
Finding an Alternative to Mac OS X - wezm
http://bitcannon.net/post/finding-an-alternative-to-mac-os-x/
======
slantyyz
I know the OTA dismissed Windows, but when I switched from OSX to Windows a
couple of years ago, I found Scott Hanselman's "Ultimate Developer and Power
Users Tool List for Windows" [1] to be indispensable. I've been doing Rails
work on Windows since switching, but ymmv depending on what your workflow and
toolchain are.

I also found that there were a lot of workarounds/alternatives to
software/tools that I _thought_ I would miss on Mac. I've managed to find
pretty much everything I needed and/or realized I could easily live without
the stuff I couldn't find alternatives for.

Having said all of that, if you have a dependency on something like XCode
because you're maintaining an iOS app, you're kinda stuck with a Mac. My
experience with Hackintoshes is that even if you buy the right hardware off
the latest Hackintosh compatibility list, it's still a bit of a time suck.
Alternatively, you could also run OSX in VMWare Workstation/Player, but you
don't get graphics acceleration and some OSX software won't run properly in a
VM.

[1]
[http://www.hanselman.com/blog/ScottHanselmans2014UltimateDev...](http://www.hanselman.com/blog/ScottHanselmans2014UltimateDeveloperAndPowerUsersToolListForWindows.aspx)

~~~
Klathmon
I gotta say I've tried to do the VM thing. I REALLY tried. But it just isn't
something that will work for any significant amount of time.

It would break with any updates, half the time xcode just wouldn't work, and
it would sometimes be so slow that you'd need to wait minutes for some fancy
animation to run.

And this wasn't even to get around buying a MacBook, we had one, I just wanted
to compile and sign a hybrid app for iOS easier than using another physical
machine.

Then we also found later that you can't sign an app on OSX while SSH'd into
the machine... It just fails with a generic signing error.

So now I have a MacBook with remote-desktop software that's just permanently
on in the corner of the room so I can open the GUI once a month or so and re
compile and sign the latest version of our app...

~~~
hiram112
I've also tried to use a Linux VM on Widnows due to issues with Node, paths in
various Scala libs, and a dozen other problems.

Cygwin works for 50%, but not for everything.

I've tried Win 10 with Subsystem for Linux (Ubuntu Bash) and unfortunately it
is not even close to production ready. Besides, I'm terribly disappointed with
Win 10 after having been really happy with Windows 7 since its release.

Running a few Java and Javascript projects in IntelliJ on a VM is an exercise
in frustration, even on a very powerful Dell Precision with an I7, SSD, and 32
GB of ram.

It works somewhat, but I'm very happy with my work provided 2015 MB Pro with
only 16GB of ram. With Brew, Docker, etc. everything works great. If work
hadn't paid for the Mac, I don't think I'd buy a new model due to the price
and lack of upgradability, no escape key, ports, etc.

That being said, I've just installed Fedora 25 on a second m2 drive I put into
my one Win 10 laptop. So far it is pretty good for dev work. It's not perfect,
but it's approaching usability with a small Win VM for Office.

~~~
Klathmon
I have also been disappointed with the Bash-On-Ubuntu-On-Windows thing from
MS. It seems like they fixed a lot of the frustrating issues recently but it's
gonna take a few months for it to get to stable so it's still a non-option for
me as well.

But i've had extremely good results by using the terminal and "GNU-ish tools"
provided by "git for windows" which has worked fantastically. I can interop
with the windows system perfectly, I get all my favorite tools like git, cat,
sed, grep, awk, all the bash shell stuff, and ssh and more, and it looks a lot
nicer than the default cmd.

Until the interop with the "host" windows system is better, and they push the
fixes to the missing features like inotify and some others, I'm gonna stick
with that.

~~~
bitcrazed
Hey there: PM for Windows Console & Bash here:

If you're running Win10 Anniversary Update (AU), know that this was our first
formal release of the Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) and was, as we made
very clear prior to release, missing several key features and capabilities.
However, we wanted to get it into users' hands ASAP so that we could asked the
community for help to identify what worked and what didn't.

And the community leapt to help-out, resulting in literally hundreds of fixes
to WSL and to the Windows Console.

We've continued to release improvements over the last several months through
the Windows Insider builds (release notes: [https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-
us/commandline/wsl/release_not...](https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-
us/commandline/wsl/release_notes)), and have posted updates and highlights via
our blog:
[https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/commandline/](https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/commandline/).

All these improvements have resulted in Bash/WSL now being very, VERY usable
as a real-world dev environment. We've a few more fixes and improvements in
the pipe that'll emerge in the next few weeks, but you can feel confident that
Bash/WSL is rapidly becoming a viable, highly productive, genuine, Linux
compatible environment for running your favorite *NIX-first tools, platforms
and technologies.

HTH.

------
Clubber
>Note that I don’t currently consider Windows a viable alternative. For the
work that I do (Rails) and tools I use something *nix based is the best choice
for me.

For what it's worth Windows 10 now has a bash shell based on Ubuntu available.

[http://www.howtogeek.com/249966/how-to-install-and-use-
the-l...](http://www.howtogeek.com/249966/how-to-install-and-use-the-linux-
bash-shell-on-windows-10/)

~~~
mrweasel
I'm not exactly sure why this happens, but when I try to use Windows my hand
(mouse hand) cramps up and I get angry and frustrated.

In my view, Windows 10 is still miles away in consistency across the entire
system, compared to macOS. Windows 10 actually made it worse, because it's
trying to accommodate both Windows 7 and Windows 8 design.

Currently I don't think we have alternatives to macOS. I understand that I
sound like a grumpy Apple fanboy, but Windows is't ready to replace macOS. The
distance between macOS and Windows have increased in the later years, and not
because Apple have improved anything, it's Microsoft who have made Windows
worse.

~~~
DavideNL
> but when I try to use Windows my hand (mouse hand) cramps up and I get angry
> and frustrated

Same here! Also i start to suffer from 'update-fatigue' when using Windows.
The endless updates, reboots, and god knows what it's doing in the background
which consumes resources... it all just feels so clumsy. I've never
experienced anything like this in OSX.

~~~
freehunter
That's probably the only thing that truly irritates me about Windows these
days. Everything else is just a design decision that, as a technical user, I
am easily able to adapt to. But not knowing if my machine is going to decide
to reboot itself at any random moment without me having the option to stop it
from doing that? Unacceptable. Completely unacceptable.

I know you should save often and bad things can happen like a power outage or
a glitch or something, but those things are rare. My Windows 10 machine
choosing to reboot itself without telling me? At least once a week.

Imagine if you had random power outages once a week, and having a UPS plugged
in couldn't stop it.

