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Linux has gotten to the point that it is no longer necessary to look at MacOS for a stable Unix environment. I don't need much from a laptop just decent keyboar

Linux has gotten to the point that it is no longer necessary to look at MacOS for a stable Unix environment. I don't need much from a laptop just decent keyboard, performance, battery life and for it to not thermal throttle, but unfortunately this seems to be incompatible with Apple's vision of the perfect MacBook. If this is the direction Apple is taking I cannot see myself buying a MacBook in the foreseeable future.

chaostheory 7y ago
> Linux has gotten to the point that it is no longer necessary to look at MacOS for a stable Unix environment You can add Windows 10 as an option too. WSL2 and Ubuntu is a nice combo. It’s pretty close to native.
- kyriakos 7y ago
  WSL2 is still not available in a stable release of windows though.
  - chaostheory 7y ago
    WSL is good enough then
    - xyzzy_plugh 7y ago
      WSL is not good enough. I tried it, I really gave it a chance. Breakages across Windows updates, atrocious filesystem performance, broken file permissions, so many rough edges buried deep in the issue tracker. I strongly recommend trying it but, but I can't possibly recommend it for professional use. It's impressive, and from what I recall a small team working on it, who deserve tremendous kudos, but it's no replacement for real Linux.
tempsolution 7y ago
Sorry, but Linux hasn't gotten anywhere in a long while. They were trying something that may have worked (Ubuntu + Unity), but this just looks and feels like a toy still. When it comes to GUI and user experience, let's face it, there is a very very TINY market left for Linux. I am a software developer for a very long time and had been running QubesOS as well as most popular distros. Of those QubesOS is the clear winner, since it looks pretty much as sad as any other Linux but at least it gives you something you can't get anywhere else: Security. As much as I hate Windows and MacOS, they just both run circles around Linux when it comes to graphics, GUI design and user experience and that is why they have such a big market share. It's this old delusion of some Linux fanboys that Linux would spread around the globe if the evil Apple and Microsoft would just allow them. There are few people who CAN use it and much fewer still that are willing to use it as a desktop system.
- Paperweight 7y ago
  Agreed. I recently gave every Linux DE an honest test drive and... it's clear that nobody really has the resources to perfect them. They all get annoying after a while. I'd be happy with something as polished as Windows 95, but even XFCE has the exact same bugs as when I used it 15 years ago.
  - Consultant32452 7y ago
    I'm curious what languages you develop in? I primarily work in Java. On a Windows machine I generally install some way of using BASH (git-Bash suffices), but otherwise I can hardly tell the difference between MacOS, Windows, and Linux. I would imagine the experience is similar for languages like python, web development, etc.
    - alanfranz 7y ago
      Java is quite crossplatform. Python, by default, wraps system libraries, so the dev experience on Windows is very different, and special care must be taken. But, it's the overall experience that sucks in Windows (and most linuxes imho).
      - skinnymuch 7y ago
        Didn’t WSL 2 come out recently? Has that not made things better for Windows? Regardless your last point is why I stick with macOS. I don’t really care that much about the laptop aesthetic.
      - Consultant32452 7y ago
        I genuinely don't understand what you're referring to when you say overall experience. When I am coding I have one monitor full of IDE, one full of browser, and a console that is brought to and from focus from time to time. The experience on the 3 major platforms is extremely similar. What are you doing differently?
  - Eiriksmal 7y ago
wayneftw 7y ago
Exactly this! As a full stack web dev, Manjaro has given me exactly everything that I need with way, way, way less work and less hassle than any Mac or Windows machine I’ve ever used in over 20 years of my programming career. Almost every piece of software that I really need to use was in the package manager for one thing. It’s also made being a developer fun again because I feel like I’m actually in control of my desktop OS! I can make it do whatever I want and have been doing just that for over a year now on 3 different machines. I have it on one work desktop, one home desktop and on a laptop, a beautiful and cheap 15” Acer/i5 unit with 16gb, expandable up to 32gb of RAM if I want... and the desktops are 5 year old HPs both with 32 GB of RAM and i7s that run circles around macOS on the newest MBPs due to things like it being a sane nix environment and not having to jump through hoops to be productive… I also set it up for a couple of my coworkers and they love it too. Furthermore we occasionally do some ASP.net and SQL Server work and have had no problem doing so right on these same machines was nothing more than Docker and Azure data studio. Honestly the only thing I’ve ever needed a Mac for is to compile stuff for iOS and I’ve been doing that for years already. Mostly because I just can’t stand the UX on macOS...like at all. So before Manjaro, I’d mostly stuck to Windows and virtual machines or Docker. But I had been trying desktop Linux on and off since the late 90s and this is the first time it ever stuck. I think it’s also because it’s not that hard to make cross platform apps anymore as it used to be when all you had was C++.
lostmyoldone 7y ago
I used Linux (Gentoo/KDE) quite a bit about 10 years ago, this year I ran Manjaro as one of my clients used that for their developer workstations. I was severely disappointed. UI scaling for high resolution displays was terrible. Configuration still spread in a billion places, badly documented, and with the polish of a gravel road. Still no smooth scrolling, and no good remote access solution, unless you think VNC is still considered good. It's not. Apart for some pretty logos, it felt almost exactly like the system I left 10 years ago. I actually felt rather sad that day. It's rather shameful, but not unexpected how all those massive companies that built their businesses on Linux can't be bothered support what is - in a sense - the "origin" of that success: That people wanted a decent OS with a nice GUI where we also wouldn't have to be prisoners of Microsoft, Apple, or anyone else.
- wayneftw 7y ago
  If you're going to scale the UI, why even bother with a high resolution display? Honest question: What do you do that requires more than 1080p? > Configuration still spread in a billion places, badly documented... Not quite a billion, but hey at least you can configure things the way you want very much unlike macOS where you have absolutely no choice whatsoever. I can't remember the last time I even used official documentation for macOS or Windows. Don't you just google everything? Aside from that, what resources do you have for mac/win that are better (more detailed?) than the Arch Linux website (which applies to Manjaro)? When I first setup Manjaro, I looked at all the remote access solutions as well and I found that X2Go was the best performing solution. Did you give that a try?
skinnymuch 7y ago
What has changed with Linux in the past 5 or so years? That makes it true now but not then? Or any other recent further back date like 2012, the first year they did a back to back yearly release (10.8, Mountain Lion)?

