Finding an Alternative to Mac OS X

http://bitcannon.net/post/finding-an-alternative-to-mac-os-x/

by wezm • 10 years ago

349 334 10 years ago

jseliger• 10 years ago

The lack of equally high standard replacements for software such as

For me, it's Devonthink Pro (http://www.devontechnologies.com/solutions/writers.html) in particular and also Lightroom. Yes, there is progress on Dark Table, but there's too much useful software on OS X and despite Apple's faults its laptop hardware still leads the pack.

Yes, the lack of ports on the new MBP is annoying. If I had to buy a new MBP today I'd just get the last version—which is still fantastic—refurbished, and kick the hardware can down the road a couple years.

ShinyCyril• 10 years ago

Obviously I'd avoid it for commercial editing, but I've had good success running Lightroom 5 under Wine.

princetontiger• 10 years ago

Funny that this got written. I've looked at switching from macOS to Windows 10.

My first operating system was Windows 95. I then upgraded to 98, and later XP. I decided to go with a Mac in 2008 after Windows Vista just couldn't get itself together.

twblalock3• 10 years ago

I use Macs at work, and I've been using Windows 10 at home since June, with my old Apple keyboard and everything.

My impression is that both operating systems are very close to parity. I use the same apps on both, including a lot of Unixy stuff that now works fine on Windows. Even the Windows font rendering is a lot like the Mac's now.

The Mac ecosystem still has a huge advantage in hardware quality, but I think Microsoft has caught up in software quality.

notheguyouthink4• 10 years ago

Except the stupid decision(s) they continue to make, like advertisements in my operating system.

Seriously, i can't comprehend why they take a paying customer (me) and frequently think i want to see their ads my operating system is some kind of blog.

(The ad in question is for me to try some new microsoft product.. i forget which one offhand, Office Live? no idea. I usually see too much red when it happens to even read.)

mcphage• 10 years ago

The author specifically excluded Windows because they're a Rails developer.

Kolberht2• 10 years ago

It's a shame, because that excuse makes no sense.

slantyyz9• 10 years ago

I've been doing Rails dev on Windows for a couple of years now (I use cmder/conemu, not the linux subystem). For the most part, my workflow is similar to what I was doing when I was on Mac, but I guess it really depends on what you're doing.

If there's something in Rails you can't do in Windows proper, you can still opt to use Vagrant on Windows for a more pure unix experience.

ericjang• 10 years ago

Another path you can take: build your own desktop and install a Hackintosh OS!

Here's my build (http://pcpartpicker.com/list/pYWQMp), which runs into some driver issues but can be fixed with Kext utility. This setup allows me to do CUDA programming + Deep Learning stuff natively in OSX, while having access to pretty Mac software. It's great, I highly recommend it!

gantengx• 10 years ago

except that Hackintosh not exactly legal :-)

wishinghand2• 10 years ago

Has Apple ever prosecuted a violation of this terrible rule of theirs?

MatekCopatek• 10 years ago

Breaking a contract is not illegal, it's a matter of civil law. And depending on where you live, such EULAs might not even be enforceable.

freshyill• 10 years ago

This is shockingly similar to the gaming PC I helped my kid build last year. We didn't build it with a mackintosh in mind, but it's nice to know we could do it if we wanted.

jawngee• 10 years ago

I've done the same and it's a great way to go. If you stick with known components in known configurations, it's easy to get working. Relatively anyways.

dogismycopilot• 10 years ago

"I has a fast Intel CPU (4Ghz i7-6700K), plenty of RAM and fast SSD storage."

wezm17• 10 years ago

Thanks, fixed.

gnufied2• 10 years ago

I have been watching elementary from the sidelines and I am wondering how deep is the keyboard integration in Pantheon?

I moved from OSX to Linux recently too and I am generally pretty happy with multi-monitor and pseudo-tiling support in gnome3. I can do most of my window movement and application switching with few shortcuts (it requires few gnome extensions). Such as -

1. switch application with shortcut rather than alt-tabbing (something like - Super-1 for Emacs, Super-2 for terminal etc). It requires a gnome extension.

2. Tile the Windows with shortcuts. Currently gnome3 has limited support but it mostly works out of box.

3. Launching or switching application with a global shortcut. Requires a gnome extension.

4. Move Window between monitors etc.

Such things usually requires at least 2 or 3 paid apps on OSX. Divvy, Sizeup etc.

Oh and 1Password works perfectly okay via Wine, including the browser extension. So, that is one thing you should checkoff your list if that is stopping you. :-)

EduardoBautista• 10 years ago

Spectacle is a free alternative to Sizeup: https://www.spectacleapp.com

wezm17• 10 years ago

The keyboard integration in Pantheon seems pretty comparable to GNOME.

I just finished importing my 1Password data into https://www.enpass.io looks like it might turn out to be a good option.

gnufied2• 10 years ago

I use https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/413/dash-hotkeys/ thing for Unity like single shortcut Window switcher. It is absolute life saver. I used to use apptivate(http://www.apptivateapp.com/) on OSX for same thing. Is there a elementary alternative? A quick google search doesn't turn up anything.

nkozyra2• 10 years ago

I'm full-time OSX user/developer, but if Rails is really your sticking point, shouldn't the linux subsystem make Win10 at least viable for a trial? Or, frankly, anything that can run VMWare or Virtualbox?

sudhirj6• 10 years ago

I switched to Windows hoping to use the WSL - looks great for the most part, but there are still lots of blocking bugs. Ruby and Git install, but not OpenSSL, which makes Rails development difficult. Lots of niggles here and there, basically.

Should be great when it comes out of beta, though - a good terminal and we'll be all set.

guycook• 10 years ago

If you haven't tried ConEmu [0], it's pretty awesome. I use it with the Git Bash that comes with the full windows git installer and it Just Works for most of my terminal needs. Haven't tried it with WSL but it can most likely be rigged up.

[0] https://conemu.github.io/

rcarmo3• 10 years ago

I'm using https://github.com/mintty/wsltty as a terminal for WSL, because it feels the closest to a Linux terminal for me. Give it a go.

severino2• 10 years ago

If Rails is his sticking point, then there's no point in paying for something when you can have it for free.

nkozyra2• 10 years ago

Well there's no indication that he's against paying, just that he looked for and failed to find a viable OSX alternative.

It's not listed in his requirements and Win10 may satisfy him.

There are lots of free things in life that have an inferior free alternative or only free alternatives and this may be one of them.

Kolberht2• 10 years ago

I think most people prefer Windows or MacOS.

When I talk to normal/non-techies about this issue, they often see it as a non-issue and/or terrifying.

Why not help Windows and Mac users by writing more software for the preferred environments?

Installing a foreign operating system is like installing a different language on your PC. You must have other motivation than normal users.

quickben• 10 years ago

Why doesn't Microsoft let people control updates or antivirus options? These questions run deep.

http://news.softpedia.com/news/medical-equipment-crashes-dur...

Clubber• 10 years ago

Note that I don’t currently consider Windows a viable alternative. For the work that I do (Rails) and tools I use something *nix based is the best choice for me.

For what it's worth Windows 10 now has a bash shell based on Ubuntu available.

http://www.howtogeek.com/249966/how-to-install-and-use-the-l...

drvdevd2• 10 years ago

I'm not Windows' biggest fan, but I'd consider it + Linux/BSD in hyper-v to be a nice start (say on a Surface Pro) -- if you need something that Just Works.

The bash subsystem is interesting, but I'd go with the virtualization solution first.

wezm17• 10 years ago

This is a solution I will test out later in the year. I like the idea of a 2-in-1 computer and I've ordered a http://eve-tech.com. I'll certainly be trying out the VM on Windows option when it comes.

bluedino2• 10 years ago

Setting up a Rails environment on it has plenty of quirks, though. And other common Linux apps don't work right either, ones you typically install along with Rails

paulddraper• 10 years ago

Setting up a Rails environment on it has plenty of quirks,

I thought that was true on any OS... :/

wvenable2• 10 years ago

I'm surprised this was downvoted -- the Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) is extremely powerful and well done.

It's a full Ubuntu userland and you can even run graphical (X) applications. I've used it for Pebble development, running the (python + ARM GCC) SDK and QEMU-based emulator all on Windows. I've run into a few minor issues but for the majority of tasks it works great -- I've completely stopped using my Ubuntu VM and do all my Linux tasks in WSL.

elcritch• 10 years ago

Same thinking here! Behind the scenes engineering in Windows in recent years has been impressive. The whole DLL adaption method started sometime when W7 was released is a pretty impressive piece of engineering. Followed by WSL now.

The WSL has potential to become a very useful tool. So much so I'm considering switching from macOS on my next laptop or so. Unfortunately unlike your case, my workflow depends on a lot of networking code. WSL still has many gaps in the socket emulation pieces. It'll likely mature over time, and it's impressive that some people are already able to switch from a Linux VM!

borland• 10 years ago

A plus one from me. I've used WSL for the last couple months to run a bunch of ruby and postgresql based stuff and once I got past a few teething problems upgrading it from ubuntu 14.04 to 16.10 it's been excellent. The performance of linux ruby under WSL is MUCH better than windows ruby. I'd recommend WSL to any ruby dev on windows simply for that.

