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Ask HN: How did you transition from Mac to Linux?
I have been a devoted Mac user for years, however apart from needing a Mac to build and release iOS apps, I am increasingly looking for great laptop hardware with great support for Linux, and recommendations on how to jump from the Mac to Linux (preferably Ubuntu). What pitfalls did you face? What apps and support did you miss?
- 0wl3x 8y agoStarting off with Ubuntu is a good idea. That's the friendliest distro of linux yet it still provides a fair amount of extensibility so you can start playing around with the really cool things linux offers. There wasn't anything I found myself missing. I suppose the keyboard layout is a little different but that's about it? Again though, the beauty of linux is that you can change just about anything for your preferences. I guess the recommendation is simply to just switch and just start and be patient! Good luck!
- rhacker 8y agoI'm curious about experiences here since I had been a Linux user before being a Mac user. Also interested specifically in anyone running Linux on a Macbook. I love Apple hardware, not sure I could go back to PC style laptops for Linux.
- wyclif 8y agoIf you need a Linux laptop, I think it's wise to look at the appropriate ThinkPad models first. Of course, if you can get away with desktop-only or workstation your options are a lot more interesting.
- crms1496 8y agoIn my experience Dell laptops also provide a great Linux experience.
- anon1253 8y agoNote Carbon X1 is not the appropriate one ... which I learned the hard way
- anothergoogler 8y agoAgreed, commented about the X1 a couple months ago https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16715851 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16715851
- peatmoss 8y agoSeconding this. For the price you can have a desktop at work and at home. The hardware will work flawlessly, and with much better performance as well. Ask yourself whether working from the coffee shop or couch is really critical or even beneficial to your productivity and mental health. My biggest realization with workstations is that they are more of a location than they are a computer formfactor. Habituating yourself to work in the work... place liberates you to not work everywhere else. Back in the day, portable computers were luxuries for the important people in a business. Now I see the true luxury is NOT having a portable. EDIT: Seconding both the Thinkpad recommendation as well as the suggestion to reconsider a workstation.
- anothergoogler 8y agoMy only advice would be to use a desktop (tower) PC and not a laptop. Much easier to get everything working well, and no power management headaches etc.
- randyzwitch 8y agoThis is what I did, used a desktop with Linux as a remote server of sorts (while also having a monitor attached). As I got more comfortable with Linux, my usage of my MBP dropped
- pnutjam 8y agoThis is good advice, you can use a terminal, forward x sessions, or use something like x2go for a full gui experience.
- SamLevin88 8y agoReally stinks when you're remote with limited connectivity though. If you're plugged in all day then it would work, yeah
- pnutjam 8y agoX2go works well over slow lines. I used to run it on a 1mb connection.
- wasted_intel 8y agoA Project Sputnik laptop from Dell with Ubuntu pre-loaded is a safe bet. I'd personally opt for an XPS 13" Developer Edition, even if I were going to load another distro like Arch Linux. Project Sputnik's objective is to ensure Linux compatibility, which involves picking components that are compatible out of the box, and submitting upstream patches for those that aren't. It does help that it's also the laptop that Linus is using: https://www.cio.com/article/3119876/linux/linus-torvalds-picks-dell-xps-13-as-his-next-laptop.html https://www.cio.com/article/3119876/linux/linus-torvalds-pic...
- ortuna 8y agoHave a Dell XPS 13 (2018) edition, NixOS w/ minimal gnome install works like a charm! NixOS config: https://gist.github.com/Ortuna/b6e95d6baefd2a1683ddd848f485bf00 https://gist.github.com/Ortuna/b6e95d6baefd2a1683ddd848f485b...
- cbartowski 8y agoSame laptop here. I've noticed the laptop drains battery when its suspended which is pretty annoying because I sometimes go a couple of days without using it. Have you run into that? I haven't had any luck getting suspend to disk to work.
- ortuna 8y agoIt does drain, maybe 2%/hr but I thought that was normal? That's what I expect to get on a Mac. I did have to `echo XHC > /proc/acpi/wakeup` because I would shut the lid, but something on the USB bus kept turning it back on.
- nerdwaller 8y agoI was turned off of these due to the reported coil whine[0], any owners know if the newest batches still have that issue? [0] https://www.dell.com/community/Linux-Developer-Systems/New-Kaby-Lake-XPS-13-coil-whine/td-p/5088148/page/30 https://www.dell.com/community/Linux-Developer-Systems/New-K...
- brotherjerky 8y agoInstall VirtualBox or similar and setup Ubuntu in a VM. Try running that full screen for a while as an easy low-risk way to start kicking the tires.
- coolspot 8y agoThis or dual boot. On my work computer I still have Windows which I didn’t boot into for more than a year. It was my safenet during my windows -> linux switch for full time. If stuck with task - 5 minutes and I am back to Windows. Don’t recall actually using that capability, especially after I set up free testing Windows VM on Linux.
- berliner 8y agoI transitioned from OS X by installing Debian on a Macbook (dual boot with OS X). If I remember correctly, I never booted into OS X again, and eventually switched to Thinkpads, Dell XPS etc. I am a Backend Engineer so I have the luxury of not being dependent on proprietary developer ecosystems like iOS etc. Good luck!
- eropple 8y agoVirtualBox performance on OS X is awful enough and it lights your battery on fire to the point that it'd give most people second thoughts about switching.
- shmerl 8y agoI've never used macOS, but transitioning to Linux would probably pose some similar questions no matter from what OS you are coming from. So some common tips that you might find useful: Laptops commonly come with SSDs or even NVMes today. If you have enough RAM, you can avoid enabling swap during installation, that will provide you more useful space on your expensive drive. Enable periodic fstrim on your drive, to make sure your deleted blocks are reused. If you are using Samsung NVMe, you might want to use bigger partition offset than just common megabyte alignment. I was recently researching this, and found out, that it can make some performance difference if you use 3 MiB offset instead of 1 MiB. It's a bit of a difficult topic, because Samsung staunchly refuse to answer questions about their NVMe erase block size. In general it's recommended to have partitions aligned to that size for best performance. You can run various testing tools like fio before setting up the system to find the optimal layout. Prefer AMD for your GPU (Vega is the best today), it will save you a lot pain (i.e. avoid Nvidia and especially Optimus). Also, as others said in this thread, consider if you need a laptop at all. Desktop would be cheaper for better performance hardware.
- striking 8y agoWrt swap: you can generally just use a swapfile. It doesn't even have to be very large. Making it a file makes it easier to manage than a partition. No, I don't know why the Debian and Ubuntu installers insist on making a partition for swap still.
- williamstein 8y agoI recently switched by buying a Pixelbook and installing the new full Linux support (dev channel) vcalled Crostini. Love it! Apple's direction and quality don't match with my needs anymore.
- prudhvis 8y agoI use both Mac(Work) and Thinkpads(Personal) laptops. Thinkpads (T470 and T470p are what i use) are really good wrt linux driver support. I personally use Fedora + Sway as my daily driver. It has excellent driver support(didn't get the nvidia ones though). These laptops have about 32G of ram. Plenty to run kvm vm's for all sorts of dev stuff. Thinkpads specially the T series comes with TLP [1] support. So, the battery life is very good. Apart from that, the keyboard is pretty comfortable, display resolutions are Full HD+. I cannot recommend it enough. [1] https://linrunner.de/en/tlp/docs/tlp-linux-advanced-power-management.html https://linrunner.de/en/tlp/docs/tlp-linux-advanced-power-ma...