~~~
medemas-os
>> But not knowing if my machine is going to decide to reboot itself at any
random moment without me having the option to stop it from doing that?
Unacceptable. Completely unacceptable.

First of all you can set the time interval when the Windows will be able to
update [https://i.imgur.com/BZNadeE.png](https://i.imgur.com/BZNadeE.png)

And even if you are working in this time Windows ask you what do you prefer -
reboot now or later.

I'am not Windows fanboy. I sue MacOS, Windows and Linux at the same time.

~~~
freehunter
Yes, you can set what time it will reboot, but you can't set it to "never", or
even "next week". And the pop-up to reboot does not take control of the
screen, so if you're doing something full screen like a game or a Powerpoint
presentation, you miss it and have to wait for the reboot. Even if you're in
front of a client.

When I'm done with my work for the day on Windows and I go to bed, I'm never
sure if everything will still be there when I wake up. Far too often I wake up
and I'm at a login screen with all of my active windows and documents closed.
That's incredibly disruptive, and there's no way to stop that.

There is no way to tell Windows 10 "don't reboot until I explicitly ask you to
do so".

------
z1mm32m4n
Many articles about wanting to leave the macOS ecosystem mention Sketch.
Sketch is macOS only (and will be for the forseeable future), so it's
understandable that people want to consider the implications of switching away
from it.

Recently, however, I stumbled upon Figma, a web-based, real-time collaborative
interface design app (i.e., a competitor of Sketch). After convincing my group
to experiment with it for a school project, I was pleasantly surprised.

\- It's web based, so it works on Linux.

\- It imports .sketch files

\- It's real-time (you can see everyone's cursor and selection). This was
great, because it meant we didn't have to walk through the snow to get to
campus to have a discussion about tweaking a few elements.

I understand that some people may still need access to Sketch to work with
people on their team or at their company. But for me, I'm officially striking
Sketch off the list of software that's tying me down to macOS.

~~~
ourcat
I've never really understood why people use Sketch. I recently worked on a
project where I had asked for some basic vanilla templates of a mobile site
from the designers and was sent a huge Sketch file. It was utterly useless and
I had to code everything by hand myself, since the 'designers' very clearly
had zero clue about HTML+CSS or any notion of responsiveness, thanks to apps
like Sketch which teach nothing of the knowledge required to be a useful part
of anyone's app/site building process.

~~~
kagamine
If you asked for templates you should have gotten templates, not mockups and
not wireframes and not a demo. In my experience there is a common
misunderstanding between designers, project managers and coders about what
word or phrase is used to describe those very different things. And instead of
learning what they are and being specific I have been told the equivalent of
"just do your thing" ie, stop bothering me. Then people complain "this isn't
what I asked for" and I have to explain the whole thing again while they don't
bother to listen. Sound familiar?

~~~
optimuspaul
template is an ambiguous term, clear communication and definitions of terms
would help.

------
codeka
> The first option I tried was an i3 based desktop. However whilst I wanted to
> like tiling window managers I decided it wasn’t for me.

It took me a week or so to get used to i3, but once I did I can't see myself
ever going back. I've been using i3 at work and at home for about year now,
and every time I get on my (Mac Book) laptop it's a frustrating experience: I
feel like I spend more time trying to figure out how to get to the window I
want that actually using it...

~~~
massysett
i3 is great, until you try to do something simple like change the time zone
for your desktop clock or add some wallpaper. I switched from Linux to Mac
because I was too well acquainted with making symlinks to /usr/share/
somewhere just to change my clock when I traveled, and then figuring out just
how few processes I had to restart so it would take effect.

Unfortunately the Linux desktops were actually worse than the barebones window
managers like i3: there was some sort of glibc bug that screwed up clock
display on GNOME for at least a year. GNOME assumed glibc did it right, which
was a reasonable assumption...but an incorrect one, but with i3 I could
control this.

Now that I'm on Mac I look back in amazement at the time I spent on Linux
learning ultimately useless stuff like why a bug in glibc would mess up my
GNOME clock but not an i3 clock.

~~~
holografix
This. It boggles the mind how much time one can waste solving admin, busy-work
type issues on Linux, specially when trying to use a GUI. I mean wifi,
Bluetooth, retina class resolution issues, drivers for multiple devices not
being available... unless one is using Linux to learn and understand it as a
server of some type I can't fathom using it as a replacement for Mac OS.

~~~
zeveb
> unless one is using Linux to learn and understand it as a server of some
> type I can't fathom using it as a replacement for Mac OS.

Perhaps some of us value our freedom?

Perhaps some of us find that it helps to develop on the same platform on which
we deploy?

Perhaps some of us find that we _don 't_, actually, spend all that much time
on 'admin, busy-work type issues,' having decided on good, solid distros which
fit our use cases (Debian works for me, others prefer RedHat)?

At the end of the day, though, it really is about freedom for me. You complain
that you _must_ tweak your system; I value that I _can_ tweak mine.

------
giancarlostoro
I'm currently running the latest release of ElementaryOS which runs off Ubuntu
16.04 it is great. It is very minimalist, and the desktop environment is
really well done. Before ElementaryOS I was using ParrotSec OS which is on par
with your typical pentesting / hacking type of distros but it comes with the
latest and greatest of programming language tools. They're based off of Debian
with their own modifications to the kernel to harden it, and out of the box
you get TOR features that I never really used, but I'm sure that may interest
some. Overall it was a great Distro my only gripe was not being able to
properly install and use Steam on it. ElementaryOS has a nice Desktop
Environment I appreciate but it either installs or doesn't. Fortunately this
laptop took ElementaryOS, where in the past I have had issues installing it. I
use ElementaryOS for everything from Python back-end RESTful service
development to .NET Core application development with Rider. I'm also
considering using SublimeText to save on startup time, although "Scratch"
isn't too bad a text editor, it suffers poor naming (try to google for Scratch
and you'll find the language before you do the text editor itself).

------
INTPenis
I had the same prejudice about Fedora and RedHat back when I was a debian
fanboy. But if you look at what Redhat is doing with their money and their
company then you soon realize that Redhat Inc. not only IS a large part of the
Linux community, but also supports the open source movement in many ways.

So Fedora has been my main distro of choice for a couple years now. I still
hesitate to order RHEL licenses at work, unless the client specifically has a
good argument for choosing RHEL I tend to lean them towards CentOS.

And I can speak from 12 years of professional sysadmin experience in BSD and
Linux that yum or dnf is a very stable package manager.

I've had more issues on Debian 6,7,8 than I've ever had on CentOS or Fedora.

