5 ms·

Personal opinion coming ... To this date I really don't think there's a polished GUI/WM that can compete with OSX. The app ecosystem is vast but spotty. Even

by nkozyra 10y ago

Personal opinion coming ... To this date I really don't think there's a polished GUI/WM that can compete with OSX. The app ecosystem is vast but spotty. Even CLI work feels clunkier in any of the desktop distros. Is it better than 5 years ago? Maybe a bit. I just think with this huge community there'd be something as attractive and natural as OSX or Win10. And that's ignoring the hardware aspect altogether. Yes, you can buy some very solid machines now, but every review I read about Mac-killer laptop hardware ends with a bunch of things that just don't work as well as a MBP.

tkubacki 10y ago
Always wondered how on earth anyone can be pleased with Finder. Compared to Nautilus it's just crap. Just opinion.
- bantunes 10y ago
  At least Finder doesn't crash with large sets of copy/paste file orders. It's really frustrating (GNOME 3.22).
  - raverbashing 10y ago
    Oh Gnome components failing at mildly not-common edge cases (note that I don't mean rare, I mean not common)? Color me surprised
- holydude 10y ago
  in my humble opinion finder is perfect for "your daily needs". For everything else there's a substitute or cmdline/emacs
John23832 10y ago
> To this date I really don't think there's a polished GUI/WM that can compete with OSX. Elementary Os is probably the closest, imo. > And that's ignoring the hardware aspect altogether. Yes, you can buy some very solid machines now, but every review I read about Mac-killer laptop hardware ends with a bunch of things that just don't work as well as a MBP. I think the ideal linux setup would be a slightly older MPB with a good distro running on it. Prob Ubuntu for compatibility.
base698 10y ago
I find it strange that you think the CLI is clunky on Linux. Up until recently Mac shipped with an 3.x version of Bash. To star it had a version of sed that was in effect broken in several use cases. Mac also lacks the system profile capabilities of Linux such as perf and the new BPF tools. Most of the tools like top, netstat, strace, and vmstat aren't as up to date on Mac either.
- matwood 10y ago
  Ships with sure, but iTerm2 and brew install bash/vim/etc... fix those issues.
- marios 10y ago
  Mac doesn't have perf, but it has DTrace. They added it in OS X 10.5 which was released 9 years ago. Regarding the other tools you mention, keep in mind they are system tools. You cannot simply take the source of Linux netstat, compile it on your mac and call it a day. The data displayed by these tools is obtained from the kernel and different kernels have different interfaces (for instance, OpenBSD doesn't have /proc which is where Linux netstat gets information).
  - base698 10y ago
    Dtrace is nice but everything seems trending away from it. I know you can't just compile and call it a day... Kind of what I was getting at :)
edtechdev 10y ago
I remember using OS X in the early years of its existence, and it was non-stop spinning beach ball of death. I switched to Windows for a while and then Ubuntu in 2006 which I still use. Everytime over the past 10 years that I try out a new Mac laptop or even desktop, the spinning beach ball still happens, even just clicking on a text field, despite faster processors, more RAM, SSD, etc. I see it in Windows 7 & 10, too, but basically never in Linux.
- arghIdontwantto 10y ago
  I have no clue what you are doing, but I have never seen this happen by just clicking a textfield (Mac user since 2005). I have my gripes with Apple, but to say everytime over the last 10 years, just clicking a textfield you get the beachball makes me doubt you. That or you are the unluckiest person I know that always touches a broken mac.
  - meric 10y ago
    I have seen it happen with new macs. Sometimes spotlight indexing is running and it slows down. But it goes away after a day of use for me.
    - arghIdontwantto 10y ago
      Fair enough... but still weird I never saw it (and I end up reinstalling my system quite regularly) with the more than 8 mac machines I've own in the last few years (plus a couple from the wife)
problems 10y ago
Coming from someone who's used Windows and Linux for years, but bought a Macbook a few years back when they were the only ones offering high DPI displays - personally I found the OSX UI really clunky - confusing file manager which seems to prefer keeping icons in the same physical place even if they overlap others, weird buried menuing system. I can't even figure out how to properly maximize a window, I find myself pressing every different combination of shift+click, ctrl+click, cmd+click, etc. It's very confusing and annoying for someone who's never used it before. I couldn't even figure out how to shutdown via the GUI for the first few months of using the system and would always open a terminal and run a shutdown command until a friend caught me doing it and told me how. So - in my experience, any decent desktop environment feels a lot better than OSX. Be it Unity, KDE or Windows. CLI is much better on Linux or FreeBSD than OSX, simply look to the clunky hack package management systems used on OSX. Maybe I'm past the point now where learning is easy for me, or maybe I just wasn't interested in learning OSX that much. But with all the "oh the GUI is so amazing" reviews I sort of assumed it would Just Work. Eventually I just gave up, I had to get off it - the GUI was too annoying on OSX to use on a daily basis and I found myself always running my Bootcamp'd Windows. Last week I blew OSX away and replaced it with Ubuntu, it took a bit of hoop jumping to get all the hardware happy, but it works now and I'm never buying Apple again. As for better hardware - I'm probably buying Dell next time, they ship 4k displays now, better resolution than Apple and have better Linux support. Also, cheap accidental warranty and a better GPU at a lower price.
- rz2k 10y ago
  How was MacOS's shutdown confusing? That sounds a little more like the version of Windows where it was intentionally hidden.
  - problems 10y ago
    I assumed it would be under the user button where logout was, similar to Ubuntu I suppose. Ubuntu has this clever little gear combined with a power button to represent shutdown and setting very clearly visible on the desktop. And I knew the unix way, so I just went with it when it wasn't where I first thought. I didn't even realize you could click the Apple logo until after that happened I don't think, I had assumed it was just an application icon. Seems dumb now, but it was out of the way enough that I didn't think about even trying it.
nottorp 10y ago
This is why I moved from Linux to OS X. However, dear Apple are getting me concerned about their future because: 1. The main innovation in the newest MBPros is... an Emoji keyboard accessory? Okay, that might actually be useful but: 2. Worse, said newest laptops have battery issues to which Apple responds by removing the battery ETA indicator? That was actually useful since I knew how much battery life I could rely on while doing the same task. 3. Since 2013, they don't have a desktop for desktop (not web) developers any more. Minis are too underpowered, iMacs are noisy under load and who knows how long they will last when kept heated the whole time, the Mac Pro is a video editing machine and little else. Right now I'm doing fine with a MBPro and a hackintosh, but if they keep making dubious decisions about the laptops and not offering a developer's desktop, I'll have to consider Linux again.
- timemachiner 10y ago
  I may be the only developer on HN that doesn't have this issue or on the entire internet for that matter, but I have no issues with battery life on my tMBP 15". I do all day development in eclipse and have music playing in the background. I think the battery life issues are overblown based on the few other devs around me that also use the new tMBP but I haven't personally asked them how long theirs last, just see they keep theirs unplugged for long periods of time too.
  - nottorp 10y ago
    It's not the issue's existence that's my cause for concern, it's Apple's reaction to it. They've always had some process that went runaway and ate most of the CPU for no reason. Just the name of the process changed across hardware and software versions. The problem is, now they're removing an useful indicator to swipe the current problem (and I'm sure a large amount of people do have it) under the rug. It's this decision that worries me, not that they botched something on this laptop generation.
    - timemachiner 10y ago
      You can still view estimated battery life in Activity Monitor.

