Linux vs. Mac - Readit News

Bad:

- Inability to set up your /home/ (which is /Users/ on a mac) the way you like it. There are default folders for Documents, Pictures, Music, etc and they cannot be deleted. If you delete them they are recreated either immediately or on reboot. My hack-of-a-solution was to alias ls to hide them [1].

- There are also applications that you cannot delete. One such application is Chess - a program that let's you play chess. No idea why it's there by default and why it's impossible to delete it.

- .DS_Store files. Whenever you open a folder in a Finder (default file browser on a Mac) it will add a hidden .DS_Store file within that folder. This file stores and remembers how you chose to arrange your folders in a graphical file manager. But these files often get in a way: you will find them in tarballs, git repositories, etc. Just like with removing folders, I don't think there is a solution that can turn them off.

- Recent OS update made system-settings look like you are on a phone. Apple probably wants to push an interface for system settings that is common to iPads, iPhones, MacBooks and even Apple Watches, but for me it's hard to get used to that.

Good:

- Default Applications are quite tasteful. In particular the Mail client, and default Apple Terminal. They have everything I need without being full of toy features

- Stable. Both hardware and Software. My MacBook pro is 5 years old now, but I never had an issue with hangs, reboots, crashes or anything of this kind.

- Third-party package managers. Homebrew is more popular, but I prefer MacPorts. Whichever you choose, you can set up your system to use linux compilers, shells, coreutils, etc. By default Apple command line arsenal is a bit dated and opinionated so to me this is a must. Once you have this done the command-line experience is almost indistinguishable from Linux (well, apart from /home/ stuff and .DS_Store things).

[1]: http://karolis.koncevicius.lt/posts/cleaning_home_on_macos/i...

rcarmo · 2 years ago

I honestly don’t think /Users is a problem (heck, I used time sharing systems where user homes were all over the place, and the original NeXT), but you can turn off .DS_Store creation on network media (I think there is an equivalent one for removable media, can’t find it now):

defaults write com.apple.desktopservices DSDontWriteNetworkStores -bool true

Also, check if dot_clean is in your system.

TigerTeamX · 2 years ago

Thanks for the nice summary. What about user interface? I always felt MacOS clunky when I tried a Macbook. E.g. no sticky windows.

kkoncevicius · 2 years ago

The desktop environment is quite configurable and can adapt to a few different styles of doing things. For example, I like asceticism so I hide the menu bar (clock, etc, on top), hide the dock (list of opened applications and quick-launch icons), and have an empty desktop with just a wallpaper. I use "Spotlight Search" (which you get by pressing meta-spacebar) to launch everything. The search is very integrated with the system so you are able to start applications, search your email inbox, browse bookmarks and web history, open notes and contacts, etc, all with the same search.

But of course there are also feature for people who do things differently. One good example is Stage Manager [1]. There are also things like "Mission Control" and multiple desktops, but I am not the right person to talk about these.

Oh one more thing - seems like Apple likes to reverse things on purpose. So the "x" for closing windows is on the left, and not on the right. The desktop icons appear on the right, not on the left. If you use trackpad to scroll it's also reversed - when your fingers slide down the page slides down as well. Takes some time getting used to this.

[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B7t_BCmY-lg

Tagbert · 2 years ago

There are a number of different third-party window managers that you can use. Rectangle is a popular one. There are a lot of little tool like that so they don't always get incorporated into the OS.

unethical_ban · 2 years ago

Including games in a desktop OS is at least a 30 year habit. I am surprised that it's non removable in this age

I love Linux, but oh my God it is so unstable for me. Updates crash things all the time. The whole Nvidia driver takes me days to sort out each time. Depending on segment, commercial software tends to be less available. You also need to know just so much low level stuff just to keep going. Wayland vs X, display managers, grub config... Too much for me.

Linux has many redeeming features but it can be a full time job just to keep it running. By contrast, Mac comes in one size and configurability is limited, but out of the box it just works.

the_third_wave · 2 years ago

Weird, I've been using Linux since 1993 in one way or another, first together with OS/2, from 1996 exclusively and have not had any stability problems in the last decade or 2. I use somewhat older hardware - Thinkpad P50 and T42p, "late 2009" 27" iMac, DL380G7 under the stairs, a bunch of Core2Duo HP laptops plus a ragtag assembly of Raspberry Pi's - which may help but still... on the P50 I can switch between nVidia and the built-in Intel GPU without problems, on the iMac the Radeon driver works just fine, it works on the T42p as well but that thing is just too slow to make it worth the effort but it just has such a good screen and keyboard that I prefer to use it over more modern machines.