~~~
kqr
I agree. My impression of RHEL and its likes is that they are "slow and
outdated", but the more actual research I do, the more I feel like using them
for their stability and security.

~~~
leojackson
RHEL is the Warren Buffett of Linux: slow, methodical, stable, and in it for
the long haul.

------
jseliger
_The lack of equally high standard replacements for software such as_

For me, it's Devonthink Pro
([http://www.devontechnologies.com/solutions/writers.html](http://www.devontechnologies.com/solutions/writers.html))
in particular and also Lightroom. Yes, there is progress on Dark Table, but
there's too much useful software on OS X and despite Apple's faults its laptop
hardware still leads the pack.

Yes, the lack of ports on the new MBP is annoying. If I had to buy a new MBP
today I'd just get the last version—which is still fantastic—refurbished, and
kick the hardware can down the road a couple years.

~~~
ShinyCyril
Obviously I'd avoid it for commercial editing, but I've had good success
running Lightroom 5 under Wine.

------
nnain
If you're an iOS/Mac developer, there's no alternative.

If you want an alternative for graphics work (or other development), try
Windows.

For other web development, in general, you'll be able to work well with Linux.

Keeping work on different machines quickly starts to become unmanageable,
that's why MacOS still leads. It gives the best of most options on the best
hardware.

P.S. - I tried ElementaryOS last month, for couple of hours and didn't find it
an alternative in any way. It's UI is quite clunky (of course, since they are
trying to copy Macs UX, but don't have the finesse). The eye candy can't make
it a Mac alternative in any way; it's still Ubuntu under the hood, and less
intuitive than Ubuntu.

~~~
applecore
Best hardware, really?

~~~
ldev
Not only teraflops and ram size defines "best"; MBP's touchpad is the only
touchpad on any laptop that I can work with without pluging in a mouse after a
minute. Screen is good. General feeling of quality is just the best.

~~~
amalag
Yeah at this point I would need a replacement for OSX and for the touchpad to
be able to go away from a Mac. I can live with their other issues for the
benefits of their trackpads and an operating system backed by Unix

~~~
kylealden
Curious if you've tried a Surface Book? I find the touchpad feel and gesture
quality to be nearly indistinguishable from a Mac.

~~~
amalag
Thanks, I will check it out. Not sure I will be happy with Windows 10 in
comparison to OSX but still worth trying out.

------
gnufied
I have been watching elementary from the sidelines and I am wondering how deep
is the keyboard integration in Pantheon?

I moved from OSX to Linux recently too and I am generally pretty happy with
multi-monitor and pseudo-tiling support in gnome3. I can do most of my window
movement and application switching with few shortcuts (it requires few gnome
extensions). Such as -

1\. switch application with shortcut rather than alt-tabbing (something like -
Super-1 for Emacs, Super-2 for terminal etc). It requires a gnome extension.

2\. Tile the Windows with shortcuts. Currently gnome3 has limited support but
it mostly works out of box.

3\. Launching or switching application with a global shortcut. Requires a
gnome extension.

4\. Move Window between monitors etc.

Such things usually requires at least 2 or 3 paid apps on OSX. Divvy, Sizeup
etc.

Oh and 1Password works perfectly okay via Wine, including the browser
extension. So, that is one thing you should checkoff your list if that is
stopping you. :-)

~~~
wezm
The keyboard integration in Pantheon seems pretty comparable to GNOME.

I just finished importing my 1Password data into
[https://www.enpass.io](https://www.enpass.io) looks like it might turn out to
be a good option.

~~~
gnufied
I use [https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/413/dash-
hotkeys/](https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/413/dash-hotkeys/) thing for
Unity like single shortcut Window switcher. It is absolute life saver. I used
to use apptivate([http://www.apptivateapp.com/](http://www.apptivateapp.com/))
on OSX for same thing. Is there a elementary alternative? A quick google
search doesn't turn up anything.

------
vxxzy
To the point (reality) of Arch's amazing docs; I fully agree with the author.
I've never experienced a more comprehensive and up-to-date doc regarding a
distro. For this reason, I exclusively use Arch for both desktop and laptop.
It is a freeing/empowering experience installing Arch.

~~~
brightball
I've got a Dell Developer Edition arriving on Thursday and everything I've
been reading about Arch has been seriously considering installing it almost
immediately.

------
ericjang
Another path you can take: build your own desktop and install a Hackintosh OS!

Here's my build
([http://pcpartpicker.com/list/pYWQMp](http://pcpartpicker.com/list/pYWQMp)),
which runs into some driver issues but can be fixed with Kext utility. This
setup allows me to do CUDA programming + Deep Learning stuff natively in OSX,
while having access to pretty Mac software. It's great, I highly recommend it!

~~~
gantengx
except that Hackintosh not exactly legal :-)

~~~
MatekCopatek
Breaking a contract is not illegal, it's a matter of civil law. And depending
on where you live, such EULAs might not even be enforceable.

~~~
hackerboos
IANAL, but I believe breaking the terms and conditions violates the CFAA [1]

[1] -
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_Fraud_and_Abuse_Act](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_Fraud_and_Abuse_Act)

------
meehow
Author mentioned separately Ubuntu add Gnome, but what about Ubuntu Gnome [1]?
I switched from Mac OS X to Ubuntu Gnome after release of latest Apple's
MacBook "shame" Pro. It took few weeks to find new dev tools, but today I
can't complain. Linux is much more mature nowadays than it was ~10 years, ago
when I switched to Mac. I'm working more with terminal now and not using Git
GUI anymore, but as long as you are not XCode coder, everything is similar,
for half of the price.

[1] [http://ubuntugnome.org/](http://ubuntugnome.org/)

------
facepalm
I am impressed by how perfectionist some people can be. All I want from a
desktop is little icons for launching programs. One of those icons should
launch a command shell. That's it.

I don't have the nerve to learn all the other features anyway...

~~~
mxuribe
Having to jump between myriad OS/platforms within any given day (windows for
work, linux for work and play, windows for spouse's laptop, etc.), I have
learned to "let it all go", and keep to minimal requirements...But I could
never vocalize it as good as you just did!

> All I want from a desktop is little icons for launching programs. One of
> those icons should launch a command shell. That's it.

Kudos!

------
sbov
After the refresh of the Macbook Pro I decided to get a desktop replacement
laptop.

Whether or not that is acceptable for your use cases depends. For me, I
already have a Surface Pro 3 for ultra portable needs. Because of that, I
found myself never using my Macbook Pro when I couldn't plug it in. And given
how slowly cpus are gaining in performance these days, if plausible, it makes
more sense to me to focus on performance over battery & weight.

------
grhmc
Not even a mention of NixOS. May I ask why not?