A co-worker is also using it to run cross compilers for embedded linux hardware devices (various patched versions of GCC and such) and it's been flawless for him, which I found quite impressive too.

partiallogic• 10 years ago

I really hoped this would be good but in it's current form it just seems too unstable and small incompatibilities that screw you. I ended up going nix vm on my work issued XPS 15 and things are going great.

fusiongyro6• 10 years ago

I'm thinking about trying it, but a friend of mine said that he could crash it easily by just doing the examples from Mastering the Linux Command Line. I think a Surface might make a decent piece of hardware but either WSL (i.e. the horrendously named Bash on Ubuntu on Windows) has to get a lot more stable or Linux support will have to improve. I hear Linux support for the Surface Pro 3 is basically there, but SP4 still needs some work.

All word-of-mouth, of course.

stinos• 10 years ago

a friend of mine said that he could crash it easily by just doing the examples from Mastering the Linux Command Line

Not really surprising (dev version, comes with warnings about compatibility, ...). But why would you let that hold you back for trying it out for what you are going to use it for? Counter-anecdote: I've ran gui apps like SublimeText, gcc, ... without crashing; also see other comments. tldr; try it first-hand instead of relying on anecdotal proof it isn't, or is, ready.

WSL (i.e. the horrendously named Bash on Ubuntu on Windows)

Note that 'WSL' and 'Ubuntu on Windows' and 'Bash on Ubuntu on Windows' are seperate terms for different things

mrweasel2• 10 years ago

I'm not exactly sure why this happens, but when I try to use Windows my hand (mouse hand) cramps up and I get angry and frustrated.

In my view, Windows 10 is still miles away in consistency across the entire system, compared to macOS. Windows 10 actually made it worse, because it's trying to accommodate both Windows 7 and Windows 8 design.

Currently I don't think we have alternatives to macOS. I understand that I sound like a grumpy Apple fanboy, but Windows is't ready to replace macOS. The distance between macOS and Windows have increased in the later years, and not because Apple have improved anything, it's Microsoft who have made Windows worse.

gladimdim2• 10 years ago

I could agree with you one year ago. But after latest upgrade to macOS I got so many issues on my MacBook Air and MacBook Pro that I decided 'enough is enough' :)

DavideNL• 10 years ago

but when I try to use Windows my hand (mouse hand) cramps up and I get angry and frustrated

Same here! Also i start to suffer from 'update-fatigue' when using Windows. The endless updates, reboots, and god knows what it's doing in the background which consumes resources... it all just feels so clumsy. I've never experienced anything like this in OSX.

wolfgke4• 10 years ago

In my view, Windows 10 is still miles away in consistency across the entire system

In my view GNU/Linux distributions are still miles away from Windows 10 in consistency across the entire system.

gladimdim2• 10 years ago

I switched to Windows 10 (Microsoft Surface 4 Pro) after ~15 years of using Linux and 5 years of MacOS. In Bash (based on Ubuntu) 99% of utilities just work. I can use npm, install modules and they still work. For me in Windows 10 - everything just works.

Though I still miss: 1. MacBook's touchpad :-( 2. Emacs-like keybindings everywhere in OS (like MacOS has).

rz2k• 10 years ago

If you force yourself to use the keyboard you might find it as convenient in Windows as it was in OS X. However, it is almost modal like vim. When I used Windows, I was used to `alt` followed by a series of keys for repetitive or common commands.

mverwijs• 10 years ago

I bought a seperate apple Bluetooth touchpad for this very reason. Works for me.

mactunes• 10 years ago

Switched to Win 10 after 20 years on the Mac. The bash was the last missing point for me. So far I'm really happy with the OS.

Matthias247• 10 years ago

As an alternative to WSL docker for windows is also very helpful.

I use it to spin up linux images that contain all the devtools that I need, and mount files/code from windows in there. For a terminal just enter the image with exec /bin/sh. To get a consistent experience I also use msys bash (which is bundled with git for windows) for terminal use on windows. With that setup entering and exiting linux containers feels very similar to on OSX.

The downside of docker for windows is that you need HyperV activated, which weans VirtualBox no longer works. The older boot2docker solution worked together with VirtualBox - however it didn't support filesharing between windows and docker containers, so there's unfortunately a tradeoff.

tracker15• 10 years ago

I run a full Linux VM in HyperV, I install git for windows, which comes with everything I need for the most part.. VS Code and my browsers. From there, I'll do samba sharing from the VM so I can edit in windows, and run in linux.

I've tried docker for windows, and even WSL+Ubuntu+Bash, and it's just not as good. I use conemu, VS Code, and Chrome more than anything else.

rtnyftxx• 10 years ago

Removing the Esc key

you can switch back to default F1... keys

Removing all legacy ports necessitating the use of dongles for everything

Somewhere have to start the transition

Prioritising thinness and weight over everything else

Batterylife is the same

Worst thing on the new rMBPs: No silent trackpad click option m(

I use OS X just as an client.

wezm17• 10 years ago

> Removing the Esc key you can switch back to default F1... keys

Not following... the physical key is gone, replaced by the touch bar?

JohnTHaller2• 10 years ago

The key is gone. The touchbar can be set to always show virtual function keys, though. Not the best option if you touch type, of course.

JohnTHaller2• 10 years ago

Batterylife is the same

Quite a few folks including Consumer Reports would differ with you on that point.

coldtea2• 10 years ago

Those folks had crazy results, in all possibility due to a software bug.

For example when they re-tried with Chrome (instead of Safari) the found exactly the same, and in some cases better, battery life.

STRML• 10 years ago

Somewhere have to start the transition

By removing every single legacy port long before there's anywhere near ubiquitous USB-C? Even USB-C cables themselves are more commonly sold as USB-A to USB-C. I love having usable DisplayPort/Thunderbolt, HDMI, and USB-A on my 2013 rMBP - I never need a dongle. If I went to a 2016, I'd need at least 3, every day.

Prioritising thinness and weight over everything else

Battery life is certainly not the same, and the lack of a 16GB option or a faster processor is a well-missed loss.

phlyingpenguin• 10 years ago

Battery life is certainly not the same, and the lack of a 16GB option or a faster processor is a well-missed loss.

Is it certainly not the same? It seems pretty much the same to me. Lack of a 16GB option? I have a 16 GB TB mac.

The FUD is getting old.

Fnoord4• 10 years ago

you can switch back to default F1... keys

Why not just set Caps Lock to Esc? Works well with Vim and you don't wanna use Caps Lock anyway.

I use Karabiner Elements to set it that way. Karabiner doesn't work with Sierra.

wezm17• 10 years ago

I'm using Caps Lock for Control already...

sudhirj6• 10 years ago

Trying to do exactly the same thing - I still have a maxed out rMBP 2013 that works great, so setting up alternatives now before I'm forced to.

The Intel Skull Canyon NUC is what I'm using, with Elementary running on Virtualbox in Windows 10 (waiting for the Samsung 960 EVO to sell globally before setting up a native install).

The one massive problem for me that keeps me going back to the laptop is that the Mac absolutely nailed keyboard layout by separating the command and control keys. And no other OS is currently able to do so.

I use the basic emacs shortcuts for navigation in all the apps that support them (crtl a,e,n,p), and the command key to issue commands like close tab, save, new tab etc.

This is absolutely impossible to replicate on any other OS (AFAIK). I can map the command key to the control key, but that's about it - it just becomes a new way to hit control. Being able to consistently map and access the command key (as SUPER) simply can't be done.

wezm17• 10 years ago

Yes I suspect the keyboard shortcuts will bother me too. One of the things I like about Elementary is that there are a bunch of things bound to Command out of the box. They also refer to it as ⌘, which has a nice familiarity about it.

sudhirj6• 10 years ago

The underlying Ubuntu still refers to it as the Super key, but elementary uses the clover to symbolise it when it can. Still can't get to Mac like setups, though - apparently in Linux it's the applications that intercept the Super key, so it's never going to be possible to get a consistent experience.

kps• 10 years ago

  > The one massive problem for me that keeps me going back to the laptop
  > is that the Mac absolutely nailed keyboard layout by separating
  > the command and control keys.

The saddest thing is that *nix systems generally did likewise, before the this-is-finally-the-year-of-desktop-Linux crowd arrived to insist on imitating every Windows mistake. No one else was boneheaded enough to screw up the Control key's function of generating control characters.

Traditional X11 programs have (had) fully configurable key bindings in their app-defaults.

Today, KDE (and other Qt) programs at least allow individually changing shortcuts to use Super. Qt has an internal switch to use Super everywhere, but it's hard-coded to the Mac platform. Perhaps eventually there will be enough pressure from OS X refugees to make it a user configurable setting.

unhammer• 10 years ago

GTK has always supported Emacs bindings, configurable with a setting: http://tiborsimko.org/emacs-bindings-in-gtk-apps.html

I use these settings and find them quite handy.