Linux-related maintenance time on all these machines is measured in minutes: sudo apt update && sudo apt dist-upgrade, wait a few seconds (gigabit fibre helps here), look through the list of updates, check that it doesn't want to remove something important on those machines which run Sid ("Debian unstable" - this problem does not occur on stable distributions) and let it rip. That's it.

Maybe try a different distribution? I'm using mostly Debian, there are a few machines running Mint, the Raspberries run whatever I happen to experiment with. On the server I'm running Proxmox with a flock of containers running Debian and a few VMs for things-not-Linux. Here, too, I have none of the problems you describe.

Try Debian?

rich_sasha · 2 years ago

I have only ever installed Ubuntu myself, on the (misguided?) hope that it's the easiest one to manage. Maybe that's where I'm going wrong.

jillesvangurp · 2 years ago

The solution to that is using hardware that does not depend on proprietary drivers. If the kernel just supports your hardware out of the box, things get a lot easier.

I've been using Manjaro with a cheap Samsung laptop with an integrated Intel iris GPU for the last two years. Performance is not amazing but very usable. I hear AMD drivers are pretty OK and that's probably what I'd get if I needed more performance on Linux. The whole deal with Nivia sounds like it's just not a great experience. Manjaro is an Arch linux derivative so you need to be pretty hands on to fix things once in a while. That goes without saying.

Though I must say, I don't seem to have a need to fix a lot of things lately and I think the Arch approach of not trying to bend a lot of packages their way and just compiling them as is while keeping on top of upstream improvements, optimizations, etc. is doing a lot of good. Keeps things simple. If things break, they usually get fixed pretty rapidly too. The package manager actually takes btrfs snapshots when it runs. So, that makes trying out new stuff pretty safe.

Mostly stuff just works on Manjaro. Stability has been fine for me. Manjaro defaulted to Wayland when I installed it and I did not have to fix anything to get that working. Just worked out of the box. I had some issues with the Intel sound driver that seem to have resolved itself with kernel updates. Bluetooth is a bit of a mess on Linux sadly. Just very flaky. So, I tend to rely less on that.

I use snap (mostly) and flatpak for running all the usual suspects in terms of electron apps for various video call tools. Steam works great on Manjaro (the steam deck of course uses Arch Linux as well), and I use that for some light gaming on the laptop. And Darktable, which I use for photo editing. The latter two are of course what I'd like a faster GPU for.

I also have a mac for work and it's nice and fast. And while the M1 has a great GPU, a lot of the older Intel macbooks had even slower intel GPUs than my Samsung. And of course while the M1 GPU is fast, you can forget about running most Steam games on it. Darktable works on it but without hardware acceleration. So, there's that.

TigerTeamX · 2 years ago

Yeah exactly! Especially the whole Wayland and Snap experience. It seems like it is not quite there - I understand the benefits but just not right there.

redeeman · 2 years ago

could you describe a bit what you do that takes days to sort out nvidia driver?

rich_sasha · 2 years ago

I recently set up two boxes with Ubuntu 20.04 . Both were on the Ubuntu list of supported hardware. Power on - it works. Install updates and restart - black screen. Ok not to panic, just do the usual: google random commands on the Internet and type them in. Ok, boot Linux in nosplash mode - fine, that works. Reinstall Nvidia drivers - whole box goes to shit and the only thing that does anything is reinstalling the distro from scratch.

Tried this again for good measure just in case, but unsurprisingly with the same effect.

Many gray hairs later, it turns out the system update installs a new kernel which has a bug to do with Nvidia drivers causing the whole thing to crash and burn. So if I downgrade the kernel (is that even a good idea?) and install Nvidia drivers there, it's ok. Some more random-commands-from-internet and this is done. Nvidia drivers installed, computer works.

Now I'll "just" install MATE instead of the default desktop env which I dislike. Some warnings about display manager..? Hmm let's see what happens in a mo. Install complete, reboot, machine is fucked again.

I'm getting desperate now, for a week I did nothing but type various cryptic commands, prepending sudo if they didn't work. I mean, I'm a decent Linux user, but I don't know what the lshw command I just typed in does. But never mind. On an Estonian Linux forum I find someone who has the same issue, and has a fix: boot in safe mode, get a terminal, disable some obscure MATE option via cli, then reboot. Yes! That worked - but why..? I breathe a sigh of relief and think fondly of my Mac at home.

There are or course the Nouveau drivers, but they get my PC hot if I wiggle.the mouse too much so that's not an option.

If it happened once, maybe I was unlucky, but happened on two different boxes in the span of months from each other.

dgan · 2 years ago

Funny, I just found a new job where I got a MacBook Pro for the first time in my life, M2 chip. I am Linux user for 7 years now, and I use OpenSUSE Tumbleweed + XFCE + NVIDIA card, and I literally have 0 problems with it for 2 last years

Opinion on Mac book after using it for barely 3 weeks:

Excellent:

- battery life

- sound

sucks, out of top of my head:

- when you press Enter it wants to rename a file (?? lol)

- terminal hotkeys don't always work (Ctrl + back doesn't delete a word...)

