15 ms·

> I have a MBP, as do all of my engineers. Within a few years all of these machines will age out and be replaced with m1 powered machines. At that point the ide

by rauhl 6y ago

> I have a MBP, as do all of my engineers. Within a few years all of these machines will age out and be replaced with m1 powered machines. At that point the idea of developing on ARM and deploying on x86 will be unpleasant Is it not at least somewhat possible that at least some of those Apple laptops will age out and be replaced with GNU/Linux laptops? Agreed that developing on ARM and deploying on x86 is unpleasant, but so too is developing on macOS and deploying on Linux. Apple’s GNU userland is pretty ancient, and while the BSD parts are at least updated, they are also very austere. Given that friction is already there, is it likelier that folks will try to alleviate it with macOS in the cloud or GNU/Linux locally? Mac OS X was a godsend in 2001: it put a great Unix underneath a fine UI atop good hardware. It dragged an awful lot of folks three-quarters of the way to a free system. But frankly I believe Apple have lost ground UI-wise over the intervening decades, while free alternatives have gained it (they are still not at parity, granted). Meanwhile, the negatives of using a proprietary OS are worse, not better.

old-gregg 6y ago
> Is it not at least somewhat possible that at least some of those Apple laptops will age out and be replaced with GNU/Linux laptops? And I personally hope that by then, GNU/Linux will have an M1-like processor available to happily run on. The possibilities demonstrated by this chip (performance+silence+battery) are so compelling that it's inevitable we'll see them in non-Apple designs. Also, as it usually happens with Apple hardware advancements, Linux experience will be gradually getting better on M1 Macbooks as well.
- davish 6y ago
  I think we can look to mobile to see how feasible this might be: consistently over the past decade, iPhones have matched or exceeded Android performance with noticeably smaller capacity batteries. A-series chips and Qualcomm chips are both ARM. Apple's tight integration comes with a cost when it comes to flexibility, and, you can argue, developer experience, but it's clearly not just the silicon itself that leads to the performance we're seeing in the M1 Macs.
  - tomp 6y ago
    I wonder to what extent that's a consequence of Apple embracing reference counting (Swift/Objective C with ARC) while Google being stuck on GC (Java)? I'm a huge fan of OCaml, Java and Python (RC but with cyclic garbage collection), and RC very likely incurs more developer headache and more bugs, but at the end of the day, that's just a question of upfront investment, and in the long run it seems to pay off - it's pretty hard for me to deny that pretty much all GC software is slow (or singlethreaded).
    - willtim 6y ago
      Java can be slow for many complex reasons, not just GC. Oracle are trying to address some of this with major proposals such as stack-allocated value types, sealed classes, vector intrinsics etc, but these are potentially years away and will likely never arrive for Android. However, a lot of Androids slowness is not due to Java but rather just bad/legacy architectural decisions. iOS is simply better engineered than Android and I say this as an Android user.
    - jjoonathan 6y ago
      Not to mention it took Android about a decade longer than iPhone to finally get their animations silky smooth. I don't know if the occasional hung frames were the results of GC, but I suspect it.
  - geogra4 6y ago
    I think there are serious concerns about Qualcomm's commitment to competitive performance instead of just being a patent troll. I think if AWS Graviton is followed by Microsoft[0] and Google[1] also having their own custom ARM chips it will force Qualcomm to either innovate or die. And will make the ARM landscape quite competitive. M1 has shown what's possible. MS and Google (and Amazon) certainly have the $$ to match what Apple is doing. 0:https://www.datacenterdynamics.com/en/news/microsoft-reportedly-developing-its-own-arm-server-chips/ https://www.datacenterdynamics.com/en/news/microsoft-reporte... 1:https://www.theverge.com/2020/4/14/21221062/google-processor-pixels-chromebooks-whitechapel-samsung-qualcomm https://www.theverge.com/2020/4/14/21221062/google-processor...
john_alan 6y ago
You can easily bring macOS up to Linux level GNU with brew. I agree generally though. I see macOS as an important Unix OS for the next decade.
- Steltek 6y ago
  "Linux" is more than coreutils. The Mac kernel is no where close to Linux in capability and Apple hates 3rd party drivers to boot. You'll end up running a half-baked Linux VM anyway so all macOS gets you is a SSH client with a nice desktop environment, which you can find anywhere really.
  - Shared404 6y ago
    > all macOS gets you is a SSH client with a nice desktop environment Also proprietary software. Unfortunately, many people still need Adobe. I personally like Krita, Shotcut, and Darktable better than any of the Adobe products I used to use, but it's a real issue. E: Add "many people"
  - john_alan 6y ago