- organsnyder 8y agoI thought I was the only person that had a work-issued Mac, but opted for a ThinkPad for personal use. Just bought a T480, and Linux support has been flawless. I installed Debian stable using the non-free installation option: https://cdimage.debian.org/cdimage/unofficial/non-free/cd-including-firmware/ https://cdimage.debian.org/cdimage/unofficial/non-free/cd-in...
- macrosak 8y agoI would be also interested. One particular productivity tool I use all the time is Alfred, especially it's clipboard history feature. Do you have any recommendations?
- jasonm89 8y agoI made the switch after my Macbook Pro was stolen and I needed something quickly to get back to work. The transition from osx to ubuntu was pretty easy after changing my shortcuts to mimic the ones I was used to in osx. I've been using linux daily on my work machine for 7 months now, and i'm actually a little obsessed with it. I transitioned from Ubuntu to Arch and am using KDE as my desktop environment. Everything can be customized and it's great, I don't think i'll be returning to osx ever again. I do miss the integration with my iphone though. I used the messages and notes app a lot in osx, so it's kinda annoying to not have that anymore. Also, i'm using a Thinkpad. Would recommend. *EDIT I now pretty much use the trackpoint 100% of the time, and don't miss the trackpad gestures at all.
- Thev00d00 8y agoIts a shame you dont have an Android, as KDE-Connect does pretty much what you are missing in terms of phone integration...
- jasonm89 8y agoNot sure if I want to switch to Android.
- pnutjam 8y agokdeconnect integrates with android spectacularly. I'm on OpenSUSE, but my coworker uses it on Slackware.
- d33 8y agoOnce you use the same applications, it's going to be much easier. So if you're not in rush, consider setting up trial Firefox/Chromium, Pidgin/anything, Thunderbird etc on your Mac and then copy the profiles. A lot depends on the programs you use, unless you're one of the guys that do everything in the browser - then it won't be a lot of difference.
- r053bud 8y agoI stopped using Mac about 5 years ago cold-turkey. I have been working with Linux for years so it was nothing really new to me, but using it as my "main desktop" had some initial issues. I just basically made a list of everything I missed on Mac and found a way to accomplish it on Linux. I was able to achieve my entire wish lish and even simplified a bit. I don't need finder since I prefer to naviagate via the Terminal for example. That doesn't work for everyone, but if they spend time looking, there will be FOSS waiting to help you out.
- trumbitta2 8y agoIn 2013 I went from a Sony VAIO with Ubuntu and lot of swearing over drivers and external monitors, to the bliss of a retina MBP. It took me exactly 20 full minutes to make its acquaintance and start working again. That is my transition story. [EDIT for context: I started using Linux in 1998 with Debian and no out-of-the-box support for my Intel740, so I know a thing or two about Linux and drivers]
- mikece 8y agoIs there still no support for installing Linux via Boot Camp? If not, why would Apple not support this? They get their pound of flesh when they sell the hardware... is that not enough?
- tobyhinloopen 8y agoNo support? Like, it does not work, or Apple just doesn't provide a guide for it? Last time I check ubuntu works fine from bootcamp. (But last time I checked was 2011 or something)
- takluyver 8y agoUsers who found that Linux did everything they want might buy something else next time. That's not to say Apple are making some evil decision to prevent this, but it's not likely to be high priority for them.
- aorth 8y agoThe only thing I miss about my Mac is the hardware. To be more specific: I miss the trackpad. I just picked up a 2018 ThinkPad Carbon X1 (6th Generation) and the machine runs Linux very well. The battery life is around eight or nine hours, the HDR screen is very good, etc. But nothing can come close to the Mac trackpad! I'm running Arch Linux, for what it's worth. My use of several Macs over the last few years was basically confined to a web browser, Mail.app, and Terminal, where I installed a handful of GNU userland tools from Homebrew and essentially used it as if it was a Linux machine. I never bought into the Apple ecosystem with Photos, iCloud, messaging, etc. My pictures and music are organized in directories and I use open-source applications like darktable and GIMP (pictures) and cantata and mpd (music) so I didn't have any lock-in there. Caveat: I'm on the systems / devops side, not dev.
- skadamat 8y agoI made this exact same switch a few months ago! RMBP 15 to Thinkpad X1 Carbon + Arch Linux. I've loved it but I do miss the trackpad (although I've adjusted my workflow to use physical buttons now + thinkpad's trackpad). I also miss the larger screen (15" was really nice). Whenever I go back to my RMBP 15 for moving files over, I've noticed the display is still nicer for text. Even with installing some calibrated color profiles, I haven't been able to match the same perfection the RMBP 15 had. Is this something you ran into at all / how did you tweak?
- kahlonel 8y agoDid you apply the "non-official" patch for the deep-sleep? How well does it work? I'm actually waiting on Lenovo to release an official patch for it before buying this machine.
- joombaga 8y agoMy biggest issue is that X doesn't support per-display DPI. My laptop screen is 4k, but my external monitors are 1920x1200. This works great in macOS, but in linux I either have to have big UI components on the externals, or tiny UI components on the built-in display. Some DEs have UI scaling, but it looks terrible.
- ben40 8y agoStill mainly a Mac user that has tried to explore making the switch, but here is a blog post that is a great read on the topic. http://bitcannon.net/post/a-year-away-from-mac-os/ http://bitcannon.net/post/a-year-away-from-mac-os/
- mattkevan 8y agoI run dual-boot macOS and Ubuntu on a ThinkPad. Ubuntu worked out-of-the-box, and macOS works well after a few tweaks. I also have a third partition to share files between the two halves. Clover bootloader has a friendly way to select which system to use on boot. I'd like to use Linux full time, but the software I need isn't there.
- OhSoHumble 8y agoI have an Aero 15x and Arch runs on it flawlessly. Everything works.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- rrggrr 8y agoI am in the process of transitioning now from OSX to Ubuntu Budgie on a laptop and here are my takeaways so far: - Cloud reliance has been key. GSuite and Dropbox have kept me from having to install much on the Budgie system. - Budget a half day on StackOverflow, etc. for problems you may have getting Dropbox, Bluetooth and some other items working seamlessly with accessories... although some of this is unique to Budgie. - Don't expect much interoperability with iOS products. - Key apps I use are available natively, eg. Slack and Atom. I'm still going back and forth some and find the desktop/UI customization available in Budgie has increased my productivity and decreased strain. I'm missing hazel, bitbar and geektool applications quite a bit and haven't found a suitable replacement that is as supported and easy to configure as those apps. I can replicate most of the functionality with Python, conky, etc... but I haven't the time to do so.
- hobofan 8y agoI regularly switch between macOS and Linus on a Macbook, and the biggest things that are missing in terms of apps are: - Alfred and all its integrations - Dash for progamming documentation. Yes, I know Zeal etc. exist, but none of them come even close in terms of usability - Karabiner-Elements for keyboard remapping. Might be less of problem on non-apple hardware where the modifier keys have a saner layout.
