
So Long, Macbook. Hello Again, Linux - Chirael
http://richardmavis.info/so-long-macbook-hello-again-linux
======
Tehchops
End-user Linux has definitely improved in the last few years.

It offers a lot of attractive features for what I imagine to be the typical HN
demographic.

That being said, it's still got rough spots that OSX doesn't. It works great
when it works, but when it doesn't....

Font rendering, display/compositor fragmentation etc...

Inb4 the anecdotal "well it works for me I just had to download the xf86 font
library and compile with a legacy glibc version..." crew comes in with a
thousand and one rebuttals. Problems like that are still a suboptimal user
experience, no matter how you slice it.

I'd definitely consider a Linux daily driver for some of my work, but there
are things that are just going to be less painful on Apple.

~~~
jasondclinton
That's true: some things are easier on Mac. In particular, I'd say that using
software that hasn't been packaged for your distribution is much easier on
Mac.

However, your example of fonts is definitely not one of those areas, anymore.
Font rendering on Linux is as advanced and capable as any other OS including
in the areas of kerning and hinting. It should just work without any user
intervention and look great.

I agree with you that compositing/window manager fragmentation is a problem.
And this article is a perfect example of that. The author may think that
they're happy using i3 with Firefox and st at the moment, but the desktop
computing environment has gotten so complex and the expectations of users who
interact with desktop applications so rich, that a small hobby project DE/WM
cannot fully satisfy all of those use cases over the long term. The only two
desktop environment projects that have enough resources to meet the needs of
users behind them are KDE and GNOME. And we shouldn't be telling new Linux
users to try anything but those two.

FWIW, I've worked at Google for 7 years where we use Linux on our
workstations. Many engineers fiddle with various "hacker" window managers like
i3, Sway, Awesome, or fvwm. They almost universally give up and switch to
GNOME(/Cinnamon) or KDE: it's just too fiddly/not complete and they'd rather
use their brain power for solving real problems. The authors example of
messing around with dmenu because "unix philosophy" is an example of this kind
of waste of time that people eventually get tired of because they have better
things to spend their time on.

~~~
devereaux
Personally, I gave up on Gnome and run LXDE a bit like i3 - autopositionning
the windows with Fx keys mapped to a given set of coordinates, so F10 will
make a window use a square on the left covering 80% of the screen, F11 will
move the window to the remaining 20% on the right, thus hiding conky - etc.
The only advantage I find in LXDE is that it has a titlebar I can 'reveal' if
I wish to mess around and fiddle with the window position (like when tracking
the arping replies in a remote lan and using a bit of scripting to see the
evolution of the metric as I fiddle with things)

I like my desktop lean and mean. I do not want distractions. When I am dealing
with a remote system crashing under load, the last thing I want is my desktop
or my shortcuts to behave in weird ways. Things must always work, in a
consistent way. Funny thing is I can only get that in Linux... and in Windows
10.

Customization is a feature, just not everyone needs that feature.

So I disagree with your assessment, as some users will find Gnome or KDE too
distracting.

~~~
jasondclinton
Some people try that, too (and XFCE). Admittedly, they're better than a tiling
window manager, but LXDE's last stable release was 2016 and it doesn't have a
compositor so all of that graphics hardware in your computer specialized to
prevent X11 DAMAGE events from forcing applications redraws and for saving
power is going unused.

~~~
ubercow13
Does using a compositor really _save_ power in practice? GNOME's one certainly
doesn't, in my experience. It would spin my fans up after a few moments of
dragging a window around. Of course it has no configuration options so it is
not possible to fix it. kwin is almost as bad last time I checked on my
hardware.

------
unfunco
Anecdotal like other comments but I and a few others from my workplace have
switched to Dell XPS machines and run Linux now, and it's because we're
working with Docker, even with 16GB RAM and solid-state drives, the
performance of Docker on MacOS is pathetic, and entirely unusable for our
work.

The XPS machines we have are ugly, they're flimsy, they have a grotesque
carbon-fibre pattern on them, the keys leave imprints on the monitor after the
lid has been closed, the fan drowns out the sound of music in my apartment,
the camera is situated about 5mm above the keyboard with it's rickety keys, it
is without a doubt the ugliest, the worst computer I have owned, I eat
tramadol just to handle the back-pain from carrying it around in my rucksack,
but I'm much less angry and frustrated working on it than I am on a Mac
because it doesn't shit it's pants when more than a few containers are
running.

~~~
geoka9
I started using X1 Carbon 6th recently and it's an amazing little machine.
Extremely portable (a 14" that weighs 2.5 lbs and fits in a 13" sleeve), great
keyboard, great Linux support, good display, and it runs very cool (the fan is
never on, despite running multiple virtualbox instances in addition to regular
work that causes sporadic CPU spikes - e.g. compiling).

It's also very pleasant to touch and hold in your hands, especially if you
like the Thinkpad aesthetics.

~~~
polyfather
I have to agree. I was never a big fan of laptops before, but I've really come
to enjoy my 6th gen X1. The keyboard is surprisingly nice (for a laptop) and
the battery lasts long enough to not annoy me when I'm on the move.

The fingerprint reader doesn't work though, not that I know what I would use
one for.

~~~
rikkus
I installed KDE Neon on a t450s recently and the fingerprint reader was the
only hardware that didn’t work out of the box. I had to install an extra
package and add some lines to a pam config file.

I use it to log in, plus to auth for anything that requires root. I’m doing
some coding so occasionally do something that requires sudo in a terminal. A
prompt appears and asks me to swipe my finger. It’s very neat.

------
naibafo
There are different issues with OSX though, that colleagues of mine had, that
never occur with Linux. E.g. the chore of somehow managing different software
versions such as the outdated default one and a second one installed with
homebrew. Almost all my colleagues struggled with setting up python 2 und 3
correctly at some point, whereas this just worked for me on Linux.

Some struggled with font rendering between a 1080p monitor and their Retina
displays as well.

~~~
Tehchops
>Almost all my colleagues struggled with setting up python 2 und 3 correctly
at some point, whereas this just worked for me on Linux.

This is one area where I'd have to concede the Apple experience is objectively
suboptimal.

However, the Python ecosystem isn't doing anyone any favors here.

~~~
saagarjha
> However, the Python ecosystem isn't doing anyone any favors here.

Apple isn't, either. They ship a version of Python by default that is woefully
out of date and conflicts with any other Python that you install, and what's
more, some of their tools (notably, LLDB) freak out if you have a newer Python
on your $PATH.

~~~
rubatuga
Except you forgot Apple ships Python 2.7.15, which was released in 2018. It's
actually quite up to date.

~~~
tpush
My Mac on Mojave ships with Python 2.7.10 which was released May 23, 2015.

------
AdmiralAsshat
I find the fetish for terminal-based music players a bit odd. I associate
terminals with doing _work_ , so the idea of having one whose sole purpose is
playing music (presumably in the background while you do other stuff) to feel
like a waste of screen real-estate and something I'm likely to accidentally
pull up while trying to cycle between my other terminal windows where I'm
doing stuff.

I much prefer something that I can kick off to play an album or a playlist and
have it all but vanish from sight, either into the taskbar or, preferably,
into the system tray.

~~~
pram
Ah but how else are you going to have enough stuff open in tmux to impress
people with your screenshot on r/unixporn

~~~
Tehchops
Found the elephant in the room, you did.

------
TransAMrit
> Recently I’ve just found myself disenchanted with Apple in a way similar to
> how I felt maybe twelve years earlier with Microsoft, when I switched to
> Linux the first time.

This is exactly why I've been switching back to Linux everywhere, including
laptops. Apple has done a pretty good job recreating the modern Windows
experience.

~~~
dwighttk
I feel like I'd be much more open to Linux if I spent most of my time in
emacs, but since I've spent like 8 minutes in emacs and about 14hrs in vim and
have very little desire to increase either of those numbers, it only takes a
small dose of Linux to re-enchant myself with Apple.

~~~
_emacsomancer_
One can certainly use Linux set up in such a way as to be very similar to a
Mac experience. (ElementaryOS seems to me intentionally be Mac-like, for
instance. But plenty of other distros are also set up in such a way that the
user doesn't have to ever open a terminal if they don't want to.)

There's no rule that you ever have to open either emacs or vim on Linux
(though, personally I think you're missing out if you've only spent 8 minutes
in emacs, but that's beside the point). In fact, you can just not install
either emacs or vim, and thus make certain you don't ever open them by
accident.

~~~
cr0sh
I recently updated my Linux desktop at home; I tried a variety of live distros
- I don't recall if Elementary was one of them - it might have been in there.

The one I ended up using had the Budgie desktop, which I found to be the most
"Mac-like" of all the experiences. The distro I used was Ubuntu Budgie,
because I wanted the Debian and Ubuntu software ecosystem, but Budgie is a
part of the Solus Linux project (which I enjoyed when I tried it, but I didn't
like the package system).

So give Solus and/or Ubuntu Budgie a try on a live USB thumbdrive sometime;
you might enjoy it, if you are looking for a "more Mac-like" experience...

~~~
_emacsomancer_
It's been a while since I've tried Budgie, but I recall it reminded me vaguely
of Android in fact.

But, in any case, yes, there are plenty of Linux front-ends which can be 'Mac-
like' if you like that sort of thing.

------
toyg
(That color theme is... not for me.)

I long for the Linux prairies of old, but I've grown fat and lazy on OSX.
Linux is a youngster's game.

Apple got it wrong in 2016 but there are signs that we might have passed
"iPhone peak"... maybe they will be forced to pay attention again to us old
farts.

