Ask Slashdot: Mac To Linux Return Flow? 965
jasnw writes "I'm one of apparently many people who moved to OS X from Linux in the early/mid 2000s for their desktop system, keeping Linux boxes around for the heavy lifting and server work. I may also be part of a large segment of that group now considering a return because of all the iOS-ification of OS X, despite the fact that the Linux desktop still falls short in the 'it just works' area. I'm angry enough at Apple, and wary enough of Linux, that I might just go to using Windows 7 for the desktop (not Win8, however). What is the feeling/experience of other 'traitors' who run OS X for the desktop and Linux for everything else?"
Answer=FreeBSD (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Windows 7 (Score:3, Informative)
Now that Windowmaker (http://windowmaker.org) has been picked up again, you might look at that one. That's the one i always ran before switching to OSX.
And i'm pretty sure it's going to be the one i'm running when i move back since i already decided that my next laptop won't be a macbook anymore.
Re:Windows 7 (Score:4, Informative)
Okay, the Distro's got it horribly wrong with their move the KDE 4. KDE said version 4.0 was only for developers and all the distro's pushed it out anyway.
I started using KDE around 4.7 or 4.8 when Ubuntu pushed out Unity that was utter crap, and the Gnome had gone to their 3.0 crap-fest. I have found KDE 4 awesome.
On lower powered compy's I've install Xubuntu. Way easier to install than Windows XP or 7. Wipe drive, format, and load Xubuntu. Worked without any screwing around with drivers or anything. I was mega impressed.
Re:Answer=FreeBSD (Score:5, Informative)
PCBSD is getting there. I still run FreeBSD-9 and FreeBSD-HEAD on laptops. But I've used PCBSD on netbooks and laptops - when the hardware support is there, it's actually rather pleasant.
The only hardware support issues have been video and wifi. I can fix the latter, I can't fix the former. :)
Re:Linux just works... (Score:5, Informative)
That just is NOT true anymore. Windows 7 has been stable from the word go. Uptime measured in days and weeks for a DESKTOP computer that is only interrupted by important updates and other administrative tasks that require a reboot. Otherwise, it Just Works. This coming from a guy who LOVES Linux- on servers.
Re:Windows 7 (Score:5, Informative)
It's worth considering MATE. It's a fork of Gnome2 that intends to develop into what Gnome 3 would have been had they not drunk the cool aid.
Re:iOSification? (Score:1, Informative)
"The "iOSification" of OS X is overblown hyperbole at the moment. "
"Overblown hyperbole"??? They changed their whole UI to make it more iOS-like.
They made the scrollbars smaller, less colorful, and they actually disappear! They took the color out of Finder sidebar icons. They took visual progress feedback out of Mail. They took away some gestures that used to be there. And so on. I could go on for a while.
And *ALL* of those changes were both (A) intended to make OS X more like iOS, and (B) directly contrary to known computer-human interface principles.
The problem with Apple's approach is that instead of making iOS more like OS X, they decided to be bass-ackwards and make OS X more like iOS. Which is a STUPID approach. The idea is supposed to be to improve your new OS until it is as good as the old one, not to drag the old (and successful!) OS down to the level of some goddamned hand-held thing.
If it were "overblown hyperbole" you would not have people threatening to quit OS X over the issue... but quite a few have, and I have been tempted myself. I just may, if Apple doesn't pull its head out and start actually improving OS X again, rather than tearing it down.
Re:Linux just works... (Score:5, Informative)
That just is NOT true anymore. Windows 7 has been stable from the word go. Uptime measured in days and weeks for a DESKTOP computer that is only interrupted by important updates and other administrative tasks that require a reboot. Otherwise, it Just Works. This coming from a guy who LOVES Linux- on servers.
That's the first problem with Windows : there is so many things that needs you to reboot it is ridiculous. And the freakin updates that FORCES me to reboot. Only thing you can do is tell it to postpone the reboot for 4 hours. Then 4 hours later that fu***n thing pops-up again requesting you to reboot. And the worst : if you are not in front of you machine when it pops, after about a minute it will decide that it can just reboot. So you come back, your computer is at the login screen and you just have to re-open everything to get back to work. Who the f**k decided this was a good idea ?
Now I don't have that problem anymore. I installed Mint on my work computer and the only time I need to reboot is when I upgrade the kernel. After the upgrade there is a popup that tells me it needs to reboot to fully apply the update. If I click postpone IT WILL NEVER BOTHER ME AGAIN.