- eropple 8y ago"How"? Getting geeked up over a switch is probably overdoing it. I mean...you just do it. Install Fedora on it--I mean, you could install Ubuntu, but the movement seems to be away from Ubuntu and for good reasons, in production I wouldn't run something that wasn't CentOS, and Fedora is close enough while removing a lot of the pain points of dealing with Debian derivatives--and start working. It'll suck at first, it'll suck less over time, you'll get there. You'll learn to RTFM if you haven't learned it already, and you'll get there. As a developer, using either is basically substitutable. I still use a Mac laptop because Linux laptop support varies between okay and awful (and System76 et al make computers that feel like junk, though Dell's support is worth calling out as a positive--my next machine is probably an Alienware 15, largely because of the keyboard and the GPU) but when not on the road I use the Mac mostly for Keynote and Photoshop, not writing code. Every Unix development tool I use (i.e., I still have Windows partitions around for good reasons), from VS Code on down the line, works on both Linux and OS X without trouble. There's really not much "switching" to be done. If you use novelty stuff like Espresso or whatever it might be a trickier situation, but I feel like most developers aren't in that boat. Consider Dropbox or similar for syncing dotfiles, though. Sharing those across will reduce your frustration a decent bit. Just make sure to have separate files for Mac and Linux-specific stuff, where applicable, and source them appropriately.
- pnutjam 8y agoCentOS and RedHat use an essentially ancient kernal, with backported fixes. I roll with OpenSUSE on my laptop, tumbleweed will give you the rolling release with cutting edge packages, or Leap will give you an excellent experience with longer support. In my experience, OpenSUSE also has the best hardware support of any Linux distro.
- eropple 8y agoThey totally do use old kernels, but in practice I have not run into issues (and almost all my consulting clients were in on CentOS before I started working with them, so the die was mostly cast). I liked OpenSUSE when I used it. Fedora's the path of least resistance for me. I kinda feel like "Not Ubuntu" is a bigger thing, in 2018, than whether you're in on Fedora or OpenSUSE or Arch or whatever; the tide seems to have turned against it as a server operating system in my neck of the woods and I tend to think you should try to stick at least reasonably close to what you're deploying on.
- cdelsolar 8y agoI've tried, but here are the issues I've run into. I'm not a Linux hater, but these are simple things there doesn't seem to be a fix for. This is on a new Dell XPS laptop. - Headphones constantly crackle when they're plugged in. I've tried updating audio drivers, enabling/disabling various things, editing config files, etc. nothing fixes it. I've gotten used to listening to music with a crackle superimposed on top. - Screen randomly flickers - The trackpad interface is nothing short of _atrocious_. If you move around it too much it "locks up" the cursor and you can't move anymore, you have to click it several times while dragging until it starts working again. If you brush it with a single atom of your finger as you're typing, the cursor will move around wildly, often selecting most of the text you've typed and overwriting it with your next character. I've also tried updating/changing/etc libinput and it doesn't do anything. - In an attempt to fix the above issues, I tried to update to Ubuntu 18.04 (it was on the latest 16.04). `do-release-upgrade` wouldn't recognize there was a new version available (this was a few days ago). I did `do-release-upgrade -d` without realizing it was a dev version, then after a few minutes of reading I realized it was, so I cancelled it, and rebooted my computer. Now, it just boots to a cursor on a black screen and it never changes. At this point I just decided to start using my Macbook again until I get un-frustrated enough to figure out what to do with the Dell.
- rangibaby 8y agoSee if it boots with a Ubuntu live USB. If it does you can install over the old version.
- scardine 8y agoMy personal pet peeve is the confusing paste buffer(s). On macs it is always ⌘+C and ⌘+V. On linux it may be CTRL+INS and Shift+INS, CTRL+C and CTRL+V, mouse-select and middle-button click and so on.
- ndespres 8y agoAre there different paste buffers depending on how it's activated?
- tapoxi 8y agoI split my time 50/50 between macOS and Fedora 28. Fedora is very similar to Ubuntu from an ease of use standpoint, and something I'd happily recommend - especially if you use RHEL/CentOS servers. Compared to a Mac workflow, you won't have a handful of business apps (like WebEx or Office) but its mostly identical. Both Fedora and Ubuntu are on 6 month release cycles, so you can use your system's package manager (dnf or apt) instead of relying on Homebrew. There's also user collections of packages available from Fedora's COPR or Ubuntu's PPAs. You'll see better performance with containers, since you don't need to go through a Hyperkit VM and docker will just run natively. Out of the box, both run the GNOME 3 desktop, which is a bit of a mixed bag. The simplicity and ease of window management with shortcuts is great, and you can install extensions to modify GNOME's behavior. Unfortunately performance isn't exactly smooth, but you can look at other full-blown desktops (KDE, MATE, Cinnamon, Budgie) or fast window managers like Sway or i3. With regard to hardware support, I went with the Dell XPS 13. It's a great machine and I've had zero issues so far. Fedora even handles firmware updates through the update GUI.
- wilkystyle 8y agoI've heard so many good things about fedora and hardware support. If I end up needing to make the switch, this sounds like my best option.
- arghwhat 8y agoI'm mostly bugged by the vastly inferior touchpad experience (Apple touchpad > pointy nub > Non-apple touchpad, and that is not up for discussion), and lack of things like Autodesk Fusion360 support for Linux (which I use for hobby CNC/3D printing purposes). Also, some small UI things are just nicer in macOS, like how well scrolling follows input, making it seem like you're physically moving the content. That illusion is lost on Linux. Most other things are as nice, if not nicer. I chose Fedora 28 Workstation, rather than Ubuntu, and it's all really quite polished. It's also a hell of a lot snappier, even on the same hardware. I wouldn't recommend using Linux on Apple hardware, though, primarily due to how annoying the gmux (dual GPU multiplexing chip) is to deal with. I might be buying the XPS 2-in-1 when the 32GB model comes out. AMD > nVidia graphics when it comes to Linux (nVidia are assholes). I would've picked Ryzen, but it seems a bit immature for laptops.
- wilkystyle 8y agoI know lots of people here love the pointy nub, but it's never worked well for me personally. The Apple trackpad is far superior to any other vendor's offering, by a huge margin.
- gargravarr 8y agoI'd agree with the touchpad conclusion, with the only distinction that Lenovo pointy nubs > all other pointy nubs. I have a pointer nub on my work Dell and it's pretty poor, acceleration is uncontrollable. My personal ThinkPad, however, is superb. Just like Apple are to trackpads, Lenovo are to TrackPoints.
- furgooswft13 8y ago> (Apple touchpad > pointy nub > Non-apple touchpad, and that is not up for discussion) I think you must have palmed your touchpad while typing out that list and somehow messed up the order. This is what you actually meant: 3 physical button trackpoint with textured nub gifted upon us by the Thinkpad Gods of old >>>> apple stuff > other stuff. There shall be no further debate!
- havemylife 8y ago
- minzschokolade 8y agoI would recommend buying a recent ThinkPad t or x series, using it with arch and i3wm, awesomewm or something similar. You may want to try such a tiling window manager instead of gnome (if you're going to use a vanilla ubuntu), since tiling can be a huge benefit when you're limited to a small laptop screen & you can do most of the things without having to leave the keyboard. I currently use both, macOS and arch linux, but I usually miss the Adobe Creative Cloud on ThinkPads & I usually have a hard time switching between the keyboard layouts; if you just want to mess around with Linux for a while, you can install it on a VM/MacBook anyways (https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/mac https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/mac).
