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I wish it was just memory leaks on my M1 Mini! Sometimes it just crashes. This has rarely happened on Linux. This sometimes happen on MacOS to the point where

I wish it was just memory leaks on my M1 Mini! Sometimes it just crashes. This has rarely happened on Linux. This sometimes happen on MacOS to the point where I don't trust it. At all. Ever. I have to save everything I'm working on constantly, just in case. Sometimes apps just stop working. Right now telegram just won't start. No matter what. Never happens on Linux. Sometimes it won't wake up from sleep. Never on Linux. Sometimes it loses the keyboard and/or mouse. This never happens on Linux. Sometimes the screensaver works, sometimes it doesn't. Grep is slow, waaay slower than on Linux. So are other random CLI things. How? Why? Docker... don't get me started, and don't make excuses. (~700 people at Mirantis and ~150k at Apple can't figure this out?) Everything runs slower on MacOS. Every. Thing. grep, sed, awk. Why don't sed, awk, grep, etc.. all the Linux things work quite right? I need to add something else on macOS to get them to work like they did on Linux. It's always "almost" but never do they work like I'd expect. I need to remember to turn off my monitor at night, because some nights it just randomly turns on. Never on Linux. Maybe it'll wake up, maybe not. I figured out if I unplug my headphones and/or webcam I can force it. All of these super basic things just DON'T work. It sucks. I could forgive Linux, but not an OS and Hardware made by the biggest company on the damn planet. I get it, this is faster than a 4 year old laptop. But that's not what I'm comparing it to. I'm comparing it to a 5 year old system I built myself from random parts that runs an open system operating system. That's a pretty low bar, and it doesn't win.

