
From OS X to Ubuntu - bpierre
https://nicolas.perriault.net/code/2016/from-osx-to-ubuntu/
======
sk1pper
IMO if money isn't an object, OS X is a better call when it comes to laptops.
If money is tight, going for a Linux box is almost as good.

Linux on desktops - as in, not a laptop - has worked pretty much flawlessly
for me for >10 years. Not much else to say there. If desktop or server, this
shouldn't be a discussion.

As far as laptops go, I've just had better experiences with macbooks. Linux on
a laptop is still 100% usable and gets you everything you need. Getting things
set up can be a way bigger PITA on Linux, like function keys, sound, and god
forbid, wirless. I've never installed Linux on a laptop and had wireless _not_
suck, at least a little bit. Mostly just randomly dropping connection. It's
gotten better in the last few years, but it hasn't reached that perfect
reliability that my mbp seems to have. Ubuntu seems to break a bit more on
average - and those errors are a bit more likely to be obnoxious, or blockers
even - like during boot. Not saying this is commonplace, but I've NEVER had OS
X kernel panic on me during boot.

Again, I would be perfectly happy a linux box instead, but for me it's worth a
bit of extra $$ for what has seemed to me to be better reliability.

Most of my experiences have been with Ubuntu LTS releases but really, I've
tried all the big ones, and on quite a few different laptops over the years.
YMMV of course.

Edit: all that being said, prob will switch over when this one dies, because
touch bar... lol

~~~
timtadh
Linux laptops: buy pre-installed. If you want linux and you want to be sure
everything is functional, AND you don't want to devote lots of time to a
"project" buy a pre-install. Dell Developer Edition laptops (XPS 13, 15) make
great laptops. I hear good things about system 76 and purism as well.

Save time. Support having good laptops and good drivers. Buy pre-installed.
Paying the "windows tax" and installing a Linux on a windows laptop isn't just
more work, it is bad for the ecosystem.

~~~
developer2
>> Linux laptops: buy pre-installed.

The fact that hardware - though much improved in the past 15 years - is still
a crapshoot on Linux, particularly when it comes to laptop hardware, is so
frustrating.

Windows will work on practically any combination of hardware. OS X will work
on any hardware it is permitted to operate on. Linux is the only consortium of
operating systems that still suffer from the inability to "just work out of
the box". I can't see how it's ever supposed to be "the year" for linux when
just getting it to run properly on hardware requires buying OEM meant-for-
Windows, but we-promise-it-works-with-linux garbage.

Is a "pre-installed" linux laptop even cross-distro compatible? If the laptop
comes with Ubuntu pre-installed, what are the odds I can replace it with
CentOS or Arch? Is the laptop "designed for linux", or "designed for exactly
what is factory shipped, and nothing else"? Can I even do a fresh install of
the shipped operating system, or do they hack in additional manufacturer
packages/kernel drivers that require you to never reinstall on top of the
shipped install? How about OS upgrades? Are they reliable, or do you risk
running into compatibility problems, even with a new version of the same
distro?

What we really need is a BSD/unix/linux[1] competitor to OS X. RedHat tried,
and IMO failed. We need another closed-source unix/linux-based operating
system that throws away X.org and its attempted modern replacements, that can
directly compete with OS X. I'm tired of waiting for the open source world to
try - and fail - to gather momentum. And tired of Apple, who has the best
unix/linux operating system, fucking us over with every hardware release.

[1] How do you type a literal asterisk on HN? Backslash and double-asterisk
don't work. _nix. \_ nix. __nix

~~~
qplex
>Linux is the only consortium of operating systems that still suffer from the
inability to "just work out of the box".

Google the laptop model + Linux before you buy it. That increases the odds of
getting a "it works out of the box" experience.

You'll also usually find pretty straightforward instructions how to get things
going quickly if they do not work out of the box, or the simple fact that the
machine is not well supported.

Also, if you had done enough Windows installs you'd know that things very
seldom "work out of the box" if you do a clean install, especially with
laptops. Instead, you'll have a fun time hunting bloated driver packages from
some slow obscure chinese FTP server.

In addition hardware support on Windows gets worse over time. For example:
Have an older Samsung laptop, wanna run Windows 10? Tough luck. [1]

On Linux you'll have this problem _very_ rarely, if ever, as hardware support
(among other things) keep improving over time.

[1]
[http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/05/31/windows_10_samsung_f...](http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/05/31/windows_10_samsung_fail/)

~~~
pjmlp
> Google the laptop model + Linux before you buy it. That increases the odds
> of getting a "it works out of the box" experience.

I would happily do this when was a university student about 20 years ago.

Nowadays, I want to go whatever store (physical or online) and just take what
I want to buy.

Yes, there are some online stores for GNU/Linux, but as I discovered with the
one I bought (Asus + Ubuntu), it might happen that some things don't quite
work.

Also the models being sold aren't that enticing, XPS is the exception.

~~~
majewsky
> Nowadays, I want to go whatever store (physical or online) and just take
> what I want to buy.

If you bring Linux on a USB stick, a good store will let you boot into it on
the exhibition piece. At least, that was the case for me, and it definitely
contributed to my buying my notebook at that particular store.

~~~
thecrazyone
I hadn't thought about this. Thanks for sharing :)

------
J0-nas
Not related to the blog post but why are the websites form lenovo + dell (and
acer) so god damn awful?

lenovo.com redirects me to
[https://www.lenovo.com/se/en/](https://www.lenovo.com/se/en/) since i'm
currently in Sweden. I then get nice server error as greeting: 403 -
Forbidden: Access is denied.

If I try to access lenovo.de I get often no response... also for subsequent
pages...

On dells website it takes an awful lot of time to filter their laptops. It's
not even 100 items... why does it take so long?

Acer has a nice compare function. The only problem is that you can't compare
laptops of their business line with the home ones. They also have too many
different models. The compare function doesn't showcase any difference.

~~~
nkoren
This, this, a thousand times this. One thing that Apple has done very well is
put together a website that:

    
    
      A.) Tells you what they are selling, and
      B.) Can sell it to you.
    

Why is it so hard for other vendors to figure out that this is a pretty good
way to sell computers?

My girlfriend bought an Asus Zenbook the other day; it's a really nice machine
and made me wonder whether there might be a Zenbook for me. So I ended up on
[http://www.asus.com/zenbook/global/index.html](http://www.asus.com/zenbook/global/index.html).
Is there a product list? No. A comparison feature? No. A way to buy, like,
anything at all? Fuck you, says Asus. Here, have a bunch of annoying marketing
copy; if you like that enough then maybe you can buy from some online retailer
who has screwed up the model-numbers, unless you'd rather go to a shop were
some know-nothing highschooler will try to make a commission by upselling you.

Had the same experience with HP. I take your word for it that Leno and Dell
and Acer are similar. Really made me appreciate Apple's retail mechanisms (as
much as I'm aiming to exit their ecosystem).

Seriously, industry: WTF? Get it together, guys!