- Sholmesy 8y agoI got a fast external SSD and put Antegeros (Arch) onto it. I then used it as my daily driver, dropping back to Mac if I needed something. I haven't had to use MacOS for a couple of months for anything. Basically have a useless SSD sitting inside my mac now :) Added benefit is I can plug the SSD straight into my PC at home and have my full work environment up and running. No driver stuff-around either, it all works perfectly. I would honestly recommend arch/antegeros. Ubuntu and others are over-hyped for their "ease of use".
- karmajunkie 8y agojust out of curiosity, what kind of external SSD did you get, and what kind of hardware interface (i.e. usb-c, thunderbolt, etc?)
- Sholmesy 8y agoSamsung Portable T5. USB-C and USB-A ports no USB 3.0 protocol. It's a "fast" SSD, but it doesn't come close to saturating USB 3.0, and is basically equivalent to an internal (not PCIe/NVMe) SATA based SSD. If you wanted to future-proof, you could get a thunderbolt 3 enclosure. Also, fits super comfortably in my pocket (smaller than a phone).
- ageofwant 8y agoMy 2 year old Dell XPS 13, which I'm typing this on is running Arch & i3-gaps. I've never had a better more productive setup. I had a MacBook Pro (2012) before, wife has a MBP 2015. I used Ubuntu as dev environment for ~10 years before the move to Arch 2 years ago. Nothing wrong with Ubuntu, but I really enjoy Arch's 'crispness'. Either way, you can't go wrong with either. It astounds me that anyone can be productive in other environments, not that I have tried myself, I just can't see the point. Having said that, I have recently started collecting cheap as chips (AU$120-AU$ 300) Lenovo Thinkpads, X220, X230 etc. It continues to amaze me how excellent a dev env a 7 year old laptop running Arch and i3 is. Buy a bunch of ebay and have a play.
- fusiongyro 8y agoI got a Dell Precision 5520 back in February or March. This is basically an XPS 15" Developer edition, if such a thing existed; it came with Ubuntu and so far I have not faced any insurmountable technical difficulties. I find I spend less time screwing around on the laptop in general, and the time I do spend, is somewhat more productive, so I'm very pleased with the result. I like the modern Ubuntu. What do I miss? The touchpad. iTerm. Mail.app. One clipboard. That's about it, and not that strongly. A pitfall you'll want to avoid: use the xinput driver, not synaptics, which is way, way too sensitive. I think this issue is resolved in Ubuntu 18.04 anyway though, so you may not even run into it.
- jnwatson 8y agoMan, I'd avoid anything Dell. Our whole company switched to new Dell laptops running Ubuntu, and it is a complete mess (and I've been running Linux since '96, Debian since '00, and Ubuntu since '05). There are OS issues, hardware issues, and driver issues. In terms of OS, Ubuntu/Gnome 3 still hasn't quite figured out hiDPI. Wayland isn't quite ready either. But these are relatively minor nits. The CPU constantly throttles. It has power management issues where the USB isn't providing enough power if the laptop is running off battery. One of the fans in my 3-month old laptop is making funny noises. I'm constantly fighting limited USB bandwidth on the USB-C port, where I have to decide which 4 of my 6 devices to plug in. I get lots of kernel oopses with dropped/hung PCIe transactions. And that's just my laptop. The other folks in the company are having similar problems. Basic stuff, like the camera doesn't work at all in the latest XPS 13 on Ubuntu 18.04. It is pretty frustrating dealing with this relative to my Mac laptop experience which is essentially everything just works.
- gargravarr 8y agoPart of the Mac experience has always been that, since Apple have full control of the hardware, everything Just Works. However, Dell seem to be getting there. Developers here get a choice of XPS 13's running Ubuntu, or MacBook Pros, and most choose the XPS. 18.04 gives you a binary choice of 100% or 200% UI scaling for HiDPI, but that seems to be good enough. Oddly, 16.04 Unity gave you a nice incremental slider for UI scaling. Nonetheless, Windows also doesn't handle HiDPI very well, and I think Apple are the only ones who've cracked it. Indeed, most other companies seem to be copying Apple in this regard - I prefer to have 1080 screens and just make use of the raw pixels rather than faff with HiDPI. No hardware is infallible, and we've had problems with our machines, but Dell customer service has been great - they usually send an engineer out the next day for our company. Can't deny, though, most people's machines display Ubuntu Experienced An Internal Error as soon as they log in, and we just dismiss the prompt. Doesn't seem to affect usability. Otherwise, the machines run Ubuntu very, very smoothly with all the hardware working. I upgraded one of our older XPS 13's to 18.04 with no problems.
- isaachier 8y agoHonestly, nothing. Now I regret all that time I wasted using Mac. I find Linux is really built for software developers, so if I experience problems, usually someone online will have a one-line terminal solution to fix it.
- DummybugStudios 8y agoI dunno man I found that after using mac the transition was pretty much seamless. Mac has a lot of GNU tools that I was already familiar with. I guess it matters how you had been using a mac. It is true that it is much easier to use a mac as a non-developer but it's also equally easy to use as a developer.
- mmanulis 8y agotl;dr; Think about your daily workflows and what apps you use most often. How many of them are Mac-only and can you find an acceptable replacement in Linux (90% yes)? It's really easy to get started with Ubuntu and be productive from day 1. I've used Linux as my primary system since late 90's. I switched to a Mac for a few years twice and back to Linux. My motivation for the (latest) switch is the complete lack of quality hardware and the cost of buying a Mac (not to mention Apple's complete abandoning of the desktop). For details, look at all the discussions on HN about the latest MacBook Pro. I would echo what several people have stated here, about getting a Developer edition from Dell preloaded with Ubuntu. Those Precision laptops are not the same as the XPS's, though they look alike. The hardware is just different enough to make it easier to run on Linux. The way it worked for me is: I took stock of the apps I spent 90% of my day using on a Mac, which are: gVim, Terminal, Chrome, Firefox, Slack, Spotify, Keybase, Dropbox and a few system monitoring things. All of that runs great on Ubuntu out of the box and with an hour's worth of Googling, you'll have your laptop configured exactly as you want. The only real issue for me was dealing with the touchpad; all that took was installing a different driver and I was done. I do install the latest kernel when it comes out, but that's cause I like pain and is completely unnecessary. It's been a year since I made the switch and the only thing I miss from my Mac is Sketch. There is Gimp and Inkscape, but it's not the same. My workflows are the same, if not better. Running the same OS as the EC2 instances I'm running keeps a lot of dumb mistakes from deployments. Being able to spin up a bunch of Vagrant boxes or Docker images and not have the UI come to a halt is fantastic. Easiest option, install a Vagrant box with Ubuntu desktop on it and use it for a day. You'll see if you like it very quickly.
