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Might as well right why they are switching from Linux to OS X, Windows or something else. I've been using Ubuntu up until 10.10 (if I'm not mistaken) and then

by konart 10y ago

Might as well right why they are switching from Linux to OS X, Windows or something else. I've been using Ubuntu up until 10.10 (if I'm not mistaken) and then Arch (for about 4 years). In the last two years I've gone from Android+Linux to full Apple. The reasons were: 1) At the time there was no notebook that could compare with MBPr (late 2013 in my case). Yes, you could have find some with the same hardware and even same size\weight, but I haven't hold a single one of them that wouldn't creak. Macbooks are build to be with you all them time. Other companies build them to be compact alternative to your desktop. From what I've seen - nothing really changed since then. 2) Free\opensouce\etc shit. Don't get me wrong - free is good, opensource is awesome, freedom is what all people need. But not the price it comes to your sometimes. Sometime free can be more expensive, opensource can be more binding. One of the reasons to live linux was the number of forks of all the libs and utils in the system. Every now and then some team splits or somebody decides his new chrome and shiny fork is something people need and voila! you have a zoo of this shit. Because the very next day some projects will split because they can't come to agreement about what lib to be using now. This is not a bliss, this is madness. When it comes to my user experience - I don't care what lib does mpv uses and can use, or... whatever. I only care if it does the job as well as before and I don't what all of the said forks in my system, this is a mess. 3) As soon as I got my MBPr I realised I want to try the so called BIG A ECOSYSTEM and bought an iPhone 6 on my birthday (my bd was on the same day the phone came to my country). I was amazed by the level of comfort. Everything works out of the box, the god damn design is always consistent[1], no need to dive into python (or something else) to seamlessly use your phone with your computer. Yes, this comes at a price - without jailbreaking you are tied to your apps, services etc. You can't just upload your music to your phone via usb and some other things, but there are solutions. ONE TIME SOLUTIONS, LINUX!, not one week prior the next update ones.

oliwarner 10y ago
I'm a little bit bemused by your description in #2 as the open source ecosystem as a zoo. It is what you make of it. If you pick brand new shiny things from unproven teams at war with their sourcecode's origin community, you're going to see some churn. You moved from the relative stability of Ubuntu to the constant churn of Arch, which suggests you've missed the point of cadence distributions. Newer is often not automagically better. We've been using and developing with and deploying on Ubuntu for years now. It's not the zoo you describe — though you are free to make it one with poor choices.
- konart 10y ago
  Well, I was prepared to see something like this, unfortunatelly I didn't really had time or desire to write a more detailed response. No, that's not what I made of it, but them I went from Ubuntu to Arch becase they desided they are now the coolers kids in the town and started to introduce shit like Unity and other things. Be the time 10.10 came out - I had to rebuild 1/3 of the system to make it as nice (in my opinion) as it should be and as it was up until they decided to fuck it up (again - just my opinion). Anyway - Arch was the best thing I could find among all other distros. Modular approach, KISS, very easy to install and maintain. The problem (both with Ubuntu and Arch, mind you) comes not with what you described as "new shiny things from unproven teams" or "Newer is often not automagically better.". Here is an example for you. At some point Jim was using program A for audio editing and program B for video editing. A used some libA library and B uses libraries libA and libB (among many others). At some point something happened inside the team of libA and now we have libAa and libAb. They have some differences (obviously). Now the teams of A and B have to decided what library to use. Fighting among them leads to new arguments about functionality and other this and two new forks appear. So now we have programs Aa, Ab, Ba and Bb. Now Jim, as a use of their previous versions had to chose what to use from this moment onwards and sometimes, it happens so that he needs all the functionality that B had, but not it is torn between Ba and Bb. So by the end of the day he has two forks of B installed, one fork of A, two libraries that do the same thing and he is praying nothings starts to get in conflict with the others. And this happens all the time. >We've been using and developing with and deploying on Ubuntu for years now. This makes it sound like you are talking about something that works as a server for services or software you deploy. I'm talking about using linux at home as working\media machine, not as a server. The latter has no such problems (not to this extent at least)
  - oliwarner 10y ago
    I don't think you have the correct measure of me. I use Linux everywhere. I'm a user. A developer. An Ubuntu member. An advocate. I help people for free (Oli on Ask Ubuntu and #Ubuntu) and I also professionally deploy desktops and servers and kiosks and single-purpose boxes, and write software at all levels (kernel to user interface). I sympathise with desktop nomads but all desktop environments (closed and open) are opinionated. You didn't like Ubuntu's. Neither did I; I moved to Kubuntu. Literally a single meta-package swap, no rebuilding necessary. I find it curious that you're allowed an opinion about desktops but the developers who write your software aren't about the software they use. Moreover, in a maintained ecosystem (eg Ubuntu) end users don't really have to worry about build deps. Yeah the confusion between (eg) libav and ffmpeg can really draw on but mostly things just work. apt install this and that and it doesn't matter if that's Aa or Ab. As long as A installs the user is happy. It's the maintainer's problem to keep that going. Even on Arch —where you are exposed to more of this— the community is usually pretty decent at fixing builds. Now as a developer (and maintainer) I get pissed off when my libraries change their deps but that really has nothing to do with my operating system, or even the concept of open source. It is what it is and it's built into my workflow.

