally, I don't have any problems with my 5 years old Dell laptop running Kubuntu.
It depends on laptop model, some are worse than others. Just google "<latop_name> linux problem" and see what others encounter. Personally, I don't have any problems with my 5 years old Dell laptop running Kubuntu.
My pet peeve with Linux: Wifi.
I have a HP laptop for work running Ubuntu that appears on their Certified hardware list. Wifi is buggy, using an external monitor is buggy, there are always "Internal Errors", sleep simply does not work, it crashes regularly.
I have a HP laptop for work running Ubuntu that appears on their Certified hardware list. Wifi is buggy, using an external monitor is buggy, there are always "Internal Errors", sleep simply does not work, it crashes regularly.
The only reason I am still using a Mac is because I need to be able to compile iPhone apps and unlike android I can only do this in OSX. All my other tools are already available in Linux or even Windows.
Sounds like you only need it for compilation. Do you develop in Xcode? What IDE/tool do you use?
It wasn't the UI that got me using macs. In fact the UI was a pain in the neck since it couldn't do what my Linux window managers could do. And I kinda liked how I had my WM set up.
It was the fact that software I needed was available on Mac and I didn't want to use Windows.
It was the fact that software I needed was available on Mac and I didn't want to use Windows.
Going by the comments here, I am surprised by how few people seem to use Linux on their laptop! Maybe selection bias due to the thread topic?
Of course, not everything will work, but for me, they often fall into the nice-to-have category of features, not a must-have. Maybe my preferences are not shared widely.
Been using Debian unstable and Xmonad for a long time, and it's hard to try and use anything else now. Most dev tools work natively ... no funky VMs to emulate, except Windows for Edge browser testing ... all works really well.
Of course, not everything will work, but for me, they often fall into the nice-to-have category of features, not a must-have. Maybe my preferences are not shared widely.
Been using Debian unstable and Xmonad for a long time, and it's hard to try and use anything else now. Most dev tools work natively ... no funky VMs to emulate, except Windows for Edge browser testing ... all works really well.
I think for those who are not able to install and configure Linux manually from scratch not using a graphical installer would be better to use Windows 10 (not a bad OS), with no irony. Since such kind of articles and "simplified" systems like that "elementary OS" do hide Linux complexity. One day user will face a really serious OS issues and will stuck with that not knowing what to do (for example not bootable system after the update, it's not so likely, but might happen with Linux).
Plain wrong IMO.
Have been using Linux professionally and on my personal machines on and off for 15 years, sonce I was a student. A bit more work than Windows in some ways, less in others.
I came to Ubuntu back in 2005ish based on a tip from a then 50 year old electrical engineer who had fallen in love.
My bus driver this morning loves it (we sometimes talk while waiting).
So stop spreading this FUD.
And this comes from someone who has started liking Windows UX lately.
Have been using Linux professionally and on my personal machines on and off for 15 years, sonce I was a student. A bit more work than Windows in some ways, less in others.
I came to Ubuntu back in 2005ish based on a tip from a then 50 year old electrical engineer who had fallen in love.
My bus driver this morning loves it (we sometimes talk while waiting).
So stop spreading this FUD.
And this comes from someone who has started liking Windows UX lately.
You didn't get a point of my message. But I'm not going to keep explaining conversation with a person who is writing to me to stop expressing my own opinion which is backed by some experience, you better keep chatting with your bus driver.
I think I got your point.
It doesn't seem like you got mine:
Lots of people - including people who aren't pro users - have been using Linux happily for years.
Post like yours are likely to discourage people from even trying, which is why I try to correct what I see as misinformation.
You are free to explain why I am wrong instead of starting to pick on the anecdote.
It doesn't seem like you got mine:
Lots of people - including people who aren't pro users - have been using Linux happily for years.
Post like yours are likely to discourage people from even trying, which is why I try to correct what I see as misinformation.
You are free to explain why I am wrong instead of starting to pick on the anecdote.
A typical Windows user is going to have no clue what to do if they have a serious OS issue too.
Windows on desktop is a more stable system than Linux on desktop.
No it's not. I have far more problems with my Win7 and Win10 systems at work than I do with my Linux system at home.
Elementary is one of the least stable Linux distros that are out there. I have a friend who's been running Debian forever using Afterstep as the WM, and it's rock solid. Granted, he does most of his work in the terminal using emacs. I've never had good luck with linux on the laptop, but I've had good luck using it on the desktop, so long as I stuck with Intel chipsets and Nvidia GPU's. The lack of apps is going to be an issue for most people though.