~~~
fouc
Yeah, I loved linux but I'm fat and lazy on OSX. I don't want to be sucked
into the rabbit hole of being able to configure and tweak everything, and
never quite feeling like I found the greenest pastures.

~~~
dtemp
I've installed Ubuntu 18.10 on my Dell laptop, and I've done no
configuring/tweaking that you describe. Just the default install, changed
maybe one or two settings in ubuntu's version of "System Preferences",
installed my Firefox extensions, changed the desktop background. You don't
need to do any configuring/tweaking if you don't want to. Everything works.

------
jwr
I so wish the Linux community would get its act together and implement a
working usable clipboard. It's the one thing I miss the most whenever I switch
from Mac OS to Linux.

On a Mac, you can cut/copy/paste using predictable keystrokes in any
application, anywhere. And there is a single clipboard. On Linux, you have to
deal with a multitude of behaviors (middle mouse button, Ctrl-C, others, and
does it paste where the cursor is or do you have to click the middle mouse
button exactly where you want stuff pasted, etc).

And I'm not even talking about multiple media types: all I need is plaintext.

The second dream wish would be for consistent keybindings in all text input
boxes, like in Mac OS. Such as make Ctrl-A _always_ go to the beginning of
line, Ctrl-E always to the end, and Ctrl-K always kill whatever is in there.

If I had that, I think I could use Linux without getting annoyed every couple
of minutes. I would still miss apps like TextExpander, flawless drag&drop, and
lots of other things, but I could at least use it without frustration.

Unfortunately, none of this is likely to happen. If you wonder why, it's
enough to look at the responses that will surely land here:

~~~
noahadavis
It won't happen because Linux users like it the way it is. It is consistent,
it's just not the way you want it to be. I love middle click paste. It makes
sense that it doesn't follow the text cursor because the mouse is separate and
this adds extra flexibility. Ctrl+A should select everything and put the
cursor at the end.

Actually, in some apps the cursor disappears and in some the cursor goes to
the end, but the behavior of what happens when text is selected is always the
same.

~~~
rezeroed
What's a "middle click"?

~~~
sangnoir
Clicking with the middle mouse button - nowadays, it's typically a clickable
scroll-wheel, but it used to be a plain button between left and right mouse
buttons back in the day.

~~~
AnIdiotOnTheNet
After mice had mostly standardized on two buttons but scroll wheels didn't
exist yet, it was common to map a simultaneous click of both mouse buttons to
simulate a middle click.

------
Waterluvian
Hooking up three monitors, 2 of which are 4k onto Ubuntu is the most
frustrating thing I've done with that OS. It just works on OSX though.

Rough spots is a good way to describe it. Overall it works... But not without
effort and competence.

~~~
InitialLastName
That doesn't "Just work" on Windows 7 or 10, though, so not sure it's a
failure on the part of Linux as much as a success on the part of macOS.

~~~
zrobotics
How does that fail? I've never had issues with multi-monitor, and they've
always been 3 different resolutions (with one rotated 90). I'm not doubting
you, as my current win10 install won't let me change the default JSON
association away from visual studio and I can't find anyone else with that
problem. I'm just curious what fails, since I haven't encountered problems
with multi-monitor since XP.

~~~
stevehawk
I hate running multiple monitors in Windows 10. I was running 24" \+ 27" BenQ
monitors (same model/specs, just diff sizes) and Windows would reboot and
ignore both. On my laptop I would go into the display settings and try to turn
them on and just get a "Failed to save settings" message. This usually
resolved itself after a reboot or two.

I honestly got so tired of it I just invested in an Alienware 34" monitor. I
haven't had the problem since.

~~~
stevehawk
I should add that while Ubuntu did not have this problem.. because the monitor
configuration is apparently loaded post login screen I had other issues - like
my login prompt being on the wrong monitor. Especially if I was using LUKS on
my primary drive, but that one is a bit more obvious as to why.

*setup is an Alienware 15 laptop which supports dual monitor out for up to 3 active displays if including the laptop monitor

------
mrspeaker
This is most definitely selection bias, but it seems like there's something in
the air at the moment with people jumping off the "mainstream tech" ship. Lots
of talk of nostalgia for 90s internet culture, switching to Linux (I also
switched to Linux (and Emacs!) after a decade+ on Mac), more
secure/transparent tech with phones etc. More willingness to put up with
"rough spots" and "less shiny" for greater access to things under-the-hood.

Is it just nostalgia? Global politics? Me hanging around other nerds who are
also getting older? I dunno, but now computers seem more exciting than ever!

Ok, I gotta get back to IRC and browsing the internet on M-x eww...

~~~
caconym_
For me it's because the big tech companies (one of which I work at) are making
everything way too complicated, gimmicky, and over-integrated for me.

I want a keyboard, not half a keyboard and a weird touch display that does
nothing useful for me I want a directory that's synced to durable cloud-based
storage, not a monolithic service product that tries to work its hooks into
every corner of my computer(s) and digital life in general. I want software
that writes data in common formats to a filesystem I can understand and
interact with as such, rather than squirreling away my data somewhere
application-specific that isn't replicated on my personally owned storage, in
some unknown format that's probably locked down according to business concerns
I shouldn't have to care about, and subject to some arbitrary TOS picked out
of the massive constellation of TOSs we all have little practical choice but
to be subject to. And so on.

The more time passes, the more consumer products seem to drift away from what
I want. It's a shame because a lot of the hardware is really quite nice and
technically capable of hosting my workloads, but the software makes me feel
dirty when I use it and often just can't do what I need. I think there is a
crazy emphasis on _consuming_ rather than _creating_ , and it hobbles so many
products that could be great.

For instance, I bought my girlfriend an iPad Pro for Christmas and it's
amazing, and I'm so fucking jealous. But it can't run a *nix terminal without
a boatload of caveats, doesn't have a real accessible filesystem, and there
are a million other little problems (like, I can't remap caps lock to
control). So, as much potential as I think that form factor has for me, the
product itself is useless because it's pretending it's not a general-purpose
computing device.

Rant over, I guess. Ultimately I don't expect big companies to go out of their
way to cater to users like me, but it's a constant disappointment.

~~~
wasted_intel
Well said. I switched to an XPS-based Arch build for many of these reasons.

I think computers are generally too complicated for lay users. People
tolerated the quirks because there was no alternative. Even on a Mac, which
wouldn't suffer from the same hardware compatibility issues as a PC/Windows
machine, users would still need to understand how to organize files, properly
close applications, and avoid running/opening arbitrary programs/files from
the internet. And that's if they could connect to the internet at all.

iOS and its ilk solved all of that. And in that moment, the number of people
who _needed_ to be exposed to all of that underlying complexity shrank
considerably. There is most certainly something lost for those people, but at
the end of the day, there is a cognitive cost to understanding how those
pieces work, and I think the mass market has shifted away from implementations
that require (or allow for) that visibility. I think that's fine, provided
there are still hardware options available to the rest of us. :)

------
teddyc
I resurrected a little NUC computer from a former employee. It has 16GB RAM
and a 256GB SSD drive. It runs Ubuntu 18.10 fine. The display port runs my 4k
monitor @ 60Hz.

I bought a USB bluetooth dongle and the smallest microphone I could find on
the internet so I can use my old bluetooth mouse and do audio conference
calls.

I am really loving it for Docker based development b/c it feels like it runs a
lot faster.

I also love the Home, End PgUp and PgDn keys. Keyboard shortcuts are tough. As
is muscle memory going back and forth.

My goal is to keep my macbook in my backpack and never take it out during the
workday. On most days, that's what happens.

~~~
war1025
How do you like the NUC? I have been toying with the idea of buying a mini
computer like that. I don't really want a full-size desktop tower, but I also
don't really want to go the route of a laptop in a docking station.

~~~
zanny
I have a PC business on the side and I love selling people NUCs. Few or no
moving parts to break, you can often mount them on the backs of monitors,
performance has been good enough for ~4 years for 99% of desktop tasks. If not
for the inexplicable price premium they'd be perfect for anyone except if you
need a lot of storage, dedicated video, or expansion slots.

~~~
war1025
Yea, I was surprised how expensive they were. It seems like there should be
cheaper options given how little laptops cost these days and them using
basically laptop hardware from what I've read.

~~~
zanny
They are a fairly niche product. The only real demographic buying them in bulk
from consumer outfits are small businesses without big contracts to HP / Dell,
the one in a million informed tech "muggle" who knows how to install their own
OS, and small IT shops that recognize how practical they are.

You can get some of them with a preinstall of Windows but because they aren't
made by the big builders who stock Best Buy and Walmart shelves they don't
often show up in front of consumers faces to buy, much like Linux desktops.
But Dell / HP / etc have no real reason to risk their business investing in
their own NUCs because theres nothing really competing with them in their
spaces for that kind of hardware, and they already make the all in one
computers that are about one notch too far up the "unmoddable" ladder for most
of us to be content with.

~~~
war1025
Thanks for the super-informative replies. One of the nice things about HN is
there is always someone that knows about some niche topic.