by konart 10y ago

oliwarner 10y ago

I'm a little bit bemused by your description in #2 as the open source ecosystem as a zoo. It is what you make of it. If you pick brand new shiny things from unproven teams at war with their sourcecode's origin community, you're going to see some churn. You moved from the relative stability of Ubuntu to the constant churn of Arch, which suggests you've missed the point of cadence distributions. Newer is often not automagically better. We've been using and developing with and deploying on Ubuntu for years now. It's not the zoo you describe — though you are free to make it one with poor choices.

konart 10y ago
Well, I was prepared to see something like this, unfortunatelly I didn't really had time or desire to write a more detailed response. No, that's not what I made of it, but them I went from Ubuntu to Arch becase they desided they are now the coolers kids in the town and started to introduce shit like Unity and other things. Be the time 10.10 came out - I had to rebuild 1/3 of the system to make it as nice (in my opinion) as it should be and as it was up until they decided to fuck it up (again - just my opinion). Anyway - Arch was the best thing I could find among all other distros. Modular approach, KISS, very easy to install and maintain. The problem (both with Ubuntu and Arch, mind you) comes not with what you described as "new shiny things from unproven teams" or "Newer is often not automagically better.". Here is an example for you. At some point Jim was using program A for audio editing and program B for video editing. A used some libA library and B uses libraries libA and libB (among many others). At some point something happened inside the team of libA and now we have libAa and libAb. They have some differences (obviously). Now the teams of A and B have to decided what library to use. Fighting among them leads to new arguments about functionality and other this and two new forks appear. So now we have programs Aa, Ab, Ba and Bb. Now Jim, as a use of their previous versions had to chose what to use from this moment onwards and sometimes, it happens so that he needs all the functionality that B had, but not it is torn between Ba and Bb. So by the end of the day he has two forks of B installed, one fork of A, two libraries that do the same thing and he is praying nothings starts to get in conflict with the others. And this happens all the time. >We've been using and developing with and deploying on Ubuntu for years now. This makes it sound like you are talking about something that works as a server for services or software you deploy. I'm talking about using linux at home as working\media machine, not as a server. The latter has no such problems (not to this extent at least)
- oliwarner 10y ago
  I don't think you have the correct measure of me. I use Linux everywhere. I'm a user. A developer. An Ubuntu member. An advocate. I help people for free (Oli on Ask Ubuntu and #Ubuntu) and I also professionally deploy desktops and servers and kiosks and single-purpose boxes, and write software at all levels (kernel to user interface). I sympathise with desktop nomads but all desktop environments (closed and open) are opinionated. You didn't like Ubuntu's. Neither did I; I moved to Kubuntu. Literally a single meta-package swap, no rebuilding necessary. I find it curious that you're allowed an opinion about desktops but the developers who write your software aren't about the software they use. Moreover, in a maintained ecosystem (eg Ubuntu) end users don't really have to worry about build deps. Yeah the confusion between (eg) libav and ffmpeg can really draw on but mostly things just work. apt install this and that and it doesn't matter if that's Aa or Ab. As long as A installs the user is happy. It's the maintainer's problem to keep that going. Even on Arch —where you are exposed to more of this— the community is usually pretty decent at fixing builds. Now as a developer (and maintainer) I get pissed off when my libraries change their deps but that really has nothing to do with my operating system, or even the concept of open source. It is what it is and it's built into my workflow.