I bought a MBP a few months ago because I was travelling to the UK and the low pound made it a no brainer (I saved 350€) but part of me was annoying at missing out on the latest version that was about to be released.
It looks like I dodged a bullet; in 4-5 years, when I'll need an upgrade, all these issues will be solved, USB-C will either have become standard or gone firewire's way, the pointless emoji board will be quietly shelved, more RAM will be possible, etc
It looks like I dodged a bullet; in 4-5 years, when I'll need an upgrade, all these issues will be solved, USB-C will either have become standard or gone firewire's way, the pointless emoji board will be quietly shelved, more RAM will be possible, etc
Do people realize they can run Linux on their Macbooks? Who needs elementary, just install Debian.
It takes time to get the mentality; took me years as well.
The shiny & pretty, especially if you're coming from the shiny & pretty, seems better and you forget to appreciate the things that silently just work in the background.
I've recently switched from the previous elementary (due to bugs and missing features) first to Mint 18 Cinnamon, just to find a lot of bugs there are well ( at least no missing features ), then to XFCE.
I'm slowly building an itch towards where most distros are moving to (being swallowed up by systemd), so XFCE: to get familiar with something that is truly portable, and runs of BSDs as well. xfwm4 + tint2 as panel + synapse as "menu" to be specific, and I'm really happy I did it.
No, it's not as nice as eOS or Gnome Shell; some apps are quite ugly and the terminal windows don't line up when tiled.
But it works. It's fast, it's glitch and bug-free so far; power management flies, and it feels like I got all the good from the good ol' Gnome2 days with updates.
The truth is, tint2 eliminated the need for fancy indicators: it has an executor, with which you can do (nearly) anything, like displaying weather, cpu temperature, fan speed, changing governors with clicks, etc.
So, as I started: it takes a lot of frustration, but eventually, you'll get to the point of install the most simple, most robust thing.
The shiny & pretty, especially if you're coming from the shiny & pretty, seems better and you forget to appreciate the things that silently just work in the background.
I've recently switched from the previous elementary (due to bugs and missing features) first to Mint 18 Cinnamon, just to find a lot of bugs there are well ( at least no missing features ), then to XFCE.
I'm slowly building an itch towards where most distros are moving to (being swallowed up by systemd), so XFCE: to get familiar with something that is truly portable, and runs of BSDs as well. xfwm4 + tint2 as panel + synapse as "menu" to be specific, and I'm really happy I did it.
No, it's not as nice as eOS or Gnome Shell; some apps are quite ugly and the terminal windows don't line up when tiled.
But it works. It's fast, it's glitch and bug-free so far; power management flies, and it feels like I got all the good from the good ol' Gnome2 days with updates.
The truth is, tint2 eliminated the need for fancy indicators: it has an executor, with which you can do (nearly) anything, like displaying weather, cpu temperature, fan speed, changing governors with clicks, etc.
So, as I started: it takes a lot of frustration, but eventually, you'll get to the point of install the most simple, most robust thing.
Last year I found that trying to use rEFInd (keeping OS X on the Macbook) was really painful, so I quit.
Is the experience a lot better if it's just Debian alone?
Is the experience a lot better if it's just Debian alone?
It's the hardware that is making people look at jumping (back) to Linux.
I appreciate them capitalizing on people looking to switch. I think they could have done a better job of describing how to switch instead of talking about what people love. I think it would have been better for them to talk about some main sticking points, like how to get out of the ecosystem (say iTunes or Photos). Either way, nice to see the competition stepping up and capitalizing on the situation.
While I agree, I can also understand why they would want to give people coming from macOS an impression of what they can expect from the switch in terms of apps, etc.
"Exiting the ecosystem" is a guide crying out to be written though.
"Exiting the ecosystem" is a guide crying out to be written though.
LOL! I doubt many people are looking to switch, the article just said that as it is trying to market something. Funny that HN readers are buying it so gullibly.
interesting project, would like to check it out. I recently upgraded from MacOS to Yosemite and have been quite happy. That said it would be nice to see other options.
I regularly use Windows, OSX and Linux and I think Ubuntu Unity in 16.04 is by far the most polished Linux desktop and for people switching to Linux that would be the best first experience.
