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Congrats on selling your iPhone so fast. I managed to purchase a System76 laptop in the meantime, typing from it now. The cat is out of the bag. You and I have

Congrats on selling your iPhone so fast. I managed to purchase a System76 laptop in the meantime, typing from it now. The cat is out of the bag. You and I have realized Apple can make these type of changes whenever they want. I'm disappointed to report that Linux needs a lot of improvement to be viable for most people. I'm forging ahead, donating to open source software and hardware projects, filing bug reports, and generally bringing the Mac spirit to Linux. "It just works." What phone did you switch to?

pshirshov 5y ago
Buy a Pixel and install Calyx or Graphene with sandboxed Play Services.
- RussianCow 5y ago
  How does sandboxing Play Services compare with using microG?
  - pshirshov 5y ago
    Well, push notifications are lot more reliable, safetynet passes basic check and app do not complain about play services issues. But network location provider doesn't work, that's an issue.
- istingray 5y ago
  Is Pixel open hardware? I'm assuming not but props to them if so.
  - pshirshov 5y ago
    It's not. Unfortunately there is little open hardware around. Though proprietary hardware plus mostly open OS is better than proprietary everything.
rconti 5y ago
> I'm disappointed to report that Linux needs a lot of improvement to be viable for most people. I'm continually surprised that people are continually surprised by this. I'm sure this post will get a lot of anecdotal replies; of course it can work fine for many people, but that's not the point. I used it exclusively on the desktop from 1995 to 2002. I could make it work for me, today, if I wanted to. > You and I have realized Apple can make these type of changes whenever they want. Was this not obvious? I'm pretty shocked that, for example, Docker can decide to change their license, and now in a few months a bunch of companies owe them money for every single user they have, even if the users don't do anything different. If they opened the license agreement and chose NOT to upgrade. If they never use the software again. But bam, terms changed, now you owe us money.
- mrtranscendence 5y ago
  > I'm sure this post will get a lot of anecdotal replies I tried Ubuntu last year, briefly. Almost everything worked fine, except ... OK, I'm a trackpad user. I have a couple Apple Magic Trackpads and I prefer to use those over a traditional mouse. It worked fine for, like, a day? And then out of nowhere it just stopped responding. Reset or reinstalled everything I could think of and it still failed to work. OK, whatever, I bought a traditional bluetooth mouse. Which went to sleep every time it remained still for more than a split second, rendering it basically unusable (not a problem on Windows on the same machine). Maybe a whiz could have fixed one or both issues, but googling completely failed me. This was pretty basic stuff, surely? And yet I couldn't even get bluetooth mice to work on the most mainstream distro. (Now, admittedly, the trackpad doesn't work properly out of the box in Windows either, since Apple doesn't provide drivers that work outside of Boot Camp. But at least there are paid drivers that work really well.)
  - kaladin-jasnah 5y ago
    Anecdotally, I have installed Linux on older MacBooks and have had the Magic Mice working fine without any issues. Anyway, I don't know. People have all sorts of annoying issues with Linux that end up being things that I have never encountered before. I usually use wireless mice with USB transceivers, which have never had problems and I feel like not everyone has such a bad experience (although I know many people who do). Perhaps it's because it's Apple hardware or something, but, admittedly, I have had MacBooks work perfectly on Linux before. I think that, however, you use Linux on a desktop rather than a laptop, you will find that the hardware experience is quite pleasurable and does not have nearly the same number of issues. Between the two, Linux does manage to shine decently on desktops.
abnercoimbre 5y ago
Is the System76 experience worthwhile so far? I'm about to invest in a Pangolin [0] this Labor Day weekend and could use an honest review from a fellow HN ex-Mac user. [0] https://system76.com/laptops/pangolin https://system76.com/laptops/pangolin
- Jayschwa 5y ago
  I've been using an Oryx Pro (v5) for a few years. It's mostly fine. My main disappointment is that it doesn't "just work" with the kernels shipped by Ubuntu. System76 provides their own kernel packages, but they sometimes cause weird conflicts with other low level packages, and it can't hold its charge when suspended. I haven't attempted to debug the issue because I usually stay plugged in when I'm working, but I suppose I ought to engage tech support. They have been helpful in the past. At the end of the day, I'll probably still give them my first look if I'm shopping for another laptop.
  - mark_l_watson 5y ago
    I also have had an Oryx Pro for several years. I stuck with System76's branded Linux, just do updates as they are available, and so far all has been well. I like that they keep CUDA working with very few hassles. Compare this to my migration to a M1 MacBook Pro: I love it, but it is rough doing deep learning on it.
- istingray 5y ago
  see my comments above in this thread. specific comments are welcome. i love talking about this thing :) As a Mac user, the build is about what you would expect from a PC. It's not one of those nightmare shit PCs. It does its job. Get that Pangolin before they sell out! Is there a Labor Day sale or something?
  - abnercoimbre 5y ago