Of course, that doesn't give you new-tab/close-tab/save on M-t/w/s, for that you have to install some Firefox addon etc. – not quite OS-wide consistency :(

webaholic• 10 years ago

Linux

codeka2• 10 years ago

The first option I tried was an i3 based desktop. However whilst I wanted to like tiling window managers I decided it wasn’t for me.

It took me a week or so to get used to i3, but once I did I can't see myself ever going back. I've been using i3 at work and at home for about year now, and every time I get on my (Mac Book) laptop it's a frustrating experience: I feel like I spend more time trying to figure out how to get to the window I want that actually using it...

massysett2• 10 years ago

i3 is great, until you try to do something simple like change the time zone for your desktop clock or add some wallpaper. I switched from Linux to Mac because I was too well acquainted with making symlinks to /usr/share/ somewhere just to change my clock when I traveled, and then figuring out just how few processes I had to restart so it would take effect.

Unfortunately the Linux desktops were actually worse than the barebones window managers like i3: there was some sort of glibc bug that screwed up clock display on GNOME for at least a year. GNOME assumed glibc did it right, which was a reasonable assumption...but an incorrect one, but with i3 I could control this.

Now that I'm on Mac I look back in amazement at the time I spent on Linux learning ultimately useless stuff like why a bug in glibc would mess up my GNOME clock but not an i3 clock.

codeka2• 10 years ago

Yeah, I found I needed to set up some keyboard shortcuts for controlling mute/volume levels, but other than that it's been pretty set-and-forget (timezones not being a problem on a desktop).

The time I spent setting those things up has been more than made up for over the last year as I've spent less time managing windows and more time just doing work.

fusiongyro6• 10 years ago

I'm on a Mac but at this point I could probably take it or leave it. Most of my life is shell + Firefox + Emacs + IntelliJ, and those all run basically the same regardless of OS.

If anything, my plan would be to move more of my life into Emacs so that I'm even less exposed to stupid ideas from my OS/laptop vendor.

I have been using i3 on a netbook for the last two days and I can definitely see how it would be lovely. But then again, Linux has changed a lot since I was into it seriously and I'm sure I will experience pain if I have to do anything substantial to tweak it, like symlink timezone files.

michaelmrose3• 10 years ago

How could you not figure out how to do this? You can very well use gui configuration utilities + i3.

m45t3r4• 10 years ago

i3 is great, until you try to do something simple like change the time zone for your desktop clock or add some wallpaper. I switched from Linux to Mac because I was too well acquainted with making symlinks to /usr/share/ somewhere just to change my clock when I traveled, and then figuring out just how few processes I had to restart so it would take effect.

Systemd makes using i3 so much easier. No more fiddling with consolekit and dbus just to get working external drives (logind solves the problem of local authentication), no more fiddling with symlinks to set time (timedatectl to the rescue).

Unfortunately the Linux desktops were actually worse than the barebones window managers like i3: there was some sort of glibc bug that screwed up clock display on GNOME for at least a year. GNOME assumed glibc did it right, which was a reasonable assumption...but an incorrect one, but with i3 I could control this.

Gnome nowadays use timedatectl AFAIK to set time too. The last time I had a issue with setting date or time in Gnome was pre-systemd days.

While some people may not like systemd, I find tools like timedatectl, localectl and hostnamectl to be quite useful. They work much better than trying to write a shell script or parse something.

holografix• 10 years ago

This. It boggles the mind how much time one can waste solving admin, busy-work type issues on Linux, specially when trying to use a GUI. I mean wifi, Bluetooth, retina class resolution issues, drivers for multiple devices not being available... unless one is using Linux to learn and understand it as a server of some type I can't fathom using it as a replacement for Mac OS.

peatmoss3• 10 years ago

I've had good luck in the past with XFCE (in Xubuntu & OpenBSD) together with XMonad for this use case. Even now, where I don't use any of the panels and whatnot, I will occasionally fire up an XFCE control panel to do whatever it is that needs doing.

rectangleboy3• 10 years ago

Similarly, I've been using AwesomeWM for a few years. Going back to OS X is frustrating to me because it's so languorous and lacking control. On Arch/AwesomeWM, I can instantly flip to the space I want, but Mission Control forces me to walk through each space, insisting on animating the sequence and taking it's time to swap in the applications as I go along.

delinka• 10 years ago

"Mission Control forces me to walk through each space"

Try swiping up instead. That'll give you a list of spaces to choose from. Certainly not as direct as your non-OS X WM but faster than stepping through each one.

SuperPaintMan• 10 years ago

Try rebinding your shortcuts. These made OSX usable for me without resorting to a full blown tiling wm. It's not as fun as xmonad, but it speeds things up. There's a tweak for decreasing the animation time, I believe it's toggleable via in Prefrences.

Cmd-j/k for next/prev space, cmd-h/k for switching windows. Cmd-H/J/K/L for desktops 1-4. I spend most days in vim/screen anyway so it feels natural.

Fnoord4• 10 years ago

but Mission Control forces me to walk through each space, insisting on animating the sequence and taking it's time to swap in the applications as I go along.

Alfred. Alt+Space by default (note you can also remove keybinds of Spotlight to make room for Alfred because I use Cmd+Space for Alfred and Alt+Space for iTerm2 fullscreen, running tmux via tmuxp).

EDIT: As joobus wrote above, I also recommend Amethyst. There's a small learning curve with the keybinds but that's it. Oh, I and I recommend Flux (remember you can temporarily put it off).

deong3• 10 years ago

I'll plug TotalSpaces2 (https://totalspaces.binaryage.com/) here. If you're stuck with OS X for whatever reason, it's well worth the $12 to remove that god-damned animation that eats keystrokes for a full second longer than it takes my hands to start trying to interact with whatever's on the screen I'm switching to.

eeeeeeeeeeeee• 10 years ago

You can set keyboard shortcuts for the specific spaces, specifically control + {1,2,3,4} for each space. In the keyboard section in system preferences, under "shortcuts" tab.

joobus• 10 years ago

Check out Amethyst https://github.com/ianyh/Amethyst for Mac. I use i3 at home, and when I first started using OSX at work it drove me nuts until I found Amethyst.

peatmoss3• 10 years ago

A colleague turned me on to KWM (https://github.com/koekeishiya/kwm). If forced to use a Mac again, I'll probably use that. Amethyst never quite worked right for me, and I found myself restarting Amethyst all the time to un-break something.

Also, KWM has focus follows mouse.

zeveb5• 10 years ago

Ditto for me with StumpWM. Whenever I have to use a machine without a tiling WM I feel like I've taken a trip back in time — back to an unpleasant and archaic part of time. Having to mouse over to windows feels like having to turn a hand-crank to navigate.

bluedino2• 10 years ago

Why did the guy try like ten different distros? After 2-3 you know Linux is going to work for your needs, or it isn't

grhmc3• 10 years ago

Not even a mention of NixOS. May I ask why not?

Edit: I'm appreciating the feedback for "why not?" and am sending it around to people in the community. :)

notheguyouthink4• 10 years ago

(not the OP) Complicated, is my reason. I have a hell of a time making sense of the configuration syntax.

NixOS is one of those "this has to be the future" things for me, but a future i can't currently use, despite wanting it. I hope someday i can make the switch.

Also, Elementary is pretty.. and call me vein, but that is nice. Generally i want the OS to "just work" and pretty gives me the false, emotional impression that it will.

grhmc3• 10 years ago

NixOS is what got me to switch back from Mac to Linux. Being able to copy someone else's config for my MacBookPro and have a pretty damn good, working system was incredible. It really opened my eyes.

Perhaps coming by #nixos on Freenode for an afternoon could get you over the configuration hurdle?

I remember I tried NixOS in a VM on a Thursday and was so smitten that I replaced OSX on Saturday.

Edit: I really appreciate your feedback on this!

zachrose2• 10 years ago

I've been running NixOS on a casual home desktop for about a year now.

I'm in love with some of its big ideas, like per-project dependency files that mostly eliminate my need for VMs and container management tools, and being able to read my OS configuration in a single file.

On the other hand, most of my work these days ends up as a Dockerfile and Docker images anyways, and the benefits of Nix package management could be had with Nix alone (not NixOS).

So at the end of the day I'm running a slightly buggy KDE 5 desktop that I haven't invested the time in fixing. I have a cool package manager, but I'm using it with one global nix environment. Packages are not hard to find once I know what I'm looking for, but discovering those packages and their nix-specific names can be tricky at times.

That said I'm new to desktop Linux, and it's hard to fault NixOS for most of the (relative) difficulties I've encountered.

grhmc3• 10 years ago

Hrmm... if you have a bit of time to describe your bugs, I'd really appreciate it if you filed a bug on the issue tracker (github.com/nixos/nixpkgs.)

secure• 10 years ago

I recently posted this in 3 tweets:

1. Switched my notebook from NixOS back to Debian. NixOS’s advantages are not actually advantages in my practical reality.

2. NixOS being such a niche distro makes it _such a pain_ to use random binaries from not-yet-packaged software, which I do often enough.

3. Also, the Nix packages I use are sometimes a bit broken. That also happens in Debian, but I don’t know enough Nix to fix stuff myself.