------
mawburn
One of the big features Macs have for me is that I can call customer service
any time of day and they can work through any serious issue I have with my
Mac. I've only had to call a few times, but they were able to work out some
pretty serious issues quickly each time. I think the longest I was on the
phone was 1.5hrs to find out that my own IT dept had screwed up Casper
settings that I couldn't fix.

For a work machine I don't really want to do that kind of debugging myself. I
just want it to work. I've been running Linux at home for about a decade and
usually have no issues, but when I do I'm not dead in the water with project
deadline hanging over my head.

~~~
Tehchops
> One of the big features Macs have for me is that I can call customer service
> any time of day and they can work through any serious issue I have with my
> Mac

This is something else that often gets left out in these discussions. For
better or worse, Apple offers an ecosystem/platform, and the support to go
along with it.

Suppose you do make a Linux laptop work for your daily driver. You're still
left out in the cold if you have an iPhone/iWatch/iPad.

The tight integration that's offered, along with the ubiquitous(and very
useful) iCloud is something that Linux just doesn't have.

And yes, I am aware of the various flavors of self-hosted solutions, the
dangers of lock-in etc...

If I've already been fighting to make my laptop functional for _work_ , I
don't want to start the same battle again for my _hobbies_ too.

~~~
willtim
If you buy a business-class machine like a ThinkPad, you will get a modular
and repairable machine with typically 3 years on-site support as standard, in
most countries. This is not true with Apple. Apple machines are essentially
unrepairable in the field and even with the expensive AppleCare option, you
will likely lose possession of your machine for a significant amount of time.

~~~
ianhowson
With Apple, you can take it to any store and they'll diagnose it immediately.
With business support (which isn't even expensive for individuals; it was
$500/year when I had it) they'll give you a loaner on the spot.

If you've got backups, your downtime for a dead machine maybe a few hours.

~~~
Filligree
I appreciate the convenience of such stores where they exist, but neither
Ireland nor Norway has any apple stores. Only third-party resellers, none of
which are nearly as good.

~~~
maccard
I had an issue with a MacBook pro in Ireland. A 15 minute call with support
and they couriered a new one out to me the following day and picked up the old
one. I signed into iCloud and Dropbox, and was back up an running in a few
hours. Doesn't get muxh smoother than that.

------
psadauskas
I've used both Linux and OSX for a long time, and what I've found is that
while Linux breaks a little more often, I stand a much better chance of being
able to fix it. When I google for a Linux problem, there's much more likely to
be an answer that works on StackOverflow, while on OSX it often just leads me
to the Apple support forums with dozens of people asking the same question and
no real answer.

Similarly, while the little utility apps on OSX tended to be better written,
on Linux if they didn't work quite the way I wanted there was usually a config
file I could tweak that would make it better. On OSX I just had to either
write an app myself (and I don't know XCode, ObjC or Swift) or hope that
someone else would. And some things on OSX were just impossible. I find that a
tiling window manager fits really well in my development flow, and while it
can sorta be emulated with tools like Divvy and Alfred, I always found it to
be more cumbersome than awesome or i3. But, Alfred is a way better launcher
than anything I've found available on Linux.

~~~
fiter
I find that in the Gnome ecosystem, the apps will not have a config file that
can be tweaked. Sometimes there will be an add-on or separate app the allows a
tweak, but there's a concerted effort to remove options.

~~~
jamesgeck0
Many Gnome config files are binary to improve startup performance, but they
can still be edited using the appropriate tool.

------
vesak
Man, this is so weird.

I used Linux from 1996ish to 2017 and then just moved almost everything to
Apple. I don’t remember the exact reason, but probably it had something to do
with Wayland taking forever to stabilize, and the community starting to smell
bad. And I’m happy, probably happier than before. Sure, Apple’s stuff isn’t
perfect, but it’s way closer to it than any Linux combination I ever tried.
The only thing I miss is i3, but turns out, not that much.

I hope my move didn’t jinx the whole platform...

~~~
mbrock
I've only been using GNU/Linux since around 2000. I started on Slackware 7,
then I was on Red Hat for a while, had a Gentoo phase, and then Debian was my
main choice for a long time, although I used Ubuntu on some computers...

When the first Intel MacBook came out I was 17 and bought one for all my
savings. I thought it was really amazing to have a beautiful laptop running a
polished desktop Unix-like. But I always had a stationary Debian computer too.

I never really liked GNOME or the other desktop environments. For most of the
time I've just used Ratpoison (or stumpwm) with GNU Emacs and a few terminals.
That way I feel way more efficient and less distracted; even on Mac OS I
usually maximize everything into a separate workspace, or now occasionally use
the new split-screen function.

Sometime right around when I started doing coding for a living, after
university, I drifted away from GNU/Linux. I just used MacBooks and iPhones.
Of course I still used GNU Emacs. But the Apple ecosystem was basically fine
for my rather ambient computing needs at home. My workplaces used either
Windows or Mac.

But then in 2015 I got my first GNU/Linux laptop and installed NixOS which I
had used on some servers and fallen in love. NixOS pretty much reinvigorated
my love for GNU/Linux, and I love it again.

I still have a bunch of Apple products. I treat them as separate lineages with
different strengths and purposes. The NixOS machine is for serious hacking,
and then I'm satisfied with letting the Macs handle photos, playing DRM
movies, all kinds of random stuff. I use an iPhone and some Mac apps that sync
with iOS, etc.

But my NixOS machines are awesome too, and they're the ones I really love —
basically because of the freedom, in the FSF sense. I know they're not doing
weird stuff behind my back, I know I can hack them freely, and I can configure
them exactly like I want them.

~~~
jonaswouters
Almost the same story, with some different dates, but I ditched my macs and am
fully on NixOS.

I loved OSX and the stylish apps, but I noticed I was only using IntelliJ,
iTerm and the browser most of the time. r/unixporn made me wishing Linux was a
better fit for me, but I could not miss apps from Adobe or Affinity.

This was solved by setting up a vfio configuration, and now even the fanciest
games run smoothly in my VM.

I still use an iPhone and iPad, but they are mostly for consumption, note
taking and drawing.

------
MattyRad
This is a shameless plug, but if anyone wants a nudge toward Linux (Ubuntu),
coming from Mac, I have a recent write up of things things that I personally
gain by using Ubuntu over Mac. [https://code.mradford.com/post/ubuntu-vs-
mac/](https://code.mradford.com/post/ubuntu-vs-mac/)

~~~
irq
Re: your article - there are no Thunderbolt monitors with an integrated GPU.
There were rumors about this happening some day, but it hasn’t yet.

Also, your review omits battery life... Why? It’s one of the most important
considerations.

~~~
MattyRad
That's interesting... my Macbook Air sometimes struggles by itself, but never
has issues performance-wise (especially with docker and npm) when it's plugged
in to the thunderbolt. Surely some kind of magic happens, but I guess it could
just be happenstance, or my imagination.

------
dbingham
What screen resolutions do the Librems support? Their tech specs don't
actually list the resolutions, just the graphic card and size of the display.
That's, honestly, one of the main things holding me to my mac: I want the
retina display.

That and the fact that all the PC hardware makers insist on offsetting the
damned touchpad. Which, maybe it's just my preference, but I hate when they
offset the damned touchpad.

~~~
NeedMoreTea
Long term Mac user, currently with Macbook Pro.

It's _Apple_ that offsets the damn touchpad. I don't want it central to the
case, I want it central to the _home keys_ (F and J) of the keyboard.

Apple centres with the case. Which is broken. There's more keys on the right
side of a keyboard than the left (without a number pad), thanks to punctuation
and brackets, so hands rest slightly left of case centre line.

Truth be told I'd prefer Apple fit a trackpoint, but that's never happening.

~~~
dbingham
I have one of the old MacBook Pros where the homerow was centered on the case,
and so was the touchpad. Which is exactly what I want.

~~~
NeedMoreTea
So do I (2015).

There's roughly half a key of trackpad to the left of F, and roughly 1.5 to
the right of J. For me that's mis-aligned with where my hands rest, even if
both component blocks are neatly case centred for pretty and symmetric photos.

The moral of which is, I suppose, that personal preferences are hard to align.
:)

------
jniedrauer
I've been developing fulltime on Linux since 2014. I can't speak for the
default distros/DEs, since I've been using i3 and sway the entire time. But
it's been a fantastic development environment for me.

I recently watched one of my colleagues run a build on their macbook. Not a
complicated build. A go binary compile and a docker image build. But it really
struck me how slow it was. What takes 15 seconds on my underpowered linux
workstation took 60+ seconds on their $2000 macbook. That's unacceptable to
me.

------
loser777
I wish this post touched on some deeper reasons that the author was
"disenchanted" with Apple. Having dabbled in tiling window managers, terminal
music players, and many other /r/unixporn memes, this kind of infatuation with
UI candy makes me think that the author's issues with Apple were only skin
deep. Many of the things mentioned here (e.g., tiling WMs, emacs _REALLY?_)
are not mutually exclusive with macOS.

I run GNU/Linux exclusively on my headless work machines, but I think moving
to Linux on the laptop still makes you trade too much (battery life, system
integration). I wonder if the author has realized that rebranded ODM hardware
(Librem and System76) and a modern Macbook are unfortunately not in remotely
the same league.