Also, I measure uptimes in months, not days and weeks. In fact I have an internet-facing server that is up for more that 5.5 years.
Re:Grow Up (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Linux just works... (Score:5, Informative)
Then, every time I want to do something more advanced, I have to go hack the registry to do it ?
And the first big warning is that if you fuck the registry, your computer may not boot anymore.
Like if you want to disable that CapsLock key, you have to modify some hex value in the registry. On my KDE machine, I just went into the control panel and assigned the CapsLock to another CTRL.
But what should "just work"? (Score:4, Informative)
My problem with these "just work" descriptions is that people have very different needs.
I use both Ubuntu and Mac OS regularly. The things that I need to "just work" are a lot of programming tools (gcc, python), databases, and servery stuff like databases, web servers, etc. Getting those to work on Mac OS is unpleasant. MacPorts and Homebrew are both terrible in comparison to the APT world. "apt-get install apache2" is very much "just works" in my book. On the Mac, I'm fine as long as I use Xcode and other Apple-specific tools, but anything else ends up being frustrating.
People complain a lot about desktop choices for Linux, but I never found any of them any worse than Mac, and some are better tailored for certain workstyles than others. All the major ones (GNOME with Shell or Unity, KDE, XFCE) are mature enough now for everyday work, even if they weren't so a few years ago. I really find all of them easier to work with than Mac's desktop. I don't like Mac's bubblegum dock, and I find the Finder to be perhaps the worst file manager ever made.
Another aspect of "just work" is installation. Installing a free OS can be painful on some hardware (and trivial on others). Since you can't (easily) install Mac OS on non-Apple hardware, this problem doesn't exist there, so it indeed "just works" in this respect. If you want a "just works" experience with a free OS, just buy a machine from System 76, a truly wonderful company that has yet to disappoint me. Comes with Ubuntu and everything working, great hardware and great support. And for me, all the things that I want to "just work" indeed do.
I use Windows 7, too, and it's fine, but I really need the Unix stuff to do my work.
Can we retire the "just works" phrase, or at least find better ways to qualify it?
Re:You and me both (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Windows 7 (Score:5, Informative)
The "every-other-Windows-sucks" pattern isn't based on comparing NT kernels. It refers to Microsoft's OS releases for the "home user" space, and Windows NT and Windows 2000 weren't aimed at that market - unlike 95, 98, ME, XP, Vista, Win 7 and now Win 8.
Re:Windows 7 (Score:2, Informative)
Re:since you asked... (Score:4, Informative)
Command Console doesn't have simple highlight / copy / paste functionality.
Yes it does; it's just disabled by default (?!?!?!)
When the default application isn't set for a document type, the first choice that's provided in the resulting pop-up is "Do you want to wander around on the web to find an application that can open this document?" rather than the option of selecting an application from the list of installed applications.
This, surprisingly, is configurable too. Once again, stupid default, but can be changed on an entire enterprise if you desire with a simple policy update.
In SQL Server Management Studio, when you have multiple sessions open, they are tabbed. Even when you only have two or three tabs, the tabs are scrunched horizontally such that you can't read the labels, which usually start with the server name, then the database name. So, if you have six sessions all connecting to different databases on 'foo' server, all six tabs are labelled 'foo...'. Sure, that's not the OS, but that is an example of Redmond not giving a shit to produce quality usability in ways that would be trivially simple.
I could point to similar things wrong with Oracle and the various half-baked front ends to Postgres, MySQL and NoSQL. That's not even getting into the mess that is Hadoop front ends....
I've used Macs for 29 years; I've used Debian for 15 years... and I've used Windows for 17 years. Windows 7 has its annoying bits, but the points you made are not among them.
I'm still a "Windows in the enterprise, Debian Linux on the servers, OS X at home" person, and probably will be for some time to come.
Re:Grow Up (Score:0, Informative)
You can copy all the games from a windows 7 computer to windows 8 and they'll run just fine.
Re:Windows 7 (Score:2, Informative)
chrome and Firefox doesn't support windows ME, or win 2K what is your point? MSFT doesn't support windows XP and Vista is about to lose it's support and security updates. Try finding a commercial entity that is actively supporting Linux 2.2 or 2.4 kernel with full bug support? Sure there is a handful of community groups but nothing I would put money on.
I don't know about you but I tend to buy new hardware every 5-6 years anyways.
