From Linux to OSX - 1 Year Later

http://batsov.com/articles/2012/09/09/from-linux-to-osx-1-year-later/

by bozhidar • 14 years ago

62 129 14 years ago

Create• 14 years ago

perhaps macports is better, but AAPL will f* you over with time, after the honeymoon. And this applies to OSX updates too, even if you fork over the money

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4433082

back to linux. (it has ruby too.)

ghshephard2• 14 years ago

The App Store is where you send your not-so-sophisticated computer relative to. In theory, applications there, are less likely to hose your operating system.

In practice - lots of stuff that you have to get off of the App Store such as LittleSnitch, Arq, SuperDuper, QuickSilver, Carbon Copy Cloner - basically, anything that needs to plumb into the internals of the OS, or break outside the sandbox, will have to be purchased from a third party - and run the (greater) risk, of course, of doing damage to your OS.

jsolson4• 14 years ago

Interesting. I actually love the Command key. I see it as a Control key for GUI operations, leaving my actual Control key free for doing things in my Terminal. This is actually a big sticking point when it comes to trying to work on Linux workstations like we have at work -- GUI and console stuff end up munged under the same modifier key (and this is harder to change than you'd think, even with a lot of xmodmap work).

That said, I've also ditched my Caps Lock key entirely and turned it into a second Control key. Control-A has never seemed difficult to me, at least with this arrangement, but I'm not a home row typist (or an Emacs user -- I just use the Emacs bindings in text boxes and terminals).

Otherwise this more or less mirrors my experience, although mine was ~7 years ago (so the Linux desktop environment was even less mature at the time). I haven't found a need to shop around for as many alternative applications. In particular, you can have Terminal.app when you pry it from my cold dead hands.

pooriaazimi7• 14 years ago

I never forget that time when I was ssh-ed on some machine and was doing something very urgent, and wanted to copy some text from the terminal to text editor (it was an Ubuntu machine) and accidentally pressed control-c and killed the session. I could've killed someone.

IMO, the Command key is one of the best features of a Mac.

hollerith5• 14 years ago

Another vote for "the Command key" (specifically, a modifier key distinct from the Control key on which to put the "more modern" shortcuts like copy, paste, kill window).

But then I was on text-mode Linux (and before that, text-mode Unix) for many years. I would understand if someone used to Windows did not like it.

jeltz2• 14 years ago

I agree with your general point. I dislike most things about mac but their extra keys do make sense.

But control-c should not kill your session, only the currently running process. Control-d is what kills sessions. If you have no current foreground process the shell just starts a new input line. Still could be real bad obviously if a process is killed.

emehrkay• 14 years ago

I watch co-workers struggle all day with their windows-based terminals logged into Linux machines. Copy is something like shift+insert or they have to go to edit > copy. So painful

chimeracoder13• 14 years ago

I have the opposite problem. There's one command - I think it's probably <C-w> (split screens in Vim) that I always hit every time I'm using a Mac, and it inevitably closes my entire terminal.

The nice thing about Linux is that I can at least remap these keybindings. On OS X, it's literally impossible to do a perfect remapping of the keys (trust me. I've tried.)

Hopefully I've saved recently (or run the process inside GNU screen....).

1SaltwaterC2• 14 years ago

Thing is that you can't blame the keyboard for a PEBCAK. We all encounter that "never forget" moments at some point. Having a Command key is a moot point as the whole purpose of power user tools is this: having the power, and the consequences, at the finger tips. You know: "power is nothing without control", "with great power comes great responsibility", etc - stuff like this.

Don't get me wrong, I am not against specific boundaries for keeping people from doing potentially unwanted actions. But at some point, all the technical solutions to human errors are like sudo.

jedbrown• 14 years ago

I use Super for GUI stuff on Linux (via xmonad, but any window manager will do). X11 also supports the Hyper modifier if you need another. I never found it easy to use the Option key, which seems to be the de facto standard substitute for Meta on Apple keyboards.

jsolson4• 14 years ago

Yeah, I've managed to get a Linux box to recognize the Command key as super when I plug in an Apple keyboard. Some apps seems to look for actual scancodes, though, rather than for what X11 tells them the mappings should be.