I DD'd a T420 with debian on it religiously throughout undergrad, and I'm not
in a hurry to go back. (I do miss the keyboard sometimes though)

~~~
rmavis
> I wish this post touched on some deeper reasons that the author was
> "disenchanted" with Apple.

It's mainly the feeling of ownership. Apple's apparently increasing hostility
toward third-party upgrade-and-repair shops (see the whole "right to repair"
issue) forces owners of their machines to use their support exclusively. I'd
prefer to have more options for upgrading my hardware than buying a new
machine. These decisions make sense for Apple but not for me. Maybe it's
because they're still small but Purism hasn't set me up for this sort of
antagonistic relationship.

There's also the increased sense of creativity with Linux. It feels a little
bit like working with Legos. Because "unix philosophy" and such that other
commenters feel are trivial wastes of time, I'm free to make the machine
behave as I wish. And I like that.

Of course there are also superficial things. I don't like notifications that
force a behavior, like being forced to opening System Preferences because the
only button on the notification is "View". But it's also more than that.

> Having dabbled in tiling window managers, terminal music players, and many
> other /r/unixporn memes

I mean, if you want to demean things you don't like as "memes", that's your
prerogative. But I don't use a tiling window manager or terminal music player
to impress people. I use them because I like them---they're fast, the mental
models make sense, they expose me to new/unfamiliar concepts, and I can
customize them to suit me.

> Many of the things mentioned here (e.g., tiling WMs, emacs _REALLY?_) are
> not mutually exclusive with macOS.

True. I've been using emacs (yeah, really) on macOS for a decade. No
complaints there.

> I wonder if the author has realized that rebranded ODM hardware (Librem and
> System76) and a modern Macbook are unfortunately not in remotely the same
> league.

The Librem 13 is easily the best-feeling laptop I've ever used.

------
nkoren
My 2012 Retina Macbook was on its last legs. I was deeply uninspired by both
the regressive functionality and excessive price of the of the latest
generation of Macs. So after almost 15 years in the Mac ecosystem, I bid it
adieu and got a Dell XPS 9560, with dual-boot Windows 10 and Ubuntu.

I'm regretting that now.

Ubuntu was a breeze for setting up development environments, but a nightmare
in basically every other sense. Keyboard drivers misbehaving, randomly
disabling system shortcuts in certain key applications (like Chrome). Mouse
wheel working horribly and requiring many hours of hacking to fix. Fans
spinning out of control in some kind of fight with the BIOS that I still
haven't been able to win, after more than 20 hours of working on it. And you
want to connect a second monitor with a different resolution than your
primary? Fuck you, no. Just no. You absolutely, positively, cannot do that. I
spent days following red herrings on forums before giving up.

On the Windows side of thing, it's much better. Most things Just Work --
except that getting the mouse wheel to work correctly is a 15-step registry-
hacking process followed by a reboot[1], and this needs to be repeated each
time Bluetooth forgets it knows this mouse -- which is every other day or so.
Oh, and also, it's so difficult to set up as a development environment that my
CTO has told me not to bother.

So, yeah, after a month, I'm having regrets. I still think that Apple is
taking the piss, but after all the time and frustration I've sunk into Linux
-- and, to a lesser extent, Windows -- the Apple Tax is beginning to look like
relatively good value for money.

1: You think I'm exaggerating? Honestly I'm not:
[https://answers.microsoft.com/en-
us/windows/forum/windows_10...](https://answers.microsoft.com/en-
us/windows/forum/windows_10-other_settings/reverse-the-scroll-of-
mouse/334669c3-8a45-4600-830a-8df628d7415e)

------
loop0
From someone that has been using linux as his main OS since 2003, I tried to
switch to mac once (used for one year) and had to work with a mac for approx.
4 years.

As good as brew is, it is just not as good as having your distro package
manager, I ran into so many issues using brew, every mac os upgrade was a pain
to keep brew packages working. Then it came docker, what a bliss is to use
docker on Linux, but on mac it is just cumbersome, specially because
everything is inside that qcow image that only grows until you run out-of-
disk. I know it was alleviated by some measures the docker team took to "fix"
it, but still it is not as good as docker running on linux.

Nowadays I just buy a thinkpad, put Fedora on it and everything works as
expected. Because all of the projects I work with use docker, performance wise
it is so much faster than running it on mac os.

------
nepeckman
My 2011 Macbook has been hanging on and functioning well with some upgrades.
When I do finally replace it, it will be with a linux laptop. I'm not
interested in paying that ridiculous price for a computer that sacrifices
functionality for aesthetics. I fully expect that there will be some trade
offs in the "Just Works" category, but I've been using linux as the driver on
my desktop for a while with few issues.

~~~
fiala__
I'm about to switch to Linux from my 2010 MBP (which is still basically
working) and my main motivation is exactly the fact that "Just Works" no
longer applies to MacBooks.

My £2800 company MBP has half-broken USB-C ports, malfunctioning Touch Bar,
various audio issues, and I can't use Blender to render on the GPU because of
Apple's shitty outdated OpenGL. I could have two Linux laptops with better
specs for the price of this piece of fancy aluminium, and a similar amount of
bugs/broken stuff.

------
contingencies
Same story here, ditched Apple. It's less the money, more the attitude. I have
never liked their keyboards.

Gentoo dying semi-frequently became tedious, so I'm currently on NixOS despite
issues. My perfect OS would be the power of a Gentoo-style build from source
distro combined with a functional management layer performing versioned system
snapshots out of the box (but allowing COW for easy additions, unlike NixOS)
so you could combine the best of both worlds.

In the future I look forward to a detachable screen and hotels, offices and
transportation with standardized secure wireless screencasting... and will
someone replace the international mains power plugs with a new multi-voltage
(DC on demand) standard already!

------
uvee
I've been running Linux (Ubuntu 18.04 with Gnome) on my Dell XPS 13 for a
while now and its been working quite well. My biggest concern was mobility,
like attaching it to different DPI monitors and have things work well still.
With Gnome as my shell, it has been keeping up quite well with the
expectations (except some programs not picking up changes right, e.g.
IntelliJ).

I had moved off of OSX after the new gen of MacBookPros were unusable for me.
I was using Windows + WSL for a while but eventually decided to give Linux a
try. Things have been quite smooth really. Since most of my dev is around
docker etc. it feels like home (not that OSX Docker experience was bad,
Windows I can't say).

------
brightball
Good new take on the migrating to Linux articles. The PureOS setup is pretty
cool.

I'm 2 years on pure Linux after about 10 years on Mac, so it definitely gets
my endorsement as well. Haven't written up anything about it yet but the
experience has been very smooth.

~~~
sonnyblarney
Can you recommend a write up that compares various flavours.

I like the notion of going Linux but frankly I have no love or will for the
hiccups. I just want stuff to work.

~~~
brightball
I need to write one up. I tried a few for at least a couple of months at a
time just to really commit to getting to know them.

Fedora, Ubuntu, Mint, Korora (Mint for Fedora) and a couple of others.

Mint was great. I ran it for about a year but then switched to Ubuntu after
the 18.04 release that switched to Gnome 3. Ubuntu being the dominant
installation tends to lead to better support from vendors, etc in my
experience. YMMV.

I honestly don’t think you can go wrong with either. The biggest thing is
going to be committing to push through any little quirks that might come up.

For example, I thought multi screen support didn’t work when I tried to use my
apple DVI adapter. Turns out that apple uses a “passive” adapter that depends
on software installed on the Mac to actually work. If you get an “active”
adapter...everything works fine.

I also wasn’t thrilled with the Magic Mouse experience, so I ended up getting
a different mouse that’s performed wonderfully.

Now that I’m far enough down the road I’ve started managing my configuration
with Ansible so I have an easy way to just rebuild my install if I try
something new. A lot of people do that too, it’s a good time.

------
sesteel
I recently installed Pop!_OS from System 76 on a newly purchased thinkpad x1
extreme and it has been an absolute joy. Pop!_OS's lineage is up the
Debian/Ubuntu branch but has a lot of features that make for a practical
experience. You can easily switch between Nvidia and Intel embedded graphics
for example.

~~~
jdhawk
There are still a few rough spots surrounding Docks, external monitors, and
HiDPI (if you went 4k).

Additionally, I had to jump through a few more hoops in order to get Thermal
Throttling under control, increase the battery life to a usable level, etc..

I'm sure that all these things will eventually get rolled in as more users get
X1E's, but overall the Pop!_OS experience has been smooth for the Newness of
the hardware

------
debrice
I have a hard time working on MacOS, so I use linux, but that's because I'm a
developer.

I have a hard time doing simple things on linux so I use MacBook for my day-
to-day things, but that's because I'm a human being.

Linux is great, MacOS is great, these posts who love to hate on one to love
another aren't.

------
NotANaN
Since the government insists that it has the authority to violate the 4th
Amendment whenever it feels like if I'm in a 100-mile vicinity of a border, I
really want devices to have "reset switches" which reset the device to, if not
a factory-default state, then a state of "just completed initial configuration
without logging into any services."

Which is the state I now feel compelled to set my devices whenever I travel,
and then restore from a remote backup when I reach my destination.

------
talkingtab
For me there are multiple issues that point toward Linux \- Linux has gotten
better \- I have two older Macs, an iMac and a 2012 MacBook. The usability of
MacOs on these is worse with every new version of the Mac OS \- I have no
confidence in new Apple hardware. They seem to be focused on customers who
will buy things with a much higher cost to benefit ratio than I can afford. I
have doubts that Apple will even continue to support Mac's. \- Apple feels
like the new Windows to me, and we all know how well that went. I do not see
the kind of user focused innovation that was their trademark. \- Other than
movies, music, web development, email and browsing I find myself using my
doing less and less with my computers \- My experience with all of those
functions has frustration creep perhaps because my hardware is old. But then
again, can't Apple support older harder?

Sorry if I descended into a tirade, but the net result is \- I love my 2012
MacBook and will probably keep it. \- I'm looking to see if I can run linux on
my 2013 iMac. \- I am trying to find inexpensive hardware (laptop or desktop)
as a development machine.

------
roadbeats
I guess the author actually meant to say “So long, OSX” as Macbooks (older
than 2016 versions) actually are good hosts for running Linux. I myself run
have two Macbooks (Air 13 and Pro 15) with dual boot setup, so I get the best
of two worlds: perfect programming setup (i3) on Linux, perfect multimedia (I
use Lightroom / Premiere sometimes) setup on OSX.

