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Comment by veidr | Hacker News Reader

My own burning hatred towards Apple runs a little hotter than most, and I have been seriously googling (and trying) alternatives since 2012.

That was when my $9000 Mac Pro — which had been a great machine, and still was, except for the little detail about not having been updated since 2009 and thus being stuck with USB 2 (!!!) to say nothing of Thunderbolt and any kind of modern accoutrements — started to feel like a personal affront, a sneering fuck you directed at not just me, but everybody remotely like me. (Wow!!! Déjà vu bro!!)

Nevertheless, I didn't switch then, and all of us complainers won't switch now either.

Because the fucking OS.

I've tried every iteration of Ubuttnu, CentOS, and FreeBSD since. Even OpenWhatever, before the goblins bought it. I have Thinkpads and Dell XPS "Developer Editions" and a drawer full of other crap like that.

Executive summary: it's all garbage time. It's like going back 10+ years. Nothing works right, on any of them. Copy/paste, batteries, wireless networking, drag and drop, high-res displays, multilingual input, even like fucking word processing and email and image editors and terminal programs... it's all like Mac OS X Jaguar level.

We can't give Apple the finger, even though we want to (and definitely after last week, we all want to) because there literally isn't an OS in the world that can touch Mac OS for general-purpose workstation/laptop use. (For niche and limited-purpose, yes, there are options.)

Elementary OS is a fucking joke. Every OS mentioned disparagingly above is a better choice for almost any purpose. But those are still horrible.

Apple's OS advantage is what lets them say "Fuck you peons, here's some 3 year old technology and a bag of dongles, that'll be $4000."

But we're mostly all gonna buy the new shitty MacBook Hipster, or gut it out with our old ones, until a better fucking OS happens. And that won't be soon — it's not even remotely on the horizon.

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I have been a Linux user for a long time ( ArchLinux with Xfce ). Recently, I switched jobs and my employer issued me with a Mac. I am having the same problem : the fucking OS. Why do I need to press multiple buttons to see how many applications I have open ? Why does command + tab cycle through every open application ? Why does it not limit itself to the applications in the current space ? What are spaces for anyway ? Why does clicking on an already open application's icon in the dock take me to a random window for the application ? Is there some logic to it ? Is it random ? I think I understand why so many people wax on about tiling window managers now, they have never seen proper window managers. Also why do I have to press Command + whatever when there is a perfectly functional control key on the keyboard ? If I am remoted into a Windows machine now I have to remember to press Control + whatever and revert back to Command + Whatever when I am back on my Mac. Also don't even get me started on the docker networking issues.

But it would be unfair for me to blame Apple's OS for most of these faults.

>Also why do I have to press Command + whatever when there is a perfectly functional control key on the keyboard ? If I am remoted into a Windows machine now I have to remember to press Control + whatever and revert back to Command + Whatever when I am back on my Mac

It's worth pointing out that Apple is the odd one out when it comes to modifier keys. Switching between Linux and Windows, alot of the keyboard shortcuts remain exactly the same. Going from Windows to OS X is a really frustrating from that aspect.

What is really frustrating is to go back. You never get that shortcut consistency like it is between different osx apps. Not to mention that my leftmost finger stopped being sick, because Cmd is just below thumb, not in the dead corner. Many linuxoids even remap control on capslock for that reason.

<Command> + <Tab> cycles open applications, but <Command> + <~> cycles windows in the current application context

I find this two-dimensional switching incredibly useful for multitasking, whereas Windows just flattens all windows to the alt-tab list, which quickly becomes overwhelming if you're a power user who doesn't like to close windows.

I have to believe you but this exact feature is possibly my biggest issue with Mac: breaking the stack.

In some of my workflows I jump back and forth between programs a lot. Example (not everything I do is this tedious : ) Alt + tab, tab, ctrl + shift + end, ctrl + c, alt + tab, ctrl + v.

When I was on Mac it felt like this would break down multiple times a day: CMD + tab, oh wait, another Window of the same App, that means CMD - tab to go back, then something I have forgotten, possibly CMD + | on my keyboard back then, then the same insanity next time.

Basically for someone like me who works quick but has lots of things to keep in mind this breaks down immediately.

I don't want to stop and think if this is another Window or another App, I just want to go back to that second last thing I worked on.

As I said, I have to believe you guys actually like it but for me this particular (mis- IMO)feature was one of the main reasons why I will ask nicely to get a Windows or Linuzx laptop instead of a Mac.

In return I ask that you believe me when I say that I haven't come across one of those jarring font issues that Mac people complain about in Linux. My touchpad is good enough, - I try to use my keyboard most of the time anyway etc etc.

Get Witch: https://manytricks.com/witch/

You should be all set. I've used it for years because I also prefer Windows' flat window switching.