~~~
mhw
> One thing that Apple has done very well is put together a website that:
    
    
      A.) Tells you what they are selling, and
      B.) Can sell it to you.
    
      C.) Be able to configure a US keyboard when you're not in the US.
    

I'm in the UK, but I've used a US keyboard layout all along from the days that
I bought an obsolete Sun3/50 to use as an X terminal. My last ThinkPad was
bought in the US by a friend who came from there and sold it on to me. But if
I wanted to buy a new laptop with a US keyboard from Lenovo or Dell today,
their web sites don't provide the option. Apple do.

(I'm sure it might be possible to order one over the phone, but why should I
have to?)

~~~
TazeTSchnitzel
I wonder if it reflects how they manufacture them. Do they print the keycap
labels on demand?

------
ekianjo
> So, is Linux ready for the desktop? > For me, the answer is yes.

Honestly it's been ready for _years_ on the desktop (of course, this does not
apply if you are an expert user in Y software only available on Z platform and
need to use it for your job/company, etc...). Ubuntu 16.04 did not bring
anything significant on the table, it's just that most people have not
noticed. I switched full Linux back in 2009~2010 and I have never looked back
since.

~~~
falcolas
Opinion follows: I don't think so.

My three day old vanilla Ubuntu desktop install completely froze up on me the
other day. I wasn't doing anything out of the ordinary - browsing Reddit with
Firefox. It was a mostly default Ubuntu install (nvidia and broadcom drivers)
and otherwise completely up to date.

I was frustrated enough I haven't bothered to troubleshoot it yet, but my best
guess is somehow I ran it out of the 16 gigs of memory in my desktop, and the
default install either didn't create a sufficient swap file, or it was not
very proactive in swapping.

If I can freeze a basic install by browsing Reddit with the default web
browser, there's something fundamentally broken.

~~~
michaelcampbell
> If I can freeze a basic install by browsing Reddit with the default web
> browser, there's something fundamentally broken.

I would agree if you could show causation, but this is only correlation. I
could tell you how many hundreds, maybe thousands of hours I do exactly what
you've described with NO freezing, but so could a lot of others. I'm sure
others yet can tell you of freezing.

None of this is perfect. But one anecdata does not a readiness state (nor lack
of it) make.

------
renownedmedia
I've been switching back and forth between OS X and Linux for the past several
years. I'm currently at a year and a half into a Linux streak and really
enjoying recent advancements. My Dell XPS 13 typically gets 10 hours of
battery life.

Linux itself is quite stable. Simply install a recent distro and off you go.
If you're using a heavy Window Manager you'll get all the convenient
configuration applets you need. The real issue, IMO, is the desire to tinker.

OS X is a bit limiting in what you can do with it. I haven't seen anyone with
custom window decorations in OS X in a long time. Short of running a software
update we aren't capable of tweaking kernel versions and system utilities. If
we stick to the same limitations in Linux it's going to be near impossible to
break.

Once the Linux tinkering sets in you'll find that you've installed a bleeding
edge kernel, changed some repository sources, modified Xorg.conf, ./configure
&& make && make install'd an obscure library (then (mostly) uninstalled it),
and installed Python 2 alongside Python 3 without rebooting for two months.
Good luck rebooting at that point ;)

With great power comes a great desire to shoot ourselves in the foot.

~~~
willismichael
Oh come on, I've been a Linux enthusiast for over a decade now and it's been
years since I've even touched xorg.conf, installed a kernel that didn't come
from a standard repo, or had trouble rebooting due to a change I made to the
system.

Linux has gotten significantly less painful over the years, and it's not just
that I'm more familiar with it now. Installing a mainstream distro these days
is easier than the last time I installed Windows (granted, that was XP).

I finally caved and started using a Mac for work. I was afraid that I would
like it so much that I would just have to buy one for home, but I actually
find Linux is still pleasant to use, I still think I prefer it over Mac OS.

~~~
colemickens
Not only that, I don't even run X as my root display server. Sure, XWayland is
around, but only because of Chromium apps (`google-chrome-unstable`, `visual-
studio-code-nightly-bin`, `slack-desktop`, `riot-web`).

And the best part is, Wayland (Ozone) support is already in Chromium, it's
just not really enabled right now.

~~~
naibafo
sadly I have yet to come across a functioning tiling window manager for
wayland.

~~~
colemickens
Sway (written in C, I contributed the libinput config), Way-Cooler (written in
Rust, if of any interest) and Orbment all ride on top of 'wlc'. They're all at
least somewhat functional. I think there's a few others but I haven't tried
any of them.

~~~
naibafo
Thanks, I will keep an eye on sway. :)

------
terrywang
Linux? Desktop? Different answer from different people.

For me I've always been optimistic. Linux as desktop offers choices and
freedom. I've been running Linux as my main desktop since Fedora Core 1 (you
can count). Overall the kernel and desktop environments (window managers) are
getting better (especially KDE). Of course, there has been learning curves and
all sort of frustration, many weird problems to attack but never a real
showstopper AS LONG AS you had the time and passion to research (learn) and
fix them (at least it is how I have built up my Linux skills tree).

It's about freedom and choice, also the habit that has formed over the years.

I do use a MacBook Pro 15" for work (on the move, portability, battery life is
better than running Linux on it - plus the wireless driver hassle - no worth
it - as long as iTerm2 and homebrew is in place - don't care), but the pretty
much all grunt work is done on my workstations (2 optiplex) in office and
home. They both are running Arch Linux + KDE Plasma 5 (Xfce4 and other light
weight WMs as alternatives). I just feel relaxed and in control of the OS (can
do pretty much what I want - like mount a part of physical memory as
ramfs/tmpfs and use it to do heavy I/O tasks etc... similar to drive a manual
car ;-)

I don't mind using a Mac but do consider Linux as a good and free alternative
when coming across things that do not work well on Mac. It may not work for
all but you'll have to give it a try to know.

