4 ms·

People move around, and that's fine. After two decades of mostly using Linux, I just made a leap of faith into the walled garden of Apple, replacing pretty much

by vesak 9y ago

People move around, and that's fine. After two decades of mostly using Linux, I just made a leap of faith into the walled garden of Apple, replacing pretty much every Linux and Windows box with either nothing (the best choice!) or a Mac. It's just a month in, but I'm quite happy. Everything works and everything is pretty. I can concentrate on important things, and of course on social media shilling.

1_player 9y ago
I've done the same 2 years ago, after being Linux-only for two decades. Sure, macOS has its flaws. Sure, GNU command line tools are better than the BSD ones (fight me). Sure, it's not as hackable as a Linux machine. But I've never been as productive. Everything works, I'm not fighting any hardware issue — Bluetooth? Wifi? Resume from sleep? Hell, I'm even rocking an external GTX 1080 GPU via Thunderbolt 2->3 adapter, and playing 4K games in Bootcamp. I have a 16GB rMBP 2015, which probably is the last well made MBP, since the newer revisions seem to have so many issues, but I don't see myself going back to a Linux desktop ever again. To be honest, the only two things I miss that work really well on Linux are Docker, and Wifi packet injection (aircrack-ng & co.)
- madmax96 9y ago
  Do you have problems with Docker for Mac?
  - 1_player 9y ago
    Not really, it works, but there's tons of reports that it's slow, containers run in a VM (obviously) and you need workarounds such as docker-sync. It makes sense, since Docker relies on the Linux kernel and its VFS interface, which have to be emulated on other OSes.
    - gurkendoktor 9y ago
      I have set up a Linux box for Docker work and I actually found Docker for Mac much nicer to work with. The installer and GUI are all really well-made and make it easy to tweak the resources that Docker VMs can utilize. Meanwhile on Linux, I had to wait for a month or so before the Docker PPA was updated after I'd upgraded to Ubuntu 17.10. (I've since migrated to an LTS-based distro, lesson learned.) I also like to use Kitematic for reading logs, which was annoying to install, and which looks out of place on Linux because it's an Electron app skinned to look like a macOS app.
- udia 9y ago
  Do you have a recommendation for an external GPU enclosure? I have the same model MacBook as you but I've been hesitant to pick one up.
  - 1_player 9y ago
    I have an Akitio Node. It's noisy as hell, but fits a full sized GPU and quite hackable - there are some silent fans mods if it bothers you. There are plenty of gotchas, so make sure you read up on egpu.io and /r/eGPU But once setup, and when Windows doesn't break everything with an update (happened with the Fall Creators update), works great and performance should be within 90-95% of a desktop setup, provided you're using an external monitor. You can use the internal LCD, but TB2 bandwidth will be the bottleneck in that case, and you'll get a bigger performance hit. Here's my success post on reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/eGPU/comments/77e86g/success_macbook_pro_15_2015_tb2_akitio_node_gtx/ https://www.reddit.com/r/eGPU/comments/77e86g/success_macboo...
leetbulb 9y ago
"Everything just works" - this is the reason I use macOS for my workstation and laptop. I don't have time to fumble around for six hours patching a driver for it to work with some slight variant hardware component (you know what I mean). I'll do that stuff on my free time, with systems other than my workstation. TimeMachine and comprehensive HiDPI support are great bonuses. If I need to work in some other environment, I have VM's, Docker, and external development environments. The primary concern with macOS is security: both inherent (telemetry, etc) and what's been in the news lately, but with some easy tweaks and good security practices otherwise, it's generally not something I worry about.

by vesak 9y ago

1_player 9y ago

I've done the same 2 years ago, after being Linux-only for two decades. Sure, macOS has its flaws. Sure, GNU command line tools are better than the BSD ones (fight me). Sure, it's not as hackable as a Linux machine. But I've never been as productive. Everything works, I'm not fighting any hardware issue — Bluetooth? Wifi? Resume from sleep? Hell, I'm even rocking an external GTX 1080 GPU via Thunderbolt 2->3 adapter, and playing 4K games in Bootcamp. I have a 16GB rMBP 2015, which probably is the last well made MBP, since the newer revisions seem to have so many issues, but I don't see myself going back to a Linux desktop ever again. To be honest, the only two things I miss that work really well on Linux are Docker, and Wifi packet injection (aircrack-ng & co.)

madmax96 9y ago
Do you have problems with Docker for Mac?
- 1_player 9y ago
  Not really, it works, but there's tons of reports that it's slow, containers run in a VM (obviously) and you need workarounds such as docker-sync. It makes sense, since Docker relies on the Linux kernel and its VFS interface, which have to be emulated on other OSes.
  - gurkendoktor 9y ago
    I have set up a Linux box for Docker work and I actually found Docker for Mac much nicer to work with. The installer and GUI are all really well-made and make it easy to tweak the resources that Docker VMs can utilize. Meanwhile on Linux, I had to wait for a month or so before the Docker PPA was updated after I'd upgraded to Ubuntu 17.10. (I've since migrated to an LTS-based distro, lesson learned.) I also like to use Kitematic for reading logs, which was annoying to install, and which looks out of place on Linux because it's an Electron app skinned to look like a macOS app.
udia 9y ago
Do you have a recommendation for an external GPU enclosure? I have the same model MacBook as you but I've been hesitant to pick one up.
- 1_player 9y ago
  I have an Akitio Node. It's noisy as hell, but fits a full sized GPU and quite hackable - there are some silent fans mods if it bothers you. There are plenty of gotchas, so make sure you read up on egpu.io and /r/eGPU But once setup, and when Windows doesn't break everything with an update (happened with the Fall Creators update), works great and performance should be within 90-95% of a desktop setup, provided you're using an external monitor. You can use the internal LCD, but TB2 bandwidth will be the bottleneck in that case, and you'll get a bigger performance hit. Here's my success post on reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/eGPU/comments/77e86g/success_macbook_pro_15_2015_tb2_akitio_node_gtx/ https://www.reddit.com/r/eGPU/comments/77e86g/success_macboo...

leetbulb 9y ago

"Everything just works" - this is the reason I use macOS for my workstation and laptop. I don't have time to fumble around for six hours patching a driver for it to work with some slight variant hardware component (you know what I mean). I'll do that stuff on my free time, with systems other than my workstation. TimeMachine and comprehensive HiDPI support are great bonuses. If I need to work in some other environment, I have VM's, Docker, and external development environments. The primary concern with macOS is security: both inherent (telemetry, etc) and what's been in the news lately, but with some easy tweaks and good security practices otherwise, it's generally not something I worry about.