3 ms·

Allow me to add: If you own a Mac now, please do yourself and every happy linux user a favor and stay there… Reading the never ending torrent of “linux is not a

Allow me to add: If you own a Mac now, please do yourself and every happy linux user a favor and stay there… Reading the never ending torrent of “linux is not as great as MacOS and no hardware is as great as a Mac” gets really, really tiresome… Different folks, different tools… If you are/were attracted to a Mac, you would probably never be happy with a linux box… For myself it was the other way around (years, and years ago), bought a Mac, hated it furiously, fire-sold it a few months later (a top of the line last-gen PowerMac G4, when it came out)… Having to use the bloody trackpad is so bad ergonomics (when used to the TrackPoint), way to closed-off and “magic” OS, no reasonable good free software (at the time). Same as reading a review of a Landrover from a guy that has been driving sportscars all his life.. “Not low enough”, “bulky”, “boring sound”…. (copy paste from my comment on the article)

pavel_lishin 9y ago
Seconding this, based on my own limited experience of running Linux at home. It's just a desktop with Ubuntu, but I've had all sorts of weird, one-off problems with it that cause me headaches. I would hate to have to deal with this on a day-to-day basis on my primary machine - so I choose not to. Mac, despite slipping software quality, still mostly Just Works without having to google a dozen forums with half-answers.
- svennek 9y ago
  > Mac, despite slipping software quality, still mostly Just Works without having to google a dozen forums with half-answers. Which people like me find to be the fun part :)
  - pavel_lishin 9y ago
    I completely understand the fun in solving a puzzle, but for my day-to-day machine I want something reliable - puzzles are great for the weekend. It's the difference between having a Honda Accord for a daily driver, and a 19600-something-or-other as a fun fix-up project in the garage. (Sorry, I'm not a car guy, that analogy went off track very rapidly.)
    - svennek 9y ago
      It is more like having a simple tool that works reasonable well with minimal training (for example a shovel) vs. having a highly customized tool that requires quite some learning and "tweaking" (like having a hydraulic motorized digger)... And after you have learned enough, the latter is as reliable (if not vastly more) that the former.. I haven't had a single day for the last half-decade, where my linux box let me down...
Jeremy1026 9y ago
I'm an avid macOS user. I was given a Windows machine for work. I lasted a week before installing Ubuntu on it, then another week before I stopped dual booting and started to run Ubuntu as the sole OS. While I still prefer macOS, Ubuntu has been, dare I say, enjoyable to use from 9-5. I'm running it on a discontinued model of a Lenovo Laptop with a 1080p screen. Which is a downgrade compared to the retina display of my MBP at home. I think one advantage that I've come across with using Ubuntu is that while everything may not "just work" to the same extent as it does with macOS, it isn't very difficult to find the solution or the right setting to tweak. The only thing I miss is iCloud. I miss having my documents synced across my machines (used to have a Mac at my previous job). So that if I needed a document at home I could just move it to the desktop and it'd show up at home or vice versa. And the iCloud keychain. In the past month I've reset so many passwords with since I've been using iCloud keychain for a few years now, I don't actually know any of my passwords anymore. I did have an oddity where my Bluetooth stopped working, so I upgraded to Ubuntu 17.04 from 16.04. During this process the driver (I guess?) got deleted for the keyboard and trackpad. I could use them in recovery mode, but not when booting into the OS directly. So I ended up having to do a clean wipe and reinstall. It took me about 2 hours to have everything back up and running including all my tools.
morganvachon 9y ago
I'm at home on a Mac, but I also love to explore alternative OSes in general, so I'm comfortable with most Linux based OSes out there. My advice to someone truly wishing to leave Macs and/or macOS behind is to try out Elementary OS. It will be a familiar visual and contextual experience and is widely compatible with commodity hardware. The terminal is tweaked for speed and ease of use, the native apps behave themselves and follow Elementary's strict (for Linux) HIG, and it's one of the most beautiful OOTB distros out there (that's purely subjective but it comes from someone who loves the macOS GUI). Before selling your Mac though, give eOS (or whichever Linux you're looking at) a go in VMWare Player or VirtualBox. Make sure it's a good fit, and please, please, buy decent hardware that is Linux-friendly once it's time to switch. You can even avoid hardware fumbles by installing Elementary on your Mac and keep the hardware you know and love.

pavel_lishin 9y ago

Seconding this, based on my own limited experience of running Linux at home. It's just a desktop with Ubuntu, but I've had all sorts of weird, one-off problems with it that cause me headaches. I would hate to have to deal with this on a day-to-day basis on my primary machine - so I choose not to. Mac, despite slipping software quality, still mostly Just Works without having to google a dozen forums with half-answers.

svennek 9y ago
> Mac, despite slipping software quality, still mostly Just Works without having to google a dozen forums with half-answers. Which people like me find to be the fun part :)
- pavel_lishin 9y ago
  I completely understand the fun in solving a puzzle, but for my day-to-day machine I want something reliable - puzzles are great for the weekend. It's the difference between having a Honda Accord for a daily driver, and a 19600-something-or-other as a fun fix-up project in the garage. (Sorry, I'm not a car guy, that analogy went off track very rapidly.)
  - svennek 9y ago
    It is more like having a simple tool that works reasonable well with minimal training (for example a shovel) vs. having a highly customized tool that requires quite some learning and "tweaking" (like having a hydraulic motorized digger)... And after you have learned enough, the latter is as reliable (if not vastly more) that the former.. I haven't had a single day for the last half-decade, where my linux box let me down...

Jeremy1026 9y ago

I'm an avid macOS user. I was given a Windows machine for work. I lasted a week before installing Ubuntu on it, then another week before I stopped dual booting and started to run Ubuntu as the sole OS. While I still prefer macOS, Ubuntu has been, dare I say, enjoyable to use from 9-5. I'm running it on a discontinued model of a Lenovo Laptop with a 1080p screen. Which is a downgrade compared to the retina display of my MBP at home. I think one advantage that I've come across with using Ubuntu is that while everything may not "just work" to the same extent as it does with macOS, it isn't very difficult to find the solution or the right setting to tweak. The only thing I miss is iCloud. I miss having my documents synced across my machines (used to have a Mac at my previous job). So that if I needed a document at home I could just move it to the desktop and it'd show up at home or vice versa. And the iCloud keychain. In the past month I've reset so many passwords with since I've been using iCloud keychain for a few years now, I don't actually know any of my passwords anymore. I did have an oddity where my Bluetooth stopped working, so I upgraded to Ubuntu 17.04 from 16.04. During this process the driver (I guess?) got deleted for the keyboard and trackpad. I could use them in recovery mode, but not when booting into the OS directly. So I ended up having to do a clean wipe and reinstall. It took me about 2 hours to have everything back up and running including all my tools.

morganvachon 9y ago

I'm at home on a Mac, but I also love to explore alternative OSes in general, so I'm comfortable with most Linux based OSes out there. My advice to someone truly wishing to leave Macs and/or macOS behind is to try out Elementary OS. It will be a familiar visual and contextual experience and is widely compatible with commodity hardware. The terminal is tweaked for speed and ease of use, the native apps behave themselves and follow Elementary's strict (for Linux) HIG, and it's one of the most beautiful OOTB distros out there (that's purely subjective but it comes from someone who loves the macOS GUI). Before selling your Mac though, give eOS (or whichever Linux you're looking at) a go in VMWare Player or VirtualBox. Make sure it's a good fit, and please, please, buy decent hardware that is Linux-friendly once it's time to switch. You can even avoid hardware fumbles by installing Elementary on your Mac and keep the hardware you know and love.