dimgl 5y ago
This is literally the opposite of what most people claim. Does anyone else have these issues? I actually just ordered an M1 MacBook myself.
- newbie2020 5y ago
  I have all the issues the parent post is commenting about. I thought I was crazy... but same happens to me. Simple stuff... why doesn't sleep to wake work correctly? Why are my peripherals schizophrenic? My Windows 98 Compaq didn't have these issues... and that was two decades ago.
- stjohnswarts 5y ago
  M1 is great, but you can certainly hit some issues where only an x86 version is available and the M1 version is either not there or buggy as hell.
- fiddlerwoaroof 5y ago
  I’ve had a couple crashes with by 2020 MBP, but my experience is that it’s the best Mac I’ve owned since about 2010.
- throwaway09223 5y ago
  I can't speak to m1 in particular, but BSD grep is known to be very slow regardless of platform. You can just brew install grep to get a fast one, but you'll still always have to always deal with avoiding the slow system grep. ag and rg are other fast options. The speed of GNU grep vs BSD grep is discussed on the BSD mailing lists here: https://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-current/2010-August/019310.html https://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-current/2010-Aug...
  - wincy 5y ago
    Ripgrep changed how I search my codebases, it’s so damned fast I love it. I almost always use it when I’m trying to find a pattern or a bit of code I vaguely remember but have forgotten where it might be in a large codebase. Still returns almost instantly.
- SavantIdiot 5y ago
  Some mac users seem to be cursed with bad hardware. It seems to be black and white: users either have no problems, or ALL the problems. I started to get "the curse" after 8 years with my 2012 MBP. It started randomly turning off. Not crashing, just turning off! I replaced the battery because that was the only warning I was getting. But it can no longer run any macOS. Even mavericks. It crashes randomly. It went from rock solid to fragile as an elderly lady with osteoporosis rollerskating on a cobblestone path. Now it is my primary Ubuntu machine since the touchpad works so much batter than Ubuntu running on my Lenovo Yoga and it has better performance. Zero turning off problems. It's been on for months running a VNC server.
  - dimgl 5y ago
    Yeah, it is very strange. I have an early 2014? MacBook Pro and it still runs today. 0 issues. That being said, it's now slow as hell and likely because of the battery. But the development experience on MacBooks is delightful.
- kybernetyk 5y ago
  Don't know about others but my M1 Macs are the most stable and performant Apple machines I had in a long time. My previous 16" i9 MBP was a disappointment (laggy/sluggish, running hot) compared to my M1 Mini and MacBook Air. I also don't see any memory issues, etc.
- MonaroVXR 5y ago
  What most people say is not always the truth. Eg; "Windows 10 is the last Windows." Most people don't give any sources.
sgt 5y ago
The Telegram issue is not specific to M1. I think it's a bug in Telegram, as it simply refuses to start on my Intel based MBP at the moment. Started this evening.
SXX 5y ago
I'm strongly prefer Linux (been using it last 10 years), but I spent last year on macOS in waiting for Asahi to become usable. I still curious about your experience. Did you actually tried to replace Apple garbage version of command line utils with latest one from GNU? It's kind a obvioius that OOTB version of utils will be much slower since Apple stopped updating GNU versions once license been changed to GPLv3. And BSD version of utils they ship with newer macOS is also usually inferior.
- least 5y ago
  I don't think this is actually super obvious to someone that isn't familiar with macOS and is used to using linux. I do think that if someone finds something peculiar enough to notice and complain about it that they should at least do their due diligence to ascertain why, rather than simply being upset about it.
chrisseaton 5y ago
> Why don't sed, awk, grep, etc.. all the Linux things work quite right? Why should all Unix implementations work just like Linux? What's so special about Linux? Why doesn't Linux work like BSD?
- ben0x539 5y ago
  Because the "linux" versions tend to have more features and better help output? I've never seen anyone install Linux and be like "damn, I wish my coreutils were more obtuse" and install a bunch of non-GNU stuff. Like, I get that Linux is just another unix and the GNU userland isn't somehow more legit than others, but it's not like people are intentionally getting inconvenienced just to be annoying.
  - sbuk 5y ago
    Or Linux users are self-righteously declaring their way is the only way...
  - user-the-name 5y ago
    This is usually called "embrace, extend, extinguish".
  - chrisseaton 5y ago
    > tend to have more features and better help output Just a random opinion. Others disagree and prefer the BSD way. Concrete reasons include code-base simplicity. https://github.com/coreutils/coreutils/blob/master/src/yes.c https://github.com/coreutils/coreutils/blob/master/src/yes.c https://github.com/openbsd/src/blob/master/usr.bin/yes/yes.c https://github.com/openbsd/src/blob/master/usr.bin/yes/yes.c
    - throwaway09223 5y ago
      That's a developer-perspective issue. You're talking to a user here, and from a user perspective, the GNU utilities are generally strictly superior. Take the example you provided, of yes(1). Most of the extra code relates to optimizations, and ensuring that the entire argv is echoed back rather than just the first argument. Because of this, even a very simple example like: "yes hello world" will behave differently on BSD vs GNU, with the GNU version likely being what users expect.
KyeRussell 5y ago
Putting aside your dislike for BSD versions of userspace tools, I am confused as to why it hasn’t occurred to you that you may have defective hardware or a defective OS install? Have you undertaken even the most basic troubleshooting steps?
hugi 5y ago
You might want to have your computer looked at. This is very much the opposite of my experience with the M1s at our offices.
staticassertion 5y ago
So why use OSX? I've been running Linux for over a decade full time. I remember using osx at work and feeling like it was just clunkier, slower, and buggier. What's the appeal?
- dylan604 5y ago
  > What's the appeal? It runs the software I need. full stop
- eknkc 5y ago
  Because last time I tried, I spent days to have fractional scaling on 4k monitors work without screen tearing, blurring etc. And have consistent momentum scrolling on touchbar. I do not even think about these things on macOS or Windows. At this point my time is too valuable for that shit. I used to fiddle a lot with my computers when I was 16. Now I want them to work.
- dimgl 5y ago
  It's not Linux. It's not clunkier, slower or buggier. Not sure why you had those issues.
  - staticassertion 5y ago
    The parent poster is literally saying that OSX is all of those things relative to their Linux system, so I'm asking why they even have the OSX system.
  - zdragnar 5y ago
    I've gone back and forth between linux and macOS the past 7 years at work. Both get the job done, but there is absolutely no denying (in my experience) that macOS is slower. Clunkier and buggies depend entirely on which distro you are comparing it with, though I find clunkier at least to be true. Buggier than linux WMs and desktops is a pretty high bar to beat, as long as you're not including homebrew in the equation (worst, most necessary bit of software for Mac ever).