~~~
AdmiralAsshat
The author mentions, however, that he also bought a new Librem 13 laptop to go
with it. So presumably he ditched the Macbook hardware as well.

~~~
roadbeats
Yes, he didn’t have to ditch Macbook though.

------
mscasts
I installed (ubuntu) Linux recently on my new HP Spectre x360. Unfortunately,
there was some issues still. My webcam didn't work at all. The touchpad was
bad in comparison to Windows drivers and the graphics drivers sucked.

But overall it works much better today than like ~5 years ago. Got back to
Windows and I am unsure if I will ever run linux on the desktop full time even
if it is a distant dream and have been for long.

The only issue is that there is still a lot of issues on many laptops. Most
desktops work great and it is easier to switch hardware parts.

On laptops, it seems that it's still a dice throw. I hope that changes in the
future. Unfortunately, it is the chicken and the egg problem here and will
most likely continue. Linux is a lot better than 5 years ago, but so is
Windows and MacOS as well even if they both have stuff that sucks.

I used to believe that [current year] was the year of linux on desktop, but I
no longer believe that mostly because of what makes linux so great, all the
choices.

~~~
mbreese
For laptop support, it really helps if you can get ahold of one of these
“Linux-first” computers, like the OP. When the components all are supported,
the experience is much smoother.

But that’s also the downside — often the hardware isn’t supported. Desktop
Linux devices just aren’t the top priority for developers.

Honestly, if you want to go this route, it’s almost easier to just run Linux
in a VM on top of Windows or macOS.

~~~
mscasts
Well, I thought about that while ordering. Sent a mail to System76 which was
the only company I knew about besides Dells XPS (that wasn't available in my
country at the time). They didn't have chargers that fit with the european
sockets and their system was still more expensive than the other options
anyway. Plus, if something goes wrong, there is no real support available in
my country. I would have to ship it half around the world for any support.

Even on hardware that are supposed to be supported, I have many times run into
problems because of it only supports x distro or something like that. Sure it
often is an pretty easy fix, but you still have to dig into to config files,
read forums on the internet to get help.

~~~
the_duke
Linux is certainly more hassle than Windows/OS X.

Since you mentioned XPS: I've been running Arch Linux on a new Dell XPS13
without any issues. Webcam, microphone, touchpad, etc: all works fine.

------
rv-de
Linux Mint 19 (xfce) on any Thinkpad (T-series) is absolutely phantastic.
Everything works either out of the box or is trivial to set up. LM 19 also
works perfect on my gf's cheap Acer - which is saying something.

I even converted my clueless father on his old days to Linux thanks to LM 19
xfce.

------
pp19dd
Rather than spend money on a new laptop that I wasn't sure I even wanted, I
tried out a Pinebook. For $99 I got a fairly usable Linux machine, albeit with
its own quirks. 11.6" IPS, 64 bit ARM CPU, 10,000 mAH battery, 2GB RAM.

Overall, I chuckled at what I got (keyboard remapping helped since it's based
on an Android layout), but some weeks afterwards I marveled at the minimalist
utility and how well it held charge.

Evaluating it was an interesting exercise. Google docs aren't fast enough on
the machine for comfort (try writing a novel) so a comparable Chromebook is a
superior choice. But, KDE Kate is great. Terminal, of course, flies as fast as
anywhere.

If you haven't seen it, I'd recommend to look at it as a point of minimalist
reference if nothing else.

------
shawnb576
I tried this experiment last year. Bought a DELL XPS 13 at Costco, put Ubuntu
18.04 on it and dove in. I've been a Mac guy for ~10y just like the author.
Worked at MS prior to that, so lots of Windows.

My experience is that it's one of those things that seems great on day 1, OK
on day 1, and so on.

Spoiler, after about 6 months I gave up and went back to Win10, which is
really improving rapidly with WSL, etc. I run an Ubuntu VM in Hyper-V if I
need "real" Linux for something.

It's death of a thousand cuts. Beyond random Linux config issues, the UI can
be laggy, the power management is terrible, etc.

I enjoyed the fiddling but just don't have time for it.

------
simplecomplex
I was hoping for a comparison between OS X and Linux, but the article is just
an overview of the OP’s Linux apps.

The title is misleading, as there’s really nothing here about MacBooks. But
good to know tiling window managers are still being used.

------
rkangel
What are people's experiences with the build quality of these artisanal laptop
builders? I have Thinkpad (running Fedora), but I like the solidity and
maintainability. Do things like the Librem last in daily use?

~~~
rmavis
The Purism forums show there's some variability but my experience has been
great. The Librem 13 is the best-feeling laptop I've ever used. It's sturdy
(unlike a Macbook Air) but thinner and lighter than my 10-year-old Macbook.
It's in a very satisfying middle ground. The keys are great and the trackpad,
though not quite as nice as Apple's, is very good.

My one complaint is with the color. Smudges definitely appear pretty quickly.
On the other hand, I'm less likely to type with gross fingers now and I wipe
down my machine more often (maybe a couple times a month), which isn't
necessarily a bad thing.

------
jeena
I did that a couple of years ago and never looked back [https://jeena.net/why-
i-switchedfrom-osx-to-linux](https://jeena.net/why-i-switchedfrom-osx-to-
linux)

------
bwidlar
Old macos user too. Using Arch Linux since some months ago.

This is my happy world now:

    
    
       xcape -e "Shift_L=parenleft;Shift_R=parenright"
       sxhkd &
       unclutter &
       feh --auto-rotate --bg-fill --randomize ~/pics/wallpapers &
    
       jack_control start
       jack_control dps nperiods 3
       jack_control dps period 2048
    
       cd ~/prog/bar/
       ./bar | ./lemonbar -B#080808 -F#333333 -f "luculent" -b &
       cd
    
       exec bspwm
    

I am going to stay here for very long, the rolling release concept is a gift
from gods.

------
danans
For the software development aspects of my work, I've developed a strong
aversion to manual mouse-based management of overlapping windows, as provided
by the traditional Mac, Windows and Linux desktop environments. They require
too much manual effort to position/resize/organize windows, which are IMO a
dated skeumorphic affordance which provides limited productivity. That starts
to matter more when you are dealing with early symptoms of RSI.

Instead, I've found that a tiling WM like XMonad[1] + its virtual desktops is
a great way to organize my separate tasks and minimize extraneous window
management. Each workspace contains the "windows" for a particular long
running task, and if I ever need more screen real estate for a particular
window, I cycle through the layout modes until I find one that works - usually
just a few key presses away.

However, unlike the author, I keep my non-programming compute tasks (email,
media, etc.) separate from my programming tasks by using a traditional desktop
environment for those, because there are a lot of things in the traditional
desktop that are optimized for those tasks (i.e. desktop notifications, media
controls, etc.) This requires running 2 different machines, but there are
plenty of good ways, either via hardware or software, to make the switches
between the two environments mostly seamless.

[1] [https://xmonad.org/](https://xmonad.org/)

------
whalesalad
Hats off to this person for jumping ship, I couldn't do it. I acquired a new
contract recently that had a fairly heavy duty dev environment requirement
(old rails app, mysql, elasticsearch, memcached, redis, nginx) and my ~2012
Macbook Air was choking on it.

I spent a few weeks really chewing on my next move. I was worried about the
keyboard on the latest Macbook Pro's, that was really my only hesitation. I
seriously considered the Thinkpad as well as the XPS but ultimately decided I
couldn't afford to leave OS X.

There is a grass-is-greener mentality around leaving for Linux, because it's
definitely improved, but it's still nowhere even close. I knew I would miss
iMessage, my Airpods wouldn't work, i'd have all the strange issues with the
clipboard or drivers, and I wouldn't be able to work on iOS applications.

I spent nearly 3k on this machine, but (knock on wood) my Apple gear has never
let me down. Sure, there are ocassional issues but the gear is really in a
league of its own in terms of quality and fit-finish. My 2012 Air made it
through a handful of startups and side projects, rails apps, django apps,
elixir, iOS, and traveled with me all over the world.

Hoping to get another 6+ years out of this. It's got 32gb of ram and the
upgraded Radeon so I think it'll pull its weight for a while. I have come to
REALLY love the keyboard and now older models feel antiquated to me (totally
was not anticipating this), and the touchbar is not as annoying as so many
people make it out to be.

------
yingw787
Yay, another Linux post! Anybody check out Project Sputnik? I think Dell
(forked?) Ubuntu in order to make it work on XPS/Precision laptops and Dell
hardware.

[https://bartongeorge.io/2012/05/07/introducing-project-
sputn...](https://bartongeorge.io/2012/05/07/introducing-project-sputnik-
developer-
laptop/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+bartongeorge%2FnMQw+%28A+Blueprint+for+the+Cloud%29)

------
jgowdy
I try to avoid me too posts, especially on HN, but I recently ditched my MBP
for an XPS 13 running Mint. I'm very impressed with how much software is
natively available now, Wine 4.0 staging is reaching amazing levels of
support, and even Steam gaming with native titles and Windows games running
under Proton. I'm very pleased with the transition and recommend that if
you're on the fence, give it a shot and see if it works for you. Ignore how
things were last time you tried.

------
kingofhdds
Strictly speaking, almost nothing in the article is about Linux. It's about
tools which work perfectly on FreeBSD, OpenBSD, or Illumos. Some of them work
on OSX too, btw.

------
dgzl
I've come to terms with the idea that different environments offer different
things.

With Mac and OSX, you get a beautiful and thoughtful presentation, terminal
access, and great with media. You can code, you can look sexy, you can edit
your media projects with _serious_ ease.

With Windows, you have brute power, great compatibility, and it's a better
option for the market (i.e. cheap and expensive options). Windows is still
King of mass market and gaming . (Withholding mobile)

With Linux, you have the option to have many kinds of environments at the
lowest cost, with the understanding that you might have to work to get where
you actually want to be. But when you get there, the satisfaction is 100x
anything you'll get from the other platforms. (Withholding bsd, plan9, etc.)

I've been using Linux for about 7 years, mostly because I realized much of my
CS homework can be done on Linux, and it was cool at the time. Also, Macs
were/are way out of my budget, and Windows machines are a dime a dozen, just
pick your price point. Then I realized the real magic of Linux: it's a free
product of the world, for the world. Long after the business behind Windows
and Mac leave the planet, Linux will stand as the people's platform. And I
figured I should start learning it.

------
Tade0
Ubuntu gave a lease of life to my old(2013) laptop after an update in Win10
locked me out of my account.

I use a company-issued MacBook Pro for work and was considering an identical
machine as my personal daily driver until I did a comparison which revealed
what an absolute monster of a laptop I could have for the same price instead.

I mean - the Apple ecosystem is great an all but I need some raw computing
power from time to time and Linux is currently able to provide that.

------
amvalo
My dealbreaker with linux is the keyboard shortcuts.

On mac, ^A and ^E work in every text field. Also, you can press cmd with your
thumb, which is much more ergonomic than mashing ctrl with your pinky. OSX
also has more well thought-out shortcuts than linux in general.

You can try to configure these things on linux, but it's tedious and never
works perfectly.

