I think it's important to note here that the reason a lot of people switch from macOS/OS X to Linux is because they can.
There's been a tremendous amount of work over the last ten years to make the Linux desktop environment habitable. At first it was usable for very narrow use cases, like living within an Office-compatible application, but over time that space has grown. What was once done out of spite can now be done for the sake of convenience.
Instead of being all negative about Apple not living up to our expectations I think we should appreciate how much Linux has exceeded them.
Early last year I switched to OSX. In the past I was heavily into various Linux distros: From Ubuntu, to the more lightweight Xubuntu. Fedora. Elementary. I've played with Gnome and Kde.
It is my opinion that the people who seem ecstatic about their switch to Linux are still in their honeymoon period. I don't feel like any Linux distro out there comes close to the stability and elegance of OSX.
I've had so many issues over the years, it's hard to even list them:
- Ubuntu only used the dedicated gfx card on one of my laptops. Never would it settle into integrated. This caused performance issues, overheating, and I ultimately decided it was impossible to use.
- Gnome had so many display, rendering, and performance issues... I still don't know how people tolerate it. Even software listed in this blog post: KeePassX copy/paste never worked for me. Random software that would just blank out and require a full system restart.
- Crashes... so many... crashes. Especially when using multiple monitors.
- Some distros (Elementary, for example) seem to have quite a few hardware limitations. Half the computers I tried to install these distros on would run into errors, a lot of bios chasing, too much time spent on forums to find help... Most of the times you just give up.
- There just isn't enough software. And Wine isn't exactly the perfect solution. Not ONE single good MySQL gui for Linux (just an example). Think about that - and no, Workbench isn't good! It's extremely intensive on resources and bloated.
I moved into OSX because I was fed up. I wanted to work and be productive and not constantly look after hardware and software. At the end of the day I wanted access to bash, pleasant to look at, with plenty of software options. I didn't want to worry about performance, random crashes, and lack of support for multiple displays. It's costly, but the solution for me was OSX.
This was the reason I switched to OSX too. I wanted to get stuff done, not fight all the time. I don't have time to tinker just to get stuff done.
Of course, now we can both be upset the course the OSX takes from our adoption of it and observe the removal of features with no recourse. Lesser of two evils I suppose.
I agree with you 100%. All these Mac users leaving for Linux will eventually realize how much work is involved in keeping a Linux system running. I was the opposite, I left OS X after nearly a decade (used Linux prior) and I hate Linux more now than I did before I switched to the Mac. Way too much work, errors everywhere for no apparent reason.
I moved to OSX after a 15 month period on Linux after years on windows. I moved because of stability, and because of software like office, and at the time, iTunes for updating my shiny new iPhone. Despite the pain, I'm looking at moving back, because I'm fed up. I want to work and be productive. I'm looking at a Dell laptop with 64gb and escape key.
> Not ONE single good MySQL gui for Linux (just an example)
SQLyog Community works wonderfully on Wine. I've been using it through multiple versions for almost 15 years with no problems. In fact I'm going crazy looking for a Posgres client that works as well and doesn't cost a fortune (meanwhile I'm working with a mix of pgAdmin and InteliJ's database plugin)
I'm not sure if it meets your needs, but DBVisualizer [1] has a reasonably full-featured free version. I use it for basic tasks and it works really well. They have a paid "pro" version but I haven't yet needed those features.
I started using Linux (Ubuntu) last year. I was trying to get into open source software and I had a choice between a Macbook or a Dell laptop with Ubuntu on it.
I was aware that Linux had a reputation of being difficult to use but I was planning on doing some learning anyway, so why not give it a try? Of course, another factor was that I've never really cared for Macs much. I never understood the appeal of Mac design and I always felt like Mac products, and particularly one button mice, violate "form follows function." (note: I'm not design-minded).
Anyway, I was really surprised that Ubuntu desktop (unity) was basically the same thing as Windows, except the sidebar was on the left. That and I could use the software manager (and later, apt-get) to install common programs instead of googling "skype installer," which is what I would have done on windows.
Later, I learned to appreciate how easy it is to edit config files in Linux. Plain text files vs. regedit? Yeah, I'll take the English please.