So tell me again how apple is evil for doing exactly the same thing as EVERY ONE ELSE?
Re:since you asked... (Score:4, Informative)
You still have different virtual desktops, but I can no longer assign applications to always open in a particular one.
Not to say that there aren't some things that I would like back from Leopard, but what you say is not correct. I can still assign applications to open on specific desktops. This is the only way I could imagine things working for some of my workflows.
Right click open app's icon -> Options -> Assign to; that should get you sorted with this.
They're also not always there, assigned in a configuration that was easy for me to remember, "from here, go to the desktop above to get to the browser, or the desktop to my right to get to xcode.
This too works, except that up and down are gone. I have three desktops created that are always there by default. All you have to do is create empty desktops and leave them there.
Applications no longer quit, instead they keep running in the background, if you click the red button.
That is how it always was. Red button closes window, Command-Q quits. In fact, the one thing that bugs me now at times is that if an app has no open window, it automatically quits it. This is inconsistent. But either way, what you say is not how it works.
You can command-q for now, but they still try to retain state. Which is insane.
Agreed, if it did this by default, this would be insane. But this is not what any of the applications do anymore. When quit and restarted the application starts brand new. You can enable the resume previous state options, but in 10.8 that is not default.
Applications are auto-saving on me. I don't mind that things auto-save into a backup file, for recovery purposes, but you should NOT overwrite the file I'm working on without my specifically clicking save.
This might be personal preference, but I sort of like this. It makes it convenient in case of problems. My laptop had started randomly dying due to a very old battery and this feature saved me many times.
Applications are trying to save to iCloud by default, instead of the local drive. I don't have a problem with iCloud, but it shouldn't be the default location.
Again, iCloud is an option but not the default. Something seems amiss on your setup.
The launchpad displays applications in multiple screens and I gotta swipe right to see the other applications. That doesn't make any sense when you have a wheel mouse...I just want to scroll down. The applications folder still exists, so this one doesn't bother me as much, I can avoid using launchpad altogether.
Exactly, you can now use the Application folder, drag it to the dock and have it show as a stack or folder to quickly browse through every application you have, or use launchpad. Honestly, choice is good. This is not complaint worthy.
They released the Mac OS X app store, which isn't really a problem. But then they made it so that you can't install any application that doesn't come from the app store by default, until you go and change the settings to allow it.
At least you can disable it and even use an option-right-click to launch the application and ignore the security settings. Besides, having something like this is not bad as it ensure some degree of security, especially for "new" users.
Also, the default is not the mac app store only, but mac app store and identified developers. A year ago, this was irritating, but I just got a new Mac and I had to turn it off to install all but two applications. It is not as inconvenient anymore.
My prediction is that the next step is going to be making it a setting that you can't get to without going to the command-line, and then they'll just not give you the option, and people will have to jailbreak their macs.
This is highly unlikely to happen. But if i
Re:since you asked... (Score:4, Informative)
You get emotional when you have to work with the OS at a lower level than just launching applications. Ie, you need to write and run some scripts, or just type in commands. Windows is just painfully bad for having a text console; it's an ugly console with bad controls (as mentioned earlier, your normal highlight/copy/paste don't work well); it has a stupid command line processor as the default, and even the power user shell is verbose and non-standard. You can replace this by using Cygwin to get a much more sane Unix style, but it is slow and quirky and painful to integrate with existing Windows command utilities (such as \ versus / path delimiters).
Now many users don't have to deal with this. My friend who only uses Windows also only uses an IDE and he fails to understand what my gripe is about even though he started his career with command line oriented operating systems. Most of the time it's no big deal to me; if I use Windows to browse the web, play games, and do taxes, I don't mind it that much and it feels little different from Linux or OS X. However when I start developing code and enter my command line frame of mind then Windows drives me crazy (I do not use an IDE); whereas Linux and OS X work very smoothly in comparison. (even when just playing games I find myself opening up a Cygwin bash shell just to copy some patch files around, unzipping files, etc).
If the "applications you need" involve the command line, then Windows is annoying and will tempt the user to become emotional.
Re:You and me both (Score:4, Informative)
I haven't had to hack files to get video, wireless (wifi), wireless (cellular) or modems (do they still make those?) working since 2007, except I did have to download the proprietary NVidia driver to run OpenGL for Compiz. In 2007 my new laptop's ATI video card did need a bleeding edge open source driver, that was the last time.
