20 ms·

Finding an Alternative to Mac OS X

• fbnlsr 10y ago
  I've been using Xubuntu on my Macbook Air in a VM and it feels amazing. It gets the job done and I really like the UI. elementaryos is perfect for a MacOS user but it feels like it's not ready yet for day to day use.
• jseliger 10y ago
  The lack of equally high standard replacements for software such as For me, it's Devonthink Pro (http://www.devontechnologies.com/solutions/writers.html http://www.devontechnologies.com/solutions/writers.html) in particular and also Lightroom. Yes, there is progress on Dark Table, but there's too much useful software on OS X and despite Apple's faults its laptop hardware still leads the pack. Yes, the lack of ports on the new MBP is annoying. If I had to buy a new MBP today I'd just get the last version—which is still fantastic—refurbished, and kick the hardware can down the road a couple years.
  • ShinyCyril 10y ago
    Obviously I'd avoid it for commercial editing, but I've had good success running Lightroom 5 under Wine.
• princetontiger 10y ago
  Funny that this got written. I've looked at switching from macOS to Windows 10. My first operating system was Windows 95. I then upgraded to 98, and later XP. I decided to go with a Mac in 2008 after Windows Vista just couldn't get itself together.
  • twblalock 10y ago
    I use Macs at work, and I've been using Windows 10 at home since June, with my old Apple keyboard and everything. My impression is that both operating systems are very close to parity. I use the same apps on both, including a lot of Unixy stuff that now works fine on Windows. Even the Windows font rendering is a lot like the Mac's now. The Mac ecosystem still has a huge advantage in hardware quality, but I think Microsoft has caught up in software quality.
    • notheguyouthink 10y ago
      Except the stupid decision(s) they continue to make, like advertisements in my operating system. Seriously, i can't comprehend why they take a paying customer (me) and frequently think i want to see their ads my operating system is some kind of blog. (The ad in question is for me to try some new microsoft product.. i forget which one offhand, Office Live? no idea. I usually see too much red when it happens to even read.)
      • twblalock 10y ago
        That never happens to me.
      • wvenable 10y ago
        I've never seen an ad in Windows 10 -- but then I did switch to classic shell for the start menu.
      • cagey 10y ago
        The ads I've seen in Win 10 (Home): (1) (Don't I want to claim my) Free trial for Office 365? (2) MS Edge is faster/better than my (non-MS) default browser (and don't I want to try Edge?). These seem to recur once after each Windows Update reboot. Anyone know of a way to permanently disable these?
        • notheguyouthink 10y ago
          Office 365 sounds correct, i bet that's my ad as well. Like, i cannot even stress how pissed off it makes me.
        • kylealden 10y ago
          Settings -> Notifications -> "Get tips, tricks, and suggestions as you use Windows" is the main one. If you want to really dial it in you can also disable notifications for individual apps like Office or Edge on that page. Note that if you're on Insider builds, there have sometimes been build-to-build update issues that reset some settings, which can result in this toggle being reset. IMO that's a serious bug you should report, but (hopefully) wouldn't make it to a stable release. (disclaimer: MSFT employee on the Edge team)
  • mcphage 10y ago
    The author specifically excluded Windows because they're a Rails developer.
    • Kolberht 10y ago
      It's a shame, because that excuse makes no sense.
      • josephby 10y ago
        I agree; it would be great to hear from developers who've experimented with switching from macOS to Windows 10, and use Ubuntu userspace on Windows. I switched about a month ago and, to be honest, I've been pleasantly surprised with Windows 10, with modern, top-of-the-line Windows hardware, and especially with Ubuntu on Windows.
        • wezm 10y ago
          Reading Dave's (https://daverupert.com/tag/davegoeswindows https://daverupert.com/tag/davegoeswindows) experience switching to Windows turned me off considering it as an option. However I've ordered an Eve V so will try it out when that comes later in the year.
    • slantyyz 10y ago
      I've been doing Rails dev on Windows for a couple of years now (I use cmder/conemu, not the linux subystem). For the most part, my workflow is similar to what I was doing when I was on Mac, but I guess it really depends on what you're doing. If there's something in Rails you can't do in Windows proper, you can still opt to use Vagrant on Windows for a more pure unix experience.
• ericjang 10y ago
  Another path you can take: build your own desktop and install a Hackintosh OS! Here's my build (http://pcpartpicker.com/list/pYWQMp http://pcpartpicker.com/list/pYWQMp), which runs into some driver issues but can be fixed with Kext utility. This setup allows me to do CUDA programming + Deep Learning stuff natively in OSX, while having access to pretty Mac software. It's great, I highly recommend it!
  • gantengx 10y ago
    except that Hackintosh not exactly legal :-)
    • wishinghand 10y ago
      Has Apple ever prosecuted a violation of this terrible rule of theirs?
      • marpstar 10y ago
        https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psystar_Corporation https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psystar_Corporation
        • bdcravens 10y ago
          That was a company selling Hackintoshes. In the many years since, Hackintoshes have remained a thing and I'm unaware of any individuals that have faced criminal or civil penalties.
          • fusiongyro 10y ago
            Until recently, a Hackintosh was a time-consuming way of producing a somewhat worse Mac. As Apple is starting to drive us away, I bet the phenomenon will grow, and then Apple's interest in squishing it will too. And the fact is, Apple could shut this phenomenon down in a matter of hours if they wanted to. This level of risk is fun but not for the faint of heart.
• dogismycopilot 10y ago
  "I has a fast Intel CPU (4Ghz i7-6700K), plenty of RAM and fast SSD storage."
  • wezm 10y ago
    Thanks, fixed.
• gnufied 10y ago
  I have been watching elementary from the sidelines and I am wondering how deep is the keyboard integration in Pantheon? I moved from OSX to Linux recently too and I am generally pretty happy with multi-monitor and pseudo-tiling support in gnome3. I can do most of my window movement and application switching with few shortcuts (it requires few gnome extensions). Such as - 1. switch application with shortcut rather than alt-tabbing (something like - Super-1 for Emacs, Super-2 for terminal etc). It requires a gnome extension. 2. Tile the Windows with shortcuts. Currently gnome3 has limited support but it mostly works out of box. 3. Launching or switching application with a global shortcut. Requires a gnome extension. 4. Move Window between monitors etc. Such things usually requires at least 2 or 3 paid apps on OSX. Divvy, Sizeup etc. Oh and 1Password works perfectly okay via Wine, including the browser extension. So, that is one thing you should checkoff your list if that is stopping you. :-)
  • EduardoBautista 10y ago
    Spectacle is a free alternative to Sizeup: https://www.spectacleapp.com https://www.spectacleapp.com
  • wezm 10y ago
    The keyboard integration in Pantheon seems pretty comparable to GNOME. I just finished importing my 1Password data into https://www.enpass.io https://www.enpass.io looks like it might turn out to be a good option.
