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After ongoing problems and repairs with my gen 2 butterfly, I switched to Linux (Ubuntu). After many months, I'm still a little shocked at how much worse the de

• hobochili 8y ago
  What hardware did you settle on?
  • latch 8y ago
    The new XPS 13. It's fine. My disappointment is 98% software. The XPS has poor camera placement (but you know that going in), the buying experience is awful (here in Asia anyways). I see myself sticking with Linux, but no loyalty to hardware vendors. I'm hoping the MateBook or Chromebook become [relatively] cheap and powerful first class linux options.
    • ddalex 8y ago
      Install Xubuntu on XPS, and set up i3 as your window manager - this is my current setup and I love it. Takes a bit to get used to a tiling window manager, but once you get it it's amazing - I never understood why people value overlapping windows anyway.
      • levesque 8y ago
        I like UIs that feel premium. Needless to say, Xubuntu and i3 do not make the cut. Left with Gnome 3 (ugh) or KDE (options galore). All other DEs feel clunky (graphical glitches, sub-par design) and are also usually buggy (which is normal for an open source project with such a big scope).
        • BanazirGalbasi 8y ago
          XFCE looks a lot better with a different window theme installed, the defaults are absolutely terrible. There's as many options for XFCE as KDE, but it definitely takes tweaking before it looks good. i3 is generally used for its productivity benefits, not for appearance. You can still spruce it up with a new bar (see Lemonbar or Polybar), but overall people choose it because it feels nice to use. The people on /r/unixporn have done a pretty good job of making it look good though.
        • remir 8y ago
          Try Budgie. It's the DE developed for Solus and it's great.
    • cevn 8y ago
      I have an older XPS 13, the touchpad is bad on Linux only. Have you noticed that issue?
  • tartrate 8y ago
    I recommend Lenovo T480 for Linux. Supports 32GB ram as well.
• cshenton 8y ago
  Well if you're comparing it to Leopard / Snow Leopard no wonder. That's probably the most neat and polished a desktop operating system has ever been. edit: To clarify, I think current macOS is a better OS, its features are worth less neatness, but Snow Leopard did a smaller amount of things in a neater and more polished way.
  • madeofpalk 8y ago
    Ahh yes, who can forget the extremely polished Snow Leopard bug that just flat out deleted people's user accounts https://gizmodo.com/5379817/reports-snow-leopard-bug-eats-user-accounts-whole https://gizmodo.com/5379817/reports-snow-leopard-bug-eats-us...
    • toasterlovin 8y ago
      OS X was once great and now it is shit. Please stop ruining the narrative!
• teekert 8y ago
  It is well known that Ubuntu is going through a phase of rapid change at the moment. I understand how you feel but I'm pretty sure the quality and consistency will only increase from here on. Otherwise, try a Plasma desktop or Mate (if you feel like a minimalist).
  • mschaef 8y ago
    > It is well known that Ubuntu is going through a phase of rapid change at the moment. I understand how you feel but I'm pretty sure the quality and consistency will only increase from here on. People have been saying things like that about various Linuxes for over 20 years, and it still isn't close.
    • teekert 8y ago
      Well I think that from about April 2012 (first generally positive feel about Unity) until about April 2021 (yes I know, this is the end of 16.04 support) you could have had (and can have) a fairly consistent experience. Now, with the introduction of Gnome into Ubuntu there is some (avoidable) flux. If you don't like it, go for a more conservative distro like CentOS, or pick Ubuntu Mate. Linux is always rapidly developing but there are always distros which suit the more conservative users who hate change. I agree that this is a difficult concept when first entering the Linux world but it is how it is. I do wonder what makes you say it isn't close though... I feel it is more than that and would really love to replace my companies Windows 10 environment with Kubuntu 18.04. Still, I think even Ubuntu's standard desktop is pretty nice and very usable.
      • mgkimsal 8y ago
        > I feel it is more than that and would really love to replace my companies Windows 10 environment with Kubuntu 18.04. Get all their .net apps and office/excel stuff to work, and get whatever integrations with office365 are required to work actually working and get it all to sync with their mobile devices... I'm sure you can have them switched in no time...