Beware: I’m a Debian Developer, so my view is obviously biased. That said, I think the trouble I had is representative for trouble other people might have with NixOS. In total, I used it for about half a year, I think.

vxxzy• 10 years ago

To the point (reality) of Arch's amazing docs; I fully agree with the author. I've never experienced a more comprehensive and up-to-date doc regarding a distro. For this reason, I exclusively use Arch for both desktop and laptop. It is a freeing/empowering experience installing Arch.

prashnts• 10 years ago

Agreed completely. I juggle between OSX and Debian, but Arch's docs are still way better when it comes to configuration and gotchas.

brightball2• 10 years ago

I've got a Dell Developer Edition arriving on Thursday and everything I've been reading about Arch has been seriously considering installing it almost immediately.

rangibaby• 10 years ago

I installed Ubuntu + GNOME on my Mac a couple of years ago as a toy but a have slowly been migrating to it as my main OS.

For what I use it for (light web dev) it is the same or better than OS X.

The only thing stopping me from throwing out OS X completely are the Adobe apps (InDesign in particular) but even with that I have switched to doing most of 90% of my work on paper or in a text file then only complete layouts in OS X.

whyileft4• 10 years ago

The interface is clean and refined.

Can we stop using the term "clean" to describe interfaces? Clean doesn't really mean anything in design and also is a one sided term without an opposite term that is not disparaging. Are all other interfaces that are not clean, dirty? Or unsanitary? Or cluttered? It becomes and absolute term like beautiful or professional which are all really just fluff terms for "good".

wezm17• 10 years ago

Good point. I actually paused and tried to come up with something better when I was proofreading the post but failed to do so. I'll keep it mind for future posts.

daveFNbuck• 10 years ago

How many positive terms have antonyms that aren't considered disparaging? The opposite of clean in design is usually "cluttered".

whyileft4• 10 years ago

An objective antonym to "cluttered" in design is "minimal".

coldtea2• 10 years ago

Clean doesn't really mean anything in design

It actually conveys pretty well that the interface is uncluttered and with a minimal aesthetic, with lots of space, etc.

Are all other interfaces that are not clean, dirty? Or unsanitary? Or cluttered?

Obviously cluttered.

Don't really understand the objection. "Clean" has been part of UI vocabulary, and before that, of aesthetic criticism (in fine arts, architecture, industrial design, etc) for ages. ("Clean lines", etc).

whyileft4• 10 years ago

Since you feel that way, would you mind showing me an example of an interface you do not consider "clean" but is of high quality and excellent usability?

BuckRogers2• 10 years ago

I don't understand the ports complaint. Or maybe it's others who don't understand their ports complaint. The USB-C connector is a physical connector, and Apple's implementation of it supports every useful protocol and function available. DisplayPort, USB3.1 and below, Thunderbolt3, charging and HDMI[0]. Just buy USB-C to whatever cables and you're done with it. USB-A to C transition complete. You don't need adapters for those protocols, they're passive cables.

What do people want? A bunch of ports that not everyone needs or wants to waste space when I could have more multipurpose USB-C ports?

Got USB-A mice and keyboards? Ok, buy a docking station or USB-C to USB-A hub and never think about it again. Got a mouse you like to carry around that isn't wireless? Pickup a small adapter[1] to get you through the transition. The only thing I can think of is ethernet but again, not everyone is going to use that. I do want ethernet, but the USB-C Thunderbolt adapter is fine. It certainly isn't the only laptop going without ethernet today. Again, why waste a port when you can have these reversible universal ports. Miss MagSafe[2]?

Either way, the complaints about the ports don't hold much water once properly researched and the change is inevitable. The reason I passed on the new MBP15 is the 24% reduction in battery capacity from 2015[3].

I needed a new machine so I bought an Acer Chromebook[4] to tide me over until Apple gets a form-fitting large capacity battery[5] in the MBPs. My configuration is $3000 and I'm just not going to spend that sort of money unless it's near-perfect. I may build a PC and remote into it as per the article until the next MBP once again matches its high price but I won't hand them 3K for a battery that's 3/4th the size of the 2015 model (66% capacity for the 13").

[0]https://youtu.be/JirCwapScUs?t=4m18s

[1]http://a.co/4zD6Jt3

[2]http://a.co/4WDmyeT

[3]http://arstechnica.com/apple/2016/12/explaining-the-battery-...

[4]https://www.acer.com/ac/en/CA/content/model/NX.GJEAA.002

[5]http://www.theverge.com/2016/12/20/14024322/macbook-pro-batt...

wishinghand2• 10 years ago

There's still a huge confusion on what cables are legitimate USB 3 Type C cables, or Thunderbolt or some third option that I forget but bricking devices is a possibility with the current mix of options.

BuckRogers2• 10 years ago

I've read a bit about that. In general, just use what comes with the USB-C device you're using. Longterm, quality issues with cabling will be sorted out. I only have one anecdote with my own equipment. I have an external SSD case[0] that came with a USB-A cable and I simply bought a micro-B to USB-C cable[1] and it worked when I tried it without issue.

What most people seem to want other than ethernet is a HDMI cable (or port) and something like this[2] will work direct from a new MBP. When I was going to buy one, I was going to grab one of those just to keep in my bag.

[0]http://a.co/51jXxNK

[1]http://a.co/8FGPfnM

[2]http://a.co/ekyPXpD

alkonaut2• 10 years ago

I understand why a full size RJ45 is a nice thing to omit because it's fat and actually prevents good slim design.

Why you wouldn't just throw in a legacy USB jack though is really odd. You can do anything with an adapter, but I just want to jam that old thumbdrive right in, without adapters or docking stations. I'd certainly give up a type-c port (if there are several) for a legacy usb port just to be able to do that.

orkoden5• 10 years ago

Getting the right adapter to connect a display isn't easy. Many only support limited resolutions and frame rates.

rectangleboy3• 10 years ago

Where's the commentary on FreeBSD? It certainly seems like the right idea (to replace OS X), but I want to know their experience.

wezm17• 10 years ago

It's coming in a follow up post. I should publish it in the next few days.

orkoden5• 10 years ago

Since you're looking for a desktop OS, you should test PC-BSD instead of pure FreeBSD.

twblalock3• 10 years ago

I've used FreeBSD as a desktop OS, briefly. I've also used a number of Linux distributions as desktop OSes since the late 1990s.

The bottom line is that Linux tends to have better hardware support, especially for laptop hardware and power management.

When you run into problems, you'll usually have a much easier time finding vendor support or online community help for a Linux distribution than for FreeBSD.

Under the hood, FreeBSD is a lot simpler than Linux, and a lot of people like it for that reason. But if you want a generic Gnome/KDE/tiling WM/etc. desktop experience, and you don't need any BSD-specific features, I think Linux is the way to go. After all, we are talking about a replacement for MacOS here, which is pretty well integrated with the hardware and does not require a lot of tinkering to get working.

saghm• 10 years ago

The bottom line is that Linux tends to have better hardware support, especially for laptop hardware and power management.

I've been playing around with various BSDs over the past couple of years, and I really want to like any of them enough to keep installed, but this is exactly the issue I've run into with freebsd and it's derivatives. On both my last laptop and the current one, I can get everything working to a fairly reasonable state, but there are minor but annoying hardware issues I just don't have to deal with in Linux.

In my most recent attempt (installing TrueOS on my spare SSD), some apps occasionally crash when I use the Intel video driver, so I'm forced to use scfb, which is a bit slower and doesn't render fonts as nicely. Additionally, the wifi tends to be a bit slower; I average around 4-5 MB (not Mb) down on Linux, but top out around 2 MB on TrueOS. I also have to use Firefox instead of Chromium on FreeBSD and its derivatives, as there always seem to be some bugs in the FreeBSD port; right now, it renders some bizarrely-shaped section of the window in a deep shade of yellow covering part of the URL bar and the top of the page, and signing in to Google to sync my extensions and history hasn't worked for like 10 major versions of Chromium.

I really like DragonflyBSD; it works a bit better for me out of the box than FreeBSD (I don't need to configure to not have the fan running at full blast all the time, and I've strangely had fewer issues with Chromium despite it using the same ports tree as FreeBSD with some custom patches), but I've had issues running any display manager other than Slim, and even that hasn't worked that well for me, as I've never been able to get the numlock and auto-login settings working (yes, I know, autologin is "insecure", but I always have FDE on my machines, so if someone can get past that, I don't think the login screen will stop them). Unfortunately I haven't been able to try it out lately; on my current laptop, BSDs weirdly seem to think that my screen resolution is 1024x768, and the only way I've found to fix that is by setting the GOP in EFI, which is not an option for DragonflyBSD currently. I've spent more time than I'm willing to admit trying to follow the manual EFI installation inductions I found on the DragonflyBSD mailing list; I think I got it to boot once, but apparently the snapshot I was using panicked when trying to load the specific wifi driver during startup (although I found out later it could load it fine after it was fully booted), and I've never gotten it to boot since, so I'm not convinced I wasn't mildly hallucinating or something. Every now and then the Dragonfly Digest will have some post talking about some new small step towards EFI support though, so I'm optimistic that someday soon I'll be able to boot it on my current laptop and discover a whole new set of reasons why I can't use it.