    • gnufied 10y ago
      I use https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/413/dash-hotkeys/ https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/413/dash-hotkeys/ thing for Unity like single shortcut Window switcher. It is absolute life saver. I used to use apptivate(http://www.apptivateapp.com/ http://www.apptivateapp.com/) on OSX for same thing. Is there a elementary alternative? A quick google search doesn't turn up anything.
• nkozyra 10y ago
  I'm full-time OSX user/developer, but if Rails is really your sticking point, shouldn't the linux subsystem make Win10 at least viable for a trial? Or, frankly, anything that can run VMWare or Virtualbox?
  • sudhirj 10y ago
    I switched to Windows hoping to use the WSL - looks great for the most part, but there are still lots of blocking bugs. Ruby and Git install, but not OpenSSL, which makes Rails development difficult. Lots of niggles here and there, basically. Should be great when it comes out of beta, though - a good terminal and we'll be all set.
    • guycook 10y ago
      If you haven't tried ConEmu [0], it's pretty awesome. I use it with the Git Bash that comes with the full windows git installer and it Just Works for most of my terminal needs. Haven't tried it with WSL but it can most likely be rigged up. [0] https://conemu.github.io/ https://conemu.github.io/
      • sudhirj 10y ago
        I use conemu with WSL... it's the best one available for Windows, but it still pales in comparison to the default macOS terminal, and even the one that ships with Elementary. The customziation, tabs, layout, fonts all work fine but seem a bit bolted on.
        • thesmallestcat 10y ago
          I feel the need to point out that what "ships" with elementaryOS is basically meaningless. You can install what you want, easily, and the default configuration is a recommendation. Welcome to Linux-land. https://www.distrowatch.com/ https://www.distrowatch.com/
          • indeyets 10y ago
• Kolberht 10y ago
  I think most people prefer Windows or MacOS. When I talk to normal/non-techies about this issue, they often see it as a non-issue and/or terrifying. Why not help Windows and Mac users by writing more software for the preferred environments? Installing a foreign operating system is like installing a different language on your PC. You must have other motivation than normal users.
  • quickben 10y ago
    Why doesn't Microsoft let people control updates or antivirus options? These questions run deep. http://news.softpedia.com/news/medical-equipment-crashes-during-heart-procedure-because-of-antivirus-scan-503642.shtml http://news.softpedia.com/news/medical-equipment-crashes-dur...
• Clubber 10y ago
  >Note that I don’t currently consider Windows a viable alternative. For the work that I do (Rails) and tools I use something *nix based is the best choice for me. For what it's worth Windows 10 now has a bash shell based on Ubuntu available. http://www.howtogeek.com/249966/how-to-install-and-use-the-linux-bash-shell-on-windows-10/ http://www.howtogeek.com/249966/how-to-install-and-use-the-l...
  • drvdevd 10y ago
    I'm not Windows' biggest fan, but I'd consider it + Linux/BSD in hyper-v to be a nice start (say on a Surface Pro) -- if you need something that Just Works. The bash subsystem is interesting, but I'd go with the virtualization solution first.
    • wezm 10y ago
      This is a solution I will test out later in the year. I like the idea of a 2-in-1 computer and I've ordered a http://eve-tech.com http://eve-tech.com. I'll certainly be trying out the VM on Windows option when it comes.
  • bluedino 10y ago
    Setting up a Rails environment on it has plenty of quirks, though. And other common Linux apps don't work right either, ones you typically install along with Rails
    • paulddraper 10y ago
      > Setting up a Rails environment on it has plenty of quirks, I thought that was true on any OS... :/
  • wvenable 10y ago
    I'm surprised this was downvoted -- the Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) is extremely powerful and well done. It's a full Ubuntu userland and you can even run graphical (X) applications. I've used it for Pebble development, running the (python + ARM GCC) SDK and QEMU-based emulator all on Windows. I've run into a few minor issues but for the majority of tasks it works great -- I've completely stopped using my Ubuntu VM and do all my Linux tasks in WSL.
• rtnyftxx 10y ago
  > Removing the Esc key you can switch back to default F1... keys > Removing all legacy ports necessitating the use of dongles for everything Somewhere have to start the transition > Prioritising thinness and weight over everything else Batterylife is the same Worst thing on the new rMBPs: No silent trackpad click option m( I use OS X just as an client.
  • wezm 10y ago
    >> Removing the Esc key > you can switch back to default F1... keys Not following... the physical key is gone, replaced by the touch bar?
    • JohnTHaller 10y ago
      The key is gone. The touchbar can be set to always show virtual function keys, though. Not the best option if you touch type, of course.
      • wezm 10y ago
        Yeah I touch type. The whole idea of encouraging people to look at their keyboard seems completely off.
      • rickyc091 10y ago
        The ESC key being missing gets blown out of proportion. Every time I hit it, I'm amazed at how it just works. Apple has made it so hitting any where in that vicinity basically triggers the ESC.
        • lobster_johnson 10y ago
          The key not physically being there is unnerving. There's no tactile feedback, _unlike every other key on the keybord_. As a touch typist, I found this extremely distracting during the week that I tried out the MBP 2016. Not every attempt to hit Esc worked, so I found myself constantly and instinctively hitting it 2-3 times "just to be sure", and then also constantly glancing down to see whether in fact I was aiming right. That's not great UI. Another problem with the touch bar is unintended touches. I constantly found myself accidentally resting a finger on the Esc key, which of course caused all sorts of weirdness in various apps. Finally, as a touch typist the touch bar was simply distracting. I never look at the keyboard, but the touch bar really wants you to look down, which is a source of distraction, especially when it changes contents in the periphery of your vision. If the touch bar brought lots of utility, I might have learned to deal with it, but it is really is of limited value. Emojis? There's cmd-ctrl-space for that (the touch bar doesn't have search so you'll be scrolling a lot to hunt down the right emoji). Safari tab previews? They're idiotically tiny. And so on.
• sudhirj 10y ago
  Trying to do exactly the same thing - I still have a maxed out rMBP 2013 that works great, so setting up alternatives now before I'm forced to. The Intel Skull Canyon NUC is what I'm using, with Elementary running on Virtualbox in Windows 10 (waiting for the Samsung 960 EVO to sell globally before setting up a native install). The one massive problem for me that keeps me going back to the laptop is that the Mac absolutely nailed keyboard layout by separating the command and control keys. And no other OS is currently able to do so. I use the basic emacs shortcuts for navigation in all the apps that support them (crtl a,e,n,p), and the command key to issue commands like close tab, save, new tab etc. This is absolutely impossible to replicate on any other OS (AFAIK). I can map the command key to the control key, but that's about it - it just becomes a new way to hit control. Being able to consistently map and access the command key (as SUPER) simply can't be done.
  • wezm 10y ago
    Yes I suspect the keyboard shortcuts will bother me too. One of the things I like about Elementary is that there are a bunch of things bound to Command out of the box. They also refer to it as ⌘, which has a nice familiarity about it.
