8 ms·

People have been saying this for the last 20 years and I've yet to build a linux workstation that isn't at least 20-30% more time consuming to configure, mainta

People have been saying this for the last 20 years and I've yet to build a linux workstation that isn't at least 20-30% more time consuming to configure, maintain and tweak than a Mac and sometimes a lot more time than that.

GhettoComputers 5y ago
You can’t really configure a Mac at all.
- matthewfcarlson 5y ago
  For some that’s a feature, not a bug. I really wish there was at least a CLI you could use to tweak certain behaviors instead of a mix on nvram and system preference
  - GhettoComputers 5y ago
    Agree but they’re complaining like I bought food at a restaurant and I can’t cook it. Seems like an invalid complaint.
- duped 5y ago
  You don't need to nearly as much, by comparison.
  - GhettoComputers 5y ago
    If you can’t, you can’t call it need to. I’d compare it to GNOME.
    - kitsunesoba 5y ago
      From someone who’s used both macOS and GNOME a good deal, GNOME to me feels a lot more like iPadOS if it had been mildly adjusted to run on desktops than it does macOS. There’s several aspects of GNOME and its app suite that are more inflexible than macOS and its apps.
      - GhettoComputers 5y ago
        I completely agree. If someone uses GNOME and says OSX isn't configuration friendly, the critique is very hypocritical, enough to be dismissed. If you say that and use almost any other DE (I love KDE) sure. Someone saying the overcooked steak is disgusting while eating a burnt piece of toast is hard to take serious, they are constantly breaking addons and plugins, its like they don't want any 3rd party support, not unlike the often critiqued apple desktop.
  - howinteresting 5y ago
    How do you turn off workspace switching animations on Macs? Note, I said "turn off", which the "Reduce Motion" setting does not do. Also, how do you get a 4k monitor to run at 144Hz on an Intel Mac?
    - GhettoComputers 5y ago
      Depends which OSX version you have for both, I don't know if your hardware supports the last one, but you might need the correct cable, HDMI doesn't do it for me, and if your intel GPU can't, it won't, not an OSX issue.
      - howinteresting 5y ago
        They are both MacOS issues. The first one is simply impossible to do on Monterey. The 4k 144 thing is a software regression (so not a hardware limitation) that still hasn't been fixed: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/253168625 https://discussions.apple.com/thread/253168625
        GhettoComputers 5y ago
        I hate the every year we update model. I never do it for iOS or OSX. Miss snow leopard: selling point: 0 new features.
    - cassianoleal 5y ago
      I don't have a 4k monitor but I have an ultrawide that does 144Hz. The only way I found to use it that way was via SwitchResX.
      - GhettoComputers 5y ago
        Does it make a big difference? I heard 60hz freesync would make a bigger difference than high refresh, it looked nice when I had 144hz but aside from me sliding my mouse it didn’t really change anything.
- irae 5y ago
  You can't really configure your car after you bought it either. Or your blender or your hair dryer. Not everything in the world needs to be configurable to be good. Yes, when moving from Windows to Mac, people miss stuff that could be configured. When moving from Mac to Windows, from Mac to Linux etc, it is always the same story. But people often miss the point that being configurable does not always means making it better necessarily. Part of configuration is to allow people to work differently, and that is good. But configuration to make it work like the competition (make Mac work like windows, or Mac work like linux) is beyond what configuration should be able to do anyway. Otherwise you end up with no consistency and a bad compromise. Even with Macs trying to offer a consistent experience, Mac apps can often behave differently. Back in the day when I used Linux I felt like many apps I needed to learn how they dealt with the most basic things like the menu locations, like window management, preferences/settings/configuration etc. Too much configuration is not healthy all the time. And Linux culture of "configure all the things" might be hurting Linux adoption itself.
