4 ms·

I really want to switch away from Mac, but there doesn't seem to be anything that fits in the intersection of "easy to use UNIX GUI" and "well built hardware."

by fnbr 9y ago

I really want to switch away from Mac, but there doesn't seem to be anything that fits in the intersection of "easy to use UNIX GUI" and "well built hardware." With the new Windows Ubuntu subsystem, I've been really tempted to get a Surface. Also, I'd be interested to see how this changes when we look at businesses. Windows has thrived historically by being the default for the enterprise, and I doubt that Mac has the same level of penetration there.

rockostrich 9y ago
I won a Surface Pro 3 a few years ago and used it as a lightweight dev machine/school laptop. It was really nice for those tasks, but I had plenty of issues with it that I solved by buying a used Macbook Air. Most of the issues were just personal preference (I didn't like the stand, the keyboard was annoying compared to a builtin keyboard, weird screen aspect ratio, Windows).
jseliger 9y ago
I really want to switch away from Mac, but there doesn't seem to be anything that fits in the intersection of "easy to use UNIX GUI" and "well built hardware." Dell XPS DE? https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2017/01/dells-latest-xps-13-de-still-delivers-linux-now-embraces-svelte-hardware/ https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2017/01/dells-latest-xps-13-... Or Purism? https://puri.sm/products/ https://puri.sm/products/
- KitDuncan 9y ago
  Yes XPS 13 + Solus for an easy to use UNIX GUI. I kid you not, I got compliments by hardcore Mac users, for how nice my setup feels.
- fnbr 9y ago
  Those look great! I'll have to check them out.
- sliken 9y ago
  Be warned Dell skimped out on the $20 Iris GPU upgrade so this generation has half the performance of the previous generation.
api 9y ago
I feel a little like you, but the thing that keeps me away from Windows is the insane privacy nightmare it's become. Every single MS product is now studded with telemetry that spews data about everything you do and probably leaks a lot of unintentional information and meta-data. Using a Windows box feels like having a shadow VNC server installed where MS can just watch you. MacOS has telemetry too but it's much more limited and honestly I trust Apple's security more than Microsoft's. Mac telemetry can also be disabled relatively easily and as near as I can tell without much consequence outside iCloud stuff. On Windows as near as I can tell turning this stuff off is pulling teeth. For those who follow the "but I have nothing to hide" line -- just replace privacy with security. Leaking that much data is also a security nightmare. My company is pretty high on the paranoia scale due to what we do, so we worry about that. So that adds a pragmatic professional reason along with the personal ones. No I do not want to spray fragments of secret keys, passwords, network I/O info, and confidential company info into the Microsoft cloud. Of course I hear rumors out of Apple that they're experimenting with ARM Macs that are app store only. I could care less if they swap X64 for ARM as long as it's an ARM64 core that performs well enough, but if they also turn MacOS into iOS with a big screen I will be forced to switch. Note that these rumors are unsubstantiated and refer to test hardware. It's entirely possible that internal test hardware and test OS images are locked to an internal app store but that the final product will be different. They might do this just for trade secret security-- every app could have embedded stuff to try to catch leakers etc.
- Karunamon 9y ago
  I know the telemetry!! thing is a bit overplayed nowadays, hence the greyness of your comment, but it's still spot on. The fact that Microsoft won't give people an off setting (not reduced, not minimal, OFF - stop talking to the mothership entirely) speaks volumes. Given the fact that it's all a black box, you're taking on pure faith that it only collects what Microsoft says it collects (and that those assurances remain valid after every single update). I'm not sure I trust Microsoft that much. And I mean that in the general sense of not giving ultimate trust to any amoral corporate entity with a poor history.
  - api 9y ago
sparkling 9y ago
> With the new Windows Ubuntu subsystem, I've been really tempted to get a Surface. In my experience, it is far, far away from substituting the UNIX experience you get from macOS/Linux/*BSD
- helthanatos 9y ago
  Because it doesn't come with an Xserver and getting one on is just evil. I find Ubuntu and windows much easier to use than Mac...
  - mitchty 9y ago
    Err, xquartz is an install away for OS X? Not sure what you're referring to with X on OS X here. How is running a package install evil?
- jstarks 9y ago
  I work on WSL, so I'd love to hear what some of the limitations are that are holding it back from being as good as the experience elsewhere.
  - jaxn 9y ago
    I use WSL all day every day. There are two things holding it back from being a better *nix experience than OSX: 1) the terminal sucks. 2) WSL should be a service. Or at least we should be able to choose to have it always-on regardless of a terminal being open. We need to be able to have WSL start at boot. (Now wondering if anyone has made some sort of WSL System Tray app)
    - teilo 9y ago
      Mac user here, but in Windows all day on Parallels and servers. For #1, this is a tremendous help: https://conemu.github.io https://conemu.github.io It's the first thing I install on Windows. Comes with build-in profiles for bash/WSL, powershell, cmd, and Admin sessions of the latter two. Still not as good as iTerm or stock Terminal, but a massive improvement over cmd.exe. #2: Totally agree, but I think things are moving this direction.
busterarm 9y ago
I've gone the Lenovo X + OpenBSD route.
slantyyz 9y ago
>> I really want to switch away from Mac, but there doesn't seem to be anything that fits in the intersection of "easy to use UNIX GUI" and "well built hardware. Perhaps you should explain why you want to switch away from Mac, since MacOS is probably that best platform that satisfies both of your criteria. It sounds like there are some deeper reasons for switching. Speaking for myself, I switched away from Macs to Windows a few years ago because I saw a very expensive "soldered-on-everything" future with the Macbook Pros (damn, I loved the expandability of the old Unibodies) and a very bad customer service experience with a product (early 2011 15" MBP) that should have been recalled before mine turned into a brick (they didn't publicly address the issue until months after I was forced to get a new laptop). If I didn't have the well-known problem with 2011 MBPs, I probably would have sucked up the price premium and bought a new MBP in spite of how expensive it is to max out an MBP.
- fnbr 9y ago
  Reasons: 1) Difficult to get NVIDIA GPUs running on Mac (you can use an eGPU, but it sucks). 2) Expandability & performance. It sucks getting gouged for storage. 3) Cost. Macs have always been more expensive, but they seem to have got way more expensive. 1 is most of it. I do machine learning as part of my job, and it's frustrating not being able to run anything locally.
peatmoss 9y ago
I went the desktop route. I feel that, for many people, laptops simply encourage bad work habits. It's like the idea that you shouldn't read in bed, because doing so habituates you to not sleeping there. Sure, some people genuinely need a portable. But... for many people desktops do some nice things: - Great price / performance - Great Linux/BSD compatibility - Improved ergonomics - A station at which one can habituate him/herself to working :-) - Greatly improved attention at meetings if in-person meetings are a thing (modulo note-taking, which I prefer to do sparsely and on paper anyway).
- api 9y ago
  I know a few people who have re-desktopped. Their new stack seems to be Linux desktop + Android phone, which is getting perilously close to Linux everywhere. The main reasons seem to be your first three. If you haven't looked recently take a look at what you can get for your $$$ in the desktop world. You can build insane performance beasts for the cost of a good laptop. I mean ludicrously fast and huge-- things like stripe+mirror RAID SSDs right on the PCI bus, 16+ 3ghz+ cores, a GPU-based parallel supercomputer, and loads of RAM. It's tempting and would be doubly so if I were doing deep learning or anything similarly demanding. The Galaxy S8 also has a dock that snaps Android into desktop mode. I've seen it and it's definitely a usable base desktop, but in the above scenario it works great as a full screen remote access terminal for your big beefy desktop. The gear (sans monitor) will fit into a backpack. I feel like we're on the verge of something.