    • sudhirj 10y ago
      The underlying Ubuntu still refers to it as the Super key, but elementary uses the clover to symbolise it when it can. Still can't get to Mac like setups, though - apparently in Linux it's the applications that intercept the Super key, so it's never going to be possible to get a consistent experience.
      • stormbrew 10y ago
        Window managers definitely get a first crack at keyboard input. For example, I have a bunch of super-related keyboard combos set in i3wm that always go to it. I doubt that's the problem you're referring to. More likely it's that the window manager has no consistent means to make any given window/app do anything in particular, like copy or paste. The app decides its own key combos for those. There's no universal way to do it globally short of using nothing but apps that are specifically intended to work with gnome or kde or another uberenvironment's configuration system. Basically, you could bind super-c at the WM level, but you couldn't make it always copy.
• webaholic 10y ago
  Linux
• codeka 10y ago
  > The first option I tried was an i3 based desktop. However whilst I wanted to like tiling window managers I decided it wasn’t for me. It took me a week or so to get used to i3, but once I did I can't see myself ever going back. I've been using i3 at work and at home for about year now, and every time I get on my (Mac Book) laptop it's a frustrating experience: I feel like I spend more time trying to figure out how to get to the window I want that actually using it...
  • massysett 10y ago
    i3 is great, until you try to do something simple like change the time zone for your desktop clock or add some wallpaper. I switched from Linux to Mac because I was too well acquainted with making symlinks to /usr/share/ somewhere just to change my clock when I traveled, and then figuring out just how few processes I had to restart so it would take effect. Unfortunately the Linux desktops were actually worse than the barebones window managers like i3: there was some sort of glibc bug that screwed up clock display on GNOME for at least a year. GNOME assumed glibc did it right, which was a reasonable assumption...but an incorrect one, but with i3 I could control this. Now that I'm on Mac I look back in amazement at the time I spent on Linux learning ultimately useless stuff like why a bug in glibc would mess up my GNOME clock but not an i3 clock.
    • codeka 10y ago
      Yeah, I found I needed to set up some keyboard shortcuts for controlling mute/volume levels, but other than that it's been pretty set-and-forget (timezones not being a problem on a desktop). The time I spent setting those things up has been more than made up for over the last year as I've spent less time managing windows and more time just doing work.
    • fusiongyro 10y ago
      I'm on a Mac but at this point I could probably take it or leave it. Most of my life is shell + Firefox + Emacs + IntelliJ, and those all run basically the same regardless of OS. If anything, my plan would be to move more of my life into Emacs so that I'm even less exposed to stupid ideas from my OS/laptop vendor. I have been using i3 on a netbook for the last two days and I can definitely see how it would be lovely. But then again, Linux has changed a lot since I was into it seriously and I'm sure I will experience pain if I have to do anything substantial to tweak it, like symlink timezone files.
• bluedino 10y ago
  Why did the guy try like ten different distros? After 2-3 you know Linux is going to work for your needs, or it isn't
• grhmc 10y ago
  Not even a mention of NixOS. May I ask why not? Edit: I'm appreciating the feedback for "why not?" and am sending it around to people in the community. :)
  • notheguyouthink 10y ago
    (not the OP) Complicated, is my reason. I have a hell of a time making sense of the configuration syntax. NixOS is one of those "this has to be the future" things for me, but a future i can't currently use, despite wanting it. I hope someday i can make the switch. Also, Elementary is pretty.. and call me vein, but that is nice. Generally i want the OS to "just work" and pretty gives me the false, emotional impression that it will.
    • grhmc 10y ago
      NixOS is what got me to switch back from Mac to Linux. Being able to copy someone else's config for my MacBookPro and have a pretty damn good, working system was incredible. It really opened my eyes. Perhaps coming by #nixos on Freenode for an afternoon could get you over the configuration hurdle? I remember I tried NixOS in a VM on a Thursday and was so smitten that I replaced OSX on Saturday. Edit: I really appreciate your feedback on this!
      • notheguyouthink 10y ago
        To add a bit more detail: It's not purely the syntax, but more difficulty finding API documentation to match "what i want to do". Eg, if i wanted to add a package, or if i wanted to add a custom package, what function would i use? (not a question directed at you). If i wanted to add a chroot, what would i use? What args are available on those functions? etcetc The documentation was a massive frustration to an already confused person. On top of that, it seemed every package/binary i wanted wasn't available in Nixpkgs, or was outdated in Nixpkgs - so i had to learn how to modify the binaries for pretty much everything i did. And, when you don't know what you're doing, this is a massive barrier to entry. I'm not too savvy on Linux and runtime requirements of binaries, so finding the requirements of a binary or setting up chroots for binaries that i could not modify was very time consuming. I spent most of my time doing that, in fact. The concept of NixOS represents time saved to me. Reproducible builds based on a idempotent config, awesome! But in reality, i had to figure out how to make everything i wanted idempotent, and it was just a massive barrier. I'm super smitten, i think the documentation just needs a bit of work. I would love to run it on my home server and also Nixpkgs on my Mac.
• vxxzy 10y ago
  To the point (reality) of Arch's amazing docs; I fully agree with the author. I've never experienced a more comprehensive and up-to-date doc regarding a distro. For this reason, I exclusively use Arch for both desktop and laptop. It is a freeing/empowering experience installing Arch.
  • prashnts 10y ago
    Agreed completely. I juggle between OSX and Debian, but Arch's docs are still way better when it comes to configuration and gotchas.
  • brightball 10y ago
    I've got a Dell Developer Edition arriving on Thursday and everything I've been reading about Arch has been seriously considering installing it almost immediately.
• rangibaby 10y ago
  I installed Ubuntu + GNOME on my Mac a couple of years ago as a toy but a have slowly been migrating to it as my main OS. For what I use it for (light web dev) it is the same or better than OS X. The only thing stopping me from throwing out OS X completely are the Adobe apps (InDesign in particular) but even with that I have switched to doing most of 90% of my work on paper or in a text file then only complete layouts in OS X.
• whyileft 10y ago
  > The interface is clean and refined. Can we stop using the term "clean" to describe interfaces? Clean doesn't really mean anything in design and also is a one sided term without an opposite term that is not disparaging. Are all other interfaces that are not clean, dirty? Or unsanitary? Or cluttered? It becomes and absolute term like beautiful or professional which are all really just fluff terms for "good".
  • wezm 10y ago
    Good point. I actually paused and tried to come up with something better when I was proofreading the post but failed to do so. I'll keep it mind for future posts.
  • daveFNbuck 10y ago
    How many positive terms have antonyms that aren't considered disparaging? The opposite of clean in design is usually "cluttered".
    • whyileft 10y ago
      An objective antonym to "cluttered" in design is "minimal".