In many ways I even prefer Unity. OSX is becoming a bit stagnant and bloated of late. The Unity UI is fast, the effects are polished and not gimmicky, the launcher and search across apps and file is near instantaneous, driver detection and configuration is streamlined and everything looks well put together.
Most Linux users have put up with some pretty awful apps, UIs and configs over the evolution of Linux and I am glad how far Ubuntu has come.
Elementary is decent but at the moment both Gnome and Unity have moved ahead and offer a more consistent and professional user experience for first timers.
In many ways I even prefer Unity. OSX is becoming a bit stagnant and bloated of late. The Unity UI is fast, the effects are polished and not gimmicky, the launcher and search across apps and file is near instantaneous, driver detection and configuration is streamlined and everything looks well put together.
Most Linux users have put up with some pretty awful apps, UIs and configs over the evolution of Linux and I am glad how far Ubuntu has come.
Elementary is decent but at the moment both Gnome and Unity have moved ahead and offer a more consistent and professional user experience for first timers.
eOS again, within a few days. I see they are pushing their marketing well.
I'm just going to link conversation from a couple of days before: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12830761
I'm just going to link conversation from a couple of days before: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12830761
Are there any distributions where the display scaling works at least as good as Windows 10? I don't expect it to be as perfect as the Mac but the current Ubuntu is a mess when you change the scaling factor.
elementary should automatically handle your hidpi quite well.
source?
I'm part of the community. I have seen alot of work being put into making hidpi work properly. I can't find any changelog mentions though :(
Here's a community post: https://www.reddit.com/r/elementaryos/comments/53gkr1/elemen...
And some hidpi icon work: http://blog.elementary.io/post/124193007916/whats-up-with-hi...
Here's a community post: https://www.reddit.com/r/elementaryos/comments/53gkr1/elemen...
And some hidpi icon work: http://blog.elementary.io/post/124193007916/whats-up-with-hi...
Is there a place where I can directly ask experts or experienced users about alternative apps of my need. I have been making my mind about complete switch but few of the most used apps from Mac holds me back. I wish someone can suggest me a decent alternative to those apps. I must also add that I will lose several licenses of purchased apps in the process but I am willing to make that sacrifice. I wish I could find a reliable way to keep running those apps in VM.
What's the gain of Elementary over other Linux distros? Is it really that much better than the start of the art anywhere else?
Do the apps integrate, in some meaningful way, more easily with each other than with, say, a stock Gnome install on top of Red Hat?
Is it as novel as Etoile? Or is it just a skin + conforming apps?
Do the apps integrate, in some meaningful way, more easily with each other than with, say, a stock Gnome install on top of Red Hat?
Is it as novel as Etoile? Or is it just a skin + conforming apps?
The thing I've used the most while I used elementary is the option to direct perform actions of the apps. I find it so easy to just press the keyboard shortcut and do something like "2+2" and get "4" as a result. I absolutely loved that!
Check out the Alfred App for Mac. It's this and it's wonderful.
What exactly is the reason to switch to another OS? I thought the complaints were about hardware. How the hell is elementary OS going to make the hardware better? Also can someone tell me the main complaint about the hardware, is it the USB-C and the sd card?
It can run on non-Apple hardware.
Unfortunately, no Photoshop, no go
I feel like, unless your situation dictates a specific product (which is unlikely), this should be rephrased "Unfortunately, no graphics editor that does x, y, z". If you continue to put up a 'Photoshop' barrier, then you will never be able to consider any alternatives — assume Photoshop will never happen on Linux, but that there may well be a graphics tool in future that is far superior as far as your needs are concerned; it may even already exist! Furthermore, the developers behind OS alternatives will never know what functionality you require if all the details you give are "Photoshop".
> If you continue to put up a 'Photoshop' barrier, then you will never be able to consider any alternatives
It's an industry/education barrier more than anything else. Photoshop has been the standard for years because it generally works quite well and is supported on the two major desktop operating systems.
> assume Photoshop will never happen on Linux
Probably not, no money in it for Adobe. I've always said I'd happily pay for a commercial Linux OS developed by Adobe that ran Creative Suite.
> it may even already exist
It doesn't.
> the developers behind OS alternatives will never know what functionality you require if all the details you give are "Photoshop"
No offence but you're kind of talking about Photoshop like it's MS Paint. It's a ubiquitous, massively bloated, complicated piece of software (10 million LOC, roughly the same as the Linux kernel?) that can take years to master.
