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What is your Linux laptop giving you that your MBP doesn’t? And how does it hurt your productivity? Genuinely curious as I don’t see how it can be any different

by sem000 4y ago

What is your Linux laptop giving you that your MBP doesn’t? And how does it hurt your productivity? Genuinely curious as I don’t see how it can be any different.

justahuman74 4y ago
Presumably that it's running Linux and can be customized as wanted. Also docker runs without a VM, so the networking and storage performance is good
smoldesu 4y ago
For me: - No nagware (no Apple Music pop-ups, advertisements for safari, login nag in settings, et. al) - Built-in package manager - Having (relative) parity between production and development Between those three, you probably couldn't pay me to go back to MacOS. Adding my own package manager, disabling ads and making my Mac into a Linux-equivalent machine is possible, but it's a lot of work to maintain and set up. If I was a creative and used Adobe/Microsoft tools, I might be a little nicer to MacOS. As a programmer though? I haven't felt the desire to use a Mac since Mojave existed.
- mfer 4y ago
  I have an M1 Pro MBP and Linux running on a Framework laptop. The Linux built in package manager is only ok. It often lags behind in versions of things I need. I ended up using Homebrew on both Mac and Linux. For the cases the Linux built-in package manager is too out of date I use Homebrew. It's not perfect on either system. > - Having (relative) parity between production and development For certain classes of development this is a big deal. For my container work it doesn't really matter. I'm running Rancher Desktop and doing container based dev in the VM. Windows, Linux, or Mac doesn't matter as the host. > - No nagware (no Apple Music pop-ups, advertisements for safari, login nag in settings, et. al) I must have learned to ignore this as I've had Macs for a couple decades now. On the flip side, a lot of business software I must use for work isn't available on Linux. I think this is the biggest problem for GNU/Linux as a general OS. There's some biz software that just doesn't run there.
  - counttheforks 4y ago
    > The Linux built in package manager is only ok. It often lags behind in versions of things I need No such thing. What distributions did you have experience with? And what distributions are you running on your production systems?
  - smoldesu 4y ago
    I have a 13" Macbook Pro and a Thinkpad model I forget the name of. Homebrew is down-right bad. There are certainly worse Linux package managers (pacman... looking at you), but if you're using MacOS I'd highly recommend giving Nix a try. Less muss-and-fuss, and stopped me from sending my Macbook on a swim in the local river. > For my container work it doesn't really matter. That's fine, it doesn't really for me either. The nice part (for me) is the native Docker and fantastic filesystem support. Whereas MacOS feels like a product I'm turning into a tool, Linux systems tend to feel like a tool out-of-box. Different strokes for different folks though, it really just depends on what you want out of a computer. > I must have learned to ignore this I must have learned to appreciate living without it, then. It's pretty jarring returning to a monetized OS like Windows 11 or Monterey for me. > a lot of business software I must use for work isn't available on Linux Oh yeah, for sure. Like I said in my previous comment, I wouldn't use Linux if I was a lawyer or a video editor. That being said though, pretty much everything I've used in the modern enterprise is browser-based. You don't need a native Jira app or a custom .DMG to run git. Arguably, everything you need is shipped right with most Linux distros. I won't (and haven't) argued that Linux is perfect, but MacOS is converging with the Windows and Google school of desktop design. It worries me, and it's part of why I left MacOS in the first place. Photoshop is nice, but living on a computer that feels like a rented hotel room isn't very satisfying to me. Again, different strokes.
    - travisgriggs 4y ago
      > Homebrew is down-right bad. Curious why? I used to dabble with it and others. A few macs ago (maybe around 2017), I switched to a strategy of “either the AppStore or brew”. I’ve never had a problem with anything from brew since. I install some productivity tools, standard OS tooling (Inkscape, Gimp, Libre), everything I need to develop for Python, Android, various embedded arm platforms, Elixir/Erlang. I even add some extra tools for Swift development.
- FollowingTheDao 4y ago