- globuous 8y agoI did. Against my will about 10 months ago. I had used ubuntu as my primary os in high school and arch in freshman / sophomore of college, so I wasn't new. But had used macbook pros for the next 7 years: when I transitioned to mac and never looked back. But then the day after quitting my job to start a startup with 0 money, I got my mac stolen. So in a way, I was financially forced. I went with arch again on some cheap second hand laptop, because I remembered the install to be a good compromise between understanding the various parts of the system i was about to use, fun, and without too much voodoo. I remembered it to be more stable than my ubuntus. Maybe because I had less apps. When I got my arch again, time to chose my UI. I tried dwn because I was now free from a window environment and wanted to give tiling a try. I loved it but missed something elegant. So i gave KDE a try because I was on KDE back in the days of ubuntu and arch. And I remembered KDE on arch to work much better than on ubuntu but that's another story. But with KDE, too many of the apps were old school creating incoherencies between apps UIs, I missed the elegancy of my mac. So, I gave a try to good ol' GNOME, but with the 3rd version although I had only heard bad things about it until then. It was perfect for what I needed. Gnome takes the good parts of macos and leaves the rest. If feels polished and the apps seem well integrated with each other. I can configure the shortcuts the way I need them. My setup is now a Spacemacs instance for everything dev / sys admin related and the rest of gnome for emails, blender, etc. And honestly, I like the gnome UI, it's smooth, stable, easy. I get no crashes and no lag. The Apple fanboy becomes a GNU fanboy. So far the only thing I miss is being stuck with evolution as my mail / calendar client because I rely on sending and accepting invites and gnome mail and gnome calendar don't have that feature yet. Evolution is gnome 2 UI and is incoherent with my gnome 3 apps, poor me :( Time for me to contribute ! But then, then you also get the fun part. A package manager, on Arch (or Manjaro being the Ubuntu of arch as I understand it) you have pacman and yaourt. I've never had to compile anything by hand, if it's not on pacman its on yaourt. Need Blender / Gimp / Krita for whatever reason ? done. Libre Office, Anything ? 4 word command and done. The most obscure add on for whatever app ? its on AUR. And I assume it's the same for everything else. Event the app starter shell thing is a great replacement for spotlight. Finally, my emacs now works perfectly. My OS X version had some random bugs occasionally making it unusable. So I can finally have my tiled environment for anything related (missed you dwm workflow) and the 'elegancy' or GNOME 3 for everything else just an alt tab away. So all an all, the Apple fanboy I had become doesn't need Apple anymore. Actually, if I were given the latest macbook pro, I'd miss my arch. It just sucks because, I miss Apple hardware, say what you want but it's hella durable. I could go on and on, but this message is already way too long, and I don't want to spoil all the fun. Hope I helped :) P.S. Gnome 3 haters, come on, for a noob like me or my grandma, it's amazing, I'm shocked. It took me 30 minutes to setup my shortcuts the systray and a few other things. and the shell works really well, it's a good replacement to spotlight.
- maximilianburke 8y agoI took a new job and had the opportunity to pick my computer. After using a personal Mac laptop for a few weeks I wasn’t happy with the performance of the tools, so I took a chance and got a Thinkpad X1 Carbon 2018. I am really happy with it. It’s running Ubuntu 18.04, the performance is really good. I have the 2560x1440 screen and I don’t use scaling; it’s small but I have lots of real estate. I like how light it is and how well it makes use of its form factor. I like the keyboard, I also like that I don’t need to worry about a stray hair causing my E key to stop working. The only issues I had were some changes that needed to be made to system configuration so that it would sleep properly.
- rangibaby 8y agoI dual boot between latest Ubuntu and OSX on my 2013 MacBook Retina. The hardware is 100% supported by Ubuntu and getting various things to work (webcam) is well documented. Honestly there isn’t much difference between them if you are spending most of your time in a text editor anyway. I mostly keep MacOS around for Adobe. There are great alternatives to Photoshop, Lightroom, and Illustrator and I use them when I can. It’s really other people that are the problem :-)
- needz 8y agoI did this just this past weekend so great timing. I switched from a late-2015 Macbook Pro (some say this is the last time a MB Pro was good) to a Thinkpad T480s w/ Fedora 28. My workflow on Mac was fairly simple -- sublime text, npm, git, and a web browser -- so my transition was probably smoother than most (although I now use VS Code instead of Sublime Text and I don't think I'll be going back). The biggest pain point for me was losing the Apple trackpad. I loved the 3-swipe gesture to switch between workspaces and although I have shortcuts for this on my new xfce desktop environment it just isn't the same. I did, however, fall in love with the Thinkpad trackpoint (nub). I'm having a few minor issues that I still need to work out (like my screen not locking when I close the lid), but overall I'm really happy with my decision so far.
- zouhair 8y agoMaybe you should look at this[0]. [0]: https://askubuntu.com/questions/92169/touchpad-gestures-to-change-workspace https://askubuntu.com/questions/92169/touchpad-gestures-to-c...
- lordnacho 8y agoWell this is quite apt (no pun intended) as I've just bought a new Linux laptop this week, having used a MBP for years. I got it off Entroware, who sell laptops with Ubuntu installed. I'm more or less done setting it up and I'm able to use it for the exact same work that I use my MBP for. (It's a backup machine for my c++ dev work). Ended costing maybe half what the MBP cost, with i7 proc, no fancy graphics card. There hasn't been a lot of things to do, really. I went with Ubuntu MATE, on a recommendation. It seems fine, very easy to customize. I've added a dock that came with it but wasn't configured that behaves just like the MacOS dock, and I removed the panel from the bottom. Also configured the top panel to have my main progs available, and to hide itself until hover. All the software I need is available in Linux, except for SourceTree. So I just use GitKraken instead. Some things I expected like Python 3 didn't seem to be there, or at least Python 2 was default. I just grabbed Anaconda. Load of other minor things are gotten the same way, either off terminal or from one of the manager apps. I had to change the font to Garuda from Ubuntu. Something about it didn't seem right, like it was too wide or something. I also had to change some colors. All pretty small stuff. There's a terminal called Tilda that pulls down on F12, that's quite a useful thing. I had to change colors on the normal terminal to look like Homebrew on the Mac. But I had to do that on the mac too. Trackpad works pretty much like the MBP, slightly to the left. Not sure why they'd do that, but it's not so far over that I can't use it. Keyboard is fine. I found it very similar to the MBP. There's not really much difference, things work pretty much as expected. Linux is probably more configurable, at least it would appear there are more internals for you to mess with. Only noticeable difference as a dev is the screen. MBP retina screen is far better, but that's not so much to do with the OS.
- radiospiel 8y agoI tried to do this, with 3 different distributions, lucked out and went back to my Mac. Things I found frustrating: Bluetooth sometimes stopped working, keyboard was lagging, weird Desktop animations. I was able to find workarounds for most of the problems - but wasted 20 hours. One problem I really just couldn't get my muscle memory to work around is that in all the Desktops Terminals have different shortcuts (Ctrl+Shift+C/V) than all the Desktop apps (Ctrl+C/V). I was hoping I could find a Desktop preconfigured to use the Super (aka Windows) Key similar to macOS' cmd-key: i.e. every Super+X shortcut goes to the GUI layer (for example for Copy & Paste). This leaves room for Ctrl-X shortcuts send Control-Keys to terminal apps. Anyone having a suggestion to improve that?
- ufo 8y agoRebinding ctrl-C to super-C everywhere sounds like a big hassle. And I wouldn't be surprised if not every app lets you rebind this sort of thing. One thing that can be relatively easily done is to remap the super key to act as an additional ctrl key or to swap the ctrl and super keys. But that wouldn't solve the "terminal consistency" issue. Some terminals allow you to change their keybindings to use ctrl-C and ctrl-V for copy-paste. However, if you do this you need to also remap the key you use to send a SIGINT to the current running process. https://askubuntu.com/questions/53688 https://askubuntu.com/questions/53688 All that said, most people I know just get used to using ctrl+shift for terminal shortcuts eventually. BTW, in Linux you can also use the middle mouse click to paste. Select some text and then click the middle mouse button to paste the current selection. This works the same on regular apps and the terminal.