I loved the design of the original Mac OS. It was a breath of fresh air in comparison with the ascetic world of MS DOS. I loved Windows, too, both in its 16-bit incarnation and as the 32-bit NT. It gave you the power unseen before. The design of Windows NT, as it was originally conceived, seemed amazing to me. And I loved Linux, too - for being a UNIX, for its openness, and for its virtually immediate availability at no charge...
As years passed, both Mac OS and Windows have been gradually losing their appeal, getting more and more bloated, resource-hungry, sometimes plain crazy. Finally, they deteriorated to the point of a marginal usefulness to me. Linux, on the other hand, has been improving at an astounding pace. Today, it is friendly. It is snappy. And it does not spy on you. There are many variants to choose from. You can get it up and running in no time. It is there to suit your computing needs.
How one can switch from OS X to Linux and still feel comfortable without a track pad with the same quality?
Everything Macbooks (and the OS) provide is replaceable with good alternatives on a Linux environment and I personally had the satisfaction to do so. But still, there existed no notebook with the same keyboard feeling, trackpad (touchpad, whatever), weight and durability as a Macbook. What do I miss here?
What's so nice about Mac trackpads?
I've heard that argument frequently but when I use my wifes Air and switch back to my laptop (either HP, Dell or Lenovo - not the cheap ones) I don't see a difference, at least when I added in synaptics driver the natural scrolling by swiping up and down.
Right now I think that Mac trackpad has three issues:
* it is freaking cold in the morning (metal case)
* you don't see the buttons (I still don't know if mac 1 one or 2 or 3 buttons :)
* click sound, when you have a child sleeping you don't want to have it so loud or at all (it should make same sound as pushing a keyboard button).
Is there really no other laptop with a trackpad as good as a macbook? This is seriously such a killer feature, it's the only thing making me stick to macbook laptops.
Because the gap isnt as big as you think it is. I have a retina MBP, a Surface Pro 3, and a Zenbook UX32VD all running Arch Linux. The trackpads on all three are very good and they can all use 3 and four finger gestures fully with Gnome and libinput. Maybe the scrolling isnt quite as good as OSX but everything is just as fluid these days.
On windows is another story, everything feels janky when using trackpad gestures.
I love Gnome's workspace switcher. OSX's workspace switcher felt tedious and slow by comparison.
With Ubuntu/Gnome, I just Ctrl+Alt+arrow-key to move between workspaces and it's so smooth/quick. It's great for writing/debugging code; I have one workspace with the app/site I'm building, one with my source code and one with the terminal for launching/killing processes. Sometimes I use the fourth workspace to do CPU profiling when doing performance testing.
It's nice that there are just four workspaces - One in each corner, then I can switch to any one of them with a single hotkey without even having to think - I can instantly bring up the one I want in a fraction of a second. It really adds up.
Windows was terrible. I had to move the mouse and click several times every time I wanted to test a change I made to the code. I can't believe I was doing that just a few years ago.
Same here. Ubuntu with quick desktop switching is a breeze to develop, Windows feels cumbersome compared to it, needs way more keystrokes and mouse gymnastics to get the work done ;-)
My Windows usage is restricted to gaming and music production. Sadly, getting low latency audio on Linux requires lots of fiddling, and even if I do get it running, I'm still going to miss the tons of windows-only audio plugins.
Ubuntu can do the workspace switching as well, but also other window managers.
Step 1. Enable workspaces in Settings->Appearance->Behavior->Enable workspaces
You can see the four workspaces on the Launcher, near the Trash icon.
Step 2. Add shortcuts to switch to these workspaces in
Settings->Keyboard->Shortcuts->Navigation
You set a shortcut for "Switch to workspace 1" (up to 4).
Ideally, you would set these to "Alt+1", "Alt+2", etc so that a single shortcut takes you as once to a specific workspace.
At one point, I ran everything I needed to on free nix, then got a Mac in the early 2000s. Over the years, I enjoyed trying the shiny new things, and being on a supported platform was a novelty. Plus, it was liberating to not futz with XF86Config files and to have a mobile \nix workstation.
But there hit a point when learning the shiny just felt like a chore, and I started gravitating back to tried and true software like emacs. And Linux stopped requiring much futzing to work pretty well. And the need to exchange Word docs evaporated due to Google Docs, LibreOffice, and life circumstances. And somewhere I decided that workstations are a luxury.