- stjohnswarts 5y ago
sanderjd 5y ago
Weird, I got an M1 Air recently and it's super fast (the most notably faster seeming new computer I've gotten in a decade) and all these issues are incredibly foreign to me. I just can't relate to this comment at all...
- grp000 5y ago
  What use case do you have for your Mac? The benchmarks and battery life have been tempting me, but I use Docker a lot which I'm hearing mixed messages for, and to be honest, my Intel-based work Mac is less palatable to use than my personal Ubuntu setup, especially in regards to workspaces, and some weird Bluetooth issues.
  - reacharavindh 5y ago
    I’m on the same boat. Using an intel Mac provided by work. Had an M1 MacBook Pro until a few months ago, and it was great at several things(fast, responsive, quiet, and great battery life) at the cost of crippled Docker use(I needed local docker at that time). I feel like many many engineers like me would easily get a reliable laptop with MacBook Pro like specs. The problem is that simply does not exist. Excellent hidpi display. Ryzen 5000 series CPU with its low power draw. Good build quality. Reliable support system. Non weird components such that a recent release of popular Linux distribution would “just work” without needing manual tweaks. In my experience, you get 3/5 in the above list at best. Framework laptop hits several of those points but misses out on Ryzen. Another contender on my list is ASUS 14 OLED with Ryzen - I’m worried about their support system though.
    - Roritharr 5y ago
      If you can compromise on the HiDPI Screen, checkout the HP EliteBook 8X5 Series, they are amazing machines. You can plug up to 64gb of RAM into them if you need it, they run pretty smooth and my colleagues can run Linux on them without any issues.
      - kaladin-jasnah 5y ago
exogen 5y ago
> Why don't sed, awk, grep, etc.. all the Linux things work quite right? I need to add something else on macOS to get them to work like they did on Linux. If you mean how they work, like command line arguments and such (and not just speed), that's because macOS is based on BSD and thus using the BSD and not GNU versions. That's not really a "not right" thing, it's just different, and would be the same if you used any other BSD like OpenBSD, FreeBSD, etc.
- gfosco 5y ago
  Yep... GNU versions are available for Mac, i.e. `brew install gnu-sed` and then `gsed` works like you'd expect.
  - pxc 5y ago
    If you install GNU coreutils from Nix (and maybe some other package managers, idk) you can get them with their normal PATHs, at the cost of some possible incompatibility with macOS-specific scripts that assume the bundled versions. I used GNU ones without the `g` prefix for a year or two and never ran into trouble because of it.
- frazbin 5y ago
  no, it's definitely "not right" -- mac os ships with ancient, crippled versions of the bsd utilities, afaict simply because it's bad for open source and because they can. E.g. `man sed` then check the date at the bottom
  - bink 5y ago
    How often do you think utilities like sed, awk, and grep are being updated? They're virtually unchanged for 20-30 years.
    - touisteur 5y ago
      I'll bite and talk about centos, the 'stable' distro. Take the example of 'tar' that slowly evolved and some time even changed its default behaviour. e.g. what to do when untaring a folder but there's already a symlink with the same name as the folder, do you erase the symlink and create a folder or do you untar the folder in the symlink? Between centos 5 and 7 this changed... Causing me some amount of pain. hostname stopped supporting '_' in host names. Could have raised a warning, have added a '-pedantic' option but no. hostname stopped assigning the permanent host name with the 'hostname myhostname' command and now you need to use hostnamectl. Could have left the 'old' feature and make hostnamectl whine instead, but no. ifconfig the deprecated tool subtly changed the order of fields too and now the MAC address is not in the same place as before, breaking scripts that trusted that not to change. df changed its syntax, adding or removing a new-line some time ago. Yeah thinking back we shouldn't have used the standard tools and expected them not to change. So, now, whenever I see in code review some bash person using 'standard' tools to get info that could be gathered through procfs or sysfs, I instead ask they use procfs, sysfs or ioctls and be done with it.
smoldesu 5y ago
Funny, I've been feeling the same way about my M1 MBA. It's hard to deny that the newer silicon doesn't have my older Linux rig beat for latency, but when it comes to raw performance I was pretty damn disappointed. At risk of offending some people, it was exactly what I feared the M1 would be: a phone CPU shoehorned in to a clamshell body. There are advantages and disadvantages to running a machine like this, but overall I don't really find the development experience to be that much more compelling than a Raspberry Pi. That being said, Apple still knows their audience. I imagine there will be a lot of chronic Twitter browsers and Pages advocates who fall in love with this machine, and I think that's fine. I do have to wonder what constitutes a "premium" device if not for the hardware though. Everything I do on modern MacOS feels like it's prodding me to go spend $8 on a tool that I'd have for free on Linux or even Windows. Booting up Big Sur makes me long for my old a1502 running Mojave and handling some frankly ridiculous workloads while staying rock-solid in terms of stability. If anything, I applaud Apple for coming straight out and telling me that the future of their devices isn't for me.
- rootusrootus 5y ago
  > That being said, Apple still knows their audience. I imagine there will be a lot of chronic Twitter browsers and Pages advocates who fall in love with this machine, and I think that's fine. That is delightfully insulting. Real developers would never use Macs, of course.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - djbusby 5y ago
    Real Developers use whatever and still get shit done.
- reissbaker 5y ago
  But when it comes to raw performance I was pretty damn disappointed. I'm curious what you mean by "raw performance"? I'm no Apple enthusiast, but AFAIK the M1 is the fastest laptop CPU on the market. There are faster desktop CPUs, but I don't think that makes it "a phone CPU shoehorned into a clamshell body" — it beats pretty much any laptop CPU in existence in the benchmarks I've seen.
cma 5y ago
Memory management on iPad seemed to be terrible when I used one for a while. An app would start acting up, so you would take a screenshot or video and send to Apple's bug reporting tool right? Every time you switched from the bug reporting tool to any other app (to crop the images of the bug, etc.) it would run out of memory and kill the bug reporting tool, which wouldn't save any of the text you had entered in the forms, deleting all of your work on the bug report. Also, every browser tab with text entered was a random crap shoot if you were going to lose it by going to another tab to copy something and return to paste. Nothing was predictable, youor work was just constantly lost of the device. Almost no apps seemed to persist things when the OS forced them to shut down, except maybe the highest rated dedicated artist and note taking stuff. But even Apple's own apps (like the bug reporting tool) often didn't bother.
alexruf 5y ago
As much as I would like to get one of those M1 Macs, this is exactly the reason why I will wait for the 2nd generation of their processors. My Intel MacBook runs rock solid and stable. Until the ARM Macs haven't reached that level of stability, I am not willing to make the switch.
