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I come at this from a productivity perspective after using Mac's for several jobs - Linux boosts my productivity by 30-40%. Anecdotal, sure, but things just wor

by mrozel 7y ago

I come at this from a productivity perspective after using Mac's for several jobs - Linux boosts my productivity by 30-40%. Anecdotal, sure, but things just work in Linux and your not constantly having to fiddle around and click through things. It could also be that Mac's have declined in quality and I can put Linux on nearly anything and it lasts forever, especially when you put it on high quality gear that just doesn't exist at Apple.

weiming 7y ago
What are some of those things? (Curious question, haven't thought of switching yet but could try if it's worth it.)
- trilila 7y ago
  Well clearly autocorrect doesn't work well on linux
- aquova 7y ago
  I'm curious to this as well. I recently got a desktop computer to supplement my MacBook, and am now using Ubuntu as my more-or-less primary OS. I'm quite enjoying it, but I certainly wouldn't claim that it works better out of the box than MacOS. Perhaps it's because I've used Mac for so long, but I can't think of anything that I find difficult to set up. Ubuntu on the other hand has several issue that I've just sort of ignore - keybindings don't always work, you can't drag to/from the Desktop for some reason, some startup programs don't always run, little things like that.
  - eof 7y ago
    Are you a developer? I think the productivity aspect would only be true in that case, as the things that “just work” are (for me) external libraries, GitHub readmes, sdk examples, etc.
    - mrozel 7y ago
      Yes and I agree that is the case. Came from DevOps, so Linux still feels natural. Though I use it for everything now from developing, image/video editing, browsing. Literally, I feel like the only thing I can't do is IOS development.
      - StavrosK 7y ago
        As a developer and hobbyist photographer and maker, I'm between two worlds. Linux is perfect for development but nothing Adobe or Autodesk runs on it, which is extremely frustrating. I don't even have to reboot to game, but I do need to reboot to edit a photo.
        mroche 7y ago
        > Linux is perfect for development but nothing Adobe or Autodesk runs on it, which is extremely frustrating. True for Adobe, technically false for Autodesk if you aren’t in CAD. Maya and MotionBuilder (acquired from Alias in mid 2000s) run on Linux for the film/VFX industry. Though to be fair, I’m pretty sure they are the only applications in AD’s entire portfolio that run on Linux, and it wasn’t because of them.
        StavrosK 7y ago
        I am in CAD, alas. Fusion 360 barely runs on Windows.
    - pjmlp 7y ago
      Being a developer does not equate with UNIX. Plenty of us are developers in other platforms.
  - danieldk 7y ago
    > I'm curious to this as well. I recently got a desktop computer to supplement my MacBook, and am now using Ubuntu as my more-or-less primary OS. I have used macOS as my primary OS from 2007 to ~2017 (before that BSD and Linux). I am now mostly back on Linux, though I also have a MacBook Pro that I use every now and then. Primary reasons for switching back to Linux: * MacBook hardware limitations: too few ports, keyboard problems, expensive upgrades. * Competitive hardware prices for Linux. I got a NUC8i5, which was somewhere between 300-400 Euro and has the same quad core CPU as my 2000 MacBook Pro. I added a 500GB SSD I had lying around and 16GB RAM. I have more resources for a fraction of the price, and can always bump up the SSD or memory relatively cheaply. * Nix. There is package/system management before and after Nix. I actually started with Nix on macOS, but being able to manage your whole system declaratively is awesome. * The subscription disease on macOS. I am fine with buying good applications. Overall I have probably spent thousands of Euros on licenses for macOS software. But I will not use an application with a subscription model. Period. [1] It transfers a huge amount of control from me to the software vendor. Unfortunately, more and more macOS applications are switching to subscriptions. * Linux is generally faster than macOS. There are also things that I like about macOS: Apple's strong push for security (including sandboxing of applications, T2, etc.), fewer issues with drivers and random paper cuts, better support for hardware decoding throughout applications, traditionally strong 3rd-party applications (OmniGraffle, Little Snitch, LaunchBar/Alfred, Things, OmniFocus, etc.), integration through AirPlay, handover, et al. [1] Admittedly, there is one exception: 1Password, we like using it for password sharing and arguably, you are paying for a cloud service.
- deleted 7y ago
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- mrozel 7y ago
  Docker has been my biggest gripe lately but admittedly has gotten better. Update environment. MacOS requires reboots and nags you constantly until you do. Whereas, apt and dnf are simple and can be automated in the background. Doing anything 'interesting' requires you to reboot and fiddle with the firmware. Where linux sudo works as expected. Outdated software due to licensing issues. See GPL and bash. Not to mention you will be much closer to a production environment and you will find less bugs developing due to differences in OS. Lots more but this is a good start. All of these things are small and mostly can be worked around but they add up I'm a big way. The road on Linux isn't completely rosy and can take more learning if you need to do anything really complicated. Tools are great but not necessarily pretty, etc.