And then MacOS started crapping up the UI with stuff I never asked for. It became more of a hassle to strip the Mac than to build up a more comfortable free \*nix environment.
I'm unlikely to go back. I'll always be glad for the decade+ Apple gave me. But I'm even more thankful for the luxury of not needing them.
I'm mostly enjoying the KDE Neon distro. It's polished, built on a stable newish base for the rest of the system.
But as I've said repeatedly in the past, the thing that still drives me completely insane are the keyboard shortcuts, their general inconsistency across DE, apps, etc., the layering interaction of how they're intercepted by different parts of the system (so even when I can manually change them to be consistent, I still can't guarantee they'll be interpreted correctly), and their use of the Control key as the primary modifier in both GUI and Terminal applications.
Linux mostly copied Windows in this regard, and it's just as painful as Windows (and then some) for that reason. I would gladly pay $1,000 for a KDE Neon or Fedora Gnome distro that went through the trouble of thoroughly implementing and maintaining a version with fully Mac-like keyboard shortcuts and keyboard shortcut customization facilities.
I'd pay that per user for my team too. We'd make the money back quickly on savings in hardware purchases.
On the other hand, KDE is the most configurable DE I've ever seen. I've never looked too much at its defaults because I usually switch to KDE in my "let's customize everything" moments (and get back from it in my "let's learn to live with defaults" ones).
Being able to bind almost everything (including running custom scripts) to a keyboard shortcut, having tons of desktop options you can force by matching window or app properties, using special attributes or regexps, all of that screams "don't use default and customize me" to me, which is where KDE really shines, IMO.
> I would gladly pay $1,000 for a KDE Neon or Fedora Gnome distro that went through the trouble of thoroughly implementing and maintaining a version with fully Mac-like keyboard shortcuts and keyboard shortcut customization facilities.
From your response to the sibling comment, it sounds like you're looking for a way to swap the Super and Control keys? There are actually settings for that in both Gnome and KDE/Plasma. In Gnome, you can go into one of the sections of Gnome Tweak Tool (I think it's called "Typing") and in one of the lists of options, there's a checkbox for something like "Swap left Win and left Control". In MADE/Plasma, it's in main settings app somewhere there's an identical list of checkbox options (I think it's in the "Keyboard" section, but I might be wrong, as I haven't used Plasma in a while; if you're having trouble finding it though, I can go back and find the exact location tomorrow and let you know)
Qt (the library KDE uses) has an internal switch to use the GUI key (Command/Windows/Super/...) instead of Control, but it's only enabled on OS X. Making that a user-configurable option for other systems would go a long way. I have no idea what the Qt/KDE folks' attitude toward that would be, but I can see it as a selling point for Mac refugees, so it may be worth your while to investigate.
This could use some copyediting, OP. You make a lot of typos, like 'controll' or 'powerfull' or 'simmular'. Have you tried adding Flyspell to your markdown-mode Emacs hooks?
I felt that need to change from mac to linux very recently also; it turns out, I lost plenty of time just to get the desktop environment "to work".
Used ubuntu + Unity, then switched to i3 on Ubuntu. After lots of tweaking, I found out how to get nice font rendering on i3 (default rendering is not so good when you're used to osx).
Then I went on the hunt for replacement apps for my office work : email + calendar + contacts; oh my, spent hours trying Thunderbird, Evolution, Geary (and it's new fork also), also Gnome Calendar, Thunderbird lightning and California for calendar.
In the end, I settled on Thunderbird + Gnome cal, but it felt like a compromise rather than a happy choice.
After some weeks of working with that setup, not finding emails when needed, forgetting about calendar appointments because of sync issues, I just gave up and when back to The Path Of Least Resistance for me : macos.
The whole email/calendar/contacts thing works so much better in KDE I think, however personally I have had all that stuff on google apps for business for many years now.
This is one of the major reasons I've switched from Linux to OS X many years ago. I spend my working hours in the terminal, but when I use a PC at home or for not programming, the desktop experience is just better on OS X. Email, calendars, contacts etc. just work without endless tinkering.
Also, there is no good email client for Linux. Thunderbird is a huge waste of time and other programs are even worse.