OpenBSD, on the other hand, works pretty great for me out of the box in terms of the GUI and hardware, but I'm not fond of the packaging system; I tend to like to have fairly recent versions of apps, so updates come a bit slowly compared to what I'm used to. Even worse, pkg_add is kind of horrifying to me compared to what you get on FreeBSD-based systems; for reasons I can't comprehend, it seems to query for updates individually for each package you have installed rather than first just getting a list of updated packages and then downloading the updates for the packages (if there are any). I'm unfortunately too spoiled to wait several minutes just to find out that there aren't actually any updates for my system.

I've never been able to get far into setting up NetBSD. A couple of years ago I got it installed but couldn't get Xorg to start up, and I've been unable to get the installer to boot on the most recent release; it prompts me to select the boot device from a number of options, and I've tried all of them, and none of them work. The issue seems to be fixed in the more recent snapshots, but I haven't been able to figure out how to install with FDE (I found the option to encrypt the disk, but it seems to be independent from the installation itself, and neither encrypting the disk before or after the installation seems to result in a bootable encrypted system), and I'm too stubborn to install it without.

vermaden2• 10 years ago

I use FreeBSD as a desktop/laptop/workstation since years and it works great for me. Total control over the system You work on is priceless.

Everything on my hardware works (ThinkPad W530). The WWAN(3g) connection, Wifi, SD Card Reader, Power Management, multi monitor setup, external disk in the Modular Bay ...

Also having ZFS and ZFS Boot Environments on a system is great for updates/changes. You are literally bulletproof.

Some screens: http://vermaden.deviantart.com/art/CorporateBSD-FreeBSD-at-W... http://vermaden.deviantart.com/art/FreeBSD-10-3-Openbox-6356...

Regards, vermaden

h4waii• 10 years ago

How is a non-tangible filesystem making you "literally" bulletproof?

The BSDs are great for very specific tasks, but I find more general use users will prefer Linux with GNU userland. It has wider hardware support and a larger community for resources such as documentation and troubleshooting.

wezm17• 10 years ago

New post about GNOME on FreeBSD is up: http://bitcannon.net/post/gnome3-on-freebsd/

monochromatic• 10 years ago

If a Macbook sshing into your work computer is good enough, why isn't a Windows laptop sshing into your work computer?

wezm17• 10 years ago

Ideally I'd only need a single computer and there are goals like being about view/edit the source code of my OS/apps that Windows doesn't tick. Still as mentioned in other comments I'm getting a Windows 2-in-1 later in the year so can try it then.

dimitar• 10 years ago

ConEmu is nice in my experience, but requires some tweeking. Some people I know use MobaXterm. The main drawback is windows itself, with its disruptive updates lately.

lostboys67• 10 years ago

Well a built-in x Server for connecting to your development systems would be nice - which both OSX and Windows 10 Lack.

And I do mean Server as X Windows switches the common usage of client and sever.

orkoden5• 10 years ago

XQuartz works just fine

zeveb5• 10 years ago

FWIW, whenever I am forced to use Windows I want to hurl my computer through a window after using it for only a few minutes. Doing anything takes click after click after click: it's way too much work. Manual window management is horrible: it's way too much work. Trying to figure out how to make anything work is a chore, as is evaluating which websites are giving correct advice, which are outdated and which are trying to infect me with malware: it's way too much work.

Granted, I feel the exact same way about macOS (with slightly less concern about malware, to be sure).

sbov• 10 years ago

After the refresh of the Macbook Pro I decided to get a desktop replacement laptop.

Whether or not that is acceptable for your use cases depends. For me, I already have a Surface Pro 3 for ultra portable needs. Because of that, I found myself never using my Macbook Pro when I couldn't plug it in. And given how slowly cpus are gaining in performance these days, if plausible, it makes more sense to me to focus on performance over battery & weight.

tankmohit11• 10 years ago

Why no plasma 5.x based distribution?

wezm17• 10 years ago

Last I checked KDE was still working on HiDPI support. Has that changed? What plasma based distribution would you recommend?

gtirloni• 10 years ago

Fedora 25 KDE spin seems to work just fine on my 1440p monitor.

toodlebunions• 10 years ago

Windows 10 with WSL?

I prefer the mac but apple seems to be really working hard to blow it.

wezm17• 10 years ago

From what I've read WSL is kind of amazing but not stable enough yet.

ehutch79• 10 years ago

how can the touchpad be both bigger and smaller than the previous model?

ixacto• 10 years ago

How about advertising for candy crush soda saga/minecraft, right on my start menu. Or the crazy invasive privacy settings on first boot. Destroy windows spying fixes most of this, but it's easier to just uninstall bill's shitty OS and use ubuntu.

Fnoord4• 10 years ago

How about advertising for candy crush soda saga/minecraft, right on my start menu.

Try Classic Shell [1]

[1] http://classicshell.net/

HugoDaniel• 10 years ago

Reads and feels like a sponsored post trying to get the attention of people who are using OSX, Fedora and Arch into elementary OS.

It presents a huge list of OSes but then it just says "After evaluating each I was left with a top 3." Without providing any reason as to why.

To top it there is no QubesOS and no NixOS on the list. This in 2017.

thesmallestcat3• 10 years ago

I think it's just incomplete writing (and it's the guy's blog, so no big deal). Author also doesn't elaborate on why ElementaryOS based on FreeBSD would be ideal, though FreeBSD is certainly rad.

mxuribe2• 10 years ago

The author does note that: > This is the first in a series...

So, perhaps future posts will provide more details, etc.

slantyyz9• 10 years ago

I know the OTA dismissed Windows, but when I switched from OSX to Windows a couple of years ago, I found Scott Hanselman's "Ultimate Developer and Power Users Tool List for Windows" [1] to be indispensable. I've been doing Rails work on Windows since switching, but ymmv depending on what your workflow and toolchain are.

I also found that there were a lot of workarounds/alternatives to software/tools that I thought I would miss on Mac. I've managed to find pretty much everything I needed and/or realized I could easily live without the stuff I couldn't find alternatives for.

Having said all of that, if you have a dependency on something like XCode because you're maintaining an iOS app, you're kinda stuck with a Mac. My experience with Hackintoshes is that even if you buy the right hardware off the latest Hackintosh compatibility list, it's still a bit of a time suck. Alternatively, you could also run OSX in VMWare Workstation/Player, but you don't get graphics acceleration and some OSX software won't run properly in a VM.

[1] http://www.hanselman.com/blog/ScottHanselmans2014UltimateDev...

quantisan• 10 years ago

Is there a similar developer tools list for Windows 10?

slantyyz9• 10 years ago

Most, if not all of the tools on that list work with Windows 10.

Klathmon4• 10 years ago

I gotta say I've tried to do the VM thing. I REALLY tried. But it just isn't something that will work for any significant amount of time.

It would break with any updates, half the time xcode just wouldn't work, and it would sometimes be so slow that you'd need to wait minutes for some fancy animation to run.

And this wasn't even to get around buying a MacBook, we had one, I just wanted to compile and sign a hybrid app for iOS easier than using another physical machine.

Then we also found later that you can't sign an app on OSX while SSH'd into the machine... It just fails with a generic signing error.

So now I have a MacBook with remote-desktop software that's just permanently on in the corner of the room so I can open the GUI once a month or so and re compile and sign the latest version of our app...

pyre• 10 years ago

Then we also found later that you can't sign an app on OSX while SSH'd into the machine... It just fails with a generic signing error.

My guess is that it's missing something that being logged into a desktop session would have (e.g. Keychain access).

ahawkins• 10 years ago

Have you considered CircleCI? They have iOS/OSX toolchain support.

hiram112• 10 years ago

I've also tried to use a Linux VM on Widnows due to issues with Node, paths in various Scala libs, and a dozen other problems.

Cygwin works for 50%, but not for everything.

I've tried Win 10 with Subsystem for Linux (Ubuntu Bash) and unfortunately it is not even close to production ready. Besides, I'm terribly disappointed with Win 10 after having been really happy with Windows 7 since its release.

Running a few Java and Javascript projects in IntelliJ on a VM is an exercise in frustration, even on a very powerful Dell Precision with an I7, SSD, and 32 GB of ram.

It works somewhat, but I'm very happy with my work provided 2015 MB Pro with only 16GB of ram. With Brew, Docker, etc. everything works great. If work hadn't paid for the Mac, I don't think I'd buy a new model due to the price and lack of upgradability, no escape key, ports, etc.