- egwor 5y ago
  Rule #1 on new mac hardware: wait til the 2nd generation!
  - elromulous 5y ago
    Rule #1 on any new hardware, wait for 2nd gen. E.g. computers, cars, aircraft. And by 2nd gen, I mean first update after a major redesign.
- mlindner 5y ago
  M1 Air here that runs rock solid and stable. OP is talking nonsense. They should get it replaced under warranty.
  - alexruf 5y ago
    This might be the case for some users and basic use cases like surfing the web and text writing. But there are still a lot of issues for pro users and developers. If you rely on such a machine for your daily work, its not mature enough.
least 5y ago
> Docker... don't get me started, and don't make excuses. (~700 people at Mirantis and ~150k at Apple can't figure this out?) The whole reason Docker exists makes complaining about its performance on non-linux operating systems asinine. > Why don't sed, awk, grep, etc.. all the Linux things work quite right? Because MacOS is BSD-based and those tools aren't "Linux" things. You can install the GNU equivalents easily if you dislike them. > I could forgive Linux, but not an OS and Hardware made by the biggest company on the damn planet. Software development doesn't particularly care about the fact that Apple is the biggest company on the planet. The pooled resources going into development of linux is quite substantial and yet it too still has plenty of software issues. LTS kernels can have hundreds of patches because software development is hard no matter how many eyes you have looking at it.
- pengaru 5y ago
  > The whole reason Docker exists makes complaining about its performance on non-linux operating systems asinine. TIL there's a single "whole" reason Docker exists. Please, enlighten me, what exactly is that reason?
  - least 5y ago
    A quick search would answer your question: https://www.docker.com/why-docker https://www.docker.com/why-docker
    - pengaru 5y ago
      Can you distill that into the single whole reason you're referring to? It's unclear to me just reading that marketing page. If it's "to provide a standardized unit of software that allows developers to isolate their app from its environment, solving the 'it works on my machine' headache", I don't see how it makes expecting good performance asinine. Linux's ABI is stable, MacOS can definitely implement it... there's nothing in Docker/Linux containers in general, forcing MacOS to incur virtualization overhead.
      - 5y ago
derekjdanserl 5y ago
It truly is a shame we have to choose between quality hardware and a quality OS. My maxed out 2013 Macbook Pro (the last model that runs linux without issue) has finally worn itself out and I’m in the market for a new laptop, but I can’t find a new laptop worth spending money on. I’m currently doing all my work on my desktop just hoping I don’t have to travel any time soon.
- secondcoming 5y ago
  Check out the Dell Mobile Workstations. I had to buy a laptop and went with a custom 7750
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- filmgirlcw 5y ago
  Look at Framework. Really fantastic out of the box Linux support (some WiFi issues depending on kernel version but legit it’s better than what you’ll find on identically specced Dell's right now and you have options about brining your own preferred WiFi card), excellent Windows support, a good community, repairable — I’ve had mine since September and am a huge fan.
nvarsj 5y ago
I think you convinced me to not get a new MBP. These are the exact kind of issues I had with prior MBPs. Also Emacs was always inexplicably 5x slower than on Linux. It's a shame we can't use alternative OSs on the hardware.
rapht 5y ago
I'd swear I'm hearing myself talking about Windows 20 years back... "I keep saving everything incase it just crashes", "It's slow as hell even for simple tasks", etc. Has Apple 2021 become Microsoft 2001 ?
- bluedino 5y ago
  Not really, but you should see Microsoft these days...
  - ClumsyPilot 5y ago
    Microsoft is actually quite decent these days, my desktop hasn't crashed in like 2 years
- jay_kyburz 5y ago
  My kids were giving me a hard time because they cant work out why I hit Control-S every 2 minutes.
coldtea 5y ago
What you describe is not a Mac Mini with some OS or HW bug, it's a broken one. Don't know what your issue is, if it is hardware, or it was pwned, or has 2-3 incompatible Rosetta apps wrecking havoc. But I'd get it replaced. None of these things happen to people, much less altogether. >Everything runs slower on MacOS. Every. Thing. The experience of everybody who bought an M1 is everything (or almost) running far snappier. >Everything runs slower on MacOS. Every. Thing. grep, sed, awk. So, is it "everything" or is it "grep, sed, awk"? And what is your case exactly? Benchmarked them on the mac and on some Linux system with the same file? Maybe did it on a network attached drive? >Why don't sed, awk, grep, etc.. all the Linux things work quite right? I need to add something else on macOS to get them to work like they did on Linux. You seem not to understand this POSIX system or versioning. Apple has older (or BSD) versions of those tools. Use Brew or similar and install the GNU versions, which would be like you know them from Linux. Not that the BSD versions are broken, they're just different.
- Shared404 5y ago
  Let this comment be a reminder to everyone that "you're holding it wrong" is not a response solely used by desktop Linux advocates.
  - coldtea 5y ago
    Yeah, it's also used by any other kind of person, if your experience is not representative to the point of being bizarro.
  - jtbayly 5y ago
    Expecting the GNU and BSD apps to be identical is certainly understandable, but explaining that they are different is hardly the same as “you’re holding it wrong.” It’s information. If, instead of learning from it, you want to be mad at that information, let alone the messenger, I pity you.
    - Shared404 5y ago
      I was more referring to the intro paragraphs: > What you describe is not a Mac Mini with some OS or HW bug, it's a broken one. Don't know what your issue is, if it is hardware, or it was pwned, or has 2-3 incompatible Rosetta apps wrecking havoc. But I'd get it replaced. > None of these things happen to people, much less altogether. > The experience of everybody who bought an M1 is everything (or almost) running far snappier. Especially since there are reports of the same thing as described happening qll over the comments here. I did not give due credit to the rest of the comment, it was quite well written. I apologize for that coldtea.
haliskerbas 5y ago
A lot of those weird random things would happen to me on Linux. But I agree with you, I wouldn’t expect a $2K+ vertically integrated, 10th iteration flagship laptop to have these kind of issues. It definitely does suck. I have the 16” base model M1 Pro and I’m also considering a return
pxc 5y ago
> Why don't sed, awk, grep, etc.. all the Linux things work quite right? I need to add something else on macOS to get them to work like they did on Linux. This is the GNU in GNU/Linux :) I really like GNU coreutils, and other basic GNU utilities like GNU sed, find, and awk. I know some BSD folks see them as ‘bloated’ and ‘non-standard’, but to me they're plenty fast and they feel complete. When I used macOS for a while for a job, it surprised me how much I'd come to rely on the features and behavior of certain GNU utilities that are apparently peculiar to them. But I miss 'em when they're gone.