    The micro-kernel design on macOS has benefits over Linux's monolithic kernel. You also get POSIX compliance.
    - astrange 6y ago
      macOS doesn't have a microkernel, but it does have userland drivers and it's pretty good at being macOS/iOS. Linux's oom-killer doesn't work nearly as well as jetsam.
      - john_alan 6y ago
        macOS has a Hybrid kernel with a decent portion being micro components I thought?
        astrange 6y ago
jjoonathan 6y ago
> GNU/Linux laptops Could we do a roll call of experiences so I know which ones work and which ones don't? Here are mine. Dell Precision M6800: Avoid. Supported Ubuntu: so ancient that Firefox and Chrome wouldn't install without source-building dependencies. Ubuntu 18.04: installed but resulted in the display backlight flickering on/off at 30Hz. Dell Precision 7200: Supported Ubuntu: didn't even bother. Ubuntu 18.04: installer silently chokes on the NVMe drive. Ubuntu 20.04: just works.
- mrj 6y ago
  Most companies wouldn't end up trying to shove a disk into a computer though, they would buy from a vendor with support and never have compatibility issues. I have owned 3 System76 computers for this reason...
  - jjoonathan 6y ago
    > they would buy from a vendor with support Like the Dell Precision 6800 above? The one where the latest supported linux was so decrepit that it wouldn't install Firefox and Chrome without manually building newer versions of some of the dependencies? "System76 is better at this than Dell" is valid feedback, but System76 doesn't have the enterprise recognition to be a choice you can't be fired for. Maybe ThinkPads hit the sweet spot. I'll have to look at their newer offerings.
- BanazirGalbasi 6y ago
  Historically, Thinkpads have had excellent support. My T430S is great (although definitely aging out), and apparently the new X1 Carbons still work well. Also, both Dell and Lenovo have models that come with Linux if desired, so those are probably good ones to look at.
  - jjoonathan 6y ago
    I'll have to look into modern thinkpads. I had a bad experience about ~10 years ago, but it wouldn't be fair to bring that forward. > both Dell and Lenovo have models that come with Linux Like the Dell Precision M6800 above? Yeah. Mixed bag.
narrator 6y ago
This is why you run your environment on Linux and MacOS in Docker, so you don't have these screwy deployment issues caused by MacOs vs Linux issues.
- eyelidlessness 6y ago
  Developing in macOS against Docker is beyond painful. 10-100x build times is not a reasonable cost for platform compat.
  - narrator 6y ago
    With some configuration you can map folders into drives on Docker. You can just build on MacOS and restart the app server in the container. I was using NodeJS though, so I'm not dealing with libc and syscall incompatibilities and such.
- synthc 6y ago
  docker om MacOs is a second class citizen, because it runs in a VM. The networking is much more complicated because of this, which causes endless amounts of hard-to-debug problems and performance is terrible.
ogre_codes 6y ago
> Is it not at least somewhat possible that at least some of those Apple laptops will age out and be replaced with GNU/Linux laptops? Has Linux desktop share been increasing lately? I'm not sure why a newer Mac with better CPU options is going to result in increasing Linux share. If anything, it's likely to be neutral or favor the Mac with it's newer/ faster CPU. > But frankly I believe Apple have lost ground UI-wise over the intervening decades, while free alternatives have gained it (they are still not at parity, granted). Maybe? I'm not as sold on Linux gaining a ton of ground here. I'm also not sold on the idea that the Mac as a whole is worse off interface wise than it was 10 years ago. While there are some issues, there are also places where it's significantly improved as well. Particularly if you have an iPhone and use Apple's other services.
- eitland 6y ago
  > Has Linux desktop share been increasing lately? At least I feel I see a lot more Linux now, not just in the company I work for but also elsewhere. The speed advantage over Windows is so huge that it is painful to go back once you've seen it. MS Office isn't seen as a requirement anymore, nobody think it is funny if you use GSuite and besides, last time I used an office file for work is months ago: everything exist inæ Slack, Teams, Confluence or Jira and these are about equally bad on all platforms. The same is true (except the awful part) for C# development: it is probably even better on Linux. People could switch to Mac and I guess many will. For others, like me Mac just doesn't work and for us Linux is an almost obvious choice.
  - ogre_codes 6y ago
    > At least I feel I see a lot more Linux now, not just in the company I work for but also elsewhere. I see it far more now than I did ~5-10 years ago when it was my daily driver. I'm just not sure if it's gotten a baseline support and flatlined or if it's growing consistently now. Fully agree with almost all of your points, and if MacOS did go off the deep end in terms of functionality, I'd be back on Linux. It's why I'm a big fan of what Marcan is doing and follow it closely. If Linux support was as good now as it was when I switched, I'd likely have never switched to the Mac. But now I just stick around for the hardware.