My experience was pretty hit or miss, and mostly I ended up with an mismash of semi-random keybindings which is sort of the opposite of what I was shooting for. On the Mac developers have done a remarkably good job of adhering to a consistent set of shortcuts (down to things like Command-, for preferences).

The other issue is that most apps don't make it straightforward to bulk re-assign keybindings from Control to Super, and last I checked it was impossible to turn off menu accelerators for Gtk+ based apps (e.g., Alt+F to bring up the file menu in Firefox).

Most of the time what I want is to map Command->Super and Option->Meta, and have Super replace Control in all GUI app keyboard shortcuts leaving Control available for command-line apps, in general.

binarycrusader• 14 years ago

  You need to install a giant lame IDE just to get
  a bunch of command line development tools?

That hasn't been true since earlier this year. If you login to developer.apple.com, you can download the "Command Line Tools for XCode" from here:

  https://developer.apple.com/downloads/index.action

No "lame" IDE required. But you might think that IDE is not so lame the first time you use Instruments...

visionscaper2• 14 years ago

To add to that: I think XCode is the most powerfull IDE I've ever used when it comes to coding c/c++/objective-c.

dagw• 14 years ago

I have a macbook air and have some projects where I write cross platform C and C++ libraries (Linux/OS X/Windows via mingw), currently using Makefiles and a text editor. I use and like IDEs when programming python, C++ on Windows and javascript and certainly wouldn't mind a powerful C IDE. Can XCode help in this case or do you have to basically be writing Mac/iOS apps to access that power? Also can XCode work nicely with Makefiles or do I have to buy into a special platform specific build system (again a problem with the whole cross platform thing)?

fsniper10• 14 years ago

I'm a hardcore Linux user, a sysadmin, developer of some kinds and an humble desktop user. For some IOS projects I have to use an hackintosh.

The experience is - in one word - disgusting. It lacks common denominator keyboard shortcuts and keyboard bindings. It lacks sane default simple applications like a decent terminal emulator. ( Yes Windows lacks is too). unavailability of a great package manager - all of us knows it, homebrew or macports doesn't cut it - makes me vomit. Unfamiliar key bindings makes me think twice or thrice before typing , "Which key should I use for this? Apple or Option? How can I skip to end of line? Why I'm at end of file now?" Also some desktop choices are not ok for my liking; switching to full height windows instead of full screen windows with the maximize button? Why on earth I would opt-in for loosing screen real estate? So many details.

Most of the time I can't help myself to stop restarting into Linux. I get slower and distracted. I have to install Mozilla Stack (Thunderbird and Firefox).

This may be only me but, I hate OsX. And I'm not starting on the "wanna be walled garden-ness."

seiji3• 14 years ago

decent terminal emulator. -- lie.

makes me vomit. -- visit your local physician.

Unfamiliar key bindings -- "Unfamiliar" by definition = "I don't know it" which isn't the OS's problem. You've gotta admit Command-C for copy being different than Control-C is brilliant.

switching to full height windows -- it's not a maximize button, it's an "optimal size" button. If your content is 500px wide, you don't need a 1000px wide window full of white space.

may be only me -- I'm pretty sure it is (check their stock).

fsniper10• 14 years ago

Terminal as a decent terminal emulator? I believe you are referring to iTerm2 but that's not the default.

unfamiliar key bindings, look for any other keyboard except OsX ones and show me the apple or the option or the command keys then I will back.

For the "Optimal Size button", the underlying operation does not account for the contents width, it only accounts for the desktop height.