  - gattilorenz 7y ago
    > Doing anything 'interesting' requires you to reboot and fiddle with the firmware. Where linux sudo works as expected. If you mean SIP, can't you just disable it for good? Then you should be in a situation similar to Linux.
  - filleduchaos 7y ago
    This seems rather uncharitable. Docker [was] off on macOS through no fault of the OS. Particular software dev teams taking shortcuts is on themselves. Linux also requires reboots for certain updates (plus you can disable checks for updates entirely and run one only when you want to on macOS, or even use `softwareupdate` for finer-grained control, so if it was "nagging you constantly" that's kind of on you). `sudo` works "as expected" for everything that doesn't involve conflict with the built-in System Integrity Protection, which is most things (in the past three or so years on macOS I've only run up against it twice). There isn't any "fiddling with firmware" going on. Plus if you want total freedom to delete your entire `/bin` folder or something, again you can disable SIP and move on with your life. I'm currently running Bash 5 on my MBP, so I don't get your outdated software complaint either. macOS doesn't have any magical power to force you to use the versions of (third-party!) software it ships with. If these are the first complaints that come to mind it just sounds like you haven't used the OS much and entirely refused to explore it or give it a chance in the time that you did. I mean, not even trying to set your own update preferences?
- danShumway 7y ago
  There are a few low-hanging improvements (updates almost never require you to restart). But it's a lot of tiny things that add up, some of which are hard to put into words. If I had to pick one thing that encompassed a lot of them, it would be that when I use Mac I feel like I'm adjusting my work-style to what Apple thinks it should be. In other words, my Linux setup now feels like it's a professional tool, and the Mac I use for work feels like a consumer-grade OS that happens to have work tools bundled on it. This is hard to put into words. If I'm an artist, my tools are very, very focused and robust. I might have specific pens and brushes that I know the feel of very well. They're not flashy and they don't have advertisements written on them, and they don't change their properties behind my back. Everything about them is designed to help me draw. If I'm a musician, I spend a lot of money to buy an instrument, and I get to know it very well. I have particular brands of reeds that are consistent that I'm likely preparing or sanding myself. I know my instrument so well that I can tell you which notes trend slightly flat or sharp, and after a while adjusting to that becomes instinctive. So if I'm a professional programmer, I likewise want a computing environment that I understand completely and can service myself, and that is very customized to my own preferences. It's no different from any other professional field -- the point of the computer is to help me get work done, everything else is secondary. You'll get different answers if you ask someone why Linux makes them productive, because the benefit of Linux is that it adapts to you. For me, personally, the biggest upgrades to my productivity have been: 1. Switching to Linux in general 2. Switching to Emacs/Spacemacs (Emacs works best on Linux) 3. Switching to Arch as my main distro (which is hard to do unless you already know Linux) 4. Most recently, switching to EXWM as a window manager (which is a lot easier to do on Arch) Each step of this process has been me getting rid of things that distract me from work, and each step has built on the last. Switching to Linux gives me a setup that is much more customizable and stable, switching to Emacs gives me an editor that is very tightly integrated into the host operating system, switching to Arch allows me to have a very minimal setup (its easier to debug because there's less going on), and switching to EXWM allows me to focus the entire setup on work. On the other hand, I have an old Surface Pro 3 that's running Manjaro/Gnome that I use for drawing. It's a very different setup from my main computer, because I use it for different things. Again, my computer should adapt to my workflow, not the other way around. The Surface setup is actually interesting, because it suffers from driver issues (unreliable Wifi, bad suspend support). And yet I'm still more productive on it than I was on Windows. I think people underestimate how much time and energy can get lost to distractions, surprise updates, stuff like that. Specialized devices are really stinking good for getting stuff done. But everyone is different. I know people that get frustrated by the initial setup times or needing to dig more into the OS internals, and I get that -- it's reasonable. For me, once I got past that I found Linux to be really stable, because it doesn't change until you tell it to. Linux is the only OS I'll set up for someone who's not tech-savy, because putting in more work up front means I won't need to do as much regular maintenance.
amelius 7y ago
