7 ms·

What I've liked about switching fulltime to a mac laptop is the polish. It's a unix install that quickly sleeps when I close the lid :-P

by ecoffey 15y ago

MatthewPhillips 15y ago
Package management is not a minor part of the "unix install". When I get a just works Mac equivalent of pacman -S whatever, I'll consider using OSX for more than testing.
- tkrajcar 15y ago
  http://mxcl.github.com/homebrew/ http://mxcl.github.com/homebrew/ See you in the Apple Store.
- lucisferre 15y ago
  The homebrew comment (which I can't reply to for some reason) is good, but not totally fair. Homebrew has to compile everything, while this isn't a huge problem with todays machines it is still a bit of a time sink. Homebrew regularly has packages that fail to build. There are over 400 open pull requests for the project at the present time to illustrate this problem. Homebrew != apt-get or any other linux package manager.
  - awj 15y ago
    "compile everything" is an approach to package management. BSD Ports (as well as Gentoo's Portage) use it. It does a pretty decent job at helping packaged programs build off/work with unpackaged installs. You also get some marvelous compile environment debugging adventures. ;)
    - lucisferre 15y ago
      Not saying it isn't an approach, I'm just saying,it's apples and oranges. When someone suggests that OSX doesn't have a linux style package management, they are technically correct.
      - awj 15y ago
        What does "linux style" even mean? Linux is a kernel, it doesn't define how a package manager is supposed to work. Gentoo has been source compiling from ages, and is a linux distribution. If you're looking for technical correctness, your initial comment[1] is wrong in the context of Portage. If you're looking for a reason to dislike a project like homebrew, bring up that it's nowhere close to complete system management. There's huge parts of OS X that I have to have already installed through other means just to get it up and running, and plenty more that I simply cannot install through it. That's a lot more important than wether or not you have to wait for package compilation. [1]"Homebrew != apt-get or any other linux package manager."
  - tkrajcar 15y ago
    Well, hang on there. I'm not here to become Mr. Homebrew Defender, but saying 'this project has 400 pull requests, that's a problem' isn't fair at all. The majority of those pull requests represent users updating formulas to new versions of things, or adding new formulas, not fixing problems that prevent things from compiling. Like any solution, particularly a 100% opensource solution, it's not perfect, but it does do the job, the majority of the time. YMMV, but I have 24 Homebrew formulas installed and have had zero problems with any of them.
    - ajross 15y ago
      I think the point was more that in comparison to the package systems deployed for Fedora or Ubuntu or OpenSUSE (also "100% open source"), Homebrew looks, well, pathetically primitive. Seriously, look at the way launchpad or koji or OBS work sometime.
    - lucisferre 15y ago
      Sorry, I use and love homebrew, I'm just saying I understand the parents issue with the lack of a compiled binary package manager for OSX. Arguably I can't see anything that is preventing one from being created though. Perhaps compile-on-demand is just the way of the future.
  - chimeracoder 15y ago
    Moreover, homebrew doesn't provide complete package management for the entire system. Sure, it can keep track (sort of) of the packages that it installs, but it's not by any stretch a one-stop destination for anything installed on your system. By contrast, I know that I can use exactly one tool (pacman)[1] to handle any installation, upgrade, query, removal, dependency tracking, versioning, etc, even for things like Python libraries. I don't need to futz around and try and remember how I originally installed it. Compare that with OS X, which gave me absolute hell when I tried to do something so utterly basic as upgrade the system version of Python from 2.6 to 2.6.1, just so that I could install matplotlib (or something along those lines). In the end, I had to do some manual rm-ing and symlinking in /usr/bin/System_Python (or whatever it was) just to get everything to line up properly while at the same time not borking everything else on my system. Manual deletion of root-access files? Just to upgrade a single library? Come on, this is 2012, not 1992.... and even if it were, we still had better tools back then! [1] Okay, technically you'll need a wrapper for the AUR like packer if you want exactly one tool; but my point still stands.
    - bdash 15y ago
      Upgrading the system Python on Mac OS X isn't easy because it's not something you should do. See http://stackoverflow.com/a/1541850 http://stackoverflow.com/a/1541850 for something of an explanation about this.
      - chimeracoder 15y ago
