5 ms·

Hah, is there a middle-ground that likes choice in the Linux world without subscribing to the delusion that Mac/Windows ecosystems constitute anything a reasona

Hah, is there a middle-ground that likes choice in the Linux world without subscribing to the delusion that Mac/Windows ecosystems constitute anything a reasonable person might describe as "a thriving hellscape of proprietary crapware"? I'll buy/build a Linux desktop when we get quality hardware and software options (where "good hardware" means more than "fast CPU! big memory!"), but for now Mac is a pretty good experience. You can't hack around the source code for proprietary programs (I've pretty much never wanted to do this on any desktop system), but you can run open source alternatives for everything except maybe some core software.

pxc 4y ago
> Hah, is there a middle-ground that likes choice in the Linux world without subscribing to the delusion that Mac/Windows ecosystems constitute anything a reasonable person might describe as "a thriving hellscape of proprietary crapware"? I realize I come off as extreme here, but that's really how I feel. I think that's an obviously fair way to describe the Microsoft Store and the Google Play Store. (Idk about iOS' App Store because I don't use iOS.) I'd also make the argument that it's a good way to describe the setup of basically any macOS power user, with their inevitable collection of brittle, mostly proprietary, solo dev apps they use to hack basic functionality back into Apple's anemic OS offering. (Windows suffers from that latter problem, too, though it's not as egregious as macOS.) > you can run open source alternatives for everything except maybe some core software. The core software is pretty much what we're talking about here: DEs and/or bundled apps. > for now Mac is a pretty good experience I understand that many people like it and I think their reasons for liking it are mostly good. But for me, using macOS is genuinely miserable, not just a little off. And I think the kind of app ecosystem that Mac people really love, of thoughfully designed, hidden gems by very small teams or individual devs, distributed as proprietary software for a small fee... is just not that great. To an extent that Mac lovers rarely admit or don't understand, a huge proportion of those apps exist only to compensate for Apple's own oversights, which wouldn't matter so much in an open ecosystem. The rest just aren't worth the cost of a closed ecosystem, in my opinion.
- yamtaddle 4y ago
  > I'd also make the argument that it's a good way to describe the setup of basically any macOS power user, with their inevitable collection of brittle, mostly proprietary, solo dev apps they use to hack basic functionality back into Apple's anemic OS offering. Mainly a DOS/Windows user for about five or six years, then Linux for about eight or nine (mostly Gentoo and, later, Ubuntu), macOS for my serious-business desktop needs since 2011. To this part of your comment: Wut. I truly have no clue what you mean by this. I think I use one program that might fit this description (Spectacle—which has several active replacements I could switch to, and still works perfectly, not so much as a single glitch, bug, or bit of jank that I've ever seen, despite its having been abandoned years ago) Meanwhile, "brittle and relying on tons of solo-dev apps to hack in basic functionality" (ok, mostly not proprietary ones, sure) is about how I would have described desktop Linux. But... I suspect we have different definitions of "basic functionality". Power management I never have to think about or fiddle with is table-stakes for me these days, for instance—I don't got time for that shit these days, a computer that can't do that fairly competently without my telling it what to do is just broken, same as a thermostat if I had to go poke it every single time I wanted the AC or heat to kick on, then watch carefully to make sure it actually did what I wanted, would be broken. A good default en keyboard layout (why would the default not be a good one? It boggles the mind—and sure, that's a distro concern, not a "Linux" concern, but so's everything that matters on Linux). "Find my" or equivalent. Low jitter and reasonably consistent latency, at least under light load. Solid, well-considered, capable, well-functioning accessibility features. A trackpad good enough I don't even consider taking my mouse unless I'll be gone several days. Bluetooth audio that works well enough that I don't hate it and spend no more than a minute or two a week fiddling with (and that mostly because I also use the same devices on Windows). Seamless password & payment sync across all my (non-server) devices, relying on biometrics on all of them so I rarely have to type a password at all. I'd be "hack[ing] in" all of that—and far, far more—back in on Linux, if I could attain it at all, and that stuff—the stuff that I rely on weekly, if not multiple times a day—is what I regard as "the basics". I'd also still be using exactly one of those "thoughtfully designed, hidden gems by very small teams or individual devs, distributed as proprietary software for a small fee" text editors if I went back to Linux. Sublime beats anything else I've used on Linux, and it's not a close contest—failing that, something from Jetbrains. Open source editors and IDEs would only enter the picture if I somehow couldn't get Sublime or something from Jetbrains. Meanwhile, I struggle to think of anything else in that category that I use. It's mostly first-party or open-source. If I did more multimedia or GUI design I'd probably use a few more of those small-team proprietary programs, but I don't think it's controversial to assert that those largely blow anything available on Linux out of the water (except the ones that are cross-platform because they're—ugh—electron or browser-based, so do work on Linux) so it's not like I'm missing out on the riches of open-source, at least when it comes to that kind of thing.