chaostheory 7y ago

> Linux has gotten to the point that it is no longer necessary to look at MacOS for a stable Unix environment You can add Windows 10 as an option too. WSL2 and Ubuntu is a nice combo. It’s pretty close to native.

kyriakos 7y ago
WSL2 is still not available in a stable release of windows though.
- chaostheory 7y ago
  WSL is good enough then
  - xyzzy_plugh 7y ago
    WSL is not good enough. I tried it, I really gave it a chance. Breakages across Windows updates, atrocious filesystem performance, broken file permissions, so many rough edges buried deep in the issue tracker. I strongly recommend trying it but, but I can't possibly recommend it for professional use. It's impressive, and from what I recall a small team working on it, who deserve tremendous kudos, but it's no replacement for real Linux.

tempsolution 7y ago

Sorry, but Linux hasn't gotten anywhere in a long while. They were trying something that may have worked (Ubuntu + Unity), but this just looks and feels like a toy still. When it comes to GUI and user experience, let's face it, there is a very very TINY market left for Linux. I am a software developer for a very long time and had been running QubesOS as well as most popular distros. Of those QubesOS is the clear winner, since it looks pretty much as sad as any other Linux but at least it gives you something you can't get anywhere else: Security. As much as I hate Windows and MacOS, they just both run circles around Linux when it comes to graphics, GUI design and user experience and that is why they have such a big market share. It's this old delusion of some Linux fanboys that Linux would spread around the globe if the evil Apple and Microsoft would just allow them. There are few people who CAN use it and much fewer still that are willing to use it as a desktop system.

