6 ms·

Why do people do this? Is it only for fun? I would think that any GNU/Linux system could provide similar or better tooling and most likely results in a less pai

Why do people do this? Is it only for fun? I would think that any GNU/Linux system could provide similar or better tooling and most likely results in a less painful upgrade process.

drinchev 10y ago
I doubt that. Sketch / Photoshop does not run on GNU / Linux as well as Safari. These are a must for any front-end developer these days and personally although I like some window managers for X11, I can't afford to go that way, because they don't feel mature enough. Not to mention iTunes, Photos and all the nice software that comes with OS X.
- X86BSD 10y ago
  Also there is no dtrace on Linux.
  - drinchev 10y ago
    Soon there will be. http://www.brendangregg.com/blog/2016-10-27/dtrace-for-linux-2016.html http://www.brendangregg.com/blog/2016-10-27/dtrace-for-linux... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12806941 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12806941
jrcii 10y ago
Gnome and KDE are painful to use when you're used to Aqua, not to mention all the great Mac-only apps.
- morganvachon 10y ago
  Openbox + compton gets me the same smoothness as Aqua, and is much more configurable. You can make it look and feel 99% like Aqua, or you can go another direction and make it exactly what works for you instead of cloning another interface.
- toyg 10y ago
  I've tried a few Linux distributions in the last few days, I suggest you try LinuxMint - it seems to be the less painful option. I'm not sure what desktop manager they use, but it's definitely better than stock KDE or stock GNOME. For KDE, the best experience at the moment seems to be Neon, although I've not tried OpenSUSE.
- xufi 10y ago
  Can't disagree with that. The way it functions and the plethora of apps you get with it are good enough for me
mountaineer22 10y ago
You can have a 32GB i7 running OS X for iOS or native app development for less than $1000. UPDATE: Oh yeah, you can upgrade the various components too.
- op00to 10y ago
  How much do you need to put towards an attorney retainer for fighting the copyright infringement lawsuit Apple can bring against you? Does that count toward the less than $1000 price tag?
  - mountaineer22 10y ago
    Please explain?
    - op00to 10y ago
      The only way to get a license for a modern MacOS is to purchase a mac. The license is nontransferrable, forever attached to the specific system purchased. It is a violation of the EULA and most likely Apple's copyright to install MacOS on systems that are not entitled for the OS, which is every system that's not a Mac. In other words, you're violating Apples copyright by running MacOS on a Hackintosh, and Apple is well within their rights to sue you for damages. Defending these types of lawsuits are expensive.
      - drinchev 10y ago
        Technically speaking if I have a Mac mini and I plug 8 more gigs of non-apple RAM or another hard-disk I'm violating their EULA. IMHO they did the copyright, because they don't want someone to put a stamp "MacOS X - tested" or something on their hardware.
        op00to 10y ago
        I don't believe your assertion that upgrading Macs breaks the EULA. Can you explain this statement? Does Apple really document how to break their EULA on their website: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT205041 https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT205041
mrtksn 10y ago
In some countries macs are ridiculously expensive for students and even for professionals and people just install MacOs on their already available PCs so that they can mess around with XCode or the tooling for web development. Sure you can have most of the tooling on Linux for example but the MacOs UI is much better than anything available for Linux distros. Also, curiosity.
- erlehmann_ 10y ago
  Could you quantify how you judge UI? I actually found that the OS X UI to be consistently less featureful and more cumbersome to use than most GNU/Linux stuff. Maybe I have different expectations regarding operating system features? Take window management, for example: If I want my windows to fill exactly half the screen, have one window on top of all others or move them from anywhere (just not the title bar), last time I checked it was just impossible out of the box. Package management is another thing where GNU/Linux excels. On Debian, I am usually just a single “apt-get” away from having exactly what I need. The UI for such tasks does not seem to exist at all on OS X without third party tools. In practical terms, Apple delivering outdated GNU utilities that are by now nine years old is something that should not happen with a modern operating system. I have encountered a lot of (non-developer) Apple users who do not know this and then wonder why something does not work. If you would explain what makes the “UI being much better” in your eyes, it might help us to understand why exactly we think differently (heh) here.
  - mrtksn 10y ago
    No I can't but for me it means that it always performs well no matter if I am watching video or messing on sublime text or I am on the terminal. Also, the terminal for me is only about the work I do and almost never about managing my computer because my computer works as expected. My blood boils when I hear about linux on desktop because my experience always involved up keeping linux doing millions of easy things all the time just to make the thing run. Some funny glitch when running Chrome? Oh that's because of the display driver, update it and you'll be fine but to update it you need to install some dependencies and to install these dependencies you need to add some repo. Oh great now the app that worked is no longer working because installing drivers somehow messed to the permissions of some folder, just run this command to fix the permissions and now you are all good. Remember that app that was crashing due to permissions? Yeah, it was due to a bug that is fixed on the new version now you need to run this command o undo the permissions change because the bug was fixed and now it's not working with the hack. I like not maintaining my tools, I don't maintain my macbook except for installing updates when prompted and cleaning the screen and the keyboard every now and then. My uptime tends to be from OS update to OS update.
e40 10y ago
Because of the software we use. Lightroom and MS Office (please don't suggest Libre Office is good enough, it's not for legal and accounting documented exchange, as I had many spreadsheets that were broken on LO).
- scholia 10y ago
  Of course, Lightroom and MS Office are available on Windows, and may include more programs ;-)
  - e40 10y ago
    The discussion here is about Linux not Windows.
    - scholia 10y ago
      None the less, my comment is true, and as a matter of fact, most PCs run Windows....
- erlehmann_ 10y ago