His "Usecase OS X Linux Comment" table is interesting. My main workstation is a desktop machine I built that's running Ubuntu 14. I've been slowly stockpiling parts to build a new/bigger/better/faster desktop, and I'm going to run Ubuntu 16 on that. 90% of my work is done in the terminal, so I'd be just fine on OSX, but I can't justify paying so much for the hardware when the OS is just not that much better. My good ol' reliable 2009 PowerBook finally died and I'm not traveling with a ThinkPad Yoga 11e thing. Windows 10 has been acceptable, though the updates are just damn painful sometimes. I found MobaXterm works well for me in the way that I work. I keep thinking I really want a new PowerBook, but I just don't know why. I know it's just not worth it. The only time I use the laptop extensively is when I travel, and the ThinkPad/Windows gets the job done just fine.
So, yeah, switching from OSX to Linux now isn't so bad. Isn't 2017 the year of "Linux On The Desktop", or was that 2016, or 2015, or 14...
Any reason you aren't running Linux on the laptop?
Also, you might want to look into a used Macbook Pro. As you have seen, they can last for awhile and parts (like batteries) are usually easy to source even years after they've been discontinued. FYI, they stopped using the PowerBook naming in 2006.
Just wanted to share my personal experience with Linux. I recently got a new laptop and was very salty about it because it came with SecureBoot on and Windows 10. However, with the help of some people on the Internet, I managed to figure out how to turn off SecureBoot and install Ubuntu on it. I tried various Linuxes and always keep going back to Ubuntu, might be the familiarity of it. I like Mint as well, but I miss the Unity desktop, heh. Anyways, I'm currently on Windows 10 again, but I keep switching to Linux and back to Windows because Windows bothers me, and I think soon enough I will permanently break free from the shackles of Microsoft and use Linux full time. Currently what bothers me most is that the mouse pointer is fiddly and requires some terminal commands to fix but it never "just works" as on Windows. I have a weird USB Wireless mouse, and it's old and becoming broken slowly, so I think I might fix it with a new mouse. On Linux, my most used feature is SSH, because being able to remotely control a computer with text (on a 1Mbps upload connection, RDP is too slow to use), from a phone or a laptop over 3G or something, it's amazing. And I often forget a file on my computer when I'm working on a laptop, and I can just SSH into it and transfer it with FileZilla or HTTP or whatever. It's nice. I have become much more grateful for open source and Linux in general, and much less angry and entitled. Bit rambly but it's 5AM I don't even know what I wrote...
What finally got me to switch was a tiling window manager. I hated all graphical desktops on Linux, and finally bit the bullet and installed XMonad. My productivity has increased measurably. Its the only graphical environment I can tolerate besides OS X's window manager, and I actually prefer it.
I can't tell if there's legitimately more of these articles going around, or if I'm just noticing them more because they reflect my personal desires. Like the Baader-Meinhof Phenomenon when you get a new car.
Why I switched from OS-X to Linux: 1. tensorflow with GPU acceleration only works on Linux.
2. Mac Pro is silly expensive and old, HP z440 with Haswell 8core xeon + much better GPU cost me much less than the entry level Mac Pro
3. I can reboot into Windows and play games (on a good GPU)
I realised I liked consistency of keyboard shortcuts and replaced my work MBP15 with a X1 carbo nand realised how crazy heavy the MBP is.
I love Linux. I use it every day and have since around '98.
Recently I decided to get my teen brother, who's going into CS soon, a Linux laptop for development and a Raspberry Pi for a project we're doing together (a "magic mirror").
Instantly found desktop Linux to still be a giant pain in the ass. Ubuntu on the Pi defaulted wifi to only manual addressing, not DHCP. On top of that, set to IPv6 only as well. After digging through SO and other forums for a while we finally figured it out.
I've never had a desktop Linux experience work "out of the box". It still takes a power user to make it even half-way tolerable, and as a power user, I found it intolerable. I could see how overwhelming it was just writ plain on his face. Then realized I was making the same expressions.
Apple is definitely irritating me lately with their hardware decisions, but at the end of the day OSX is just better with desktop tasks. Hell, I'd choose Windows desktop experience over Linux, even with MS's privacy issues with Win10. Because I don't want to spend 3 hours figuring out how to turn on wifi.