In addition, better consult and seek advice from Linux veterans regarding
distribution/desktop environment/window manager choices, known hardware
support issues and best practices beforehand, save you time and trouble ;-)

~~~
terrywang
With regard to Power Management

TLP may be useful for people who run Linux on laptops TLP – Linux Advanced
Power Management [http://linrunner.de/tlp](http://linrunner.de/tlp)
[https://github.com/linrunner/TLP](https://github.com/linrunner/TLP)

Laptop Mode Tools is the then standard way of power saving, not sure if it is
obsolete now. [https://github.com/rickysarraf/laptop-mode-
tools](https://github.com/rickysarraf/laptop-mode-tools)

In addition, Intel's PowerTop and other stuff on 01.org can also be useful if
running on Intel architecture (GPU).

I had been running Ubuntu 8.04, 10.04 12.04 on Dell Latitude D630 and E6410
(suspend to memory worked fine `pm-suspend` and then `systemctl suspend`) for
several years, during that period of time laptop mainly sat on docking station
as a desktop so I couldn't care less about power management, performance was
first priority (e.g. no HDD spin-down `hdparm -B 254 /dev/sdX`, no swap
devices, vm.swappiness=1 etc...).

HTH

------
voycey
Disclaimer: I have been using Linux as my main OS for many years now....

However, I actually agree with a lot of the below, the alternative programs on
Linux aren't up to scratch with tools people build their livelihood on
(Illustrator, Photoshop, Sketch etc).

But the opposite is true also, I find development painful on OSX, I get pissed
when starting with a new company and they assume I want a Mac. My stack is
LAMP, it's what the servers run, its what I want to run on my local
development machine as well.

I am currently on Windows / Virtualbox with a full desktop version of Ubuntu
16.04 and its a great setup, best of both worlds, I can develop natively and
if there is anything I need to do that is beyond the capabilities of any Linux
Replacements (e.g I had to some pretty heavy vector editing the other day), I
have Windows available just a minimise away!

------
csdreamer7
For those of you looking for a nice little Linux laptop check out System76's
Lemur.

[https://system76.com/laptops/lemur](https://system76.com/laptops/lemur)

I have the older Skylake version and it runs just fine as long as you use Mesa
13 (I use Manjaro so it is not an issue).

System76 does little things such as commit driver fixes to the kernel and
flash a custom bios and firmware to make the hardware run better with Linux.
If you want to good hardware support on Linux you can't go wrong with buying
laptop from them.

~~~
Freak_NL
I just wish they (or a comparable competitor) opened up shop in Europe.
Ordering from the US is doable, but the hit-or-miss import tax sucks, and for
warranty the distance and economic zone mismatch mean delays and high shipping
costs.

That said, they make great laptops. I love my four year old Gazelle.

------
macco
For all your OS X coming to Linux, a word of personal advice. Use a distro
with KDE, Kubuntu is great for beginners and install ubuntu-make
([https://wiki.ubuntu.com/ubuntu-make](https://wiki.ubuntu.com/ubuntu-make)),
a command line utility that installs your dev environment.

If you feel a bit more adventurous and want the all of the newest Software try
Manjaro-KDE.

Why KDE?

KDE has a traditional Desktop experience, that can be tweaked in every way. It
is much more polished and all the other Linux desktops and it uses Qt5 as it's
base - so the team doesn't need to develop the widget toolkit and can focus on
the desktop. Lastly gtk apps look much better in KDE than Qt apps in Gnome.

BTW: I was a long time Unity and then Gnome user, so I know what I am talking
about. I switched to KDE this summer and never looked back.

~~~
more_original
The choice of desktop environment is quite a personal matter. I would
recommend Gnome 3, which is especially polished on Fedora.

The early transition years from Gnome 2 to Gnome 3 were rough, and I switched
to KDE for this time. KDE was fine, but Gnome 3 has been polished a lot in the
last view years. So I switched back to Gnome 3 and never looked back :).

~~~
macco
> The choice of desktop environment is quite a personal matter.

Absolutely.

------
peterburkimsher
Is there a common high-level scripting tool for Gnome, like AppleScript?

For me it's all about the APIs. When I want to do something like:

tell application "iTunes" to return every track whose genre is "Rock" and
rating > 3

then I don't want to mess around with API documentation for 10 hours and
trying lots of different music managers, then importing my large library, just
to lose all the tags.

I expect similar APIs in the file browser, text editor, photo library,
contacts, calendar, and web browser apps too. A common API is what makes an
ecosystem to me.

~~~
TD-Linux
Yes and no, there's a standard API called D-Bus. If you want to browse it you
can run a program like D-Feet and choose "session bus". It's not tied to a
particular language though, rather you need bindings to it. In addition, it's
somewhat more complex than AppleScript, and the APIs that most apps provide
are rarely documented. It does have the concept of standard interfaces, so
many apps will often implement identical APIs.

------
methodin
For the most part all software/hardware combinations are pretty solid for a
majority of users. Those that required very specific things - obviously not.
Hell I'm a developer and switched to Chromebooks since I only need a browser
and ssh. Everyone should always be out there looking at other stuff - chances
are you can discover something new or even better than what you thought
possible.

~~~
themodelplumber
> Everyone should always be out there looking at other stuff - chances are you
> can discover something new or even better than what you thought possible

This is a great point. I bought Dell's first Ubuntu laptop offering back in
'07 or '08, and am still thankful I did to this day, even though the machine
has long since retired. Back then the MacBook Pro was a very solid offering,
and a Linux laptop was almost a joke. But I still have Youtube video tutorials
I recorded from that laptop, it was a great machine and your point is as true
now as it was then. Try it out, don't just sit there ignorantly whinging, is
my version. :-)

------
Abishek_Muthian
In my humble opinion,

OSX : Productivity, Linux : Development, Windows : Games

I've been with all of these for all my computing life & still doing the same.

OSX/macOS is great for anyone who doesn't want to meddle with their system,
especially if you use iDevices. Though developers have historically liked OSX,
it could be apt for web development or anything non resource consuming (like
java/android). For e.g I symlinked my android sdk (15 GB) to another SSD and
had the android studio run from the native partition & the android studio's
instant run feature sure made whole lot of mess and took 1 hour to compile
~2,00,000 lines of code. Of course this is not the fault of OSX, but I can
manage partitions better & expandability is cheaper in a linux based system.
Of course

Linux : I use an external SSD with Arch Linux for android development with the
Mac. It has improved my development productivity multifold. Of course you
might need some tinkering to do, but will be straight forward unless it
involves GPU. Basically GPU drivers, especially Nvidia sucks big time on
linux.

Windows : DirectX.

~~~
slitaz
The game situation is changing fast. Even CivIV was just announced that it is
coming to Linux.

Perhaps the Vulkan drivers will make it even better to write crossplatform
games.

~~~
hobarrera
Plus, wine works marvelously nowadays, with lots of games getting platinum or
gold ratings, some even on the day they're released.

------
aruggirello
Shameless plug: wish me good luck - I'm going to open an ecommerce for Linux-
& BSD- preinstalled laptop & desktop computers in Italy (because that's where
I live). Mind you, it's a small business, initially limited to reselling OEM-
preinstalled systems already available in the wholesale market, but if it
works, I'm planning to launch my own models, too. Any suggestions?

~~~
pawelkomarnicki
Don't do it.