  As a Lightroom user, how do you think Darktable compares to it for amateur and semi-professional use cases? http://www.darktable.org/ http://www.darktable.org/
  - jseliger 10y ago
    I've tried and liked it, but it seems that it isn't really meant to replicate Lightroom's cataloguing functionality. I tried importing the 20 or 25K photos I have, which Lightroom cruises through (I've met people with hundreds of thousands of photos in their catalogues) and Darktable gacks. That's on a relatively recent 5K iMac too, so I don't think hardware limitations are the problem. Right now Darktable seems to be more of an editing tool and less of a cataloguing tool.
- marmaduke 10y ago
  MS Office 2013 runs fine on Wine! At least, I can confirm that the equation editing and change tracking stuff was worth the effort to set up Wine. If you have custom plugins 'n stuff, maybe it won't work well.
adamors 10y ago
I actually switched to Hackintoshes from Linux PCs because the upgrade/install process is less painful. Used Ubuntu and Arch in the past, tinkering with the system was almost a daily thing. Also, the UX/UI of OS X is just miles ahead of anything on Linux. Same for 3rd party software.
- erlehmann_ 10y ago
  Referring to my other comment, could you quantify your UX/UX assessment? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12829832 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12829832
  - adamors 10y ago
    To me it comes down to: sane default settings, ease of customisability and ability to discover stuff on my own. Add to this applications that just work™. I still remember having to write a Bash script on Ubuntu to move the mouse every 2 minutes because the screensaver couldn't detect VLC was running in fullscreen. Or having to reboot because the audio driver crashed randomly. Even xkcd has a strip about something similar https://xkcd.com/196/ https://xkcd.com/196/
  - itchyouch 10y ago
    I think a lot of it has to do with polish. Linux GUIs can be beautiful, but the interactions with the UI tend to be functional first and stay that way. I remember when compiz came out and it was supposed to make the UIs really pop with a good graphics card. It really bridged the gap a lot, but the physics in the animation lacked a bit of timing finesse. The animations weren't terribly clunky, but they lacked a certain fluidity with the interaction. When interacting with a mouse or finger, certain things like input speed wouldn't be taken account for. Like on MacOS, a fast moving mouse cursor travels more across the screen than a slow moving mouse cursor. When scrolling, moving the scrollbars faster increase the scrolling speed while slowing down the movements slow things down proportionately in a very intuitive fashion, while a similar concept on Linux may do something very similar, it doesn't quite hit the nail on the head. It usually requires adjusting ones input and getting used to the tool. Even when the OS UI improved, individual applications also needed appropriate UI updates and UX. Since a lot of GUI apps were wrappers for underlying command-line utilities, they felt a lot like thinking in command-line mode for a GUI app or were unapproachable unless one came from a technical background. But even for people who may only use a browser, when starting a browser, the default set of fonts in a given browser were usually not that great. Not sure how much it has improved now, but I think the main culprit lies in the font rendering settings and available fonts. Getting prettier fonts have improved slightly, but a lot of the system feel comes from these fonts, especially in things like menus. So reading a webpage in some standard sans-serif may be fine on Windows & Mac, but just look slightly off on Linux. Functionally, nothing was wrong, but maybe the text box slightly overflowed outside of a div that was sized well for MacOS and Windows, but not Linux. Small things like these add up and make people feel like desktop Linux is just not quite there. I think Canonical has done a tremendous amount of work getting desktop Linux closer to being viable. This is coming from someone that's on 14.04 ubuntu. I haven't tried the lastest 16.x series, but I'm guessing it will get closer. The other challenge outside of UI/UX improvements really is commercial support that comes along with 3rd party products. When you purchase some printer and you see there is included productivity software, it will 100% work on Windows, 20% chance there is a Mac port, and usually 0% chance that it has a Linux port/version. Even when you purchase something OS agnostic like a cable modem, there will be Windows/Mac Compatible logos, but no Linux Compatible sticker making one feel like desktop Linux is relevant or even a prudent choice for someone non-technical to use.
yardie 10y ago
I've been a Mac user since the late 90s. Believe it or not you used to be able to get a Mac for under $1k. Usually, through student discounts and back to school sales. My last desktop Mac was a Powermac G4 tower. The next gen was the Powermac G5 with double the price! There was no upgrade plan going forward. $2500 was wildly out of my budget. A few years later, after Apple released the first intel macs, I discovered the osx86 wiki, gave it a shot and it worked! I built a Hackintosh that was almost as powerful as a full MacPro, Intel Q6600, 16GB RAM, RAID10 HDD, for 1/3 of the price. I've always enjoyed using a Mac since the System 7 days. But in this day and age paying >$1500 for a laptop just seems ludicrous. I'm typing this from a 2011 MBP. I anticipated purchasing a newer 2016 MBP. After this announcement I'll probably look into a refurbished rMBP. Sadly, I believe the entry level xMac is never going to happen. the Mac mini gets no love, the MacPro gets no attention, the iMac gets and it appears the focus is mobile and laptops. So I'll be back on the OSX86 wiki making my shopping list and doing my research once again.
rcarmo 10y ago
The user experience completely blows Linux out of the water, and the tooling is superior because you can use ports from Linux/BSD _and_ native tools.
erikbye 10y ago
You do realize a lot of people work with software like Adobe’s Photoshop, Premiere, Illustrator, After Effects, Ableton Live, Pro Tools, Cubase, Sonar, Final Cut, Avid tools++? Do not even bother to mention Wine, or Linux native alternatives, because there are non that are good enough for most professional users. Also, less painful? I spend less time installing and configuring a hackintosh system and upgrades than I do configuring and maintaining most Linux distros. Making a stable hackintosh system these days is as easy as picking parts from something like OP’s post and following install and configure guides on the same site. Very little pain involved actually. My preferred work environment is OS X/macOS as host and a Linux distro as guest. I also prefer a hackintosh system to a Mac Pro for price/performance ratio, and the flexibility of selecting my own hardware and upgrading whenever I feel like it.

