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This makes me glad I switched from being a Linux desktop enthusiast over a decade ago. I’m still a Linux server enthusiast, and I greatly appreciate all the har

This makes me glad I switched from being a Linux desktop enthusiast over a decade ago. I’m still a Linux server enthusiast, and I greatly appreciate all the hard work volunteers put into Linux desktop software — but the hassle and lack of polish keeps me on the Mac for desktops. It was fun for a while Linux Desktop, I wish you the best but I’ve moved on.

markstos 5y ago
Congratulations on getting your ports back!
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- peheje 5y ago
  and 120 hz screen
- handrous 5y ago
  What's really crazy is that Apple can screw up several times in a row (abrupt removal of all ports; Touch Bar; flawed keyboard design), even such that the screwups overlap and are occurring all at once, and... there's not really anyone else to go to. Their products are basically their own category—everyone else is that far behind on overall UX, capabilities, and average (maybe not worst-case) experience—so your choices are "just live with the bad parts and hope they fix it next time" or "slice off your nose". It really sucks. I'd love for them to have anyone nipping at their heels. (Windows user from '94-present [gaming and other non-serious uses, for most of that time], mainly a desktop Linux user from 2000-2011 and I still try it out every couple years, FWIW—alternated between nodding along and going "holy crap, still?!" for all of TFA)
  - peheje 5y ago
    Maybe in regard to their new APU's, but everything else I think PC's are just as great. There has also been some really nice Windows laptops in most recent years. I got a business HP laptop (think it was probook series) for work when I started 2 years ago. It was awesome, great trackpad, keyboard, battery life, speed etc. Had to move over to Macbook Pro 16" due to some technical setup in the workplace. It's great too but not ahead on anything really. Lower battery, more heat. Slower. Also Intel though. Lot of issues with connecting non-Apple displays. Also heard the Dell XPS should be great. I just think many people think Macbook good, PC bad. Because they ARE willing to spend 2500$ on a Mac but their last PC they spend 1000$, and then they to compare. But I concede, currently Apple APU's has no match.
    - tombert 5y ago
      > Lot of issues with connecting non-Apple displays. I have the 16" Macbook pro as well, and haven't ever had any issues connecting to an HDMI monitor/TV with just a cheapy USB-C dongle I bought off Amazon. What kind of issues are you having?
      - handrous 5y ago
        The place I worked when the all-usb-c Macs rolled out, I do recall a lot of "that monitor doesn't work no matter what", and "that one works but only with this cable and dongle, swap either and it won't work", and "that one works but only with the displayport dongle, not HDMI", and "that one works but it'll blank about once an hour and you'll have to unplug it and plug it back in", et c. I hope that's been ironed out by now, but don't really know (I WFH now and have for years, and my monitor's fine, but that's just one monitor)
      - peheje 5y ago
        We have issues with our dual HP screen setup going completely black out for 5-10 seconds randomly 3-5 times throughout a work-day. When it happens the screen setup/orientation often reset, so left becomes right. We've tried multiple different cables, cheap ones, short ones, expensive ones, Thunderbolt 3 etc. etc. Console does log an error when it happens, but we don't have the expertise to look into it. And really who to contact? HP would point fingers at Apple and vice versa, or Apple at our corporate setup. Doesn't seem to happen with only 1 screen attached. For headset connection we use an off-brand adapter where we plugin the wireless USB-A dongle, but you sound like a robot. Probably adapter fault, but same issue, who to contact? We found a particular brand of a very cheap small USB-C to A adapter works. I am using bluetooth to connect my headset, but it's very spotty requiring me to reset bluetooth module one a week to get the connection. So why am I using bluetooth you might ask, and not the dongle? Well if I use the dongle it interferes with my personal Logitech mice/keyboard setup, so that begins to lag. I know the solution is to use Airpods, Apple keyboard and mice/trackpad as well as Apple screens and adapters... but expensive and shouldn't be necessary.
    - handrous 5y ago
      > I just think many people think Macbook good, PC bad. Because they ARE willing to spend 2500$ on a Mac but their last PC they spend 1000$, and then they to compare. FWIW we've never spent more than ~$1300 on a personal MacBook (older Pro, when the lower-end models were much cheaper, and a recent Air; my wife's owned two Airs). Aside from one case when a workplace provided me a much higher-end unit than I would have requested—I'd really rather not have a discrete graphics card, thanks, as they're the cause of a solid 50% of all problems with laptops, both Mac and PC, in my experience—I don't think a company's ever spent more than ~$1700 on a work MacBook for me.
- dsomers 5y ago
  Sometimes I feel like I’m the only one that never uses any kind of port for anything but charging. But I’m glad people are glad!
berkes 5y ago
What is "This" which you refer to? The article is really a rather random list of issues that different demographics might or will encounter. Is there any specific issue on there that made you glad you switched?
- dsomers 5y ago
  Well, once I bought a laptop with integrated intel graphics because it was supposed to have good Linux support. Suspended/wake didn’t work, and 3D didn’t work, I spent months on mailing list trying to figure out the problem, and I ended up being the one merging the fix for Ubuntu, you can probably still find that on launchpad.net I get it, that was over ten years ago, and maybe things are better, maybe not according to this guy. I’m just tired of this kind of finickiness and would rather focus on hacking on server code.
