4 ms·

So to sum it up, a user (or let's be real, a consumer) has three choices for a desktop / laptop: - an ad-ridden, privacy invading hellhole that goes for "flat

So to sum it up, a user (or let's be real, a consumer) has three choices for a desktop / laptop: - an ad-ridden, privacy invading hellhole that goes for "flat design" even worse than macOS's newest iteration (Windows 11), with machines mostly built out of cheap plastic, with the hardware being inadequately cooled and built on a CPU architecture that leads to guzzling power worse than an X-series BMW with its gas pedal floored on a German Autobahn. On top of that, AI slop everywhere. - a visual hellhole that, gotta admit it, still has by far the upper hand performance-wise thanks to a best-in-class-by-far hardware and excellent integration with the OS (macOS) - an "OS" that's more like 20 different ways of doing things, with not a single one achieving any sort of visual integration across at least the major applications because there's like a dozen UI frameworks and serious issues with hardware support across the board on top (Linux) Brave new world lol

fsflover 1y ago
> and serious issues with hardware support across the board on top (Linux) I'm tired of this myth. Just like with Mac and Windows, you choose the suitable hardware or, better, buy preinstalled. There are no compatibility issue with my Librem 14. Even suspend works 100% of the time. Also, GNU/Linux is not an OS but there are many very different OSes for different use cases and visual preferences.
- mschuster91 1y ago
  > There are no compatibility issue with my Librem 14. Even suspend works 100% of the time. Can you walk into any big box store and buy that thing, or a Framework? No. I am talking about OS choices accessible to the general public, not to nerds with dedicated knowledge. The experience of installing Linux on anything available at a big box store is likely to result in a multitude of issues. No actor in Linux at large makes any effort to cater to the general public, and that's the point I'm making. > Also, GNU/Linux is not an OS but there are many very different OSes for different use cases and visual preferences. ... and the consequence of that multitude of How To Do Things is precisely what keeps Linux adoption so low. Steve Ballmer had a point in "developers developers developers" - it's no wonder that there aren't that many native software products viable for actual commercial use on Linux.
  - fsflover 1y ago
    > Can you walk into any big box store and buy that thing, or a Framework? No. This is a real problem and I wonder if it might be connected with the lobbying of the Win-Mac duopoly.
    - mschuster91 1y ago
      It's a scale problem. Walmart or whatever, they buy and sell insane quantities of goods - they make life insanely difficult for vendors and either you're someone as large as HP, Acer, Asus etc who can get by with margins less than 1% but make up for it in volume, or you can't compete with them at all and stay out of the big box stores for good. That's why anti-trust legislation and enforcement is actually important... to prevent ossification of scale that effectively prohibits new actors from entering the market.
  - adrian_b 1y ago
    I assume that you can walk in many big box stores and buy a Dell computer or a HP computer with preinstalled Linux. I am not sure about brick-and-mortar stores, because I have not used such stores for many decades, but with on-line shopping it is certainly easy to find a Dell or HP computer with preinstalled Linux that supports the hardware as well as Windows. Moreover, choosing Ubuntu over Windows frequently saves at least one hundred $. I have such a Dell laptop (Dell Precision), which came with a preinstalled Ubuntu that worked perfectly (even if I have wiped it and installed another Linux by myself, because I do not like Ubuntu).
- mft_ 1y ago
  That's not most people's reality. 99.999%+ of people out there in the world don't start with a desire for a Linux setup; and so many of the small proportion who at some point want to consider it start with pre-existing hardware. And yes, having tried and largely burnt out trying to use Linux on several different computers on different occasions, it can be hugely frustrating, if not ultimately impossible.
  - fsflover 1y ago
    It's like trying to install Windows on a Macbook: Your're on your own here. Don't blame Microsoft or Apple for your issues.
    - IAmBroom 1y ago
      Name a computer manufacturer that supplies laptops built specifically for Linux, instead of as a smaller-market option.
      - fsflover 1y ago
        System76, Purism, Taxedo, Pine64, Oxide.
        mschuster91 1y ago
        These are all small market vendors.
        fsflover 1y ago
        This doesn't affect the message in my original post.
        steveklabnik 1y ago
        Oxide does not make laptops.
mft_ 1y ago
I'm with you. I hate Microsoft more and more with every day using their software, but sadly working in most industries, you're tied to Microsoft Office for a large proportion of business tasks. I'd very much like to switch to Linux to lose some of the Windows awfulness, but (as you say) the reality of getting a particular computer working sufficiently well is somewhere between non-trivial and ulcer-inducingly complicated, and anyway the absence of native Microsoft Office makes it a non-starter.
- adrian_b 1y ago
  There are already many years since I have abandoned MS Office, so I do not know how this works for recent MS Office versions, but before that I have used for many years native MS Office Professional running on Linux (via CrossOver; both MS Office Pro and CrossOver were paid, so choosing Linux was done for better performance and features, not for lower cost). The funny thing was that at least those older versions of MS Office ran much better on Linux than on the contemporaneous Windows (XP and Vista), i.e. faster and with no crashes, presumably due to the faster file system and due to the lack of interfering antiviruses or other corporate garbage.
- mschuster91 1y ago
  > I'd very much like to switch to Linux to lose some of the Windows awfulness, but (as you say) the reality of getting a particular computer working sufficiently well is somewhere between non-trivial and ulcer-inducingly complicated, and anyway the absence of native Microsoft Office makes it a non-starter. Switch to Mac. Honestly. Office is decent enough for creatives to use (otherwise you'd get half the ad industry to close). Add Hyperswitch to get a decent alt-tab, Karabiner so you can remap ctrl+c/v to avoid twisting your hands, and a Windows keyboard layout to not lose your muscle memory for braces and other special characters (that Apple doesn't print on the keyboard FFS), SizeUp for having Windows shortcuts to move your windows around without a mouse - and that's it. A Mac that gets enough of the Windows muscle memory to make the transition pretty painlss.
  - mft_ 1y ago
    Thanks :) I'm actually a long-time Mac user, but switched to a Windows laptop a year ago due to availability of certain apps. My Windows installations are usually pain free, with all of the recent crap disabled or removed. The growing hatred comes from everything else: Office, and the poor UX of the online variants, and the awful usability of the modern iteration of Sharepoint (or whatever it's called now), and crappy unreliable authentication flows, and Teams repeatedly changing its UI, and Teams and Outlook pushing new variants on you, and Teams causing problems for someone on a call most of the time. Sadly, as this article discussed, Mac OS is not going in a direction that's strongly encouraging. Plus, RE: Microsoft Office, I always believed that it was handicapped on Mac versus Windows. Excel seemed to bog down more quickly when faced with large spreadsheets, and the whole suite seemed sluggish, as if it was running through a not very efficient compatibility layer.
dTal 1y ago
>not a single one achieving any sort of visual integration across at least the major applications because there's like a dozen UI frameworks I beg to differ. GTK and Qt cover 99% of applications. If you run Plasma, you get a pleasant GUI for theming which lets you set them both to a matching theme. Look and feel consistency is on par with Windows 95 (and far superior to modern Windows), and I can't even tell which UI framework is being used a lot of the time.
- skydhash 1y ago
  Yep, we already have Electron apps in the mix, so grumbling about GTK and Qt inconsistencies is no longer worth it.
mrob 1y ago
Despite Apple hardware being fast, it subjectively feels slow because of the mandatory UI animations. The "reduced motion" setting does not help because it only replaces them with equally slow fades. I believe there are unofficial ways to disable them, but if you're willing to sacrifice the convenience of sticking to officially supported configurations why use Apple products at all? There are better options for those who like customizing and tweaking things.