Paperweight 7y ago
Agreed. I recently gave every Linux DE an honest test drive and... it's clear that nobody really has the resources to perfect them. They all get annoying after a while. I'd be happy with something as polished as Windows 95, but even XFCE has the exact same bugs as when I used it 15 years ago.
- Consultant32452 7y ago
  I'm curious what languages you develop in? I primarily work in Java. On a Windows machine I generally install some way of using BASH (git-Bash suffices), but otherwise I can hardly tell the difference between MacOS, Windows, and Linux. I would imagine the experience is similar for languages like python, web development, etc.
  - alanfranz 7y ago
    Java is quite crossplatform. Python, by default, wraps system libraries, so the dev experience on Windows is very different, and special care must be taken. But, it's the overall experience that sucks in Windows (and most linuxes imho).
    - skinnymuch 7y ago
      Didn’t WSL 2 come out recently? Has that not made things better for Windows? Regardless your last point is why I stick with macOS. I don’t really care that much about the laptop aesthetic.
    - Consultant32452 7y ago
      I genuinely don't understand what you're referring to when you say overall experience. When I am coding I have one monitor full of IDE, one full of browser, and a console that is brought to and from focus from time to time. The experience on the 3 major platforms is extremely similar. What are you doing differently?
- Eiriksmal 7y ago

wayneftw 7y ago

Exactly this! As a full stack web dev, Manjaro has given me exactly everything that I need with way, way, way less work and less hassle than any Mac or Windows machine I’ve ever used in over 20 years of my programming career. Almost every piece of software that I really need to use was in the package manager for one thing. It’s also made being a developer fun again because I feel like I’m actually in control of my desktop OS! I can make it do whatever I want and have been doing just that for over a year now on 3 different machines. I have it on one work desktop, one home desktop and on a laptop, a beautiful and cheap 15” Acer/i5 unit with 16gb, expandable up to 32gb of RAM if I want... and the desktops are 5 year old HPs both with 32 GB of RAM and i7s that run circles around macOS on the newest MBPs due to things like it being a sane nix environment and not having to jump through hoops to be productive… I also set it up for a couple of my coworkers and they love it too. Furthermore we occasionally do some ASP.net and SQL Server work and have had no problem doing so right on these same machines was nothing more than Docker and Azure data studio. Honestly the only thing I’ve ever needed a Mac for is to compile stuff for iOS and I’ve been doing that for years already. Mostly because I just can’t stand the UX on macOS...like at all. So before Manjaro, I’d mostly stuck to Windows and virtual machines or Docker. But I had been trying desktop Linux on and off since the late 90s and this is the first time it ever stuck. I think it’s also because it’s not that hard to make cross platform apps anymore as it used to be when all you had was C++.

lostmyoldone 7y ago

I used Linux (Gentoo/KDE) quite a bit about 10 years ago, this year I ran Manjaro as one of my clients used that for their developer workstations. I was severely disappointed. UI scaling for high resolution displays was terrible. Configuration still spread in a billion places, badly documented, and with the polish of a gravel road. Still no smooth scrolling, and no good remote access solution, unless you think VNC is still considered good. It's not. Apart for some pretty logos, it felt almost exactly like the system I left 10 years ago. I actually felt rather sad that day. It's rather shameful, but not unexpected how all those massive companies that built their businesses on Linux can't be bothered support what is - in a sense - the "origin" of that success: That people wanted a decent OS with a nice GUI where we also wouldn't have to be prisoners of Microsoft, Apple, or anyone else.

wayneftw 7y ago
If you're going to scale the UI, why even bother with a high resolution display? Honest question: What do you do that requires more than 1080p? > Configuration still spread in a billion places, badly documented... Not quite a billion, but hey at least you can configure things the way you want very much unlike macOS where you have absolutely no choice whatsoever. I can't remember the last time I even used official documentation for macOS or Windows. Don't you just google everything? Aside from that, what resources do you have for mac/win that are better (more detailed?) than the Arch Linux website (which applies to Manjaro)? When I first setup Manjaro, I looked at all the remote access solutions as well and I found that X2Go was the best performing solution. Did you give that a try?

skinnymuch 7y ago

What has changed with Linux in the past 5 or so years? That makes it true now but not then? Or any other recent further back date like 2012, the first year they did a back to back yearly release (10.8, Mountain Lion)?