Why do people do this? Is it only for fun? I would think that any GNU/Linux system could provide similar or better tooling and most likely results in a less painful upgrade process.

drinchev 10y ago

I doubt that. Sketch / Photoshop does not run on GNU / Linux as well as Safari. These are a must for any front-end developer these days and personally although I like some window managers for X11, I can't afford to go that way, because they don't feel mature enough. Not to mention iTunes, Photos and all the nice software that comes with OS X.

X86BSD 10y ago
Also there is no dtrace on Linux.
- drinchev 10y ago
  Soon there will be. http://www.brendangregg.com/blog/2016-10-27/dtrace-for-linux-2016.html http://www.brendangregg.com/blog/2016-10-27/dtrace-for-linux... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12806941 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12806941

jrcii 10y ago

Gnome and KDE are painful to use when you're used to Aqua, not to mention all the great Mac-only apps.

morganvachon 10y ago
Openbox + compton gets me the same smoothness as Aqua, and is much more configurable. You can make it look and feel 99% like Aqua, or you can go another direction and make it exactly what works for you instead of cloning another interface.
toyg 10y ago
I've tried a few Linux distributions in the last few days, I suggest you try LinuxMint - it seems to be the less painful option. I'm not sure what desktop manager they use, but it's definitely better than stock KDE or stock GNOME. For KDE, the best experience at the moment seems to be Neon, although I've not tried OpenSUSE.
xufi 10y ago
Can't disagree with that. The way it functions and the plethora of apps you get with it are good enough for me

mountaineer22 10y ago

You can have a 32GB i7 running OS X for iOS or native app development for less than $1000. UPDATE: Oh yeah, you can upgrade the various components too.