It's an industry/education barrier more than anything else. Photoshop has been the standard for years because it generally works quite well and is supported on the two major desktop operating systems.
> assume Photoshop will never happen on Linux
Probably not, no money in it for Adobe. I've always said I'd happily pay for a commercial Linux OS developed by Adobe that ran Creative Suite.
> it may even already exist
It doesn't.
> the developers behind OS alternatives will never know what functionality you require if all the details you give are "Photoshop"
No offence but you're kind of talking about Photoshop like it's MS Paint. It's a ubiquitous, massively bloated, complicated piece of software (10 million LOC, roughly the same as the Linux kernel?) that can take years to master.
One factor you don't mention is the learning curve required for someone to develop the skills needed to be, at a professionally viable level, productive and effective with a tool like Photoshop or Lightroom.
Even if there was a collection of Linux-compatible software that was just as effective as PS and LR, professionals don't necessarily have the time available to learn those tools.
Even if there was a collection of Linux-compatible software that was just as effective as PS and LR, professionals don't necessarily have the time available to learn those tools.
Not really, The functionality required is "Everything photoshop does" I think the problem with the Linux desktop is that everyone thinks its fine and blames users for being dumb instead of providing a better experience.
As an engineer part of your skill is trying to translate what people are saying into something meaningful
As an engineer part of your skill is trying to translate what people are saying into something meaningful
Or Lightroom. And please do not say Darktable is a replacement. Maybe one day, but not yet.
Agreed on Lightroom and Photoshop as sticking points, sadly.
Windows 10 with forced updates is too big if a reliability risk, especially when we're under deadline. Even if we could accept the spyware.
MBP could work, but it's very expensive, and the 16GB limit would be painful.
Mac Pro is expensive and somewhat outdated, and also is not portable.
Windows as a guest on Linux may work for us, but I'm still unclear on how that will impact color calibration / transforms.
I wish Adobe would just offer CS for Linux. Even at twice the price it would be our best option.
Windows 10 with forced updates is too big if a reliability risk, especially when we're under deadline. Even if we could accept the spyware.
MBP could work, but it's very expensive, and the 16GB limit would be painful.
Mac Pro is expensive and somewhat outdated, and also is not portable.
Windows as a guest on Linux may work for us, but I'm still unclear on how that will impact color calibration / transforms.
I wish Adobe would just offer CS for Linux. Even at twice the price it would be our best option.
The truth about PS and Lightroom is that many of their users wouldn't really need them.
A workflow of, for example, Rawtherapee + GIMP would be more than enough for basic to upper intermediate tasks to replace Lightroom with. ( No, I'm not talking bs, my wife is actually using this for work; just like Mixxx is usable for professional DJing. ) There is also digiKam, which is rather impressive; it is lacking a few features, yet, but not as many as you'd think.
PS & Lightroom is everywhere, that is what's tought in schools; it's the MS Office of photo & design, and it shouldn't be.
There are, of course, situations, when the all-in-one PS is needed, but it's really, really rare.
Give digiKam and GIMP a go, but give them weeks, not minutes. Most of those who run away are only literally trying them for hours at max while these are utterly different tools.
A workflow of, for example, Rawtherapee + GIMP would be more than enough for basic to upper intermediate tasks to replace Lightroom with. ( No, I'm not talking bs, my wife is actually using this for work; just like Mixxx is usable for professional DJing. ) There is also digiKam, which is rather impressive; it is lacking a few features, yet, but not as many as you'd think.
PS & Lightroom is everywhere, that is what's tought in schools; it's the MS Office of photo & design, and it shouldn't be.
There are, of course, situations, when the all-in-one PS is needed, but it's really, really rare.
Give digiKam and GIMP a go, but give them weeks, not minutes. Most of those who run away are only literally trying them for hours at max while these are utterly different tools.
Sure, because who deserves a decent UI&UX.
UI&UX are both object to taste.
You know, the good thing is, that with the afromentioned software, it can be easily fixed, since the accept patches and pull requests.
I honestly wonder where GIMP, digiKam and the rest would be with the money PS subscriptions generate, paying for People With Good UX Taste.
I honestly wonder where GIMP, digiKam and the rest would be with the money PS subscriptions generate, paying for People With Good UX Taste.
You can use programs like Wine to run Windows applications. That makes switching a bit less painful, at least.
It also makes sure that there won't be native ports of these applications.
Adobe won't make a Photoshop port, unless it is 100% obvious to them, that they are leaving more money on the table by not porting it than is the cost of porting and support.