The world is not running on OsX or Apple hardware. They have a decent userbase but not the whole computer users are using one.

randall• 14 years ago

http://www.paulgraham.com/disagree.html

You're so close! Just put some respect in this and it'd be one of the best refutations i've seen on HN in ages.

ricardobeat4• 14 years ago

I'm curious on the shortcomings of Homebrew (other than like-to-have packages) + app store. And the Terminal, you can have zsh/fish if you want or use iTerm2 for crazy features.

On shortcuts: you're just used to another way, it's not the system's fault. It's possible to use both Windows and OSX without much difficulty after getting used to it.

At least 50% of the joy of using a mac is due to the hardware and integration.

jeltz2• 14 years ago

From my personal experience using homebrew it is two things.

1) The lack of packages combined with lack of quality of the packages (e.g. they do not build or have a poor defaults).

2) That homebrew installs stuff under /usr/local as owned by your user. That does not meet the expectations of UNIX applications and seems to me like it could be unsafe due to messing with expectations. Stuff under /usr/local/bin is supposed to be owned by root:root.

The good part of homebrew is that writing homebrew scripts seems easier than writing dpkg or rpm scripts.

sjwright2• 14 years ago

Sorry fsniper, but most of your criticisms are either factually wrong and/or based in ignorance.

Not sure what you mean by common denominator shortcuts, but if you mean things like Quit/Cut/Paste/Print/Save/New/Undo then you're dead wrong. Exists, and largely unchanged for nearly 30 years. And they're highly consistent. If it's a menu command, it's the command key.

Mac OS X does not lack a decent terminal emulator. You might have missed it, the program is called Terminal.

You might be right about the package managers, but many people would disagree with you.

There is no maximize button.

You installed Firefox and Thunderbird, so what's the problem? Are you trolling now?

fsniper10• 14 years ago

If you are thinking of only OsX world, yeah they have never changed for the last 30 or more years, but the world is not only osx. I'm not a single desktop user, I occasionally switch between boxes and only OsX makes my motor memory to fail.

I'm sorry but I can't think of Terminal as a decent Terminal emulator.

Not having a maximize button invalidates my criticism but brings another one of unfamiliar titlebar choices.

I'm not trolling, I'm speaking of defaults.

DanBC4• 14 years ago

Shift clicking the green bobble maximises (really maximises, apart from the unremovable Menu bar) the window.

Not allowing the user to add this functionality (even if it's a hidden option in a config file somewhere) is sub optimal in my opinion.

There are some great things about OSX but there are a few small but frustrating things too.

fsniper10• 14 years ago

Thank you. This is a really helpful comment.

CountSessine• 14 years ago

The experience is - in one word - disgusting

Really?

It lacks common denominator keyboard shortcuts and keyboard bindings

No it doesn't. Emacs/bash key combos are everywhere. These are the oldest and most important key sequences in use on any computer. CTRL-A, CTRL-E, META-F, META-B, META-D, CTRL-K - and they pervade the Cocoa/Nextstep text engine. They're everywhere.

It lacks sane default simple applications like a decent terminal emulator

Really? Terminal is pretty awesome in some ways. For example, with the Gnome terminal app, when you resize the window, lines aren't readjusted for width and you end up either cropping lines or leaving a blank space to the right. Terminal seems to be one of the few terminal emulators that gets this right.

Unfamiliar key bindings makes me think twice or thrice before typing

I don't understand this. Doesn't this just mean that you haven't gotten used to it?

How can I skip to end of line?

CTRL-E, like I said. If you're an Emacs nut (and I am) you can even edit the file ~/Library/KeyBindings/DefaultKeyBinding.dict to make these key bindings work in ANY text field that uses an NSTextField object in ANY OSX application.

There's even a global kill-ring. It's awesome. Clearly there were some real Emacs fans who worked on the original Nextstep text engine.

switching to full height windows instead of full screen windows with the maximize button? Why on earth I would opt-in for loosing screen real estate

It's a 'resize' button, not a maximize button. For many applications, especially those whose content is a fixed or maximum size (like web browsers), a maximize button with a large screen is just silly - you'd waste screen real estate with white or blank borders. What the 'resize' button does is and should be application-specific. For a web browser, it should resize the window to the size of the content. Ditto a word processor. For an IDE like XCode and Eclipse, it should maximize (and both of those do).