  - berkes 5y ago
    I once bought a laptop with a trackpad and it came with Windows ME. The trackpad kept dropping. It was a problem with the driver crashing. I once got a macbook from work, and the mechanical stress from carrying it in my backpack broke something internally. Started randomly rebooting. I had to bring it in, b/c Apple would not allow me to swap the broken piece myself. Got it back with everything wiped and all my files gone. This is why Windows will never work for normal people and will never become popular. This is why Apple won't work for any common use like a backpack and will never become usefull /s But first: thanks a lot for spending the time to make a patch! Yet, my point is: sure, that is valid criticism. Stuff should Just Work. But it also is kindof anecdotal and a little random to write off the entire desktop experience of Linux on a piece of unsupported hardware 10 years ago. We all have experienced bad hardware support everywhere, with every OS, with every ecosystem, haven't we? Hell, even one of my thinkpads did weird stuff once.
    - watermelon0 5y ago
      Sure, maybe we should gather a random group of people, give each of them a laptop with Linux and Windows, and tell them to do some common tasks on both of them. Let's see which one they prefer, and have less issues with. Common tasks include: - Zoom/Google Meet meetings including screen sharing - Playing music on bluetooth headphones - Watching movies on Youtube/Netflix - Playing games (with official support for both platforms) - Using external monitor with different DPI
andrewzah 5y ago
I've used linux daily for the last ~4 years and I would not say mac osx is better. Every OS has issues, but with linux I understand what's going on and can configure it to my liking.
- dsomers 5y ago
  Cool! I definitely learned a lot about Unix and how OS’s work in general because of Linux, and I really appreciate that. What I also learned is I don’t care about configuring my desktop and rather spend time hacking on Web Application code.
  - andrewzah 5y ago
    "What I also learned is I don’t care about configuring my desktop and rather spend time hacking on Web Application code." This is fair, and it's a selling point for Windows and OSX. I also dislike having to tinker more than necessary. As long as you're on the happy path, those work pretty well for most people. But if you're not on the happy path, it can get real painful real fast. With linux I'm able to set things like audio (pipewire), foreign language inputs (fcitx), etc exactly how I want it- and that means no desktop environment at all asides from i3. I had a macbook for a while and ended up getting frustrated in certain situations due to lack of freedom to configure things exactly how I want, even if other parts of the OS were more polished.
Arainach 5y ago
Linux on the desktop was great when I was in high school and college and had tons of free time to investigate, debug, and understand things and very little money to spend on solutions. I learned a lot. Now I have far less time and far more money. I use Windows. It just works.
- tombert 5y ago
  I don't run desktop Linux anymore because I got a substantial discount on a Macbook about a year ago and my current laptop was falling apart, but I really don't feel like this has been an issue in the last ~5 years (at least for me). Before last year, I had run Linux for nearly ten years, and the last five of which I would typically be happy enough if I just flashed Ubuntu to a flash drive, plugged into my laptop, installed, and moved on with my life. Generally, Linux would just work; I would get my games through Steam, basically everything else through the Ubuntu store, and things generally worked fine out of the box. I will say that prior to ~2016, it was a completely different story. Whenever I had to reinstall Linux (which was frequent), I could expect to spend several hours hunting down drivers and figuring out how to finagle GRUB or DKMS to work, but I largely don't feel like this is an issue anymore, at least not with the "mainstream" distros like Ubuntu or Suse.
- dragonelite 5y ago
  Same here that is why im waiting on hopefully some indepth reviews/benchmarks about the m1 pro and max. Because windows is usually a 2nd rate citizen when it comes to dev tools and gets the cool stuff usually as last. Mac usually gets 1st class citizen treatment.
  - watermelon0 5y ago
    This might change in the near future, with WSL2/WSLg. Additionally, unless ARM starts replacing x86 on servers, WSL2/x86 is a lot closer to the production setup, than either emulation on M1, or developing for ARM platform, and targeting x86 in production.
- IshKebab 5y ago
  Exactly the same. I just hope they don't fill Windows with ads.
poetaster 5y ago
Ah, funny. The OS X launch drove me to linux/bsd. The classic I still boot once a year. Sometimes I boot to netbsd. And I was a mac user who would complain about the idiocy of windows in the 90s. Typing this on linux mobile.
handrous 5y ago
> I’m still a Linux server enthusiast Ditto for about two decades, but I'm working on becoming a FreeBSD server enthusiast instead. Between being the "native" platform for ZFS, which is a huge deal all on its own, and my disliking a whole bunch of things about the direction of Linux (I am pretty sure Red Hat is pushing almost all the new stuff I dislike, in that they're the de-facto owners of the projects and are having great political success pushing them on everyone else) I think it's time to start surveying the broader field of free server unices. Still working on getting used to Jails over Docker + LXC. Docker's so damn convenient, even if you just treat it as a cross-distro isolated-install package manager with a huge and up-to-date package list, and don't leverage anything else it does.