- "fn" is the most left key... instead of control...

- windows management is trash, i cant "magnet" to borders of the screen

- I wasn't able to plug a LG usb mouse (?? apparently I need a tutorial to plug a mouse)

- hotkeys in Pycharm/Intellij are different and not interchangeable

- brew is not as good as zypper

- need to use AppleStore for some applications

- when installing applications they don't seem to be available in terminal ...

ShrimpHawk · 2 years ago

Use Rectangle[1] for magnet snapping window management. For almost every mac complaint there exists a tool to solve it.

[1]https://rectangleapp.com/

KenArrari · 2 years ago

Probably true but if I wanted to deal with endless tweaks, I'd just keep using Linux.

999wl · 2 years ago

thanks for the tip!

PrimeMcFly · 2 years ago

> For almost every mac complaint there exists a tool to solve it.

Instead of running an OS with a ton of little tools and hacks, why not just run on that lets you configure it how you want?

- the enter command in Finder is a UI convention. Some Linux DEs have a similar one in their file managers.

- the OS uses Emacs key bindings throughout in standard input fields. Try it.

- Search for “Magnet” or, if you’re a tiling person, “Amethyst”

- Mice just work. You may get a dialog for weird HID devices, but I don’t get why you mention a tutorial

- hot keys are configurable in every single application - check the system preferences.

- brew is not the only option, you can also look into MacPorts (but I wouldn’t recommend it)

- there is an “open” CLI command that you can use for to invoke non-CLI apps that do not register themselves in PATH. Use “man open”.

Also, look into native CLI tools like sips, etc. There is a lot of CLI goodness in macOS that impatient people overlook.

Well, when I plug my mouse, I have a window telling me "configure your keyboard" and asking me to press "Shift" on it ...

ngai_aku · 2 years ago

> terminal hotkeys don't always work (Ctrl + back doesn't delete a word...)

Don’t you want M-DEL? Terminal (actually, all text fields in cocoa applications IIRC) use gnu readline commands.

https://www.gnu.org/software/bash/manual/html_node/Readline-...

rado · 2 years ago

Windows do snap to edges, maybe it’s too subtle to notice.

mackwell · 2 years ago

Crash every 30 minutes on a clean install sounds like a hardware issue. In my experience an Ubuntu install is able to run continuously for long stretches without issue.

Whether you enjoy switching to Mac OS is going to depend on what you use your machine for. In general, for my main work machine I use Mac and I have very little to no downtime ever. However, much of the benefit of going Mac is gained if you go all in on the ecosystem across devices.

Yeah definitely weird and it didn't happen before. I am running a memtester as mongol suggested.

I really enjoy Linux and the freedom it gives me, but using 30 hours last month getting things to work so I can do work... is not how I want to spend my time.

chrisfosterelli · 2 years ago

I switched from being a lifelong Linux user to being a Mac user. Nearly everything was better: 95%+ of the tools I use were the exact same, everything was just more usable and stable. The biggest draw was that I wasn't stuck with PC hardware anymore, which is nice because I really prefer Macbook hardware and most Linux OS's just don't work well enough with it for me. I'm a web developer though so YMMV depending on what you're doing for work, but for me I was able to bring vim, Chrome, zsh, and most linux commands, which covers the vast majority of my day.

The biggest drawback was that running FOSS was something I cared about and no longer doing so made me feel sad for a bit. The filesystem layout is slightly different but still UNIX-y and newer versions of MacOS don't let you put files wherever you want (which makes sense from a security perspective but is nonetheless an adjustment). I struggle to think of much more than that. The operating system just gets out of my way now and I appreciate that, and we still run Linux on all of our servers for everything so I've got that at least.

unsupp0rted · 2 years ago

I’ve never encountered a warning about not putting files wherever I want. Where would you want to put files, say, outside your user’s home folder?

There's been a couple times I had a generic binary I wanted to drop in `/bin/` or a package that wanted to install itself to `/usr/` The correct way is to just not do this, which is fine, it was just super weird to use `sudo` and then have the OS tell me 'no'.

It's much more rare now that I've created $HOME/.bin and added it to my $PATH and nearly all 3rd party apps have been updated to not install to SIP directories.

aborsy · 2 years ago

Ubuntu works pretty good on laptop and desktop. I don’t recall any problems for years. The hardware support is excellent, but if occasionally something is not supported, there can be inconveniences. You should check if your distribution works on that laptop.

I won’t switch because I don’t trust a closed source black box with my life. I can understand what Linux does, and suitably lock it down and customize it.