dimgl 5y ago

This is literally the opposite of what most people claim. Does anyone else have these issues? I actually just ordered an M1 MacBook myself.

newbie2020 5y ago
I have all the issues the parent post is commenting about. I thought I was crazy... but same happens to me. Simple stuff... why doesn't sleep to wake work correctly? Why are my peripherals schizophrenic? My Windows 98 Compaq didn't have these issues... and that was two decades ago.
stjohnswarts 5y ago
M1 is great, but you can certainly hit some issues where only an x86 version is available and the M1 version is either not there or buggy as hell.
fiddlerwoaroof 5y ago
I’ve had a couple crashes with by 2020 MBP, but my experience is that it’s the best Mac I’ve owned since about 2010.
throwaway09223 5y ago
I can't speak to m1 in particular, but BSD grep is known to be very slow regardless of platform. You can just brew install grep to get a fast one, but you'll still always have to always deal with avoiding the slow system grep. ag and rg are other fast options. The speed of GNU grep vs BSD grep is discussed on the BSD mailing lists here: https://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-current/2010-August/019310.html https://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-current/2010-Aug...
- wincy 5y ago
  Ripgrep changed how I search my codebases, it’s so damned fast I love it. I almost always use it when I’m trying to find a pattern or a bit of code I vaguely remember but have forgotten where it might be in a large codebase. Still returns almost instantly.
SavantIdiot 5y ago
Some mac users seem to be cursed with bad hardware. It seems to be black and white: users either have no problems, or ALL the problems. I started to get "the curse" after 8 years with my 2012 MBP. It started randomly turning off. Not crashing, just turning off! I replaced the battery because that was the only warning I was getting. But it can no longer run any macOS. Even mavericks. It crashes randomly. It went from rock solid to fragile as an elderly lady with osteoporosis rollerskating on a cobblestone path. Now it is my primary Ubuntu machine since the touchpad works so much batter than Ubuntu running on my Lenovo Yoga and it has better performance. Zero turning off problems. It's been on for months running a VNC server.
- dimgl 5y ago
  Yeah, it is very strange. I have an early 2014? MacBook Pro and it still runs today. 0 issues. That being said, it's now slow as hell and likely because of the battery. But the development experience on MacBooks is delightful.
kybernetyk 5y ago
Don't know about others but my M1 Macs are the most stable and performant Apple machines I had in a long time. My previous 16" i9 MBP was a disappointment (laggy/sluggish, running hot) compared to my M1 Mini and MacBook Air. I also don't see any memory issues, etc.
MonaroVXR 5y ago
What most people say is not always the truth. Eg; "Windows 10 is the last Windows." Most people don't give any sources.

sgt 5y ago

The Telegram issue is not specific to M1. I think it's a bug in Telegram, as it simply refuses to start on my Intel based MBP at the moment. Started this evening.

SXX 5y ago

I'm strongly prefer Linux (been using it last 10 years), but I spent last year on macOS in waiting for Asahi to become usable. I still curious about your experience. Did you actually tried to replace Apple garbage version of command line utils with latest one from GNU? It's kind a obvioius that OOTB version of utils will be much slower since Apple stopped updating GNU versions once license been changed to GPLv3. And BSD version of utils they ship with newer macOS is also usually inferior.

least 5y ago
I don't think this is actually super obvious to someone that isn't familiar with macOS and is used to using linux. I do think that if someone finds something peculiar enough to notice and complain about it that they should at least do their due diligence to ascertain why, rather than simply being upset about it.

chrisseaton 5y ago

> Why don't sed, awk, grep, etc.. all the Linux things work quite right? Why should all Unix implementations work just like Linux? What's so special about Linux? Why doesn't Linux work like BSD?

ben0x539 5y ago
Because the "linux" versions tend to have more features and better help output? I've never seen anyone install Linux and be like "damn, I wish my coreutils were more obtuse" and install a bunch of non-GNU stuff. Like, I get that Linux is just another unix and the GNU userland isn't somehow more legit than others, but it's not like people are intentionally getting inconvenienced just to be annoying.
- sbuk 5y ago
  Or Linux users are self-righteously declaring their way is the only way...
- user-the-name 5y ago
  This is usually called "embrace, extend, extinguish".
- chrisseaton 5y ago
  > tend to have more features and better help output Just a random opinion. Others disagree and prefer the BSD way. Concrete reasons include code-base simplicity. https://github.com/coreutils/coreutils/blob/master/src/yes.c https://github.com/coreutils/coreutils/blob/master/src/yes.c https://github.com/openbsd/src/blob/master/usr.bin/yes/yes.c https://github.com/openbsd/src/blob/master/usr.bin/yes/yes.c
  - throwaway09223 5y ago
    That's a developer-perspective issue. You're talking to a user here, and from a user perspective, the GNU utilities are generally strictly superior. Take the example you provided, of yes(1). Most of the extra code relates to optimizations, and ensuring that the entire argv is echoed back rather than just the first argument. Because of this, even a very simple example like: "yes hello world" will behave differently on BSD vs GNU, with the GNU version likely being what users expect.

