> It's still just some application UI wrapped around a CoW file system.
So? In terms of usability impact I still consider it a major feature (that no amount of tweaking will get you on Linux).
> My point is you shouldn't have to install a 3rd party package manager.
But macOS has a "package manager" – it's called App Store. You and I may not think it sufficient for our (developer) needs, but we're not representative users. And for normal users and even myself it offers very useful functionality over what they'd get out of the typical native linux package manger. You can trivially reinstall everything on a different machine with a different os version (as long as it's not super ancient), and it works – no "DLL" hell, because everything is essentially self-contained. And since software is tied to your account, there is no need for crufty apt queries in the hope to get a list of packages out you can backup for reinstall elsewhere or after clean upgrade. Ubuntu has tried to establish a clone in the Snap Store, but no one I know seems to use it and I haven't tried it myself, so I don't know how compelling it is.
And I need to install a 3rd party package manager on (non-NixOS) linux distros anyway, because IMO apt, yum etc. fundamentally suck and nix is the only thing that doesn't. Funnily enough, the only really compelling UX argument for linux instead of macOS for developers I can think of apart from /proc is that with NixOS you can codify your complete machine setup in a single nice config file, making it super easy to replicate, backup or inspect.
> Or maybe you're just exaggerating all these problems to make a point [...] More importantly Linux doesn't do what you're accusing it of doing.
It's a bit annoying to be told that what I'm saying literally can't be true. It is, and I didn't tweak any sysctl params or the swap setup before I got tired of my machine grinding to a halt and me having to reset it. I can ensure you it's entirely possible to have a high grade desktop with SSD and have linux fall over swapping endlessly without even being able to move the cursor anymore. Of course this doesn't happen in "everyday" usage otherwise no one would be running linux, but it's not that hard to trigger if you're running a VMs, a few browsers and dev tooling stuff that can potentially consume large amount of memory very quickly. I've moved away from having to use these tools (and also tweaked my machine) so it hasn't been a problem off late, but I ran into it with completely stock ubuntu.
Drive-by poster here but I was wondering if you had spent any time looking into what IO scheduler you're using on Linux?
Some time ago I encountered issues similar to what you mention in your posts. I solved it selecting the "Deadline" IO scheduler when I built my kernel.
> (that no amount of tweaking will get you on Linux).
It best not to use such firm definitives like that when what you actually mean is "more tweaking than a typical user would be bothered with". :)
> But macOS has a "package manager" – it's called App Store. You and I may not think it sufficient for our (developer) needs, but we're not representative users.
You're seriously going to defend the App Store?! The App Store isn't just garbage for developers, it's garbage for everyone because it misses so many non-developer productivity tools too. It doesn't even have Chrome nor Firefox in it.
> And for normal users and even myself it offers very useful functionality over what they'd get out of the typical native linux package manger
Sorry but I'm not buying that argument. You claim to be a "normal user" then talk about messing around with kernel parameters in Linux. I really don't think you're making any fair and balanced arguments on this topic at all.
> You can trivially reinstall everything on a different machine with a different os version (as long as it's not super ancient), and it works – no "DLL" hell, because everything is essentially self-contained.
I guess if you compare the App Store to manually loading software on Windows - literally the worst platform ever created for managing installed software - then the App Store would look good. But likewise if you compare a heart surgery to a lobotomy then heart surgery would look less invasive too. This is why I don't think it's productive to compare solutions to the worst examples.
> And since software is tied to your account, there is no need for crufty apt queries in the hope to get a list of packages out you can backup for reinstall elsewhere or after clean upgrade.
It's a pity that the App Store offers so little software so you end up falling back to 3rd party package managers. So now on OSX you not only need to run the same "crufty [package manager] queries" on OSX but you also need to install the package manager itself too.
> And I need to install a 3rd party package manager on (non-NixOS) linux distros anyway, because IMO apt, yum etc. fundamentally suck and nix is the only thing that doesn't.
A moment ago you were claiming to be a "normal user". Normal users don't install nix :) tbh I'm not the biggest fan of apt, yum is better but I do really like pacman. However claiming apt and yum suck when also praising the OSX App Store is just weird.
> I can ensure you it's entirely possible to have a high grade desktop with SSD and have linux fall over swapping endlessly without even being able to move the cursor anymore. Of course this doesn't happen in "everyday" usage otherwise no one would be running linux, but it's not that hard to trigger if you're running a VMs, a few browsers and dev tooling stuff that can potentially consume large amount of memory very quickly.
Right, I get you now. That context helps. Your previous description just said you were running a browser and sounded like it was happening everyday (so basically you were exaggerating by leaving key details out when describing the root cause). The problem there is that you're not just over commiting on memory but also over commiting on CPU resources too. That latter part matters because swapping can be CPU expensive too. Hence why your system is grinding to a halt.
Also I still think you're to blame a little there because if you're running VMs then you should be setting their thresholds to a level that doesn't overcommit your systems resources (baring in mind these tools aren't the stuff that "normal users" would be using either). It's like opening a bottle of wine and pouring yourself 4 glasses then complaining that the bottle is empty and you couldn't squeeze out a 5th glass (can you tell I'm drinking wine at the moment hehe?). You only have a finite amount of system resources so you cant really complain if you intentionally over commit them.
> You're seriously going to defend the App Store?!
Yup, flawed as it is, I find it much more useful than apt. If I'm wearing a dev hat and were forbidden from using anything to manage software installs other than one of apt or App Store (no nix!), I'd rather have apt. But for my non dev apps (you know, even people who tweak kernel parameters have non-programming related apps they want to use from time to time ;), Appstore is obviously more useful.