- beagle3 8y agoI was trying to do the opposite transition a couple of years ago (Ubuntu+Unity -> MacOS), and the Mac feels so clunky in comparison - I eventually switched back to Ubuntu, though I might try again soon. Some of it is just unfamiliarity, some of it is trivia that is hard to get used to (I've been binding alt-shift to some actions for the three decades - and the Mac won't let me do that), and part of it is the Mac crapping all over my directories with DS_Store files and whatever. Part of it was the inconvenience of having to buy a lot of thing I could earlier "apt-get". I would probably have spent $500 on things, glad to support the ecosystem, but it's from 10 different vendors, each with their own terms-of-service and mail and having to register and stuff. I would gladly buy it through the app-store if they were available there, but none of those I wanted were. But the biggest thing is, I hardly got anything from the Mac that I didn't already have with Ubuntu; I do science, programming, and a little bit of movie watching / internet browsing - no multimedia production. Ubuntu is just as good, if not better, than MacOS for those things. Never had an issue with sleep/hibernate not working in Linux. The things I did get from the mac: (And the reason I was trying to switch): Better hardware (especially screen, touchpad), better battery life, lighter weight. But overall, for me, they were not enough for the inconveniences.
- mping 8y agoI use Karabiner for switching alt/cmd and fn/ctrl. I also configure iTerm to switch some keys - apple really annoys me by using a diff layout; so many years of muscle memory aren't immediately applicable.
- gargravarr 8y agoI decided to install Linux Mint (which is heavily Ubuntu-based) directly on my old A1260 MacBook Pro in 2015 - I ran into some interesting quirks with the GPU (had to force it into BIOS mode) but other than that, I ran the machine for a year purely on Linux. After setting the machine up how I liked it (I really like the Cinnamon UI, even though it's much more Windows-like), I moved the same configs to my other machines. I have a ThinkPad X220 also running Mint with an extra battery for traveling, and a seldom-used desktop PC. The aging MBP finally wore out in 2016 and no longer powers on (but after 5 years of daily use, I'm quite impressed with it). I bought a custom-built Clevo gaming laptop from Scan's 3XS division, since it gave me a lot of say over the hardware - I chose Intel and nVidia where possible to ensure compatibility. I intended from the start for the laptop to run Mint, and it has done so impressively - it has a 1TB SATA SSD for the OS (which I have dual-booting Windows for games) and a second 256GB NVMe SSD dedicated to my Steam library. I like that the machine has enough RAM (16GB) that I can casually jump into a Steam game whenever I feel like it without closing what I've currently got open, and that the RAM and SSDs are upgradable. It's also covered in ports either side, including ethernet and 4 USB3.0 ports. And it cost me less than half that of an entry-level MBP. I found Linux is mostly there, but there are some things that Apple still does much better. The touchpad is the most obvious - even using a utility like Fusuma, multi-touch is still only fluent on a Mac, and the Synaptics pad on the Clevo often takes several swipes to register. The keyboard is also nowhere near as nice - I have to press the keys very hard, and often use it with an external. The UI, however, is extremely usable and familiar, so much so that I've converted family members using it. The hardware support is excellent - all the hardware, Wifi, USB ports etc. worked out of the box - and the performance is superb. I spec'd a good i7 chip for future-proofing and it's still extremely fast, and the Geforce graphics handle 3D gaming with ease. One major hardware problem I had was that the screen cable wore out after only a year of use, and although it was replaced under warranty, it seemed like a very silly thing to wear out so soon. For comparison, the only hardware problems I experienced on the MBP were a detached Bluetooth antenna (probably from when the previous owner upgraded the HDD) which just clipped back on, and the webcam cable failed, but I was able to buy a spare and replace it myself. I also kept the machine very clean and was surprised at how little dust there was inside it. The bottom panel of the Clevo comes off easily enough, but the fan vents seem much more inviting to let dust into the chassis. Battery life is also abysmal - with the machine set on the nVidia GPU, it lasts less than an hour, and less than 2 days in sleep mode. I didn't buy it to use on battery, however, as I regularly travel between fixed locations so I have mains power. The longevity of the MBP did surprise me - I used it daily for 5 years with no problems, and went from Snow Leopard (which is my all-time favourite OS) up to Mavericks. The build quality was very, very good, and with the exception of Lenovo ThinkPads, I can't think of another machine I could expect that much useful life out of. However, Macs are no longer upgradeable and are very difficult to repair - current machines have the RAM soldered to the board, and if the SSDs are replaceable, they're proprietary Apple ones. I made it a goal with the replacement to have it upgradeable - the CPU will address up to 64GB RAM so I would be able to quadruple the factory value when 32GB DIMMs hit the market (they seem to be close), and the SSDs are standard. I added the second one 6 months after I bought it. That said, the case does not feel anywhere near as solid and rugged as the MBP's metal chassis - I took the MBP around the world with me, but the Clevo feels a lot more fragile, so I take the ThinkPad instead now. I looked at the T-series ThinkPads but none of them had offboard GPUs when I was shopping. Don't forget, with Linux, you can easily try before you buy - download an ISO, write it to a USB stick and boot your current Mac from it, then check out the OS from the live environment. Try a number of different Ubuntu variants, e.g. Gnome, MATE, Kubuntu, Xubuntu etc., see which GUI you get on best with. For hardware, I would definitely recommend ThinkPads.
- tannhaeuser 8y agoI've always been into Unix and bought a PowerBook back in 2003 as a capable Unix laptop which also did support the couple commercial apps I was using at the time (PhotoShop, MS Office, some graphics apps). Competent out-of-the-box support for displays (had up to two externally hooked up with a PCCard graphics card) and power management, Apple innovations (Expose, Spotlight), plus Unix command line and F/OSS apps was adding to a real great experience at the time. But I don't like Apple's current lineup (no display options/only glossy screens, keyboard sucks IMHO, no port options). More than everything else, I took offense in Apple selling these as "Pro" machines (and at "Pro" prices) when there's really nothing "Pro" about them compared to older PowerBooks with replaceable batteries and RAM, all the ports, etc. What did I miss when going back to Linux (XPS 13, Ubuntu)? Not much really. SketchUp for architectural 3D drawings (though I haven't checked with Wine recently which is an unbelievably capable environment for running Windows apps; back then it did almost work but would crash when attempting to save), general polish (Ubuntu is a bit frugal and ugly vs Mac OS), power management and touch pad as good as Apple's, and a nice shopping and unpacking experience, albeit for a price. Didn't miss iTunes, nor Mac OS's slowness :)
- elchief 8y agoHad to turn in my MBP at the old job. Got an Asus Zenbook UX430U at the new one. Works great with Ubuntu
- lunulata 8y agoUbuntu is good to start with. Also, you should consider the Elementary distro, they have a focus on stealing Mac users https://elementary.io/ https://elementary.io/ could be right up your alley. As long as you use Ubuntu or Elementary - any of the more ui friendly & compatibility focused distros you'll avoid a lot of the common problems that frustrate new users. After you're comfortable with that... wander over to https://www.reddit.com/r/unixporn/ https://www.reddit.com/r/unixporn/ and take your desktop up another level. I use both Linux and Mac and never find myself wanting a particular app from Mac that I don't have available to me on Linux. I find myself needing things like xcode for builds, but certainly not wanting it. If you're a music producer Logic Pro is the one app you'll miss.