majormajor 6y ago
> Is it not at least somewhat possible that at least some of those Apple laptops will age out and be replaced with GNU/Linux laptops? Sadly, fewer of my coworkers use Linux now than they did 10 years ago.
surajrmal 6y ago
I develop on GNU/Linux begrudgingly. It has all of my tools, but I have a never-ending stream of issues with WiFi, display, audio, etc. As far as I'm concerned, GNU/Linux is something that's meant to be used headless and ssh'd into.
- Koshkin 6y ago
  Try a Raspberry Pi. It just works.
  - freeone3000 6y ago
    Except for when the wifi fails or your SD card that you boot off of gets corrupted or you try to do something that requires a bit more power than 1.2GHz and 1GB RAM can handle.
    - jadedtuna 6y ago
      Raspberry Pi 4 has up to 8GB of RAM and a 1.5GHz CPU, but your point still stands. Even with those specs it won't provide a fully smooth desktop experience.
- christophilus 6y ago
  What distro do you use? I switched from Mac to Pop, and it’s great. I had already decided that 2021 would be my year of the Linux desktop, but Apple forced my hand a bit early. My 2019 Mac’s WiFi went. Had to lose my primary dev machine for over a week as it shipped out to have a bunch of hardware replaced. So, I built a PC with parts that have good Linux support. I think that’s the key. I imagine System76 machines would run smoothly. It’s definitely not as smooth a UX as Mac, but I like being in an open ecosystem on a machine I can repair. And it’s had a number of perks such Docker running efficiently for once. Edit: I can now trivially repair my computer if it breaks. The entire rig cost about 1/4 what my MacBook cost, and it is much faster.
- somethoughts 6y ago
  For what its worth I've been thinking about going to a Mac M1 laptop for email/HR plus an small-form-factor Ubuntu box for development (i.e. Intel NUC, Asus PN-50) that I can ssh into and run headlessly locally. With a hybrid 1-2 days in the office and the fact that the NUC form factor has gotten smaller and higher performance, I could make a case to actually stick it in my laptop bag for the 1-2 days and do email/surf only on my train commute. I was never really that productive working on the train anyways.
ashtonkem 6y ago
There is literally no chance of that. IT would find this an intolerable burden for them to manage, and I doubt the devs would like it either. Most of them seem pretty enthused to get their hands on a m1. I’ve known colleagues that tried to run Linux professionally using well reviewed Linux laptops, and their experience has been universally awful. Like “I never managed to get the wifi to work, ever” bad. The idea of gambling every developer on that is a non-starter even at my level, let alone across the org.
- rauhl 6y ago
  FWIW, I have been running Linux as my desktop since 1999, and on a laptop since the mid-2000s. It is doable, and I no longer have the problems which used to be common. Once upon a time Ethernet, WiFi & graphics were screwy, but not for a long time now.
mulmen 6y ago
Approximately zero MacBooks will be replaced by Linux laptops in the next couple years. There is no new story in the Linux desktop world to make a Linux Laptop more appealing. That people already selected to develop on MacOS and deploy to Linux tells you all you need to know there. MacPorts and Homebrew exist. Both support M1 more or less and support is improving. Big Sur is a Big Disaster but hopefully this is just the MacOS version of iOS 13 and the next MacOS next year goes back to being mostly functional. I have more faith in that than a serviceable Linux desktop environment.
- optimuspaul 6y ago
  > Big Sur is a Big Disaster I may be naive but that seems like hyperbole. I updated to Big Sur shortly after is was released. It was a little bumpy here and there, but not more than any other update. I'd even argue it has been as smooth or smoother than any of my Linux major upgrades in the past 20 years.
  - mulmen 6y ago
    It is mostly functional but visually a mess. “Better than Linux upgrades” is a pretty low bar.
  - eyelidlessness 6y ago
    I haven't updated but my impression has been that this is a "tock" release, as in "yeah we shipped some big UI changes but we'll refine them, very little of substance changed in the underlying systems". And that's great, and I look forward to being a medium-early adopter before the worst of the UI gets a big refresh next year.
    - mulmen 6y ago
      Yeah that’s a great description. I upgraded my personal laptop and it’s so bad I’m holding off on my work laptop until I am forced to upgrade.
eyelidlessness 6y ago
> Is it not at least somewhat possible that at least some of those Apple laptops will age out and be replaced with GNU/Linux laptops? Some definitely will. Significant enough to assume they're not well-situated other-configs? Probably not. Even the most VIM- and CLI-oriented devs I know still prefer a familiar GUI for normal day to day work. Are they all going Ubuntu? Or Elementary? I mean, I welcome any migration that doesn't fracture the universe. But I don't think it's likely.