  For me: I have a Macbook Air M1 2020 and a Thinkpad X1 Carbon 7th Gen (4 years old!) running Linux Mint. I have upgraded the Thinkpad's Battery, RAM (16GB), and SSD (500GB) for the cost of the parts. I will not be able to do that on the Macbook. Ever. For what I do (browsing, videos, some writing and research) the only benefit to the Macbook is slightly better battery life. I have more software option on the Thinkpad for sure and it does not want to control everything I do. I paid WAY less for the thinkpad and I get pretty much the same performance for my needs. The THRUTH is that most people are being way oversold computing power and paying a premium for it because they are locked into the platform. And just yesterday for some reason Safari vanished and re-arranged my bookmarks for no reason. Getting my MacBook ready to sell as a matter of fact. In my mind it is stupid (and poor marketing) that the linux community is not crushing Apple with cheap, fast laptops.
  - manuelabeledo 4y ago
    > In my mind it is stupid (and poor marketing) that the linux community is not crushing Apple with cheap, fast laptops. That is not how the economics of laptops work. Most people don't want a Linux laptop. Call it inertia, but it is a fact that most people buy Windows laptops. Most of the premium market consumers prefer Apple. And most people who prefer Linux aren't paying a premium right now. So you have three sets that do not overlap, and there is nothing the community can do about that in the short to medium term, anyway.
- Lio 4y ago
  Apple nagware is a pain in the arse. On my old MBP I get regularly nagged to update to Monterey. Despite it not being supported. On my iPhone it wouldn't stop nagging me to accept changes to the iCloud T&Cs. There was no permanent opt out. You could say no for a bit and then it would go back to nagging you. Same with Apple Music. Currently my iPhone nags me to disable background running of Garmin Connect, so that I loose integration with my Garmin watch. None of this endears Apple to me and is definitely a consideration for my next purchase.
dbeley 4y ago
Thinkpads will always have better keyboards, better connectivity and the trackpoint for them.
lynndotpy 4y ago
For my experience, as a longtime Linux user who got a MBP: I really miss the desktop environments available on Linux. KDE is great, and even Gnome beats MacOS. You can't even move windows between desktops with a keyboard shortcut on MacOS. The desktop experience on MacOS is a "death by a thousand cuts" situation. E.g. Popup dialogues will rearrange your windows (e.g. if the popup is wider than your window, to remain centered, it will move the underlying window and I'm not joking.) E.g. Mouse acceleration can't be turned off, which makes MacOS pretty awful for any mouse-centric workflows. E.g. Blocking animations that fundamentally can't be turned off. That's on top of things that aren't necessarily faults with MacOS, such as getting used to different keyboard shortcuts. On Linux, I get native Docker, up-to-date coreutils (they're different on MacOS), more precompiled versions of software I use, and having the Linux desktop software that I prefer. (Finder is frustrating, Gedit or Kate for text editing is great, GIMP is much nicer on Linux, etc.) I also miss KDEConnect. I don't use Xcode, but as I understand, updating it messes with git and python. But the battery life really is amazing enough to make it worth it. I'm really excited for Asahi to progress to a point that I'm comfortable using it.
- TheKnack 4y ago
  Apps like Keyboard Maestro or BetterTouchTool can resolve almost every Macos usability complaint that I've heard. Keyboard Maestro can move windows between desktops with a keyboard shortcut, for example, and there are multiple ways to disable mouse acceleration. For almost every missing feature or annoyance in Macos, someone else has had the same thought and developed a solution. https://forum.keyboardmaestro.com/t/move-frontmost-window-to-a-different-space/10512 https://forum.keyboardmaestro.com/t/move-frontmost-window-to...
  - gspencley 4y ago