KyeRussell 5y ago

Putting aside your dislike for BSD versions of userspace tools, I am confused as to why it hasn’t occurred to you that you may have defective hardware or a defective OS install? Have you undertaken even the most basic troubleshooting steps?

hugi 5y ago

You might want to have your computer looked at. This is very much the opposite of my experience with the M1s at our offices.

staticassertion 5y ago

So why use OSX? I've been running Linux for over a decade full time. I remember using osx at work and feeling like it was just clunkier, slower, and buggier. What's the appeal?

dylan604 5y ago
> What's the appeal? It runs the software I need. full stop
eknkc 5y ago
Because last time I tried, I spent days to have fractional scaling on 4k monitors work without screen tearing, blurring etc. And have consistent momentum scrolling on touchbar. I do not even think about these things on macOS or Windows. At this point my time is too valuable for that shit. I used to fiddle a lot with my computers when I was 16. Now I want them to work.
dimgl 5y ago
It's not Linux. It's not clunkier, slower or buggier. Not sure why you had those issues.
- staticassertion 5y ago
  The parent poster is literally saying that OSX is all of those things relative to their Linux system, so I'm asking why they even have the OSX system.
- zdragnar 5y ago
  I've gone back and forth between linux and macOS the past 7 years at work. Both get the job done, but there is absolutely no denying (in my experience) that macOS is slower. Clunkier and buggies depend entirely on which distro you are comparing it with, though I find clunkier at least to be true. Buggier than linux WMs and desktops is a pretty high bar to beat, as long as you're not including homebrew in the equation (worst, most necessary bit of software for Mac ever).
stjohnswarts 5y ago

sanderjd 5y ago

Weird, I got an M1 Air recently and it's super fast (the most notably faster seeming new computer I've gotten in a decade) and all these issues are incredibly foreign to me. I just can't relate to this comment at all...

grp000 5y ago
What use case do you have for your Mac? The benchmarks and battery life have been tempting me, but I use Docker a lot which I'm hearing mixed messages for, and to be honest, my Intel-based work Mac is less palatable to use than my personal Ubuntu setup, especially in regards to workspaces, and some weird Bluetooth issues.
- reacharavindh 5y ago
  I’m on the same boat. Using an intel Mac provided by work. Had an M1 MacBook Pro until a few months ago, and it was great at several things(fast, responsive, quiet, and great battery life) at the cost of crippled Docker use(I needed local docker at that time). I feel like many many engineers like me would easily get a reliable laptop with MacBook Pro like specs. The problem is that simply does not exist. Excellent hidpi display. Ryzen 5000 series CPU with its low power draw. Good build quality. Reliable support system. Non weird components such that a recent release of popular Linux distribution would “just work” without needing manual tweaks. In my experience, you get 3/5 in the above list at best. Framework laptop hits several of those points but misses out on Ryzen. Another contender on my list is ASUS 14 OLED with Ryzen - I’m worried about their support system though.
  - Roritharr 5y ago
    If you can compromise on the HiDPI Screen, checkout the HP EliteBook 8X5 Series, they are amazing machines. You can plug up to 64gb of RAM into them if you need it, they run pretty smooth and my colleagues can run Linux on them without any issues.
    - kaladin-jasnah 5y ago

exogen 5y ago

> Why don't sed, awk, grep, etc.. all the Linux things work quite right? I need to add something else on macOS to get them to work like they did on Linux. If you mean how they work, like command line arguments and such (and not just speed), that's because macOS is based on BSD and thus using the BSD and not GNU versions. That's not really a "not right" thing, it's just different, and would be the same if you used any other BSD like OpenBSD, FreeBSD, etc.

