6 ms·

I still don't know a better plattform. Linux may be fine if you like tinkering and can compromise on UX and Windows is the same but worse (but at least with Lin

I still don't know a better plattform. Linux may be fine if you like tinkering and can compromise on UX and Windows is the same but worse (but at least with Linux built in now).

mahkoh 3y ago
By tinkering and UX you mean writing a wrapper for every application that needs more than 256 open files.
sspiff 3y ago
I personally much, much prefer the UX on Linux. I may be suffering from some kind of Stockholm syndrome as a long time Linux user, but I have to use macOS for work and it absolutely doesn't work for me. I find the UX quirky and akward to use. I hate how the window management works. I hate how annoying it is to get two windows to show side by side. I hate how there end up so many icons in the menu bar which are entirely unhelpful. I hate how space inefficient the dock is, but when you auto hide it, you can no longer see the notification counts at a glance. I would honest to God rate macOS UX a 2/5 for design and a 5/5 for QA.
- rurp 3y ago
  I feel very similarly. Macs are polished and well built, but the amount of anti-features or weird UX decisions that I can't do anything about are maddening. I eventually switched to linux for my personal dev machine and after some initial bumpiness came to love it.
- bombcar 3y ago
  If you have the time to “play” with it Linux is amazing. But you have to defend yourself against upgrades. It was years ago that a routine upgrade from some Linux distribution to the next version completely changed my GUI in ways that I just didn’t want to deal with - I bought a Mac. If I were ever to go back I’d run Gentoo or some other rolling release distro; at least then I get changes a little bit at a time. There are addons and tricks to do window management in Mac OS - but the big one I do is throw that dock on the right hand side of the screen and leave it. Wide screens have space there, might as well use it. Mac OS still has a bit of that “upgrade changes everything” going on but it seems more gradual and less painful - and in my experience pretty polished.
  - sspiff 3y ago
    I've not had breaking changes in Linux for a long, long time. I generally use either a completely unmodified, default config Gnome, or Sway with my own config. I've used a couple of different desktop environments or window managers over the past few decades, but these days I either stick with the default (which is so often Gnome) or use Sway, where I can just copy in my config file and everything works exactly as I'm used to.
  - gorjusborg 3y ago
    > If you have the time to “play” with it Linux is amazing. But you have to defend yourself against upgrades. That has not been my experience. If you are using something like Arch (rolling release distro) maybe, but Ubuntu and Debian stable have been pretty much that. I also find it a little funny that a complaint about Linux is in the thread of a post showing how Apple will change things that break their users without apology.
  - jwells89 3y ago
    I’ve found that even if I have time to allot to playing with Linux, I can never get things tuned the way I want. If you want bog standard Win9X paradigm desktop (most DEs), iPadOS with a mild desktop bent (GNOME), or yet another minimal tiling WM those are easy to do, but reproducing other environments (mainly macOS) keeping all the bits that matter in tact isn’t currently possible. It’s quite frustrating for me. If it weren’t for the fact that such a thing would progress glacially if worked on only in my spare time I’d write my own DE and maintain enough forks that my GitHub profile would look like a fork factory.
    - hotnfresh 3y ago
      Making a simple tweak like setting caps lock to an extra ctrl is a whole side quest on Linux and you may never really get it working everywhere.
      - bombcar 3y ago
        Part of the fun with that is there's about fifty different places you could do it, and the only one that will really affect everything is in the kernel (IIRC), anything else will affect the program, window manager, terminal, etc but not necessarily anything else. And some programs bypass everything and read scancodes anyway. Whereas in Mac OS X it's a simple configurable option (a bit hidden, System Settings, Keyboard -> Keyboard Shortcuts -> Modifier Keys).
- philistine 3y ago
  Do you always have your applications in full screen? In my limited experience, that's the number one cause of grief with macOS' UX.
  - sspiff 3y ago
    No, I do not, at least not on macOS. Because the experience is so horrible, perhaps. I generally have one big window or two windows side-by-side on Linux though.
    - timeon 3y ago
      Have you tried yabai? MacOS still interferes with it sometimes, but overall it is not that bad.
- geitir 3y ago
  Highly recommend https://github.com/rxhanson/Rectangle https://github.com/rxhanson/Rectangle
  - baq 3y ago
    and https://github.com/lwouis/alt-tab-macos https://github.com/lwouis/alt-tab-macos
- Phemist 3y ago