    Can it resolve me not being able to use MATE as the desktop environment? My biggest gripe with Mac OS X is the window manager. I want to be able to ALT+right-click anywhere on a window to be able to move it around, alt+left-click anywhere on a window to resize it. I want to be able to click the dock icon for an app I'm using and have the most recently used window of that app come to the foreground instead of however it makes that decision. I'd love to get preview thumbnails of windows when hovering over icons in the doc so that I can select the window I want. Right-click plus reading window titles takes longer to find the window I need. I want to be able to customize my fonts because I have a hard time reading text on my QHD external monitor. I want a terminal that doesn't suck (and yes I use iterm2, it still sucks because I can't quickly jump to the end / beginning of a line to edit a command). I want to be able to select text to copy to clipboard and use my middle mouse button to paste and I want that to work for all programs. I want to be able to hold ctrl plus use the mouse wheel to zoom in / out of web pages on chrome ... something Linux and Windows both do out of the box but it just doesn't work on Mac OS X. I want to be able to customize all of this and not feel like I'm locked in to "the Apple way" of doing things. I lot of this is just familiarity and getting really used to a particular DE over decades of use and taking little things for granted. If all you've ever used is a Mac then I'm sure you've figured out how to be hyper-productive on that DE. I just find it strange that, from a company that somehow positioned itself as UX leaders ... I find that I'm 1/10th as productive on my work Macbook as I am on any nix device (and while Mac might use a heavily modified NetBSD kernel IIRC and have zsh and bash ... it feels very different from a nix machine to me).
hsbauauvhabzb 4y ago
>32gb of ram
lern_too_spel 4y ago
Others have filled in some of the productivity benefits, but it also avoids a thousand little papercuts. It doesn't have uninstallable crapware like Apple News.
nequo 4y ago
A ThinkPad X1 Carbon is cheaper, lighter, has a better keyboard, and on Linux I can run the DE that has the defaults/customizations and keybindings that I am used to. I also don't have to worry (or at least I think that I don't) that the Linux kernel or my distro silently introduces a hack for their programs to bypass my firewall and VPN because they couldn't fix some bugs by the company-mandated release date: https://www.cnet.com/tech/services-and-software/apple-nixes-feature-that-let-apps-bypass-vpn/ https://www.cnet.com/tech/services-and-software/apple-nixes-...
gnufied 4y ago
I work on container stuff, so may be my POV is bit different but: 1. I had hard time fighting openssl installed by Homebrew and getting Python to use it. On Linux - this is never an issue. In general IMO using homebrew is fairly tedious. 2. Debugging of stuff running on Linux. Sometimes logging is not enough and while remote debugging can be made to work (I mainly use Goland), it is pretty fiddly and does not work reliably. I am not new to Mac or anything tbh. I used to use Mac about 5 years ago exclusively and then Linux for next 5 years and now using Mac again. IMO for kind of work I do - Linux is just leaps ahead of Mac.
rkangel 4y ago
There are some really weird things. The only sustained usage of Macs I've had is a Mac Mini (x86) that I had for app development. Even just plugging in a plain old UK layout USB keyboard (not an Apple one) and having it behave itself and give me the right characters was surprisingly difficult.
dpz 4y ago
Biggest things for me - I've never found a good WM that can replace what bspwm can do. - Something as useful as pacman, brew is no where near as good. - Full control over my system. Plus I can run my set up on a £30 chromebook and be nearly as efficient as my ~£1800 Work laptop.
Leimi 4y ago
Some workflows on a linux system can be totally different than what is possible on a mac. Even with apps like BetterTouchTool, Hammerspoon, Amethyst and others. Customizing window management, advanced keyboard shortcuts, general system behavior in mac is going against the tide. It kinda works, but never as good as you'd want because you can't really get rid of the default window manager and default global behavior. Some window manager in linux are more like window manager frameworks, like AwesomeWM, that lets you customize its behavior via lua scripting. It's extremely powerful and allows you to get exactly the behavior you want. But this part of linux is pretty niche stuff for sure though haha. I wouldn't say I'm more productive thanks to this, but I'm way happier using a system I can set up so that it behaves how I want, instead of having to follow rules I don't agree with and can't change.
somethingreen 4y ago
- window management that is either sane (i.e. restores minimized windows when alt/cmd+tab'ed to) or can be customized - desktop environment that is either sane (i.e. doesn't center align panels with variable number of controls like dock does) or can be customized - keyboard without missing buttons, with actual button travel yet not touching the screen when closed - option of a screen that doesn't double as mirror