markstos 5y ago

Congratulations on getting your ports back!

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
peheje 5y ago
and 120 hz screen
handrous 5y ago
What's really crazy is that Apple can screw up several times in a row (abrupt removal of all ports; Touch Bar; flawed keyboard design), even such that the screwups overlap and are occurring all at once, and... there's not really anyone else to go to. Their products are basically their own category—everyone else is that far behind on overall UX, capabilities, and average (maybe not worst-case) experience—so your choices are "just live with the bad parts and hope they fix it next time" or "slice off your nose". It really sucks. I'd love for them to have anyone nipping at their heels. (Windows user from '94-present [gaming and other non-serious uses, for most of that time], mainly a desktop Linux user from 2000-2011 and I still try it out every couple years, FWIW—alternated between nodding along and going "holy crap, still?!" for all of TFA)
- peheje 5y ago
  Maybe in regard to their new APU's, but everything else I think PC's are just as great. There has also been some really nice Windows laptops in most recent years. I got a business HP laptop (think it was probook series) for work when I started 2 years ago. It was awesome, great trackpad, keyboard, battery life, speed etc. Had to move over to Macbook Pro 16" due to some technical setup in the workplace. It's great too but not ahead on anything really. Lower battery, more heat. Slower. Also Intel though. Lot of issues with connecting non-Apple displays. Also heard the Dell XPS should be great. I just think many people think Macbook good, PC bad. Because they ARE willing to spend 2500$ on a Mac but their last PC they spend 1000$, and then they to compare. But I concede, currently Apple APU's has no match.
  - tombert 5y ago
    > Lot of issues with connecting non-Apple displays. I have the 16" Macbook pro as well, and haven't ever had any issues connecting to an HDMI monitor/TV with just a cheapy USB-C dongle I bought off Amazon. What kind of issues are you having?
    - handrous 5y ago
      The place I worked when the all-usb-c Macs rolled out, I do recall a lot of "that monitor doesn't work no matter what", and "that one works but only with this cable and dongle, swap either and it won't work", and "that one works but only with the displayport dongle, not HDMI", and "that one works but it'll blank about once an hour and you'll have to unplug it and plug it back in", et c. I hope that's been ironed out by now, but don't really know (I WFH now and have for years, and my monitor's fine, but that's just one monitor)
    - peheje 5y ago
      We have issues with our dual HP screen setup going completely black out for 5-10 seconds randomly 3-5 times throughout a work-day. When it happens the screen setup/orientation often reset, so left becomes right. We've tried multiple different cables, cheap ones, short ones, expensive ones, Thunderbolt 3 etc. etc. Console does log an error when it happens, but we don't have the expertise to look into it. And really who to contact? HP would point fingers at Apple and vice versa, or Apple at our corporate setup. Doesn't seem to happen with only 1 screen attached. For headset connection we use an off-brand adapter where we plugin the wireless USB-A dongle, but you sound like a robot. Probably adapter fault, but same issue, who to contact? We found a particular brand of a very cheap small USB-C to A adapter works. I am using bluetooth to connect my headset, but it's very spotty requiring me to reset bluetooth module one a week to get the connection. So why am I using bluetooth you might ask, and not the dongle? Well if I use the dongle it interferes with my personal Logitech mice/keyboard setup, so that begins to lag. I know the solution is to use Airpods, Apple keyboard and mice/trackpad as well as Apple screens and adapters... but expensive and shouldn't be necessary.