    I'm hoping there's a Labor Day sale :) Thanks for the comments, I'm motivated to take the plunge now!
- 5y ago
digisign 5y ago
I ordered the pine64 but it still has not arrived.
mrtranscendence 5y ago
> I managed to purchase a System76 laptop in the meantime, typing from it now. If I could just get a decent higher-than-1080 panel from System76, I might consider it for my next laptop. I've been spoiled by Macs. As it is I might go with a Framework laptop instead.
- istingray 5y ago
  Email them and say that! We need to be more vocal as customers so vendors don't waste time.
Hackbraten 5y ago
Not GP but I took a leap of faith and ordered a Librem 5. It’s supposed to ship early 2022 but I’m not holding my breath.
post_break 5y ago
S21 ultra. Out of one place into another I know. But it's also the principle of the thing. I don't share my location data with the bare minimum, and sideload stuff. I don't see hardware good enough to go completely off-grid from Google yet so this was my compromise.
- istingray 5y ago
  Understandable. I suggest donating to open source options as part of your compromise. Purism, PinePhone, Ubuntu Touch....or buying something from them if it's not an option.
  - post_break 5y ago
    Unpopular opinion but I mostly donate to charities that are confirmed to spend the money on more than administrative people. Open source donations I make for software I use. If an open source thing comes around that can replace my Samsung phone I'd buy in a heartbeat.
    - istingray 5y ago
      Yes! And because of this, this means you need to donate ahead of time so things can be built to replace your Samsung phone. After it's built well...what would they spend your money on? Donate early, donate often.
TaylorAlexander 5y ago
> I'm disappointed to report that Linux needs a lot of improvement to be viable for most people. I'm forging ahead, donating to open source software and hardware projects, filing bug reports, and generally bringing the Mac spirit to Linux. "It just works." IMO it would go a long way if we taught computer literacy and specifically Linux literacy to everyone in school. Microsoft and Google have all the school contracts and they bring people up on systems that "just work" (actually they have paid system administrators). If we taught people from a young age to use Linux and handle problems, then the small problems that often come up with open source need not be barriers to adoption. Even if every regular person can't always solve every linux problem, if they were familiar enough to use it and had at least one expert friend, they'd be fine. That's not to say we shouldn't strive to make Linux "just work" for most people, but we can attack the problem from other angles as well.
- istingray 5y ago
  I agree more tech literacy is needed. The learning curve for Linux seems so steep. For what it's worth, I took UNIX classes in high school, and know how to get around. But Linux is just far more than I can handle, even just to install apps and configure settings. For example just trying to get my mouse not to stutter, I dig and find a solution. I copy and paste it into the terminal. It doesn't work and I try 3 different solutions. I'm curious about solutions but it wears my curiosity out pretty fast. I need to get work done. In the sense that computers are like cars, I'm okay not knowing how exactly it works under the hood.
  - TaylorAlexander 5y ago
    Yes this kind of thing is frustrating. And I may be very wrong, but I have been wondering, what if this is what open source is always going to be like. I am 100% pro open source and I think everything (cars, trucks, washing machines, factory machines) should be open source. But I guess if we got to that point, where the people producing the computers and the people writing the code were all on the same side, maybe things wouldn't break so often. Also FWIW I have learned, even though I run debian, to check the Arch Wiki for tips on problems like that. One more place to check in addition to stack overflow.
inpdx 5y ago
"I'm disappointed to report that Linux needs a lot of improvement to be viable for most people." Evergreen.
- nbzso 5y ago
  As a designer, the only thing that I miss on Linux is graphical software at least on a level of Affinity Designer. Everything else is more than viable. Blender. Resolve. BitWig Studio. RawTherapee, Krita. For web development is perfect, my engineers run ARCH/Manjaro over soon to be abandoned Apple hardware. Even my old MacBook Air is supported, Pop!_OS is working perfectly with properly mapped keyboard keys (keyboard backlit controls, audio, playback, etc). The only thing that I have done is to plug thunderbolt/ethernet adapter, clicked on popshop update, restarted and wifi started working flawlessly.
  - istingray 5y ago
    Just a gut check -- what about wake from sleep using an external keyboard? That required me to do github work, install a system service. It's these touches I miss from MacOS.
    - nbzso 5y ago
      https://bit.ly/2Yj9n5F https://bit.ly/2Yj9n5F or for time based cycle RTCWake https://bit.ly/38KqdfI https://bit.ly/38KqdfI. With broad addaption use cases like this will be solved. You can install and configure Linux Desktop nowadays without touching the terminal.
luxuryballs 5y ago
I mean I already have accepted the fact that they allow Signal type apps because if the FBI or whoever requests it they can just access your display driver layer and see what you’re typing locally, no need to ban encrypted messaging. I just keep remembering how Lavabit shut down because he refused to comply and otherwise had no choice in the matter. Computers and software should not be easily trusted.

pshirshov 5y ago

Buy a Pixel and install Calyx or Graphene with sandboxed Play Services.

