4 ms·

Out of curiosity, why did you switch to OSX? I'm on OSX now, and I love much of it, but the author's points ring very true. I'm less and less sure every day why

by ihodes 16y ago

Out of curiosity, why did you switch to OSX? I'm on OSX now, and I love much of it, but the author's points ring very true. I'm less and less sure every day why I stay on Mac as apposed to Arch, which I use on my servers.

danieldk 16y ago
Hardware support and applications. The first point does not need much elaboration, but I simply can't live without Lightroom, InDesign, and Illustrator. If I ever switch back to Linux on the desktop, I probably need a Windows VM to run those applications. Also at home, Linux cannot provide the same level of integration as the Mac, iPhone, and Apple TV. I like being able to stream a video on my iPhone to our TV, or use my laptop to stream an album stored on my Mac Mini to our TV.
bradleyland 16y ago
Horses for courses. No one else can tell you why you should use OS X, Linux... Or (gasp) Windows, for that matter. There is no empirical claim of superiority when it comes to tools. It's whatever works for you. Our lead developer uses TextMate with a mouse. Quite honestly, I think I use more keyboard shortcuts in TextMate than he does, and he doesn't use a stitch of Vim, where I'm fairly comfortable with it. I can feel the condescending smirks from here, but my knowledge of keyboard shortcuts doesn't make me a better programmer. Far from it. I can hardly code my way out of a paper bag. Your tools do not make you a good programmer! Having said all that, there's no reason you shouldn't try different tools. You should, actually. Just make sure you haven't convinced yourself that "tool XYZ will make me a better programmer." It may make you a more comfortable programmer, but beware of Yaks in need of shaving. If you find yourself spending more time setting up your environment than actually coding, you'd be better off with a system that denies you the temptation.
kgo 16y ago
I personally find X to really annoying due to it's architecture, no matter how pretty Gnome and KDE get. Just one example that happens all the time for me on linux. 1. Taskbar yells that I have updates. 2. I click the notification icon. 3. Nothing happens. No hourglass. 4. Wait. 5. Click it again. 6. No feedback. 7. Two copies of synaptic pop up. One flips out because another copy is already open. The analogous version of this never happens to me on Windows or OSX. Sure it's not the end of the world, but when weird stuff like this happens more than once a day, it gets annoying. It's like having that toilet where you need to jiggle the handle.
- hollerith 16y ago
  Same here: X is annoying for reasons hard for me to articulate, and the analogous part of OS X is significantly less annoying. If Canonical completes their plan to replace X with Wayland in Ubuntu, I will give Ubuntu another try. ADDED. I ran Linux for 13 years.
  - krakensden 16y ago
    None of the problems he listed are caused by X, they're caused by various decisions in GTK+, Gnome, and Synaptic. Moving to Wayland won't fix any of those things. It will get you slightly faster compositing, though.
    - hollerith 16y ago
      It might be possible to fix these things without changing X, but I get the impression that it is harder to write an app that does not annoy me in X than in OS X.
- mnnttl 16y ago
  1.You can disable automatic updates. 2.You can remove the notification applets in the gnome-panel. 3.Probably it was a case of bad network. And hourglass belonged to Windows, you shouldn't expect it here. 4.That's what you do. Be patient. 5.You shouldn't have clicked it again because the first instance is still loading. 6.Be patient. 7.I told you, point 5. If you think that these are valid enough reasons to believe the usability of Linux is poor, I really sympathize with you. And all of this is about updating the system. When I can update Windows or OSX by just issuing a command like "sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade" I will change my operating system.
  - kgo 16y ago
    That was just one simple example to illustrate X goofiness. I wasn't complaining about updating in particular, I was complaining about the UI when I perform a common operation. I just want reliable feedback to say that my operation is running. It's fine if the hourglass is a windows thing, but how am I supposed to know an app is actually loading on linux then? Pull up a terminal, run 'ps -Af | grep synaptic"? Not very friendly. But if we want to stick with the update example, try opening System Preferences on OSX or the Control Panel on Windows twice. Even on purpose. It's pretty tough to do. And yet it happens to me all the time by accident on linux all the time.