  - handrous 5y ago
    > I just think many people think Macbook good, PC bad. Because they ARE willing to spend 2500$ on a Mac but their last PC they spend 1000$, and then they to compare. FWIW we've never spent more than ~$1300 on a personal MacBook (older Pro, when the lower-end models were much cheaper, and a recent Air; my wife's owned two Airs). Aside from one case when a workplace provided me a much higher-end unit than I would have requested—I'd really rather not have a discrete graphics card, thanks, as they're the cause of a solid 50% of all problems with laptops, both Mac and PC, in my experience—I don't think a company's ever spent more than ~$1700 on a work MacBook for me.
dsomers 5y ago
Sometimes I feel like I’m the only one that never uses any kind of port for anything but charging. But I’m glad people are glad!

berkes 5y ago

What is "This" which you refer to? The article is really a rather random list of issues that different demographics might or will encounter. Is there any specific issue on there that made you glad you switched?

dsomers 5y ago
Well, once I bought a laptop with integrated intel graphics because it was supposed to have good Linux support. Suspended/wake didn’t work, and 3D didn’t work, I spent months on mailing list trying to figure out the problem, and I ended up being the one merging the fix for Ubuntu, you can probably still find that on launchpad.net I get it, that was over ten years ago, and maybe things are better, maybe not according to this guy. I’m just tired of this kind of finickiness and would rather focus on hacking on server code.
- berkes 5y ago
  I once bought a laptop with a trackpad and it came with Windows ME. The trackpad kept dropping. It was a problem with the driver crashing. I once got a macbook from work, and the mechanical stress from carrying it in my backpack broke something internally. Started randomly rebooting. I had to bring it in, b/c Apple would not allow me to swap the broken piece myself. Got it back with everything wiped and all my files gone. This is why Windows will never work for normal people and will never become popular. This is why Apple won't work for any common use like a backpack and will never become usefull /s But first: thanks a lot for spending the time to make a patch! Yet, my point is: sure, that is valid criticism. Stuff should Just Work. But it also is kindof anecdotal and a little random to write off the entire desktop experience of Linux on a piece of unsupported hardware 10 years ago. We all have experienced bad hardware support everywhere, with every OS, with every ecosystem, haven't we? Hell, even one of my thinkpads did weird stuff once.
  - watermelon0 5y ago
    Sure, maybe we should gather a random group of people, give each of them a laptop with Linux and Windows, and tell them to do some common tasks on both of them. Let's see which one they prefer, and have less issues with. Common tasks include: - Zoom/Google Meet meetings including screen sharing - Playing music on bluetooth headphones - Watching movies on Youtube/Netflix - Playing games (with official support for both platforms) - Using external monitor with different DPI

andrewzah 5y ago

I've used linux daily for the last ~4 years and I would not say mac osx is better. Every OS has issues, but with linux I understand what's going on and can configure it to my liking.