~~~
spurgu
I have had a "Mac thumb" for a good while now, the thumb position of constant
Cmd+C-ing is horrible. Not ergonomic at all.

I love the fact that it's the same everywhere though and don't have to
Ctrl+Shift+C to copy in the terminal.

------
rorygibson
I just - last week - moved from a 2012 retina MBP 13" to a new XPS 13" with
Ubuntu 18. Loving it.

Also running i3 (actually i3-gaps, + terminator, dmenu, emacs)

I also bought a 34" curved ultrawide Samsung, which powers the XPS over USB-C.
Single cable, and my mechanical keyboard is plugged into the monitor as a hub.

Everything just works. It's ace.

------
shinylane
This is a great read, thank you for your documented experience here. I'm very
interested in trying this as my OSX is already rocking a good tmux/vi setup.

I do fiddle with modern react and JS, any issues with JS compatibility on that
browser? I enjoy Mint in an ASUS laptop, but memory and hardware issues do
arise.

------
osrec
For anyone who just wants a system that works, and doesn't require whizzy
animations all over the place, try Lubuntu.

I've been using it for a while and it simply gets out of your way and just
let's you get on with things. Best operating system I've used till date for
development.

~~~
thomastjeffery
XFCE (Xubuntu) is just as good, in case LMDE (Lubuntu) isn't quite what you
want.

~~~
osrec
I've always found Lubuntu snappier. Also, multiple monitors work beautifully
on Lubuntu - I unfortunately had issues with Xubuntu.

------
overgard
MacBooks don’t seem like great developer machines anymore. The keyboards are
really lacking (bad travel and lack of useful keys), the touch bar is a silly
gimmick, it needs 50 dongles to connect to anything, and every macOS update
seems to break developer tools in surprising ways.

------
jasonfrank
When my 2013 MacBook Air died from a coffee spill about a year ago, I wanted
to try a different laptop. I picked the X1 Carbon (6th gen) which is a _very_
nice machine in many ways.

However, I ended up switching back for two main reasons:

1\. the touchpad is good but not nearly as good. I would regularly
accidentally click on things while scrolling, despite fiddling with the
settings. It was maddening.

2\. For my work, Linux is a better fit than Windows. When I installed Ubuntu
on the X1, both the touchpad and trackpoint were _entirely_ unusable. I did a
bit of searching and tried a few recommendations but never got it to work. I
don't want to carry around a mouse.

I now have the new MacBook Air and I'm generally happy with it. Keyboard is
not as good as the old ones in my opinion.

------
asselinpaul
Recently tried the switch. Bought a top-spec Thinkpad P1, installed a few
distros.

Ended up returning it due to:

    
    
        - poor scaling on 4k display (Linux)
    
        - awful speakers
    
        - poor battery life
    

Reluctantly back on a MBP — no complaints besides the useless Touchbar.

Things _just work_.

------
javajosh
This might be weird, but what I want is something like a real TempleOS. Maybe
something like a kernel and all the apps are written in Rebol, where the whole
base system including window manager is 1MB max and you can easily, instantly
drop into a mode where you can edit anything down to memory and CPU registers.

It seems to me that what the Linux desktop gives you is a bad compromise
between this hackers paradise (which isn't very practical and very productive
in one quirky mode) and a software developers paradise (quite practical and
productive in a wide variety of modes). The right solution is a late 2016 MBPr
(the one with magsafe and SD card and good keyboard), _and_ a Thinkpad with my
fantasy RebolOS running on it.

------
perfect_wave
I'm surprised no one has mentioned the price of the laptop that the author
gets. The thing is $1,400 base price - and that's with a 120 GB SSD and 4 GB
of RAM. Up it to 8 GB of RAM and a 500 GB SSD and you're paying $1,7000.

Seems quite the hefty price to pay.

------
k__
I read that more and more parts are soldered on the logic board in the new
version, which means people have to buy new macbooks every few years anyway.

I tried to upgrade my RAM and found out it's soldered in, whelp, lets see how
long I can stand 8GB of RAM, haha.

~~~
Synaesthesia
With a fast SSD, I find it completely acceptable, even my old 4gb MBA was OK
in performance, depends on your use case.

~~~
k__
Coding (Xcode, Android Studio) and video editing (FCPX)

------
vivan
I attempted to move to Ubuntu on my XPS 13, but couldn't manage to get the DPI
scaling to work properly. Weirdly, if I run Ubuntu in a VM under windows it
scales fine.

There are still too many of these small problems to justify making the move
for me fully.

~~~
MrZongle2
Preach. Currently running Ubuntu 18.04 on an XPS 15, and it's been....
interesting. Disappointing, in some respects, as having set up the system to
dual-boot into Windows 10 and having seen what the hardware _can_ accomplish,
I feel as if I've had to try remarkably hard to get close to that in a Linux
environment.

------
ahnick
I love the look of the Librem 13 mentioned in the article. If it had 32GB of
memory then I'd consider switching over. As is though, you'll have to pry my
T480 ThinkPad from my cold dead hands. :-)

------
5_minutes
I’d love to switch to Linux - just to be able to work with a decent hardware
laptop again. But can’t live without a few mac-only apps, like Sketch.

I find that iMac’s offer good value for money, but the Macbook Pro’s are
horrible laptops.

I’m still convinced that Jobs was smart enough to build good machines for
developers. Cook doesn’t care.

I still have an MBP 17”, still works great, battery is dead. I would’ve loved
a new version of that machine under Jobs.

1500$ new iPhones, product lines not even being slightly updated... it’s a
mess.

BUT: it’s nice to have your photos appear on your desktop and ipad and, it’s
just easy.

------
simplicio
Interesting that he's using suckless.org programs. I was reading through their
codebase just to practice reading C, and was curious how much use they had "in
the wild"

------
sysashi
Sorry for off topic and I know it's not a complaint aggregator but 90% of the
time when I reboot my mbp (2017) it does not recognize usb keyboard and mouse.
That's so frustrating and my google-fu does not help me at all, resetting PRAM
does however. I'm thinking about just rolling my favorite distribution on this
machine. (Although not really sure how things are working now, last time I
checked on my mb air 2011 everything was pretty smooth except battery life)

------
dagss
I need tiling window managers. Not negotiable at all.

I have the impression that there are no alternatives for Windows or Mac? If so
that alone frees med from considering those..

------
throw12311112
I recently 'downgraded' from a 2017 MBP nonTB to a 2015 X1 Carbon Thinkpad
with Manjaro Linux installed and i'm loving it. Only cost me 330 euros second
hand.

Apple are dead to me after I spent thousands on a machine that has a broken
keyboard.

In hindsight I wish I switched to Linux years ago for my professional
computing. swdevs, sysadmins & security people who know the ins and outs of
computing should switch.

I call it conscious computing.

------
ausjke
Why the switch :)

Linux desktop has been my sole desktop for the last 15 years, it gets better
and got the job done. I must admit that Ubuntu made a big difference.

On the other hand unless you're a PC game lover, the PC itself is more of a
chromebook, i.e. nice hardware running a modern browser plus a few decent
editors. The OS underneath is less irrelevant now.

Linux has space to improve though, for me it is the power management
especially for laptops.

------
jaabe
I think I feel the same disenchantment from Apple that the author does, and it
really scares me. Because the responses to this piece are basically 220
reasons of why I’ll probably never switch.

Don’t get me wrong, I want to like Linux, I just don’t want to spend any time
(as in any time) on configurations. I want to plug right into my 4K monitor
and have things just work. I want a good trackpad, and so on.

