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> I was with you right up until you made the cheap shot at Linux. That was as unnecessary as it was untrue. Here are some concrete examples: - macOS has essen

by patrec 8y ago

> I was with you right up until you made the cheap shot at Linux. That was as unnecessary as it was untrue. Here are some concrete examples: - macOS has essentially a single set of efficient and consistent keybindings that works everywhere. Command line and GUI work essentially the same, i can use emacs style navigation with C-a C-e C-f C-b etc. everywhere. I can copy with Cmd-C and paste with Cmd-V in my terminal. The geniuses who created the first mainstream Linux GUI paradigms decided to copy windows and go with Control as the main key modifier to create a set of clashing keybindings for GUI and console. - file history (If I messed something up in my keynote presentation, I can easily compare previous versions and restore what's needed) - Cmd-? allows you to access any menu item quickly by search, how do I do that on Linux? - finding files (see below) - MacOS can recover from memory pressure fine. How do I get my linux machine not to effectively crash if I run an app that happens to use too much memory (technically it just swaps itself to death, in practice reset is the only remotely timely way to recover)? I've tried any amount of tweaking, but turns out that you can't turn off overcommit and swap completely, even if have lots of memory, things will just break randomly (chrome for example). > Linux is no harder to find files on than it is on OS X. Can you point me at something on linux that comes anywhere close to spotlight/mdfind? On of the reasons spotlight works well is file system integration, to the best of my knowledge nothing on linux does that. It's trivial to open a file by recency or contents or type (or tags or ...) from the open dialogue of any application on macOS, how do I do that on linux? If I want to find all mp4 videos of 1000x1000 resolution that I modified within the last week, or all jpeg files with sRGB color profile, I can do so instantaneously with mdfind. That is not to say that linux isn't more ergonomic for certain things, but in my experience they tend to be mostly limited to things only programmers would care about (/proc is the number one thing I miss on a mac; some commandline utilities are also nicer on linux, but you can normally install them easily enough on macs as well). For what it's worth: I'm using both linux and macOS daily and am both productive and reasonably expert with both.