~~~
thepiwo
I'd say he should try, but with out to high expectations or financial
investments.

Linux offers could work for people just wanting a working computer with less
risk of viruses. People that don't care for their machine running Linux. Most
other people interested are tech savvy and will compare other offerings as
well or selfbuild.

------
mnm1
The problem is/was never Linux. For me, it's always been X. At some point, it
just stops working. I've had to reinstall from scratch so many times over the
last 20 years that I've lost count. Tried again these last couple of months.
Nope. The longest X has stayed stable has been almost 6 months, about 5 years
ago. Same as 20 and 10 years ago. This time it was only a few weeks. After
that, I'm lucky if I get a text login prompt at all. Maybe Wayland will be
better but I'm not holding my breath based on what I've read so far.

On top of X's display issues, it has input issues, especially with trackpads.
This should be self explanatory to anyone who's run Linux on an Macbook Pro
and likely with any other trackpad. I think many of the issues can be fixed
with many days spent on tweaking the drivers, but some of the issues don't
seem to have a fix that the drivers support (proper double tap detection that
only registers a double tap if my fingers are close together--should part of
accidental touch detection--for example).

I really want it to work but X is simply insufferable in its current form. I
shouldn't have to reinstall the OS multiple times just to test it out or debug
X when it fails to load (it's just easier to reinstall). Ironically,
everything else works perfectly for me, including all necessary software,
wifi, nvidia gfx, etc.

~~~
terrywang
X is really old and should be phased out. That's why Fedora has made Wayland
the default display manager in latest Fedora 25.

I have never had the problem you've described, most issue I've encountered (my
VGA/GPU were all Intel/NVIDIA) can be fixed (using pseudo console, SSH, chroot
etc...) without reinstall (which doesn't really fix the root cause). The
issues you've mentioned, try to look for workarounds from distro wiki or
stackoverflow (sister sites), or even Gentoo/Arch Docs, try to get mentor
who's a Linux veteran will save you time and effort.

I've been running rolling release for many years and it has never broken once
after the sysV init -> systemd migration (I did a reinstall). Even Ubuntu /
Kubuntu LTS versions have been stable, I wonder if it the VGA/GPU driver
causing all the troubles.

HTH

~~~
mnm1
I'm hoping Wayland does indeed solve the problems X has. Unfortunately, it's
not just one problem but a series of them spread over multiple machines from
various vendors. This latest one I think is probably not the graphics driver
as it did work fine for a couple of weeks but the trackpad driver. I think I
might give Fedora 25 a shot and see if there's a difference.

Without a doubt, however, Linux based OS's have come a very long way even in
just the last 5 years, let alone the last 20. Mint KDE for example, works
almost out of the box for me on my 2013 MbPro w/ external 4k monitor (except
internal trackpad / Magic Trackpad 2). I suspect I'll be able to remove that
"almost" in the next year or two if not sooner and once messing with X config
is no longer required, hopefully X (or Wayland) will be stable.

------
hhandoko
> If you know f.lux, RedShift is an alternative to it for Linux.

Good to know there's an alternative, but to clarify: f.lux is available on
Linux as well (the statement makes it as if it weren't, just not open-source).

~~~
saghm
I think due to the closed-source nature of f.lux, RedShift is in the main
repos for more distros than f.lux, making it easier for new Linux users to
install.

~~~
hhandoko
That's a good point, thanks. I was looking at it as an Ubuntu user :)

------
mark_l_watson
I went in the opposite direction. I downloaded Slackware over a 2400bud modem,
and have used Linux ever since then. For a long time, Linux was my principle
OS for a laptop, but occasionally using OS X on a Mac laptop.

I have mostly been retired for a long while, and usually try to limit my work
time to 4 hours a day. I want that 4 hours to be as productive as possible,
and right now my little MacBook is a bit more productive. Cost is not an
issue.

~~~
tyfon
I was lucky enough to get the Slackware book with the cd around 1993-94(?) so
I didn't have to go through the whole floppydisk dance.

I did try something called minilinux before though that I downloaded off a
bbs. I think it was 4 floppies :)

Still using linux to this day both at home and work.

------
corv
Sure it's possible to use Linux on the desktop. It's also possible to find
some laptops that are well supported.

Do I want to replace Lightroom, Sketch, Pixelmator, 1Password and Alfred with
inferior replacements? No, because my livelihood depends on good tools and I
think it's fair to pay money for them.

~~~
methodin
I find it difficult to believe that your livelihood depends solely on the
specific combination of apps you mentioned. It doesn't even seem like you've
actually tried any of these apps yet call them inferior? Inferior how? That's
quite an elitist stance to portray without the specifics to back it up here.

~~~
dkuntz2
Have you tried any of the apps they're claiming are superior? I would argue
Sketch is compared to Inkscape, and Pixelmator is compared to Gimp. For
someone who is mostly messing around casually and just for fun, Inkscape and
Gimp are great. They give you most of the tools you need or want, but not
always in a straightforward way, and their UIs are lacking compared to their
commercial counterparts.

Sketch and Pixelmator, to me, operate in a significantly smoother way, and
make doing basic tasks substantially easier. The biggest thing that comes to
mind for Sketch/Inkscape is exporting sections of the larger project file into
individual assets. It's a breeze in sketch. It's integrated in the main UI, it
operates in a predictable way, and it just works. Inkscape pulls you through a
series of menus, and doesn't have any way to remember how you've previously
separated up your assets (unless there's some way to do that deeply hidden in
the UI that I could never find).

So yes, Sketch and Pixelmator, and most well-known creative software (anything
in the Adobe suite, the Affinity Suite, etc) is generally significantly ahead
of the open source options. Would I prefer it otherwise, sure, but the open
source options aren't used by that many professionals, and are generally
swimming upstream to implement features the commercial ones already have,
instead of creating the next great feature (whatever that is) or streamlining
their UI to make easier to use.

------
kinnth
Im also going to make the switch with the Lenovo X1. Apple are just taking the
piss with peripherals and cost now.

Nice read, gives me more faith in my choice.

~~~
criddell
Will you miss the retina display though?

~~~
artursapek
I just bought the highest-end 4th gen X1 Carbon and it has a high-density
2560x1440 _matte_ display. It's as good as or better than the MBP's. And
Ubuntu handles handles UI scaling surprisingly well.

~~~
intopieces
> And Ubuntu handles handles UI scaling surprisingly well.

This is why I jumped from Ubuntu on a Dell XPS 13 9343 (Early 2015) to a new
MacBook Pro (Late 2016, non-touch). I was tired of being surprised when things
worked well.