This may be only me but, I hate OsX

It sounds to me like you haven't put much energy into figuring it out and finding the best workflow - certainly not nearly as much energy as I've put into learning the esoterica behind Linux abominations like XKB and Gnome 3. And I would never say that Linux disgusts me - far from it. I think Linux is great.

doktrin• 14 years ago

>> iTerm2 is the ultimate terminal emulator. It alone warrants the purchase of a Mac.

This is quite a strong statement and caught me a little off guard. What particular features does iterm2 offer that make it so stellar? I'm genuinely curious, as I haven't ever felt the burning need for a "better" terminal emulator on OSX (or Linux for that matter).

ghshephard2• 14 years ago

I'd love to see the run down on that as well. I spend 8-10 hours a day in Terminal.app, usually with 15-20 console tabs open, and I've certainly used iTerm2 for a few weeks, just to get a sense of what I'm missing - but I've always come back to Terminal.app.

I will agree, though, that the Terminal environment on the Macintosh singlehandedly causes me to use the OS X environment instead of windows - and this is after using SecureCRT/Putty for 6-7 years - so it's clearly not a case of "You love what you are used to."

tiziano88• 14 years ago

From what I remember, the default terminal emulator on OSX does not even allow customising the color palette! I was able to only change the foreground and background color, and forced to stick to one of the predefined themes for the rest. On the other hand, I doubt iterm2 can achieve the flexibility and customisability of urxvt, which for me is still the #1 terminal emulator. Just my two cents to add to the discussion :)

jsolson4• 14 years ago

> From what I remember, the default terminal emulator on OSX does not even allow customising the color palette!

For what it's worth, at least in Mountain Lion you can change the ANSI palette in Terminal.app. That said, it would never have occurred to me that this is something someone might want to do :).

msbarnett3• 14 years ago

> From what I remember, the default terminal emulator on OSX does not even allow customising the color palette! I was able to only change the foreground and background color, and forced to stick to one of the predefined themes for the rest.

This certainly hasn't been true since at least 10.7, and I think for longer than that.

visionscaper2• 14 years ago

That's really not true: You can completely customize the terminal.app colors (background, foreground, cursor, selection highlight, ansi colors, etc.), the window transparency and blur-effect, both for active and inactive windows. You can save your customizations as themes.

ecaron• 14 years ago

http://www.iterm2.com/#/section/features

Looks to me like it just exposes many of the out-of-the-box Linux terminal features that aren't immediately obvious & require Googling to setup. But saying that it is so amazing it alone warrants ditching Linux and going Mac is a ridiculous statement that certainly wasn't intended to be taken at face value.

zobzu2• 14 years ago

What annoys me about OSX is the whole "copy app to install"

"please wait while 500 megs are being copied". Oh hi non-shared libraries.

I also don't see what's so great about iTerm2, some lights would be interesting. Otherwise I'll claim Konsole is the best termminal emulator in the world, bare none just like that too :)

Finally I do agree that OSX gets Spotlight right. The Linux look alikes for this feature plain sucks. But that's probably the only thing I can see.

ricardobeat4• 14 years ago

> What annoys me about OSX is the whole "copy app to install"

As opposed to "press a button (or 30) to copy/install"?

djacobs• 14 years ago

No -- as opposed to pacman -S package (or whatever his former distro used). Having come to Linux from OS X, I agree that OS X installations are pretty inferior to Linux's.

zobzu2• 14 years ago

While there are other arguable issues, the whole point for me as that it's copying the 500 megs for the app because of all the static lib versions 'n stuff.