Unfortunately, as Apple tries to integrate more and more of the supply chain, and other computer-makers are copying Apple's business model, I predict that generic computers (the ones you install Linux on) will slowly disappear from the market.
- pw6hv 7y ago
  I am not sure this is true. I believe that generic computers will be in the market until there will be people willing to buy them.
- acomjean 7y ago
  I always wonder where apple is going to proprietary hardware. For example the “t2” chip, which seems to be a “computer in a computer” and only Apple. I suspect other hardware manufacturers just want windows to work for the most part. From Wikipedia “Thge Apple T2 chip is a SoC from Apple first released in the iMac Pro 2017. It is a 64-bit ARMv8 chip (a variant of the A10, or T8010), and runs a separate operating system called bridgeOS 2.0,[95] which is a watchOS derivative.[96] It provides a secure enclave for encrypted keys, gives users the ability to lock down the computer's boot process, handles system functions like the camera and audio control, and handles on-the-fly encryption and decryption for the solid-state drive.[97][98][99]” https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple-designed_processors https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple-designed_processors
  - panpanna 7y ago
    There are similar things in PC land and most of the time they can be disabled. Things do not look as good in mobile space (mainly thanks to Qualcomm)
- ekianjo 7y ago
  > I predict that generic computers (the ones you install Linux on) will slowly disappear from the market. It seems the be going the opposite way, since by far and large there's more offering hardware wise than there has ever been, so what you see is manufacturers catering to niches more than before.
darrmit 7y ago
My experience is somewhat opposite. I love Linux. I've used it for over a decade in various roles. But it always ends up the same - either some obscure Bluetooth or graphics bug frustrates me to the point I can't stand it anymore, or I get fed up with 2 hours of battery life and go back to macOS. In this case, I'm measuring my productivity by the time it takes to mess around with the OS to get the desired result, and the fact that the stability baseline just never seems to get there. I get and support the attraction to Linux on the desktop, but find YMMV to be very much true.
- ekianjo 7y ago
  > or I get fed up with 2 hours of battery life and go back to macOS. Not sure about the Bluetooth part (i had this kind of issue once in like 10 years) but the battery life, getting 2 hours is not common anymore. Sure, you won't get as long as Windows on the same hardware more of the time, but 5 to 7 hours on a full charge is what you can expect, if not longer.
  - mrozel 7y ago
    This and it's come a long way in the last 10yrs but it's more dependent on hardware. Optimus still an issue with nvidia (3hrs) vs 630(5hrs) and have to switch between. However, just bought a pair of (used) x270's to travel with - one has Fedora and the other windows 10. Linux lasts 8-9 hours and the Windows about the same (maybe less).
    - p_l 7y ago
      Maxed out X250 had been reported to last 26h hours online, with plain debian install, no tricks like Macs' "oh, you look outside, I'll go to sleep now"
  - dkersten 7y ago
    Anecdotally, my cheapo $500 linux laptop gets a full work day (so 6-8 hours depending on what I'm doing, unless I run docker, then it gets maybe 3 hours tops) while my previous 2017 $2000 macbook pro typically got around 4 hours for the same type of work. I did spend about 2 hours optimising for battery when I got the laptop, but it was a once-off thing.
jdsampayo 7y ago
It also works excellent on low quality gear, I have some Point of Sales with very old computers, they just need internet, a browser and a thermal printer. Installed Xubuntu and forgot about those for years, the experience is still smooth, fast and the computers turn-on fast.
holografix 7y ago
“Things just work in Linux” - please do share this magical setup you have because my experience over the last 20 years is that nothing just works. MacOS mostly works, Windows sometimes works, Linux never works.
- bsder 7y ago
  I'm actually being driven to Linux by the absolute crappiness of Windows 10 and OS X. Oh, how the wheel turns ... > Windows sometimes works I'm going to take exception to this. Windows 10 has been a disaster for me. Effectively, Windows 10 treats me like a "supplicant". "Oh, great computer, can you please do some work for me right now?" "I say NAY! I must now commence my Update Ritual. Please come back and ask again. But I make no guarantees." Every ... single ... time. WTF! > MacOS mostly works Unless you want to do modern graphics and then you get the "joy" of learning Metal (or not). Or, you can simply throw in the towel and switch to Windows/Linux where you can use OpenGL and Vulkan. Valve is funding MoltenVK (a Vulkan shim on top of Metal) because it is more cost effective than dealing with Metal. Let that sink in for a minute. And OS X hardware is a disaster. We've actually stockpiled used-2015 era OS X laptops in the office. At this point we have enough if someone has a laptop that goes down.
  - squiggleblaz 7y ago