Edit: I'm appreciating the feedback for "why not?" and am sending it around to
people in the community. :)

~~~
zachrose
I've been running NixOS on a casual home desktop for about a year now.

I'm in love with some of its big ideas, like per-project dependency files that
mostly eliminate my need for VMs and container management tools, and being
able to read my OS configuration in a single file.

On the other hand, most of my work these days ends up as a Dockerfile and
Docker images anyways, and the benefits of Nix package management could be had
with Nix alone (not NixOS).

So at the end of the day I'm running a slightly buggy KDE 5 desktop that I
haven't invested the time in fixing. I have a cool package manager, but I'm
using it with one global nix environment. Packages are not hard to find once I
know what I'm looking for, but discovering those packages and their nix-
specific names can be tricky at times.

That said I'm new to desktop Linux, and it's hard to fault NixOS for most of
the (relative) difficulties I've encountered.

~~~
grhmc
Hrmm... if you have a bit of time to describe your bugs, I'd really appreciate
it if you filed a bug on the issue tracker (github.com/nixos/nixpkgs.)

~~~
zachrose
Thank you! I'm honestly not sure which bugs should go with NixOS and which
should go to some application or library that I can't figure out. A typical
example: since installing a different video card, videos will play in Firefox
but not Chrome.

------
rangibaby
I installed Ubuntu + GNOME on my Mac a couple of years ago as a toy but a have
slowly been migrating to it as my main OS.

For what I use it for (light web dev) it is the same or better than OS X.

The only thing stopping me from throwing out OS X completely are the Adobe
apps (InDesign in particular) but even with that I have switched to doing most
of 90% of my work on paper or in a text file then only complete layouts in OS
X.

------
HugoDaniel
Reads and feels like a sponsored post trying to get the attention of people
who are using OSX, Fedora and Arch into elementary OS.

It presents a huge list of OSes but then it just says "After evaluating each I
was left with a top 3." Without providing any reason as to why.

To top it there is no QubesOS and no NixOS on the list. This in 2017.

~~~
thesmallestcat
I think it's just incomplete writing (and it's the guy's blog, so no big
deal). Author also doesn't elaborate on why ElementaryOS based on FreeBSD
would be ideal, though FreeBSD is certainly rad.

------
rbanffy
<rant>People worry too much about what they use to host text editors and
terminal windows...</rant>

~~~
khazhou
Sure, except that OSX's iterm2+Karabiner is so much better than any terminal
on Linux. Awesome full-screen switching (⌘-Enter), easy shortcuts to create
subwindows, natural clipboard support, great keyboard compatibility with Emacs
(after futzing with keyboard settings and Karabiner mappings). On Ubuntu, all
of these have been lacking. Hell, I can't even use the terminal for a single
session without accidentally triggering the App Launcher several times.

~~~
tracker1
I have to absolutely agree on iterm2, I'd love to have the same on Linux...
there are a few okay ones, none I've tried as good. On windows, I like ConEmu
okay, still not as good, but better than default.

~~~
dagw
Honest question. I spend my development time switching between OS X, Linux and
Windows and I've been using iterm2 for years. Yet I have no idea why people
claim that it is so much better than anything else out there. If I where to
completely give up on OS X for Linux, iterm2 wouldn't even make the list of
things I'd even consider missing. What unique killer features am I not using?

~~~
khazhou
What's your editor? For me it's emacs (w/o X) so I"m inside iterm2 for the
entirety of my Linux work.

------
KangooDude
His only whines are about hardware that is too thin/light and does not have
legacy ports and OS that won't work on some junk and don't let you publish
hacks in some rarely visited moderated store (just like windows, or linux)

And instead of ordering dirty cheap hackintosh with up to 4 CPU Xeons with all
memory he can get and compatible wifi, that will be no thin and no light and
he can run familiar terminal window to remote build his diamond code while
listening to sound of coolers,

He starting to search OS with better GUI than OSX (Elementary it is) and
dreaming about hardware you can run FreeBSD (like PS/2 mouse and glorious VESA
2.0 1280 _1024?)

I expect next article will be a tour to the wonderful world of 15" 1366_768
Celeron laptops that let you upgrade memory (up to 8Gb!), spacious replaceable
4200 hard drive and have USB 2.0 ports and VGA in addition to HDMI 1.4. People
will know in detail how good terminal window run there on FreeBSD with
Elementary OS theme (without 2D acceleration of course).

He makes alot of sense, that mate.

------
sudhirj
Trying to do exactly the same thing - I still have a maxed out rMBP 2013 that
works great, so setting up alternatives now before I'm forced to.

The Intel Skull Canyon NUC is what I'm using, with Elementary running on
Virtualbox in Windows 10 (waiting for the Samsung 960 EVO to sell globally
before setting up a native install).

The one massive problem for me that keeps me going back to the laptop is that
the Mac absolutely nailed keyboard layout by separating the command and
control keys. And no other OS is currently able to do so.

I use the basic emacs shortcuts for navigation in all the apps that support
them (crtl a,e,n,p), and the command key to issue commands like close tab,
save, new tab etc.

This is absolutely impossible to replicate on any other OS (AFAIK). I can map
the command key to the control key, but that's about it - it just becomes a
new way to hit control. Being able to consistently map and access the command
key (as SUPER) simply can't be done.

~~~
wezm
Yes I suspect the keyboard shortcuts will bother me too. One of the things I
like about Elementary is that there are a bunch of things bound to Command out
of the box. They also refer to it as ⌘, which has a nice familiarity about it.

~~~
sudhirj
The underlying Ubuntu still refers to it as the Super key, but elementary uses
the clover to symbolise it when it can. Still can't get to Mac like setups,
though - apparently in Linux it's the applications that intercept the Super
key, so it's never going to be possible to get a consistent experience.

~~~
stormbrew
Window managers definitely get a first crack at keyboard input. For example, I
have a bunch of super-related keyboard combos set in i3wm that always go to
it. I doubt that's the problem you're referring to. More likely it's that the
window manager has no consistent means to make any given window/app do
anything in particular, like copy or paste. The app decides its own key combos
for those. There's no universal way to do it globally short of using nothing
but apps that are specifically intended to work with gnome or kde or another
uberenvironment's configuration system. Basically, you could bind super-c at
the WM level, but you couldn't make it always copy.

~~~
sudhirj
Yeah, I think you're exactly right... there's a feature request here that goes
through this:

[https://bugs.launchpad.net/switchboard-plug-
keyboard/+bug/16...](https://bugs.launchpad.net/switchboard-plug-
keyboard/+bug/1624189)

------
sbuk
I'd Love to see someone take on GNUStep are run with it. The constant
reinvention of the wheel with FOSS desktops and Window Managers is mind
boggling. Too much 'not invented here' syndrome? Sadly the task is way beyond
my capabilities. Still one of the best ever... Of course, YMMV!

~~~
wezm
Yeah it's a shame [http://etoileos.com/](http://etoileos.com/) didn't get more
momentum.

------
rectangleboy
Where's the commentary on FreeBSD? It certainly seems like the right idea (to
replace OS X), but I want to know their experience.