  - GhettoComputers 5y ago
    I agree, configuration is evil. I love my zero config fish shell.
    - GekkePrutser 5y ago
      The problem with no configuration is that someone else (the vendor) configures it for you. Who doesn't necessarily have the same interests. Consider Microsoft complement destroying usability in Windows 8 just because they wanted to sell more tablets. Apple trying to lock you in ever deeper into their walled garden.
hanklazard 5y ago
Try pop!_os. Really easy to install and use. It’s my daily driver on a carbon X1 and I’m not a developer or anything.
- leetrout 5y ago
  Tossing out a second +1 for pop! I've not used it in about a year now and I do miss it. They were adding support for a tiling WM mode and it wasn't bad (needed some work). I was using it on System76 hardware and had zero issues with the OS and S76 replaced my keyboard when it went bad.
- WJW 5y ago
  pop! is indeed really nice, with the possible exception that for some reasons I have to manually recompile the nvidia drivers (and sometimes wifi drivers) with some arcane `dkms` commands every time the OS updates include a kernel update. After the second time this happened I just pasted all the commands in a text file for later reference but it sure is annoying. Apparently not everyone has this problem though, so maybe my computer is just weird.
hasel 5y ago
Bootup archlinux image, type in archinstall, make sure to select gnome... It's that easy.
- thatguy0900 5y ago
  Arch is not a good goto if you don't want to spend a lot of configuration time
- edgyquant 5y ago
  To get an OS? Sure. To get one setup to run my dev environment, games and media? I have to pull in a GitHub repo and run a script that installs and configures everything for me (before the usual tasks of logging in to a hundred websites.) I swore Linux was super easy to setup for years, and as someone whose daily driver is MacOS now I still agree it’s the easiest to setup to my needs, but all 3 main OSs can get you a system in a couple clicks/keystrokes. Windows is probably the most difficult to setup for me (MacOS is at least unix so my scripts for Linux mostly work on the Mac as well) and I only use it for my gaming pc (which was for years Ubuntu, I just decided to install windows on it since I only use it to game anymore.) I love Linux, it’s been my OS since Vista came out and I switched to SUSE Community Edition, but we get so used to our OSs we forget part of the ease of use is being familiar. When I problem pops up on Ubuntu I can solve it within a minute. When one pops up on Mac it takes me some googling (and I give up on windows.) None if these systems are all the easy (or difficult) to use, it’s just a few basic concepts and then a ton of time figuring stuff out.
outworlder 5y ago
> People have been saying this for the last 20 years and I've yet to build a linux workstation that isn't at least 20-30% more time consuming to configure, maintain and tweak than a Mac and sometimes a lot more time than that. That's a high bar to clear. One thing that Apple does that makes a lot of sense is that they own the hardware and the software. Hackintoshes are a good indication of how things would look like if they had to support more hardware than they do. This is one of the reasons why I have recommended Macs for the less tech savvy members of my family. Just works, great manufacturer support (noone really comes close), has things like Time Machine to keep backups running. My "support calls" dropped drastically. My mother had a Linux netbook(remember those?) for banking purposes but a Mac for general usage. She would be able to browse on Linux, but things would get messy the moment she would want to, say, use her cricut machine. Let's compare with Windows? That truly takes a whole lot of time, specially because the OS seems to "rot" over time. It's become less of an issue (possibly also because our hardware is so powerful). My Windows desktop has taken way more work to maintain than my Linux machines(plural) + Macs. I have to keep that for VR, Fusion360 (going to ditch that as soon as I can) and the odd game that doesn't work properly (Sea of Thieves in-game chat?). Can't wait to get rid of it and use only Linux - which takes hardly any "maintenance" at all (other than installing updates and even that is just a click).