~~~
AnIdiotOnTheNet
Everyone wants a computer that does what they want it to out of the box. When
we say we want something easy, that's what we mean. The problem with that is
that everyone wants different things, so it is fundamentally impossible. I
think Linux needs to stop trying to be easy, and start trying to be simple.

Throw out all the over-complicated garbage that has become the Linux Desktop
and make something that is simple enough for people to build an accurate
mental model of how it functions in a relatively short time, and with a set of
simple composable tools. Then they can build the thing they want with a
relative minimum and without writing any C. It already some composability
thanks to the original UNIX commandline toolset, at least for text processing,
but those have grown archaic over time and the concept was never properly
extended to the GUI.

I doubt that will ever happen though. Instead the community will just keep
piling on more and more complexity, keep creating more and more distros to try
and cover that infinity of what people want in their effort to make it "easy",
and tell anyone who doesn't want to do things the way they do that they're
doing them wrong.

------
aoro
What pulls me to linux over my MacBook is the package managers. The apt-get
system is much better than homebrew in my experience.

~~~
jorvi
See, I don’t get this. I know that from a technical perspective apt is much
nicer because its ‘first party’ to the OS, but homebrew both feels much
simpler in us and its packages are so fresh that it trails the stable branch
of packages by a day or so. Apt packages are frozen in place, unless you go
with extra PPAs. Or if you go with a rolling release like Arch, there’s small
things breaking constantly.

------
resca79
When I switched from linux to mac it was just for the hardware, at time I
bought a ibook g4 the most beautifull laptop that I have had, the battery in
2006 has a duration around 9 hours of coding. Recently when I think to back to
linux the only my worries is the system update and the fact that I cannot test
or compile any iOS app.

------
babyslothzoo
This type of report, and the comments here echoing it, should worry Apple.

Years of bad decisions and neglect for the Mac have added up. The bad
keyboards, touch bars, unnecessary port removals, etc, it feels like the
company forgot who the "Pro" Mac line is made for. I hope they course correct
but fear they won't.

------
sam0x17
All of that said, what's with the bright manila color theme? There are plenty
of people using i3 with a particularly awesome looking setup. Now macos and
windows people are going to see this manila paper theme and think, that looks
like 90's crap, fuck linux. So that's great :/

~~~
rmavis
Well, I did warn people about this:

> You might not be impressed much with my environment—I pretty much just
> copied the acme colors—but some people have put a lot of work into making
> their setups look sexy.

[https://www.reddit.com/r/unixporn](https://www.reddit.com/r/unixporn)

------
isacikgoz
I am also planning to migrate from macbook. I am tired of constant hardware
failures, of my current macbook and previous one. OS on the other hand is not
better than in any field if I compare it to Linux. The only valid reason for
me to stay with macOS is support of MS office tools.

------
growt
Since TFA talks a lot about i3 and dmenu, here are my scripts to have your
most used commands on top in dmenu in i3:
[https://github.com/grothkopp/dmenu_run_favorites](https://github.com/grothkopp/dmenu_run_favorites)

------
overcast
My current setup is as follows. I found this to be the best way of not being
distracted by other functions on the same machine. When I want to do one of
those 3 tasks, I bootup the correct machine/drive.

MacOS(Hackintosh) - Daily driver, photo editing.

Windows 10 - Gaming

Mint Linux(Disk2 of Gaming PC) - Development

------
carlospwk
I find it depressing that (despite this post) there really are only two viable
operating systems for 99% of the user base that needs ease of use and
commercial software. Same in mobile devices. And there is absolutely nothing
indicating a change to the status quo.

~~~
zrobotics
To be fair though, this is mostly a setup problem. There are a lot of people
who only need a personal computer to use a browser. I've switched my father &
stepfather over to Linux mint, and the amount of tech support is actually
lower than when one was on Mac and one was on windows. I think the big issue
is that Linux isn't pre-installed. That, and there are programs that won't
work (my mother is still on win10 due to MS Office).

Remember, most people aren't software devs, and have very different concerns.
And increasingly there are more and more people who don't even own a proper
computer, since a smartphone will suffice for their needs.

------
faleidel
Something I made while search for a replacement for my own macbook:
[http://nomoremacbook.com/](http://nomoremacbook.com/)

I have a macbook pro 2012 and still don't know what my next computer is going
to be.

------
k_bx
Dual-booting on my 2014 MBP. Works surprisingly wonderful, even has pixel-
perfect scrolling in Chrome. Battery is great as well.

Only using it for development, and overall it was a great idea to switch from
trying to set up macOS with Docker and other stuff.

------
mmgutz
Am I the only one that uses Linux in a virtual machine as their daily driver?
I do this whether I'm on Windows or MacOS.

Linux with a lightweight window manager, like i3, works great in a virtual
machine. Docker works flawleslly inside a VM as well.

------
KaiserPro
From what I've seen of OP's setup, I'm surprised they every had a macbook in
the first place.

Literally everything is textmode barring the browser. you might as well have a
tty and a separate device for the browser.

------
jherdman
I gave Ubuntu a solid shot for a few weeks in 2018. I came running back to
Apple without hesitation. At the end of the day end-user experience on Linux
just isn't as nice, cohesive, or friendly.

------
proyb
As far as I like about Linux but audio quality feel less bass despite a tweak
to supposedly bring the best sound on ALSA didn’t help.

Piano timbres sound far better on macOS and Windows unless you could advice
me.

~~~
mastercheif
What DAC are you using? And what audio applications? On MacOS and Windows, if
your music player is not using CoreAudio or WASAPI “exclusive mode”, your
audio is going to get res ampler and dithered by the OS mixer. This may be the
difference that you’re hearing.

------
koshak
My phone is coupled with my laptop. All my settings are backed up. All my
docs, pics, music, random files all are synced with “cloud”. If my laptop or
my phone gets hit by a bus I will go to the nearest shop, get a new device and
get it set up from backup within an hour.

I delegated the fine tuning and customization to a third party once I realized
I don’t have time for it anymore.

I am fine with it although it is not ideal and there is room for improvement.
There is always some. Everywhere.

Please ping me from future when Linux (or Fuchsia or whatever is there in the
second half of 2020s) is capable of that as well and there are
vendors/providers who are honest, dependable and trusted who I can allow to
store my data, identity and privacy and have good sleep.

Cheers.

------
TomK32
My decade of PowerMacs and Macbooks ended three years ago, sadly I started
using it when iTunes still had m4p and I'm too lazy these days to go through
the elaborate extraction processes.

------
m0zg
Funny, I'm thinking of moving in the opposite direction due to the lack of
support of hidpi in the latest LTS Ubuntu. There's some support in Kubuntu,
but I don't like KDE.

------
davidcollantes
Shouldn't it be "So Long, macOS. Hello again, Linux?" I have known people who
has done the same, and are back again on macOS. Give it a bit, and it will
pass.

------
AtlasBarfed
16GB max? Unspecified max resolution on the display? storage is
"configurable"? HDMI version (4k capable could be 1.4b or 2.0)?

For a tech laptop, the specs are very unspecific.

------
marsrover
I built a computer the other day and installed Ubuntu on it. Worked pretty
much flawlessly out of the box and I could see it being my main driver for
years to come.

------
Synaesthesia
Personally have no issues with iTunes, it's nice and fast even on my non-ssd
PC (hackintosh), and deals with my 300gb+ library with no problems.

------
shmerl
Welcome back! macOS can't really beat Linux in productivity. Especially if you
are using well configurable DE. I like KDE for that.

------
evilturnip
For some cool Linux desktop setups, checkout r/unixporn on reddit. Some of the
desktop setups on there approach the level of art.

------
DanCarvajal
As a graphic designer, if I Adobe CC worked on GNU/Linux I would gladly
switch. Alas my job is very depended on Adobe InDesign.

------
systemtest
I'm currently on Ubuntu 18.04 and I love it but:

\- Firefox takes literally 10 seconds to start unless I disable eth0

\- Chromium isn't able to resolve DNS for local intranet sites

\- Have not tried chrome as installing it means fiddling with apt repos, wget
or gdebi

These issues are unresolved as of January 2019. I can't say that I ever had
such issues on macOS. I have had DNS issues because of my specific ISP router
after a major macOS upgrade but my ISP patched it within a week.

~~~
cheald
The first two issues both sound like you have misconfigured DNS and the first
resolver in your list is invalid (and has to time out). The same
misconfiguration under OSX would be likely to create the same issues.