gfosco 5y ago
Yep... GNU versions are available for Mac, i.e. `brew install gnu-sed` and then `gsed` works like you'd expect.
- pxc 5y ago
  If you install GNU coreutils from Nix (and maybe some other package managers, idk) you can get them with their normal PATHs, at the cost of some possible incompatibility with macOS-specific scripts that assume the bundled versions. I used GNU ones without the `g` prefix for a year or two and never ran into trouble because of it.
frazbin 5y ago
no, it's definitely "not right" -- mac os ships with ancient, crippled versions of the bsd utilities, afaict simply because it's bad for open source and because they can. E.g. `man sed` then check the date at the bottom
- bink 5y ago
  How often do you think utilities like sed, awk, and grep are being updated? They're virtually unchanged for 20-30 years.
  - touisteur 5y ago
    I'll bite and talk about centos, the 'stable' distro. Take the example of 'tar' that slowly evolved and some time even changed its default behaviour. e.g. what to do when untaring a folder but there's already a symlink with the same name as the folder, do you erase the symlink and create a folder or do you untar the folder in the symlink? Between centos 5 and 7 this changed... Causing me some amount of pain. hostname stopped supporting '_' in host names. Could have raised a warning, have added a '-pedantic' option but no. hostname stopped assigning the permanent host name with the 'hostname myhostname' command and now you need to use hostnamectl. Could have left the 'old' feature and make hostnamectl whine instead, but no. ifconfig the deprecated tool subtly changed the order of fields too and now the MAC address is not in the same place as before, breaking scripts that trusted that not to change. df changed its syntax, adding or removing a new-line some time ago. Yeah thinking back we shouldn't have used the standard tools and expected them not to change. So, now, whenever I see in code review some bash person using 'standard' tools to get info that could be gathered through procfs or sysfs, I instead ask they use procfs, sysfs or ioctls and be done with it.

smoldesu 5y ago

Funny, I've been feeling the same way about my M1 MBA. It's hard to deny that the newer silicon doesn't have my older Linux rig beat for latency, but when it comes to raw performance I was pretty damn disappointed. At risk of offending some people, it was exactly what I feared the M1 would be: a phone CPU shoehorned in to a clamshell body. There are advantages and disadvantages to running a machine like this, but overall I don't really find the development experience to be that much more compelling than a Raspberry Pi. That being said, Apple still knows their audience. I imagine there will be a lot of chronic Twitter browsers and Pages advocates who fall in love with this machine, and I think that's fine. I do have to wonder what constitutes a "premium" device if not for the hardware though. Everything I do on modern MacOS feels like it's prodding me to go spend $8 on a tool that I'd have for free on Linux or even Windows. Booting up Big Sur makes me long for my old a1502 running Mojave and handling some frankly ridiculous workloads while staying rock-solid in terms of stability. If anything, I applaud Apple for coming straight out and telling me that the future of their devices isn't for me.

rootusrootus 5y ago
> That being said, Apple still knows their audience. I imagine there will be a lot of chronic Twitter browsers and Pages advocates who fall in love with this machine, and I think that's fine. That is delightfully insulting. Real developers would never use Macs, of course.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- djbusby 5y ago
  Real Developers use whatever and still get shit done.
reissbaker 5y ago
But when it comes to raw performance I was pretty damn disappointed. I'm curious what you mean by "raw performance"? I'm no Apple enthusiast, but AFAIK the M1 is the fastest laptop CPU on the market. There are faster desktop CPUs, but I don't think that makes it "a phone CPU shoehorned into a clamshell body" — it beats pretty much any laptop CPU in existence in the benchmarks I've seen.

cma 5y ago

Memory management on iPad seemed to be terrible when I used one for a while. An app would start acting up, so you would take a screenshot or video and send to Apple's bug reporting tool right? Every time you switched from the bug reporting tool to any other app (to crop the images of the bug, etc.) it would run out of memory and kill the bug reporting tool, which wouldn't save any of the text you had entered in the forms, deleting all of your work on the bug report. Also, every browser tab with text entered was a random crap shoot if you were going to lose it by going to another tab to copy something and return to paste. Nothing was predictable, youor work was just constantly lost of the device. Almost no apps seemed to persist things when the OS forced them to shut down, except maybe the highest rated dedicated artist and note taking stuff. But even Apple's own apps (like the bug reporting tool) often didn't bother.

alexruf 5y ago

As much as I would like to get one of those M1 Macs, this is exactly the reason why I will wait for the 2nd generation of their processors. My Intel MacBook runs rock solid and stable. Until the ARM Macs haven't reached that level of stability, I am not willing to make the switch.

egwor 5y ago
Rule #1 on new mac hardware: wait til the 2nd generation!
- elromulous 5y ago
  Rule #1 on any new hardware, wait for 2nd gen. E.g. computers, cars, aircraft. And by 2nd gen, I mean first update after a major redesign.
mlindner 5y ago
M1 Air here that runs rock solid and stable. OP is talking nonsense. They should get it replaced under warranty.
- alexruf 5y ago
  This might be the case for some users and basic use cases like surfing the web and text writing. But there are still a lot of issues for pro users and developers. If you rely on such a machine for your daily work, its not mature enough.

least 5y ago

> Docker... don't get me started, and don't make excuses. (~700 people at Mirantis and ~150k at Apple can't figure this out?) The whole reason Docker exists makes complaining about its performance on non-linux operating systems asinine. > Why don't sed, awk, grep, etc.. all the Linux things work quite right? Because MacOS is BSD-based and those tools aren't "Linux" things. You can install the GNU equivalents easily if you dislike them. > I could forgive Linux, but not an OS and Hardware made by the biggest company on the damn planet. Software development doesn't particularly care about the fact that Apple is the biggest company on the planet. The pooled resources going into development of linux is quite substantial and yet it too still has plenty of software issues. LTS kernels can have hundreds of patches because software development is hard no matter how many eyes you have looking at it.