That being said, I've just installed Fedora 25 on a second m2 drive I put into my one Win 10 laptop. So far it is pretty good for dev work. It's not perfect, but it's approaching usability with a small Win VM for Office.

rbanffy2• 10 years ago

<rant>People worry too much about what they use to host text editors and terminal windows...</rant>

khazhou3• 10 years ago

Sure, except that OSX's iterm2+Karabiner is so much better than any terminal on Linux. Awesome full-screen switching (⌘-Enter), easy shortcuts to create subwindows, natural clipboard support, great keyboard compatibility with Emacs (after futzing with keyboard settings and Karabiner mappings). On Ubuntu, all of these have been lacking. Hell, I can't even use the terminal for a single session without accidentally triggering the App Launcher several times.

sfilargi• 10 years ago

If you like iTerm2 you might want to try a tiling window manager like dwm.

m45t3r4• 10 years ago

Awesome full-screen switching (⌘-Enter), easy shortcuts to create subwindows, natural clipboard support, great keyboard compatibility with Emacs (after futzing with keyboard settings and Karabiner mappings).

Except for "natural clipboard support" (dunno what you mean) and "Emacs" (I am a vim user, so I set up vim shortcuts) I have everything you said in my i3 setup, however for every application instead only for terminal.

slowrabbit2• 10 years ago

Terminology, the Enlightenment terminal is better than iterm2+Karabiner imo especially when you consider Karabiner doesn't properly work on Sierra.

Vinnl• 10 years ago

Hell, I can't even use the terminal for a single session without accidentally triggering the App Launcher several times.

Pretty sure that has to do with you being used to different keyboard shortcuts, not with any inherent properties of the terminal app. I'm currently experiencing this the other way around (working on OS X being used to Ubuntu), and struggling with it as well.

tracker15• 10 years ago

I have to absolutely agree on iterm2, I'd love to have the same on Linux... there are a few okay ones, none I've tried as good. On windows, I like ConEmu okay, still not as good, but better than default.

alkonaut2• 10 years ago

Exactly. If you do a lot of work over terminals and ssh anyway, does it really matter?

Most likely (hopefully, if you have a big powerful workstation) you use at least some big fat desktop application such as XCode, Visual Studio, AutoCad, Photoshop, Chrome, Mathematica, Office, ...

Just pick an operating system that works well with your hardware and your big fat desktop applications. All that terminal stuff will likely run anyway.

thinkMOAR• 10 years ago

Hear hear!!

"I’ve also run various Linux distributions and BSDs since around 2000, so am quite familiar with them"

Therefor i consider, it is not even a switch just more dedicated usage. Clickbait blogpost, if you ask me.

tluyben22• 10 years ago

Slightly offtopic; I worry about Window managers... Too much, I admit but it's such a difference in productivity for me. Is there a good i3/ratpoison alternative for Mac OS X or Windows? I think I have tried all that came up with Google and they are far less efficient than both of the above.

tehwalrus2• 10 years ago

I use Amathyst on Mac, having got used to AwesomeWM and then needing to switch. I believe its (unfamiliar to me) key bindings are based on i3.

https://github.com/ianyh/Amethyst

nkohari2• 10 years ago

Honestly, if Linux's font rendering looked as good as OS X, I would have already switched. I know it might sound arbitrary, but aesthetics matter to me, and if I'm going to stare at it for 12 hours a day it should look nice. :)

rbanffy2• 10 years ago

I spend most of the time in terminals and text editors and, quite frankly, the only things favoring the Mac are the high-dpi built-in screen and the touchpad gestures. The only thing favoring Linux is the select-middle-click thing. Everything else is more or less the same.

frik• 10 years ago

Or the other way:

Finding an Alternative to Windows 10

That non-optional phone-home, non-optional updates, ads on startmenu, little QA (buggy like never before) - Windows up to Win7 was so nice, since Nadella everything went downhill, so sad, but true. Good that Win7 is supported until 2020, and promising alternatives are around the corner with Google Android/Fuchsia, macOS, Linux - although, the transition will be painful and but necasserry. It's a little late and all trust is gone, but maybe they fire the CEO and make a u-turn.

Lio• 10 years ago

I see the downvotes for the parent post but no rebuttals to the phone home/privacy issues in Windows 10.

I ask this as someone who hasn't really used Windows for 10+ years, could someone who knows please discuss the state of privacy in Windows 10?

Is this a non-issue because you can turn off all the monitoring? How would one go about that?

Is it a non-issue because Windows 10 doesn't send private information back to Microsoft? What does it send back?

RossBencina• 10 years ago

I use Windows 10 on my main dev box. I somewhat agree with the parent. The Windows 10 situation has been enough to push me to start experimenting with Linux.

The phone-home and forced-update-reboot are the big problems for me:

The phone-home behavior of Windows 10 is a repellent. Turning it all off is non-trivial. The easily accessible privacy settings don't disable everything. There are various lists of firewall rules, scripts, policy settings etc. I can't recommend a specific source, but I think there are some well-maintained lists/scripts on github. To be honest, I'm not sure whether anyone knows exactly what goes back to Microsoft (not being tin-foil hat about it, I just don't think it's well documented).

The no-choice-auto-update-reboot thing is also terrible (I've lost data on more than one occasion from unsaved files when Windows forces a reboot while I'm afk). This can be disabled with a lot of work and research. Some people say manual updates will re-enable it. Note that I really do want to keep my machine up to date, but ideally I don't want to have to reboot, and when I do have to reboot I want to choose exactly when. I didn't buy a UPS so my computer could reboot randomly by itself.

As for "ads on startmenu, little QA (buggy like never before)":

Running Windows 10 Pro I have not seen any advertising.

The system runs fine for me. Arguably it runs with lower memory usage than Win 7. I agree that Win 7 is very stable, and that's been my experience with Win 10 too. That said, I only started using Win10 in mid 2016, so perhaps earlier builds were worse.

Overall I would have been happy to stay with Win 7. So far I've found Linux GUI to be less polished, but maybe I'll get used to it.

parmgrewal• 10 years ago

For everyday use there is Android based RemixOS worth checking out, it looks polished but is still in its infancy. [1] http://www.jide.com/remixos

z1mm32m4n2• 10 years ago

Many articles about wanting to leave the macOS ecosystem mention Sketch. Sketch is macOS only (and will be for the forseeable future), so it's understandable that people want to consider the implications of switching away from it.

Recently, however, I stumbled upon Figma, a web-based, real-time collaborative interface design app (i.e., a competitor of Sketch). After convincing my group to experiment with it for a school project, I was pleasantly surprised.

- It's web based, so it works on Linux.

- It imports .sketch files

- It's real-time (you can see everyone's cursor and selection). This was great, because it meant we didn't have to walk through the snow to get to campus to have a discussion about tweaking a few elements.

I understand that some people may still need access to Sketch to work with people on their team or at their company. But for me, I'm officially striking Sketch off the list of software that's tying me down to macOS.

ourcat3• 10 years ago

I've never really understood why people use Sketch. I recently worked on a project where I had asked for some basic vanilla templates of a mobile site from the designers and was sent a huge Sketch file. It was utterly useless and I had to code everything by hand myself, since the 'designers' very clearly had zero clue about HTML+CSS or any notion of responsiveness, thanks to apps like Sketch which teach nothing of the knowledge required to be a useful part of anyone's app/site building process.

dorian-graph• 10 years ago

To clarify, you're basing your whole not understanding why people use Sketch based just on your experience that you mentioned?

z1mm32m4n2• 10 years ago

I'd be curious to hear what you consider to be an alternative workflow or tool.

Any tool can be used incorrectly in bad hands. The problem of choosing to work with talented and competent designers is largely unrelated from the choice of tool.

kagamine• 10 years ago

If you asked for templates you should have gotten templates, not mockups and not wireframes and not a demo. In my experience there is a common misunderstanding between designers, project managers and coders about what word or phrase is used to describe those very different things. And instead of learning what they are and being specific I have been told the equivalent of "just do your thing" ie, stop bothering me. Then people complain "this isn't what I asked for" and I have to explain the whole thing again while they don't bother to listen. Sound familiar?

nkohari2• 10 years ago

My IDE didn't teach me that much about software engineering either.

kaolti• 10 years ago

"thanks to apps like Sketch which teach nothing of the knowledge required to be a useful part of anyone's app/site building process." - I don't see how Sketch is to blame for designers sending you the wrong files.

therealmarv2• 10 years ago

You should tell your Sketch designer about https://zeplin.io/ or upload your sketch design there. But I agree to some other comments... I think you and your designer do not speak the same language ;)

untog3• 10 years ago

I think the problem here is that you asked for the wrong thing.

Of course you had to code everything by hand yourself - you didn't ask for code, you asked for design templates.

ourcat3• 10 years ago

just to clarify: I expected HTML (etc.) files. We'd already been through the whole wireframing process.

I also requested a responsive design.

What I got was as useful as a PDF.

Sorry, just kvetching on Sketching.

I just felt it was a waste of time that some basic coding skills could have solved. ;)

jasim2• 10 years ago

I'm a programmer like you and used to believe in the idea that you should design in the medium which is HTML and CSS, and not in a tool like Photoshop or Sketch. But I've completely reversed my stance after working with a lot of designers who create beautiful sites that goes very well with the grain of the web.

The reason is direct manipulation. You're not thinking in terms of the DOM's static flow when trying to create a design. Instead you want a medium where you can quickly transfer the idea in your head to a tangible form and try out different layouts, typography, colors, and visuals.