    I didn't use Windows XP or anything since. I'm now using Windows 10 due to a work situation. But seriously. The Update Ritual happens out-of-ours when you're not using your computer. It seems to take a few days longer than it needs to (why not do it tonight? why must you ask me for days and days, and then finally do it overnight?). But it's generally quite reasonable. I don't fully understand why Linux is able to do its system updates as one of several tasks, but Windows has to take over the computer to do it though. Is it just that if a Linux box gets stuffed during update, the user is probably able to recover, so the relative risks are different?
- ben-schaaf 7y ago
  I've never had a minor update on Linux break the entire graphics stack like osx 10.14.4 did. And I've certainly never waited month(s) for a major breakage to be fixed. For an ecosystem with the smallest variety of hardware, they sure are bad at supporting it...
sombremesa 7y ago
I find that many people who say things like this have never actually tried to boost their productivity on Mac in the first place. As someone who uses Alfred, Karabiner Elements, Keyboard Maestro, Spectacle, Omnifocus, and a host of plugins on fish shell besides, it baffles me how slow my peers are at doing basic stuff they do twenty times a day. Just set up a shortcut, it's trivial. Not so trivial on Linux. The fact that the author considers Firefox add-ons (!) a Linux feature is a clear indicator they never even tried on a Mac and were enamored by Linux due to the lionisation in the particular subreddits they follow. Kind of like here! Not that there is anything wrong with getting excited about something. Just don't make sweeping generalizations. Also, a small tip: You can put your Mac apps and configurations in Dropbox and they will show up and work as you expect across your multiple machines.
- slifin 7y ago
  I agree with your premise, I'd suggest Yabai if you're curious about getting the productivity of a power user on Linux using something like i3
- gingerlime 7y ago
  One thing I sorely miss after switching from Linux to Mac is i3. Spetactle gets close, but something as trivial(?) as switching window focus with the keyboard I couldn't figure out a solution for... Can Keyboard Maestro do it?
  - IggleSniggle 7y ago
    I haven’t used i3, but I missed good keyboard context switching support when I started using macOS. There’s some reasonable solutions out there, but my current favorite interface customizer is BetterTouchTool, which is setup to let you customize any input for any kind of OS function you might want. I have a 4-monitor setup so easy window/tile management is important to me. I have a handful of keyboard chords to put windows on the screen/quadrant combo that I want. My TouchBar is permanently set to media keys with media info + notification area + emoji keyboard. For keyboard control over focus, I use the Contexts app inter-app and ShortCat within app.
  - 7y ago
coldtea 7y ago
I find the opposite (and I've used Linux since 1997, plus several other unices starting from Sun OS). Things tend to just work on the Mac, even though I use it for a wide variety of tasks (programming mainly, writing, music, and video secondarily, plus some photo work). Music and Video (DAWs and NLEs) are almost a joke in Linux. You have to be cautious to buy compatible laptop hardware, and still there's always something not working on new setups, usually sleep, sound, GPU compositor, bluetooth, etc.
- panpanna 7y ago
  > You have to be cautious to buy compatible laptop hardware, and still there's always something not working on new setups, usually sleep, sound, GPU compositor, bluetooth, etc. Technically, there are more 100% Linux compatible laptops than macos dito... That is true even if you limit yourself to thinkpads
- chipotle_coyote 7y ago
  Things tend to just work on the Mac, even though I use it for a wide variety of tasks (programming mainly, writing, music, and video secondarily, plus some photo work). I'm pretty sure that would be my problem if I tried to move (back to) Linux. A lot of the HN crowd is (understandably!) focused on development, and the chances are your favorite dev environment is going to be good-or-better on Linux as it is on the Mac. But I can't find a screenplay writing program on Linux I personally like as much as Highland for the Mac, or a Markdown editor that I like as much as iA Writer or BBEdit for the "heavy lifting" of technical writing at work, or a graphics editor I like as much as Acorn, or a Twitter client I like as much as Twitterrific, or a Markdown previewer/converter I like as much as Marked, and and and. I know it's all subjective, but it's a sticking point. And the last I checked, at least, I couldn't find good equivalents to OS X Services/Quick Actions, which can be just amazing. I'm sure if Apple really tanks, I could make the switch and hit a happy place, but it'd be turbulent for a while.
  - pjmlp 7y ago
    > I'm pretty sure that would be my problem if I tried to move (back to) Linux. A lot of the HN crowd is (understandably!) focused on development, and the chances are your favorite dev environment is going to be good-or-better on Linux as it is on the Mac. Those of us into graphics programming, UI/UX are better served with macOS/Windows tooling, development enviroments and SDKs. That is what triggered my move back into those platforms.
exadeci 7y ago
To start on a new laptop in an office on OSX I just list my brew packages on my previous laptop, copy my ~/ and move that to the new laptop and I'm set up in the time it takes for it to install all my brew packages and casks.