  For the window management, a big shoutout to `magnet` (for snapping windows) and `AltTab` (for sane alt tabbing).. for making the management much less frustrating (although not completely fixed). The "windows should be grouped in terms of the applications" does not make sense to me AT ALL. Most work is done on a project basis, which crosses application boundaries quite readily. E.g., one project might involve having an open Android Studio project, a PDF with documentation, a browser window and a note pad. "Cmd-tabbing", though, brings up the next window of the same application that I am currently on. Viewing a PDF with preview, this will bring up some random image most of the time? (Luckily this is fixed by AltTab) No solutions for the dock from me though. Personally I hate how the dock can randomly move between two monitors if you just happen to drag a file through the area where the dock COULD go on your second screen. Additionally, things I hate and have not been able to fix: how if you close a window of a specific application in MacOS, it moves another window of that same application forward (similar to the Cmd+Tab behaviour) and if you click on an application in the Dock, it brings forward ALL windows of that application (whereas I would expect only the most recently used one).
  - ris58h 3y ago
    > magnet There is Rectangle which is free and open source. Also there is Touch-Tab (disclaimer: I'm the developer) to switch apps with 3-finger swipe left/right. https://rectangleapp.com/ https://rectangleapp.com/ https://github.com/ris58h/Touch-Tab/ https://github.com/ris58h/Touch-Tab/
- roopepal 3y ago
  > I hate how the window management works. I hate how annoying it is to get two windows to show side by side. Plenty of window management apps and tools available. Rectangle, for example. > I hate how there end up so many icons in the menu bar which are entirely unhelpful. The only ones I cannot seem to be able to remove trivially are the clock and the Control Center. Solved in mere seconds by typing "menu bar" into the System Settings search. You could literally even just hold cmd and drag almost any icon out of the bar. Not to mention any of the more involved menu bar customization apps and tools. Why does it seem like such "macOS bad Linux good" comments always compare the default macOS experience to a personalized Linux environment? Why does an out-of-the-box Mac have to fulfill the same requirements we spent hours configuring for on a Linux machine? Where does the capability or mindset to install a tool disappear when we move from Linux to macOS?
  - yencabulator 3y ago
    > Why does it seem like such "macOS bad Linux good" comments always compare the default macOS experience to a personalized Linux environment? Because the "Linux bad macOS good" comments say things like the parent: > Linux may be fine if you like tinkering Are you now saying macOS requires tinkering too?
  - sspiff 3y ago
    > Why does it seem like such "macOS bad Linux good" comments always compare the default macOS experience to a personalized Linux environment? I'm not, I'm comparing to an unmodified, standard config Gnome or Plasma. I also use Sway, and I'm pretty sure I've spent less time customizing/configuring it than my Mac.
  - dagw 3y ago
    Why does an out-of-the-box Mac have to fulfill the same requirements we spent hours configuring for on a Linux machine? I think part of the problem is due to Mac and Apple have traditionally sold itself as intuitive and easy-to-use out of the box. People buy a Mac because they've been told that they don't have to spend hours configuring it. Hell Apple built a whole ad campaign around how the Mac is so much easier and more intuitive to use than Windows computers. However truth is that if you're coming from Linux or Windows, a lot of MacOS is incredibly unintuitive and weird out of the box.
ris58h 3y ago
MacOS window management is one of several things that make users 'compromise on UX' so you should reconsider your statement.
- GeekyBear 3y ago
  > MacOS window management is one of several things that make users 'compromise on UX Using gesture based window management is one of the bigger strengths of the Mac.
  - ris58h 3y ago
    1. How can I switch between apps using gestures? 2. What essential features of 'gesture based window management' aren't present on Windows or Linux (GNOME for example)?
    - saagarjha 3y ago
      3 finger swipe down to enter Exposé, then 3 finger swipes left/right.
      - ris58h 3y ago
        Expose doesn't show fullscreen windows of an app.
        saagarjha 3y ago
        If your apps are fullscreen you can swipe between them already?
    - kec 3y ago
      Swipe up with 4 fingers to enter Mission Control.
      - ris58h 3y ago
        Unfortunately _entering_ Mission Control doesn't switch apps. On Windows it's a 3-finger swipe left/right. It seems like 'one of the bigger strengths of the Mac' is bigger on Windows.
thefz 3y ago
Interestingly, I know a lot of people (me included) that can't treat OSX as a "serious" OS for any serious work. It just feels like a toy to use, and too distracting. Its developers took too many liberties with focus stealing too.