I gave it a good shot -- five months of tweaking, five months of reinstalls
and forum posts and being back on the Linux Train with everything. But it just
got so old. Workarounds for workarounds, unpredictability, lack of
interoperability with my other devices... I just couldn't do it anymore. Linux
rarely delights.

I still keep Elementary OS on a desktop (it too has some oddities, but it's
mostly smooth sailing) but on a laptop, when I'm out of my home and really
want to just _get work done_ , I haven't found anything as pleasing as OS X.

I enjoyed Linux for learning how to tweak things, but sometimes I want to use
the computer, not configured it. And Ubuntu was always needing configuration.

------
0max
On the flip side, I just went from OS X to Windows 10, which has Ubuntu
available under developer settings...And now I can play all my old Windows
Steam games.

Last time I used Windows for my workhorse was Vista.

------
cossovich
I moved from OS X to Ubuntu running on Thinkpads as my main work machine
around the Ubuntu 12.04 era... haven't looked back. I have an 11" Macbook Air
as a backup/home machine and I think Canonical have closed the gap in terms of
polish and stability. If you stick with well supported hardware (Thinkpad T
and X series in my experience) you can't go wrong.

------
SloppyStone
If only Linux had decent image editors... I would have made the jump years
ago, but Gimp and Inkscape ain't just cutting it.

~~~
mtw
Same for me - last I checked, Gimp's UI is too damn awful. But I only need 5%
of PHotoshop's features (smart selection, fill with color, resize, crop,
optimize for web) to optimize images for web work

~~~
pawadu
GIMP is ugly? watch this video, just give it 5 minutes of your time:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JNoVb5k40sU&t=30](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JNoVb5k40sU&t=30)

the guy (a pro photographer) explains how to make GIMP less ugly and more
usable.

------
gonzo
After a decade on MacBooks, I've just gone the same route as the author.
Ubuntu on an X1 Carbon 4th gen.

After moving to 16.10, the only thing that doesn't work is the fingerprint
reader.

I also buy the systems for most of the developers in my company (we do
pfSense), and they're also going to be asked to consider the same solution on
future upgrades.

~~~
csdreamer7
gonzo, you may want to check out my comment here on the Lemur.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13362198](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13362198)

------
montyboy_us
+1 on the X1 Carbon. I made the switch this year, too, post MacBook Pro
announcement. Have been running Fedora flawlessly. Cheers.

~~~
nishs
Could you comment on your battery life experience / any heating issues?

~~~
viraptor
Previous generation X1. Easily getting 6h of scripting. (As in, no heavy
compiler or processing needed) Slightly warm, but no issues with heat.

~~~
phongngtuan
Tbh that does not sound very good for a flagship model...

~~~
viraptor
I've never seen a laptop actually survive longer than 7h practically. The
advertised battery life may say >10, synthetic benchmarks may say a bit lower.
But once you use it with wifi on, with proper brightness, actually doing some
work - no - it always takes a big hit.

~~~
phongngtuan
Did you try windows, or if linux with lightweight use, would it improve the
battery life? I had a macbook pro for 4 years so battery degraded and the
processor wasn't that efficient but anecdote for newer macbook rarely reports
anything less than 6 hours. I'm interested in a X270 (for the battery) but
then I read somewhere battery on linux is kinda unstable. What do you think?

------
partycoder
Elementary OS is very similar to Mac OS in terms of UI. Of course the project
is rather new, but is very promising.

The desktop environment (Pantheon) is installable in Ubuntu, though.

Once in a while you might end up with a messed up situation that might require
some effort to fix.

~~~
willismichael
How well does it work to install Pantheon on Ubuntu? I'm curious to try it on
a home computer that has other users without impacting them, is there a simple
way to make it launch Pantheon when I sign in, but still use Unity for other
user accounts on the machine?

Ages ago I remember using a login client that allowed you to pick which
desktop environment you wanted to use, but I'm not sure how to do it on
Ubuntu... I guess I could google around for whatever command-line-and-text-
editor-fu is required.

~~~
fiddlerwoaroof
Lightdm/gdm (the service that provides the login screen) generally provides a
way to choose an alternate session to start on login and then remember it on a
per-user basis.

~~~
guitarbill
The way this works on Ubuntu is there's a small icon (circle-like) next to the
user name, click this and if you have other desktop environments installed,
you can select it.

It's a great way to try out new ones. I tried Ubuntu + Cinnamon before making
the jump to Mint.

~~~
fiddlerwoaroof
I've pretty much given up on Linux desktop environments in favor of tiling
window managers. First I tried XMonad and then, when I had an issue with my
monitor layout that was causing XMonad to crash (X reporting my monitor size
as 0x0 for some reason). I jumped to StumpWM and have been using it ever since
(it had the same problem, but I found it much easier to locate and fix the bug
in a Common Lisp program than in a Haskell program: especially because I could
connect to the running window manager with Slime in emacs, catch the error,
and then fiddle around in the REPL for a while to find the X calls that could
actually return the right monitor size).

------
baldfat
Linux is all about customized computer.

Personally I love tiled window managers (i3) and urvxt for a terminal and I
prefer my gui programs to be mostly KDE. I am the only person in the world
like this.

Welcome to your way (As long as you don't mind working for it)

~~~
Koshkin
> _Linux is all about customized computer._

While true for many Linux fans, the majority of regular Linux users,
especially those in the enterprise arena, do not customize anything and simply
use it the way it is installed/configured by default - pretty much as they
would were they using Windows or MacOS.

~~~
criddell
These days I advise people to pick the most popular distro and leave
everything as close to the default settings as possible.

I used to enjoy endless customizing (Enlightenment) but that ended up taking
the place of actually doing work. These days I leave everything set to default
and install as little software as I possibly can.

------
dirtyhenry
My main point to stick to macOS is the lack of any solid alternative to Xcode
for iOS development. For a non-development environment, I think Raspbian
provides a good enough experience. #stuckForever

~~~
pawadu
This is because Apple wants to lock you in. It is your choice to stay with the
platform or get out.

Fun fact: if you remote login into a OSX machine you wont be allowed to build
and publish iOS apps. Apple has disabled that on purpose. Think about that for
a minute!

~~~
dirtyhenry
Sure, but I make my income from developing iOS apps. And I really enjoy it. I
just wish Xcode tools (maybe just CLI tools) would be available on Linux
platforms. Maybe with Swift getting popular...