      • mschaef 8y ago
• onyva 8y ago
  Second comment about buying experience. I got a Dell XPS which is great, though I would never buy anything again from Dell due to their horrible customer service. By which I mean pathetically rude and unprofessional (German store). Desktop experience of clean uninterrupted GNOME is great for me. Move from Ubuntu to fedora. Ubuntu really messes up GNOME with their BS ideas of usability. I.e horrible terrible ugly Unity, RIP.
  • tapoxi 8y ago
    Recent releases of Ubuntu use regular GNOME 3 with the Dash to Dock extension installed by default.
    • onyva 8y ago
      As far as I remember (before I switched) they’re messing up nautilus and keeping older versions. Also installation, software management and other little things. This mishmash of ideas and concepts of two separate projects is bad. Ubuntu does not understand usability and they should really allow GNOME’s vision to come through. GNOME is probably not perfect, but it is consistent.
  • BanazirGalbasi 8y ago
    Yeah, the whole Unity look and feel was always terrible for me. My first experience with Linux was the last version of Ubuntu with Gnome2, then I did a system update and everything changed and back then I didn't know about changing DEs. Now I avoid Unity whenever possible, as even the Gnome lookalike Ubuntu has now seems so much slower than XFCE or i3.
    • Brakenshire 8y ago
      I think the Unity dock concept is a lot more approachable for naive computer users: commonly used applications are always availabe, it’s clear which applications are open, and it’s clear which windows are open within those applications. Older relatives of mine have taken to it immediately, Gnome’s equivalent has an appreciable learning curve. Also, I recently installed 18.04 on a relative’s three year old laptop, and it was really really fast, faster than my vanilla Gnome installation, although that could be because I’m using more applications at once. Ubuntu’s ideas of usability are valid for some use cases, even if they’re not mine.
• onepointzero 8y ago
  Never used a Macbook before; always been a Windows user until my switch a few years ago to Ubuntu Gnome. Gotta say Gnome was the most counter-intuitive DE coming from a Windows background, making the switch brutal. Several years later, loving and still using the Gnome look. Wouldn't trade it for anything.
• drewg123 8y ago
  It is all what you're used to. I switched from a Linux KDE desktop to a Mac 11 years ago. I ended up switching back to Linux & KDE after about 6 months of use, and giving the Mac to my inlaws. What it came down to for me is that I've been using the same window manager shortcuts since the late 80s, and I can't make them work with OSX. Eg, I use focus-follows mouse, and some strange mouse-button + ALT key combos to move/raise/iconify windows. The loss of focus follows mouse is what really drove me nuts. I was forever deleting emails because I'd move my mouse to a terminal or emacs window and start typing, like I'd done for the last 20+ years, but without a click "random stuff" was happening in Mail, which was still getting the keystrokes.
  • modzu 8y ago
    thats a huge part of it for sure. certainly thats why windows remains so dominant. its just hard to switch.
    • markmark 8y ago
      Yep, I'm a long term Windows user and developing on a mac for the last 6 months, and I find it pretty terrible, I'd rather be using Ubuntu. But I'm happy to admit it's because of what I'm used to.
  • latch 8y ago
    "It is all what you're used to" I don't think this is true. Ubuntu is far less consistent with keyboard shortcuts and menu bars from app to app (OSX has this nailed). This is overwhelming my biggest problem. cmd+c, cmd+v for copy and paste across all apps. Not all apps minus terminal. Double click URL portion in firefox, entire url is highlighted, double click url part in other places, only that word/segment is highlight (I guess it's this 8 year old bug? https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=611162 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=611162) Sublime sometimes opens with the menu shown, sometimes with it hidden (I've tried to script this, doesn't always work). Sometimes the window shows up minimized (scripting this catch 90% of the cases) On quit, Firefox always restores the DDG and Amazon search options, but not the other ones. Why can't it remember this? (there are other cases of partial configuration amnesia for various apps) "Ubuntu Software" doesn't list available updates for installed "Add-ons", you have to remove and and re-add when you know one exists. It also doesn't let you "search" installed even if you're on the installed tab. When my I wake my screen up, there's a brief flash of my unlocked screen (someone could theoretically take a picture) before the lock screen comes up. In OSX and android I just enter my carriers free wifi settings and it works. In Ubuntu, I'm given a bunch of detailed options, and I've yet to find the magical combination that works. While on battery, the time remaining can be comically off when waking from sleep (23 hours, really?!). I've also had it say 10 minutes left when it shut down. There are plenty of apps on extensions.gnome.org (available in "Ubuntu Software") that constantly crash gnome. Go through systemd logs, find which ones are causing the problem, try to fix or uninstall. The list goes on and on. Correct battery time, configurations that stick, consistency from app to app are polish, not preferences.