fsflover 1y ago

> and serious issues with hardware support across the board on top (Linux) I'm tired of this myth. Just like with Mac and Windows, you choose the suitable hardware or, better, buy preinstalled. There are no compatibility issue with my Librem 14. Even suspend works 100% of the time. Also, GNU/Linux is not an OS but there are many very different OSes for different use cases and visual preferences.

mschuster91 1y ago
> There are no compatibility issue with my Librem 14. Even suspend works 100% of the time. Can you walk into any big box store and buy that thing, or a Framework? No. I am talking about OS choices accessible to the general public, not to nerds with dedicated knowledge. The experience of installing Linux on anything available at a big box store is likely to result in a multitude of issues. No actor in Linux at large makes any effort to cater to the general public, and that's the point I'm making. > Also, GNU/Linux is not an OS but there are many very different OSes for different use cases and visual preferences. ... and the consequence of that multitude of How To Do Things is precisely what keeps Linux adoption so low. Steve Ballmer had a point in "developers developers developers" - it's no wonder that there aren't that many native software products viable for actual commercial use on Linux.
- fsflover 1y ago
  > Can you walk into any big box store and buy that thing, or a Framework? No. This is a real problem and I wonder if it might be connected with the lobbying of the Win-Mac duopoly.
  - mschuster91 1y ago
    It's a scale problem. Walmart or whatever, they buy and sell insane quantities of goods - they make life insanely difficult for vendors and either you're someone as large as HP, Acer, Asus etc who can get by with margins less than 1% but make up for it in volume, or you can't compete with them at all and stay out of the big box stores for good. That's why anti-trust legislation and enforcement is actually important... to prevent ossification of scale that effectively prohibits new actors from entering the market.
- adrian_b 1y ago
  I assume that you can walk in many big box stores and buy a Dell computer or a HP computer with preinstalled Linux. I am not sure about brick-and-mortar stores, because I have not used such stores for many decades, but with on-line shopping it is certainly easy to find a Dell or HP computer with preinstalled Linux that supports the hardware as well as Windows. Moreover, choosing Ubuntu over Windows frequently saves at least one hundred $. I have such a Dell laptop (Dell Precision), which came with a preinstalled Ubuntu that worked perfectly (even if I have wiped it and installed another Linux by myself, because I do not like Ubuntu).
mft_ 1y ago
That's not most people's reality. 99.999%+ of people out there in the world don't start with a desire for a Linux setup; and so many of the small proportion who at some point want to consider it start with pre-existing hardware. And yes, having tried and largely burnt out trying to use Linux on several different computers on different occasions, it can be hugely frustrating, if not ultimately impossible.
- fsflover 1y ago
  It's like trying to install Windows on a Macbook: Your're on your own here. Don't blame Microsoft or Apple for your issues.
  - IAmBroom 1y ago
    Name a computer manufacturer that supplies laptops built specifically for Linux, instead of as a smaller-market option.
    - fsflover 1y ago
      System76, Purism, Taxedo, Pine64, Oxide.
      - mschuster91 1y ago
        These are all small market vendors.
        fsflover 1y ago
        This doesn't affect the message in my original post.
      - steveklabnik 1y ago
        Oxide does not make laptops.