------
ldev
Tried to switch to Linux like a month ago, main gripes:

1) Typing sudo before everything. Entering your password everytime OS farts.
Geez. Even installing nodejs required to type sudo, meanwhile on macOS - brew
install node. Also Ubuntu has outdated packages (nodejs version in their "up
do date" repository starts with a zero, need to hunt down ppas, I mean at this
point package repository loses it's point, because it's easier to go to the
package's website and download it than googling out two ppas and checking
which one is more legit, buut then you run into another issue - windows has
exe files, macos has dmg files, linux has a zip file and it's not recommended
to install this way, what a royal mess).

2) No good dock software. There's plank, xfce, kde provides almost "docks",
but all plainly suck. What I want from dock - notifications in dock on app
icon (you got 2 unread messages in skype, mail app, messenger, etc etc - show
a little overlay on the icon with number "2") and tasks in submenu - right
click on skype icon - common tasks like changing online status, right click on
music player icon - show Play/Pause, Skip song, etc etc. There's a bazillion
choices and every linux fanboy touts about the POWER OF CHOICE - but all
choices suck (so you could say there's no choice, there's even no one option).

3) I really love global app menu. Well, I was told Linux has _THE_
customizability... Apparently not when you want something more technically
difficult than one of the same tilling wm or conky config - for the most part
using jaytana and vala global menu worked, but IntelliJ IDEA's globbal menu
entries did nothing on click and some gtk3 software didn't hid their own app
menu, so not really working well. Customizability my ass.

I like linux on server, it's allright there (although FreeBSD with clearly
defined base system and /usr is actually designed), but as a desktop OS - not
even close.

~~~
Sean1708
It might be worth giving ApricityOS[0] a try next time you fancy delving into
Linux, I've a lot of good things from ex-Mac users who switched to it.

[0]: [https://apricityos.com/](https://apricityos.com/)

~~~
ldev
Thanks. I try out Linux every year and it's getting better, I mean Linux gets
95% of things right (if not right - atleast you can live with it), but devil's
in the details and those remaining little 5% really piss me off. Like xfce -
program can change it's state or w/e to busy for 50 ms and you get the loading
spinner near your cursor for 50 ms. So cursor just "blinks" with loading
spinner. Sometimes repeatedly.

Somehow never noticed that on macOS - either applications are designed better
and only known long tasks change the cursor, or there's a system wide control
- show spinner near cursor only if app was in busy state for 500 ms or
something.

This year tried out Ubuntu, elementaryOS, Manjaro and Solus. Well, Solus on
boot on my system had a black screen, and when booted in VirtualBox on Windows
- black screen but atleast network notification showed that I'm connected to
the internet, after I dismissed the notification - black screen again.

------
rurban
Dtrace? systemtap is not close to dtrace performance and ease of use. I'd
rather switch to freebsd or dragonfly than back to linux.

~~~
gonzo
Kris Moore reports that TrueOS (previously PC-BSD) works on the X1 Carbon 4th
gen except for resume.

------
anthk
>I didn't debate this for days, I installed the latest available Ubuntu right
away as it was the distribution

Man, stick to 16.04, add PlayDEB and the official MESA releases.

If you want something recent based on GNU/Linux, desktop oriented, and fast,
get SolusOS.

~~~
robert_foss
Why stick with 16.04?

~~~
nishs
Not OP, probably because it an LTS release.

~~~
slitaz
The LTS releases get a kernel upgrade and graphics libraries every six months
or so. So, you get newer hardware support even if you stay at 16.04.

There is a new such update for 16.04 at the end of this month. It is the
16.04.02 update.

------
jhanschoo
This is pretty tangential to the topic, but if anybody is looking to dual- or
triple-boot without resorting to third-party EFI software,
[http://courses.cms.caltech.edu/cs171/materials/pdfs/How_to_D...](http://courses.cms.caltech.edu/cs171/materials/pdfs/How_to_Dual-
Boot_OSX_and_Ubuntu.pdf) offers the best guide to setting up such an
environment using the Apple EFI.

I've successfully followed a modified version of this guide's steps to install
Ubuntu to a bootable USB drive and am very satisfied with it.

------
leastangle
Waiting for the new X1 Carbon to be available in order to replace my MBP...

------
artursapek
I made the exact same move a couple months ago (Ubuntu on X1 Carbon) and have
never been happier with a computer.

------
fb03
I consider this a sad reality, being a huge FOSS fan and systems admin with
several deployed/mantained linux servers, but, for most power users:

-> Right now, if you can, have all three operating systems available, according to your needs and each system's software coverage strengths and weaknesses.

Expanding (and this is where it might get controversial): If you game (for
real), make music (for real) or produce video (for real), you are stuck with
Windows...

-> Mac OS X comes really close for video and graphics, BUT, for rendering shit out you are still going to want a fully loaded multi-gpu rig, and you can't legally install OS X on that.

-> For music production, Mac OS X is already used in lots of shops, but if you like experimenting, you are still going to miss a bunch of audio plugins that are free and readily available for the Win32 ecosystem. Also, setting up low latency audio and plugins on Windows is a _breeze_.

-> If you build a gaming rig, you're stuck with Windows as well for the same performance reasons.

Here's what I am doing right now:

[On the go] I have a good-ish Macbook. The reason I chose a mac was because at
the time I bought it (4 years ago), they were the only ones offering real 6h+
battery life. I'm usually on the move so I like to always have a box with me
to squeeze some study/code in between the daily downtime. If I install Ubuntu
or Windows on this laptop, battery is used 30% quicker, so no can do.

[At the home office] I produce music and game on a pretty beefy Windows rig. I
need to boot to Windows because of the low latency/realtime requirements of
gaming and live audio. When I need to code I just fire up a fullscreen Ubuntu
VM (with like, 8gb of dedicated ram) and code away. This VM even finds and
uses all my displays so I'm fully immersed, and performance for development is
quite good (C and Python dev, mostly Eclipse CDT and Pycharm).

This setup is more complex than the usual, but I'm always fiddling with lots
of stuff and this is how I keep myself happy and productive. I don't want to
spend all day long configuring and compromising, trying to fit all my needs in
one OS, it's just not going to happen. I think I'm better off actually doing
real work ;)

~~~
jdhawk
> This VM even finds and uses all my displays

Are you using VirtualBox? VMWare? I have had hell getting this to work
properly.

~~~
fb03
I am using Virtualbox with the "Oracle Extension Pack" (to get USB2.0 etc) on
Win10. These tips work just fine on Windows 7 as well.

In the VM config, be sure to set virtual displays to the same number of
monitors you have/are using on Windows. Then install the guest addons on your
distro and make sure it is working correctly (ex.: you don't need to lock your
mouse inside the VM, etc).