Which may suck for you, if your business or job requires Photoshop right now. You aren't going to switch to Linux then, because you will get Photoshop and whatever OS it requires in the state it is today - which decreases the motivation for Adobe from previous paragraph.
Adobe won't make a Photoshop port, unless it is 100% obvious to them, that they are leaving more money on the table by not porting it than is the cost of porting and support.
Which may suck for you, if your business or job requires Photoshop right now. You aren't going to switch to Linux then, because you will get Photoshop and whatever OS it requires in the state it is today - which decreases the motivation for Adobe from previous paragraph.
If you actually check Wine compatibility charts and user ratings you will see that there is a lof of garbage (the worst rating) ratings for the most popular Windows/Mac software. So it is not a viable option for the biggest applications like Photoshop, Premiere, After Effects, Pro Tools, Ableton Live, etc.
And certainly no option for a business, but rarely for your average Joe, either. It is often hit and miss.
Like I have said countless times, a lot of users are bound to using either Windows or Mac because of a few applications. There is Microsoft Office (cloud versions are not good enough). Visual Studio. Adobe products. Avid. Ableton. Apple’s own software (Logic, Final Cut).
Where there even is alternatives, they are just not good enough.
Where Linux has gotten some support, is from the VFX industry, especially from Autodesk. You can use Maya and Nuke and Linux. Actually, almost all VFX companies use Linux in their shop.
And certainly no option for a business, but rarely for your average Joe, either. It is often hit and miss.
Like I have said countless times, a lot of users are bound to using either Windows or Mac because of a few applications. There is Microsoft Office (cloud versions are not good enough). Visual Studio. Adobe products. Avid. Ableton. Apple’s own software (Logic, Final Cut).
Where there even is alternatives, they are just not good enough.
Where Linux has gotten some support, is from the VFX industry, especially from Autodesk. You can use Maya and Nuke and Linux. Actually, almost all VFX companies use Linux in their shop.
Photoshop CC 2015 has gold rating and should be stable with Crossover or a fixed Wine version - not too hard to setup with Playonlinux. Of course, a native version from Adobe is preferrable but that is unlikely to happen until market share is 5%.
The difficulty in practice is that this isn't 100% complete. Observe the debug messages spewed out in the console when you run a Windows app under Wine.
Despite saying this, this is a fairly good option and I applaud Wine for its existence and the monumental undertaking they undertook (poor grammar, sorry).
Despite saying this, this is a fairly good option and I applaud Wine for its existence and the monumental undertaking they undertook (poor grammar, sorry).
I've been using Elementary OS for a few years now. THIS is the Linux desktop for me & easily replaces Windows and/or OS X with the exception of serious gaming where you're likely be be running Windows no matter what.
Honestly, this looks abysmal. This is like 1/1000th of the complexity and flexibility of macOS. What are you actually so upset about that warrants building a new, hideous, kiddy-version of mac OS?
You clearly haven't tried neither elementary nor Linux in general. There are many legitimate reasons why you might want to use elementary just as well as there are many legitimate reasons why you might want to use macOS. You're condemning diversity? To each their own.
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Why do macOS users seem to want to migrate to elementary?
I mean why elementary as your choice for a Linux distro?
I mean why elementary as your choice for a Linux distro?
There's interest because of a recent, popular post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12830761
As to how many people really are migrating, who knows. I'm an Apple user, but I'm not going to take the rabid fanboy position that these distro makers must be lying when they say they've noticed more interest, lately.
As to how many people really are migrating, who knows. I'm an Apple user, but I'm not going to take the rabid fanboy position that these distro makers must be lying when they say they've noticed more interest, lately.
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Still need to get better facetimehd support.
No Spotlight?
Vultures ;-)
I would rather use BeOS
Otherwise known as the "Here are the reasons Apple will probably sue us" blog.
The elephant in the room is that Elementary is infringing on Apple's copyright by imitating macOS design. Linux has great desktop environments (Unity, KDE, Gnome). Elementary's claim to fame is that it has good design (wink). If stealing others' GPL-licensed code is wrong, then so is this.
You are confusing copyright[1] (covers written works, such as source code) with design patents[2] (covers look and feel). If Elementary is infringing on Apple's patents, that would be wrong.
A cursory search of OSX design patents[3] turns up the Dock patent[4]. Whether Elementary infringes the patent is a legal matter (IANAL).