        My point exactly. A well-designed OS shouldn't require you to keep multiple versions installed on a machine like that. I have exactly two versions of Python on my box (a 2.7.x and a 3.x), and since I don't need to do development testing of libraries against multiple versions, that's all I should need. (And we're just talking about development tools and installation here - what about all of the other aspects of package management, which OS X completely neglects?) In this case the problem is that libraries may not detect the alternative versions of Python if System Python is still installed. But the prepackaged versions of Python won't always install properly if you already have a Python on your system, so you're in a catch-22. I mean take a look at the installation instructions for Matplotlib[1]. It takes about two lines to explain how to install it on Windows, and more than half the page to explain different things you have to try to get it to work on OS X. And that's not counting the copious other errors and hacks that you'll find if you try Googling the OS X installation issues. Let's face it: if it's orders of magnitude easier to install a well-designed library on Windows than your OS, you have a problem with your OS. [1] http://matplotlib.sourceforge.net/faq/installing_faq.html http://matplotlib.sourceforge.net/faq/installing_faq.html
lucisferre 15y ago
The sleep comment is apt. Having run linux on laptops many times in the past, the regular incompatibilities and inconsistencies are hard to get past. From power management features, to wifi quirks there is always something that just doesn't work right. I've spent the better part of my life, from age 6 onwards tinkering with computers, installing and reinstalling OSes and I can honestly, say I'm over it. Now I just want the damn thing to work like every other user. I think being burnt out on tinkering makes me a better developer though. At least as far as creating a good UX goes.
- ecoffey 15y ago
  When I finally got it working on my asus, it still took a healthy 2 - 5 minutes to sleep and about the same to wake
  - cydonian_monk 15y ago
    Full hibernation on my AMD 'netbook' is that way (or was before I shoved an SSD in it), but sleep/wake is usually pretty quick. When it works. But it rarely works. Don't get me started on what the WiFi switch does in Linux. (I could swear it sticks a random value in the CS and IP registers.)
mbq 15y ago
So does my Linux pc; it also wakes up when I open the lid, equally instantly.
- ecoffey 15y ago
  Nice! Although that was never my experience, after futzing with it for a while.
- ditoa 15y ago
  Would you mind sharing some information on your setup? What make/model laptop do you have and what distro are you using? Did you have to do anything specific to get the power management to work properly? Cheers
  - michaelmoss 15y ago
    <Shameless Plug> I'm using a System76 laptop (http://www.system76.com/laptops/model/gazelle http://www.system76.com/laptops/model/gazelle) and the power management works quite well. The System76 team partnered with Ubuntu to provide enhanced drivers to support all of their hardware with zero configuration to the end-user. I wish the multi-touch hardware was a bit better, but otherwise, I can't say enough good things about my new laptop.
    - ditoa 15y ago
      Thanks for the reply. Have you tried any other distros on it? Specifically I am interested in Arch. Thanks.
      - mbq 15y ago
        My setup is Arch at Toshiba R830, with toshiba_acpi and uswsusp.
      - Nick_C 15y ago
        Assuming Arch is still based on Slackware: Slackware 13.37 on my Compaq Presario (C700 series) works great. It never used to, back in the 12.0 Slackware days, and then I gave up and forgot about it. A few months ago I decided to try again and it just worked. Check out your scripts in /etc/acpi and try `acpi_listen` to see what event is triggered.
InclinedPlane 15y ago
I don't want my laptop to go to sleep when I close the lid, especially if it's plugged in. Is there a setting on Macs for that yet or do you still have to run a 3rd party app? That behavior is one of the most annoying defaults ever, in my opinion.
- Derbasti 15y ago
  As far as I am concerned, sleeping is only annoying if it takes time. My MacBook basically wakes up instantly, so I have no issue whatsoever with it. Why do you think sleeping is a annoying?
  - simcop2387 15y ago
    If he's like me he'll leave some long running process going and close the lid to save power. I do that a lot for compiles or downloads.
  - InclinedPlane 15y ago
    If I have a game running I don't want my laptop to suspend, if I have an ssh, RDP, or IRC session open I don't want my laptop to suspend, if I have audio or video playing I don't want my laptop to suspend, if I just started a compile I don't want my laptop to suspend, if I just copied files to my dropbox folder I don't want my laptop to suspend.
    - dextorious 15y ago
      If I have any of the above, I also don't want to CLOSE the lid. What's with you people? What's next? "If I have an ssh session running, I don't want the machine to stop when I remove the battery and the charge plug"?
      - InclinedPlane 15y ago
        You don't want to close the lid when you have an ssh session running or IRC? That is non-sensical.