by nkozyra 10y ago

tkubacki 10y ago

Always wondered how on earth anyone can be pleased with Finder. Compared to Nautilus it's just crap. Just opinion.

bantunes 10y ago
At least Finder doesn't crash with large sets of copy/paste file orders. It's really frustrating (GNOME 3.22).
- raverbashing 10y ago
  Oh Gnome components failing at mildly not-common edge cases (note that I don't mean rare, I mean not common)? Color me surprised
holydude 10y ago
in my humble opinion finder is perfect for "your daily needs". For everything else there's a substitute or cmdline/emacs

John23832 10y ago

> To this date I really don't think there's a polished GUI/WM that can compete with OSX. Elementary Os is probably the closest, imo. > And that's ignoring the hardware aspect altogether. Yes, you can buy some very solid machines now, but every review I read about Mac-killer laptop hardware ends with a bunch of things that just don't work as well as a MBP. I think the ideal linux setup would be a slightly older MPB with a good distro running on it. Prob Ubuntu for compatibility.

base698 10y ago

I find it strange that you think the CLI is clunky on Linux. Up until recently Mac shipped with an 3.x version of Bash. To star it had a version of sed that was in effect broken in several use cases. Mac also lacks the system profile capabilities of Linux such as perf and the new BPF tools. Most of the tools like top, netstat, strace, and vmstat aren't as up to date on Mac either.

matwood 10y ago
Ships with sure, but iTerm2 and brew install bash/vim/etc... fix those issues.
marios 10y ago
Mac doesn't have perf, but it has DTrace. They added it in OS X 10.5 which was released 9 years ago. Regarding the other tools you mention, keep in mind they are system tools. You cannot simply take the source of Linux netstat, compile it on your mac and call it a day. The data displayed by these tools is obtained from the kernel and different kernels have different interfaces (for instance, OpenBSD doesn't have /proc which is where Linux netstat gets information).
- base698 10y ago
  Dtrace is nice but everything seems trending away from it. I know you can't just compile and call it a day... Kind of what I was getting at :)

edtechdev 10y ago

I remember using OS X in the early years of its existence, and it was non-stop spinning beach ball of death. I switched to Windows for a while and then Ubuntu in 2006 which I still use. Everytime over the past 10 years that I try out a new Mac laptop or even desktop, the spinning beach ball still happens, even just clicking on a text field, despite faster processors, more RAM, SSD, etc. I see it in Windows 7 & 10, too, but basically never in Linux.