Sometimes, "guest addons" version mismatch causes the video driver to do funny
stuff or just not work at all, falling back to svga, so I recommend (as much
as I dislike this course of action) that you install the same "guest addons"
pack on your Linux guest that comes with your instaled VirtualBox. That means
not using the distro-packaged version of it (Ubuntu/Debian has the pack on
their repos but they are usually outdated).

Also, up the Vm's VIDEO MEMORY to like 128mb or so. It starts too low on
VBox's default config and without a big enough framebuffer, even with
everything working perfectly you won't see your displays resize to full
resolution. If you can make your windows really tiny and the desktop resizes
accordingly, but can't make them change size dynamically once you get to a
certain point, it's probably lacking virtual video memory.

Hope I could help!

o/

~~~
jdhawk
Thanks! I'll give it a shot

------
codezero
Curious what the wifi, sleep, and battery life stories are like in comparison
to Mac OS.

~~~
throwaway729
IME wifi isn't much a problem anymore. Might want to look up the chipset
before purchase to be sure, but I've had zero issues since maybe 2006?

Sleep is still kinda annoying. Every once in a while my machine ends up not
going to sleep when I close the lid and I end up with a hot brick at 2%
battery when I take it out of my bag. TBF this has happened to me with MBPs
too, though.

Battery life is a major differentiator. Mac wins there for all normal use
cases.

~~~
criddell
How well are high-dpi displays handled these days?

~~~
pkaye
I just switched to a 4K monitor for my Ubuntu desktop system. Everything was
automatically recognized. I just had to use one of the settings to scale
things up to my liking.

Beyond this, a couple apps were still of the wrong font scaling so I had to
tweak them individually. Lastly the console and boot fonts have to be changed
separately but there was an online link that gave me the command line settings
to make those happen. In the end the effort was not not much more than I dealt
with in Windows.

------
ravirajx7
There may be 1000s of reasons for using linux distro which i genuinely don't
know about but one thing which i have noticed is that linux requires lot of
time setting things up. There is terminal for you to work as app store and
there is app store also ( though this app store doesn't have that many apps).
I have used ubuntu,debian,manjaro,budgie remix and things which i have found
buggy about all of these distros are it's Wi-Fi support (like it supports my
mobile hotspot but I don't know why it's buggy with my college wifi and i
still can't access internet over my college hotspot) Maybe I'm noob? and i
don't know how to solve many of its issues. But genuinely speaking do i need
that much of skill just to run an os? Seriously? i never ever had any problem
using windows. Some other issues with Linux distros include its Bluetooth
support which also stuck. I mean why do i need to invest so much of time
putting apt get install xyz? After finding commands over internet. Even basic
file managers and many packages like media plugings etc. you need to update
time to time which means for you to use linux distro efficiently you need to
be connected with internet. Ever tried using Linux without internet? Use it
once you'll feel the boredom using it. The main reason i still use linux is
just fan following ( i.e. its Internet based reviews its virus security and
all that which you too know about ). And all being said i have lost so many
files because whole of my os just crashed several times without me knowing any
reason? And one more you know? you can't use windows hard disk drive without
shutting down or logging your windows off properly. I mean why do i need to
put this much of effort just to use this linux distro? Though on the other
side you are skipping windows gold class desktop environment and its user
friendliness. You have to put some more effort again to play games. I'm amazed
how people love complex things than the easier one.

------
digi_owl
With these things it boils down to two issues that are often related.

First being drivers, second being software patents.

With regards to drivers there are two variants of the issue.

The first is buggy proprietary drivers.

Please stop insisting on using Nividia hardware under Linux just because they
offer a proprietary driver pack. That driver pack is a mess and a half, and
most of the complaints i have seen levied against X11 can be explained by said
proprietary drivers being in use.

The second is buggy hardware hidden by proprietary Windows drivers.

This is why you see all kinds of power management issues under Linux. All too
often the hardware will claim to support being suspended, but never come back
to life one done so. Manufacturers knows of this, and will implement
workarounds in their official drivers.

As for software patents, they result in FOSS having to wait some 20 years to
implement "bleeding obvious" features to avoid getting sued.

------
runeks
What about SSDs? The only mention I can find is for the 5720, All-in-One,
which is a 27" workstation.

Do the laptops ship with rotational HDDs? IMHO comparing this to a MacBook
(with its PCIe SSD) if it has a rotational HDD is disingenuous.

I replaced my root partition HDD with an SSD in 2009 and I'm never going back.

------
agmcleod
I think linux is nice and all. But i've had my share of issues with Ubuntu &
video card drivers over the years. I've tried to run dual boot on my PC at
home, and haven't had much luck keeping it stable. I think the best experience
I had was running Ubuntu back around 2008, 2009, on my dell inspiron laptop.
Wireless was a challenge, but otherwise it ran great.

On the weekend I picked up a laptop I ordered during boxing day sales. An asus
rog with a gtx 1070 in it. More for going to gaming events and that, but I put
linux mint on the second hard drive so I can mess around from time to time.
Haven't tested the web cam, but most things seem to work fine. I guess time
will tell if it's something I want to move to (still use a mac at work)

------
stymaar
> Nowadays even Steam is available for Linux, with more and more titles
> available. That should get you covered for a little while. If it doesn't,
> PlayOnLinux allows running Windows games on Wine. Most of the time, it works
> just fine.

I'm my experience can be totally true if you have an Nvidia Graphic card (I
run almost every games on my desktop) but it can also be false if you have
something else (my laptop have an Integrated Intel graphic and I can run
nothing).

The author have a ThinkPad X1 Carbon, which have a newer version of Intel
graphic and it looks like he achieves to run games, so maybe there is some
progress on that front also.

------
desireco42
Most important part here, and what is mostly stopping me from jumping ship is
photography. Darktable is probably fantastic software, however there is number
of great plugins for Lightroom that I would miss dearly.

~~~
contingencies
You can virtualize or dual-boot if your photography workflow is anything like
mine (mostly huge, batch-oriented). You can even use eg. VMWare unity mode to
right-click to open in Lightroom in a virtualized windows or OSX instance.
Performance won't be perfect but it's definitely good enough. Less so for
video editing.

Personally the bigger irritation has been printer drivers. I have a Canon
Pixma Pro 1 which has no drivers for Linux, forcing me to maintain out of date
Windows systems to print with, at which point one can spend a thousand years
defibrillating half-baked theories on color management and virtualization, or
crushingly accept a partial solution.

Canon: GIVE US LINUX DRIVERS.