- jeffmcmahan 8y agoI tried to switch to Ubuntu in mid-2015, using a VM for Adobe CS, but it was awkward, particularly with the CS working files not being easily shareable btw the VM and linux. Gave up after about 3 weeks and went back to my Mac. It will stay this way until CS or something similarly capable comes to linux (and if you're about to say "GIMP!", let me just stop you right there).
- SamLevin88 8y agoFWIW I did the opposite. I had elementaryOS optimized for laptop use running on a thinkpad T430s. I was happy with it for a bit but ended up reverting to a MBP for the following reasons: - As others have pointed out, the MPB gestures/touchpad are second to none. The size alone, let alone the responsive and consistent gestures are conducive to my productivity - OSX posix support has never let me down. As of today, I have been able to develop anything on a Macbook that I would use linux for. This increases my productivity and battery life - On some variations of linux, notably elementary (which I somewhat ironically chose in order to get as close to the OSX experience as possible), alt+tab goes to the next open window as opposed to the one you most recently used, as it does on OSX. This drove me crazy - OSX has more support for more apps than linux does - You can always run linux in a docker container or a VM if you absolutely need it Just my two cents for someone who is weighing between Mac/Linux
- platinumrad 8y ago>OSX posix support has never let me down. OS X is literally missing half of semaphore.h. Actually it's worse than that because the functions aren't technically missing and your code compiles the whole time as you write it but when you run it you find out that nothing works because all the functions do is print "function not implemented".
- MertsA 8y agoIn many ways you're already most of the way there. By and large the biggest issues with switching to Linux for the average user is the plethora of random applications that only support Windows or Mac. Most of that software is stuff that already only supports Windows so it's not like you're using any of that as is. The fastest way to learn how to use Linux as opposed to macOS or Windows is to dive right in and start using it at least on your personal computer.
- krylon 8y agoI went from GNU/Linux to Mac in 2013 and back to GNU/Linux about a year ago. (Never owned a Macbook, though.) Laptop-wise, I can recommend the Asus Zenbook. The keyboard backlight does not work on Linux, and Bluetooth is a little flakey, but apart from that it works very well for me (on openSUSE Tumbleweed, at least). There are two things I miss: At work, we use a VoIP-based PBX which also supports software clients; the client is available on Windows and Mac. So on the Mac, I could work from home and use my headset for telephony, which was very, very convenient. On Linux, I have not been able to get this to work. The other thing is that on macOS, the text input widget understands the basic emacs key navigation shortcuts (Ctrl+A -> Jump to beginning of current line, Ctrl+E -> Jump to end of current line, etc...); all the muscle memory I had build up over years of using emacs finally paid off in a big way, because I could use part of it everywhere. Apart from those two pain points, I was very happy to get back on the GNU.
- estro 8y agoI second the recommendation to get an Asus Zenbook, with the same cons. The case is solid and durable; specs range from reasonable to outstanding (especially at its price point). I would also look at the IBM Thinkpad, as I've had friends and coworkers praise its Linux interoperability.
- havemylife 8y agoSeconding the Thinkpad. There's also various repurposed IBM (I want to say mostly T200 and T400) that have GNU/Linux and an open source bios (or boot loader, I apologise if I'm mixing terms) pre-installed. Price is probably high for the hardware though I think it's goes back into further open-source libre development. But if it is important to you, you'll actually 'own' your computer.
- krylon 8y agoPre-owned / refurbished ThinkPads can be found surprisingly cheaply on Amazon (and elsewhere, I suppose). If you value reliability over performance, formerly top-shelf ThinkPads provide that at a great price. I got a ~2011 x220 for about €230 a few years ago - works like a charm on Debian, and compared to what that money gets you in current hardware, it's still a kick ass machine - except for the low display resolution...
- havemylife 8y agoIt really depends on what you want and what you use your computer for. There are obviously political and ethical aspects you may be concerned about but I think it's better to just not get into that now. You mention needing a laptop with hardware supported by Linux. I would recommend first beginning with looking at various laptops sold with Linux. This should take care of any hardware incompatibility others have mentioned (though do your research). Linux (or GNU-Linux) packages most of it's drivers in the Linux kernal (please correct if I'm mistaken) so that if a piece of hardware is supported it is ready to go after you install the OS. It should be noted however that graphics cards/units have various levels of support with from what I understand Intel currently having the best open source support with Nvidia haveing pretty decent proprietary drivers. Ati/AMD varries though that shouldn't necessarily preclude you from an AMD processor. Importantly do your research on support for those components. As far as software is concerned that I haven't the foggiest idea what to recommend. If you just need a web browser, an office suite, and streaming video, then Ubuntu I would say handles all that pretty good. (It's all I've run for the last couple years, and mixed before that). Most importantly patience, research, and if you can't find an answer always ask. And be open to learning (until you die).
- VICTOR-K 8y agoI built a Hackintosh that worked until a mac update brought it down. Went to Linux and this lead to much frustration but I learned a lot from trying diferent variations of Linux. Use linux Mint on two laptops. (one a mac pro that apple no longer surports) and the pc. My only problem with Linux is less suport of 32bit. Apple shows no support for older macs but linux always comes thru.
- kernelcurry 8y agoI am debating on moving over full-time to Linux and picking up a laptop from https://puri.sm/ https://puri.sm/ the hardware and open drivers are the most annoying thing when finding a laptop for Linux it seems. Almost everyone uses terrible wireless hardware or does not fully support the highest resolution or something strange. I am hoping https://puri.sm/ https://puri.sm/ has that all figured out.
- rrggrr 8y agoPureOS was not a great experience for me and I'm using Ubuntu (budgie) now.
- digikata 8y agoHow is the hardware under Ubuntu? I've been eyeing up a Purism laptop as a successor for a Macbook Air that's getting a little long in the tooth.
- kernelcurry 8y agoHardware compatibility for Apple laptops is horrendous! I wish they would just open their drivers to the community at large! I would run *nix on an Apple Laptop no problem.
- digikata 8y agoWell on the Macbook Air, I'm running OSX, err macOS. Been running Mac on laptop and linux on desktop for a while now, but the last couple of iterations of both Macbook and macOS have been weak on the basics. Soo, I'm eyeing up the Purism laptops.