pxc 4y ago

> Hah, is there a middle-ground that likes choice in the Linux world without subscribing to the delusion that Mac/Windows ecosystems constitute anything a reasonable person might describe as "a thriving hellscape of proprietary crapware"? I realize I come off as extreme here, but that's really how I feel. I think that's an obviously fair way to describe the Microsoft Store and the Google Play Store. (Idk about iOS' App Store because I don't use iOS.) I'd also make the argument that it's a good way to describe the setup of basically any macOS power user, with their inevitable collection of brittle, mostly proprietary, solo dev apps they use to hack basic functionality back into Apple's anemic OS offering. (Windows suffers from that latter problem, too, though it's not as egregious as macOS.) > you can run open source alternatives for everything except maybe some core software. The core software is pretty much what we're talking about here: DEs and/or bundled apps. > for now Mac is a pretty good experience I understand that many people like it and I think their reasons for liking it are mostly good. But for me, using macOS is genuinely miserable, not just a little off. And I think the kind of app ecosystem that Mac people really love, of thoughfully designed, hidden gems by very small teams or individual devs, distributed as proprietary software for a small fee... is just not that great. To an extent that Mac lovers rarely admit or don't understand, a huge proportion of those apps exist only to compensate for Apple's own oversights, which wouldn't matter so much in an open ecosystem. The rest just aren't worth the cost of a closed ecosystem, in my opinion.

yamtaddle 4y ago
> I'd also make the argument that it's a good way to describe the setup of basically any macOS power user, with their inevitable collection of brittle, mostly proprietary, solo dev apps they use to hack basic functionality back into Apple's anemic OS offering. Mainly a DOS/Windows user for about five or six years, then Linux for about eight or nine (mostly Gentoo and, later, Ubuntu), macOS for my serious-business desktop needs since 2011. To this part of your comment: Wut. I truly have no clue what you mean by this. I think I use one program that might fit this description (Spectacle—which has several active replacements I could switch to, and still works perfectly, not so much as a single glitch, bug, or bit of jank that I've ever seen, despite its having been abandoned years ago) Meanwhile, "brittle and relying on tons of solo-dev apps to hack in basic functionality" (ok, mostly not proprietary ones, sure) is about how I would have described desktop Linux. But... I suspect we have different definitions of "basic functionality". Power management I never have to think about or fiddle with is table-stakes for me these days, for instance—I don't got time for that shit these days, a computer that can't do that fairly competently without my telling it what to do is just broken, same as a thermostat if I had to go poke it every single time I wanted the AC or heat to kick on, then watch carefully to make sure it actually did what I wanted, would be broken. A good default en keyboard layout (why would the default not be a good one? It boggles the mind—and sure, that's a distro concern, not a "Linux" concern, but so's everything that matters on Linux). "Find my" or equivalent. Low jitter and reasonably consistent latency, at least under light load. Solid, well-considered, capable, well-functioning accessibility features. A trackpad good enough I don't even consider taking my mouse unless I'll be gone several days. Bluetooth audio that works well enough that I don't hate it and spend no more than a minute or two a week fiddling with (and that mostly because I also use the same devices on Windows). Seamless password & payment sync across all my (non-server) devices, relying on biometrics on all of them so I rarely have to type a password at all. I'd be "hack[ing] in" all of that—and far, far more—back in on Linux, if I could attain it at all, and that stuff—the stuff that I rely on weekly, if not multiple times a day—is what I regard as "the basics". I'd also still be using exactly one of those "thoughtfully designed, hidden gems by very small teams or individual devs, distributed as proprietary software for a small fee" text editors if I went back to Linux. Sublime beats anything else I've used on Linux, and it's not a close contest—failing that, something from Jetbrains. Open source editors and IDEs would only enter the picture if I somehow couldn't get Sublime or something from Jetbrains. Meanwhile, I struggle to think of anything else in that category that I use. It's mostly first-party or open-source. If I did more multimedia or GUI design I'd probably use a few more of those small-team proprietary programs, but I don't think it's controversial to assert that those largely blow anything available on Linux out of the water (except the ones that are cross-platform because they're—ugh—electron or browser-based, so do work on Linux) so it's not like I'm missing out on the riches of open-source, at least when it comes to that kind of thing.