- 2muchcoffeeman 5y ago
  >That's a high bar to clear. One thing that Apple does that makes a lot of sense is that they own the hardware and the software. It’s an ideological bar though. Pick a line or models of laptops and officially support that specific line. Keep the list smallish and from popular manufacturers. Everything else deals with it they way we do now. Linux on supported hardware is pretty low maintenance. But it’s still not quite as nice as MacOS. And god forbid you get the latest hardware.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
2-718-281-828 5y ago
maybe you're just a passionate tweaker. the basic stuff I need for my workstation has to be configured on any OS - be it Windows, Linux or Mac. the more advanced stuff is mostly optional and I usually do it additionally on linux just because I can. so, I'd say this is a bit of an apple-pear-comparison.
pkulak 5y ago
This seems off to me. I remember when I was using Mac, if I got a new machine, I had at least a day of downtime. Everything is minor, but it totally adds up. You've got to run around to dozens of websites, download, and click through menus to install Docker/Homebrew/IntelliJ/etc. Then there are all the nanny systems you have to turn off every time you hit them the first time. Oh, gotta give the console access to the filesystem. Half the binaries you download aren't signed to Apple's liking, so you gotta work around each one of those, and how you work around it changes with every major version of MacOS. Hell, just dragging, holding and releasing the 2-dozen useless default apps the hell out of the Dock takes a solid minute. Did you sign in to iCloud yet, btw? Siri would love to be enabled to, if you have a moment. Your home folder isn't in the finder, just a bunch of iCloud stuff and the Desktop. Do you remember how to option-click in the magic spot to find it and make a shortcut? It's death by a million cuts. That said, I'm not gonna pretend that Linux is some utopia and everything works immediately. But there's no way it's worse. I have a script that takes any machine from a formatted drive to a working OS exactly how I need it, unattended, in about 20 minutes. That's extreme, but everyone at least has a list of the packages they need that they can copy paste install into the terminal as soon as the installer is done.
- brarsanmol 5y ago
  I mean I've had 2 mac's so far and I've reset the first one a handful of times it never took me more than about 1 - 2 hours to get up and running with Homebrew (a package manager for Mac). Although I will agree the Mac installer is highly unintuitive.
  - GhettoComputers 5y ago
    I never felt that way, its pretty easy, early version installs breaks stuff, and I have to deal with any UI and features they added in. You partition your computer to just try the new version as well? Pretty handy.
- stnikolauswagne 5y ago
  I am on my 4th macbook in 7 years, I have not had to install any program twice and all my settings so far have carried over between devices, with the sole exception of security settings. Maybe I got absurdly lucky but I have never had this little issues with switching devices thanks to migration assistant.
__MatrixMan__ 5y ago
I guess it depends on what you're configuring. I'm using microk8s at work and the part of my team that has to deal with the VM-encapsulated version that runs on Mac or Windows is always mired in configuration woes. Same goes for docker. Granted, that's a far cry from touchpad configs--but if you keep your dotfiles in git then touchpad config is something you only have to once (per touchpad that you own).