~~~
twblalock
I've used FreeBSD as a desktop OS, briefly. I've also used a number of Linux
distributions as desktop OSes since the late 1990s.

The bottom line is that Linux tends to have better hardware support,
especially for laptop hardware and power management.

When you run into problems, you'll usually have a much easier time finding
vendor support or online community help for a Linux distribution than for
FreeBSD.

Under the hood, FreeBSD is a lot simpler than Linux, and a lot of people like
it for that reason. But if you want a generic Gnome/KDE/tiling WM/etc. desktop
experience, and you don't need any BSD-specific features, I think Linux is the
way to go. After all, we are talking about a replacement for MacOS here, which
is pretty well integrated with the hardware and does not require a lot of
tinkering to get working.

~~~
saghm
> The bottom line is that Linux tends to have better hardware support,
> especially for laptop hardware and power management.

I've been playing around with various BSDs over the past couple of years, and
I _really_ want to like any of them enough to keep installed, but this is
exactly the issue I've run into with freebsd and it's derivatives. On both my
last laptop and the current one, I can get everything working to a fairly
reasonable state, but there are minor but annoying hardware issues I just
don't have to deal with in Linux.

In my most recent attempt (installing TrueOS on my spare SSD), some apps
occasionally crash when I use the Intel video driver, so I'm forced to use
scfb, which is a bit slower and doesn't render fonts as nicely. Additionally,
the wifi tends to be a bit slower; I average around 4-5 MB (not Mb) down on
Linux, but top out around 2 MB on TrueOS. I also have to use Firefox instead
of Chromium on FreeBSD and its derivatives, as there always seem to be some
bugs in the FreeBSD port; right now, it renders some bizarrely-shaped section
of the window in a deep shade of yellow covering part of the URL bar and the
top of the page, and signing in to Google to sync my extensions and history
hasn't worked for like 10 major versions of Chromium.

I really like DragonflyBSD; it works a bit better for me out of the box than
FreeBSD (I don't need to configure to not have the fan running at full blast
all the time, and I've strangely had fewer issues with Chromium despite it
using the same ports tree as FreeBSD with some custom patches), but I've had
issues running any display manager other than Slim, and even that hasn't
worked that well for me, as I've never been able to get the numlock and auto-
login settings working (yes, I know, autologin is "insecure", but I always
have FDE on my machines, so if someone can get past that, I don't think the
login screen will stop them). Unfortunately I haven't been able to try it out
lately; on my current laptop, BSDs weirdly seem to think that my screen
resolution is 1024x768, and the only way I've found to fix that is by setting
the GOP in EFI, which is not an option for DragonflyBSD currently. I've spent
more time than I'm willing to admit trying to follow the manual EFI
installation inductions I found on the DragonflyBSD mailing list; I think I
got it to boot once, but apparently the snapshot I was using panicked when
trying to load the specific wifi driver during startup (although I found out
later it could load it fine after it was fully booted), and I've never gotten
it to boot since, so I'm not convinced I wasn't mildly hallucinating or
something. Every now and then the Dragonfly Digest will have some post talking
about some new small step towards EFI support though, so I'm optimistic that
someday soon I'll be able to boot it on my current laptop and discover a whole
new set of reasons why I can't use it.

OpenBSD, on the other hand, works pretty great for me out of the box in terms
of the GUI and hardware, but I'm not fond of the packaging system; I tend to
like to have fairly recent versions of apps, so updates come a bit slowly
compared to what I'm used to. Even worse, pkg_add is kind of horrifying to me
compared to what you get on FreeBSD-based systems; for reasons I can't
comprehend, it seems to query for updates individually for each package you
have installed rather than first just getting a list of updated packages and
then downloading the updates for the packages (if there are any). I'm
unfortunately too spoiled to wait several minutes just to find out that there
aren't actually any updates for my system.

I've never been able to get far into setting up NetBSD. A couple of years ago
I got it installed but couldn't get Xorg to start up, and I've been unable to
get the installer to boot on the most recent release; it prompts me to select
the boot device from a number of options, and I've tried all of them, and none
of them work. The issue seems to be fixed in the more recent snapshots, but I
haven't been able to figure out how to install with FDE (I found the option to
encrypt the disk, but it seems to be independent from the installation itself,
and neither encrypting the disk before or after the installation seems to
result in a bootable encrypted system), and I'm too stubborn to install it
without.

~~~
fusiongyro
I tried NetBSD on my Acer Aspire One netbook from like six years ago. Most
things worked out of the box. One thing that did not was the keyboard did not
wake after suspend, which was manual (typing apm -z). I decided that was a
deal-breaker and switched to Ubuntu, which worked perfectly out of the box,
including lid-shut suspend.

NetBSD also gave me a bizarre halt-the-world problem on installation the first
few times ("Old BPB too big") until I skipped the first sector.

I figure this laptop is old enough if it isn't supported by now it won't ever
be.

------
LukasMathis
I'm kind of in the same boat, and I'm slowly, gradually, replacing my Macs
with both Windows and Linux devices. As somebody with zero investment in
earlier Windows versions, I quite loved Windows 8, and found Windows 10 to be
a step back from that, but still a good alternative to the Mac. There are also
various different Linux systems that make great desktop operating systems.

Reading the linked article, I have some observations, particularly about the
requirements Wesley lists:

> One tool for each job.

This strikes me as a somewhat peculiar requirement. The Mac certainly doesn't
work that way, particularly since OS X, and as long as the different tools
available aren't hurting you, their availability won't be much of a problem.

> A sensible/minimal selection of pre-installed applications.

To me, a more useful requirement would be "no bloatware". Linux distros in
particular often come with a ton of pre-installed applications, but they are
generally good applications, and having them does not cause any harm.

If you buy a Windows computer, on the other hand, you'll likely find its
installed Windows version to be borderline unusable due to all of the
preinstalled manure.

> Simple, easy to use/understand interface

As somebody who has used Macs since the early 90s, I'd argue that ever since
Mac OS X, the Mac hasn't _really_ offered that. It's still ahead of most
Windows versions (excluding perhaps Windows 8, but clearly including Windows
10, which sadly has reintroduced much of the clutter from earlier Windows
versions), but many Linux distros are now much cleaner and simpler than OS X
(both Elementary and Pixel come to mind as examples of this).