by fnbr 9y ago

rockostrich 9y ago

I won a Surface Pro 3 a few years ago and used it as a lightweight dev machine/school laptop. It was really nice for those tasks, but I had plenty of issues with it that I solved by buying a used Macbook Air. Most of the issues were just personal preference (I didn't like the stand, the keyboard was annoying compared to a builtin keyboard, weird screen aspect ratio, Windows).

jseliger 9y ago

I really want to switch away from Mac, but there doesn't seem to be anything that fits in the intersection of "easy to use UNIX GUI" and "well built hardware." Dell XPS DE? https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2017/01/dells-latest-xps-13-de-still-delivers-linux-now-embraces-svelte-hardware/ https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2017/01/dells-latest-xps-13-... Or Purism? https://puri.sm/products/ https://puri.sm/products/

KitDuncan 9y ago
Yes XPS 13 + Solus for an easy to use UNIX GUI. I kid you not, I got compliments by hardcore Mac users, for how nice my setup feels.
fnbr 9y ago
Those look great! I'll have to check them out.
sliken 9y ago
Be warned Dell skimped out on the $20 Iris GPU upgrade so this generation has half the performance of the previous generation.

api 9y ago

I feel a little like you, but the thing that keeps me away from Windows is the insane privacy nightmare it's become. Every single MS product is now studded with telemetry that spews data about everything you do and probably leaks a lot of unintentional information and meta-data. Using a Windows box feels like having a shadow VNC server installed where MS can just watch you. MacOS has telemetry too but it's much more limited and honestly I trust Apple's security more than Microsoft's. Mac telemetry can also be disabled relatively easily and as near as I can tell without much consequence outside iCloud stuff. On Windows as near as I can tell turning this stuff off is pulling teeth. For those who follow the "but I have nothing to hide" line -- just replace privacy with security. Leaking that much data is also a security nightmare. My company is pretty high on the paranoia scale due to what we do, so we worry about that. So that adds a pragmatic professional reason along with the personal ones. No I do not want to spray fragments of secret keys, passwords, network I/O info, and confidential company info into the Microsoft cloud. Of course I hear rumors out of Apple that they're experimenting with ARM Macs that are app store only. I could care less if they swap X64 for ARM as long as it's an ARM64 core that performs well enough, but if they also turn MacOS into iOS with a big screen I will be forced to switch. Note that these rumors are unsubstantiated and refer to test hardware. It's entirely possible that internal test hardware and test OS images are locked to an internal app store but that the final product will be different. They might do this just for trade secret security-- every app could have embedded stuff to try to catch leakers etc.