by rauhl 6y ago

old-gregg 6y ago

> Is it not at least somewhat possible that at least some of those Apple laptops will age out and be replaced with GNU/Linux laptops? And I personally hope that by then, GNU/Linux will have an M1-like processor available to happily run on. The possibilities demonstrated by this chip (performance+silence+battery) are so compelling that it's inevitable we'll see them in non-Apple designs. Also, as it usually happens with Apple hardware advancements, Linux experience will be gradually getting better on M1 Macbooks as well.

davish 6y ago
I think we can look to mobile to see how feasible this might be: consistently over the past decade, iPhones have matched or exceeded Android performance with noticeably smaller capacity batteries. A-series chips and Qualcomm chips are both ARM. Apple's tight integration comes with a cost when it comes to flexibility, and, you can argue, developer experience, but it's clearly not just the silicon itself that leads to the performance we're seeing in the M1 Macs.
- tomp 6y ago
  I wonder to what extent that's a consequence of Apple embracing reference counting (Swift/Objective C with ARC) while Google being stuck on GC (Java)? I'm a huge fan of OCaml, Java and Python (RC but with cyclic garbage collection), and RC very likely incurs more developer headache and more bugs, but at the end of the day, that's just a question of upfront investment, and in the long run it seems to pay off - it's pretty hard for me to deny that pretty much all GC software is slow (or singlethreaded).
  - willtim 6y ago
    Java can be slow for many complex reasons, not just GC. Oracle are trying to address some of this with major proposals such as stack-allocated value types, sealed classes, vector intrinsics etc, but these are potentially years away and will likely never arrive for Android. However, a lot of Androids slowness is not due to Java but rather just bad/legacy architectural decisions. iOS is simply better engineered than Android and I say this as an Android user.
  - jjoonathan 6y ago
    Not to mention it took Android about a decade longer than iPhone to finally get their animations silky smooth. I don't know if the occasional hung frames were the results of GC, but I suspect it.
- geogra4 6y ago
  I think there are serious concerns about Qualcomm's commitment to competitive performance instead of just being a patent troll. I think if AWS Graviton is followed by Microsoft[0] and Google[1] also having their own custom ARM chips it will force Qualcomm to either innovate or die. And will make the ARM landscape quite competitive. M1 has shown what's possible. MS and Google (and Amazon) certainly have the $$ to match what Apple is doing. 0:https://www.datacenterdynamics.com/en/news/microsoft-reportedly-developing-its-own-arm-server-chips/ https://www.datacenterdynamics.com/en/news/microsoft-reporte... 1:https://www.theverge.com/2020/4/14/21221062/google-processor-pixels-chromebooks-whitechapel-samsung-qualcomm https://www.theverge.com/2020/4/14/21221062/google-processor...

john_alan 6y ago

You can easily bring macOS up to Linux level GNU with brew. I agree generally though. I see macOS as an important Unix OS for the next decade.

Steltek 6y ago
"Linux" is more than coreutils. The Mac kernel is no where close to Linux in capability and Apple hates 3rd party drivers to boot. You'll end up running a half-baked Linux VM anyway so all macOS gets you is a SSH client with a nice desktop environment, which you can find anywhere really.
- Shared404 6y ago
  > all macOS gets you is a SSH client with a nice desktop environment Also proprietary software. Unfortunately, many people still need Adobe. I personally like Krita, Shotcut, and Darktable better than any of the Adobe products I used to use, but it's a real issue. E: Add "many people"
- john_alan 6y ago
  The micro-kernel design on macOS has benefits over Linux's monolithic kernel. You also get POSIX compliance.
  - astrange 6y ago
    macOS doesn't have a microkernel, but it does have userland drivers and it's pretty good at being macOS/iOS. Linux's oom-killer doesn't work nearly as well as jetsam.
    - john_alan 6y ago
      macOS has a Hybrid kernel with a decent portion being micro components I thought?
      - astrange 6y ago

jjoonathan 6y ago

> GNU/Linux laptops Could we do a roll call of experiences so I know which ones work and which ones don't? Here are mine. Dell Precision M6800: Avoid. Supported Ubuntu: so ancient that Firefox and Chrome wouldn't install without source-building dependencies. Ubuntu 18.04: installed but resulted in the display backlight flickering on/off at 30Hz. Dell Precision 7200: Supported Ubuntu: didn't even bother. Ubuntu 18.04: installer silently chokes on the NVMe drive. Ubuntu 20.04: just works.