by mrozel 7y ago

weiming 7y ago

What are some of those things? (Curious question, haven't thought of switching yet but could try if it's worth it.)

trilila 7y ago
Well clearly autocorrect doesn't work well on linux
aquova 7y ago
I'm curious to this as well. I recently got a desktop computer to supplement my MacBook, and am now using Ubuntu as my more-or-less primary OS. I'm quite enjoying it, but I certainly wouldn't claim that it works better out of the box than MacOS. Perhaps it's because I've used Mac for so long, but I can't think of anything that I find difficult to set up. Ubuntu on the other hand has several issue that I've just sort of ignore - keybindings don't always work, you can't drag to/from the Desktop for some reason, some startup programs don't always run, little things like that.
- eof 7y ago
  Are you a developer? I think the productivity aspect would only be true in that case, as the things that “just work” are (for me) external libraries, GitHub readmes, sdk examples, etc.
  - mrozel 7y ago
    Yes and I agree that is the case. Came from DevOps, so Linux still feels natural. Though I use it for everything now from developing, image/video editing, browsing. Literally, I feel like the only thing I can't do is IOS development.
    - StavrosK 7y ago
      As a developer and hobbyist photographer and maker, I'm between two worlds. Linux is perfect for development but nothing Adobe or Autodesk runs on it, which is extremely frustrating. I don't even have to reboot to game, but I do need to reboot to edit a photo.
      - mroche 7y ago
        > Linux is perfect for development but nothing Adobe or Autodesk runs on it, which is extremely frustrating. True for Adobe, technically false for Autodesk if you aren’t in CAD. Maya and MotionBuilder (acquired from Alias in mid 2000s) run on Linux for the film/VFX industry. Though to be fair, I’m pretty sure they are the only applications in AD’s entire portfolio that run on Linux, and it wasn’t because of them.
        StavrosK 7y ago
        I am in CAD, alas. Fusion 360 barely runs on Windows.
  - pjmlp 7y ago
    Being a developer does not equate with UNIX. Plenty of us are developers in other platforms.
- danieldk 7y ago
  > I'm curious to this as well. I recently got a desktop computer to supplement my MacBook, and am now using Ubuntu as my more-or-less primary OS. I have used macOS as my primary OS from 2007 to ~2017 (before that BSD and Linux). I am now mostly back on Linux, though I also have a MacBook Pro that I use every now and then. Primary reasons for switching back to Linux: * MacBook hardware limitations: too few ports, keyboard problems, expensive upgrades. * Competitive hardware prices for Linux. I got a NUC8i5, which was somewhere between 300-400 Euro and has the same quad core CPU as my 2000 MacBook Pro. I added a 500GB SSD I had lying around and 16GB RAM. I have more resources for a fraction of the price, and can always bump up the SSD or memory relatively cheaply. * Nix. There is package/system management before and after Nix. I actually started with Nix on macOS, but being able to manage your whole system declaratively is awesome. * The subscription disease on macOS. I am fine with buying good applications. Overall I have probably spent thousands of Euros on licenses for macOS software. But I will not use an application with a subscription model. Period. [1] It transfers a huge amount of control from me to the software vendor. Unfortunately, more and more macOS applications are switching to subscriptions. * Linux is generally faster than macOS. There are also things that I like about macOS: Apple's strong push for security (including sandboxing of applications, T2, etc.), fewer issues with drivers and random paper cuts, better support for hardware decoding throughout applications, traditionally strong 3rd-party applications (OmniGraffle, Little Snitch, LaunchBar/Alfred, Things, OmniFocus, etc.), integration through AirPlay, handover, et al. [1] Admittedly, there is one exception: 1Password, we like using it for password sharing and arguably, you are paying for a cloud service.
deleted 7y ago
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mrozel 7y ago
Docker has been my biggest gripe lately but admittedly has gotten better. Update environment. MacOS requires reboots and nags you constantly until you do. Whereas, apt and dnf are simple and can be automated in the background. Doing anything 'interesting' requires you to reboot and fiddle with the firmware. Where linux sudo works as expected. Outdated software due to licensing issues. See GPL and bash. Not to mention you will be much closer to a production environment and you will find less bugs developing due to differences in OS. Lots more but this is a good start. All of these things are small and mostly can be worked around but they add up I'm a big way. The road on Linux isn't completely rosy and can take more learning if you need to do anything really complicated. Tools are great but not necessarily pretty, etc.
- gattilorenz 7y ago