dsomers 5y ago
Cool! I definitely learned a lot about Unix and how OS’s work in general because of Linux, and I really appreciate that. What I also learned is I don’t care about configuring my desktop and rather spend time hacking on Web Application code.
- andrewzah 5y ago
  "What I also learned is I don’t care about configuring my desktop and rather spend time hacking on Web Application code." This is fair, and it's a selling point for Windows and OSX. I also dislike having to tinker more than necessary. As long as you're on the happy path, those work pretty well for most people. But if you're not on the happy path, it can get real painful real fast. With linux I'm able to set things like audio (pipewire), foreign language inputs (fcitx), etc exactly how I want it- and that means no desktop environment at all asides from i3. I had a macbook for a while and ended up getting frustrated in certain situations due to lack of freedom to configure things exactly how I want, even if other parts of the OS were more polished.

Arainach 5y ago

Linux on the desktop was great when I was in high school and college and had tons of free time to investigate, debug, and understand things and very little money to spend on solutions. I learned a lot. Now I have far less time and far more money. I use Windows. It just works.

tombert 5y ago
I don't run desktop Linux anymore because I got a substantial discount on a Macbook about a year ago and my current laptop was falling apart, but I really don't feel like this has been an issue in the last ~5 years (at least for me). Before last year, I had run Linux for nearly ten years, and the last five of which I would typically be happy enough if I just flashed Ubuntu to a flash drive, plugged into my laptop, installed, and moved on with my life. Generally, Linux would just work; I would get my games through Steam, basically everything else through the Ubuntu store, and things generally worked fine out of the box. I will say that prior to ~2016, it was a completely different story. Whenever I had to reinstall Linux (which was frequent), I could expect to spend several hours hunting down drivers and figuring out how to finagle GRUB or DKMS to work, but I largely don't feel like this is an issue anymore, at least not with the "mainstream" distros like Ubuntu or Suse.
dragonelite 5y ago
Same here that is why im waiting on hopefully some indepth reviews/benchmarks about the m1 pro and max. Because windows is usually a 2nd rate citizen when it comes to dev tools and gets the cool stuff usually as last. Mac usually gets 1st class citizen treatment.
- watermelon0 5y ago
  This might change in the near future, with WSL2/WSLg. Additionally, unless ARM starts replacing x86 on servers, WSL2/x86 is a lot closer to the production setup, than either emulation on M1, or developing for ARM platform, and targeting x86 in production.
IshKebab 5y ago
Exactly the same. I just hope they don't fill Windows with ads.

poetaster 5y ago

Ah, funny. The OS X launch drove me to linux/bsd. The classic I still boot once a year. Sometimes I boot to netbsd. And I was a mac user who would complain about the idiocy of windows in the 90s. Typing this on linux mobile.

handrous 5y ago

> I’m still a Linux server enthusiast Ditto for about two decades, but I'm working on becoming a FreeBSD server enthusiast instead. Between being the "native" platform for ZFS, which is a huge deal all on its own, and my disliking a whole bunch of things about the direction of Linux (I am pretty sure Red Hat is pushing almost all the new stuff I dislike, in that they're the de-facto owners of the projects and are having great political success pushing them on everyone else) I think it's time to start surveying the broader field of free server unices. Still working on getting used to Jails over Docker + LXC. Docker's so damn convenient, even if you just treat it as a cross-distro isolated-install package manager with a huge and up-to-date package list, and don't leverage anything else it does.