mrj 6y ago
Most companies wouldn't end up trying to shove a disk into a computer though, they would buy from a vendor with support and never have compatibility issues. I have owned 3 System76 computers for this reason...
- jjoonathan 6y ago
  > they would buy from a vendor with support Like the Dell Precision 6800 above? The one where the latest supported linux was so decrepit that it wouldn't install Firefox and Chrome without manually building newer versions of some of the dependencies? "System76 is better at this than Dell" is valid feedback, but System76 doesn't have the enterprise recognition to be a choice you can't be fired for. Maybe ThinkPads hit the sweet spot. I'll have to look at their newer offerings.
BanazirGalbasi 6y ago
Historically, Thinkpads have had excellent support. My T430S is great (although definitely aging out), and apparently the new X1 Carbons still work well. Also, both Dell and Lenovo have models that come with Linux if desired, so those are probably good ones to look at.
- jjoonathan 6y ago
  I'll have to look into modern thinkpads. I had a bad experience about ~10 years ago, but it wouldn't be fair to bring that forward. > both Dell and Lenovo have models that come with Linux Like the Dell Precision M6800 above? Yeah. Mixed bag.

narrator 6y ago

This is why you run your environment on Linux and MacOS in Docker, so you don't have these screwy deployment issues caused by MacOs vs Linux issues.

eyelidlessness 6y ago
Developing in macOS against Docker is beyond painful. 10-100x build times is not a reasonable cost for platform compat.
- narrator 6y ago
  With some configuration you can map folders into drives on Docker. You can just build on MacOS and restart the app server in the container. I was using NodeJS though, so I'm not dealing with libc and syscall incompatibilities and such.
synthc 6y ago
docker om MacOs is a second class citizen, because it runs in a VM. The networking is much more complicated because of this, which causes endless amounts of hard-to-debug problems and performance is terrible.

ogre_codes 6y ago

> Is it not at least somewhat possible that at least some of those Apple laptops will age out and be replaced with GNU/Linux laptops? Has Linux desktop share been increasing lately? I'm not sure why a newer Mac with better CPU options is going to result in increasing Linux share. If anything, it's likely to be neutral or favor the Mac with it's newer/ faster CPU. > But frankly I believe Apple have lost ground UI-wise over the intervening decades, while free alternatives have gained it (they are still not at parity, granted). Maybe? I'm not as sold on Linux gaining a ton of ground here. I'm also not sold on the idea that the Mac as a whole is worse off interface wise than it was 10 years ago. While there are some issues, there are also places where it's significantly improved as well. Particularly if you have an iPhone and use Apple's other services.

eitland 6y ago
> Has Linux desktop share been increasing lately? At least I feel I see a lot more Linux now, not just in the company I work for but also elsewhere. The speed advantage over Windows is so huge that it is painful to go back once you've seen it. MS Office isn't seen as a requirement anymore, nobody think it is funny if you use GSuite and besides, last time I used an office file for work is months ago: everything exist inæ Slack, Teams, Confluence or Jira and these are about equally bad on all platforms. The same is true (except the awful part) for C# development: it is probably even better on Linux. People could switch to Mac and I guess many will. For others, like me Mac just doesn't work and for us Linux is an almost obvious choice.
- ogre_codes 6y ago
  > At least I feel I see a lot more Linux now, not just in the company I work for but also elsewhere. I see it far more now than I did ~5-10 years ago when it was my daily driver. I'm just not sure if it's gotten a baseline support and flatlined or if it's growing consistently now. Fully agree with almost all of your points, and if MacOS did go off the deep end in terms of functionality, I'd be back on Linux. It's why I'm a big fan of what Marcan is doing and follow it closely. If Linux support was as good now as it was when I switched, I'd likely have never switched to the Mac. But now I just stick around for the hardware.

majormajor 6y ago

> Is it not at least somewhat possible that at least some of those Apple laptops will age out and be replaced with GNU/Linux laptops? Sadly, fewer of my coworkers use Linux now than they did 10 years ago.

surajrmal 6y ago

I develop on GNU/Linux begrudgingly. It has all of my tools, but I have a never-ending stream of issues with WiFi, display, audio, etc. As far as I'm concerned, GNU/Linux is something that's meant to be used headless and ssh'd into.