Re:Windows 7 (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Been There (Score:4, Informative)
I hate to reply to myself, but I just thought of a few more biggies:
This reply is mainly for the benefit of those who still use OS X and may have some of these problems.
- Window Management: This wasn't as big of an issue until I discovered that Alt + Left Mouse Button allowed me to drag windows from anywhere inside of the window under Linux. After I learned that I could resize windows in Linux using Alt + Mouse Button 2 or 3 (button depends on your Window Manager), using OS X felt much more tedious. Even Microsoft Windows lets you resize a window by dragging any edge, but with OS X, you have to use the little corner in the bottom-right section of the window. In addition to this, switching apps on OS X with the keyboard shortcut doesn't restore iconified windows which means you still have to go down to the doc to get it. Better yet, you can not switch to one specific window of an app using the keyboard shortcut - instead, they all come to the front and then you have to find the window you want.
How long has it been since you used OS X? I don't remember when it happened exactly but most apps let you resize from all edges and corners now. I can't remember when this wasn't the case with OS X, actually.
App switching in OS X works like this: Cmd+Tab switches between applications, and Cmd+` (backtick, it's under the tilde and right above the Tab key) cycles between individual windows within an application. Took a while to give up the Windows-centric paradigm of treating each window as something totally separate to Alt-Tab through, but once I got used to treating each application as a set of grouped windows it was quite easy to work with. Without knowing the Cmd+` shortcut I'm sure it seems much more tedious to find the window you want quickly.
I think recent versions of Windows have improved window management, but my point is that window management on OS X is not nearly as bad as it is perceived to be. It's just different. Personally I find it remarkably efficient.
- Window Maximization: Some apps require a lot of real-estate and there is no way to maximize a window with a single button click in OS X. Intuitively you would press the green "+" button on the window, but that simply switches the window "between its standard state and its user state" and that behavior is always unpredictable. You can manually "maximize" the window by moving the mouse to the titlebar and dragging the window to the upper left portion of the screen and then moving the mouse to the bottom right corner of the screen to resize the window. I guess Apple figures if you have to do more work for something, you'll appreciate it more.
I have also been vexed by this issue after coming from the Windows and/or Linux world where maximize really means "use every available pixel to make this window as big as possible". I got used to it, and with the advent of larger screens over the years it's started to make quite a bit less sense for some apps (like web browsers where most web pages end up filling a small center strip of the window).
However, there is hope for those who can't get used to it: There is a SIMBL plugin called SizeWell that's been around a few years and almost completely solves this, bringing a true "maximize window" ability to the green/plus button in most applications. Both SIMBL and SizeWell are free and I've been using them both for at least a couple of years with no known problems. You can either assign "true maximize" as the default for the green button or have a right-click context menu that allows you to do all sorts of other things like sizing a window to a half/third/quarter of the screen, set windows to specific pixel sizes, change positioning or even move windows between different spaces. I use this all the time especially with Finder windows. It's awesome and significantly enhances the joy of using OS X. Spread the word.
Bonus: Most of the SizeWel
Re:Windows 7 (Score:4, Informative)
so this leaves me with only sensible window managers like XFCE and LXDE.
Fluxbox- do-it-yourself!
This's about the only useful post I've seen here in this thread (so far).
That said, it may not be easy. Doin' it yourself (to make it do it the way you want it done) ain't what people want these days. Sad. Fluxbox stays out of your way leaving you to just config apps, but who nowadays wants to diddle with ~/.Xresources and ~/.emacs and ~/.muttrc ...? Oh, and it doesn't include "wizards" that magically config sound or WiFi or USB plugin mountpoints, ... You may need to $google.
Who nowadays even runs Xconsole, or knows the differences between XTerm and urxvt and KTerm and Gnome-Terminal?
Meanwhile, I have three tabs open in urxvt, Xconsole constantly tells me what's happening, Gkrellm tells me thousands of things (including the weather), slrn watches Usenet news, irssi does IRC, mutt watches my IMAP mail (and Gkrellm pings me on newcoming), ... On ALT-F2, I have Firefox, Gimp, Alsa Mixer, LibreOffice, ...
$kidsthesedays.
Re:Windows 7 (Score:4, Informative)
I'm bitching that they won't let me eat the entire cake that I paid for, especially when the OtherOS feature was a significant factor in my choice to buy Sony. Guess why Sony have forever lost me as a customer?