I still don't know a better plattform. Linux may be fine if you like tinkering and can compromise on UX and Windows is the same but worse (but at least with Linux built in now).

mahkoh 3y ago

By tinkering and UX you mean writing a wrapper for every application that needs more than 256 open files.

sspiff 3y ago

I personally much, much prefer the UX on Linux. I may be suffering from some kind of Stockholm syndrome as a long time Linux user, but I have to use macOS for work and it absolutely doesn't work for me. I find the UX quirky and akward to use. I hate how the window management works. I hate how annoying it is to get two windows to show side by side. I hate how there end up so many icons in the menu bar which are entirely unhelpful. I hate how space inefficient the dock is, but when you auto hide it, you can no longer see the notification counts at a glance. I would honest to God rate macOS UX a 2/5 for design and a 5/5 for QA.

rurp 3y ago
I feel very similarly. Macs are polished and well built, but the amount of anti-features or weird UX decisions that I can't do anything about are maddening. I eventually switched to linux for my personal dev machine and after some initial bumpiness came to love it.
bombcar 3y ago
If you have the time to “play” with it Linux is amazing. But you have to defend yourself against upgrades. It was years ago that a routine upgrade from some Linux distribution to the next version completely changed my GUI in ways that I just didn’t want to deal with - I bought a Mac. If I were ever to go back I’d run Gentoo or some other rolling release distro; at least then I get changes a little bit at a time. There are addons and tricks to do window management in Mac OS - but the big one I do is throw that dock on the right hand side of the screen and leave it. Wide screens have space there, might as well use it. Mac OS still has a bit of that “upgrade changes everything” going on but it seems more gradual and less painful - and in my experience pretty polished.
- sspiff 3y ago
  I've not had breaking changes in Linux for a long, long time. I generally use either a completely unmodified, default config Gnome, or Sway with my own config. I've used a couple of different desktop environments or window managers over the past few decades, but these days I either stick with the default (which is so often Gnome) or use Sway, where I can just copy in my config file and everything works exactly as I'm used to.
- gorjusborg 3y ago
  > If you have the time to “play” with it Linux is amazing. But you have to defend yourself against upgrades. That has not been my experience. If you are using something like Arch (rolling release distro) maybe, but Ubuntu and Debian stable have been pretty much that. I also find it a little funny that a complaint about Linux is in the thread of a post showing how Apple will change things that break their users without apology.
- jwells89 3y ago
  I’ve found that even if I have time to allot to playing with Linux, I can never get things tuned the way I want. If you want bog standard Win9X paradigm desktop (most DEs), iPadOS with a mild desktop bent (GNOME), or yet another minimal tiling WM those are easy to do, but reproducing other environments (mainly macOS) keeping all the bits that matter in tact isn’t currently possible. It’s quite frustrating for me. If it weren’t for the fact that such a thing would progress glacially if worked on only in my spare time I’d write my own DE and maintain enough forks that my GitHub profile would look like a fork factory.
  - hotnfresh 3y ago
    Making a simple tweak like setting caps lock to an extra ctrl is a whole side quest on Linux and you may never really get it working everywhere.
    - bombcar 3y ago
      Part of the fun with that is there's about fifty different places you could do it, and the only one that will really affect everything is in the kernel (IIRC), anything else will affect the program, window manager, terminal, etc but not necessarily anything else. And some programs bypass everything and read scancodes anyway. Whereas in Mac OS X it's a simple configurable option (a bit hidden, System Settings, Keyboard -> Keyboard Shortcuts -> Modifier Keys).
philistine 3y ago
Do you always have your applications in full screen? In my limited experience, that's the number one cause of grief with macOS' UX.
- sspiff 3y ago
  No, I do not, at least not on macOS. Because the experience is so horrible, perhaps. I generally have one big window or two windows side-by-side on Linux though.
  - timeon 3y ago
    Have you tried yabai? MacOS still interferes with it sometimes, but overall it is not that bad.
geitir 3y ago
Highly recommend https://github.com/rxhanson/Rectangle https://github.com/rxhanson/Rectangle
- baq 3y ago
  and https://github.com/lwouis/alt-tab-macos https://github.com/lwouis/alt-tab-macos
Phemist 3y ago