Koshkin 6y ago
Try a Raspberry Pi. It just works.
- freeone3000 6y ago
  Except for when the wifi fails or your SD card that you boot off of gets corrupted or you try to do something that requires a bit more power than 1.2GHz and 1GB RAM can handle.
  - jadedtuna 6y ago
    Raspberry Pi 4 has up to 8GB of RAM and a 1.5GHz CPU, but your point still stands. Even with those specs it won't provide a fully smooth desktop experience.
christophilus 6y ago
What distro do you use? I switched from Mac to Pop, and it’s great. I had already decided that 2021 would be my year of the Linux desktop, but Apple forced my hand a bit early. My 2019 Mac’s WiFi went. Had to lose my primary dev machine for over a week as it shipped out to have a bunch of hardware replaced. So, I built a PC with parts that have good Linux support. I think that’s the key. I imagine System76 machines would run smoothly. It’s definitely not as smooth a UX as Mac, but I like being in an open ecosystem on a machine I can repair. And it’s had a number of perks such Docker running efficiently for once. Edit: I can now trivially repair my computer if it breaks. The entire rig cost about 1/4 what my MacBook cost, and it is much faster.
somethoughts 6y ago
For what its worth I've been thinking about going to a Mac M1 laptop for email/HR plus an small-form-factor Ubuntu box for development (i.e. Intel NUC, Asus PN-50) that I can ssh into and run headlessly locally. With a hybrid 1-2 days in the office and the fact that the NUC form factor has gotten smaller and higher performance, I could make a case to actually stick it in my laptop bag for the 1-2 days and do email/surf only on my train commute. I was never really that productive working on the train anyways.

ashtonkem 6y ago

There is literally no chance of that. IT would find this an intolerable burden for them to manage, and I doubt the devs would like it either. Most of them seem pretty enthused to get their hands on a m1. I’ve known colleagues that tried to run Linux professionally using well reviewed Linux laptops, and their experience has been universally awful. Like “I never managed to get the wifi to work, ever” bad. The idea of gambling every developer on that is a non-starter even at my level, let alone across the org.

rauhl 6y ago
FWIW, I have been running Linux as my desktop since 1999, and on a laptop since the mid-2000s. It is doable, and I no longer have the problems which used to be common. Once upon a time Ethernet, WiFi & graphics were screwy, but not for a long time now.

mulmen 6y ago

Approximately zero MacBooks will be replaced by Linux laptops in the next couple years. There is no new story in the Linux desktop world to make a Linux Laptop more appealing. That people already selected to develop on MacOS and deploy to Linux tells you all you need to know there. MacPorts and Homebrew exist. Both support M1 more or less and support is improving. Big Sur is a Big Disaster but hopefully this is just the MacOS version of iOS 13 and the next MacOS next year goes back to being mostly functional. I have more faith in that than a serviceable Linux desktop environment.

optimuspaul 6y ago
> Big Sur is a Big Disaster I may be naive but that seems like hyperbole. I updated to Big Sur shortly after is was released. It was a little bumpy here and there, but not more than any other update. I'd even argue it has been as smooth or smoother than any of my Linux major upgrades in the past 20 years.
- mulmen 6y ago
  It is mostly functional but visually a mess. “Better than Linux upgrades” is a pretty low bar.
- eyelidlessness 6y ago
  I haven't updated but my impression has been that this is a "tock" release, as in "yeah we shipped some big UI changes but we'll refine them, very little of substance changed in the underlying systems". And that's great, and I look forward to being a medium-early adopter before the worst of the UI gets a big refresh next year.
  - mulmen 6y ago
    Yeah that’s a great description. I upgraded my personal laptop and it’s so bad I’m holding off on my work laptop until I am forced to upgrade.

eyelidlessness 6y ago

> Is it not at least somewhat possible that at least some of those Apple laptops will age out and be replaced with GNU/Linux laptops? Some definitely will. Significant enough to assume they're not well-situated other-configs? Probably not. Even the most VIM- and CLI-oriented devs I know still prefer a familiar GUI for normal day to day work. Are they all going Ubuntu? Or Elementary? I mean, I welcome any migration that doesn't fracture the universe. But I don't think it's likely.