My thoughts on macOS vs Linux

[dimitarvp]

Welcome back, you new father you! Now, how much years do you need to catch up with sleep after the baby was born?

@OvermindDL1

It’s security is a whole ton better however

I am admitting my complete ignorance here, I never used Wayland. I am pondering a Linux workstation and I can’t even decide between KDE / XFCE / BSPWM / DWM for two spare laptops I have lying around…

@OvermindDL1

The Mac interface is incredible inconfigurable

That’s true but honestly? For most people it’s fine. I know that one day I’ll love tinkering with my desktop UI as many Linuxers do but realistically, macOS’ UI is not a show stopper to me. It can be better but it absolutely does NOT hamper my daily productivity. I wish for more keyboard shortcuts and generally not use the mouse much but that’s irrelevant to my paid work – just a personal preference.

@OvermindDL1

Capitalism is a pox on humanity, nothing but a modern day monarchic system to keep control centralized in the few, but that’s a topic for another thread. ^.^;

Maybe we should start it!

@OvermindDL1

Really though, my 15 year old desktop, which had a CPU change 11+ years ago, still runs absolute circles around my comparatively very new work Dell computer that runs Win10

I feel you are cherry-picking here. My gaming PC is aging – it has an i7 3770 CPU with 32GB ram and an average consumer-grade SSD (Samsung EVO 860) and it’s working CRAZY fast in Windows 10. I can’t blink before 99% of what I do there happens (which is gaming… which I do like twice a month in the last year or so…). But in any case, opening browser tabs, opening most programs, closing stuff, connections… EVERYTHING is just amazingly fast. And we’re talking a nearly 10-year old PC.

But I’ve always known how to tune Windows and escape from a lot of its inefficiencies (and that’s surprisingly extremely easy to do, they are just 3-4 things really). So maybe, just as you can perfectly and intuitively tune your Linux to be amazingly fast, so can I with Windows?

My hugest gripe with Win10 is the atrocious bootup time. It absolutely brought back the jokes of “turn the computer on and let it warm up” jokes in my house. My wife’s gaming laptop boots up in 15 seconds and is ready to start an app or game 10 or so more seconds later.

When it comes to Windows, its devs kind of gave up and just gated stuff behind timers to avoid parallel shared state bugs, I feel.

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But I think we can all agree Windows is a gradually dying platform. Instead of moving to Linux step by step, Microsoft is making things worse for everyone by tacking WSL2 in it. While companies like Valve are adding new games to run under Linux through the Steam library every week… Even today, a lot of people in HN report that they have completely ditched Windows and they can do all their daily work AND gaming under Linux. Cool!

[AstonJ]

@OvermindDL1

Isn’t that an ancient windows’ism? Why would mac’s need to do that?! Linux definitely doesn’t…

Haha yeah, and Macs used to be great too, but I started to do it after every major update (usually upgrade first, then to another point release then a clean install) and I noticed an improvement. Luckily clean installs on Macs are pretty straight forward and can be done in a day or so (inc getting your dev env back up). I quite like being able to start ‘afresh’ every now and again

[dimitarvp]

@AstonJ

Luckily clean installs on Macs are pretty straight forward and can be done in a day or so (inc getting your dev env back up).

Haha, nice joke, but 1st of April is behind us now.

It’d take me likely a full week… I have a ton of stuff installed.

[AstonJ]

List it all

(Genuinely curious tho )

[dimitarvp]

It’s going to take me almost the same amount of time as to reinstall them all.

Problem is also the diversity of platforms. Stuff installed through asdf, npm, OCaml, Rust, Java, PHP, Elixir, bash/zsh scripts, and I am likely forgetting half of it.

[OvermindDL1]

@dimitarvp

Now, how much years do you need to catch up with sleep after the baby was born?

Too much, lol…

@dimitarvp

I am admitting my complete ignorance here, I never used Wayland. I am pondering a Linux workstation and I can’t even decide between KDE / XFCE / BSPWM / DWM for two spare laptops I have lying around…

I’m a huge KDE zealot. KDE is the lowest ram usage, fastest to run, most configurable WM out for linux right now (and it has the most wayland support if you go that way, though I stick with X because I can’t do without my remote X links, lol).

@dimitarvp

That’s true but honestly? For most people it’s fine. I know that one day I’ll love tinkering with my desktop UI as many Linuxers do but realistically, macOS’ UI is not a show stopper to me. It can be better but it absolutely does NOT hamper my daily productivity. I wish for more keyboard shortcuts and generally not use the mouse much but that’s irrelevant to my paid work – just a personal preference.