Then again we're comparing OSX to Linux, not Windows (Linux installs are ONE click, which is also less than OSX in fact)

keeperofdakeys• 14 years ago

Unfortunately, even assuming static API's, changing ABI's mean having third party packages and central shared libraries isn't going to happen.

pooriaazimi7• 14 years ago

Regarding the Control key - you can swap that with the absolutely useless "Caps Lock" key: http://thehelpfulhacker.net/2012/02/15/killing-caps-lock/

Now you can do CapsLock-a, CapsLock-e, etc. all day, which is much easier.

16s• 14 years ago

I value free, open source software more than convenience. For this reason, I will not use OSX or any other non-free operating system no matter how convenient they may be to use. That convenience comes at a great cost that I am not willing to pay.

hollerith5• 14 years ago

A noble, socially-responsible choice. Kudos!

jshen4• 14 years ago

Sorry, I just don't see it that way. Don't get me wrong, I prefer open source, all else being equal, but software is a tool for me to achieve some other goal. If paying someone for proprietary software allows me to more quickly or cheaply achieve my real goal, then that's great. What exactly is irresponsible about that? What exactly is ignoble about that?

drcube2• 14 years ago

I agree, but how hardcore do you take it? I'm on the fence about switching to a Linux-libre OS and wondering if anybody has any experience with it.

w1ntermute3• 14 years ago

The biggest thing to remember is that you need to select hardware that will work with Linux (just like how the vast majority of Mac users use Apple hardware). The issue is knowing what to get. If you're in the market for a laptop, I would highly recommend the ThinkPad X1 Carbon. It's a great piece of hardware by itself, and the Linux compatibility is there as well.

shuw5• 14 years ago

I'm curious about your thoughts outside of software. This is a sincere question because I often see so much passion about the topic in software, but rarely outside.

Do you only play free games, listen to free music and read free books? What about the electronics you use, the architecture of the buildings you live in and the car you drive?

billswift2• 14 years ago

"Books Were the First Open-Source Software"

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/seth-roberts/books-were-the-fi...

chimeracoder13• 14 years ago

The analogy breaks down for most things outside of software (even hardware, to a degree), because the basis for the argument in favor of free software is the four freedoms[1], which are themselves mere extensions of the rights of purchase.

If you sell me something, you cannot tell me that I can't modify it for my own use, for example. You as the seller can't tell me that I'm not allowed to resell my textbooks, or to modify the frames on my eyeglasses, or to hire my friend to fix my vacuum cleaner.

Proprietary software licenses do do that - the main difference is that is a non-rivalrous good; I can redistribute software without losing access to it myself. Because of that, people think it's somehow 'wrong' to say that I should be allowed to purchase a program and then resell it to another person, but if you look at it the other way, that's no more 'wrong' than purchasing a physical good and then reselling it.

In the South, it used to be common to sell property on the condition that the purchaser never sell it to a black person (I think they still used the term Negro or 'colored' then). If I remember correctly, that was first deemed illegal in certain parts not because it's horribly racist, but because it violates the principles of first sale: you've sold me something, and now you can't tell me what I'm not allowed to do with it.

[1] http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html

dylok42002• 14 years ago

definitely prefer open source but sometimes have to delve into the other to get the outcome sought. aversion to buying a product and now owning it though. should be yours to do with as you please.

billswift2• 14 years ago

I would prefer to use only open source, but I am not technically literate enough. I have used both Windows and Linux for 16 years, and had been using Linux more and Windows less for the first nine years. Over the past 7 years, since getting on the Internet, I have mostly used Windows, because I have not managed to get any of the Linux distros I have tried to work over a dial-up modem.

blinkingled• 14 years ago

Within the last year I have moved my work desktop (iMac) to Windows - RDP(actually Remmina/FreeRDP are looking good on Linux recently), VPN etc. just works better there - and development laptop (MBP) to Linux.

More and more as Linux matures and OS X gets buggier/fancier, I don't see the need to use OS X. I am running KUbuntu 12.10 beta on my 2010 MBP and it is pretty pleasant to work with - boots fast, nothing crashes, wi-fi connects and stays so, suspend resume works, no proprietary drivers needed. I did have to do some little hackery to do an EFI install and disable the Nvidia crap and that gives me very good battery life.