>I've never had a desktop Linux experience work "out of the box"
Completely the opposite for me. Ubuntu installs on almost anything I've tried (laptops, netbooks, desktops with production dates ranging from 2006 to present day). Install and setup for use usually take less than an hour. For a couple of years now I haven't encountered a single issue (like networking or graphics not working).
Not to say your experience isn't accurate, just wanted to add how impressed I've been with Linux and particularly Ubuntu for the past few years.
Conversely, installing windows (8) on modern, fresh from the factory, HP laptops has been an experience I will never voluntarily repeat.
I totally disagree. I've installed Ubuntu on 4-5 systems over the last 3 years, I find it exceptionally quick and easy compared to installing Windows. Obviously, I can't compare it to OS X for install because it's not possible to buy it standalone.
Additionally, if you're installing on a raspberry pi you're fundamentally at a power user level - my non-techie friends and family are nowhere near that level. If you actually install it on a desktop it's a breeze, I think your frustration stems from engaging in an activity that's fairly challenging no matter what you do. There are plenty of alternatives for your pi, but neither OS X nor Windows are among them.
I'd be more interested to hear how the linux laptop went. Did that come preinstalled? Did your brother like it?
> I've never had a desktop Linux experience work "out of the box".
I keep saying that I have, and its way better now. But, I'm slowly realizing that I haven't done a bare metal install in probably 6 years. I suspect that a lot of people are in the same boat.
For any Android devs out there. I built a linux beast workstation just for running Android Studio/Gradle et al. Then used NoMachine to headless into it. Kept my 2013 MBP and got a 4-5x improvement in build/deploy cycles without leaving OSX completely behind. Highly recommended.
That "usecase" table is pretty handy! I must admit that I'm enjoying all this recent spate of articles on the front-page about Linux compatible laptops and similar programs, even if they cause a bit of an adversarial comment section. :)
As [astrodust] points out, there's been great strides in making the Linux ecosystem "habitable." With more people thinking about putting in the effort to switch, I think it would be useful if we focused on the positive aspects of a free operating system and not just that you can run them on systems without a touchbar. The article mentions configurability and being able to run it on anything. I'd add zero cost and privacy. If you value those things then switching could still be worth it in the end even with other pain points.
I'm always surprised when these discussions happen how few people are using macOS because of Mac-only software. I'm thinking of things like BBEdit or TextMate, Messages, any of the Omni Group's titles, Automator, Final Cut, Scrivener, GarageBand, etc...
Uhhh this person re-wrote a text editor because TextEdit now defaults to iCloud save? Something that non-developers probably appreciate, but we may not.
Is it not known that this behavior can be disabled back to the old way with a single line command? You simply run this from Terminal:
Actually, probably not. I'd say a majority of macOS users are unaware of that particular setting, much less that settings can updated via the command line. Thanks for posting this!
[+] [-] astrodust|9 years ago|reply
There's been a tremendous amount of work over the last ten years to make the Linux desktop environment habitable. At first it was usable for very narrow use cases, like living within an Office-compatible application, but over time that space has grown. What was once done out of spite can now be done for the sake of convenience.
Instead of being all negative about Apple not living up to our expectations I think we should appreciate how much Linux has exceeded them.
[+] [-] joaodlf|9 years ago|reply
Early last year I switched to OSX. In the past I was heavily into various Linux distros: From Ubuntu, to the more lightweight Xubuntu. Fedora. Elementary. I've played with Gnome and Kde.
It is my opinion that the people who seem ecstatic about their switch to Linux are still in their honeymoon period. I don't feel like any Linux distro out there comes close to the stability and elegance of OSX.
I've had so many issues over the years, it's hard to even list them:
- Ubuntu only used the dedicated gfx card on one of my laptops. Never would it settle into integrated. This caused performance issues, overheating, and I ultimately decided it was impossible to use.
- Gnome had so many display, rendering, and performance issues... I still don't know how people tolerate it. Even software listed in this blog post: KeePassX copy/paste never worked for me. Random software that would just blank out and require a full system restart.
- Crashes... so many... crashes. Especially when using multiple monitors.
- Some distros (Elementary, for example) seem to have quite a few hardware limitations. Half the computers I tried to install these distros on would run into errors, a lot of bios chasing, too much time spent on forums to find help... Most of the times you just give up.