So to some degrees, Wesley is requiring these operating systems to offer
things that the Mac hasn't truly offered since the late 90s. This is not
entirely unfair; as a Mac user, he's used to the Mac's oddities and flaws, and
so it is perhaps useful to require the system he's switching to to be better
than Mac OS in some respects.

Still, I think it's fair to point out that the Mac itself probably couldn't
easily fulfill all of these requirements.

------
monochromatic
If a Macbook sshing into your work computer is good enough, why isn't a
Windows laptop sshing into your work computer?

~~~
lostboys67
Well a built-in x Server for connecting to your development systems would be
nice - which both OSX and Windows 10 Lack.

And I do mean Server as X Windows switches the common usage of client and
sever.

~~~
orkoden
XQuartz works just fine

------
nkozyra
I'm full-time OSX user/developer, but if Rails is really your sticking point,
shouldn't the linux subsystem make Win10 at least viable for a trial? Or,
frankly, anything that can run VMWare or Virtualbox?

~~~
sudhirj
I switched to Windows hoping to use the WSL - looks great for the most part,
but there are still lots of blocking bugs. Ruby and Git install, but not
OpenSSL, which makes Rails development difficult. Lots of niggles here and
there, basically.

Should be great when it comes out of beta, though - a good terminal and we'll
be all set.

~~~
guycook
If you haven't tried ConEmu [0], it's pretty awesome. I use it with the Git
Bash that comes with the full windows git installer and it Just Works for most
of my terminal needs. Haven't tried it with WSL but it can most likely be
rigged up.

[0] [https://conemu.github.io/](https://conemu.github.io/)

~~~
sudhirj
I use conemu with WSL... it's the best one available for Windows, but it still
pales in comparison to the default macOS terminal, and even the one that ships
with Elementary. The customziation, tabs, layout, fonts all work fine but seem
a bit bolted on.

~~~
thesmallestcat
I feel the need to point out that what "ships" with elementaryOS is basically
meaningless. You can install what you want, easily, and the default
configuration is a recommendation. Welcome to Linux-land.
[https://www.distrowatch.com/](https://www.distrowatch.com/)

~~~
indeyets
isn't it the same on any OS? :-/

you can install what you want on macOS and you can install what you want on
Windows. Both have custom terminal apps

~~~
thesmallestcat
No, it isn't. Debian packages, Ubuntu packages, etc. are tested together as a
group and you can expect that they integrate properly. The same cannot be said
for third-party OSX .apps. They're more like adding another repo to your
sources.list. Hell, OSX won't even let you uninstall Terminal.app.

------
fithisux
It is apitty FOSS project like GNU-Darwin / PureDarwin never took off and
people use Hackintosh. But Apple is here to blame. They could even support the
users by charging some fee.

~~~
orkoden
Using only Darwin instead of Linux or FreeBSD was never really attractive.
Contributing upstream is difficult to impossible, since Apple was never set up
to take your contributions. The different Darwin distributions never really
developed a direction or a unique feature set.

The only feature that sets Darwin apart from FreeBSD is launchd instead of
init. The rest is mostly downsides like a weird file system. You can get
dtrace on many other OSs today too.

------
frik
Or the other way:

Finding an Alternative to Windows 10

That non-optional phone-home, non-optional updates, ads on startmenu, little
QA (buggy like never before) - Windows up to Win7 was so nice, since Nadella
everything went downhill, so sad, but true. Good that Win7 is supported until
2020, and promising alternatives are around the corner with Google
Android/Fuchsia, macOS, Linux - although, the transition will be painful and
but necasserry. It's a little late and all trust is gone, but maybe they fire
the CEO and make a u-turn.

~~~
Lio
I see the downvotes for the parent post but no rebuttals to the phone
home/privacy issues in Windows 10.

I ask this as someone who hasn't really used Windows for 10+ years, could
someone who knows please discuss the state of privacy in Windows 10?

Is this a non-issue because you can turn off all the monitoring? How would one
go about that?

Is it a non-issue because Windows 10 doesn't send private information back to
Microsoft? What does it send back?

~~~
RossBencina
I use Windows 10 on my main dev box. I somewhat agree with the parent. The
Windows 10 situation has been enough to push me to start experimenting with
Linux.

The phone-home and forced-update-reboot are the big problems for me:

The phone-home behavior of Windows 10 is a repellent. Turning it all off is
non-trivial. The easily accessible privacy settings don't disable everything.
There are various lists of firewall rules, scripts, policy settings etc. I
can't recommend a specific source, but I think there are some well-maintained
lists/scripts on github. To be honest, I'm not sure whether anyone knows
exactly what goes back to Microsoft (not being tin-foil hat about it, I just
don't think it's well documented).

The no-choice-auto-update-reboot thing is also terrible (I've lost data on
more than one occasion from unsaved files when Windows forces a reboot while
I'm afk). This can be disabled with a lot of work and research. Some people
say manual updates will re-enable it. Note that I really do want to keep my
machine up to date, but ideally I don't want to have to reboot, and when I do
have to reboot I want to choose exactly when. I didn't buy a UPS so my
computer could reboot randomly by itself.

As for "ads on startmenu, little QA (buggy like never before)":

Running Windows 10 Pro I have not seen any advertising.

The system runs fine for me. Arguably it runs with lower memory usage than Win
7. I agree that Win 7 is very stable, and that's been my experience with Win
10 too. That said, I only started using Win10 in mid 2016, so perhaps earlier
builds were worse.

Overall I would have been happy to stay with Win 7. So far I've found Linux
GUI to be less polished, but maybe I'll get used to it.

------
stuffaandthings
I use Albert on my Arch Linux installation as an alternative to Alfred. Not
quite as good, but it works and is familiar (also extensible).

If you're looking for clipboard management, there are tons of linux solutions
for that, see:
[https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/list_of_applications#Cl...](https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/list_of_applications#Clipboard_managers)

As for an alternative to Karabiner, I use Xmonad and manage my keymapping
through the use of Xmodmap
([https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/xmodmap](https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/xmodmap))

------
andyhoang
Hi guys, can you suggest me any laptop + os that have trackpad work like
apple's (multi guesture, smooth scrolling) I love to leave them but, their
trackpad... are so good. I can use *nix quite ok, so os isn't a problem for my
dev station.

------
fbnlsr
I've been using Xubuntu on my Macbook Air in a VM and it feels amazing. It
gets the job done and I really like the UI.

elementaryos is perfect for a MacOS user but it feels like it's not ready yet
for day to day use.

------
bane
I've used a Mac for work for the past 5 years, I use Windows PCs at home but
most of my computing devices are Android.

I usually find if I need something specific for production use, it's in some
Linux distro, and I'll either SSH into one for work, or fire up a VM with that
distro in it and SSH into it. The best dev environment I've been able to
conjure up is using WinSCP to act as a bridge to whatever system I'm
connecting to, and just using a local great text editor in Windows (Sublime
Text, etc.). When you save, WinSCP just seamlessly saves it back to the
server.

I'll keep a Putty instance permanently ssh'd in and flip to that for console
stuff.

On OSX I've setup a network mount to the same linux machine/VM with SSHFS and
edit with pretty much the same text editors and use iterm2 that's permanently
ssh'd into the same machine/VM so the experience is virtually identical (with
the exception that SSFHS can be a bit fragile).

Most of the other apps I choose are cross platform because I work on a
similarly mixed OS team. I think every team should be mixed OS because it
forces the teams to choose cross platform tools instead of locking themselves
into platform specific choices.

I don't dev _from_ my Android devices, but I do push stuff to them frequently,
so they all have Servers Ultimate on them and I'll frequently setup ftp
servers on them to move files or ssh servers so I can remote in and do some
simple maintenance without have to do it on a small screen or fidget with an
on screen keyboard.

If you aren't doing something _really_ specialized on OS X, I'm not sure I
understand what the crisis is except for people building too much of their
identity into what device they're carrying around.

Apple's hardware _is_ the best, by far, but at $3k a pop, I can buy 4 or 5
perfectly fine and similarly specc'd Windows Laptops, or 6 or 7 better specc'd
desktops. If one breaks, just throw it away and buy whatever the newer one is
and keep your hardware fresh.

If most of what you're doing is looking at a console, or editing in a text
editor, it only takes an hour to get a new machine up and functional again
anyways.

So much drama.

------
pjmlp
Funny how we keep seeing these post from developers that aren't Mac OS/iDevice
developers.

NeXT's adoption of UNIX was just a way to fulfill expectations of the newly
created workstation market.

No serious NeXT application was a pure UNIX one, just like on Mac OS X.

I never saw a NeXT full of xterms and vi, rather with applications that took
full advantage of the desktop frameworks, including the devtools.

