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That's true: some things are easier on Mac. In particular, I'd say that using software that hasn't been packaged for your distribution is much easier on Mac. H

That's true: some things are easier on Mac. In particular, I'd say that using software that hasn't been packaged for your distribution is much easier on Mac. However, your example of fonts is definitely not one of those areas, anymore. Font rendering on Linux is as advanced and capable as any other OS including in the areas of kerning and hinting. It should just work without any user intervention and look great. I agree with you that compositing/window manager fragmentation is a problem. And this article is a perfect example of that. The author may think that they're happy using i3 with Firefox and st at the moment, but the desktop computing environment has gotten so complex and the expectations of users who interact with desktop applications so rich, that a small hobby project DE/WM cannot fully satisfy all of those use cases over the long term. The only two desktop environment projects that have enough resources to meet the needs of users behind them are KDE and GNOME. And we shouldn't be telling new Linux users to try anything but those two. FWIW, I've worked at Google for 7 years where we use Linux on our workstations. Many engineers fiddle with various "hacker" window managers like i3, Sway, Awesome, or fvwm. They almost universally give up and switch to GNOME(/Cinnamon) or KDE: it's just too fiddly/not complete and they'd rather use their brain power for solving real problems. The authors example of messing around with dmenu because "unix philosophy" is an example of this kind of waste of time that people eventually get tired of because they have better things to spend their time on.

Hello71 8y ago
> Font rendering on Linux is as advanced and capable as any other OS including in the areas of kerning and hinting. It should just work without any user intervention and look great. This isn't entirely true. AIUI, Apple enables LCD filtering and subpixel rendering by default, because it knows that you're using an LCD and what the subpixel order is. However, these are usually toggleable via the GUI, and even without them it usually still looks fine.
- jasondclinton 8y ago
  People forget that subpixel rendering was a thing on CRT's before LCD's were around. Subpixel order is pretty universally standardized. Is there an EDID data element for pixel order?
  - Wowfunhappy 8y ago
    I didn't know that! How does sub-pixel rendering work on CRT's, which (to my understanding) don't have a set matrix of pixels and subpixels?
    - jotm 8y ago
      It worked like shit, blurring perfectly fine text. At least the last time I had a CRT, which was very early 00's
- amaccuish 8y ago
  Since Mojave, MacOS nolonger does subpixel rendering. https://mjtsai.com/blog/2018/07/13/macos-10-14-mojave-removes-subpixel-anti-aliasing/ https://mjtsai.com/blog/2018/07/13/macos-10-14-mojave-remove...
  - Klonoar 8y ago
    On non-retina displays, which... is nowhere near the normal use case for Macs at this point.
    - pseudalopex 8y ago
      On all displays. It matters less on Retina displays. External displays are nowhere near the normal use case?
      - Klonoar 8y ago
        No, my point is that this change only affects non-Retina displays. In my experience (worldwide, many companies, etc) anyone who uses a Mac with an external monitor generally doesn't settle for some POS. It's a high-end screen that matches the MacBook, hence why it's not that big of a deal.
        pseudalopex 8y ago
        The change affects all displays. The highest supported resolution on a MacBook is still scaled down. Only a couple of expensive LG displays match the actual density as far as I know. The MacBook Air only got a Retina display a few months ago. The low-end iMac is still 1080p.
devereaux 8y ago
Personally, I gave up on Gnome and run LXDE a bit like i3 - autopositionning the windows with Fx keys mapped to a given set of coordinates, so F10 will make a window use a square on the left covering 80% of the screen, F11 will move the window to the remaining 20% on the right, thus hiding conky - etc. The only advantage I find in LXDE is that it has a titlebar I can 'reveal' if I wish to mess around and fiddle with the window position (like when tracking the arping replies in a remote lan and using a bit of scripting to see the evolution of the metric as I fiddle with things) I like my desktop lean and mean. I do not want distractions. When I am dealing with a remote system crashing under load, the last thing I want is my desktop or my shortcuts to behave in weird ways. Things must always work, in a consistent way. Funny thing is I can only get that in Linux... and in Windows 10. Customization is a feature, just not everyone needs that feature. So I disagree with your assessment, as some users will find Gnome or KDE too distracting.
- jasondclinton 8y ago
  Some people try that, too (and XFCE). Admittedly, they're better than a tiling window manager, but LXDE's last stable release was 2016 and it doesn't have a compositor so all of that graphics hardware in your computer specialized to prevent X11 DAMAGE events from forcing applications redraws and for saving power is going unused.
  - devereaux 8y ago
    I agree ; I'm considering moving to wayland but still now LXDE does everything I need well enough to not have bothered for the last few years
  - ubercow13 8y ago
    Does using a compositor really _save_ power in practice? GNOME's one certainly doesn't, in my experience. It would spin my fans up after a few moments of dragging a window around. Of course it has no configuration options so it is not possible to fix it. kwin is almost as bad last time I checked on my hardware.
- Yeroc 8y ago
grumdan 8y ago
> I agree with you that compositing/window manager fragmentation is a problem. And this article is a perfect example of that. The author may think that they're happy using i3 with Firefox and st at the moment, but the desktop computing environment has gotten so complex and the expectations of users who interact with desktop applications so rich, that a small hobby project DE/WM cannot fully satisfy all of those use cases over the long term. Users have different needs and preferences, so I see the fragmentation as a positive thing because it gives people choice. For me personally, xmonad, one of these hobby projects, has been perfectly sufficient for the last 10 years. I also didn't really touch my configuration much in the last ~8 years. More importantly though, I find it actually reduces my mental workload since I no longer have to handle window placement myself.
- DJHenk 8y ago
  Definitely. I have had i3 on every computer I use for a couple of years now and I don't think I will ever go back to a conventional window manager. No matter the thing I'm doing, every useful or efficient placing of windows is always no more than one or two keystrokes away.
Symmetry 8y ago
Eh, I've been running xmonad within Gnome since (checks git blame) 2011 and I don't think I'm changing things anytime soon. Well, for the first 2 years I fiddled a lot and made sure I could just configure a computer the way I liked with a script. Occasionally I'll have an issue like Ubuntu switching to Gnome 3 but even that, the biggest disruption in years, just took an evening of fiddling to fix.