- There just isn't enough software. And Wine isn't exactly the perfect solution. Not ONE single good MySQL gui for Linux (just an example). Think about that - and no, Workbench isn't good! It's extremely intensive on resources and bloated.
I moved into OSX because I was fed up. I wanted to work and be productive and not constantly look after hardware and software. At the end of the day I wanted access to bash, pleasant to look at, with plenty of software options. I didn't want to worry about performance, random crashes, and lack of support for multiple displays. It's costly, but the solution for me was OSX.
[+] [-] 72deluxe|9 years ago|reply
Of course, now we can both be upset the course the OSX takes from our adoption of it and observe the removal of features with no recourse. Lesser of two evils I suppose.
[+] [-] loup-vaillant|9 years ago|reply
- No dedicated graphics card. Intel's work well enough.
- I use Lxde with Xmonad. It's fast.
- No crash since I bough my laptop 8 months ago. No multiple monitors either, though.
- Still need proprietary hardware, so I stick to distros that distribute them. I blame the hardware vendors for their needless secrecy.
- I don't miss anything but the latest Windows games.
[+] [-] dcdevito|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] antfarm|9 years ago|reply
https://www.jetbrains.com/datagrip/
[+] [-] lowbloodsugar|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rodelrod|9 years ago|reply
SQLyog Community works wonderfully on Wine. I've been using it through multiple versions for almost 15 years with no problems. In fact I'm going crazy looking for a Posgres client that works as well and doesn't cost a fortune (meanwhile I'm working with a mix of pgAdmin and InteliJ's database plugin)
[+] [-] cobbzilla|9 years ago|reply
[1] http://www.dbvis.com/
[+] [-] tps5|9 years ago|reply
I started using Linux (Ubuntu) last year. I was trying to get into open source software and I had a choice between a Macbook or a Dell laptop with Ubuntu on it.
I was aware that Linux had a reputation of being difficult to use but I was planning on doing some learning anyway, so why not give it a try? Of course, another factor was that I've never really cared for Macs much. I never understood the appeal of Mac design and I always felt like Mac products, and particularly one button mice, violate "form follows function." (note: I'm not design-minded).
Anyway, I was really surprised that Ubuntu desktop (unity) was basically the same thing as Windows, except the sidebar was on the left. That and I could use the software manager (and later, apt-get) to install common programs instead of googling "skype installer," which is what I would have done on windows.
Later, I learned to appreciate how easy it is to edit config files in Linux. Plain text files vs. regedit? Yeah, I'll take the English please.
[+] [-] Koshkin|9 years ago|reply
As years passed, both Mac OS and Windows have been gradually losing their appeal, getting more and more bloated, resource-hungry, sometimes plain crazy. Finally, they deteriorated to the point of a marginal usefulness to me. Linux, on the other hand, has been improving at an astounding pace. Today, it is friendly. It is snappy. And it does not spy on you. There are many variants to choose from. You can get it up and running in no time. It is there to suit your computing needs.
Today, there is nothing better.
[+] [-] diegoperini|9 years ago|reply
Everything Macbooks (and the OS) provide is replaceable with good alternatives on a Linux environment and I personally had the satisfaction to do so. But still, there existed no notebook with the same keyboard feeling, trackpad (touchpad, whatever), weight and durability as a Macbook. What do I miss here?
Edit: Grammar fix. :)
[+] [-] krzyk|9 years ago|reply
Right now I think that Mac trackpad has three issues:
* it is freaking cold in the morning (metal case)
* you don't see the buttons (I still don't know if mac 1 one or 2 or 3 buttons :)
* click sound, when you have a child sleeping you don't want to have it so loud or at all (it should make same sound as pushing a keyboard button).
[+] [-] Sammi|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rhodysurf|9 years ago|reply
On windows is another story, everything feels janky when using trackpad gestures.
[+] [-] oliwarner|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jondubois|9 years ago|reply
I would never go back to Windows or even OSX.
I love Gnome's workspace switcher. OSX's workspace switcher felt tedious and slow by comparison.
With Ubuntu/Gnome, I just Ctrl+Alt+arrow-key to move between workspaces and it's so smooth/quick. It's great for writing/debugging code; I have one workspace with the app/site I'm building, one with my source code and one with the terminal for launching/killing processes. Sometimes I use the fourth workspace to do CPU profiling when doing performance testing.