~~~
rcarmo
I hacked about in a NeXT in a research institution and spent a long while
getting X, NFS, etc. to work "right" (which it never quite did), but yeah,
you're right - except for macOS/iOS devs, Mac-using developers that target web
or server-side are the ones actively looking for alternatives, because the
tooling and targets are just easier to use on Linux these days...

------
rileymat2
> Note that I don’t currently consider Windows a viable alternative. For the
> work that I do (Rails) and tools I use something *nix based is the best
> choice for me.

For a long time, it has been my workflow to almost never develop on the host
machine. I find Virtual Machines to be preferable for a lot of reasons. Am I
unusual in this regard?

~~~
drvdevd
Perhaps you are but you shouldn't be. When I was still using a Mac, this was
exactly what I did. The #1 benefit IMO, is being able to create a filesystem
and OS isolation/independence layer that let's you easily switch host OSes
without too much hassle or thought. One can easily switch from Linux to
Windows to MacOS or even migrate their work to the cloud without too much
effort.

------
slowrabbit
@wezm You should checkout Enlightenment windows manager over Arch Linux I
think it'll be right up your alley based on your preferences
[https://www.enlightenment.org/](https://www.enlightenment.org/)

~~~
wezm
I tried it on my Arch install. I know it's highly themeable but the default
theme was not at all minimal and I wasn't a fan.

------
rayj
How about advertising for candy crush soda saga/minecraft, right on my start
menu. Or the crazy invasive privacy settings on first boot. Destroy windows
spying fixes most of this, but it's easier to just uninstall bill's shitty OS
and use ubuntu.

~~~
Fnoord
> How about advertising for candy crush soda saga/minecraft, right on my start
> menu.

Try Classic Shell [1]

[1] [http://classicshell.net/](http://classicshell.net/)

------
hartator
Anyone knows an alliterative to Alfred in Windows or Linux?

I really really like the ability to search apps with a few keystrokes and I
really really like to be able to search clipboard history with another few
keystrokes.

Nothing I've found are doing both or one as good as Alfred.

~~~
zeveb
> I really really like the ability to search apps with a few keystrokes

GNOME does this out of the box. It's possible to add this to e.g. StumpWM, i3
or AwesomeWM too.

Similar functionality is available in emacs with Helm: search through all
callable functions by just typing a few characters.

> I really really like to be able to search clipboard history with another few
> keystrokes

Emacs does this, with yank-pop (M-y); Helm turns this into helm-show-kill-
ring, which offers extremely convenient searchability.

I really can't recommend emacs highly enough: it's everything one could want
in an operating environment.

~~~
keithpeter
dmenu from suckless-tools springs to mind as well, but, as you say the 'hit-
windows-key-type-part-of-name-or-function' facility is a native part of Gnome
Shell (default DE with Fedora). Whisker-menu for XFCE4 can be bound to windows
key (Mod4). In KDE 4.14, you can bind a chord such as Windows-key-space or
some other letter to bring up the application launcher.

------
parmgrewal
For everyday use there is Android based RemixOS worth checking out, it looks
polished but is still in its infancy. [1]
[http://www.jide.com/remixos](http://www.jide.com/remixos)

------
princetontiger
Funny that this got written. I've looked at switching from macOS to Windows
10.

My first operating system was Windows 95. I then upgraded to 98, and later XP.
I decided to go with a Mac in 2008 after Windows Vista just couldn't get
itself together.

~~~
mcphage
The author specifically excluded Windows because they're a Rails developer.

~~~
Kolberht
It's a shame, because that excuse makes no sense.

~~~
josephby
I agree; it would be great to hear from developers who've experimented with
switching from macOS to Windows 10, and use Ubuntu userspace on Windows.

I switched about a month ago and, to be honest, I've been pleasantly surprised
with Windows 10, with modern, top-of-the-line Windows hardware, and especially
with Ubuntu on Windows.

~~~
wezm
Reading Dave's
([https://daverupert.com/tag/davegoeswindows](https://daverupert.com/tag/davegoeswindows))
experience switching to Windows turned me off considering it as an option.
However I've ordered an Eve V so will try it out when that comes later in the
year.

------
blainsmith
I've been very happy with [https://apricityos.com](https://apricityos.com)
running Cinnamon desktop.

------
tankmohit11
Why no plasma 5.x based distribution?

~~~
wezm
Last I checked KDE was still working on HiDPI support. Has that changed? What
plasma based distribution would you recommend?

~~~
gtirloni
Fedora 25 KDE spin seems to work just fine on my 1440p monitor.

~~~
wezm
Ok, looks like I need to check out KDE too.