arghIdontwantto 10y ago
I have no clue what you are doing, but I have never seen this happen by just clicking a textfield (Mac user since 2005). I have my gripes with Apple, but to say everytime over the last 10 years, just clicking a textfield you get the beachball makes me doubt you. That or you are the unluckiest person I know that always touches a broken mac.
- meric 10y ago
  I have seen it happen with new macs. Sometimes spotlight indexing is running and it slows down. But it goes away after a day of use for me.
  - arghIdontwantto 10y ago
    Fair enough... but still weird I never saw it (and I end up reinstalling my system quite regularly) with the more than 8 mac machines I've own in the last few years (plus a couple from the wife)

problems 10y ago

Coming from someone who's used Windows and Linux for years, but bought a Macbook a few years back when they were the only ones offering high DPI displays - personally I found the OSX UI really clunky - confusing file manager which seems to prefer keeping icons in the same physical place even if they overlap others, weird buried menuing system. I can't even figure out how to properly maximize a window, I find myself pressing every different combination of shift+click, ctrl+click, cmd+click, etc. It's very confusing and annoying for someone who's never used it before. I couldn't even figure out how to shutdown via the GUI for the first few months of using the system and would always open a terminal and run a shutdown command until a friend caught me doing it and told me how. So - in my experience, any decent desktop environment feels a lot better than OSX. Be it Unity, KDE or Windows. CLI is much better on Linux or FreeBSD than OSX, simply look to the clunky hack package management systems used on OSX. Maybe I'm past the point now where learning is easy for me, or maybe I just wasn't interested in learning OSX that much. But with all the "oh the GUI is so amazing" reviews I sort of assumed it would Just Work. Eventually I just gave up, I had to get off it - the GUI was too annoying on OSX to use on a daily basis and I found myself always running my Bootcamp'd Windows. Last week I blew OSX away and replaced it with Ubuntu, it took a bit of hoop jumping to get all the hardware happy, but it works now and I'm never buying Apple again. As for better hardware - I'm probably buying Dell next time, they ship 4k displays now, better resolution than Apple and have better Linux support. Also, cheap accidental warranty and a better GPU at a lower price.

rz2k 10y ago
How was MacOS's shutdown confusing? That sounds a little more like the version of Windows where it was intentionally hidden.
- problems 10y ago
  I assumed it would be under the user button where logout was, similar to Ubuntu I suppose. Ubuntu has this clever little gear combined with a power button to represent shutdown and setting very clearly visible on the desktop. And I knew the unix way, so I just went with it when it wasn't where I first thought. I didn't even realize you could click the Apple logo until after that happened I don't think, I had assumed it was just an application icon. Seems dumb now, but it was out of the way enough that I didn't think about even trying it.

nottorp 10y ago

This is why I moved from Linux to OS X. However, dear Apple are getting me concerned about their future because: 1. The main innovation in the newest MBPros is... an Emoji keyboard accessory? Okay, that might actually be useful but: 2. Worse, said newest laptops have battery issues to which Apple responds by removing the battery ETA indicator? That was actually useful since I knew how much battery life I could rely on while doing the same task. 3. Since 2013, they don't have a desktop for desktop (not web) developers any more. Minis are too underpowered, iMacs are noisy under load and who knows how long they will last when kept heated the whole time, the Mac Pro is a video editing machine and little else. Right now I'm doing fine with a MBPro and a hackintosh, but if they keep making dubious decisions about the laptops and not offering a developer's desktop, I'll have to consider Linux again.

timemachiner 10y ago
I may be the only developer on HN that doesn't have this issue or on the entire internet for that matter, but I have no issues with battery life on my tMBP 15". I do all day development in eclipse and have music playing in the background. I think the battery life issues are overblown based on the few other devs around me that also use the new tMBP but I haven't personally asked them how long theirs last, just see they keep theirs unplugged for long periods of time too.
- nottorp 10y ago
  It's not the issue's existence that's my cause for concern, it's Apple's reaction to it. They've always had some process that went runaway and ate most of the CPU for no reason. Just the name of the process changed across hardware and software versions. The problem is, now they're removing an useful indicator to swipe the current problem (and I'm sure a large amount of people do have it) under the rug. It's this decision that worries me, not that they botched something on this laptop generation.
  - timemachiner 10y ago
    You can still view estimated battery life in Activity Monitor.