  > Doing anything 'interesting' requires you to reboot and fiddle with the firmware. Where linux sudo works as expected. If you mean SIP, can't you just disable it for good? Then you should be in a situation similar to Linux.
- filleduchaos 7y ago
  This seems rather uncharitable. Docker [was] off on macOS through no fault of the OS. Particular software dev teams taking shortcuts is on themselves. Linux also requires reboots for certain updates (plus you can disable checks for updates entirely and run one only when you want to on macOS, or even use `softwareupdate` for finer-grained control, so if it was "nagging you constantly" that's kind of on you). `sudo` works "as expected" for everything that doesn't involve conflict with the built-in System Integrity Protection, which is most things (in the past three or so years on macOS I've only run up against it twice). There isn't any "fiddling with firmware" going on. Plus if you want total freedom to delete your entire `/bin` folder or something, again you can disable SIP and move on with your life. I'm currently running Bash 5 on my MBP, so I don't get your outdated software complaint either. macOS doesn't have any magical power to force you to use the versions of (third-party!) software it ships with. If these are the first complaints that come to mind it just sounds like you haven't used the OS much and entirely refused to explore it or give it a chance in the time that you did. I mean, not even trying to set your own update preferences?
danShumway 7y ago
There are a few low-hanging improvements (updates almost never require you to restart). But it's a lot of tiny things that add up, some of which are hard to put into words. If I had to pick one thing that encompassed a lot of them, it would be that when I use Mac I feel like I'm adjusting my work-style to what Apple thinks it should be. In other words, my Linux setup now feels like it's a professional tool, and the Mac I use for work feels like a consumer-grade OS that happens to have work tools bundled on it. This is hard to put into words. If I'm an artist, my tools are very, very focused and robust. I might have specific pens and brushes that I know the feel of very well. They're not flashy and they don't have advertisements written on them, and they don't change their properties behind my back. Everything about them is designed to help me draw. If I'm a musician, I spend a lot of money to buy an instrument, and I get to know it very well. I have particular brands of reeds that are consistent that I'm likely preparing or sanding myself. I know my instrument so well that I can tell you which notes trend slightly flat or sharp, and after a while adjusting to that becomes instinctive. So if I'm a professional programmer, I likewise want a computing environment that I understand completely and can service myself, and that is very customized to my own preferences. It's no different from any other professional field -- the point of the computer is to help me get work done, everything else is secondary. You'll get different answers if you ask someone why Linux makes them productive, because the benefit of Linux is that it adapts to you. For me, personally, the biggest upgrades to my productivity have been: 1. Switching to Linux in general 2. Switching to Emacs/Spacemacs (Emacs works best on Linux) 3. Switching to Arch as my main distro (which is hard to do unless you already know Linux) 4. Most recently, switching to EXWM as a window manager (which is a lot easier to do on Arch) Each step of this process has been me getting rid of things that distract me from work, and each step has built on the last. Switching to Linux gives me a setup that is much more customizable and stable, switching to Emacs gives me an editor that is very tightly integrated into the host operating system, switching to Arch allows me to have a very minimal setup (its easier to debug because there's less going on), and switching to EXWM allows me to focus the entire setup on work. On the other hand, I have an old Surface Pro 3 that's running Manjaro/Gnome that I use for drawing. It's a very different setup from my main computer, because I use it for different things. Again, my computer should adapt to my workflow, not the other way around. The Surface setup is actually interesting, because it suffers from driver issues (unreliable Wifi, bad suspend support). And yet I'm still more productive on it than I was on Windows. I think people underestimate how much time and energy can get lost to distractions, surprise updates, stuff like that. Specialized devices are really stinking good for getting stuff done. But everyone is different. I know people that get frustrated by the initial setup times or needing to dig more into the OS internals, and I get that -- it's reasonable. For me, once I got past that I found Linux to be really stable, because it doesn't change until you tell it to. Linux is the only OS I'll set up for someone who's not tech-savy, because putting in more work up front means I won't need to do as much regular maintenance.