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Design_patent
[3] https://www.google.com/search?q=design+patent+osx&ie=utf-8&o...
[4] http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=H...:
A cursory search of OSX design patents[3] turns up the Dock patent[4]. Whether Elementary infringes the patent is a legal matter (IANAL).
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Design_patent
[3] https://www.google.com/search?q=design+patent+osx&ie=utf-8&o...
[4] http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=H...:
Check Solus instead
https://solus-project.com/
https://solus-project.com/
I've downvoted you for now, since your comment doesn't tell us anything about the project and appears to be a lazy effort to piggyback off the resource that (I presume) a competitor has offered.
I wrote that comment first, but then got a login prompt and thought it didn't go through. But it did, so I deleted my second comment, which went something like
> I recently installed Solus and was pleasantly surprised
I don't have a detailed comparison or anything like that, I haven't used that many Linux desktop distros to begin with, but I did try Elementary OS and found it wanting.
> I recently installed Solus and was pleasantly surprised
I don't have a detailed comparison or anything like that, I haven't used that many Linux desktop distros to begin with, but I did try Elementary OS and found it wanting.
I think there might be something wrong with that website. I went there and saw no screenshots nor any real information on what Solus is. There was a learn more link but it took me to something called Budgie.
Yeah, site under-delivers somewhat.
There are some screens in this pdf
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B5Ymf8oYXx-PSXU2eFlsR0NvY1E...
There are some screens in this pdf
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B5Ymf8oYXx-PSXU2eFlsR0NvY1E...
I've been using Solus on my laptop for almost a year now and I must say, for everyday use, it is quite good. I'm not sure about using it as a dev machine. But if you just want to browser the web, listen to music, and occasionally write a document or something, it's very stable. I don't think I've ever seen it crash. Also, it's very easy to install and is definitely one of the best looking linux distros around. That and elementary.
Why do both of these hide the fact that they're Linux distros? Only nerds are going to be installing a new OS. That's not a small detail; it means you can run thousands of useful programs.
Because they're not trying to appeal to the "nerd market", they're trying to appeal to the general users with their design. As someone who has used elementary quite a bit, I can guarantee you that the elementary OS is way simpler to use to Average Joe than both Windows and macOS.
Yes, the Elementary team has been doing great work for years. Sad that it's all parallel to the efforts of the larger GNOME Desktop project. I don't know how much code gets shared between the two, but I cringe to think that Elementary is dragging along a suitcase full of patches! Some of their apps are forks, while others are written from scratch to fit their design (UI/UX/simplicity) goals. I think their decision to use what amounts to a random, third-party web browser (Midori) as the default is laughable (this day and age, would any security-conscious person NOT recommend Chrome?).
Nonetheless, bravo to the Elementary team for taking the time to even write up this blog post (which is apparently the first in a series).
Edit: replies pointed out that Epiphany is the default web browser. Point still stands that Chrome implements the most security mitigations out of ALL browsers on the market.
Nonetheless, bravo to the Elementary team for taking the time to even write up this blog post (which is apparently the first in a series).
Edit: replies pointed out that Epiphany is the default web browser. Point still stands that Chrome implements the most security mitigations out of ALL browsers on the market.
> would any security-conscious person NOT recommend Chrome?
Would any security-conscious person DO recommend a browser made by an advertising company for datamining purposes?
Firefox is a much better choice for the privacy/security-aware individual.
Would any security-conscious person DO recommend a browser made by an advertising company for datamining purposes?
Firefox is a much better choice for the privacy/security-aware individual.
But privacy != security. Chrome implements the most security mitigations compared to all other browsers.
Do you any source to back that up?
This is the first time I hear something like that.
It's well known in the information security community for years. But here's a recent article on grading software security like how we grade cars:
https://theintercept.com/2016/07/29/a-famed-hacker-is-gradin...
They give one example (with a graph) of the security mitigations that are in popular web browsers:
https://prod01-cdn07.cdn.firstlook.org/wp-uploads/sites/1/20...
Firefox scored below Chrome and Safari in several areas: address space layout randomization (ASLR), heap protection, stack guards, fortified source. And I've even seen infosec people saying that Firefox has some of these, but doesn't even enable them on builds for some platforms!
https://theintercept.com/2016/07/29/a-famed-hacker-is-gradin...
They give one example (with a graph) of the security mitigations that are in popular web browsers:
https://prod01-cdn07.cdn.firstlook.org/wp-uploads/sites/1/20...
