
Switching to Ubuntu - reddotX
http://support.system76.com/articles/switch/
======
zhte415
If found myself turned off Ubuntu because of Unity, despite using Ubuntu
itself since 2005. Odd orange and purple, new odd left menu, general sense
Ubuntu was changing how I didn't want it to. Moved to Mint. Seemed to
replicate Windows XP but by a pain. The upgrade path for Mint felt not
dissimilar to jumping into the sea off a cliff 50 feet up with an incoming
storm. I've done both. The sea took 15 minutes to swim 50 feet. Mint was
worse.

But then, out of chance installing on a laptop that wasn't sure it was UEFI or
BIOS (yes, BIOS in UEFI mode), lacking much in terms of storage media, plus a
weak internet connection, knew Ubuntu had a mini install, not server install,
but mini install, but had never used before. Not so well linked to on the
website but for benefit of all here's the link:
[https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Installation/MinimalCD](https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Installation/MinimalCD)
about 40MB.

Fantastic. Complete Ubuntu ecosystem underpinned by Debian solidness. And
straight-up GNOME environment (or GUI of choosing, or lack of, selectable on
install). No cruft, but as full featured as any Ubuntu can be. And lets GNOME
actually be enjoyed with customisation, but also allows the focus and
productivity that GNOME esp. GNOME3 offer.

The OP is about OSX to Mac. Completely support Ubuntu/GNOME. Absolutely
suggest straight OSX > GNOME and it/general Ubuntu ecosystem. Avoids messing
with Unity or any 'Ubuntu minus Unity' system reinvention, and lets one enjoy
using a computer, not being frustrated by it.

~~~
tajen
I too have been put off by Unity when it appeared, and moved to Mac. It's sad
that they lost so many people, they were on the path to become the leader OS,
and not only among the Linux community. Did they even gain more of the target
users (tablets) they hoped to reach with Unity?

But there's always one guy to say "Hey, I like Unity, plus you can always
configure Gnome or get Kubuntu if you like" and the mere doubt of a debate
dillutes the elephant in the room, which is that Unity wasn't capable of
generating massive adoption, as opposed to most other DEs. Yep, some people
liked Unity, but it's only some people, that's the problem.

~~~
KKKKkkkk1
Sorry to be that guy, but I like Unity. My vie is that Unity is Canonical's
way of integrating the good features of MacOS into the Linux desktop and
moving away from the Windows-lookalike strategy the GNOME project used to
have. So I would argue that if people migrated from Ubuntu to MacOS, it's not
because they don't like Unity, but rather because they like MacOS or Apple
machines in general, and Unity was Canonical's response precisely to that.

~~~
tajen
I didn't even know MacOS when I migrated. I just did it because I literally
couldn't work anymore in Ubuntu. I just knew some people could get the job
done in Mac, which doesn't happen to be the case with Ubuntu.

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pksadiq
I would recommend Debian GNU/Linux over Ubuntu for the following reasons:

* Stability: I consider Debian testing/unstable more stable than Ubuntu stable (Try updating an ubuntu with lots of package installed).

* Privacy: Debian is more concerned about User's privacy then Ubuntu. If your iceweasel (now firefox) automatically connects to internet to load some data against your wish, you can consider this as a bug in Debian (and several other examples).

* Community support: You get community support from both Ubuntu and Debian communities.

* Truely free software 0: No non-free software by default. No binary blobs. But you may choose to have, if you wish to.

* Truely free software 1: In Debian, if you solely install packages from 'main' repo, you can safely use it, even in commercial setup. But in ubuntu, there can be packages that may commercially have several restrictions (and those repos are enabled by default).

Everything is from upstream: GNOME, wayland, flatpak ...

~~~
blfr
_(Try updating an ubuntu with lots of package installed)_

Always do and don't remember any issues.

Mostly, Ubuntu is Debian with some niceties thrown in like AskUbuntu, Unity,
PPAs, or a release schedule.

~~~
6d6b73
I just updated Ubuntu last night..and it's no longer working. I would switch
to Openbsd but I need VMs. I guess it's time to go back to the good old Debian

~~~
gkya
If I were able to switch to a new OS now, I'd give a try to NixOS and GuixSD
(especially to the latter as it fits my love of lisp and emacs). They bring a
new paradigm to the table in package management. Unfortunately a bit busy
nowadays...