- kernelcurry 8y agoYeah, I would be running Gentoo so on their laptops. It just seems the hardware compatibility for these are WAY better than most on the market today
- AlphaGeekZulu 8y agoI migrated from Mac to Linux about 5 years ago. I had used the Mac privately and professionally for a living since around 1987, as a typesetter, graphic artist and software developer. My harddisk contained all private and business data and had never seen a fresh install since the first version of MacOS X - I was successfully updating the OS ever since. Shortkeys were of course in my muscle DNA and I new every file in the Library-folders by name. Hard to imagine to leave that experience for good. But I got so concerned about Apple's way into entertainment electronics, that I was commited to leave in time. Hardware-wise I switched from the MacBook Pro 17" first to a Lenovo Thinkpad W520, and four years later to my current Tuxedo XUX707. Both computers I liked a lot, but the Tuxedo I really love. It is a beast with 32GB RAM, 4TB HD, 256 GB SSD, desktop i7 7700, 4K monitor and a dedicated Nvidia 1060. It is heavy and loud, more a gamer PC than a laptop, but performance and reliability are incredible. I have two external monitors connected to it. I prepared the transition for about a year. First I tried a couple of Linux distros (on a second partition of my gaming PC) and after a while I decided for Ubuntu. I made sure to execute at least one major distro update of my final selection of Linux candidates to make sure they ran flawlessly. My favorite was Linux Mint, but it failed on one of the upgrades and so I ended up with Ubuntu. Unity was never an issue for me. Then I investigated how to transfer my mails (some ten thousands), but I had used Thunderbird already on the Mac and so there was no trouble at all. Next I transferred my data to the Ubuntu test machine and played a while to find, how well I could continue with my daily chores. Turned out to work quite well. At that time I was not much into graphic design any more, but much into software development. I found comparable software for everything except Adobe InDesign (Scribus just won't do). I replaced Lightroom with Darktable, Photoshop with Gimp (do not like Gimp a lot, but it works for my needs) and later Krita, Illustrator with Inkscape and Microsoft office with LibreOffice (and later Softmaker). Not all of the replacements had the same quality as on the Mac, but they were ok, at least no showstoppers for my commitment to switch. In many domains, especially development, text processing and the like, I was overwhelmed how many good (and many free) solutions were available in the Linux world. It was sort of enlightenment. Of course, there was a lot of new stuff to get used to: application installation via package managers, shortkeys and the like. After about 3 months of "playing" with the prepared test system I decided to switch and I knew that I would have to switch hard. I was very afraid to end up living in two systems. So I decided for a D-Day, did a last synch of data and put the Mac in the shelf. Yes, the first month was hard, but as I was commited to never return, I just went through and it worked. Today, I could not imagine to ever return to the Mac. I never had crackling sound, blinking screens or anything like this. My Linux computer can connect and handle much more hardware than any Mac I ever had. It is very possible (and likely), that certain computers will not work well with Linux - this is something you have to make sure with a test installation before you switch, but it is for sure not a generic issue. I switched to Tuxedo because they offer Linux-tested hardware (and they build the computer as you want it). The worst hardware issue I ever ran into was lacking support for keyboard lights. There are occassional issues with the proprietary nvidia-drivers, though, that can really drive someone mad. I know how to handle this by now, but this was the only real annoyance I ever encountered. One word of warning, though: I have always been a developer since my childhood and I was pretty experienced on the commandline long before I switched to Linux. This might give me an attitude and advance that other Mac users might be missing and that might make a transition more difficult. While the standard Ubuntu system will be sufficient for most users out of the box, there might arise the need to fix or enhance or adjust things and while this felt very natural for me with my background, it might be a big hurdle for others. My setup today is: I live completely on the Linux laptop. I still have a Mac on the desk for compiling iOS apps and casual use of Adobe InDesign. I use the "Das Keyboard" keyboard with unlabelled switches and the synergy keyboard sharing software, so I can use the Linux computer and the Mac as one computer. I have the keyboard-layouts and shortkeys of both operating systems in my muscle DNA now and in addition a good deal of the Emacs-shortcuts ;-)
- charlieegan3 8y agoMy first computer was a 2005 iBook. I used to be a huge apple fan but after a bad experience with a 2012 rMBP I started looking at other options. I bought a Dell precision laptop at the end of 2016 and installed ubuntu. This wasn't the first Linux machine for me but it was the first I really worked at. At around the same time I set myself the goal of reducing any and all dependencies on gui apps other than a browser. I quit dayone, various database guis, etc in this period. This was key, I also got better at many cli tools in the process. I spent a considerable amount of time building a dotfile config that was cross platform / worked with my work mac and other apple computers. This was really painful, it was never 100% consistent but it did all me to prove to myself that it was possible to productively use Linux - something I'd always been skeptical of before, for whatever reason. I then took on a massive downsizing effort and sold all of my computers, this was also a lot of work. Disassembling custom PC's and selling laptops on eBay took longer than expected. I was then left with only my work computer. Down from 6 laptops/desktops. My work laptop was a max spec first gen touchbar 13" at the time. I then got a new job, when asking for my new laptop I bit the bullet and asked for the new Dell XPS 13. So far I'm getting on fine, native containers is the biggest benefit I've seen personally. I miss photoshop a bit as I haven't invested the effort to run it properly on Linux via wine etc.
- diweirich 8y agoI've tried making the jump a few times with a desktop computer. I lost probably two weeks to debugging issues between Ubuntu and my hardware. Finally got everything working, not perfect, but acceptable. Then I replaced my monitor with a 4k monitor and all hell broke loose again. Linux is great, and I plan on trying it again, but make sure your hardware is compatible.
- aceofcaves 8y agoStarted with Windows, then Linux ever since I got out of school since time for gaming was no longer a thing. I've got a mac mini when my gaming rig died a couple of years ago, tried to make OS X my main thing but it feels so damn slow in comparison to GNOME, which is surprising because GNOME ain't exactly lightweight these days. Basically opening finder takes anywhere up to a minute where-as nautilus is more or less instant. Used to find image editing lacking, but Inkscape and GIMP are pretty decent replacements for Illustrator and Photoshop. The only major pitfall I've ever encountered is NVIDIA Optimus (weird IGP/GPU hybrid thing NVIDIA had going on around when i3/i5 laptops were the new hotness), drivers for it were a bitch to the point where Linus publicly said fuck you to NVIDIA during a Q&A. Other than that driver support has actually been better on Linux than Windows in my experience.
- madis 8y agoI'm currently doing the same. The 2 I have my eye on are Lenovo X1 Carbon and T480s. Reason for change: frustration with Apple's loss of quality in both software and hardware AND malicious practices. Just watch couple videos from Louis Rossmann and you'll get the idea. What I'm doing to smoothen the transition is that I started doing my personal coding in VM (VMWare Fusion), full-screening ElementaryOS. That is to get everything set up and more into muscle-memory. Client work will still be done on MBP. Then I'll switch my desktop over to Linux (hackintosh). After that laptop.
- vajrapani666 8y agoMy battery started failing on my 2016 Macbook Pro. I took it in and Apple said it would take 5 days to fix. I found a loaner macbook, but didn't want to setup a whole development environment to use for just a week. So I used Google Cloud Platform with an Ubuntu 16.04 desktop with remote access over chrome remote desktop. It was ungodly fast, and just for fun I cranked it up to 8 cores. It's nice to know that if anything ever happens to my physical laptop, I can just power up my cloud instance and keep working without skipping a beat. Linux was fantastic, except for two things. 1. Sketch. All the competitors aren't even close to being up-to-par, and it's become an industry standard. 2. Docker and permissions. I can't believe it was so much harder to deal with docker in Linux than MacOSX. I constantly struggled with docker creating files as root. Even when I explicitly defined the $UID or $USER for docker-compose, I would still see the docker image that ran a Rails instance create files owned by root in `log` and `tmp`. I highly recommend trying out Ubuntu in the cloud to give Linux a trial run, you might be surprised by what you love and hate.
- vajrapani666 8y agoHere's the guide I used to setup a cloud desktop on GCP http://timbot-inc.blogspot.com/2015/11/cloud-workstation-howto-chromebook.html http://timbot-inc.blogspot.com/2015/11/cloud-workstation-how...
- bfrog 8y agoI mean, I've simply used linux for over a decade unless I can't (some things need windows... still). Seriously though, for my job of data wrangling/programming/small hardware design projects... linux does it all and the tooling is entirely FOSS which means I can and do scratch my own itches. I tried using Mac a few times now, and it just drives me insane. There's a hodge podge of things to try and work around it being a Mac like homebrew, but in the end its still an awkward to use Mac.