5 ms·

The problem I have here is price. This just doesn't undercut an mbp, and it would have to to get me to buy it

by andrewvc 14y ago

dignan 14y ago
Maybe you're not the target audience then? This seems to be targeted at a relatively specific group of people.
- andrewvc 14y ago
  Perhaps. I've run linux year over year til 6 mo. ago when I switched to a mac. As nice as this is I just doubt the hardware is of a similar quality. Additionally, for a notebook the magsafe connector is a huge deal as it's the thing I've seen die first on notebook after notebook. I do all my dev on linux VMs at this point, and I'd imagine that's a lot of other devs.
tikhonj 14y ago
Isn't the mbp pretty annoying for Linux? That's what I've heard, at the very least, and some of my friends have had trouble (at least on slightly older mbps--certainly not the new high-res versions).
- cdmckay 14y ago
  Right, but I think OS X is unix-y enough for most people.
  - Ralith 14y ago
    Why do you think that? It lacks most of the killer features.
    - generalk 14y ago
      Care to expand on that? Recall that Mac OS X is a certified UNIX, so I'm not sure what "unix-y" features it's missing.
      - super_mario 14y ago
        GPL v3 great purge that Apple is doing in stages means that all UNIX-y software on Mac OS X, including shells, gcc etc are now ancient and will eventually be phased out altogether.
      - Ralith 14y ago
        The ability to replace the desktop environment without basically building a new OS from scratch, for one.
    - AlisdairO 14y ago
      Once I've got homebrew or macports installed, I miss very little. What features do you find it lacking?
      - chimeracoder 14y ago
        Without extreme modifications to the operating system and/or expensive third-party solutions: Disabling the nauseating window-switching animations in Lion (not Snow Leopard), the ability to implement proper tiling window management (think wmii, not Divvy/Shift), focus-follows-mouse, arbitrary remappings of keys, mapping keyboard shortcuts involving the return/enter key, disabling the hardcoded built-in delay in the Caps Lock key, unified package management (homebrew != portage), unified binary package management (pacman != homebrew != portage), launching of 'applications' from a terminal without hunting down the location of the binary[1], renaming Documents/ and Downloads/ to their lowercase equivalents without breaking tab completion (seriously??), getting GNU screen/readline working in Terminal.app without really awkward line wrapping problems, the ability to access basic utilities (like system temperature) from the command line, upgrading system versions of things like the python interpreter (this may have been fixed), changing the resolution and font-size system-wide, scripting arbitrary window behavior in any language (again, think plan9/wmii), mounting /tmp in RAM the way tmpfs in Linux provides... ...that was just off the top of my head, but clearly there's quite a bit. Some of that is because it ships with a version of bash that's on the order of a decade old... but that's a problem in and of itself! [1] Yet another example of how the concept of applications is broken on OSX - installing an application from a .dmg file is a completely different process from installing something via make install on a traditional (*)NIX.
        AlisdairO 14y ago
        Thanks for the response - honestly, though, aside from the inability to switch WM I'm not sure most of those things constitute the killer features of linux, so much as issues that will bug a relatively small number of people (with the caveat that for most people's purposes, I think homebrew or macports are good enough). You might group them under a larger heading of 'configurability'. Other bugbears are solved by third party applications (different terminal app, command line temperature app, etc). It's fair to say that you might reasonably class such configurability as the defining killer feature of linux - and different people will be more or less willing to trade it off in favour of a lower-hassle experience.
- Tichy 14y ago
  Used to be the trackpad didn't work properly, but I think in the latest version of Ubuntu it might be fixed. Haven't tried it yet, though, only saw things in the "what's new" text that made me think they probably fixed it.
  - trucmuche 14y ago
    I installed Ubuntu 12.04 without problems on my 2010 Macbook Air (with an external DVD drive). It works well and I am happy with it. There is a minor problem where the trackpad sometimes thinks I'm double-clicking after the laptop comes out of sleep, but that's being worked on. It rarely happens, and when it does, logout+login fixes the problem. That's pretty much the only quibble I have.
- lunarscape 14y ago
  Wireless is a problem on some (13' 2011 pro for example if I'm not mistaken). Not being able to remap the fn key is also extremely annoying.