RussianCow 5y ago
How does sandboxing Play Services compare with using microG?
- pshirshov 5y ago
  Well, push notifications are lot more reliable, safetynet passes basic check and app do not complain about play services issues. But network location provider doesn't work, that's an issue.
istingray 5y ago
Is Pixel open hardware? I'm assuming not but props to them if so.
- pshirshov 5y ago
  It's not. Unfortunately there is little open hardware around. Though proprietary hardware plus mostly open OS is better than proprietary everything.

rconti 5y ago

> I'm disappointed to report that Linux needs a lot of improvement to be viable for most people. I'm continually surprised that people are continually surprised by this. I'm sure this post will get a lot of anecdotal replies; of course it can work fine for many people, but that's not the point. I used it exclusively on the desktop from 1995 to 2002. I could make it work for me, today, if I wanted to. > You and I have realized Apple can make these type of changes whenever they want. Was this not obvious? I'm pretty shocked that, for example, Docker can decide to change their license, and now in a few months a bunch of companies owe them money for every single user they have, even if the users don't do anything different. If they opened the license agreement and chose NOT to upgrade. If they never use the software again. But bam, terms changed, now you owe us money.

mrtranscendence 5y ago
> I'm sure this post will get a lot of anecdotal replies I tried Ubuntu last year, briefly. Almost everything worked fine, except ... OK, I'm a trackpad user. I have a couple Apple Magic Trackpads and I prefer to use those over a traditional mouse. It worked fine for, like, a day? And then out of nowhere it just stopped responding. Reset or reinstalled everything I could think of and it still failed to work. OK, whatever, I bought a traditional bluetooth mouse. Which went to sleep every time it remained still for more than a split second, rendering it basically unusable (not a problem on Windows on the same machine). Maybe a whiz could have fixed one or both issues, but googling completely failed me. This was pretty basic stuff, surely? And yet I couldn't even get bluetooth mice to work on the most mainstream distro. (Now, admittedly, the trackpad doesn't work properly out of the box in Windows either, since Apple doesn't provide drivers that work outside of Boot Camp. But at least there are paid drivers that work really well.)
- kaladin-jasnah 5y ago
  Anecdotally, I have installed Linux on older MacBooks and have had the Magic Mice working fine without any issues. Anyway, I don't know. People have all sorts of annoying issues with Linux that end up being things that I have never encountered before. I usually use wireless mice with USB transceivers, which have never had problems and I feel like not everyone has such a bad experience (although I know many people who do). Perhaps it's because it's Apple hardware or something, but, admittedly, I have had MacBooks work perfectly on Linux before. I think that, however, you use Linux on a desktop rather than a laptop, you will find that the hardware experience is quite pleasurable and does not have nearly the same number of issues. Between the two, Linux does manage to shine decently on desktops.

abnercoimbre 5y ago

Is the System76 experience worthwhile so far? I'm about to invest in a Pangolin [0] this Labor Day weekend and could use an honest review from a fellow HN ex-Mac user. [0] https://system76.com/laptops/pangolin https://system76.com/laptops/pangolin

Jayschwa 5y ago
I've been using an Oryx Pro (v5) for a few years. It's mostly fine. My main disappointment is that it doesn't "just work" with the kernels shipped by Ubuntu. System76 provides their own kernel packages, but they sometimes cause weird conflicts with other low level packages, and it can't hold its charge when suspended. I haven't attempted to debug the issue because I usually stay plugged in when I'm working, but I suppose I ought to engage tech support. They have been helpful in the past. At the end of the day, I'll probably still give them my first look if I'm shopping for another laptop.
- mark_l_watson 5y ago
  I also have had an Oryx Pro for several years. I stuck with System76's branded Linux, just do updates as they are available, and so far all has been well. I like that they keep CUDA working with very few hassles. Compare this to my migration to a M1 MacBook Pro: I love it, but it is rough doing deep learning on it.
istingray 5y ago
see my comments above in this thread. specific comments are welcome. i love talking about this thing :) As a Mac user, the build is about what you would expect from a PC. It's not one of those nightmare shit PCs. It does its job. Get that Pangolin before they sell out! Is there a Labor Day sale or something?
- abnercoimbre 5y ago
  I'm hoping there's a Labor Day sale :) Thanks for the comments, I'm motivated to take the plunge now!
5y ago

digisign 5y ago

I ordered the pine64 but it still has not arrived.

mrtranscendence 5y ago

> I managed to purchase a System76 laptop in the meantime, typing from it now. If I could just get a decent higher-than-1080 panel from System76, I might consider it for my next laptop. I've been spoiled by Macs. As it is I might go with a Framework laptop instead.

istingray 5y ago
Email them and say that! We need to be more vocal as customers so vendors don't waste time.