op00to 10y ago
How much do you need to put towards an attorney retainer for fighting the copyright infringement lawsuit Apple can bring against you? Does that count toward the less than $1000 price tag?
- mountaineer22 10y ago
  Please explain?
  - op00to 10y ago
    The only way to get a license for a modern MacOS is to purchase a mac. The license is nontransferrable, forever attached to the specific system purchased. It is a violation of the EULA and most likely Apple's copyright to install MacOS on systems that are not entitled for the OS, which is every system that's not a Mac. In other words, you're violating Apples copyright by running MacOS on a Hackintosh, and Apple is well within their rights to sue you for damages. Defending these types of lawsuits are expensive.
    - drinchev 10y ago
      Technically speaking if I have a Mac mini and I plug 8 more gigs of non-apple RAM or another hard-disk I'm violating their EULA. IMHO they did the copyright, because they don't want someone to put a stamp "MacOS X - tested" or something on their hardware.
      - op00to 10y ago
        I don't believe your assertion that upgrading Macs breaks the EULA. Can you explain this statement? Does Apple really document how to break their EULA on their website: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT205041 https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT205041

mrtksn 10y ago

In some countries macs are ridiculously expensive for students and even for professionals and people just install MacOs on their already available PCs so that they can mess around with XCode or the tooling for web development. Sure you can have most of the tooling on Linux for example but the MacOs UI is much better than anything available for Linux distros. Also, curiosity.

erlehmann_ 10y ago
Could you quantify how you judge UI? I actually found that the OS X UI to be consistently less featureful and more cumbersome to use than most GNU/Linux stuff. Maybe I have different expectations regarding operating system features? Take window management, for example: If I want my windows to fill exactly half the screen, have one window on top of all others or move them from anywhere (just not the title bar), last time I checked it was just impossible out of the box. Package management is another thing where GNU/Linux excels. On Debian, I am usually just a single “apt-get” away from having exactly what I need. The UI for such tasks does not seem to exist at all on OS X without third party tools. In practical terms, Apple delivering outdated GNU utilities that are by now nine years old is something that should not happen with a modern operating system. I have encountered a lot of (non-developer) Apple users who do not know this and then wonder why something does not work. If you would explain what makes the “UI being much better” in your eyes, it might help us to understand why exactly we think differently (heh) here.
- mrtksn 10y ago
  No I can't but for me it means that it always performs well no matter if I am watching video or messing on sublime text or I am on the terminal. Also, the terminal for me is only about the work I do and almost never about managing my computer because my computer works as expected. My blood boils when I hear about linux on desktop because my experience always involved up keeping linux doing millions of easy things all the time just to make the thing run. Some funny glitch when running Chrome? Oh that's because of the display driver, update it and you'll be fine but to update it you need to install some dependencies and to install these dependencies you need to add some repo. Oh great now the app that worked is no longer working because installing drivers somehow messed to the permissions of some folder, just run this command to fix the permissions and now you are all good. Remember that app that was crashing due to permissions? Yeah, it was due to a bug that is fixed on the new version now you need to run this command o undo the permissions change because the bug was fixed and now it's not working with the hack. I like not maintaining my tools, I don't maintain my macbook except for installing updates when prompted and cleaning the screen and the keyboard every now and then. My uptime tends to be from OS update to OS update.

e40 10y ago

Because of the software we use. Lightroom and MS Office (please don't suggest Libre Office is good enough, it's not for legal and accounting documented exchange, as I had many spreadsheets that were broken on LO).

scholia 10y ago
Of course, Lightroom and MS Office are available on Windows, and may include more programs ;-)
- e40 10y ago
  The discussion here is about Linux not Windows.
  - scholia 10y ago
    None the less, my comment is true, and as a matter of fact, most PCs run Windows....
erlehmann_ 10y ago
As a Lightroom user, how do you think Darktable compares to it for amateur and semi-professional use cases? http://www.darktable.org/ http://www.darktable.org/
- jseliger 10y ago
  I've tried and liked it, but it seems that it isn't really meant to replicate Lightroom's cataloguing functionality. I tried importing the 20 or 25K photos I have, which Lightroom cruises through (I've met people with hundreds of thousands of photos in their catalogues) and Darktable gacks. That's on a relatively recent 5K iMac too, so I don't think hardware limitations are the problem. Right now Darktable seems to be more of an editing tool and less of a cataloguing tool.
marmaduke 10y ago
MS Office 2013 runs fine on Wine! At least, I can confirm that the equation editing and change tracking stuff was worth the effort to set up Wine. If you have custom plugins 'n stuff, maybe it won't work well.

adamors 10y ago

I actually switched to Hackintoshes from Linux PCs because the upgrade/install process is less painful. Used Ubuntu and Arch in the past, tinkering with the system was almost a daily thing. Also, the UX/UI of OS X is just miles ahead of anything on Linux. Same for 3rd party software.