amelius 7y ago

Unfortunately, as Apple tries to integrate more and more of the supply chain, and other computer-makers are copying Apple's business model, I predict that generic computers (the ones you install Linux on) will slowly disappear from the market.

pw6hv 7y ago
I am not sure this is true. I believe that generic computers will be in the market until there will be people willing to buy them.
acomjean 7y ago
I always wonder where apple is going to proprietary hardware. For example the “t2” chip, which seems to be a “computer in a computer” and only Apple. I suspect other hardware manufacturers just want windows to work for the most part. From Wikipedia “Thge Apple T2 chip is a SoC from Apple first released in the iMac Pro 2017. It is a 64-bit ARMv8 chip (a variant of the A10, or T8010), and runs a separate operating system called bridgeOS 2.0,[95] which is a watchOS derivative.[96] It provides a secure enclave for encrypted keys, gives users the ability to lock down the computer's boot process, handles system functions like the camera and audio control, and handles on-the-fly encryption and decryption for the solid-state drive.[97][98][99]” https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple-designed_processors https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple-designed_processors
- panpanna 7y ago
  There are similar things in PC land and most of the time they can be disabled. Things do not look as good in mobile space (mainly thanks to Qualcomm)
ekianjo 7y ago
> I predict that generic computers (the ones you install Linux on) will slowly disappear from the market. It seems the be going the opposite way, since by far and large there's more offering hardware wise than there has ever been, so what you see is manufacturers catering to niches more than before.

darrmit 7y ago

My experience is somewhat opposite. I love Linux. I've used it for over a decade in various roles. But it always ends up the same - either some obscure Bluetooth or graphics bug frustrates me to the point I can't stand it anymore, or I get fed up with 2 hours of battery life and go back to macOS. In this case, I'm measuring my productivity by the time it takes to mess around with the OS to get the desired result, and the fact that the stability baseline just never seems to get there. I get and support the attraction to Linux on the desktop, but find YMMV to be very much true.

ekianjo 7y ago
> or I get fed up with 2 hours of battery life and go back to macOS. Not sure about the Bluetooth part (i had this kind of issue once in like 10 years) but the battery life, getting 2 hours is not common anymore. Sure, you won't get as long as Windows on the same hardware more of the time, but 5 to 7 hours on a full charge is what you can expect, if not longer.
- mrozel 7y ago
  This and it's come a long way in the last 10yrs but it's more dependent on hardware. Optimus still an issue with nvidia (3hrs) vs 630(5hrs) and have to switch between. However, just bought a pair of (used) x270's to travel with - one has Fedora and the other windows 10. Linux lasts 8-9 hours and the Windows about the same (maybe less).
  - p_l 7y ago
    Maxed out X250 had been reported to last 26h hours online, with plain debian install, no tricks like Macs' "oh, you look outside, I'll go to sleep now"
- dkersten 7y ago
  Anecdotally, my cheapo $500 linux laptop gets a full work day (so 6-8 hours depending on what I'm doing, unless I run docker, then it gets maybe 3 hours tops) while my previous 2017 $2000 macbook pro typically got around 4 hours for the same type of work. I did spend about 2 hours optimising for battery when I got the laptop, but it was a once-off thing.

jdsampayo 7y ago

It also works excellent on low quality gear, I have some Point of Sales with very old computers, they just need internet, a browser and a thermal printer. Installed Xubuntu and forgot about those for years, the experience is still smooth, fast and the computers turn-on fast.

holografix 7y ago

“Things just work in Linux” - please do share this magical setup you have because my experience over the last 20 years is that nothing just works. MacOS mostly works, Windows sometimes works, Linux never works.

bsder 7y ago
I'm actually being driven to Linux by the absolute crappiness of Windows 10 and OS X. Oh, how the wheel turns ... > Windows sometimes works I'm going to take exception to this. Windows 10 has been a disaster for me. Effectively, Windows 10 treats me like a "supplicant". "Oh, great computer, can you please do some work for me right now?" "I say NAY! I must now commence my Update Ritual. Please come back and ask again. But I make no guarantees." Every ... single ... time. WTF! > MacOS mostly works Unless you want to do modern graphics and then you get the "joy" of learning Metal (or not). Or, you can simply throw in the towel and switch to Windows/Linux where you can use OpenGL and Vulkan. Valve is funding MoltenVK (a Vulkan shim on top of Metal) because it is more cost effective than dealing with Metal. Let that sink in for a minute. And OS X hardware is a disaster. We've actually stockpiled used-2015 era OS X laptops in the office. At this point we have enough if someone has a laptop that goes down.
- squiggleblaz 7y ago
  I didn't use Windows XP or anything since. I'm now using Windows 10 due to a work situation. But seriously. The Update Ritual happens out-of-ours when you're not using your computer. It seems to take a few days longer than it needs to (why not do it tonight? why must you ask me for days and days, and then finally do it overnight?). But it's generally quite reasonable. I don't fully understand why Linux is able to do its system updates as one of several tasks, but Windows has to take over the computer to do it though. Is it just that if a Linux box gets stuffed during update, the user is probably able to recover, so the relative risks are different?
ben-schaaf 7y ago
I've never had a minor update on Linux break the entire graphics stack like osx 10.14.4 did. And I've certainly never waited month(s) for a major breakage to be fixed. For an ecosystem with the smallest variety of hardware, they sure are bad at supporting it...