by sem000 4y ago

What is your Linux laptop giving you that your MBP doesn’t? And how does it hurt your productivity? Genuinely curious as I don’t see how it can be any different.

justahuman74 4y ago

Presumably that it's running Linux and can be customized as wanted. Also docker runs without a VM, so the networking and storage performance is good

smoldesu 4y ago

For me: - No nagware (no Apple Music pop-ups, advertisements for safari, login nag in settings, et. al) - Built-in package manager - Having (relative) parity between production and development Between those three, you probably couldn't pay me to go back to MacOS. Adding my own package manager, disabling ads and making my Mac into a Linux-equivalent machine is possible, but it's a lot of work to maintain and set up. If I was a creative and used Adobe/Microsoft tools, I might be a little nicer to MacOS. As a programmer though? I haven't felt the desire to use a Mac since Mojave existed.

mfer 4y ago
I have an M1 Pro MBP and Linux running on a Framework laptop. The Linux built in package manager is only ok. It often lags behind in versions of things I need. I ended up using Homebrew on both Mac and Linux. For the cases the Linux built-in package manager is too out of date I use Homebrew. It's not perfect on either system. > - Having (relative) parity between production and development For certain classes of development this is a big deal. For my container work it doesn't really matter. I'm running Rancher Desktop and doing container based dev in the VM. Windows, Linux, or Mac doesn't matter as the host. > - No nagware (no Apple Music pop-ups, advertisements for safari, login nag in settings, et. al) I must have learned to ignore this as I've had Macs for a couple decades now. On the flip side, a lot of business software I must use for work isn't available on Linux. I think this is the biggest problem for GNU/Linux as a general OS. There's some biz software that just doesn't run there.
- counttheforks 4y ago
  > The Linux built in package manager is only ok. It often lags behind in versions of things I need No such thing. What distributions did you have experience with? And what distributions are you running on your production systems?
- smoldesu 4y ago
  I have a 13" Macbook Pro and a Thinkpad model I forget the name of. Homebrew is down-right bad. There are certainly worse Linux package managers (pacman... looking at you), but if you're using MacOS I'd highly recommend giving Nix a try. Less muss-and-fuss, and stopped me from sending my Macbook on a swim in the local river. > For my container work it doesn't really matter. That's fine, it doesn't really for me either. The nice part (for me) is the native Docker and fantastic filesystem support. Whereas MacOS feels like a product I'm turning into a tool, Linux systems tend to feel like a tool out-of-box. Different strokes for different folks though, it really just depends on what you want out of a computer. > I must have learned to ignore this I must have learned to appreciate living without it, then. It's pretty jarring returning to a monetized OS like Windows 11 or Monterey for me. > a lot of business software I must use for work isn't available on Linux Oh yeah, for sure. Like I said in my previous comment, I wouldn't use Linux if I was a lawyer or a video editor. That being said though, pretty much everything I've used in the modern enterprise is browser-based. You don't need a native Jira app or a custom .DMG to run git. Arguably, everything you need is shipped right with most Linux distros. I won't (and haven't) argued that Linux is perfect, but MacOS is converging with the Windows and Google school of desktop design. It worries me, and it's part of why I left MacOS in the first place. Photoshop is nice, but living on a computer that feels like a rented hotel room isn't very satisfying to me. Again, different strokes.
  - travisgriggs 4y ago
    > Homebrew is down-right bad. Curious why? I used to dabble with it and others. A few macs ago (maybe around 2017), I switched to a strategy of “either the AppStore or brew”. I’ve never had a problem with anything from brew since. I install some productivity tools, standard OS tooling (Inkscape, Gimp, Libre), everything I need to develop for Python, Android, various embedded arm platforms, Elixir/Erlang. I even add some extra tools for Swift development.
FollowingTheDao 4y ago
For me: I have a Macbook Air M1 2020 and a Thinkpad X1 Carbon 7th Gen (4 years old!) running Linux Mint. I have upgraded the Thinkpad's Battery, RAM (16GB), and SSD (500GB) for the cost of the parts. I will not be able to do that on the Macbook. Ever. For what I do (browsing, videos, some writing and research) the only benefit to the Macbook is slightly better battery life. I have more software option on the Thinkpad for sure and it does not want to control everything I do. I paid WAY less for the thinkpad and I get pretty much the same performance for my needs. The THRUTH is that most people are being way oversold computing power and paying a premium for it because they are locked into the platform. And just yesterday for some reason Safari vanished and re-arranged my bookmarks for no reason. Getting my MacBook ready to sell as a matter of fact. In my mind it is stupid (and poor marketing) that the linux community is not crushing Apple with cheap, fast laptops.
- manuelabeledo 4y ago
  > In my mind it is stupid (and poor marketing) that the linux community is not crushing Apple with cheap, fast laptops. That is not how the economics of laptops work. Most people don't want a Linux laptop. Call it inertia, but it is a fact that most people buy Windows laptops. Most of the premium market consumers prefer Apple. And most people who prefer Linux aren't paying a premium right now. So you have three sets that do not overlap, and there is nothing the community can do about that in the short to medium term, anyway.
Lio 4y ago
Apple nagware is a pain in the arse. On my old MBP I get regularly nagged to update to Monterey. Despite it not being supported. On my iPhone it wouldn't stop nagging me to accept changes to the iCloud T&Cs. There was no permanent opt out. You could say no for a bit and then it would go back to nagging you. Same with Apple Music. Currently my iPhone nags me to disable background running of Garmin Connect, so that I loose integration with my Garmin watch. None of this endears Apple to me and is definitely a consideration for my next purchase.