Hello71 8y ago

> Font rendering on Linux is as advanced and capable as any other OS including in the areas of kerning and hinting. It should just work without any user intervention and look great. This isn't entirely true. AIUI, Apple enables LCD filtering and subpixel rendering by default, because it knows that you're using an LCD and what the subpixel order is. However, these are usually toggleable via the GUI, and even without them it usually still looks fine.

jasondclinton 8y ago
People forget that subpixel rendering was a thing on CRT's before LCD's were around. Subpixel order is pretty universally standardized. Is there an EDID data element for pixel order?
- Wowfunhappy 8y ago
  I didn't know that! How does sub-pixel rendering work on CRT's, which (to my understanding) don't have a set matrix of pixels and subpixels?
  - jotm 8y ago
    It worked like shit, blurring perfectly fine text. At least the last time I had a CRT, which was very early 00's
amaccuish 8y ago
Since Mojave, MacOS nolonger does subpixel rendering. https://mjtsai.com/blog/2018/07/13/macos-10-14-mojave-removes-subpixel-anti-aliasing/ https://mjtsai.com/blog/2018/07/13/macos-10-14-mojave-remove...
- Klonoar 8y ago
  On non-retina displays, which... is nowhere near the normal use case for Macs at this point.
  - pseudalopex 8y ago
    On all displays. It matters less on Retina displays. External displays are nowhere near the normal use case?
    - Klonoar 8y ago
      No, my point is that this change only affects non-Retina displays. In my experience (worldwide, many companies, etc) anyone who uses a Mac with an external monitor generally doesn't settle for some POS. It's a high-end screen that matches the MacBook, hence why it's not that big of a deal.
      - pseudalopex 8y ago
        The change affects all displays. The highest supported resolution on a MacBook is still scaled down. Only a couple of expensive LG displays match the actual density as far as I know. The MacBook Air only got a Retina display a few months ago. The low-end iMac is still 1080p.

devereaux 8y ago

Personally, I gave up on Gnome and run LXDE a bit like i3 - autopositionning the windows with Fx keys mapped to a given set of coordinates, so F10 will make a window use a square on the left covering 80% of the screen, F11 will move the window to the remaining 20% on the right, thus hiding conky - etc. The only advantage I find in LXDE is that it has a titlebar I can 'reveal' if I wish to mess around and fiddle with the window position (like when tracking the arping replies in a remote lan and using a bit of scripting to see the evolution of the metric as I fiddle with things) I like my desktop lean and mean. I do not want distractions. When I am dealing with a remote system crashing under load, the last thing I want is my desktop or my shortcuts to behave in weird ways. Things must always work, in a consistent way. Funny thing is I can only get that in Linux... and in Windows 10. Customization is a feature, just not everyone needs that feature. So I disagree with your assessment, as some users will find Gnome or KDE too distracting.

jasondclinton 8y ago
Some people try that, too (and XFCE). Admittedly, they're better than a tiling window manager, but LXDE's last stable release was 2016 and it doesn't have a compositor so all of that graphics hardware in your computer specialized to prevent X11 DAMAGE events from forcing applications redraws and for saving power is going unused.
- devereaux 8y ago
  I agree ; I'm considering moving to wayland but still now LXDE does everything I need well enough to not have bothered for the last few years
- ubercow13 8y ago
  Does using a compositor really _save_ power in practice? GNOME's one certainly doesn't, in my experience. It would spin my fans up after a few moments of dragging a window around. Of course it has no configuration options so it is not possible to fix it. kwin is almost as bad last time I checked on my hardware.
Yeroc 8y ago

grumdan 8y ago

> I agree with you that compositing/window manager fragmentation is a problem. And this article is a perfect example of that. The author may think that they're happy using i3 with Firefox and st at the moment, but the desktop computing environment has gotten so complex and the expectations of users who interact with desktop applications so rich, that a small hobby project DE/WM cannot fully satisfy all of those use cases over the long term. Users have different needs and preferences, so I see the fragmentation as a positive thing because it gives people choice. For me personally, xmonad, one of these hobby projects, has been perfectly sufficient for the last 10 years. I also didn't really touch my configuration much in the last ~8 years. More importantly though, I find it actually reduces my mental workload since I no longer have to handle window placement myself.

DJHenk 8y ago
Definitely. I have had i3 on every computer I use for a couple of years now and I don't think I will ever go back to a conventional window manager. No matter the thing I'm doing, every useful or efficient placing of windows is always no more than one or two keystrokes away.

Symmetry 8y ago

Eh, I've been running xmonad within Gnome since (checks git blame) 2011 and I don't think I'm changing things anytime soon. Well, for the first 2 years I fiddled a lot and made sure I could just configure a computer the way I liked with a script. Occasionally I'll have an issue like Ubuntu switching to Gnome 3 but even that, the biggest disruption in years, just took an evening of fiddling to fix.