It's nice that there are just four workspaces - One in each corner, then I can switch to any one of them with a single hotkey without even having to think - I can instantly bring up the one I want in a fraction of a second. It really adds up.
Windows was terrible. I had to move the mouse and click several times every time I wanted to test a change I made to the code. I can't believe I was doing that just a few years ago.
[+] [-] fb03|9 years ago|reply
My Windows usage is restricted to gaming and music production. Sadly, getting low latency audio on Linux requires lots of fiddling, and even if I do get it running, I'm still going to miss the tons of windows-only audio plugins.
[+] [-] simosx|9 years ago|reply
Step 1. Enable workspaces in Settings->Appearance->Behavior->Enable workspaces You can see the four workspaces on the Launcher, near the Trash icon.
Step 2. Add shortcuts to switch to these workspaces in Settings->Keyboard->Shortcuts->Navigation
You set a shortcut for "Switch to workspace 1" (up to 4). Ideally, you would set these to "Alt+1", "Alt+2", etc so that a single shortcut takes you as once to a specific workspace.
[+] [-] indeyets|9 years ago|reply
Ctrl-left/Ctrl-right switches workspaces for me. Four-finger swipe does the same.
what am I doing wrong?
[+] [-] peatmoss|9 years ago|reply
But there hit a point when learning the shiny just felt like a chore, and I started gravitating back to tried and true software like emacs. And Linux stopped requiring much futzing to work pretty well. And the need to exchange Word docs evaporated due to Google Docs, LibreOffice, and life circumstances. And somewhere I decided that workstations are a luxury.
And then MacOS started crapping up the UI with stuff I never asked for. It became more of a hassle to strip the Mac than to build up a more comfortable free \*nix environment.
I'm unlikely to go back. I'll always be glad for the decade+ Apple gave me. But I'm even more thankful for the luxury of not needing them.
[+] [-] im_down_w_otp|9 years ago|reply
But as I've said repeatedly in the past, the thing that still drives me completely insane are the keyboard shortcuts, their general inconsistency across DE, apps, etc., the layering interaction of how they're intercepted by different parts of the system (so even when I can manually change them to be consistent, I still can't guarantee they'll be interpreted correctly), and their use of the Control key as the primary modifier in both GUI and Terminal applications.
Linux mostly copied Windows in this regard, and it's just as painful as Windows (and then some) for that reason. I would gladly pay $1,000 for a KDE Neon or Fedora Gnome distro that went through the trouble of thoroughly implementing and maintaining a version with fully Mac-like keyboard shortcuts and keyboard shortcut customization facilities.
I'd pay that per user for my team too. We'd make the money back quickly on savings in hardware purchases.
[+] [-] oelmekki|9 years ago|reply
Being able to bind almost everything (including running custom scripts) to a keyboard shortcut, having tons of desktop options you can force by matching window or app properties, using special attributes or regexps, all of that screams "don't use default and customize me" to me, which is where KDE really shines, IMO.
[+] [-] saghm|9 years ago|reply
From your response to the sibling comment, it sounds like you're looking for a way to swap the Super and Control keys? There are actually settings for that in both Gnome and KDE/Plasma. In Gnome, you can go into one of the sections of Gnome Tweak Tool (I think it's called "Typing") and in one of the lists of options, there's a checkbox for something like "Swap left Win and left Control". In MADE/Plasma, it's in main settings app somewhere there's an identical list of checkbox options (I think it's in the "Keyboard" section, but I might be wrong, as I haven't used Plasma in a while; if you're having trouble finding it though, I can go back and find the exact location tomorrow and let you know)
[+] [-] kps|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fallenshell|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|9 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] gwern|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] netgusto|9 years ago|reply
Used ubuntu + Unity, then switched to i3 on Ubuntu. After lots of tweaking, I found out how to get nice font rendering on i3 (default rendering is not so good when you're used to osx).
Then I went on the hunt for replacement apps for my office work : email + calendar + contacts; oh my, spent hours trying Thunderbird, Evolution, Geary (and it's new fork also), also Gnome Calendar, Thunderbird lightning and California for calendar.