dbeley 4y ago

Thinkpads will always have better keyboards, better connectivity and the trackpoint for them.

lynndotpy 4y ago

For my experience, as a longtime Linux user who got a MBP: I really miss the desktop environments available on Linux. KDE is great, and even Gnome beats MacOS. You can't even move windows between desktops with a keyboard shortcut on MacOS. The desktop experience on MacOS is a "death by a thousand cuts" situation. E.g. Popup dialogues will rearrange your windows (e.g. if the popup is wider than your window, to remain centered, it will move the underlying window and I'm not joking.) E.g. Mouse acceleration can't be turned off, which makes MacOS pretty awful for any mouse-centric workflows. E.g. Blocking animations that fundamentally can't be turned off. That's on top of things that aren't necessarily faults with MacOS, such as getting used to different keyboard shortcuts. On Linux, I get native Docker, up-to-date coreutils (they're different on MacOS), more precompiled versions of software I use, and having the Linux desktop software that I prefer. (Finder is frustrating, Gedit or Kate for text editing is great, GIMP is much nicer on Linux, etc.) I also miss KDEConnect. I don't use Xcode, but as I understand, updating it messes with git and python. But the battery life really is amazing enough to make it worth it. I'm really excited for Asahi to progress to a point that I'm comfortable using it.

TheKnack 4y ago
Apps like Keyboard Maestro or BetterTouchTool can resolve almost every Macos usability complaint that I've heard. Keyboard Maestro can move windows between desktops with a keyboard shortcut, for example, and there are multiple ways to disable mouse acceleration. For almost every missing feature or annoyance in Macos, someone else has had the same thought and developed a solution. https://forum.keyboardmaestro.com/t/move-frontmost-window-to-a-different-space/10512 https://forum.keyboardmaestro.com/t/move-frontmost-window-to...
- gspencley 4y ago
  Can it resolve me not being able to use MATE as the desktop environment? My biggest gripe with Mac OS X is the window manager. I want to be able to ALT+right-click anywhere on a window to be able to move it around, alt+left-click anywhere on a window to resize it. I want to be able to click the dock icon for an app I'm using and have the most recently used window of that app come to the foreground instead of however it makes that decision. I'd love to get preview thumbnails of windows when hovering over icons in the doc so that I can select the window I want. Right-click plus reading window titles takes longer to find the window I need. I want to be able to customize my fonts because I have a hard time reading text on my QHD external monitor. I want a terminal that doesn't suck (and yes I use iterm2, it still sucks because I can't quickly jump to the end / beginning of a line to edit a command). I want to be able to select text to copy to clipboard and use my middle mouse button to paste and I want that to work for all programs. I want to be able to hold ctrl plus use the mouse wheel to zoom in / out of web pages on chrome ... something Linux and Windows both do out of the box but it just doesn't work on Mac OS X. I want to be able to customize all of this and not feel like I'm locked in to "the Apple way" of doing things. I lot of this is just familiarity and getting really used to a particular DE over decades of use and taking little things for granted. If all you've ever used is a Mac then I'm sure you've figured out how to be hyper-productive on that DE. I just find it strange that, from a company that somehow positioned itself as UX leaders ... I find that I'm 1/10th as productive on my work Macbook as I am on any nix device (and while Mac might use a heavily modified NetBSD kernel IIRC and have zsh and bash ... it feels very different from a nix machine to me).