The problem I have here is price. This just doesn't undercut an mbp, and it would have to to get me to buy it

dignan 14y ago

Maybe you're not the target audience then? This seems to be targeted at a relatively specific group of people.

andrewvc 14y ago
Perhaps. I've run linux year over year til 6 mo. ago when I switched to a mac. As nice as this is I just doubt the hardware is of a similar quality. Additionally, for a notebook the magsafe connector is a huge deal as it's the thing I've seen die first on notebook after notebook. I do all my dev on linux VMs at this point, and I'd imagine that's a lot of other devs.

tikhonj 14y ago

Isn't the mbp pretty annoying for Linux? That's what I've heard, at the very least, and some of my friends have had trouble (at least on slightly older mbps--certainly not the new high-res versions).

cdmckay 14y ago
Right, but I think OS X is unix-y enough for most people.
- Ralith 14y ago
  Why do you think that? It lacks most of the killer features.
  - generalk 14y ago
    Care to expand on that? Recall that Mac OS X is a certified UNIX, so I'm not sure what "unix-y" features it's missing.
    - super_mario 14y ago
      GPL v3 great purge that Apple is doing in stages means that all UNIX-y software on Mac OS X, including shells, gcc etc are now ancient and will eventually be phased out altogether.
    - Ralith 14y ago
      The ability to replace the desktop environment without basically building a new OS from scratch, for one.
  - AlisdairO 14y ago
    Once I've got homebrew or macports installed, I miss very little. What features do you find it lacking?
    - chimeracoder 14y ago
      Without extreme modifications to the operating system and/or expensive third-party solutions: Disabling the nauseating window-switching animations in Lion (not Snow Leopard), the ability to implement proper tiling window management (think wmii, not Divvy/Shift), focus-follows-mouse, arbitrary remappings of keys, mapping keyboard shortcuts involving the return/enter key, disabling the hardcoded built-in delay in the Caps Lock key, unified package management (homebrew != portage), unified binary package management (pacman != homebrew != portage), launching of 'applications' from a terminal without hunting down the location of the binary[1], renaming Documents/ and Downloads/ to their lowercase equivalents without breaking tab completion (seriously??), getting GNU screen/readline working in Terminal.app without really awkward line wrapping problems, the ability to access basic utilities (like system temperature) from the command line, upgrading system versions of things like the python interpreter (this may have been fixed), changing the resolution and font-size system-wide, scripting arbitrary window behavior in any language (again, think plan9/wmii), mounting /tmp in RAM the way tmpfs in Linux provides... ...that was just off the top of my head, but clearly there's quite a bit. Some of that is because it ships with a version of bash that's on the order of a decade old... but that's a problem in and of itself! [1] Yet another example of how the concept of applications is broken on OSX - installing an application from a .dmg file is a completely different process from installing something via make install on a traditional (*)NIX.
      - AlisdairO 14y ago
        Thanks for the response - honestly, though, aside from the inability to switch WM I'm not sure most of those things constitute the killer features of linux, so much as issues that will bug a relatively small number of people (with the caveat that for most people's purposes, I think homebrew or macports are good enough). You might group them under a larger heading of 'configurability'. Other bugbears are solved by third party applications (different terminal app, command line temperature app, etc). It's fair to say that you might reasonably class such configurability as the defining killer feature of linux - and different people will be more or less willing to trade it off in favour of a lower-hassle experience.
Tichy 14y ago
Used to be the trackpad didn't work properly, but I think in the latest version of Ubuntu it might be fixed. Haven't tried it yet, though, only saw things in the "what's new" text that made me think they probably fixed it.
- trucmuche 14y ago
  I installed Ubuntu 12.04 without problems on my 2010 Macbook Air (with an external DVD drive). It works well and I am happy with it. There is a minor problem where the trackpad sometimes thinks I'm double-clicking after the laptop comes out of sleep, but that's being worked on. It rarely happens, and when it does, logout+login fixes the problem. That's pretty much the only quibble I have.
lunarscape 14y ago
Wireless is a problem on some (13' 2011 pro for example if I'm not mistaken). Not being able to remap the fn key is also extremely annoying.