      • jaclaz 10y ago
        Personally I would use "streamlined", as "minimal" conveys to me the idea of "spartan" in the sense of (rigidly) frugal or austere.
        • whyileft 10y ago
          "streamlined" is much better. Great suggestion.
  • coldtea 10y ago
    >Clean doesn't really mean anything in design It actually conveys pretty well that the interface is uncluttered and with a minimal aesthetic, with lots of space, etc. >Are all other interfaces that are not clean, dirty? Or unsanitary? Or cluttered? Obviously cluttered. Don't really understand the objection. "Clean" has been part of UI vocabulary, and before that, of aesthetic criticism (in fine arts, architecture, industrial design, etc) for ages. ("Clean lines", etc).
• BuckRogers 10y ago
  I don't understand the ports complaint. Or maybe it's others who don't understand their ports complaint. The USB-C connector is a physical connector, and Apple's implementation of it supports every useful protocol and function available. DisplayPort, USB3.1 and below, Thunderbolt3, charging and HDMI[0]. Just buy USB-C to whatever cables and you're done with it. USB-A to C transition complete. You don't need adapters for those protocols, they're passive cables. What do people want? A bunch of ports that not everyone needs or wants to waste space when I could have more multipurpose USB-C ports? Got USB-A mice and keyboards? Ok, buy a docking station or USB-C to USB-A hub and never think about it again. Got a mouse you like to carry around that isn't wireless? Pickup a small adapter[1] to get you through the transition. The only thing I can think of is ethernet but again, not everyone is going to use that. I do want ethernet, but the USB-C Thunderbolt adapter is fine. It certainly isn't the only laptop going without ethernet today. Again, why waste a port when you can have these reversible universal ports. Miss MagSafe[2]? Either way, the complaints about the ports don't hold much water once properly researched and the change is inevitable. The reason I passed on the new MBP15 is the 24% reduction in battery capacity from 2015[3]. I needed a new machine so I bought an Acer Chromebook[4] to tide me over until Apple gets a form-fitting large capacity battery[5] in the MBPs. My configuration is $3000 and I'm just not going to spend that sort of money unless it's near-perfect. I may build a PC and remote into it as per the article until the next MBP once again matches its high price but I won't hand them 3K for a battery that's 3/4th the size of the 2015 model (66% capacity for the 13"). [0]https://youtu.be/JirCwapScUs?t=4m18s https://youtu.be/JirCwapScUs?t=4m18s [1]http://a.co/4zD6Jt3 http://a.co/4zD6Jt3 [2]http://a.co/4WDmyeT http://a.co/4WDmyeT [3]http://arstechnica.com/apple/2016/12/explaining-the-battery-life-problems-with-the-new-macbook-pros/ http://arstechnica.com/apple/2016/12/explaining-the-battery-... [4]https://www.acer.com/ac/en/CA/content/model/NX.GJEAA.002 https://www.acer.com/ac/en/CA/content/model/NX.GJEAA.002 [5]http://www.theverge.com/2016/12/20/14024322/macbook-pro-battery-development-failure http://www.theverge.com/2016/12/20/14024322/macbook-pro-batt...
  • wishinghand 10y ago
    There's still a huge confusion on what cables are legitimate USB 3 Type C cables, or Thunderbolt or some third option that I forget but bricking devices is a possibility with the current mix of options.
• rectangleboy 10y ago
  Where's the commentary on FreeBSD? It certainly seems like the right idea (to replace OS X), but I want to know their experience.
  • wezm 10y ago
    It's coming in a follow up post. I should publish it in the next few days.
    • orkoden 10y ago
      Since you're looking for a desktop OS, you should test PC-BSD instead of pure FreeBSD.
  • twblalock 10y ago
    I've used FreeBSD as a desktop OS, briefly. I've also used a number of Linux distributions as desktop OSes since the late 1990s. The bottom line is that Linux tends to have better hardware support, especially for laptop hardware and power management. When you run into problems, you'll usually have a much easier time finding vendor support or online community help for a Linux distribution than for FreeBSD. Under the hood, FreeBSD is a lot simpler than Linux, and a lot of people like it for that reason. But if you want a generic Gnome/KDE/tiling WM/etc. desktop experience, and you don't need any BSD-specific features, I think Linux is the way to go. After all, we are talking about a replacement for MacOS here, which is pretty well integrated with the hardware and does not require a lot of tinkering to get working.
    • saghm 10y ago
      > The bottom line is that Linux tends to have better hardware support, especially for laptop hardware and power management. I've been playing around with various BSDs over the past couple of years, and I really want to like any of them enough to keep installed, but this is exactly the issue I've run into with freebsd and it's derivatives. On both my last laptop and the current one, I can get everything working to a fairly reasonable state, but there are minor but annoying hardware issues I just don't have to deal with in Linux. In my most recent attempt (installing TrueOS on my spare SSD), some apps occasionally crash when I use the Intel video driver, so I'm forced to use scfb, which is a bit slower and doesn't render fonts as nicely. Additionally, the wifi tends to be a bit slower; I average around 4-5 MB (not Mb) down on Linux, but top out around 2 MB on TrueOS. I also have to use Firefox instead of Chromium on FreeBSD and its derivatives, as there always seem to be some bugs in the FreeBSD port; right now, it renders some bizarrely-shaped section of the window in a deep shade of yellow covering part of the URL bar and the top of the page, and signing in to Google to sync my extensions and history hasn't worked for like 10 major versions of Chromium. I really like DragonflyBSD; it works a bit better for me out of the box than FreeBSD (I don't need to configure to not have the fan running at full blast all the time, and I've strangely had fewer issues with Chromium despite it using the same ports tree as FreeBSD with some custom patches), but I've had issues running any display manager other than Slim, and even that hasn't worked that well for me, as I've never been able to get the numlock and auto-login settings working (yes, I know, autologin is "insecure", but I always have FDE on my machines, so if someone can get past that, I don't think the login screen will stop them). Unfortunately I haven't been able to try it out lately; on my current laptop, BSDs weirdly seem to think that my screen resolution is 1024x768, and the only way I've found to fix that is by setting the GOP in EFI, which is not an option for DragonflyBSD currently. I've spent more time than I'm willing to admit trying to follow the manual EFI installation inductions I found on the DragonflyBSD mailing list; I think I got it to boot once, but apparently the snapshot I was using panicked when trying to load the specific wifi driver during startup (although I found out later it could load it fine after it was fully booted), and I've never gotten it to boot since, so I'm not convinced I wasn't mildly hallucinating or something. Every now and then the Dragonfly Digest will have some post talking about some new small step towards EFI support though, so I'm optimistic that someday soon I'll be able to boot it on my current laptop and discover a whole new set of reasons why I can't use it. OpenBSD, on the other hand, works pretty great for me out of the box in terms of the GUI and hardware, but I'm not fond of the packaging system; I tend to like to have fairly recent versions of apps, so updates come a bit slowly compared to what I'm used to. Even worse, pkg_add is kind of horrifying to me compared to what you get on FreeBSD-based systems; for reasons I can't comprehend, it seems to query for updates individually for each package you have installed rather than first just getting a list of updated packages and then downloading the updates for the packages (if there are any). I'm unfortunately too spoiled to wait several minutes just to find out that there aren't actually any updates for my system. I've never been able to get far into setting up NetBSD. A couple of years ago I got it installed but couldn't get Xorg to start up, and I've been unable to get the installer to boot on the most recent release; it prompts me to select the boot device from a number of options, and I've tried all of them, and none of them work. The issue seems to be fixed in the more recent snapshots, but I haven't been able to figure out how to install with FDE (I found the option to encrypt the disk, but it seems to be independent from the installation itself, and neither encrypting the disk before or after the installation seems to result in a bootable encrypted system), and I'm too stubborn to install it without.
• deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
• monochromatic 10y ago
  If a Macbook sshing into your work computer is good enough, why isn't a Windows laptop sshing into your work computer?
  • wezm 10y ago
    Ideally I'd only need a single computer and there are goals like being about view/edit the source code of my OS/apps that Windows doesn't tick. Still as mentioned in other comments I'm getting a Windows 2-in-1 later in the year so can try it then.
  • dimitar 10y ago
    ConEmu is nice in my experience, but requires some tweeking. Some people I know use MobaXterm. The main drawback is windows itself, with its disruptive updates lately.
  • lostboys67 10y ago
    Well a built-in x Server for connecting to your development systems would be nice - which both OSX and Windows 10 Lack. And I do mean Server as X Windows switches the common usage of client and sever.
    • orkoden 10y ago
      XQuartz works just fine
  • zeveb 10y ago
    FWIW, whenever I am forced to use Windows I want to hurl my computer through a window after using it for only a few minutes. Doing anything takes click after click after click: it's way too much work. Manual window management is horrible: it's way too much work. Trying to figure out how to make anything work is a chore, as is evaluating which websites are giving correct advice, which are outdated and which are trying to infect me with malware: it's way too much work. Granted, I feel the exact same way about macOS (with slightly less concern about malware, to be sure).
• sbov 10y ago
  After the refresh of the Macbook Pro I decided to get a desktop replacement laptop. Whether or not that is acceptable for your use cases depends. For me, I already have a Surface Pro 3 for ultra portable needs. Because of that, I found myself never using my Macbook Pro when I couldn't plug it in. And given how slowly cpus are gaining in performance these days, if plausible, it makes more sense to me to focus on performance over battery & weight.
• deleted 10y ago
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• tankmohit11 10y ago
  Why no plasma 5.x based distribution?
  • wezm 10y ago
    Last I checked KDE was still working on HiDPI support. Has that changed? What plasma based distribution would you recommend?
    • gtirloni 10y ago
      Fedora 25 KDE spin seems to work just fine on my 1440p monitor.
      • wezm 10y ago
        Ok, looks like I need to check out KDE too.
• toodlebunions 10y ago
  Windows 10 with WSL? I prefer the mac but apple seems to be really working hard to blow it.
  • wezm 10y ago
    From what I've read WSL is kind of amazing but not stable enough yet.
• ehutch79 10y ago
  how can the touchpad be both bigger and smaller than the previous model?
• ixacto 10y ago
  How about advertising for candy crush soda saga/minecraft, right on my start menu. Or the crazy invasive privacy settings on first boot. Destroy windows spying fixes most of this, but it's easier to just uninstall bill's shitty OS and use ubuntu.
  • Fnoord 10y ago
    > How about advertising for candy crush soda saga/minecraft, right on my start menu. Try Classic Shell [1] [1] http://classicshell.net/ http://classicshell.net/
• HugoDaniel 10y ago
  Reads and feels like a sponsored post trying to get the attention of people who are using OSX, Fedora and Arch into elementary OS. It presents a huge list of OSes but then it just says "After evaluating each I was left with a top 3." Without providing any reason as to why. To top it there is no QubesOS and no NixOS on the list. This in 2017.
  • thesmallestcat 10y ago
    I think it's just incomplete writing (and it's the guy's blog, so no big deal). Author also doesn't elaborate on why ElementaryOS based on FreeBSD would be ideal, though FreeBSD is certainly rad.
  • mxuribe 10y ago
    The author does note that: > This is the first in a series... So, perhaps future posts will provide more details, etc.
• slantyyz 10y ago
  I know the OTA dismissed Windows, but when I switched from OSX to Windows a couple of years ago, I found Scott Hanselman's "Ultimate Developer and Power Users Tool List for Windows" [1] to be indispensable. I've been doing Rails work on Windows since switching, but ymmv depending on what your workflow and toolchain are. I also found that there were a lot of workarounds/alternatives to software/tools that I thought I would miss on Mac. I've managed to find pretty much everything I needed and/or realized I could easily live without the stuff I couldn't find alternatives for. Having said all of that, if you have a dependency on something like XCode because you're maintaining an iOS app, you're kinda stuck with a Mac. My experience with Hackintoshes is that even if you buy the right hardware off the latest Hackintosh compatibility list, it's still a bit of a time suck. Alternatively, you could also run OSX in VMWare Workstation/Player, but you don't get graphics acceleration and some OSX software won't run properly in a VM. [1] http://www.hanselman.com/blog/ScottHanselmans2014UltimateDeveloperAndPowerUsersToolListForWindows.aspx http://www.hanselman.com/blog/ScottHanselmans2014UltimateDev...
  • quantisan 10y ago
    Is there a similar developer tools list for Windows 10?
    • slantyyz 10y ago
      Most, if not all of the tools on that list work with Windows 10.
  • Klathmon 10y ago
    I gotta say I've tried to do the VM thing. I REALLY tried. But it just isn't something that will work for any significant amount of time. It would break with any updates, half the time xcode just wouldn't work, and it would sometimes be so slow that you'd need to wait minutes for some fancy animation to run. And this wasn't even to get around buying a MacBook, we had one, I just wanted to compile and sign a hybrid app for iOS easier than using another physical machine. Then we also found later that you can't sign an app on OSX while SSH'd into the machine... It just fails with a generic signing error. So now I have a MacBook with remote-desktop software that's just permanently on in the corner of the room so I can open the GUI once a month or so and re compile and sign the latest version of our app...
• rbanffy 10y ago
  <rant>People worry too much about what they use to host text editors and terminal windows...</rant>
  • khazhou 10y ago
    Sure, except that OSX's iterm2+Karabiner is so much better than any terminal on Linux. Awesome full-screen switching (⌘-Enter), easy shortcuts to create subwindows, natural clipboard support, great keyboard compatibility with Emacs (after futzing with keyboard settings and Karabiner mappings). On Ubuntu, all of these have been lacking. Hell, I can't even use the terminal for a single session without accidentally triggering the App Launcher several times.