erlehmann_ 10y ago
Referring to my other comment, could you quantify your UX/UX assessment? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12829832 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12829832
- adamors 10y ago
  To me it comes down to: sane default settings, ease of customisability and ability to discover stuff on my own. Add to this applications that just work™. I still remember having to write a Bash script on Ubuntu to move the mouse every 2 minutes because the screensaver couldn't detect VLC was running in fullscreen. Or having to reboot because the audio driver crashed randomly. Even xkcd has a strip about something similar https://xkcd.com/196/ https://xkcd.com/196/
- itchyouch 10y ago
  I think a lot of it has to do with polish. Linux GUIs can be beautiful, but the interactions with the UI tend to be functional first and stay that way. I remember when compiz came out and it was supposed to make the UIs really pop with a good graphics card. It really bridged the gap a lot, but the physics in the animation lacked a bit of timing finesse. The animations weren't terribly clunky, but they lacked a certain fluidity with the interaction. When interacting with a mouse or finger, certain things like input speed wouldn't be taken account for. Like on MacOS, a fast moving mouse cursor travels more across the screen than a slow moving mouse cursor. When scrolling, moving the scrollbars faster increase the scrolling speed while slowing down the movements slow things down proportionately in a very intuitive fashion, while a similar concept on Linux may do something very similar, it doesn't quite hit the nail on the head. It usually requires adjusting ones input and getting used to the tool. Even when the OS UI improved, individual applications also needed appropriate UI updates and UX. Since a lot of GUI apps were wrappers for underlying command-line utilities, they felt a lot like thinking in command-line mode for a GUI app or were unapproachable unless one came from a technical background. But even for people who may only use a browser, when starting a browser, the default set of fonts in a given browser were usually not that great. Not sure how much it has improved now, but I think the main culprit lies in the font rendering settings and available fonts. Getting prettier fonts have improved slightly, but a lot of the system feel comes from these fonts, especially in things like menus. So reading a webpage in some standard sans-serif may be fine on Windows & Mac, but just look slightly off on Linux. Functionally, nothing was wrong, but maybe the text box slightly overflowed outside of a div that was sized well for MacOS and Windows, but not Linux. Small things like these add up and make people feel like desktop Linux is just not quite there. I think Canonical has done a tremendous amount of work getting desktop Linux closer to being viable. This is coming from someone that's on 14.04 ubuntu. I haven't tried the lastest 16.x series, but I'm guessing it will get closer. The other challenge outside of UI/UX improvements really is commercial support that comes along with 3rd party products. When you purchase some printer and you see there is included productivity software, it will 100% work on Windows, 20% chance there is a Mac port, and usually 0% chance that it has a Linux port/version. Even when you purchase something OS agnostic like a cable modem, there will be Windows/Mac Compatible logos, but no Linux Compatible sticker making one feel like desktop Linux is relevant or even a prudent choice for someone non-technical to use.

yardie 10y ago

I've been a Mac user since the late 90s. Believe it or not you used to be able to get a Mac for under $1k. Usually, through student discounts and back to school sales. My last desktop Mac was a Powermac G4 tower. The next gen was the Powermac G5 with double the price! There was no upgrade plan going forward. $2500 was wildly out of my budget. A few years later, after Apple released the first intel macs, I discovered the osx86 wiki, gave it a shot and it worked! I built a Hackintosh that was almost as powerful as a full MacPro, Intel Q6600, 16GB RAM, RAID10 HDD, for 1/3 of the price. I've always enjoyed using a Mac since the System 7 days. But in this day and age paying >$1500 for a laptop just seems ludicrous. I'm typing this from a 2011 MBP. I anticipated purchasing a newer 2016 MBP. After this announcement I'll probably look into a refurbished rMBP. Sadly, I believe the entry level xMac is never going to happen. the Mac mini gets no love, the MacPro gets no attention, the iMac gets and it appears the focus is mobile and laptops. So I'll be back on the OSX86 wiki making my shopping list and doing my research once again.

rcarmo 10y ago

The user experience completely blows Linux out of the water, and the tooling is superior because you can use ports from Linux/BSD _and_ native tools.

erikbye 10y ago

You do realize a lot of people work with software like Adobe’s Photoshop, Premiere, Illustrator, After Effects, Ableton Live, Pro Tools, Cubase, Sonar, Final Cut, Avid tools++? Do not even bother to mention Wine, or Linux native alternatives, because there are non that are good enough for most professional users. Also, less painful? I spend less time installing and configuring a hackintosh system and upgrades than I do configuring and maintaining most Linux distros. Making a stable hackintosh system these days is as easy as picking parts from something like OP’s post and following install and configure guides on the same site. Very little pain involved actually. My preferred work environment is OS X/macOS as host and a Linux distro as guest. I also prefer a hackintosh system to a Mac Pro for price/performance ratio, and the flexibility of selecting my own hardware and upgrading whenever I feel like it.