~~~
CarVac
Printing is perfectly fine with Epson printers.

~~~
pawadu
At work we have an old HP printer that only worked with linux out of the box.
Windows 8 needed drivers to be downloaded and even than couldn't print duplex.
OSX people had similar problems.

Windows 10 worked really smoothly on the other hand. And now that it has a
proper shell I am starting to like Windows again...

------
Adracus
Sure, functionality-wise Ubuntu and also other Linux operating systems can
definitely match the palette that OS X offers. The problems with Ubuntu are
starting if you are getting into the area of peripherals:

Drivers for some things are missing or are not performing as comparable
Hardware does under OS X, it gets even worse when you're struggling with
HiDPI: Have you ever tried to have one non-HiDPI and one HiDPI screen as when
using your QHD laptop screen together with a FullHD secondary monitor? Total
pain in the ass under Ubuntu and in contrast very easy on OS X.

------
joantune
Big questions (for me at least here)

How is the Pad sensitivity on that combo (i.e. X1 Carbon + Ubuntu + Gnome3)

Also: do you have the double finger scroll thing, what about the double tap
for secondary mouse button? also three finger move and four finger gestures?

One of the things I love about my Mac is how easy to use the trackpad is with
all of its features. (the other things are durability and being a POSIX
system, both covered apparently by the lenovo and being a Linux). I won't pay
an extra 1000USD or more for it though, especially if it's reasonably ok in
the X1 for instance

------
Walkman
A lot of people find "alternatives" to the OS X apps, but they don't realize
the difference is so huge it's not even funny. Alfred DOES NOT have an
alternative on any platform. It's so good it's unbelievable, takes job of
multiple programs I need to constantly use on Linux. Also DashDoc, etc. Also
there is Terminator yes, but it's feature set is nowhere near of iTerm2, it's
crazy what you can do with it and how convenient is it compared to any
terminal emulators.

------
Vinkekatten
For work (java + web developer) Linux is what I would prefer. Unfortunately
we're a Windows shop.

For play (gaming + photography) it's a no go. Stuck with Windows for a while
longer I suppose.

------
hd4
Since a few versions now (and also in 16.04 LTS), the Bluetooth drivers in the
kernel used by Ubuntu have been broken. Otherwise Ubuntu is a solid distro and
it doesn’t get in my way.

------
Insanity
All laptops at home are running ubuntu, and so is my desktop. For me it was
seemingly the opposite to the experience of many people here. I had no issues
whatsoever with the laptops, everything worked pretty much out of the box. No
issues with function keys not working, wireless, audio or anything else.

On the other hand, on my desktop I had a lot of issues with random system
freezes, and with the audio. My headset would have a constant crackling and
the graphics card had quite a few issues.

As with most things, YMMV.

------
asciimo
> And now I see their latest MBP line with the Esc key removed...

What?! Ha. It almost seems like post-Jobs Apple "innovates" by removing
classic user interfaces.

~~~
jaegerpicker
It's only technically removed. The function row including the escape button
was replaced with a touch screen that can and does display an escape button in
the given context. It's still bad because the escape button is in a different
place and doesn't always display at the right time. As a emacs user, escape is
my meta key, I dislike it because it messes with my muscle memory.

~~~
DRW_
> It's still bad because the escape button is in a different place and doesn't
> always display at the right time.

It's actually pretty much in the same place (touchable area is bigger than the
visual button) and I'm pretty certain it displays at all times.

Missing the feedback is more than understandable criticism (that I agree with)
but muscle memory of hitting the key in the first place itself shouldn't
really change, hasn't for me - as someone who does use vim a fair amount.

------
jeromenerf
These mac/osx exodus posts reminds me of how non durable the whole ecosystem
is.

Perfectly working hardware (routers, dongles, laptops, mobiles ..) is declared
EOL and gradually becomes less functional and more of a security issue.

Destructive recycling could be an option, but damn, we are talking about
"perfectly working devices", with a real value and a pretty high environmental
cost.

How do you deal with them?

------
jstewartmobile
I've been using vanilla Debian w/XFCE as my development desktop for years now,
and it has been great.

I am especially fond of the Guake terminal ([http://guake-
project.org](http://guake-project.org)). It is just a translucent terminal
that swoops up/down from the top with a keypress.

------
jordic
Don't miss the point that every morning when you open your laptop you will be
proud of using a free Desktop.

------
DoodleBuggy
Didn't work for me, yet, but maybe someday.

In the meantime I'm still holding out hope that Apple saves the Mac. Sigh.

------
omouse
Fedora is also a great option; I switched to it a few months ago from Ubuntu
and it's been great.

------
spectaclepiece
I would switch to Linux in a heartbeat if Adobe and Autodesk had support for
it.

------
steve371
I agree it can be a bit work to get ur ubuntu laptop works perfect. But just a
simple wireless driver install with ubuntu 14.04 lts gives me the perfect
experience. While my win10 connection constantly droppes.

------
chmike
I have an Ubuntu desktop and a Macbook air laptop. On the Desktop computer I
have a TypeMatrix Bépo keyboard which is great for French people writing
French text and coding.

What I'm missing on my Ubuntu computer is Word and Excel. LibreOffice is very
far from the quality of Word. So I use my Mac when I have to write word
documents but the Mac interface is a pain.

I had a windows laptop but although the hardware was good it was very slooooow
at start up. It needed 30minutes to be ready to be usable (reboot or wake up)
and without any roaming and with virus checking disabled. That's useless.

The only serious problem in my field with Ubuntu is that many people use Word
as document format and this is annoying.

~~~
fb03
I feel your pain and sadly, the only way I could find around this issue was to
use a virtual machine running Windows 7 with Office 2010.

I have used Libreoffice's Writer with some degree of success. My dissertation
was written in it and some of its specific features are actually more advanced
than the Word counterparts, mainly: automatically numbering pictures and
tables, auto-TOCs and formatting styles. Word does all that but Writer is way
more flexible in this regard.

What I couldn't adapt to, though, was the gap between MS Excel and
Libreoffice's Calc. The difference in functionality and usability is huge :-(
Just try to properly format a bunch of cells in Calc and you'll realize how
cumbersome and painful it is.

The virtual machine approach works nicely but then you have another box to
mantain. Since mine is just for Office I leave it Internet-less and that makes
for another set of adaptations (ex.: how to put and remove content to the VM,
need to use CIFS/Samba for that, etc).

o/

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nurettin
>> Kafkaian

That's a rather kafkaesque way of putting it.

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ekianjo
> For things like cropping & scaling images, The Gimp does an okay job.

Strange, Darktable can do that too, very well and easier than on Gimp.

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pawelkomarnicki
Why not using Windows 10 laptop with Vagrant for development?

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techolic
It should be included some internet law that every article contains a tl;dr
section.

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tuananh
I tried Fedora 25 recently. While the driver support is way way better than
before (everything works out of the box) but the graphic driver support is
abysmal. It works but stutter like crazy. Installing graphic driver is not
very trivial.