    • sfilargi 10y ago
      If you like iTerm2 you might want to try a tiling window manager like dwm.
    • m45t3r 10y ago
      > Awesome full-screen switching (⌘-Enter), easy shortcuts to create subwindows, natural clipboard support, great keyboard compatibility with Emacs (after futzing with keyboard settings and Karabiner mappings). Except for "natural clipboard support" (dunno what you mean) and "Emacs" (I am a vim user, so I set up vim shortcuts) I have everything you said in my i3 setup, however for every application instead only for terminal.
      • lucaspiller 10y ago
        > "natural clipboard support" (dunno what you mean) I'd assume the author means the same shortcuts as every other app, which would be Ctrl-C/V on Linux. Obviously that wouldn't work in the terminal emulator, but I don't see why you can't remap it to Meta-C/V (as MacOS uses) for that. You could even remap it globally: http://askubuntu.com/questions/102846/remapping-keyboard-shortcuts-copy-paste-etc-to-alt-key-instead-of-ctrl http://askubuntu.com/questions/102846/remapping-keyboard-sho...
    • 10y ago
• frik 10y ago
  Or the other way: Finding an Alternative to Windows 10 That non-optional phone-home, non-optional updates, ads on startmenu, little QA (buggy like never before) - Windows up to Win7 was so nice, since Nadella everything went downhill, so sad, but true. Good that Win7 is supported until 2020, and promising alternatives are around the corner with Google Android/Fuchsia, macOS, Linux - although, the transition will be painful and but necasserry. It's a little late and all trust is gone, but maybe they fire the CEO and make a u-turn.
  • Lio 10y ago
    I see the downvotes for the parent post but no rebuttals to the phone home/privacy issues in Windows 10. I ask this as someone who hasn't really used Windows for 10+ years, could someone who knows please discuss the state of privacy in Windows 10? Is this a non-issue because you can turn off all the monitoring? How would one go about that? Is it a non-issue because Windows 10 doesn't send private information back to Microsoft? What does it send back?
    • RossBencina 10y ago
      I use Windows 10 on my main dev box. I somewhat agree with the parent. The Windows 10 situation has been enough to push me to start experimenting with Linux. The phone-home and forced-update-reboot are the big problems for me: The phone-home behavior of Windows 10 is a repellent. Turning it all off is non-trivial. The easily accessible privacy settings don't disable everything. There are various lists of firewall rules, scripts, policy settings etc. I can't recommend a specific source, but I think there are some well-maintained lists/scripts on github. To be honest, I'm not sure whether anyone knows exactly what goes back to Microsoft (not being tin-foil hat about it, I just don't think it's well documented). The no-choice-auto-update-reboot thing is also terrible (I've lost data on more than one occasion from unsaved files when Windows forces a reboot while I'm afk). This can be disabled with a lot of work and research. Some people say manual updates will re-enable it. Note that I really do want to keep my machine up to date, but ideally I don't want to have to reboot, and when I do have to reboot I want to choose exactly when. I didn't buy a UPS so my computer could reboot randomly by itself. As for "ads on startmenu, little QA (buggy like never before)": Running Windows 10 Pro I have not seen any advertising. The system runs fine for me. Arguably it runs with lower memory usage than Win 7. I agree that Win 7 is very stable, and that's been my experience with Win 10 too. That said, I only started using Win10 in mid 2016, so perhaps earlier builds were worse. Overall I would have been happy to stay with Win 7. So far I've found Linux GUI to be less polished, but maybe I'll get used to it.
• parmgrewal 10y ago
  For everyday use there is Android based RemixOS worth checking out, it looks polished but is still in its infancy. [1] http://www.jide.com/remixos http://www.jide.com/remixos
• z1mm32m4n 10y ago
  Many articles about wanting to leave the macOS ecosystem mention Sketch. Sketch is macOS only (and will be for the forseeable future), so it's understandable that people want to consider the implications of switching away from it. Recently, however, I stumbled upon Figma, a web-based, real-time collaborative interface design app (i.e., a competitor of Sketch). After convincing my group to experiment with it for a school project, I was pleasantly surprised. - It's web based, so it works on Linux. - It imports .sketch files - It's real-time (you can see everyone's cursor and selection). This was great, because it meant we didn't have to walk through the snow to get to campus to have a discussion about tweaking a few elements. I understand that some people may still need access to Sketch to work with people on their team or at their company. But for me, I'm officially striking Sketch off the list of software that's tying me down to macOS.
  • ourcat 10y ago
    I've never really understood why people use Sketch. I recently worked on a project where I had asked for some basic vanilla templates of a mobile site from the designers and was sent a huge Sketch file. It was utterly useless and I had to code everything by hand myself, since the 'designers' very clearly had zero clue about HTML+CSS or any notion of responsiveness, thanks to apps like Sketch which teach nothing of the knowledge required to be a useful part of anyone's app/site building process.
    • z1mm32m4n 10y ago
      I'd be curious to hear what you consider to be an alternative workflow or tool. Any tool can be used incorrectly in bad hands. The problem of choosing to work with talented and competent designers is largely unrelated from the choice of tool.
    • dorian-graph 10y ago
      To clarify, you're basing your whole not understanding why people use Sketch based just on your experience that you mentioned?
    • kagamine 10y ago
• pjmlp 10y ago
  Funny how we keep seeing these post from developers that aren't Mac OS/iDevice developers. NeXT's adoption of UNIX was just a way to fulfill expectations of the newly created workstation market. No serious NeXT application was a pure UNIX one, just like on Mac OS X. I never saw a NeXT full of xterms and vi, rather with applications that took full advantage of the desktop frameworks, including the devtools.
  • rcarmo 10y ago
    I hacked about in a NeXT in a research institution and spent a long while getting X, NFS, etc. to work "right" (which it never quite did), but yeah, you're right - except for macOS/iOS devs, Mac-using developers that target web or server-side are the ones actively looking for alternatives, because the tooling and targets are just easier to use on Linux these days...
• facepalm 10y ago
  I am impressed by how perfectionist some people can be. All I want from a desktop is little icons for launching programs. One of those icons should launch a command shell. That's it. I don't have the nerve to learn all the other features anyway...
  • mxuribe 10y ago
    Having to jump between myriad OS/platforms within any given day (windows for work, linux for work and play, windows for spouse's laptop, etc.), I have learned to "let it all go", and keep to minimal requirements...But I could never vocalize it as good as you just did! > All I want from a desktop is little icons for launching programs. One of those icons should launch a command shell. That's it. Kudos!
• slowrabbit 10y ago
  @wezm You should checkout Enlightenment windows manager over Arch Linux I think it'll be right up your alley based on your preferences https://www.enlightenment.org/ https://www.enlightenment.org/
  • wezm 10y ago
    I tried it on my Arch install. I know it's highly themeable but the default theme was not at all minimal and I wasn't a fan.