mft_ 1y ago

I'm with you. I hate Microsoft more and more with every day using their software, but sadly working in most industries, you're tied to Microsoft Office for a large proportion of business tasks. I'd very much like to switch to Linux to lose some of the Windows awfulness, but (as you say) the reality of getting a particular computer working sufficiently well is somewhere between non-trivial and ulcer-inducingly complicated, and anyway the absence of native Microsoft Office makes it a non-starter.

adrian_b 1y ago
There are already many years since I have abandoned MS Office, so I do not know how this works for recent MS Office versions, but before that I have used for many years native MS Office Professional running on Linux (via CrossOver; both MS Office Pro and CrossOver were paid, so choosing Linux was done for better performance and features, not for lower cost). The funny thing was that at least those older versions of MS Office ran much better on Linux than on the contemporaneous Windows (XP and Vista), i.e. faster and with no crashes, presumably due to the faster file system and due to the lack of interfering antiviruses or other corporate garbage.
mschuster91 1y ago
> I'd very much like to switch to Linux to lose some of the Windows awfulness, but (as you say) the reality of getting a particular computer working sufficiently well is somewhere between non-trivial and ulcer-inducingly complicated, and anyway the absence of native Microsoft Office makes it a non-starter. Switch to Mac. Honestly. Office is decent enough for creatives to use (otherwise you'd get half the ad industry to close). Add Hyperswitch to get a decent alt-tab, Karabiner so you can remap ctrl+c/v to avoid twisting your hands, and a Windows keyboard layout to not lose your muscle memory for braces and other special characters (that Apple doesn't print on the keyboard FFS), SizeUp for having Windows shortcuts to move your windows around without a mouse - and that's it. A Mac that gets enough of the Windows muscle memory to make the transition pretty painlss.
- mft_ 1y ago
  Thanks :) I'm actually a long-time Mac user, but switched to a Windows laptop a year ago due to availability of certain apps. My Windows installations are usually pain free, with all of the recent crap disabled or removed. The growing hatred comes from everything else: Office, and the poor UX of the online variants, and the awful usability of the modern iteration of Sharepoint (or whatever it's called now), and crappy unreliable authentication flows, and Teams repeatedly changing its UI, and Teams and Outlook pushing new variants on you, and Teams causing problems for someone on a call most of the time. Sadly, as this article discussed, Mac OS is not going in a direction that's strongly encouraging. Plus, RE: Microsoft Office, I always believed that it was handicapped on Mac versus Windows. Excel seemed to bog down more quickly when faced with large spreadsheets, and the whole suite seemed sluggish, as if it was running through a not very efficient compatibility layer.

dTal 1y ago

>not a single one achieving any sort of visual integration across at least the major applications because there's like a dozen UI frameworks I beg to differ. GTK and Qt cover 99% of applications. If you run Plasma, you get a pleasant GUI for theming which lets you set them both to a matching theme. Look and feel consistency is on par with Windows 95 (and far superior to modern Windows), and I can't even tell which UI framework is being used a lot of the time.

skydhash 1y ago
Yep, we already have Electron apps in the mix, so grumbling about GTK and Qt inconsistencies is no longer worth it.

mrob 1y ago

Despite Apple hardware being fast, it subjectively feels slow because of the mandatory UI animations. The "reduced motion" setting does not help because it only replaces them with equally slow fades. I believe there are unofficial ways to disable them, but if you're willing to sacrifice the convenience of sticking to officially supported configurations why use Apple products at all? There are better options for those who like customizing and tweaking things.