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bshimmin
_Ubuntu has several powerful image manipulation programs. Gimp, darktable, and
Inkskape will do what Adobe products can. Plus, they are free, which is a huge
bonus. Adobe products don’t currently run on Ubuntu but there are plenty of
replacement software options._

That's a pretty debatable paragraph, and one with which most serious Photoshop
and Illustrator users would really struggle.

~~~
pkd
Yeah, I love how sophisticated Gimp and Inkscape are for open source projects,
but they don't even touch Adobe when it comes to the finesse and features,
sadly. I keep Windows on dual boot just so that I can use Illustrator on the
odd times that I need to.

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anondon
I was configuring a 15 inch Gazelle: i7 6700HQ + 32GB RAM + 250GB SSD comes to
around $1300. Good value.

Anyone have experience with System76 laptops recently? How is the build
quality, battery life, service? There are not many reviews about the laptops.

~~~
mcguire
I have a 4 year old Gazelle that I've been mostly satisfied with. It never did
have much battery life, so that hasn't gotten better, but no major problems
otherwise.

It does use Nvidia graphics, for which driver support is crap. And unlike
previous machines, the issues haven't disappeared with upgrades. A failure to
resume is the most common bug.

A special award goes to Chrome, which likes to use the acceleration and will
leave the main Chrome window on top of the screen after the application is
hidden. (Using a nonstandard manager such as Xmonad or ratpoison.)

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worldsayshi
Having a work computer that had Ubuntu pre-loaded I must say that Ubuntu
_almost_ hits the mark on being a competitor in user friendliness. There are
only a few things that I think needs improvement. For me it's configurability
of the mouse (in particular cursor acceleration) and dual screen high-dpi
support (which is partly on app developers). Most other things seems to be
there when using a laptop with supported hardware. But supporting the hardware
has been the main hurdle for a long time so having more alternatives that
ships with it would probably solve that one.

~~~
binaryanomaly
I agree that the out of the box mouse settings are too limited. But if it
really bothers you there's still the option to find the right driver and dive
into xorg.conf any time. I spent an hour or two to tweek my macbook touchpad
but it was totally worth the effort.

~~~
worldsayshi
Yeah, I have that for getting two finger scroll and right click and disabling
touch areas. But after the first time I tried to set it up I got a lot of
weird behaviour after suspension and such.

It took quite a bit of effort and the details were hard to understand. There
are a lot of conflicting info in stack overflow threads and such. Like I found
out after the first try that there are multiple configuration paths that are
merged. Don't remember the details now. It was confusing anyhow.

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botto
Ubuntu ruined it when they included their advertising and marketing engine
straight up in the unity interface. Debian is at least not trying to sell all
your info.

~~~
fulafel
The Amazon thing was disabled by default in 16.04.

~~~
chronic6l
The Amazon "thing" is most definitely enabled on the sidebar by default in
16.04.

~~~
fulafel
The Unity Amazon search integration was disabled. The Amazon button is just a
shortcut that opens the Amazon web page.

~~~
nol13
Eh, close enough.

I appreciate that Canonical spends a lot of cash developing and hosting Ubuntu
but if this is the only way that they can do it then thanks but no thanks.

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norswap
Has Unity stopped from being a slow and unresponsive mess?

My last experience with Unity was that it just lagged lagged on a machine that
could handle windows seven with no hiccups.

Most people with whom I talked about this seemed to have had similar
experiences. In truth I've never heard anyone defend Unity.

~~~
wodenokoto
Do you talk to people in real life about unity?

I have never met a person who called unity slow and unresponsive, but I always
read that complaint online.

My dad uses it full time at home and consider it just as user friendly as the
windows he uses at work.

I used it on my laptop 7 years ago, and every other update had hardware
compatibility quirks. But unless I used the XP that came with that laptop,
Windows also didn't have full compatibility.

~~~
type0
> I have never met a person who called unity slow and unresponsive, but I
> always read that complaint online.

Well everything is relative I guess. Compared to Windows Vista, Unity is
rocket fast. On older machines MATE is much more responsive then Unity without
suffering the tweak-ability issues of Lubuntu.

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gotofritz
Great, just what I was looking for. Let's see if I can finally rid myself of
the Apple Co. for good!

Although, no Google Drive... no Evernote...

~~~
binaryanomaly
Try dropbox paper instead of evernote. Personally I find it awesome and
migrated to it from evernote. One reason for it was the (since years) missing
Linux client and the unusable web client.

~~~
gotofritz
Does it have the equivalent of the web clipper? I use Evernote mostly to save
bookmarks

~~~
kejaed
Have you considered Pinboard? I got big into Evernote for a while but the poor
app quality and losing a couple of notes' contents was enough for me just to
move to KISS pinboard.