For the window management, a big shoutout to `magnet` (for snapping windows) and `AltTab` (for sane alt tabbing).. for making the management much less frustrating (although not completely fixed). The "windows should be grouped in terms of the applications" does not make sense to me AT ALL. Most work is done on a project basis, which crosses application boundaries quite readily. E.g., one project might involve having an open Android Studio project, a PDF with documentation, a browser window and a note pad. "Cmd-tabbing", though, brings up the next window of the same application that I am currently on. Viewing a PDF with preview, this will bring up some random image most of the time? (Luckily this is fixed by AltTab) No solutions for the dock from me though. Personally I hate how the dock can randomly move between two monitors if you just happen to drag a file through the area where the dock COULD go on your second screen. Additionally, things I hate and have not been able to fix: how if you close a window of a specific application in MacOS, it moves another window of that same application forward (similar to the Cmd+Tab behaviour) and if you click on an application in the Dock, it brings forward ALL windows of that application (whereas I would expect only the most recently used one).
- ris58h 3y ago
  > magnet There is Rectangle which is free and open source. Also there is Touch-Tab (disclaimer: I'm the developer) to switch apps with 3-finger swipe left/right. https://rectangleapp.com/ https://rectangleapp.com/ https://github.com/ris58h/Touch-Tab/ https://github.com/ris58h/Touch-Tab/
roopepal 3y ago
> I hate how the window management works. I hate how annoying it is to get two windows to show side by side. Plenty of window management apps and tools available. Rectangle, for example. > I hate how there end up so many icons in the menu bar which are entirely unhelpful. The only ones I cannot seem to be able to remove trivially are the clock and the Control Center. Solved in mere seconds by typing "menu bar" into the System Settings search. You could literally even just hold cmd and drag almost any icon out of the bar. Not to mention any of the more involved menu bar customization apps and tools. Why does it seem like such "macOS bad Linux good" comments always compare the default macOS experience to a personalized Linux environment? Why does an out-of-the-box Mac have to fulfill the same requirements we spent hours configuring for on a Linux machine? Where does the capability or mindset to install a tool disappear when we move from Linux to macOS?
- yencabulator 3y ago
  > Why does it seem like such "macOS bad Linux good" comments always compare the default macOS experience to a personalized Linux environment? Because the "Linux bad macOS good" comments say things like the parent: > Linux may be fine if you like tinkering Are you now saying macOS requires tinkering too?
- sspiff 3y ago
  > Why does it seem like such "macOS bad Linux good" comments always compare the default macOS experience to a personalized Linux environment? I'm not, I'm comparing to an unmodified, standard config Gnome or Plasma. I also use Sway, and I'm pretty sure I've spent less time customizing/configuring it than my Mac.
- dagw 3y ago
  Why does an out-of-the-box Mac have to fulfill the same requirements we spent hours configuring for on a Linux machine? I think part of the problem is due to Mac and Apple have traditionally sold itself as intuitive and easy-to-use out of the box. People buy a Mac because they've been told that they don't have to spend hours configuring it. Hell Apple built a whole ad campaign around how the Mac is so much easier and more intuitive to use than Windows computers. However truth is that if you're coming from Linux or Windows, a lot of MacOS is incredibly unintuitive and weird out of the box.

ris58h 3y ago

MacOS window management is one of several things that make users 'compromise on UX' so you should reconsider your statement.

GeekyBear 3y ago
> MacOS window management is one of several things that make users 'compromise on UX Using gesture based window management is one of the bigger strengths of the Mac.
- ris58h 3y ago
  1. How can I switch between apps using gestures? 2. What essential features of 'gesture based window management' aren't present on Windows or Linux (GNOME for example)?
  - saagarjha 3y ago
    3 finger swipe down to enter Exposé, then 3 finger swipes left/right.
    - ris58h 3y ago
      Expose doesn't show fullscreen windows of an app.
      - saagarjha 3y ago
        If your apps are fullscreen you can swipe between them already?
  - kec 3y ago
    Swipe up with 4 fingers to enter Mission Control.
    - ris58h 3y ago
      Unfortunately _entering_ Mission Control doesn't switch apps. On Windows it's a 3-finger swipe left/right. It seems like 'one of the bigger strengths of the Mac' is bigger on Windows.

thefz 3y ago

Interestingly, I know a lot of people (me included) that can't treat OSX as a "serious" OS for any serious work. It just feels like a toy to use, and too distracting. Its developers took too many liberties with focus stealing too.