Karunamon 9y ago
I know the telemetry!! thing is a bit overplayed nowadays, hence the greyness of your comment, but it's still spot on. The fact that Microsoft won't give people an off setting (not reduced, not minimal, OFF - stop talking to the mothership entirely) speaks volumes. Given the fact that it's all a black box, you're taking on pure faith that it only collects what Microsoft says it collects (and that those assurances remain valid after every single update). I'm not sure I trust Microsoft that much. And I mean that in the general sense of not giving ultimate trust to any amoral corporate entity with a poor history.
- api 9y ago

sparkling 9y ago

> With the new Windows Ubuntu subsystem, I've been really tempted to get a Surface. In my experience, it is far, far away from substituting the UNIX experience you get from macOS/Linux/*BSD

helthanatos 9y ago
Because it doesn't come with an Xserver and getting one on is just evil. I find Ubuntu and windows much easier to use than Mac...
- mitchty 9y ago
  Err, xquartz is an install away for OS X? Not sure what you're referring to with X on OS X here. How is running a package install evil?
jstarks 9y ago
I work on WSL, so I'd love to hear what some of the limitations are that are holding it back from being as good as the experience elsewhere.
- jaxn 9y ago
  I use WSL all day every day. There are two things holding it back from being a better *nix experience than OSX: 1) the terminal sucks. 2) WSL should be a service. Or at least we should be able to choose to have it always-on regardless of a terminal being open. We need to be able to have WSL start at boot. (Now wondering if anyone has made some sort of WSL System Tray app)
  - teilo 9y ago
    Mac user here, but in Windows all day on Parallels and servers. For #1, this is a tremendous help: https://conemu.github.io https://conemu.github.io It's the first thing I install on Windows. Comes with build-in profiles for bash/WSL, powershell, cmd, and Admin sessions of the latter two. Still not as good as iTerm or stock Terminal, but a massive improvement over cmd.exe. #2: Totally agree, but I think things are moving this direction.

busterarm 9y ago

I've gone the Lenovo X + OpenBSD route.

slantyyz 9y ago

>> I really want to switch away from Mac, but there doesn't seem to be anything that fits in the intersection of "easy to use UNIX GUI" and "well built hardware. Perhaps you should explain why you want to switch away from Mac, since MacOS is probably that best platform that satisfies both of your criteria. It sounds like there are some deeper reasons for switching. Speaking for myself, I switched away from Macs to Windows a few years ago because I saw a very expensive "soldered-on-everything" future with the Macbook Pros (damn, I loved the expandability of the old Unibodies) and a very bad customer service experience with a product (early 2011 15" MBP) that should have been recalled before mine turned into a brick (they didn't publicly address the issue until months after I was forced to get a new laptop). If I didn't have the well-known problem with 2011 MBPs, I probably would have sucked up the price premium and bought a new MBP in spite of how expensive it is to max out an MBP.

fnbr 9y ago
Reasons: 1) Difficult to get NVIDIA GPUs running on Mac (you can use an eGPU, but it sucks). 2) Expandability & performance. It sucks getting gouged for storage. 3) Cost. Macs have always been more expensive, but they seem to have got way more expensive. 1 is most of it. I do machine learning as part of my job, and it's frustrating not being able to run anything locally.

peatmoss 9y ago

I went the desktop route. I feel that, for many people, laptops simply encourage bad work habits. It's like the idea that you shouldn't read in bed, because doing so habituates you to not sleeping there. Sure, some people genuinely need a portable. But... for many people desktops do some nice things: - Great price / performance - Great Linux/BSD compatibility - Improved ergonomics - A station at which one can habituate him/herself to working :-) - Greatly improved attention at meetings if in-person meetings are a thing (modulo note-taking, which I prefer to do sparsely and on paper anyway).

api 9y ago
I know a few people who have re-desktopped. Their new stack seems to be Linux desktop + Android phone, which is getting perilously close to Linux everywhere. The main reasons seem to be your first three. If you haven't looked recently take a look at what you can get for your $$$ in the desktop world. You can build insane performance beasts for the cost of a good laptop. I mean ludicrously fast and huge-- things like stripe+mirror RAID SSDs right on the PCI bus, 16+ 3ghz+ cores, a GPU-based parallel supercomputer, and loads of RAM. It's tempting and would be doubly so if I were doing deep learning or anything similarly demanding. The Galaxy S8 also has a dock that snaps Android into desktop mode. I've seen it and it's definitely a usable base desktop, but in the above scenario it works great as a full screen remote access terminal for your big beefy desktop. The gear (sans monitor) will fit into a backpack. I feel like we're on the verge of something.