~~~
gotofritz
Does it actually let you save the page content, or is it just the bookmarks
like del.ici.ous?

~~~
kejaed
The site-provided bookmarklet will save the text you have highlighted on the
page, and you can pay a little extra for the "Archiving" option that will wget
the entire page for you to access forevermore.

------
binaryanomaly
Too bad they don't have any good looking laptops. It could really be an
alternative to apple.

~~~
dudul
I wish they had a 13'' model. The Lemur is not bad, but still bigger and
heavier than a MBP 13.

~~~
binaryanomaly
The Dell XPS 13 looks not too bad
[http://www.dell.com/us/business/p/xps-13-9360-laptop/pd](http://www.dell.com/us/business/p/xps-13-9360-laptop/pd)

The only Linux Laptop I know that could be sort of compared to a macbook pro.
But still from my point of view not even close to the asethetics of a mbpro.

~~~
jpkeisala
I tried out in the shop XPS 13 and new MBP. Even though XPS is a really nice
laptop MBP is nicer looking. I changed in 2006 from Windows to Mac but now I
am really struggling to decide if I should go back to Windows with XPS or buy
that overpriced MBP.

~~~
smoe
I switched to the XPS 13 in 2015 after ten years of Apple. In my opinion, the
Macs look much much nicer overall. But after getting used to the super thin
bezel on the xps 13 screen, sitting in front of an MB feels like working on an
archaic machine to me.

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wineisfine
Its also a good side by side graphic comparison of both OSes.

With a bit of effort, Unity could look much better.

~~~
mrweasel
It really could, and it really needs to. The default looks is a pretty sure
way of ensuring that people who are browsing for an alternative to the Mac
aren't going to pick Ubuntu.

It's a matter of personal taste, but does anyone honestly look at the default
Ubuntu desktop and think "Well, that's just the pretties desktop I've ever
seen".

Logically it shouldn't matter, the look has little influence on the
functionality, but I really think the orange, black, and purple look has
turned people away from, if not Linux, then certainly from Ubuntu.

~~~
aplaice
> but does anyone honestly look at the default Ubuntu desktop and think "Well,
> that's just the pretties desktop I've ever seen".

Data point of one, but yes, I have — I genuinely think that Unity (>=12.04)
looks better than any of Windows 7, Windows XP, and KDE4 (all of which I had
used extensively), MacOS and Gnome-3 (which I had used sporadically) and
Windows 8 and 10, (which I've only seen but not used). IMO it's also at least
as functional as any of the above.

I particularly liked the fact that they "got" the fact that one can have
limited vertical screen space and for example the menus of a maximized window
merge with the top status bar.

Tastes obviously differ widely.

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haggy
Good article on getting started. I think the initial switch is the most
daunting part but once you do it, you won't look back. If you currently use a
mac and work primarily in a *nix environment then making the switch from OSX
-> Ubuntu should feel incredibly natural.

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__s
I've bought twice from system76. Replaced Ubuntu with Arch on the first, &
Windows on the 2nd (would've preferred Arch on the 2nd, but alas, I'm a
Windows dev by shameful trade)

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rocky1138
This is a really good document. I wish someone would do this for KDE Neon,
which is Ubuntu LTS paired with nightly KDE (much better experience than
Kubuntu).

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IE6
I think the article misses a big part of the experience of switching platforms
that goes beyond what GUI applications are there by default.

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known
Brilliant write up

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Annatar
Why in the world would anyone switch from Apple to anything? You drop the
cash, pick up the vertically integrated product, turn it on, and get done
whatever you need to do without hardware or software getting in the way.

Time saved: priceless.

~~~
pritambaral
> without hardware or software getting in the way.

I see you and I have had different experiences with Apple laptops.

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tjpnz
I wouldn't recommend Ubuntu to anyone after the Unity debacle. The way that
they insisted on ramming certain "design decisions" down people's throats
demonstrated quite clearly that certain elements of the project decided that
user feedback meant squat. I remember talking to someone involved with Unity
and asking him why I couldn't move the launcher to the bottom of the screen.
The answer I got was that it was a design decision that people would just have
to accept. He followed up by saying I would get used to it - despite having
already put up with it for 2+ years. Attitudes like this are why I and many
others will never trust Ubuntu again.

~~~
owaislone
You can move it to bottom now BTW.

~~~
tjpnz
You absolutely can but for the longest time you couldn't - not at least in a
way that wouldn't break between versions. The wider issue here though is the
attitude. If someone from the Unity team had explained why it couldn't be done
for a technical reason I think many people would understand that. But to be
told it was by design and that I should learn to live with it is exactly the
kind of arrogance we could all live without in the Linux/FOSS community.