• INTPenis 10y ago
  I had the same prejudice about Fedora and RedHat back when I was a debian fanboy. But if you look at what Redhat is doing with their money and their company then you soon realize that Redhat Inc. not only IS a large part of the Linux community, but also supports the open source movement in many ways. So Fedora has been my main distro of choice for a couple years now. I still hesitate to order RHEL licenses at work, unless the client specifically has a good argument for choosing RHEL I tend to lean them towards CentOS. And I can speak from 12 years of professional sysadmin experience in BSD and Linux that yum or dnf is a very stable package manager. I've had more issues on Debian 6,7,8 than I've ever had on CentOS or Fedora.
  • kqr 10y ago
    I agree. My impression of RHEL and its likes is that they are "slow and outdated", but the more actual research I do, the more I feel like using them for their stability and security.
    • leojackson 10y ago
      RHEL is the Warren Buffett of Linux: slow, methodical, stable, and in it for the long haul.
    • ams6110 10y ago
      Agree as well. And I'm not sure about the "outdated" characterization. I find the most hardware driver support with RHEL. If a vendor is going to support Linux at all, they almost always start with RHEL and its derivatives. RHEL is the Linux distro for production systems that you want to just run without any tinkering or surprises.
    • loukrazy 10y ago
      It seems to take a few releases longer for new features to move from Fedora to RHEL, but RHEL 7 is pretty current. That stability is great though, you can stay on one version of RHEL for a very long time and still get patch support, especially since major upgrades are so traumatic on most Linux distributions (RHEL included)
  • 10y ago
• hartator 10y ago
  Anyone knows an alliterative to Alfred in Windows or Linux? I really really like the ability to search apps with a few keystrokes and I really really like to be able to search clipboard history with another few keystrokes. Nothing I've found are doing both or one as good as Alfred.
  • weavie 10y ago
    Not sure about searching clipboard history, but just about every Linux window manager has a decent application launcher that can be easily accessed with the keyboard. I haven't tried it, but Albert may be worth a look : https://github.com/ManuelSchneid3r/albert https://github.com/ManuelSchneid3r/albert
  • rcarmo 10y ago
    I use Kupfer on Openbox and LXDE, and it does a lot of what I need (it's more similar to Quicksilver than to Alfred).
  • pacifika 10y ago
    Farr (http://www.donationcoder.com/Software/Mouser/findrun/index.html http://www.donationcoder.com/Software/Mouser/findrun/index.h...) and ArsClip (http://www.joejoesoft.com/vcms/97/ http://www.joejoesoft.com/vcms/97/)
  • zeveb 10y ago
    > I really really like the ability to search apps with a few keystrokes GNOME does this out of the box. It's possible to add this to e.g. StumpWM, i3 or AwesomeWM too. Similar functionality is available in emacs with Helm: search through all callable functions by just typing a few characters. > I really really like to be able to search clipboard history with another few keystrokes Emacs does this, with yank-pop (M-y); Helm turns this into helm-show-kill-ring, which offers extremely convenient searchability. I really can't recommend emacs highly enough: it's everything one could want in an operating environment.
    • keithpeter 10y ago
      dmenu from suckless-tools springs to mind as well, but, as you say the 'hit-windows-key-type-part-of-name-or-function' facility is a native part of Gnome Shell (default DE with Fedora). Whisker-menu for XFCE4 can be bound to windows key (Mod4). In KDE 4.14, you can bind a chord such as Windows-key-space or some other letter to bring up the application launcher.
• meehow 10y ago
  Author mentioned separately Ubuntu add Gnome, but what about Ubuntu Gnome [1]? I switched from Mac OS X to Ubuntu Gnome after release of latest Apple's MacBook "shame" Pro. It took few weeks to find new dev tools, but today I can't complain. Linux is much more mature nowadays than it was ~10 years, ago when I switched to Mac. I'm working more with terminal now and not using Git GUI anymore, but as long as you are not XCode coder, everything is similar, for half of the price. [1] http://ubuntugnome.org/ http://ubuntugnome.org/
• bane 10y ago
  I've used a Mac for work for the past 5 years, I use Windows PCs at home but most of my computing devices are Android. I usually find if I need something specific for production use, it's in some Linux distro, and I'll either SSH into one for work, or fire up a VM with that distro in it and SSH into it. The best dev environment I've been able to conjure up is using WinSCP to act as a bridge to whatever system I'm connecting to, and just using a local great text editor in Windows (Sublime Text, etc.). When you save, WinSCP just seamlessly saves it back to the server. I'll keep a Putty instance permanently ssh'd in and flip to that for console stuff. On OSX I've setup a network mount to the same linux machine/VM with SSHFS and edit with pretty much the same text editors and use iterm2 that's permanently ssh'd into the same machine/VM so the experience is virtually identical (with the exception that SSFHS can be a bit fragile). Most of the other apps I choose are cross platform because I work on a similarly mixed OS team. I think every team should be mixed OS because it forces the teams to choose cross platform tools instead of locking themselves into platform specific choices. I don't dev from my Android devices, but I do push stuff to them frequently, so they all have Servers Ultimate on them and I'll frequently setup ftp servers on them to move files or ssh servers so I can remote in and do some simple maintenance without have to do it on a small screen or fidget with an on screen keyboard. If you aren't doing something really specialized on OS X, I'm not sure I understand what the crisis is except for people building too much of their identity into what device they're carrying around. Apple's hardware is the best, by far, but at $3k a pop, I can buy 4 or 5 perfectly fine and similarly specc'd Windows Laptops, or 6 or 7 better specc'd desktops. If one breaks, just throw it away and buy whatever the newer one is and keep your hardware fresh. If most of what you're doing is looking at a console, or editing in a text editor, it only takes an hour to get a new machine up and functional again anyways. So much drama.
  • deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
• giancarlostoro 10y ago
  I'm currently running the latest release of ElementaryOS which runs off Ubuntu 16.04 it is great. It is very minimalist, and the desktop environment is really well done. Before ElementaryOS I was using ParrotSec OS which is on par with your typical pentesting / hacking type of distros but it comes with the latest and greatest of programming language tools. They're based off of Debian with their own modifications to the kernel to harden it, and out of the box you get TOR features that I never really used, but I'm sure that may interest some. Overall it was a great Distro my only gripe was not being able to properly install and use Steam on it. ElementaryOS has a nice Desktop Environment I appreciate but it either installs or doesn't. Fortunately this laptop took ElementaryOS, where in the past I have had issues installing it. I use ElementaryOS for everything from Python back-end RESTful service development to .NET Core application development with Rider. I'm also considering using SublimeText to save on startup time, although "Scratch" isn't too bad a text editor, it suffers poor naming (try to google for Scratch and you'll find the language before you do the text editor itself).