But there still exist the problem of converting that design into code, and that is a wasteful exercise. You might have found Protoship UIPad, a tool I'm developing (in early alpha), useful there. It can convert Sketch designs into code - HTML/CSS and even React. Sketch has been incredible for that sort of stuff. It is a vector design tool and its design elements are fully expressible through CSS and SVG, unlike say Photoshop which is a raster tool.

Lalabadie• 10 years ago

[...] thanks to apps like Sketch which teach nothing of the knowledge required to be a useful part of anyone's app/site building process.

This and the massive misunderstanding – where two parties agree to "templates", and one delivers mockups to the other who expects coded pages – tells me that Sketch is a subject in the story, but it isn't at fault.

Sketch users can be very knowledgeable designers and very good communicators. Sketch itself doesn't teach design, and it doesn't solve communication issues either.

eriknstr• 10 years ago

Figma seems pretty neat. Does anyone know of something similar but open source?

slantyyz9• 10 years ago

Affinity Designer is now cross platform and is starting to provide some of the functionality of Sketch. I don't think can handle Sketch files yet, but it's definitely an up and coming design tool.

pjmlp• 10 years ago

Funny how we keep seeing these post from developers that aren't Mac OS/iDevice developers.

NeXT's adoption of UNIX was just a way to fulfill expectations of the newly created workstation market.

No serious NeXT application was a pure UNIX one, just like on Mac OS X.

I never saw a NeXT full of xterms and vi, rather with applications that took full advantage of the desktop frameworks, including the devtools.

rcarmo3• 10 years ago

I hacked about in a NeXT in a research institution and spent a long while getting X, NFS, etc. to work "right" (which it never quite did), but yeah, you're right - except for macOS/iOS devs, Mac-using developers that target web or server-side are the ones actively looking for alternatives, because the tooling and targets are just easier to use on Linux these days...

facepalm• 10 years ago

I am impressed by how perfectionist some people can be. All I want from a desktop is little icons for launching programs. One of those icons should launch a command shell. That's it.

I don't have the nerve to learn all the other features anyway...

mxuribe2• 10 years ago

Having to jump between myriad OS/platforms within any given day (windows for work, linux for work and play, windows for spouse's laptop, etc.), I have learned to "let it all go", and keep to minimal requirements...But I could never vocalize it as good as you just did!

All I want from a desktop is little icons for launching programs. One of those icons should launch a command shell. That's it.

Kudos!

slowrabbit2• 10 years ago

@wezm You should checkout Enlightenment windows manager over Arch Linux I think it'll be right up your alley based on your preferences https://www.enlightenment.org/

wezm17• 10 years ago

I tried it on my Arch install. I know it's highly themeable but the default theme was not at all minimal and I wasn't a fan.

INTPenis• 10 years ago

I had the same prejudice about Fedora and RedHat back when I was a debian fanboy. But if you look at what Redhat is doing with their money and their company then you soon realize that Redhat Inc. not only IS a large part of the Linux community, but also supports the open source movement in many ways.

So Fedora has been my main distro of choice for a couple years now. I still hesitate to order RHEL licenses at work, unless the client specifically has a good argument for choosing RHEL I tend to lean them towards CentOS.

And I can speak from 12 years of professional sysadmin experience in BSD and Linux that yum or dnf is a very stable package manager.

I've had more issues on Debian 6,7,8 than I've ever had on CentOS or Fedora.

kqr• 10 years ago

I agree. My impression of RHEL and its likes is that they are "slow and outdated", but the more actual research I do, the more I feel like using them for their stability and security.

leojackson• 10 years ago

RHEL is the Warren Buffett of Linux: slow, methodical, stable, and in it for the long haul.

ams6110• 10 years ago

Agree as well. And I'm not sure about the "outdated" characterization. I find the most hardware driver support with RHEL. If a vendor is going to support Linux at all, they almost always start with RHEL and its derivatives.

RHEL is the Linux distro for production systems that you want to just run without any tinkering or surprises.

loukrazy• 10 years ago

It seems to take a few releases longer for new features to move from Fedora to RHEL, but RHEL 7 is pretty current. That stability is great though, you can stay on one version of RHEL for a very long time and still get patch support, especially since major upgrades are so traumatic on most Linux distributions (RHEL included)

brightball2• 10 years ago

There's a part of me that really wants to use RHEL on the desktop to both support the company and to encourage them to put more of an emphasis on it. I'd love to see Dell Developer Edition with RedHat out there.

To me, that just seems like a long term win.

cgh• 10 years ago

Yep, +1 for Fedora 25. The recent Ars review sums it up pretty well: probably the best Linux desktop ever.

fbnlsr• 10 years ago

I've been using Xubuntu on my Macbook Air in a VM and it feels amazing. It gets the job done and I really like the UI.

elementaryos is perfect for a MacOS user but it feels like it's not ready yet for day to day use.

hartator• 10 years ago

Anyone knows an alliterative to Alfred in Windows or Linux?

I really really like the ability to search apps with a few keystrokes and I really really like to be able to search clipboard history with another few keystrokes.

Nothing I've found are doing both or one as good as Alfred.

weavie• 10 years ago

Not sure about searching clipboard history, but just about every Linux window manager has a decent application launcher that can be easily accessed with the keyboard.

I haven't tried it, but Albert may be worth a look : https://github.com/ManuelSchneid3r/albert

rcarmo3• 10 years ago

I use Kupfer on Openbox and LXDE, and it does a lot of what I need (it's more similar to Quicksilver than to Alfred).

pacifika• 10 years ago

Farr (http://www.donationcoder.com/Software/Mouser/findrun/index.h...) and ArsClip (http://www.joejoesoft.com/vcms/97/)

zeveb5• 10 years ago

I really really like the ability to search apps with a few keystrokes

GNOME does this out of the box. It's possible to add this to e.g. StumpWM, i3 or AwesomeWM too.

Similar functionality is available in emacs with Helm: search through all callable functions by just typing a few characters.

I really really like to be able to search clipboard history with another few keystrokes

Emacs does this, with yank-pop (M-y); Helm turns this into helm-show-kill-ring, which offers extremely convenient searchability.

I really can't recommend emacs highly enough: it's everything one could want in an operating environment.

keithpeter• 10 years ago

dmenu from suckless-tools springs to mind as well, but, as you say the 'hit-windows-key-type-part-of-name-or-function' facility is a native part of Gnome Shell (default DE with Fedora). Whisker-menu for XFCE4 can be bound to windows key (Mod4). In KDE 4.14, you can bind a chord such as Windows-key-space or some other letter to bring up the application launcher.

slantyyz9• 10 years ago

On Windows, it's probably a combination of multiple tools. Some examples:

* For searching and browsing, Listary Pro is pretty good.

* For text expansion, AutoHotKey

* Automating, maybe AutoHotKey again.

* Clipboard stuff - Ditto, Clip X

As I mentioned in another post, Scott Hanselman's giant developer tools list is particularly useful:

http://www.hanselman.com/blog/ScottHanselmans2014UltimateDev...

orkoden5• 10 years ago

ac’tivAid is a superb script collection for AutoHotKey.

http://www.ghacks.net/2014/09/24/activaid-is-a-useful-autoho...

https://www.heise.de/download/product/activaid-24593

meehow• 10 years ago

Author mentioned separately Ubuntu add Gnome, but what about Ubuntu Gnome [1]? I switched from Mac OS X to Ubuntu Gnome after release of latest Apple's MacBook "shame" Pro. It took few weeks to find new dev tools, but today I can't complain. Linux is much more mature nowadays than it was ~10 years, ago when I switched to Mac. I'm working more with terminal now and not using Git GUI anymore, but as long as you are not XCode coder, everything is similar, for half of the price.

[1] http://ubuntugnome.org/

bane• 10 years ago

I've used a Mac for work for the past 5 years, I use Windows PCs at home but most of my computing devices are Android.

I usually find if I need something specific for production use, it's in some Linux distro, and I'll either SSH into one for work, or fire up a VM with that distro in it and SSH into it. The best dev environment I've been able to conjure up is using WinSCP to act as a bridge to whatever system I'm connecting to, and just using a local great text editor in Windows (Sublime Text, etc.). When you save, WinSCP just seamlessly saves it back to the server.

I'll keep a Putty instance permanently ssh'd in and flip to that for console stuff.

On OSX I've setup a network mount to the same linux machine/VM with SSHFS and edit with pretty much the same text editors and use iterm2 that's permanently ssh'd into the same machine/VM so the experience is virtually identical (with the exception that SSFHS can be a bit fragile).

Most of the other apps I choose are cross platform because I work on a similarly mixed OS team. I think every team should be mixed OS because it forces the teams to choose cross platform tools instead of locking themselves into platform specific choices.

I don't dev from my Android devices, but I do push stuff to them frequently, so they all have Servers Ultimate on them and I'll frequently setup ftp servers on them to move files or ssh servers so I can remote in and do some simple maintenance without have to do it on a small screen or fidget with an on screen keyboard.