snazz 8y ago
Re. keybindings: you can change your default GTK bindings to Emacs-style if you want to. Whether the super/Windows/Command key should be used for window management or application controls is still up for debate; it always bothers me whenever I have to use a Mac that some browser bindings are already taken by the WM/OS because Cmd is shared between apps and the OS. There are very few bindings that you can’t change on Linux or another non-Mac Unix-like. Re. file history: use real version control or a filesystem with this functionality (I imagine that ZFS would). Better to just use Git. Re. Cmd-?: no alternative exists that I know of. However, menu bars are usually less prevalent on software written for traditional Unix than on a Mac. Re. Finding files: GNOME does this with the search bar OOTB it appears. Otherwise, use search in Nautilus like you would in Finder. Re. Memory presssure: search “swappiness Linux” into a search engine. Do you prefer maximum available memory or responsiveness? Linux gives you the choice here. Recency, contents and type can all be sorted with Nautilus on GNOME. I’m not aware of a way to find very specific files that meet your search query quite like you mentioned (although I’m sure they exist). I would pipe file into grep personally, but that’s probably too rudimentary for what you want.
- patrec 8y ago
  > Better to just use Git. How would this help with my example? Git is terrible for managing non-text files and has zero support for browsing such files interactively. It also doesn't work at the file level and is pretty much unusable for anyone who isn't a developer. > Re. keybindings: you can change your default GTK bindings to Emacs-style if you want to. Yeah, but that doesn't really work, it just makes the whole mess even worse (oops, no longer can select everything with a shortcut, webapps, other toolkits don't care etc). > Do you prefer maximum available memory or responsiveness? Linux gives you the choice here. It doesn't. I want responsiveness, but I can't have it. Turning off overcommit (and swap) does improve responsiveness but is not a viable option for a desktop system, apps will just break if you turn off overcommit completely. > Recency, contents and type can all be sorted with Nautilus on GNOME. For me this works neither reliably nor with acceptable performance (unsurprising since a proper version needs FS integration).
  - laumars 8y ago
    > Turning off overcommit (and swap) does improve responsiveness but is not a viable option for a desktop system Back when I got my first SSD I ran Linux without a swap file/partition. I did this partly because it was only a 60GB SSD so I wanted to conserve space. I also did it because I didn't want to shorten the life of the SSD with (this was back when such a thing was a concern) and I ran that set up for years on a pretty modest 8GB RAM with KDE installed (ie not just a lightweight tiling WM). > unsurprising since a proper version needs FS integration It really doesn't and apfs (your file system in OSX) doesn't even do this. In fact it's probably better that your meta-data indexer isn't embedded into your file system driver because you're just going to slow down file system operations - which matters a lot on UNIX-based platforms because they do lots of file system operations. A far better approach is to have your indexer run as a separate process that monitors file writes (you can still have a kernel hook for that if you wish) thus you can then catalogue your files without interrupting your normal file system operations. You can also add more granularity like separate database per home directory (which would be much harder to do securely if you were embedding that code into the fs driver without then going down the route of having multiple tanks ala ZFS). It also makes it much easier to optimize your meta-data db since you can now dump everything into a RDBMS rather than attached to the space constrained inodes. For what it's worth, this is another area I have first hand experience with because I've written a few hobby file systems over the years. Nothing serious nor performant; just myself messing around with a few ideas. But it's still earned me a greater appreciation for the design decisions behind the file systems we do commonly use.
laumars 8y ago
I don't mind OSX - honestly there's bits of it I do genuinely like. But it's blind-sighted fanboyism that really does the platform harm. > keybindings Honestly, I find Mac OS keybindings and keyboard layout the worst thing about using Macs. Yes it might make some sense but when literally every other platform on the planet follows the same standard apart from Apple, it then makes Apple the ugly stepsister regardless of how rational it might be on paper. I mean if you only ever use Macs then I guess you might like it, but for anyone who swaps between systems (or even just wants to use a non-mac keyboard) it can be very annoying. > file history You can have that in Linux > Cmd-? (how do I do that on Linux?) shrugs maybe you can't. But that's just one feature. As a counterargument I could list a dozen things that are in Linux that aren't in OSX. Like up to date core utils and proper package management. Which are just about the two most important things on a dev machine - far more important than Cmd-?. And sure you could install GNU core utils via brew, none of that is part of the default OS X build - which matters because the whole basis of your argument was that OSX has better defaults. Ultimately though I don't see the point in nitpicking each OS - feature by feature. > finding files I'd already disagreed this in my previous post after you made that claim earlier > MacOS can recover from memory pressure fine. How do I get my linux machine not to effectively crash if I run an app that happens to use too much memory (technically it just swaps itself to death, in practice reset is the only remotely timely way to recover)? I've tried any amount of tweaking, but turns out that you can't turn off overcommit and swap completely, even if have lots of memory, things will just break randomly (chrome for example). The problem there is the application. However Linux will just kill the last process that over allocates memory. If you're getting the kind of symptoms you've described then you've either fiddled with your swap file settings (so not running defaults) and/or you're running Linux on some pretty awesome spinning disks while comparing it to nice fast SSDs on OSX. Either way, you're not comparing like for like. > Can you point me at something on linux that comes anywhere close to spotlight/mdfind? There's loads. Krunner, for example, has all the same features as Spotlight plus supports plugins to extend it. For example I can run math calculations in it - which I haven't yet worked out how to do in Spotlight. > For what it's worth: I'm using both linux and macOS daily and am both productive and reasonably expert with both. But do you actually use desktop Linux on modern hardware? Or are you just running Linux on a few servers and guessing about the desktop experience. I ask because your comments were valid about 10 or 15 years ago but really aren't the case any longer. > That is not to say that linux isn't more ergonomic for certain things, but in my experience they tend to be mostly limited to things only programmers would care about This I do wholeheartedly agree with.

by patrec 8y ago

snazz 8y ago

Re. keybindings: you can change your default GTK bindings to Emacs-style if you want to. Whether the super/Windows/Command key should be used for window management or application controls is still up for debate; it always bothers me whenever I have to use a Mac that some browser bindings are already taken by the WM/OS because Cmd is shared between apps and the OS. There are very few bindings that you can’t change on Linux or another non-Mac Unix-like. Re. file history: use real version control or a filesystem with this functionality (I imagine that ZFS would). Better to just use Git. Re. Cmd-?: no alternative exists that I know of. However, menu bars are usually less prevalent on software written for traditional Unix than on a Mac. Re. Finding files: GNOME does this with the search bar OOTB it appears. Otherwise, use search in Nautilus like you would in Finder. Re. Memory presssure: search “swappiness Linux” into a search engine. Do you prefer maximum available memory or responsiveness? Linux gives you the choice here. Recency, contents and type can all be sorted with Nautilus on GNOME. I’m not aware of a way to find very specific files that meet your search query quite like you mentioned (although I’m sure they exist). I would pipe file into grep personally, but that’s probably too rudimentary for what you want.