Firefox scored below Chrome and Safari in several areas: address space layout randomization (ASLR), heap protection, stack guards, fortified source. And I've even seen infosec people saying that Firefox has some of these, but doesn't even enable them on builds for some platforms!
Midori is not the default browser, it's Epiphany, as stated in the blog post. Besides, Chromium is available in the software store, and official Chrome is installable directly from Google.
Also, how is this any different than macOS shipping with Safari only, or Windows shipping with Edge only? You're holding an open source project to a higher standard than two highly successful commercial offerings.
Also, how is this any different than macOS shipping with Safari only, or Windows shipping with Edge only? You're holding an open source project to a higher standard than two highly successful commercial offerings.
> I think their decision to use what amounts to a random, third-party web browser (Midori) as the default is laughable
They switched to the default GNOME browser "Epiphany" in the latest release of elementary OS. But I agree, the first thing i did was install a different browser. In my case Firefox.
They switched to the default GNOME browser "Epiphany" in the latest release of elementary OS. But I agree, the first thing i did was install a different browser. In my case Firefox.
The version of Epiphany which has to ship with Ubuntu (because Ubuntu is only shipping GTK 3.18) is pretty outdated [1]. I have been trying to move away from Chrome to Epiphany slowly but was encountering quite a few issues which I reported to GNOME and they were like "Oh yeah, we fixed this a long time ago, get the latest version".
I got the latest version via flatpak and I've completely replaced Chrome. There are still a few issues to be ironed out in flatpak (like notifications and downloads support), but it's getting there!
[1] https://blogs.gnome.org/mcatanzaro/2016/03/30/positive-progr...
I got the latest version via flatpak and I've completely replaced Chrome. There are still a few issues to be ironed out in flatpak (like notifications and downloads support), but it's getting there!
[1] https://blogs.gnome.org/mcatanzaro/2016/03/30/positive-progr...
Epiphany uses Webkit, and Gnome and Elementary are clearly emulating OSX. Also, unlike Chrome, Epiphany is well integrated with GTK3 apps - for example you can drag/drop text from Epiphany to Nautilus. And Firejail+Epiphany should be similar in terms of security.
Of course, Chrome is still better feature wise, however, Elementary or any other distribution would need Google's permission to distribute Chrome.
Of course, Chrome is still better feature wise, however, Elementary or any other distribution would need Google's permission to distribute Chrome.
> Sad that it's all parallel to the efforts of the larger GNOME Desktop project.
That is why open source is still a thing: because of available choices.
That is why open source is still a thing: because of available choices.
Oh, definitely. Open-source software is awesome. I'm just saying it's a shame that they do such awesome work and have to keep it parallel, maintaining a ton of their own software (or suitcase full of patches) with their small team, compared to the GNOME team that has a much larger developer community.
That was when my $9000 Mac Pro — which had been a great machine, and still was, except for the little detail about not having been updated since 2009 and thus being stuck with USB 2 (!!!) to say nothing of Thunderbolt and any kind of modern accoutrements — started to feel like a personal affront, a sneering fuck you directed at not just me, but everybody remotely like me. (Wow!!! Déjà vu bro!!)
Nevertheless, I didn't switch then, and all of us complainers won't switch now either.
Because the fucking OS.
I've tried every iteration of Ubuttnu, CentOS, and FreeBSD since. Even OpenWhatever, before the goblins bought it. I have Thinkpads and Dell XPS "Developer Editions" and a drawer full of other crap like that.
Executive summary: it's all garbage time. It's like going back 10+ years. Nothing works right, on any of them. Copy/paste, batteries, wireless networking, drag and drop, high-res displays, multilingual input, even like fucking word processing and email and image editors and terminal programs... it's all like Mac OS X Jaguar level.
We can't give Apple the finger, even though we want to (and definitely after last week, we all want to) because there literally isn't an OS in the world that can touch Mac OS for general-purpose workstation/laptop use. (For niche and limited-purpose, yes, there are options.)
Elementary OS is a fucking joke. Every OS mentioned disparagingly above is a better choice for almost any purpose. But those are still horrible.
Apple's OS advantage is what lets them say "Fuck you peons, here's some 3 year old technology and a bag of dongles, that'll be $4000."
But we're mostly all gonna buy the new shitty MacBook Hipster, or gut it out with our old ones, until a better fucking OS happens. And that won't be soon — it's not even remotely on the horizon.