If you aren't doing something really specialized on OS X, I'm not sure I understand what the crisis is except for people building too much of their identity into what device they're carrying around.

Apple's hardware is the best, by far, but at $3k a pop, I can buy 4 or 5 perfectly fine and similarly specc'd Windows Laptops, or 6 or 7 better specc'd desktops. If one breaks, just throw it away and buy whatever the newer one is and keep your hardware fresh.

If most of what you're doing is looking at a console, or editing in a text editor, it only takes an hour to get a new machine up and functional again anyways.

So much drama.

giancarlostoro• 10 years ago

I'm currently running the latest release of ElementaryOS which runs off Ubuntu 16.04 it is great. It is very minimalist, and the desktop environment is really well done. Before ElementaryOS I was using ParrotSec OS which is on par with your typical pentesting / hacking type of distros but it comes with the latest and greatest of programming language tools. They're based off of Debian with their own modifications to the kernel to harden it, and out of the box you get TOR features that I never really used, but I'm sure that may interest some. Overall it was a great Distro my only gripe was not being able to properly install and use Steam on it. ElementaryOS has a nice Desktop Environment I appreciate but it either installs or doesn't. Fortunately this laptop took ElementaryOS, where in the past I have had issues installing it. I use ElementaryOS for everything from Python back-end RESTful service development to .NET Core application development with Rider. I'm also considering using SublimeText to save on startup time, although "Scratch" isn't too bad a text editor, it suffers poor naming (try to google for Scratch and you'll find the language before you do the text editor itself).

nnain3• 10 years ago

If you're an iOS/Mac developer, there's no alternative.

If you want an alternative for graphics work (or other development), try Windows.

For other web development, in general, you'll be able to work well with Linux.

Keeping work on different machines quickly starts to become unmanageable, that's why MacOS still leads. It gives the best of most options on the best hardware.

P.S. - I tried ElementaryOS last month, for couple of hours and didn't find it an alternative in any way. It's UI is quite clunky (of course, since they are trying to copy Macs UX, but don't have the finesse). The eye candy can't make it a Mac alternative in any way; it's still Ubuntu under the hood, and less intuitive than Ubuntu.

applecore• 10 years ago

Best hardware, really?

optimuspaul2• 10 years ago

best I've used (which isn't saying much)... but really depends on what you mean by best. Not necessarily the best performing specs on the market, but pretty good from off the shelf.

untog3• 10 years ago

IMO, the Apple unibody laptop design is still the best out there. And the (non-latest) keyboard and trackpad have no comparison in Windows laptops.

ldev• 10 years ago

Not only teraflops and ram size defines "best"; MBP's touchpad is the only touchpad on any laptop that I can work with without pluging in a mouse after a minute. Screen is good. General feeling of quality is just the best.

Humdeee• 10 years ago

Suggest something else more superior?

alphonsegaston• 10 years ago

The problem I'm finding with graphics work is that I'm more and more relying on scripted tasks to complete things efficiently or get around deficits in Adobe's software. I'd move to Windows, but I can't imagine giving up how easy a Unix-like environment makes things.

nnain3• 10 years ago

You might have heard by now that Windows 10 now comes with a full Ubuntu-based Bash shell that can run Linux software. Guess that covers your use case well!

generic_user• 10 years ago

There are multiple projects that give you a Linux user land on windows. Including bash, csh, perl, python, gcc and full toolchain. Msys2 project provides that. There are also alternative terminals.

A smarter way is to use python for automation. There are lots of graphics libraries and bindings to do what ever you want.

mastermachetier• 10 years ago

The problem I with linux is that there is no good laptop running linux well or anywhere near as good as windows or osx. If I could run osx on alternatives to the macbooks I would be happy best of all worlds.

nnain3• 10 years ago

I see this complaint often here, but I don't get it. Is some Linux driver not working? You can't use the mic, Wi-Fi etc? Linux just works fine on my machine, and also for a large user-base.

rileymat2• 10 years ago

Note that I don’t currently consider Windows a viable alternative. For the work that I do (Rails) and tools I use something *nix based is the best choice for me.

For a long time, it has been my workflow to almost never develop on the host machine. I find Virtual Machines to be preferable for a lot of reasons. Am I unusual in this regard?

ristic• 10 years ago

I've recently adopted a similar approach. I have a virtual machine running the same OS and version as the target production machine. I'm using QEMU and connecting to it via ssh.

drvdevd2• 10 years ago

Perhaps you are but you shouldn't be. When I was still using a Mac, this was exactly what I did. The #1 benefit IMO, is being able to create a filesystem and OS isolation/independence layer that let's you easily switch host OSes without too much hassle or thought. One can easily switch from Linux to Windows to MacOS or even migrate their work to the cloud without too much effort.

sbuk• 10 years ago

I'd Love to see someone take on GNUStep are run with it. The constant reinvention of the wheel with FOSS desktops and Window Managers is mind boggling. Too much 'not invented here' syndrome? Sadly the task is way beyond my capabilities. Still one of the best ever... Of course, YMMV!

wezm17• 10 years ago

Yeah it's a shame http://etoileos.com/ didn't get more momentum.

fithisux• 10 years ago

It is apitty FOSS project like GNU-Darwin / PureDarwin never took off and people use Hackintosh. But Apple is here to blame. They could even support the users by charging some fee.

orkoden5• 10 years ago

Using only Darwin instead of Linux or FreeBSD was never really attractive. Contributing upstream is difficult to impossible, since Apple was never set up to take your contributions. The different Darwin distributions never really developed a direction or a unique feature set.

The only feature that sets Darwin apart from FreeBSD is launchd instead of init. The rest is mostly downsides like a weird file system. You can get dtrace on many other OSs today too.

KangooDude• 10 years ago

His only whines are about hardware that is too thin/light and does not have legacy ports and OS that won't work on some junk and don't let you publish hacks in some rarely visited moderated store (just like windows, or linux)

And instead of ordering dirty cheap hackintosh with up to 4 CPU Xeons with all memory he can get and compatible wifi, that will be no thin and no light and he can run familiar terminal window to remote build his diamond code while listening to sound of coolers,

He starting to search OS with better GUI than OSX (Elementary it is) and dreaming about hardware you can run FreeBSD (like PS/2 mouse and glorious VESA 2.0 12801024?)

I expect next article will be a tour to the wonderful world of 15" 1366768 Celeron laptops that let you upgrade memory (up to 8Gb!), spacious replaceable 4200 hard drive and have USB 2.0 ports and VGA in addition to HDMI 1.4. People will know in detail how good terminal window run there on FreeBSD with Elementary OS theme (without 2D acceleration of course).

He makes alot of sense, that mate.

andyhoang• 10 years ago

Hi guys, can you suggest me any laptop + os that have trackpad work like apple's (multi guesture, smooth scrolling) I love to leave them but, their trackpad... are so good. I can use *nix quite ok, so os isn't a problem for my dev station.

LukasMathis• 10 years ago

I'm kind of in the same boat, and I'm slowly, gradually, replacing my Macs with both Windows and Linux devices. As somebody with zero investment in earlier Windows versions, I quite loved Windows 8, and found Windows 10 to be a step back from that, but still a good alternative to the Mac. There are also various different Linux systems that make great desktop operating systems.

Reading the linked article, I have some observations, particularly about the requirements Wesley lists:

One tool for each job.

This strikes me as a somewhat peculiar requirement. The Mac certainly doesn't work that way, particularly since OS X, and as long as the different tools available aren't hurting you, their availability won't be much of a problem.

A sensible/minimal selection of pre-installed applications.

To me, a more useful requirement would be "no bloatware". Linux distros in particular often come with a ton of pre-installed applications, but they are generally good applications, and having them does not cause any harm.

If you buy a Windows computer, on the other hand, you'll likely find its installed Windows version to be borderline unusable due to all of the preinstalled manure.

Simple, easy to use/understand interface

As somebody who has used Macs since the early 90s, I'd argue that ever since Mac OS X, the Mac hasn't really offered that. It's still ahead of most Windows versions (excluding perhaps Windows 8, but clearly including Windows 10, which sadly has reintroduced much of the clutter from earlier Windows versions), but many Linux distros are now much cleaner and simpler than OS X (both Elementary and Pixel come to mind as examples of this).

So to some degrees, Wesley is requiring these operating systems to offer things that the Mac hasn't truly offered since the late 90s. This is not entirely unfair; as a Mac user, he's used to the Mac's oddities and flaws, and so it is perhaps useful to require the system he's switching to to be better than Mac OS in some respects.

Still, I think it's fair to point out that the Mac itself probably couldn't easily fulfill all of these requirements.

blainsmith• 10 years ago

I've been very happy with https://apricityos.com running Cinnamon desktop.

stuffaandthings• 10 years ago

I use Albert on my Arch Linux installation as an alternative to Alfred. Not quite as good, but it works and is familiar (also extensible).

If you're looking for clipboard management, there are tons of linux solutions for that, see: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/list_of_applications#Cl...

As for an alternative to Karabiner, I use Xmonad and manage my keymapping through the use of Xmodmap (https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/xmodmap)

Finding an Alternative to Mac OS X

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