What I've liked about switching fulltime to a mac laptop is the polish. It's a unix install that quickly sleeps when I close the lid :-P

by ecoffey 15y ago

What I've liked about switching fulltime to a mac laptop is the polish. It's a unix install that quickly sleeps when I close the lid :-P

MatthewPhillips 15y ago

Package management is not a minor part of the "unix install". When I get a just works Mac equivalent of pacman -S whatever, I'll consider using OSX for more than testing.

tkrajcar 15y ago
http://mxcl.github.com/homebrew/ http://mxcl.github.com/homebrew/ See you in the Apple Store.
lucisferre 15y ago
The homebrew comment (which I can't reply to for some reason) is good, but not totally fair. Homebrew has to compile everything, while this isn't a huge problem with todays machines it is still a bit of a time sink. Homebrew regularly has packages that fail to build. There are over 400 open pull requests for the project at the present time to illustrate this problem. Homebrew != apt-get or any other linux package manager.
- awj 15y ago
  "compile everything" is an approach to package management. BSD Ports (as well as Gentoo's Portage) use it. It does a pretty decent job at helping packaged programs build off/work with unpackaged installs. You also get some marvelous compile environment debugging adventures. ;)
  - lucisferre 15y ago
    Not saying it isn't an approach, I'm just saying,it's apples and oranges. When someone suggests that OSX doesn't have a linux style package management, they are technically correct.
    - awj 15y ago
      What does "linux style" even mean? Linux is a kernel, it doesn't define how a package manager is supposed to work. Gentoo has been source compiling from ages, and is a linux distribution. If you're looking for technical correctness, your initial comment[1] is wrong in the context of Portage. If you're looking for a reason to dislike a project like homebrew, bring up that it's nowhere close to complete system management. There's huge parts of OS X that I have to have already installed through other means just to get it up and running, and plenty more that I simply cannot install through it. That's a lot more important than wether or not you have to wait for package compilation. [1]"Homebrew != apt-get or any other linux package manager."
- tkrajcar 15y ago
  Well, hang on there. I'm not here to become Mr. Homebrew Defender, but saying 'this project has 400 pull requests, that's a problem' isn't fair at all. The majority of those pull requests represent users updating formulas to new versions of things, or adding new formulas, not fixing problems that prevent things from compiling. Like any solution, particularly a 100% opensource solution, it's not perfect, but it does do the job, the majority of the time. YMMV, but I have 24 Homebrew formulas installed and have had zero problems with any of them.
  - ajross 15y ago
    I think the point was more that in comparison to the package systems deployed for Fedora or Ubuntu or OpenSUSE (also "100% open source"), Homebrew looks, well, pathetically primitive. Seriously, look at the way launchpad or koji or OBS work sometime.
  - lucisferre 15y ago
    Sorry, I use and love homebrew, I'm just saying I understand the parents issue with the lack of a compiled binary package manager for OSX. Arguably I can't see anything that is preventing one from being created though. Perhaps compile-on-demand is just the way of the future.
- chimeracoder 15y ago
  Moreover, homebrew doesn't provide complete package management for the entire system. Sure, it can keep track (sort of) of the packages that it installs, but it's not by any stretch a one-stop destination for anything installed on your system. By contrast, I know that I can use exactly one tool (pacman)[1] to handle any installation, upgrade, query, removal, dependency tracking, versioning, etc, even for things like Python libraries. I don't need to futz around and try and remember how I originally installed it. Compare that with OS X, which gave me absolute hell when I tried to do something so utterly basic as upgrade the system version of Python from 2.6 to 2.6.1, just so that I could install matplotlib (or something along those lines). In the end, I had to do some manual rm-ing and symlinking in /usr/bin/System_Python (or whatever it was) just to get everything to line up properly while at the same time not borking everything else on my system. Manual deletion of root-access files? Just to upgrade a single library? Come on, this is 2012, not 1992.... and even if it were, we still had better tools back then! [1] Okay, technically you'll need a wrapper for the AUR like packer if you want exactly one tool; but my point still stands.
  - bdash 15y ago
    Upgrading the system Python on Mac OS X isn't easy because it's not something you should do. See http://stackoverflow.com/a/1541850 http://stackoverflow.com/a/1541850 for something of an explanation about this.
    - chimeracoder 15y ago
      My point exactly. A well-designed OS shouldn't require you to keep multiple versions installed on a machine like that. I have exactly two versions of Python on my box (a 2.7.x and a 3.x), and since I don't need to do development testing of libraries against multiple versions, that's all I should need. (And we're just talking about development tools and installation here - what about all of the other aspects of package management, which OS X completely neglects?) In this case the problem is that libraries may not detect the alternative versions of Python if System Python is still installed. But the prepackaged versions of Python won't always install properly if you already have a Python on your system, so you're in a catch-22. I mean take a look at the installation instructions for Matplotlib[1]. It takes about two lines to explain how to install it on Windows, and more than half the page to explain different things you have to try to get it to work on OS X. And that's not counting the copious other errors and hacks that you'll find if you try Googling the OS X installation issues. Let's face it: if it's orders of magnitude easier to install a well-designed library on Windows than your OS, you have a problem with your OS. [1] http://matplotlib.sourceforge.net/faq/installing_faq.html http://matplotlib.sourceforge.net/faq/installing_faq.html