Hackbraten 5y ago

Not GP but I took a leap of faith and ordered a Librem 5. It’s supposed to ship early 2022 but I’m not holding my breath.

post_break 5y ago

S21 ultra. Out of one place into another I know. But it's also the principle of the thing. I don't share my location data with the bare minimum, and sideload stuff. I don't see hardware good enough to go completely off-grid from Google yet so this was my compromise.

istingray 5y ago
Understandable. I suggest donating to open source options as part of your compromise. Purism, PinePhone, Ubuntu Touch....or buying something from them if it's not an option.
- post_break 5y ago
  Unpopular opinion but I mostly donate to charities that are confirmed to spend the money on more than administrative people. Open source donations I make for software I use. If an open source thing comes around that can replace my Samsung phone I'd buy in a heartbeat.
  - istingray 5y ago
    Yes! And because of this, this means you need to donate ahead of time so things can be built to replace your Samsung phone. After it's built well...what would they spend your money on? Donate early, donate often.

TaylorAlexander 5y ago

> I'm disappointed to report that Linux needs a lot of improvement to be viable for most people. I'm forging ahead, donating to open source software and hardware projects, filing bug reports, and generally bringing the Mac spirit to Linux. "It just works." IMO it would go a long way if we taught computer literacy and specifically Linux literacy to everyone in school. Microsoft and Google have all the school contracts and they bring people up on systems that "just work" (actually they have paid system administrators). If we taught people from a young age to use Linux and handle problems, then the small problems that often come up with open source need not be barriers to adoption. Even if every regular person can't always solve every linux problem, if they were familiar enough to use it and had at least one expert friend, they'd be fine. That's not to say we shouldn't strive to make Linux "just work" for most people, but we can attack the problem from other angles as well.

istingray 5y ago
I agree more tech literacy is needed. The learning curve for Linux seems so steep. For what it's worth, I took UNIX classes in high school, and know how to get around. But Linux is just far more than I can handle, even just to install apps and configure settings. For example just trying to get my mouse not to stutter, I dig and find a solution. I copy and paste it into the terminal. It doesn't work and I try 3 different solutions. I'm curious about solutions but it wears my curiosity out pretty fast. I need to get work done. In the sense that computers are like cars, I'm okay not knowing how exactly it works under the hood.
- TaylorAlexander 5y ago
  Yes this kind of thing is frustrating. And I may be very wrong, but I have been wondering, what if this is what open source is always going to be like. I am 100% pro open source and I think everything (cars, trucks, washing machines, factory machines) should be open source. But I guess if we got to that point, where the people producing the computers and the people writing the code were all on the same side, maybe things wouldn't break so often. Also FWIW I have learned, even though I run debian, to check the Arch Wiki for tips on problems like that. One more place to check in addition to stack overflow.

inpdx 5y ago

"I'm disappointed to report that Linux needs a lot of improvement to be viable for most people." Evergreen.

nbzso 5y ago
As a designer, the only thing that I miss on Linux is graphical software at least on a level of Affinity Designer. Everything else is more than viable. Blender. Resolve. BitWig Studio. RawTherapee, Krita. For web development is perfect, my engineers run ARCH/Manjaro over soon to be abandoned Apple hardware. Even my old MacBook Air is supported, Pop!_OS is working perfectly with properly mapped keyboard keys (keyboard backlit controls, audio, playback, etc). The only thing that I have done is to plug thunderbolt/ethernet adapter, clicked on popshop update, restarted and wifi started working flawlessly.
- istingray 5y ago
  Just a gut check -- what about wake from sleep using an external keyboard? That required me to do github work, install a system service. It's these touches I miss from MacOS.
  - nbzso 5y ago
    https://bit.ly/2Yj9n5F https://bit.ly/2Yj9n5F or for time based cycle RTCWake https://bit.ly/38KqdfI https://bit.ly/38KqdfI. With broad addaption use cases like this will be solved. You can install and configure Linux Desktop nowadays without touching the terminal.

luxuryballs 5y ago

I mean I already have accepted the fact that they allow Signal type apps because if the FBI or whoever requests it they can just access your display driver layer and see what you’re typing locally, no need to ban encrypted messaging. I just keep remembering how Lavabit shut down because he refused to comply and otherwise had no choice in the matter. Computers and software should not be easily trusted.