Also, only $14--less than the price of most dongles. ;)

> Also why do I have to press Command + whatever when there is a perfectly functional control key on the keyboard ?

Of all the OS X criticism, this is the most absurd. Command, Control, they are all arbitrary choice, why even whinge about it. Is like going to France and complaining everyone speaks French

Also, the Mac was released long before Windows. Not Apple's fault that Windows differs.

Protip: use karabiner to bind command to control when you're using a windows VM ;)

I discovered Karabiner too late, after upgrading to Sierra, now I'm waiting for it to work on Sierra :-(

Speak for yourself. Linux is a perfectly viable option for non-lazy people, who don't complain about everything. And Windows 10 is excellent too if you don't care about privacy. And it's Ubuntu not Ubuttnu.

>> a sneering fuck you directed at not just me, but everybody remotely like me.

You overpaid 8k for a machine so why should Apple care? You are clearly going to buy their next product.

>>But we're mostly all gonna buy the new shitty MacBook Hipster, or gut it out with our old ones

According to Netmarketshare stats at least 2% have abandoned OSX since May 2016.

See Linux people always say that, "it's coz your lazy", "Linux works great". I've tried pretty much every year for the last 10 years to get Linux working.

When I go into a brand new elementary installation to try it out, and I can't set the proxy, i shake my head and wonder how anybody can take this OS seriously.

Not even that the proxy setting didn't work, I actually couldn't set it in the GUI, it would just wipe my setting.

Yeah... linux is not perfectly viable, its a mess.

> And it's Ubuntu not Ubuttnu.

oh. well, as long as that's been cleared up.

Non-lazy or should I say ok-to-deal-with-all-this-shit http://itvision.altervista.org/why.linux.is.not.ready.for.th...

> Linux is a perfectly viable option for non-lazy people, who don't complain about everything.

And that right there is the problem. Laziness is a good thing, it means the software is being more useful. And you should encourage complaints and fix the problem, which can only make things better for everyone.

> Nothing works right, on any of them. Copy/paste, batteries, wireless networking, drag and drop, high-res displays, multilingual input, even like fucking word processing and email and image editors and terminal programs...

Can you be more specific? i.e. - copy paste with a highlight+middle mouse button is frankly awesome in GNOME.

- Batteries - yeah, Windows laptops usually don't have amazing battery life and it can even be slightly worse under Linux, however if you're working in a mode where you laptop is 99% plugged in and you just need occasionally a couple of hours from it, it's quite doable, which I'd imagine is the use-case for most "workstation" usage scenarios.

- wireless networking - works great if you're willing to do a bit of research before buying, instead of just dropping Linux on any garbage PC and expecting it to work flawlessly, (why won't you try that with macOS and report back?)

- drag and drop - that seems... highly unlikely, unless you're dragging/dropping from/to some weird, wrapped wine port that doesn't communicate with your desktop

- high-res displays - not as good as macOS, but works quite well in GNOME 3 and improving all the time, (far better than Windows)

- multilingual input, even like fucking word processing and email and image editors and terminal programs - things like multilingual input work well, word processing works well, but certainly there's no MS Office, (which isn't that great on a Mac either), there's no Photoshop, but I find it strange that Krita, GIMP etc. won't suffice you for many tasks, mail works well and terminal programs work amazingly well as well. In addition gaming on Linux is now miles better than on macOS, in addition to the far superior customisability and superior package management, not to mention not being under the will of a single company that does whatever it feels like that day, which matters to some.

> copy paste with a highlight+middle mouse button is frankly awesome in GNOME

Oh my gosh, this is my least favorite thing about using gnome! I accidentally paste all the time and can't turn it off particularly easily. Very sad.

It’s a generic feature of X available in all desktop environments (essentially there’s two copy-paste mechanism which you can use independently). Much easier to use than manual C-c C-v, especially if you have a third mouse button also on your laptop.

And this is the problem. There is zero thought being given to different usage scenarios, and when it is, it's a chaotic solution that works some of the time. How do you middle-click-paste if you are on a trackpad with only two buttons, for example?

I'm only picking on this to illustrate the point: things are hacked together at almost every level for a workstation. This is why "The Year of the Linux Desktop" never happened.

In stark contrast, I am much, much happier with Linux as a server machine than as a workstation, and prefer it to any others.

I know for sure that in CDE with SunOS and HP-UX middle click was for paste. I think also on SGI with Irix, but that is going back to 1994 when I was a young teen so I don't remember exactly. Middle click to paste also worked on some linuxes, which is why it was important to get a 3 button mouse even though the middle button did nothing on windows. I want to say that "middle click to paste" is and old unix convention, but I only have the 2.5 examples.

Middle click to paste is indeed an old convention. Xterm supports it, so I suspect it goes all the way back to the early days of the X Window System, c. 1984.