hsbauauvhabzb 4y ago

>32gb of ram

lern_too_spel 4y ago

Others have filled in some of the productivity benefits, but it also avoids a thousand little papercuts. It doesn't have uninstallable crapware like Apple News.

nequo 4y ago

A ThinkPad X1 Carbon is cheaper, lighter, has a better keyboard, and on Linux I can run the DE that has the defaults/customizations and keybindings that I am used to. I also don't have to worry (or at least I think that I don't) that the Linux kernel or my distro silently introduces a hack for their programs to bypass my firewall and VPN because they couldn't fix some bugs by the company-mandated release date: https://www.cnet.com/tech/services-and-software/apple-nixes-feature-that-let-apps-bypass-vpn/ https://www.cnet.com/tech/services-and-software/apple-nixes-...

gnufied 4y ago

I work on container stuff, so may be my POV is bit different but: 1. I had hard time fighting openssl installed by Homebrew and getting Python to use it. On Linux - this is never an issue. In general IMO using homebrew is fairly tedious. 2. Debugging of stuff running on Linux. Sometimes logging is not enough and while remote debugging can be made to work (I mainly use Goland), it is pretty fiddly and does not work reliably. I am not new to Mac or anything tbh. I used to use Mac about 5 years ago exclusively and then Linux for next 5 years and now using Mac again. IMO for kind of work I do - Linux is just leaps ahead of Mac.

rkangel 4y ago

There are some really weird things. The only sustained usage of Macs I've had is a Mac Mini (x86) that I had for app development. Even just plugging in a plain old UK layout USB keyboard (not an Apple one) and having it behave itself and give me the right characters was surprisingly difficult.

dpz 4y ago

Biggest things for me - I've never found a good WM that can replace what bspwm can do. - Something as useful as pacman, brew is no where near as good. - Full control over my system. Plus I can run my set up on a £30 chromebook and be nearly as efficient as my ~£1800 Work laptop.

Leimi 4y ago

Some workflows on a linux system can be totally different than what is possible on a mac. Even with apps like BetterTouchTool, Hammerspoon, Amethyst and others. Customizing window management, advanced keyboard shortcuts, general system behavior in mac is going against the tide. It kinda works, but never as good as you'd want because you can't really get rid of the default window manager and default global behavior. Some window manager in linux are more like window manager frameworks, like AwesomeWM, that lets you customize its behavior via lua scripting. It's extremely powerful and allows you to get exactly the behavior you want. But this part of linux is pretty niche stuff for sure though haha. I wouldn't say I'm more productive thanks to this, but I'm way happier using a system I can set up so that it behaves how I want, instead of having to follow rules I don't agree with and can't change.

somethingreen 4y ago

- window management that is either sane (i.e. restores minimized windows when alt/cmd+tab'ed to) or can be customized - desktop environment that is either sane (i.e. doesn't center align panels with variable number of controls like dock does) or can be customized - keyboard without missing buttons, with actual button travel yet not touching the screen when closed - option of a screen that doesn't double as mirror