~~~
systemtest
Thank you for solving the first issue! I switched DNS from automatic to
manual. Now I do have to adjust this every time I switch networks so perhaps I
should write a script that does this automatically.

~~~
kilburn
If your problem is over wifi, NetworkManager (the default in Ubuntu) should
let you do this automatically.

Networkmanager defines a "connection" for every (stored) wifi, which you can
view:

    
    
      nmcli connection show
    

Now, you can set the dns servers to use when any of these connections is
activated. For instance, define google's servers by:

    
    
      nmcli conn mod <connection-name> ipv4.dns "8.8.8.8 8.8.4.4"
    

This will override the DNS settings (which come from DHCP by default) whenever
you connect to this specific network :)

~~~
base698
This never works for me... can't ever get it to stick, tried all kinds of ways
to mod with nmcli or systemctl restart/reload network manager. Debating on
just doing a cron job to rewrite resolv.conf.

~~~
kilburn
I'm not an ubuntu user (debian testing here). I remember that various systemd-
thingies were actually tweaking some network settings behind NetworkManager's
back.

Getting NetworkManager to work properly was a matter of disabling all that
systemd stuff and then setting it up using config files and nmcli (the gnome
GUI just broke everything too easily).

My impression after all that was that NetworkManager is a very capable piece
of software littered with bad interfaces and impenetrable documentation. You
will emerge victorious if you fight those hard enough. In contrast, trying to
setup the system using the various systemd-thingies got me to "xxx is planned
but not working now" every time.

Btw, I do have a weird complicated network configuration because I'm switching
between ethernet and wifi, and have multiple bridged and/or routed
vms/containers (with all of kvm, lxc, and virtualbox).

------
o_____________o
Funny how the main thing that keeps me away from Linux now was the main pain
point over a decade ago: Adobe suite

------
blt
Librem lacks HiDPI. Is there a Linux optimized laptop with HiDPI and a near-
apple quality trackpad?

------
EugeneOZ
Pff, how many such posts I saw, and in few months later "I'm in Mac again".

------
cr0sh
I just recently (a couple months ago) updated my Linux desktop experience at
home. I had been running an Ubuntu 14.04 LTS install, that was getting long-
in-the-tooth, as well as being unstable.

Part of the instability had to do with various hacks and patches I had put in
place, including a big one where I updated gcc to the latest version to
support C11; this broke my update process horribly - so much so that when I
went to update the NVidia drivers, my system became ultra-b0rked. I had been
meaning to do an upgrade - now I was forced to.

What saved me a great amount of trouble was the fact that I had partitioned my
system; that is, when I had installed Ubuntu, I had put it on an SSD (/tmp and
a few others were on a RAM disk), and /home was on a separate drive. So all I
had to do was pull the SSD, drop in a new one, and re-install something else.

Actually, I also used a different drive for my /home directory, because my old
drive was getting old - plus my /home directory itself had a lot of old
baggage. To that end, I migrated it to a new drive, created a new user with
the new OS install, then migrated the files I needed across (moving from
Chrome to Chromium wasn't as easy as it should have been, but it was doable).
For the most part, it was painless.

I ended up sticking with Ubuntu - but this time I went with Ubuntu Budgie.
What I had done was check several other live distros first (regular Ubuntu,
BunsenLabs, Solus, Mint, and a few others) to see what was out there again.
See, my old system I had built from 14.04 LTS - but I had started with
"minimal" and built it up to look and work almost identical to CrunchBang
(#!), because I liked it so much (and #! had died, but its descendents hadn't
been in a finished state - which is why I looked at BunsenLabs).

I ultimately wanted something like the MBP setup I used for work; I thought I
had found it with Solus. It seemed almost perfect - except for its package
manager. While it had a lot of offerings, I worried about the ease of whether
I could install third-party stuff. One thing I had "vowed" to never again do
was to "compile and install from source" (that was part of what got my into
this mess); if I ever needed to do that, it would be better for me to run it
in a container, on a VM, or in some other manner - just not mangled into my
main system with no "accountability" as to what was done and where.

Solus' package management was a custom system, that leaned heavily on app
images; I liked that, it was something I had recently looked into (like a week
before all this happened), so I wanted that option. But their library wasn't
as extensive as the Ubuntu ecosystem, and I also wasn't sure what to do about
third-party .deb files and the like - how would I install those. So I looked
around for a viable alternative.

I found it with Ubuntu Budgie. I could be on the latest version of Ubuntu (I
actually chose stability over latest - so I went with 18.04 LTS), but still
have the Budgie desktop (with Plank and other goodness). I've found the best
of both worlds, and I have a system now that I believe is as close to my MBP
(well, OSX) as I can get with Linux; honestly, I consider it a bit superior.

I've decided, as alluded before, not to install anything from source, as
tempting as it may be, and instead only stick within the confines of what is
available via apt and (trusted) third-party PPAs. Otherwise, I'll consider
using one of the various app image systems, a VirtualBox VM, or something
similar - or look for something else. I just don't want to end up in the same
boat down the line.

Is it perfect? No. But it certainly beats the pants off of what I had to do
with Linux 10 years before, or 10 years before that.

I've been using Linux in one form or another since 1995 (my first "install"
was MonkeyLinux, which runs on a DOS filesystem; my first "real" Linux distro
was TurboLinux 2.0); back then it was a "nightmare" \- a fun nightmare, to be
honest. Nothing like recompiling your kernel to get the latest PCMCIA drivers
working, among other things. But I'm pretty past that kind of thing today.

Not completely, of course, as b0rking my system with a custom manglement to
get gcc/C11 working (took me a while to get all the dependencies just right,
but I had it up and running - but the update system for 14.04 LTS did not like
it at all).

------
arronblown
Good bye hardware, hello software?

This is such a stupid title.

------
patrickg_zill
The Second Moribundity of Apple is nigh. First was the stagnation a few years
after Jobs left.

Now that Jobs is gone, Cook is showing he has the logistics knowledge but not
the other parts of product leadership needed.

~~~
_emacsomancer_
I'm not sure that Apple cares though. At this point they don't really seem
that interested in 'computers' (as per their own ads), and the iOS ecosystem
is where they make their money.

------
the_cat_kittles
been using ubuntu for the last 2 weeks. i cannot believe i hadnt thought to do
this sooner. i miss nothing from mac or windows land, except easier drivers
for some peripherals. i cannot believe how worthless windows terminal is. i
cannot believe how bloated osx is. ububtu is a dream!

------
DontSueMeBro
MacBook implies MacOS and the article is comparing that hardware+OS
combination with just an OS. It would have been nice to hear what hardware
solution the author ended up with, along with Linux, for a fuller comparison.
Mostly because I'm in the same boat as the author and will be moving away from
a Mac after 15 years to Linux, but am lost on the hardware front. Right now
really wanting a Lenovo Yoga C930, maybe.

~~~
shhh_quiet
The article notes that the author is using a Purism Librem 13 laptop.

------
alanfranzoni
I must say that the whole desktop looks like something from the 90s. If you
find it fine for your needs, that's great. But I don't think it's a general
solution. Linux is so half-baked with respect to desktop, very often it's
getting as problematic as a Windows system, especially on laptops.

~~~
coding123
How is it half baked?

~~~
alanfranzoni
Some examples from my latest (Ubuntu 18.04) linux experience: \- Does hidpi
work? For ALL applications, and flawlessly? \- Is the desktop responsive, or
does it feel laggy? \- File manager:Can I customize my favourites, including
removing the builtin ones? \- Can you use a lot of good desktop applications?
Like MS Word, Adobe Photoshop, and similar? Or Google Drive, Pixelmator, Dash,
Flux, tools in general that may have a small price but make your work
considerably faster? \- Does bluetooth audio work flawlessly, like, you can
use a bt audio device, then stop, then start again? \- does the system include
a braindead, just-works backup-and-restore system?

Sure: if you know Linux well enough, AND YOU SPEND ENOUGH TIME ON YOUR SYSTEM,
you can fix most of the above issues (I could not fix the Gnome DE latency
with hidpi, btw). But I don't want to waste my time fixing my desktop; I want
to pay, and my desktop should just work.

Then: if you like the Linux desktop, feel free to use it.

~~~
Majestic121
I agree with your statement that a desktop should Just Work, and the Linux
desktop experience is not perfect, but you seem to have had a harder
experience than most would.

I don't expect you to get back on Linux or anything, but paying for known
supported hardware (e.g. Dell XPS 13) goes a long way to have a 'no-tinkering-
needed' experience (pretty much like OSX run better on its own hardware).

For the record, HiDPI works flawlessly and responsively with a Dell Precision
5510, including when using projectors with different resolutions. Never had an
issue with my Bluetooth headphones, and the system does include a braindead,
just-works backup-and-restore system : deja-dup, which works with Google Drive
out of the box after inputing your credentials.

Applications that don't have a Linux version can be a pain, but most have
perfectly good alternative (Google Docs, Flux, Zeal for Dash).

Some of them don't really, or require a big change (typically,
Photoshop/Gimp), and those can indeed require one to stay on a specific OS