GhettoComputers 5y ago

You can’t really configure a Mac at all.

matthewfcarlson 5y ago
For some that’s a feature, not a bug. I really wish there was at least a CLI you could use to tweak certain behaviors instead of a mix on nvram and system preference
- GhettoComputers 5y ago
  Agree but they’re complaining like I bought food at a restaurant and I can’t cook it. Seems like an invalid complaint.
duped 5y ago
You don't need to nearly as much, by comparison.
- GhettoComputers 5y ago
  If you can’t, you can’t call it need to. I’d compare it to GNOME.
  - kitsunesoba 5y ago
    From someone who’s used both macOS and GNOME a good deal, GNOME to me feels a lot more like iPadOS if it had been mildly adjusted to run on desktops than it does macOS. There’s several aspects of GNOME and its app suite that are more inflexible than macOS and its apps.
    - GhettoComputers 5y ago
      I completely agree. If someone uses GNOME and says OSX isn't configuration friendly, the critique is very hypocritical, enough to be dismissed. If you say that and use almost any other DE (I love KDE) sure. Someone saying the overcooked steak is disgusting while eating a burnt piece of toast is hard to take serious, they are constantly breaking addons and plugins, its like they don't want any 3rd party support, not unlike the often critiqued apple desktop.
- howinteresting 5y ago
  How do you turn off workspace switching animations on Macs? Note, I said "turn off", which the "Reduce Motion" setting does not do. Also, how do you get a 4k monitor to run at 144Hz on an Intel Mac?
  - GhettoComputers 5y ago
    Depends which OSX version you have for both, I don't know if your hardware supports the last one, but you might need the correct cable, HDMI doesn't do it for me, and if your intel GPU can't, it won't, not an OSX issue.
    - howinteresting 5y ago
      They are both MacOS issues. The first one is simply impossible to do on Monterey. The 4k 144 thing is a software regression (so not a hardware limitation) that still hasn't been fixed: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/253168625 https://discussions.apple.com/thread/253168625
      - GhettoComputers 5y ago
        I hate the every year we update model. I never do it for iOS or OSX. Miss snow leopard: selling point: 0 new features.
  - cassianoleal 5y ago
    I don't have a 4k monitor but I have an ultrawide that does 144Hz. The only way I found to use it that way was via SwitchResX.
    - GhettoComputers 5y ago
      Does it make a big difference? I heard 60hz freesync would make a bigger difference than high refresh, it looked nice when I had 144hz but aside from me sliding my mouse it didn’t really change anything.
irae 5y ago
You can't really configure your car after you bought it either. Or your blender or your hair dryer. Not everything in the world needs to be configurable to be good. Yes, when moving from Windows to Mac, people miss stuff that could be configured. When moving from Mac to Windows, from Mac to Linux etc, it is always the same story. But people often miss the point that being configurable does not always means making it better necessarily. Part of configuration is to allow people to work differently, and that is good. But configuration to make it work like the competition (make Mac work like windows, or Mac work like linux) is beyond what configuration should be able to do anyway. Otherwise you end up with no consistency and a bad compromise. Even with Macs trying to offer a consistent experience, Mac apps can often behave differently. Back in the day when I used Linux I felt like many apps I needed to learn how they dealt with the most basic things like the menu locations, like window management, preferences/settings/configuration etc. Too much configuration is not healthy all the time. And Linux culture of "configure all the things" might be hurting Linux adoption itself.
- GhettoComputers 5y ago
  I agree, configuration is evil. I love my zero config fish shell.
  - GekkePrutser 5y ago
    The problem with no configuration is that someone else (the vendor) configures it for you. Who doesn't necessarily have the same interests. Consider Microsoft complement destroying usability in Windows 8 just because they wanted to sell more tablets. Apple trying to lock you in ever deeper into their walled garden.

hanklazard 5y ago

Try pop!_os. Really easy to install and use. It’s my daily driver on a carbon X1 and I’m not a developer or anything.

leetrout 5y ago
Tossing out a second +1 for pop! I've not used it in about a year now and I do miss it. They were adding support for a tiling WM mode and it wasn't bad (needed some work). I was using it on System76 hardware and had zero issues with the OS and S76 replaced my keyboard when it went bad.
WJW 5y ago
pop! is indeed really nice, with the possible exception that for some reasons I have to manually recompile the nvidia drivers (and sometimes wifi drivers) with some arcane `dkms` commands every time the OS updates include a kernel update. After the second time this happened I just pasted all the commands in a text file for later reference but it sure is annoying. Apparently not everyone has this problem though, so maybe my computer is just weird.

hasel 5y ago

Bootup archlinux image, type in archinstall, make sure to select gnome... It's that easy.

thatguy0900 5y ago
Arch is not a good goto if you don't want to spend a lot of configuration time
edgyquant 5y ago
To get an OS? Sure. To get one setup to run my dev environment, games and media? I have to pull in a GitHub repo and run a script that installs and configures everything for me (before the usual tasks of logging in to a hundred websites.) I swore Linux was super easy to setup for years, and as someone whose daily driver is MacOS now I still agree it’s the easiest to setup to my needs, but all 3 main OSs can get you a system in a couple clicks/keystrokes. Windows is probably the most difficult to setup for me (MacOS is at least unix so my scripts for Linux mostly work on the Mac as well) and I only use it for my gaming pc (which was for years Ubuntu, I just decided to install windows on it since I only use it to game anymore.) I love Linux, it’s been my OS since Vista came out and I switched to SUSE Community Edition, but we get so used to our OSs we forget part of the ease of use is being familiar. When I problem pops up on Ubuntu I can solve it within a minute. When one pops up on Mac it takes me some googling (and I give up on windows.) None if these systems are all the easy (or difficult) to use, it’s just a few basic concepts and then a ton of time figuring stuff out.