pengaru 5y ago
> The whole reason Docker exists makes complaining about its performance on non-linux operating systems asinine. TIL there's a single "whole" reason Docker exists. Please, enlighten me, what exactly is that reason?
- least 5y ago
  A quick search would answer your question: https://www.docker.com/why-docker https://www.docker.com/why-docker
  - pengaru 5y ago
    Can you distill that into the single whole reason you're referring to? It's unclear to me just reading that marketing page. If it's "to provide a standardized unit of software that allows developers to isolate their app from its environment, solving the 'it works on my machine' headache", I don't see how it makes expecting good performance asinine. Linux's ABI is stable, MacOS can definitely implement it... there's nothing in Docker/Linux containers in general, forcing MacOS to incur virtualization overhead.
    - 5y ago

derekjdanserl 5y ago

It truly is a shame we have to choose between quality hardware and a quality OS. My maxed out 2013 Macbook Pro (the last model that runs linux without issue) has finally worn itself out and I’m in the market for a new laptop, but I can’t find a new laptop worth spending money on. I’m currently doing all my work on my desktop just hoping I don’t have to travel any time soon.

secondcoming 5y ago
Check out the Dell Mobile Workstations. I had to buy a laptop and went with a custom 7750
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
filmgirlcw 5y ago
Look at Framework. Really fantastic out of the box Linux support (some WiFi issues depending on kernel version but legit it’s better than what you’ll find on identically specced Dell's right now and you have options about brining your own preferred WiFi card), excellent Windows support, a good community, repairable — I’ve had mine since September and am a huge fan.

nvarsj 5y ago

I think you convinced me to not get a new MBP. These are the exact kind of issues I had with prior MBPs. Also Emacs was always inexplicably 5x slower than on Linux. It's a shame we can't use alternative OSs on the hardware.

rapht 5y ago

I'd swear I'm hearing myself talking about Windows 20 years back... "I keep saving everything incase it just crashes", "It's slow as hell even for simple tasks", etc. Has Apple 2021 become Microsoft 2001 ?

bluedino 5y ago
Not really, but you should see Microsoft these days...
- ClumsyPilot 5y ago
  Microsoft is actually quite decent these days, my desktop hasn't crashed in like 2 years
jay_kyburz 5y ago
My kids were giving me a hard time because they cant work out why I hit Control-S every 2 minutes.

coldtea 5y ago

What you describe is not a Mac Mini with some OS or HW bug, it's a broken one. Don't know what your issue is, if it is hardware, or it was pwned, or has 2-3 incompatible Rosetta apps wrecking havoc. But I'd get it replaced. None of these things happen to people, much less altogether. >Everything runs slower on MacOS. Every. Thing. The experience of everybody who bought an M1 is everything (or almost) running far snappier. >Everything runs slower on MacOS. Every. Thing. grep, sed, awk. So, is it "everything" or is it "grep, sed, awk"? And what is your case exactly? Benchmarked them on the mac and on some Linux system with the same file? Maybe did it on a network attached drive? >Why don't sed, awk, grep, etc.. all the Linux things work quite right? I need to add something else on macOS to get them to work like they did on Linux. You seem not to understand this POSIX system or versioning. Apple has older (or BSD) versions of those tools. Use Brew or similar and install the GNU versions, which would be like you know them from Linux. Not that the BSD versions are broken, they're just different.

Shared404 5y ago
Let this comment be a reminder to everyone that "you're holding it wrong" is not a response solely used by desktop Linux advocates.
- coldtea 5y ago
  Yeah, it's also used by any other kind of person, if your experience is not representative to the point of being bizarro.
- jtbayly 5y ago
  Expecting the GNU and BSD apps to be identical is certainly understandable, but explaining that they are different is hardly the same as “you’re holding it wrong.” It’s information. If, instead of learning from it, you want to be mad at that information, let alone the messenger, I pity you.
  - Shared404 5y ago
    I was more referring to the intro paragraphs: > What you describe is not a Mac Mini with some OS or HW bug, it's a broken one. Don't know what your issue is, if it is hardware, or it was pwned, or has 2-3 incompatible Rosetta apps wrecking havoc. But I'd get it replaced. > None of these things happen to people, much less altogether. > The experience of everybody who bought an M1 is everything (or almost) running far snappier. Especially since there are reports of the same thing as described happening qll over the comments here. I did not give due credit to the rest of the comment, it was quite well written. I apologize for that coldtea.

haliskerbas 5y ago

A lot of those weird random things would happen to me on Linux. But I agree with you, I wouldn’t expect a $2K+ vertically integrated, 10th iteration flagship laptop to have these kind of issues. It definitely does suck. I have the 16” base model M1 Pro and I’m also considering a return

pxc 5y ago

> Why don't sed, awk, grep, etc.. all the Linux things work quite right? I need to add something else on macOS to get them to work like they did on Linux. This is the GNU in GNU/Linux :) I really like GNU coreutils, and other basic GNU utilities like GNU sed, find, and awk. I know some BSD folks see them as ‘bloated’ and ‘non-standard’, but to me they're plenty fast and they feel complete. When I used macOS for a while for a job, it surprised me how much I'd come to rely on the features and behavior of certain GNU utilities that are apparently peculiar to them. But I miss 'em when they're gone.