

Ask HN: What's wrong or missing in your favorite OS? - jayphelps

Whether you're a Windows, Linux, or Mac person, most hackers are very opinionated about their preferred OS.<p>My question is what "feature" (or lack thereof) do you secretly hate about it?  You know, that thing you won't admit in _____ vs. _____ arguments?
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Staydecent
I really think neither OS X nor Windows has the upper hand on the other, so
I'll offer my top gripe for each.

OSX: Window/File Management. I've been told it's the "mac way" to open a
program to create a file. I'm reliant on the OS/Finder to do this. Also, just
basic window management is confusing to me. Perhaps Lion is addressing this.

Windows: No terminal.

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roadnottaken
Mac OS X: lack of a remote-desktop solution.

(Able to connect TO a Mac, from any other computer via RDP).

I can go from Windows to Linux, Linux to Windows, and Mac to Windows/Linux...
but no way to connect TO my OSX box except from another Mac. Why?

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konad
OSX comes with remote desktop, it's in System preferences, sharing .., remote
desktop (I think). I don't have osx available to get the exact words.

It's just VNC. It also has an SSH server in the same section so you can tunnel
through securely.

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roadnottaken
Wow, thanks. I can't believe I didn't know that. I've only had a Mac for a few
months.... Thanks!!!

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roadnottaken
FWIW, after trying VNC on OSX (via Linux and Win7) I have to give Microsoft
credit for their RDP implementation. It kick's VNC's ass for speed and
usability -- no contest.

Still, it's nice to know how to do this on Macs.

~~~
konad
The VNC implementation on OSX is particularly poor. It crashes and I have to
manually restart it.

On Linux the VNC is an X client so one can have multiple instances running
each exposing with their own graphical shell.

Does Windows RDP do that ? (I don't know).

TightVNC works the best with low speed networks, it uses JPEG encoding too.

BTW. is is also against the Windows EULA to use VNC server on it !

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spooneybarger
Mac OS X: lack of a tiling window manager. at least 50% of my complaints would
be solved by that one addition. 40% of my other issues would have to gut the
Finder.

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jayphelps
You and me both brother. Some things I just don't get in OS X. Like the "zoom"
button's inconsistent functionality. Hilarious that OS X Lion is going to
change this button to go literally fullscreen now (without toolbars, desktop,
etc) which might be pretty annoying too but I guess we'll see.

~~~
spooneybarger
i like the zoom to max size for content much more than zoom to whole screen
but i'm someone who never uses it anyway. i have divvy which makes my life a
little more manageable.

~~~
jayphelps
+1 for Divvy

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kgo
OSX: Only one global menubar really sucks for multi-monitor setups.

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konad
Plan9 - no modern web browser or media player.