> However claiming apt and yum suck when also praising the OSX App Store is just weird.
Why? Both fill different needs and App Store solves a problems that are useful to me acceptably well (making it easy to install up-to-date software I want, upgrade it and remember what I have on a per-account not per machine basis).
Yum and apt, on the other hand don't (they don't have up-to-date software I want, they don't give me what I consider a decent way to manage the same or similar setups on multiple machines etc.). I basically install everything I can with nix instead.
> So now on OSX you not only need to run the same "crufty [package manager] queries" on OSX but you also need to install the package manager itself too.
Unlike apt/yum nix offers good ways to do this – no cruftiness involved. E.g. you can just write a small file with what you want and you'll get it, on any machine.
> You only have a finite amount of system resources so you cant really complain if you intentionally over commit them.
That's not what's happened, my VMs where capped at reasonable limits. I used to run some tools for various reasons that could in some scenarios eat a lot of a ram fairly suddenly (I don't think the systems was anywhere close to overloaded CPU wise was true most of the time but I can't vouch I remember this right anymore).
Either way, I don't think the whole OS falling over because one app wants to consume too much memory and the OS has decided to never say no is reasonable. And it's not something I can recall ever happening to me with any other OS (in recent years, I don't want to think back to ancient windows days).
I take your multi-machine point but the above just depends on what repository you're pointing at (eg stable, testing, etc) and which Linux distro you're running. You can't really blame apt for being out of date if you're running Debian. And nor could you blame apt for delivering buggy packages if you're running the testing repos on Ubuntu.
It's the same package manager, just different end points.
> Unlike apt/yum nix offers good ways to do this – no cruftiness involved. E.g. you can just write a small file with what you want and you'll get it, on any machine.
Technically you can do that with any package manager - given that's the core point of a package manager :P
I've not used nix (read a little about it but never taken the time to try it) so I can't comment how much easier that makes the process of custom repositories than hosting your own apt or yum repo, but it's not actually hard to do in those two either. Plus you could always compile your own .deb or RPM and install it like a standalone installer (MSI et al).
I've got nothing against nix though. In fact weirdly I think your underselling nix by focusing on the points you have rather than it's major differences from traditional package management.
> That's not what's happened, my VMs where capped at reasonable limits. I used to run some tools for various reasons that could in some scenarios eat a lot of a ram fairly suddenly (I don't think the systems was anywhere close to overloaded CPU wise was true most of the time but I can't vouch I remember this right anymore).
The problem with over commiting is the limits might seem reasonable under normal workloads but when you do end up with an empty bucket you have no safe way to recover from that. Or at least not with desktop virtualisation solutions like VirtualBox. ESXi et al will handle such situations more gracefully because they're designed to over commit during off peak work loads.
That said, I don't know how long ago it was you last did this but a few years ago VirtualBox did add a CPU execution cap in the guest config. IIRC it defaults to 100% but if you're running multiple guests and/or running heavy applications on the host while also running heavy guest VMs then it's worth dropping the CPU execution cap down so the guest cannot lock up the host.
> Either way, I don't think the whole OS falling over because one app wants to consume too much memory and the OS has decided to never say no is reasonable.
I think your expectation here is a little unreasonable to be honest. You cannot drain the host of free system memory and idle CPUs then expect the host to gracefully recover. It's like trying to dowse a fire with an empty bucket. I honestly can't see how OSX would perform any different to Linux in that regard. So you were probably using different virtualisation technologies on OSX (VMWare perhaps?) that handle guests more responsibly.
So? In terms of usability impact I still consider it a major feature (that no amount of tweaking will get you on Linux).
> My point is you shouldn't have to install a 3rd party package manager.
But macOS has a "package manager" – it's called App Store. You and I may not think it sufficient for our (developer) needs, but we're not representative users. And for normal users and even myself it offers very useful functionality over what they'd get out of the typical native linux package manger. You can trivially reinstall everything on a different machine with a different os version (as long as it's not super ancient), and it works – no "DLL" hell, because everything is essentially self-contained. And since software is tied to your account, there is no need for crufty apt queries in the hope to get a list of packages out you can backup for reinstall elsewhere or after clean upgrade. Ubuntu has tried to establish a clone in the Snap Store, but no one I know seems to use it and I haven't tried it myself, so I don't know how compelling it is.
And I need to install a 3rd party package manager on (non-NixOS) linux distros anyway, because IMO apt, yum etc. fundamentally suck and nix is the only thing that doesn't. Funnily enough, the only really compelling UX argument for linux instead of macOS for developers I can think of apart from /proc is that with NixOS you can codify your complete machine setup in a single nice config file, making it super easy to replicate, backup or inspect.
> Or maybe you're just exaggerating all these problems to make a point [...] More importantly Linux doesn't do what you're accusing it of doing.
It's a bit annoying to be told that what I'm saying literally can't be true. It is, and I didn't tweak any sysctl params or the swap setup before I got tired of my machine grinding to a halt and me having to reset it. I can ensure you it's entirely possible to have a high grade desktop with SSD and have linux fall over swapping endlessly without even being able to move the cursor anymore. Of course this doesn't happen in "everyday" usage otherwise no one would be running linux, but it's not that hard to trigger if you're running a VMs, a few browsers and dev tooling stuff that can potentially consume large amount of memory very quickly. I've moved away from having to use these tools (and also tweaked my machine) so it hasn't been a problem off late, but I ran into it with completely stock ubuntu.