by ihodes 16y ago

danieldk 16y ago

Hardware support and applications. The first point does not need much elaboration, but I simply can't live without Lightroom, InDesign, and Illustrator. If I ever switch back to Linux on the desktop, I probably need a Windows VM to run those applications. Also at home, Linux cannot provide the same level of integration as the Mac, iPhone, and Apple TV. I like being able to stream a video on my iPhone to our TV, or use my laptop to stream an album stored on my Mac Mini to our TV.

bradleyland 16y ago

Horses for courses. No one else can tell you why you should use OS X, Linux... Or (gasp) Windows, for that matter. There is no empirical claim of superiority when it comes to tools. It's whatever works for you. Our lead developer uses TextMate with a mouse. Quite honestly, I think I use more keyboard shortcuts in TextMate than he does, and he doesn't use a stitch of Vim, where I'm fairly comfortable with it. I can feel the condescending smirks from here, but my knowledge of keyboard shortcuts doesn't make me a better programmer. Far from it. I can hardly code my way out of a paper bag. Your tools do not make you a good programmer! Having said all that, there's no reason you shouldn't try different tools. You should, actually. Just make sure you haven't convinced yourself that "tool XYZ will make me a better programmer." It may make you a more comfortable programmer, but beware of Yaks in need of shaving. If you find yourself spending more time setting up your environment than actually coding, you'd be better off with a system that denies you the temptation.

kgo 16y ago

I personally find X to really annoying due to it's architecture, no matter how pretty Gnome and KDE get. Just one example that happens all the time for me on linux. 1. Taskbar yells that I have updates. 2. I click the notification icon. 3. Nothing happens. No hourglass. 4. Wait. 5. Click it again. 6. No feedback. 7. Two copies of synaptic pop up. One flips out because another copy is already open. The analogous version of this never happens to me on Windows or OSX. Sure it's not the end of the world, but when weird stuff like this happens more than once a day, it gets annoying. It's like having that toilet where you need to jiggle the handle.

hollerith 16y ago
Same here: X is annoying for reasons hard for me to articulate, and the analogous part of OS X is significantly less annoying. If Canonical completes their plan to replace X with Wayland in Ubuntu, I will give Ubuntu another try. ADDED. I ran Linux for 13 years.
- krakensden 16y ago
  None of the problems he listed are caused by X, they're caused by various decisions in GTK+, Gnome, and Synaptic. Moving to Wayland won't fix any of those things. It will get you slightly faster compositing, though.
  - hollerith 16y ago
    It might be possible to fix these things without changing X, but I get the impression that it is harder to write an app that does not annoy me in X than in OS X.
mnnttl 16y ago
1.You can disable automatic updates. 2.You can remove the notification applets in the gnome-panel. 3.Probably it was a case of bad network. And hourglass belonged to Windows, you shouldn't expect it here. 4.That's what you do. Be patient. 5.You shouldn't have clicked it again because the first instance is still loading. 6.Be patient. 7.I told you, point 5. If you think that these are valid enough reasons to believe the usability of Linux is poor, I really sympathize with you. And all of this is about updating the system. When I can update Windows or OSX by just issuing a command like "sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade" I will change my operating system.
- kgo 16y ago
  That was just one simple example to illustrate X goofiness. I wasn't complaining about updating in particular, I was complaining about the UI when I perform a common operation. I just want reliable feedback to say that my operation is running. It's fine if the hourglass is a windows thing, but how am I supposed to know an app is actually loading on linux then? Pull up a terminal, run 'ps -Af | grep synaptic"? Not very friendly. But if we want to stick with the update example, try opening System Preferences on OSX or the Control Panel on Windows twice. Even on purpose. It's pretty tough to do. And yet it happens to me all the time by accident on linux all the time.