• nnain 10y ago
  If you're an iOS/Mac developer, there's no alternative. If you want an alternative for graphics work (or other development), try Windows. For other web development, in general, you'll be able to work well with Linux. Keeping work on different machines quickly starts to become unmanageable, that's why MacOS still leads. It gives the best of most options on the best hardware. P.S. - I tried ElementaryOS last month, for couple of hours and didn't find it an alternative in any way. It's UI is quite clunky (of course, since they are trying to copy Macs UX, but don't have the finesse). The eye candy can't make it a Mac alternative in any way; it's still Ubuntu under the hood, and less intuitive than Ubuntu.
  • applecore 10y ago
    Best hardware, really?
    • optimuspaul 10y ago
      best I've used (which isn't saying much)... but really depends on what you mean by best. Not necessarily the best performing specs on the market, but pretty good from off the shelf.
    • untog 10y ago
      IMO, the Apple unibody laptop design is still the best out there. And the (non-latest) keyboard and trackpad have no comparison in Windows laptops.
      • deong 10y ago
        The touchpad is probably as close as possible as being just objectively better on Macs. But the keyboard? I don't even think "Mac keyboards are the best" is a plurality opinion among just Mac users, is it? There's obviously a large heaping of personal taste here, but the MBP I have at work is the worst keyboard I've ever used on a "real computer" (i.e., not some weird hybrid tablet thing or something). And of the Mac people I know or read online, it seems the keyboards of the last couple of years of laptops have been, at best, tolerable.
    • 10y ago
• rileymat2 10y ago
  > Note that I don’t currently consider Windows a viable alternative. For the work that I do (Rails) and tools I use something *nix based is the best choice for me. For a long time, it has been my workflow to almost never develop on the host machine. I find Virtual Machines to be preferable for a lot of reasons. Am I unusual in this regard?
  • ristic 10y ago
    I've recently adopted a similar approach. I have a virtual machine running the same OS and version as the target production machine. I'm using QEMU and connecting to it via ssh.
  • drvdevd 10y ago
    Perhaps you are but you shouldn't be. When I was still using a Mac, this was exactly what I did. The #1 benefit IMO, is being able to create a filesystem and OS isolation/independence layer that let's you easily switch host OSes without too much hassle or thought. One can easily switch from Linux to Windows to MacOS or even migrate their work to the cloud without too much effort.
• sbuk 10y ago
  I'd Love to see someone take on GNUStep are run with it. The constant reinvention of the wheel with FOSS desktops and Window Managers is mind boggling. Too much 'not invented here' syndrome? Sadly the task is way beyond my capabilities. Still one of the best ever... Of course, YMMV!
  • wezm 10y ago
    Yeah it's a shame http://etoileos.com/ http://etoileos.com/ didn't get more momentum.
• fithisux 10y ago
  It is apitty FOSS project like GNU-Darwin / PureDarwin never took off and people use Hackintosh. But Apple is here to blame. They could even support the users by charging some fee.
  • orkoden 10y ago
    Using only Darwin instead of Linux or FreeBSD was never really attractive. Contributing upstream is difficult to impossible, since Apple was never set up to take your contributions. The different Darwin distributions never really developed a direction or a unique feature set. The only feature that sets Darwin apart from FreeBSD is launchd instead of init. The rest is mostly downsides like a weird file system. You can get dtrace on many other OSs today too.
• fithisux 10y ago
  It is apitty FOSS project like GNU-Darwin / PureDarwin never took off and people use Hackintosh. But Apple is here to blame. They could even support the users by charging some fee.
• KangooDude 10y ago
  His only whines are about hardware that is too thin/light and does not have legacy ports and OS that won't work on some junk and don't let you publish hacks in some rarely visited moderated store (just like windows, or linux) And instead of ordering dirty cheap hackintosh with up to 4 CPU Xeons with all memory he can get and compatible wifi, that will be no thin and no light and he can run familiar terminal window to remote build his diamond code while listening to sound of coolers, He starting to search OS with better GUI than OSX (Elementary it is) and dreaming about hardware you can run FreeBSD (like PS/2 mouse and glorious VESA 2.0 12801024?) I expect next article will be a tour to the wonderful world of 15" 1366768 Celeron laptops that let you upgrade memory (up to 8Gb!), spacious replaceable 4200 hard drive and have USB 2.0 ports and VGA in addition to HDMI 1.4. People will know in detail how good terminal window run there on FreeBSD with Elementary OS theme (without 2D acceleration of course). He makes alot of sense, that mate.
• andyhoang 10y ago
  Hi guys, can you suggest me any laptop + os that have trackpad work like apple's (multi guesture, smooth scrolling) I love to leave them but, their trackpad... are so good. I can use *nix quite ok, so os isn't a problem for my dev station.
• LukasMathis 10y ago
  I'm kind of in the same boat, and I'm slowly, gradually, replacing my Macs with both Windows and Linux devices. As somebody with zero investment in earlier Windows versions, I quite loved Windows 8, and found Windows 10 to be a step back from that, but still a good alternative to the Mac. There are also various different Linux systems that make great desktop operating systems. Reading the linked article, I have some observations, particularly about the requirements Wesley lists: > One tool for each job. This strikes me as a somewhat peculiar requirement. The Mac certainly doesn't work that way, particularly since OS X, and as long as the different tools available aren't hurting you, their availability won't be much of a problem. > A sensible/minimal selection of pre-installed applications. To me, a more useful requirement would be "no bloatware". Linux distros in particular often come with a ton of pre-installed applications, but they are generally good applications, and having them does not cause any harm. If you buy a Windows computer, on the other hand, you'll likely find its installed Windows version to be borderline unusable due to all of the preinstalled manure. > Simple, easy to use/understand interface As somebody who has used Macs since the early 90s, I'd argue that ever since Mac OS X, the Mac hasn't really offered that. It's still ahead of most Windows versions (excluding perhaps Windows 8, but clearly including Windows 10, which sadly has reintroduced much of the clutter from earlier Windows versions), but many Linux distros are now much cleaner and simpler than OS X (both Elementary and Pixel come to mind as examples of this). So to some degrees, Wesley is requiring these operating systems to offer things that the Mac hasn't truly offered since the late 90s. This is not entirely unfair; as a Mac user, he's used to the Mac's oddities and flaws, and so it is perhaps useful to require the system he's switching to to be better than Mac OS in some respects. Still, I think it's fair to point out that the Mac itself probably couldn't easily fulfill all of these requirements.
• blainsmith 10y ago
  I've been very happy with https://apricityos.com https://apricityos.com running Cinnamon desktop.
• stuffaandthings 10y ago
  I use Albert on my Arch Linux installation as an alternative to Alfred. Not quite as good, but it works and is familiar (also extensible). If you're looking for clipboard management, there are tons of linux solutions for that, see: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/list_of_applications#Clipboard_managers https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/list_of_applications#Cl... As for an alternative to Karabiner, I use Xmonad and manage my keymapping through the use of Xmodmap (https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/xmodmap https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/xmodmap)