sombremesa 7y ago

I find that many people who say things like this have never actually tried to boost their productivity on Mac in the first place. As someone who uses Alfred, Karabiner Elements, Keyboard Maestro, Spectacle, Omnifocus, and a host of plugins on fish shell besides, it baffles me how slow my peers are at doing basic stuff they do twenty times a day. Just set up a shortcut, it's trivial. Not so trivial on Linux. The fact that the author considers Firefox add-ons (!) a Linux feature is a clear indicator they never even tried on a Mac and were enamored by Linux due to the lionisation in the particular subreddits they follow. Kind of like here! Not that there is anything wrong with getting excited about something. Just don't make sweeping generalizations. Also, a small tip: You can put your Mac apps and configurations in Dropbox and they will show up and work as you expect across your multiple machines.

slifin 7y ago
I agree with your premise, I'd suggest Yabai if you're curious about getting the productivity of a power user on Linux using something like i3
gingerlime 7y ago
One thing I sorely miss after switching from Linux to Mac is i3. Spetactle gets close, but something as trivial(?) as switching window focus with the keyboard I couldn't figure out a solution for... Can Keyboard Maestro do it?
- IggleSniggle 7y ago
  I haven’t used i3, but I missed good keyboard context switching support when I started using macOS. There’s some reasonable solutions out there, but my current favorite interface customizer is BetterTouchTool, which is setup to let you customize any input for any kind of OS function you might want. I have a 4-monitor setup so easy window/tile management is important to me. I have a handful of keyboard chords to put windows on the screen/quadrant combo that I want. My TouchBar is permanently set to media keys with media info + notification area + emoji keyboard. For keyboard control over focus, I use the Contexts app inter-app and ShortCat within app.
- 7y ago

coldtea 7y ago

I find the opposite (and I've used Linux since 1997, plus several other unices starting from Sun OS). Things tend to just work on the Mac, even though I use it for a wide variety of tasks (programming mainly, writing, music, and video secondarily, plus some photo work). Music and Video (DAWs and NLEs) are almost a joke in Linux. You have to be cautious to buy compatible laptop hardware, and still there's always something not working on new setups, usually sleep, sound, GPU compositor, bluetooth, etc.

panpanna 7y ago
> You have to be cautious to buy compatible laptop hardware, and still there's always something not working on new setups, usually sleep, sound, GPU compositor, bluetooth, etc. Technically, there are more 100% Linux compatible laptops than macos dito... That is true even if you limit yourself to thinkpads
chipotle_coyote 7y ago
Things tend to just work on the Mac, even though I use it for a wide variety of tasks (programming mainly, writing, music, and video secondarily, plus some photo work). I'm pretty sure that would be my problem if I tried to move (back to) Linux. A lot of the HN crowd is (understandably!) focused on development, and the chances are your favorite dev environment is going to be good-or-better on Linux as it is on the Mac. But I can't find a screenplay writing program on Linux I personally like as much as Highland for the Mac, or a Markdown editor that I like as much as iA Writer or BBEdit for the "heavy lifting" of technical writing at work, or a graphics editor I like as much as Acorn, or a Twitter client I like as much as Twitterrific, or a Markdown previewer/converter I like as much as Marked, and and and. I know it's all subjective, but it's a sticking point. And the last I checked, at least, I couldn't find good equivalents to OS X Services/Quick Actions, which can be just amazing. I'm sure if Apple really tanks, I could make the switch and hit a happy place, but it'd be turbulent for a while.
- pjmlp 7y ago
  > I'm pretty sure that would be my problem if I tried to move (back to) Linux. A lot of the HN crowd is (understandably!) focused on development, and the chances are your favorite dev environment is going to be good-or-better on Linux as it is on the Mac. Those of us into graphics programming, UI/UX are better served with macOS/Windows tooling, development enviroments and SDKs. That is what triggered my move back into those platforms.

exadeci 7y ago

To start on a new laptop in an office on OSX I just list my brew packages on my previous laptop, copy my ~/ and move that to the new laptop and I'm set up in the time it takes for it to install all my brew packages and casks.