patrec 8y ago
> Better to just use Git. How would this help with my example? Git is terrible for managing non-text files and has zero support for browsing such files interactively. It also doesn't work at the file level and is pretty much unusable for anyone who isn't a developer. > Re. keybindings: you can change your default GTK bindings to Emacs-style if you want to. Yeah, but that doesn't really work, it just makes the whole mess even worse (oops, no longer can select everything with a shortcut, webapps, other toolkits don't care etc). > Do you prefer maximum available memory or responsiveness? Linux gives you the choice here. It doesn't. I want responsiveness, but I can't have it. Turning off overcommit (and swap) does improve responsiveness but is not a viable option for a desktop system, apps will just break if you turn off overcommit completely. > Recency, contents and type can all be sorted with Nautilus on GNOME. For me this works neither reliably nor with acceptable performance (unsurprising since a proper version needs FS integration).
- laumars 8y ago
  > Turning off overcommit (and swap) does improve responsiveness but is not a viable option for a desktop system Back when I got my first SSD I ran Linux without a swap file/partition. I did this partly because it was only a 60GB SSD so I wanted to conserve space. I also did it because I didn't want to shorten the life of the SSD with (this was back when such a thing was a concern) and I ran that set up for years on a pretty modest 8GB RAM with KDE installed (ie not just a lightweight tiling WM). > unsurprising since a proper version needs FS integration It really doesn't and apfs (your file system in OSX) doesn't even do this. In fact it's probably better that your meta-data indexer isn't embedded into your file system driver because you're just going to slow down file system operations - which matters a lot on UNIX-based platforms because they do lots of file system operations. A far better approach is to have your indexer run as a separate process that monitors file writes (you can still have a kernel hook for that if you wish) thus you can then catalogue your files without interrupting your normal file system operations. You can also add more granularity like separate database per home directory (which would be much harder to do securely if you were embedding that code into the fs driver without then going down the route of having multiple tanks ala ZFS). It also makes it much easier to optimize your meta-data db since you can now dump everything into a RDBMS rather than attached to the space constrained inodes. For what it's worth, this is another area I have first hand experience with because I've written a few hobby file systems over the years. Nothing serious nor performant; just myself messing around with a few ideas. But it's still earned me a greater appreciation for the design decisions behind the file systems we do commonly use.

laumars 8y ago

I don't mind OSX - honestly there's bits of it I do genuinely like. But it's blind-sighted fanboyism that really does the platform harm. > keybindings Honestly, I find Mac OS keybindings and keyboard layout the worst thing about using Macs. Yes it might make some sense but when literally every other platform on the planet follows the same standard apart from Apple, it then makes Apple the ugly stepsister regardless of how rational it might be on paper. I mean if you only ever use Macs then I guess you might like it, but for anyone who swaps between systems (or even just wants to use a non-mac keyboard) it can be very annoying. > file history You can have that in Linux > Cmd-? (how do I do that on Linux?) shrugs maybe you can't. But that's just one feature. As a counterargument I could list a dozen things that are in Linux that aren't in OSX. Like up to date core utils and proper package management. Which are just about the two most important things on a dev machine - far more important than Cmd-?. And sure you could install GNU core utils via brew, none of that is part of the default OS X build - which matters because the whole basis of your argument was that OSX has better defaults. Ultimately though I don't see the point in nitpicking each OS - feature by feature. > finding files I'd already disagreed this in my previous post after you made that claim earlier > MacOS can recover from memory pressure fine. How do I get my linux machine not to effectively crash if I run an app that happens to use too much memory (technically it just swaps itself to death, in practice reset is the only remotely timely way to recover)? I've tried any amount of tweaking, but turns out that you can't turn off overcommit and swap completely, even if have lots of memory, things will just break randomly (chrome for example). The problem there is the application. However Linux will just kill the last process that over allocates memory. If you're getting the kind of symptoms you've described then you've either fiddled with your swap file settings (so not running defaults) and/or you're running Linux on some pretty awesome spinning disks while comparing it to nice fast SSDs on OSX. Either way, you're not comparing like for like. > Can you point me at something on linux that comes anywhere close to spotlight/mdfind? There's loads. Krunner, for example, has all the same features as Spotlight plus supports plugins to extend it. For example I can run math calculations in it - which I haven't yet worked out how to do in Spotlight. > For what it's worth: I'm using both linux and macOS daily and am both productive and reasonably expert with both. But do you actually use desktop Linux on modern hardware? Or are you just running Linux on a few servers and guessing about the desktop experience. I ask because your comments were valid about 10 or 15 years ago but really aren't the case any longer. > That is not to say that linux isn't more ergonomic for certain things, but in my experience they tend to be mostly limited to things only programmers would care about This I do wholeheartedly agree with.