To get me to stick to OS X - Apple needs to do significantly better. Each release gives me new headaches and no features I need - bad battery life, Wi-Fi issues, graphics glitches - I can at least try to fix those with Linux.

ConstantineXVI• 14 years ago

Alfred[0] has to be one of the most valuable (as far as $/usefulness) pieces of software I've ever bought. Besides the Spotlight-style file/app search, can also manipulate files/dirs, does pasteboard history[1], and one-shot terminal commands; without having to drop whatever I'm doing for another window.

[0] http://www.alfredapp.com/

[1] not part of Alfred, but pbcopy/pbpaste in the terminal are your friends.

prophetjohn• 14 years ago

You can also use it for math expressions, type in URLs to quickly open them, search Google and Wikipedia. It's completely changed the way I compute. The only time I see the app tray anymore is when I accidentally make it spring up from the bottom with my mouse.

hollerith5• 14 years ago

I turned Spotlight indexing off on my Lion install to stop regular bouts of unresponsiveness on my 2011 Mac mini (with hard drive, not SSD).

adlpz• 14 years ago

Is your hard drive almost full? I've found that when drive space is running very low, OSX deletes some of Spotlight's cache, probably to make sure there's space for hibernation and swap. When it gets back enough space, it rebuilds the cache again.

The problem is that if you are constantly orbiting a certain point of fullness, it goes crazy and keeps deleting and rebuilding all the time, causing slowdowns.

hollerith5• 14 years ago

47% of capacity with 248 gigs free.

azakai• 14 years ago

..and you've swapped from using an open OS to buying an OS from a company that fires patent lawsuits left and right. You've also bought that company's hardware.

I grant you it's convenient in many ways to use OS X, but supporting companies that commit patent mayhem is not good for our industry.

(Yes, yes, I know the competition isn't clean either, blah blah. But you switched from Linux.)

sjtrny• 14 years ago

Sorry, how did this get so many points? Most of it is rubbish. All I hear is "Wah wah wah I like the control key, I don't understand the command key wah wah". And some of it is factually incorrect.

taylodl• 14 years ago

OSX is good for developers with families. The wife and kids are happy and you're pretty happy too. Win-win all the way around.

conradev• 14 years ago

> Programs like launchctl (for instance) are not exactly fun to work with, but they do get the job done.

One thing I like about launchd is that on OS X, there is one standard way to launch daemons. On Linux, there are a thousand ways to launch daemons. launchd also has a bunch of features, one of which is to start services on demand, upon connection to a socket, something Ubuntu hasn't had until the latest 12.04 (http://manpages.ubuntu.com/manpages/natty/man8/upstart-socke...). I do agree, however, that OS X shouldn't be used for anything more than a desktop workstation.

chimeracoder13• 14 years ago

> On Linux, there are a thousand ways to launch daemons.

Depends on your distro, really - Arch keep things fairly centralized and simple.

I never really got the hang of Ubuntu, though, by comparison.

donniezazen• 14 years ago

I really liked BSD style rc.d and now Arch and other distros are moving to systemd but Ubuntu won't ship it in 12.10.

lucian19002• 14 years ago

launchd isn't bad, but it lacks good admin tools. Even upstart has better admin tools than launchd, and systemd has the best you could ask for.

lorenzfx• 14 years ago

What is so great about the OS X Desktop? (Honest question; As a long term Mac OS (X) user who switched to Linux about a year ago I am really wondering...)

Also, has a heavy computer user I mainly switched to Linux/FreeBSD because of the much improved customization possibilities. While the default OS X experience might be superior to GNOME/KDE, I now get a lot of things done a lot faster since I could make my machine exactly fit my needs. I really cannot imagine why any (not platform depending) programmer would ditch Linux for OS X just because the defaults work better.

From Linux to OSX - 1 Year Later

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