In the end, I settled on Thunderbird + Gnome cal, but it felt like a compromise rather than a happy choice.
After some weeks of working with that setup, not finding emails when needed, forgetting about calendar appointments because of sync issues, I just gave up and when back to The Path Of Least Resistance for me : macos.
[+] [-] tyfon|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] adamors|9 years ago|reply
Also, there is no good email client for Linux. Thunderbird is a huge waste of time and other programs are even worse.
[+] [-] blakesterz|9 years ago|reply
So, yeah, switching from OSX to Linux now isn't so bad. Isn't 2017 the year of "Linux On The Desktop", or was that 2016, or 2015, or 14...
[+] [-] ticoombs|9 years ago|reply
http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/ThinkWiki
[+] [-] pfranz|9 years ago|reply
Also, you might want to look into a used Macbook Pro. As you have seen, they can last for awhile and parts (like batteries) are usually easy to source even years after they've been discontinued. FYI, they stopped using the PowerBook naming in 2006.
[+] [-] milankragujevic|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] colordrops|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|9 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] jhasse|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] elzi|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] muro|9 years ago|reply
I realised I liked consistency of keyboard shortcuts and replaced my work MBP15 with a X1 carbo nand realised how crazy heavy the MBP is.
Still miss Lightroom and Preview on Mac OS.
[+] [-] thebouv|9 years ago|reply
Recently I decided to get my teen brother, who's going into CS soon, a Linux laptop for development and a Raspberry Pi for a project we're doing together (a "magic mirror").
Instantly found desktop Linux to still be a giant pain in the ass. Ubuntu on the Pi defaulted wifi to only manual addressing, not DHCP. On top of that, set to IPv6 only as well. After digging through SO and other forums for a while we finally figured it out.
I've never had a desktop Linux experience work "out of the box". It still takes a power user to make it even half-way tolerable, and as a power user, I found it intolerable. I could see how overwhelming it was just writ plain on his face. Then realized I was making the same expressions.
Apple is definitely irritating me lately with their hardware decisions, but at the end of the day OSX is just better with desktop tasks. Hell, I'd choose Windows desktop experience over Linux, even with MS's privacy issues with Win10. Because I don't want to spend 3 hours figuring out how to turn on wifi.
[+] [-] 3princip|9 years ago|reply
Completely the opposite for me. Ubuntu installs on almost anything I've tried (laptops, netbooks, desktops with production dates ranging from 2006 to present day). Install and setup for use usually take less than an hour. For a couple of years now I haven't encountered a single issue (like networking or graphics not working).
Not to say your experience isn't accurate, just wanted to add how impressed I've been with Linux and particularly Ubuntu for the past few years.
Conversely, installing windows (8) on modern, fresh from the factory, HP laptops has been an experience I will never voluntarily repeat.
[+] [-] bb611|9 years ago|reply
Additionally, if you're installing on a raspberry pi you're fundamentally at a power user level - my non-techie friends and family are nowhere near that level. If you actually install it on a desktop it's a breeze, I think your frustration stems from engaging in an activity that's fairly challenging no matter what you do. There are plenty of alternatives for your pi, but neither OS X nor Windows are among them.
I'd be more interested to hear how the linux laptop went. Did that come preinstalled? Did your brother like it?
[+] [-] lowbloodsugar|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jdc0589|9 years ago|reply
I keep saying that I have, and its way better now. But, I'm slowly realizing that I haven't done a bare metal install in probably 6 years. I suspect that a lot of people are in the same boat.
[+] [-] bebort45|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] autocorr|9 years ago|reply
As [astrodust] points out, there's been great strides in making the Linux ecosystem "habitable." With more people thinking about putting in the effort to switch, I think it would be useful if we focused on the positive aspects of a free operating system and not just that you can run them on systems without a touchbar. The article mentions configurability and being able to run it on anything. I'd add zero cost and privacy. If you value those things then switching could still be worth it in the end even with other pain points.
[+] [-] criddell|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] eeeeeeeeeeeee|9 years ago|reply
Is it not known that this behavior can be disabled back to the old way with a single line command? You simply run this from Terminal:
defaults write NSGlobalDomain NSDocumentSaveNewDocumentsToCloud -bool false
[+] [-] grzm|9 years ago|reply