lucisferre 15y ago

The sleep comment is apt. Having run linux on laptops many times in the past, the regular incompatibilities and inconsistencies are hard to get past. From power management features, to wifi quirks there is always something that just doesn't work right. I've spent the better part of my life, from age 6 onwards tinkering with computers, installing and reinstalling OSes and I can honestly, say I'm over it. Now I just want the damn thing to work like every other user. I think being burnt out on tinkering makes me a better developer though. At least as far as creating a good UX goes.

ecoffey 15y ago
When I finally got it working on my asus, it still took a healthy 2 - 5 minutes to sleep and about the same to wake
- cydonian_monk 15y ago
  Full hibernation on my AMD 'netbook' is that way (or was before I shoved an SSD in it), but sleep/wake is usually pretty quick. When it works. But it rarely works. Don't get me started on what the WiFi switch does in Linux. (I could swear it sticks a random value in the CS and IP registers.)

mbq 15y ago

So does my Linux pc; it also wakes up when I open the lid, equally instantly.

ecoffey 15y ago
Nice! Although that was never my experience, after futzing with it for a while.
ditoa 15y ago
Would you mind sharing some information on your setup? What make/model laptop do you have and what distro are you using? Did you have to do anything specific to get the power management to work properly? Cheers
- michaelmoss 15y ago
  <Shameless Plug> I'm using a System76 laptop (http://www.system76.com/laptops/model/gazelle http://www.system76.com/laptops/model/gazelle) and the power management works quite well. The System76 team partnered with Ubuntu to provide enhanced drivers to support all of their hardware with zero configuration to the end-user. I wish the multi-touch hardware was a bit better, but otherwise, I can't say enough good things about my new laptop.
  - ditoa 15y ago
    Thanks for the reply. Have you tried any other distros on it? Specifically I am interested in Arch. Thanks.
    - mbq 15y ago
      My setup is Arch at Toshiba R830, with toshiba_acpi and uswsusp.
    - Nick_C 15y ago
      Assuming Arch is still based on Slackware: Slackware 13.37 on my Compaq Presario (C700 series) works great. It never used to, back in the 12.0 Slackware days, and then I gave up and forgot about it. A few months ago I decided to try again and it just worked. Check out your scripts in /etc/acpi and try `acpi_listen` to see what event is triggered.

InclinedPlane 15y ago

I don't want my laptop to go to sleep when I close the lid, especially if it's plugged in. Is there a setting on Macs for that yet or do you still have to run a 3rd party app? That behavior is one of the most annoying defaults ever, in my opinion.

Derbasti 15y ago
As far as I am concerned, sleeping is only annoying if it takes time. My MacBook basically wakes up instantly, so I have no issue whatsoever with it. Why do you think sleeping is a annoying?
- simcop2387 15y ago
  If he's like me he'll leave some long running process going and close the lid to save power. I do that a lot for compiles or downloads.
- InclinedPlane 15y ago
  If I have a game running I don't want my laptop to suspend, if I have an ssh, RDP, or IRC session open I don't want my laptop to suspend, if I have audio or video playing I don't want my laptop to suspend, if I just started a compile I don't want my laptop to suspend, if I just copied files to my dropbox folder I don't want my laptop to suspend.
  - dextorious 15y ago
    If I have any of the above, I also don't want to CLOSE the lid. What's with you people? What's next? "If I have an ssh session running, I don't want the machine to stop when I remove the battery and the charge plug"?
    - InclinedPlane 15y ago
      You don't want to close the lid when you have an ssh session running or IRC? That is non-sensical.