Eh, by configureable I don’t mean overall use like that. Like an example that occurred just a couple days, I kept needing to get colors from random things on my screen (don’t ask, OBS stuff) and taking a screenshot to open in an image view and get the color of a pixel is painful, instead I just right-clicked on one of my screen bars, add widgets, color picker, and now with a click I can get many color codes of many things in like 12 different formats (although I only needed 2 formats). I then removed it when I was done. It’s not things like just setting things setting up a theme or a layout of things once and never/rarely touching it, I’m constantly making little changes here and there to improve the efficiency of what I’m doing “now” or repetitively, Like that color picker widget doesn’t need to go into one of my bars, it can go on my desktop, floating around somewhere, I can put it into QT-based windows (or in the chrome of anything else), etc… etc… I can quite literally put a clock or file picker or a shut-down-computer button in the title bar of a single program or every program if I want to. Going back to Windows or seeing how mac’s operate would drive me utter crazy, people are constantly going through so many steps that are taking them multiplies of time longer than it would take me to do one little thing and basically automate the rest of it away. The overall KDE configurability isn’t just relegated to theming or widgets or anything, you can move anything around, make it look like macs or windows or something entirely new, move the menu bar out of programs and make it a floating window if you want, or change global hotkeys on the fly by pressing a button to record, another to record onto, then a set of buttons to play (a surprisingly simple script I made long ago), it is extensive what you can do.

@dimitarvp

When it comes to Windows, its devs kind of gave up and just gated stuff behind timers to avoid parallel shared state bugs, I feel.

Lol

@AstonJ

Haha yeah, and Macs used to be great too, but I started to do it after every major update (usually upgrade first, then to another point release then a clean install) and I noticed an improvement. Luckily clean installs on Macs are pretty straight forward and can be done in a day or so (inc getting your dev env back up). I quite like being able to start ‘afresh’ every now and again

Heh, I would so hate to set everything back up, though I could bring my home directory across, but then its not a clean install again so its entirely point defeating (considering the rest of the system is managed and kept clean by the package systems anyway save for a few untouched old configuration files, lol.

[AstonJ]

@dimitarvp

It’s going to take me almost the same amount of time as to reinstall them all.

Problem is also the diversity of platforms. Stuff installed through asdf, npm, OCaml, Rust, Java, PHP, Elixir, bash/zsh scripts, and I am likely forgetting half of it.

Why not do a clean/fresh install on a new HD to see how long it takes or whether you enjoy the experience? If you follow the guide on my blog post you might be surprised at how ‘easy’ it is?

@OvermindDL1

Heh, I would so hate to set everything back up, though I could bring my home directory across, but then its not a clean install again so its entirely point defeating (considering the rest of the system is managed and kept clean by the package systems anyway save for a few untouched old configuration files, lol.

I quite like having a bit of a spring clean tbh

All of my important stuff is backed up and any prog-specific settings are usually easy to put back on (or could be done by copying prefs files if need be - but I tend to prefer a clean-as-possible install).

Haven’t had time to read it yet… but this looks interesting:

Fed up with the Mac, I spent six months with a Linux laptop. The grass is not greener on the other side

Fed up with the Mac, I spent six months with a Linux laptop. The grass is not greener on the other side April 02, 2021 — Carlos Fenollosa This article is part of a series: Seven years later, I bought a new Macbook. For the first time, I don’t love it How I moved my setup from a Mac to a Linux laptop This article (TBD) My review of the M1 Macbook Air Due to very bad decisions by Apple’s product marketing teams, Mac hardware and software had been in steady decline since 2016. Therefore, th…

[dimitarvp]

@AstonJ

Why not do a clean/fresh install on a new HD to see how long it takes or whether you enjoy the experience? If you follow the guide on my blog post you might be surprised at how ‘easy’ it is?

Aston, what are you smoking again, my man?

I barely have enough energy to last a normal day… He’s talking about exploratory masochistic reinstalls… If I was some kind of a warlock I’d likely just drain all your energy because you seem to have an infinite supply of it.

On the flip side, I now have to do 6 blood examinations and I am fairly sure I’ll pass out for the diabetes testing one (where they get blood, feed you some sugar syrup, get blood 1hr later, give you some water, then get blood one more time 2hr later).

[AstonJ]

@dimitarvp

If I was some kind of a warlock I’d likely just drain all your energy because you seem to have an infinite supply of it.

Energy isn’t a problem just wish there were more hours in the day

On a more serious note tho, diet is, imo, key. We have evolved to function best on a specific type of diet - a species appropriate diet - and a great place to start is the Palaeolithic diet. If you’ve never followed such a diet before you will probably be quite (pleasantly) surprised by it

I often say try it (strict) for 3 months - what’s 3 months of your life when it could be one of the best things you ever did? And that doesn’t have to be on blind faith either, there are thousands upon thousands of people saying how it’s helped, and even more when speaking of diet changes in general. Diet really is the key in the majority of cases imo. The paleo is a great place to start because it’s extremely popular - so lots of recipes on line

[dimitarvp]

@AstonJ

I often say try it (strict) for 3 months - what’s 3 months of your life when it could be one of the best things you ever did?

Dude, you still don’t get it. I don’t have the time or the energy for it.

Will it take me more than 1h a day to prepare those meals? If so, hard pass.