I support FOSS, and Linux in particular. Freedom is amazing!

jamesbvaughan · 2 years ago

I switched from a Linux laptop to a Macbook Pro for after about 5 years on Linux. The initial reason was that my last employer required us to use Macbooks.

I now have the option to use whatever computer I'd like and (for now at least) I'm still sticking with the Macbook. The main things that keep me on it are: - Excellent hardware. The build quality is higher than any non-Apple laptop I've tried and the display is really good. - Performance and battery usage with the Apple silicon chip is great. - iCloud sync. I use an iPhone and frequently make use of iMessage, photos, and clipboard syncing between devices. I know that you can replicate a lot of that with Android and Linux, but at this point I'm pretty deep in Apple's ecosystem and am unlikely to switch away anytime soon.

The biggest thing I miss is having a good tiling window manager experience. I have a desktop running Sway[0] and really love it. I've tried a handful of tiling window managers for mac and none of them have felt really good to use. They all feel like I'm fighting the OS more than working with it.

If there were a lightweight laptop with good linux compatibility, a high-dpi, high refresh rate display, and competitive battery life, I'd be very tempted to switch back to linux just to have a good window manager again. I'm hoping that Asahi on the MBP can give me that, but it seems like it's not quite ready for daily driving yet.

[0] https://swaywm.org/

brucethemoose2 · 2 years ago

Terrible windows laptops are just terrible laptops, but seeing my Asus G14 side by side next to a macbook pro doesn't really leave me wanting for anything.

Its about the same size. The screen, keyboard, trackpad... all comparable. It has more ports. The cooling system in the G14 blows the mac away, hence it can run passively and sip battery just piddling around the desktop.

The mac has 3 big advantages as far as I can tell:

- Power efficiency under heavy GPU/AI loads. If you even sniff the dGPU in a PC, you can kiss your battery goodby.

- A large RAM pool for GPU/AI stuff.

- No fussing around with different power settings/fan profiles for different situations.

As for the PC laptop

- It has a huge gaming advantage

-"native nvidia" is often easier for ML stuff.

Software differences are a whole other can of worms.

The G14 looks pretty good - I hadn't checked it out before.

It's slightly thicker and heavier than the MPB and I'd really like to go lighter rather than heavier if I were to switch. If gaming were a priority for me though, something like this seems like it would be the way to go.

I’ve tried Amethyst and Phoenix (the former is completely scriptable), and they’re workable.

Here’s my list: https://taoofmac.com/space/apps/window_managers

You will never have the kind of control you have in Sway, but you can get really close.

tsuujin · 2 years ago

I recently switched to using yabai for tiling windows on Mac. It is easily the best of the tools I have tried. Not without faults, and some things like dialog popups get treated weird, but it has overall made me happy.

Yeah, yabai is the one I've had the most success with and I'm a fan of it! I actually still use it for faster desktop/workspace switching.

I've ended up finding that for me personally though, it feels slightly better to give in to the way macOS wants me to do window management, working with the designers' intent, than it does to work against it with yabai.

ofalkaed · 2 years ago

I have not used Macs in years but the one observation I would offer, a good amount of linux/OSS software seems to break when Apple updates the OS and it does not seem a good platform if you want to keep using such software. This observation is based off of the dozen or so projects I follow the development of (mostly audio related) so may not be at all accurate to the wider view and I just may have found one of the little niches where these problems are more common.

blacksmith_tb · 2 years ago

Hmm, is this an AI response? How could Apple break linux sw?

I use four personal machines pretty frequently (a few hours, a few time a week), one Mac Mini, a recent all-AMD Asus laptop running Ubuntu 22.10, an old Dell laptop (with a discreet nVidia card) running Ubuntu 22.10, and a really old Toshiba ultrabook running Pop_OS! None of them break regularly, though the Asus (probably from being the newest) has a fingerprint sensor that has never quite worked right under Ubuntu. Other than the slowness and clunkiness of snaps, Ubuntu seems fine to me? Going forward I will probably stick to Pop, it seems a little better thought out than plain ol' Ubuntu, but the differences aren't night and day.

Dont know if it is a AI response, but one of my friends had a M1 and we couldn't watch a movie because VLC wasn't ported yet.

Just some weird things with Snaps that made me "snap" :P Like, Installing Chromium with snap, and then it doesn't have access to file drop which is something I use like 20 times a day. This easily adds 30 minutes to my work. Or sharing my screen I have to click 4 buttons in a slow and clunky manner.

>How could Apple break linux sw?

Software must communicate with the OS to work and Apple does not seem to care much about doing things which will break software from the linux/OSS community. This is actually one the primary reasons I gave up OSX/Apple, the other being they dropped support for classic apps, in one update they rendered 75% of the software I used unusable.