• arghwhat 8y ago
  I recently switched from macOS High Sierra to Fedora. I felt that Fedora was smoother, way more responsive on the same hardware (and yes, comparing fresh macOS to fresh Linux install), more consistent and more intuitive, and more usable. The only thing I can think of that's better on macOS is the touchpad, which to the best of my knowledge is a gift given to us mortals by the gods. Oh, and the macOS default wallpaper is better.
  • macintux 8y ago
    > The only thing I can think of that's better on macOS is the touchpad, which to the best of my knowledge is a gift given to us mortals by the gods. I'm absolutely unwilling to give up the Mac trackpad. When I see people who aren't artists using mice I have to question their value system, or assume they haven't discovered the absolute joy that is "tap to click". Obviously the configuration matters a great deal.
    • modzu 8y ago
      nailed it. the trackpad is THE killer feature of the macbook. everything else has a comparable in other products.
    • namibj 8y ago
      On my Thinkpad the whole touchpad depresses like a giant keyboard button. Yes, there is slightly more force than on an apple Touchpad, but you don't accidentally click by tapping, which is nice.
      • macintux 8y ago
        To my recollection, after discovering tap to click, I've not once accidentally clicked. That would be, hm, maybe 15 years now? The extra effort required/friction added to click really annoys me now.
        • namibj 8y ago
          I remember experiencing some issues around that, but it's been years and I was not used to the device it happened on. It might not have been a MacBook, but the alternative then would have been a dedicated area or physical button in the corner of the touchpad, so then it was preferable. I don't remember why, but I think the issue with palm rejection being necessary on some of the laptops I used (not owned) was the lack of sufficient space to rest the hands on that would neither result in them being on the edge of the case nor on the edge of the touchpad. This Thinkpad (T540p) does not have that issue, as the size seems to allow the keyboard to be far enough away from the front edge of the base. To be fair, the noise of clicking the touchpad is annoying some times, but mostly due to the mushy bottoming of the keyboard, which results in low noise despite a clear actuation point. My aversion to a MacBook is mostly coming from the repair-unfriendlyness, combined with the high prices on the secondary market compared to T/X series Thinkpads. As long as I can hold it for at least one hour on one hand, while walking, in a position that I can keep an eye on the screen and use the other hand for hitting keys if needed, I don't consider it to heavy. And screen size is only really restricted by needing to fit inside commonly available backpacks, and not hindering maneuverability which happens if it is too wide in the middle dimension (approximating as a cuboid) to fit within the width of the chest. Being able to fit with it on my lap in a row on e.g. public transit/long distance trains/ (airplanes) also sets a limit to the width in the maximum dimension of the cuboid approximation. As this limit is lower than that imposed by fitting within the flat space on my back, that restriction dosn't really apply for the laptop.
• modzu 8y ago
  i know. dammit. i think the part of the brain that allows one to use linux in the first place (ie bash) is at odds with the aesthetic and visual centers of the brain. seriously. that said, with a non-trivial amount of time and work, you can get your desktop experience to be pretty slick. but it requires knowing your desktop environments, window managers, compositors, default apps, etc...
• urmish 8y ago
  You can change desktops very easily on the popular linux distros. Try r/linux and ask about what you want specifically. It's very likely there is a desktop out there for you. If you just want a macOS copy, most of that can be done by configuration. The development environment is really good on arch linux bdw.
• tkzzbneig 8y ago
  Unity is very commonly despised in the Linux community. Some do like it, but to form your opinion of Linux DE usability based on that one experience isn't fair. Try Linux Mint for all the ease of Ubuntu in terms of setup and bundled software, but for the best DE out there.