outworlder 5y ago

> People have been saying this for the last 20 years and I've yet to build a linux workstation that isn't at least 20-30% more time consuming to configure, maintain and tweak than a Mac and sometimes a lot more time than that. That's a high bar to clear. One thing that Apple does that makes a lot of sense is that they own the hardware and the software. Hackintoshes are a good indication of how things would look like if they had to support more hardware than they do. This is one of the reasons why I have recommended Macs for the less tech savvy members of my family. Just works, great manufacturer support (noone really comes close), has things like Time Machine to keep backups running. My "support calls" dropped drastically. My mother had a Linux netbook(remember those?) for banking purposes but a Mac for general usage. She would be able to browse on Linux, but things would get messy the moment she would want to, say, use her cricut machine. Let's compare with Windows? That truly takes a whole lot of time, specially because the OS seems to "rot" over time. It's become less of an issue (possibly also because our hardware is so powerful). My Windows desktop has taken way more work to maintain than my Linux machines(plural) + Macs. I have to keep that for VR, Fusion360 (going to ditch that as soon as I can) and the odd game that doesn't work properly (Sea of Thieves in-game chat?). Can't wait to get rid of it and use only Linux - which takes hardly any "maintenance" at all (other than installing updates and even that is just a click).

2muchcoffeeman 5y ago
>That's a high bar to clear. One thing that Apple does that makes a lot of sense is that they own the hardware and the software. It’s an ideological bar though. Pick a line or models of laptops and officially support that specific line. Keep the list smallish and from popular manufacturers. Everything else deals with it they way we do now. Linux on supported hardware is pretty low maintenance. But it’s still not quite as nice as MacOS. And god forbid you get the latest hardware.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

2-718-281-828 5y ago

maybe you're just a passionate tweaker. the basic stuff I need for my workstation has to be configured on any OS - be it Windows, Linux or Mac. the more advanced stuff is mostly optional and I usually do it additionally on linux just because I can. so, I'd say this is a bit of an apple-pear-comparison.

pkulak 5y ago

This seems off to me. I remember when I was using Mac, if I got a new machine, I had at least a day of downtime. Everything is minor, but it totally adds up. You've got to run around to dozens of websites, download, and click through menus to install Docker/Homebrew/IntelliJ/etc. Then there are all the nanny systems you have to turn off every time you hit them the first time. Oh, gotta give the console access to the filesystem. Half the binaries you download aren't signed to Apple's liking, so you gotta work around each one of those, and how you work around it changes with every major version of MacOS. Hell, just dragging, holding and releasing the 2-dozen useless default apps the hell out of the Dock takes a solid minute. Did you sign in to iCloud yet, btw? Siri would love to be enabled to, if you have a moment. Your home folder isn't in the finder, just a bunch of iCloud stuff and the Desktop. Do you remember how to option-click in the magic spot to find it and make a shortcut? It's death by a million cuts. That said, I'm not gonna pretend that Linux is some utopia and everything works immediately. But there's no way it's worse. I have a script that takes any machine from a formatted drive to a working OS exactly how I need it, unattended, in about 20 minutes. That's extreme, but everyone at least has a list of the packages they need that they can copy paste install into the terminal as soon as the installer is done.

brarsanmol 5y ago
I mean I've had 2 mac's so far and I've reset the first one a handful of times it never took me more than about 1 - 2 hours to get up and running with Homebrew (a package manager for Mac). Although I will agree the Mac installer is highly unintuitive.
- GhettoComputers 5y ago
  I never felt that way, its pretty easy, early version installs breaks stuff, and I have to deal with any UI and features they added in. You partition your computer to just try the new version as well? Pretty handy.
stnikolauswagne 5y ago
I am on my 4th macbook in 7 years, I have not had to install any program twice and all my settings so far have carried over between devices, with the sole exception of security settings. Maybe I got absurdly lucky but I have never had this little issues with switching devices thanks to migration assistant.

__MatrixMan__ 5y ago

I guess it depends on what you're configuring. I'm using microk8s at work and the part of my team that has to deal with the VM-encapsulated version that runs on Mac or Windows is always mired in configuration woes. Same goes for docker. Granted, that's a far cry from touchpad configs--but if you keep your dotfiles in git then touchpad config is something you only have to once (per touchpad that you own).