------
dogismycopilot
"I has a fast Intel CPU (4Ghz i7-6700K), plenty of RAM and fast SSD storage."

~~~
wezm
Thanks, fixed.

------
toodlebunions
Windows 10 with WSL?

I prefer the mac but apple seems to be really working hard to blow it.

~~~
wezm
From what I've read WSL is kind of amazing but not stable enough yet.

------
rtnyftxx
> Removing the Esc key

you can switch back to default F1... keys

> Removing all legacy ports necessitating the use of dongles for everything

Somewhere have to start the transition

> Prioritising thinness and weight over everything else

Batterylife is the same

Worst thing on the new rMBPs: No silent trackpad click option m(

I use OS X just as an client.

~~~
STRML
> Somewhere have to start the transition

By removing every single legacy port long before there's anywhere near
ubiquitous USB-C? Even USB-C cables themselves are more commonly sold as USB-A
to USB-C. I _love_ having usable DisplayPort/Thunderbolt, HDMI, and USB-A on
my 2013 rMBP - I never need a dongle. If I went to a 2016, I'd need at least
3, every day.

> Prioritising thinness and weight over everything else

Battery life is certainly not the same, and the lack of a 16GB option or a
faster processor is a well-missed loss.

~~~
phlyingpenguin
> Battery life is certainly not the same, and the lack of a 16GB option or a
> faster processor is a well-missed loss.

Is it certainly not the same? It seems pretty much the same to me. Lack of a
16GB option? I have a 16 GB TB mac.

The FUD is getting old.

------
BuckRogers
I don't understand the ports complaint. Or maybe it's others who don't
understand their ports complaint. The USB-C connector is a physical connector,
and Apple's implementation of it supports every useful protocol and function
available. DisplayPort, USB3.1 and below, Thunderbolt3, charging and HDMI[0].
Just buy USB-C to whatever cables and you're done with it. USB-A to C
transition complete. You don't need adapters for those protocols, they're
passive cables.

What do people want? A bunch of ports that not everyone needs or wants to
waste space when I could have more multipurpose USB-C ports?

Got USB-A mice and keyboards? Ok, buy a docking station or USB-C to USB-A hub
and never think about it again. Got a mouse you like to carry around that
isn't wireless? Pickup a small adapter[1] to get you through the transition.
The only thing I can think of is ethernet but again, not everyone is going to
use that. I do want ethernet, but the USB-C Thunderbolt adapter is fine. It
certainly isn't the only laptop going without ethernet today. Again, why waste
a port when you can have these reversible universal ports. Miss MagSafe[2]?

Either way, the complaints about the ports don't hold much water once properly
researched and the change is inevitable. The reason I passed on the new MBP15
is the 24% reduction in battery capacity from 2015[3].

I needed a new machine so I bought an Acer Chromebook[4] to tide me over until
Apple gets a form-fitting large capacity battery[5] in the MBPs. My
configuration is $3000 and I'm just not going to spend that sort of money
unless it's near-perfect. I may build a PC and remote into it as per the
article until the next MBP once again matches its high price but I won't hand
them 3K for a battery that's 3/4th the size of the 2015 model (66% capacity
for the 13").

[0][https://youtu.be/JirCwapScUs?t=4m18s](https://youtu.be/JirCwapScUs?t=4m18s)

[1][http://a.co/4zD6Jt3](http://a.co/4zD6Jt3)

[2][http://a.co/4WDmyeT](http://a.co/4WDmyeT)

[3][http://arstechnica.com/apple/2016/12/explaining-the-
battery-...](http://arstechnica.com/apple/2016/12/explaining-the-battery-life-
problems-with-the-new-macbook-pros/)

[4][https://www.acer.com/ac/en/CA/content/model/NX.GJEAA.002](https://www.acer.com/ac/en/CA/content/model/NX.GJEAA.002)

[5][http://www.theverge.com/2016/12/20/14024322/macbook-pro-
batt...](http://www.theverge.com/2016/12/20/14024322/macbook-pro-battery-
development-failure)

~~~
wishinghand
There's still a huge confusion on what cables are legitimate USB 3 Type C
cables, or Thunderbolt or some third option that I forget but bricking devices
is a possibility with the current mix of options.

~~~
BuckRogers
I've read a bit about that. In general, just use what comes with the USB-C
device you're using. Longterm, quality issues with cabling will be sorted out.
I only have one anecdote with my own equipment. I have an external SSD case[0]
that came with a USB-A cable and I simply bought a micro-B to USB-C cable[1]
and it worked when I tried it without issue.

What most people seem to want other than ethernet is a HDMI cable (or port)
and something like this[2] will work direct from a new MBP. When I was going
to buy one, I was going to grab one of those just to keep in my bag.

[0][http://a.co/51jXxNK](http://a.co/51jXxNK)

[1][http://a.co/8FGPfnM](http://a.co/8FGPfnM)

[2][http://a.co/ekyPXpD](http://a.co/ekyPXpD)

------
ehutch79
how can the touchpad be both bigger and smaller than the previous model?

------
webaholic
Linux

------
bluedino
Why did the guy try like ten different distros? After 2-3 you know Linux is
going to work for your needs, or it isn't

------
Kolberht
I think most people prefer Windows or MacOS.

When I talk to normal/non-techies about this issue, they often see it as a
non-issue and/or terrifying.

Why not help Windows and Mac users by writing more software for the preferred
environments?

Installing a foreign operating system is like installing a different language
on your PC. You must have other motivation than normal users.

~~~
quickben
Why doesn't Microsoft let people control updates or antivirus options? These
questions run deep.

[http://news.softpedia.com/news/medical-equipment-crashes-
dur...](http://news.softpedia.com/news/medical-equipment-crashes-during-heart-
procedure-because-of-antivirus-scan-503642.shtml)

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whyileft
_> The interface is clean and refined._

Can we stop using the term "clean" to describe interfaces? Clean doesn't
really mean anything in design and also is a one sided term without an
opposite term that is not disparaging. Are all other interfaces that are not
clean, dirty? Or unsanitary? Or cluttered? It becomes and absolute term like
beautiful or professional which are all really just fluff terms for "good".

~~~
coldtea
> _Clean doesn 't really mean anything in design_

It actually conveys pretty well that the interface is uncluttered and with a
minimal aesthetic, with lots of space, etc.

> _Are all other interfaces that are not clean, dirty? Or unsanitary? Or
> cluttered?_

Obviously cluttered.

Don't really understand the objection. "Clean" has been part of UI vocabulary,
and before that, of aesthetic criticism (in fine arts, architecture,
industrial design, etc) for ages. ("Clean lines", etc).

~~~
whyileft
Since you feel that way, would you mind showing me an example of an interface
you do not consider "clean" but is of high quality and excellent usability?