I don't have a problem with middle click being a backwards-compatible convention. It's that the option to change it is non-obvious, and therefore excludes laptop users.

As a counter-example: Much earlier versions of Windows had a menu in the top left corner. The shortcut to close a window used to be double-clicking in that corner. In Windows 7 (not sure about 8 or 10), that menu button/icon is gone. Of course, you can close a windows with the X in the right corner, but the old shortcut still works even though there is seemingly nothing there.

I can't remember where I read this, but I always think of it when it comes to UX design:

Always have more than one way to do the same thing in a UI. Users will pick whichever works better for their worklow.

I wasn't defending it. I'm familiar with it and use it occasionally, but I don't think I would have made that design choice.

There are two ways of doing copy/paste. The middle clicking and Ctrl+C/V.

hmm, horses for courses. I thought popular thinking had moved on from the perl philosophy of "there's more than one way to do it" to "let's reduce complexity and errors by just having one way to do it". While having a CLI and GUI might be good for two different UIs what's the point of having two ways to do the same thing?

The windows X is more of a backwards compatibility thing I imagine, because it makes no sense to have an invisible menu in the top left corner.

>How do you middle-click-paste if you are on a trackpad with only two buttons, for example?

Tap twice and drag on the second tap to select.

Tap with three fingers to paste.

Don't use the buttons.

Why on earth is there not a way to turn this off? I could be a bit understanding if there was just no UI option for this and I had to make an edit to an X conf file, but it's baffling that there just doesn't seem to be a way at all to turn it off. Some applications like Firefox let you change middle-click to autoscroll but that doesn't help outside of Firefox. I'm so worried I'm going to highlight my password and then absent-mindedly middle click and paste it into a chat twenty minutes later!

You can turn it of in gnome-tweak-tool

> Batteries - yeah, Windows laptops usually don't have amazing battery life and it can even be slightly worse under Linux, however if you're working in a mode where you laptop is 99% plugged in and you just need occasionally a couple of hours from it, it's quite doable, which I'd imagine is the use-case for most "workstation" usage scenarios.

Unfortunately, it turns out this usage pattern is terrible for the battery.

> Unfortunately, it turns out this usage pattern is terrible for the battery.

If you let it sufficiently (not fully!) discharge at least once a month, I don't see why it would be particularly terrible for the battery, what am I missing?

As far as I am aware, letting it discharge is only for calibration purposes (to ensure the battery gauge reads correctly).

I've been using my laptop battery for about three years with exactly this pattern, and what once lasted ~4 hours on a charge now lasts about 25 minutes.

Copy is Ctrl+C in your browser, in your notepad, in your IDE, but it's Ctrl-Shift-C in your terminal.

Paste is Ctrl+V in your browser, in your notepad, in your IDE, but it's Ctrl-Shift-V in your terminal.

Now copy a bunch of IPs from your AWS page into terminal to ssh into them for an hour or so.

Fuck that shit, I'm getting a second mortgage for the MBP and a set of 19 dongles.

It's been years since I've used linux, but my muscle memory for copying/pasting in the terminal is still there, to the point of it being the reason I can't use non Mac layout keyboards in OSX. I'll just keep pressing shift if I'm in the terminal.

>- wireless networking - works great if you're willing to do a bit of research before buying, instead of just dropping Linux on any garbage PC and expecting it to work flawlessly, (why won't you try that with macOS and report back?)

Why doesn't Linux track actual hardware proved to be compatible. Each year the same 'bit of research' with no guarantees at all. Oh, wait, Linux does not — because it isn't a Product.

> Why doesn't Linux track actual hardware proved to be compatible.

Sure it does [1]. The "bit of research" involves finding out if your desired machine has one of the many chips known to work flawlessly, which shouldn't be a problem, unless you don't mind what you spend your money on and just buy impulsively.

There are also chipset manufactures which are known to be more friendly than others, for example almost any modern Intel Wireless chip will work just fine.

Even for generally unfriendly OEMs, you can find amazingly clear documentation [2].

> Oh, wait, Linux does not

Again, you just asserted stuff without any evidence, see above.

> because it isn't a Product

Not sure by what definition of "product" you're going by, (if any), but you can absolutely get commercial support from a number of companies i.e. Canonical, RedHat, SuSE and even Oracle if you so desire.

[1] - https://help.ubuntu.com/community/WifiDocs/WirelessCardsSupp... [2] - https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/broadcom_wireless

Must confess that 10 years ago I lost around 5 years in deep linux setup & programming, and I know all that you say. Neither [1] nor [2] do not list recent specific hardware models, I mean, notebooks and PCs, not chips or boards. Regular user has to unpack the device and `lspci -vnn -d 14e4:` (amazingly clear for regular user?), or something in live-usb system console at the store under manager's sight to maybe estimate whether this wifi is able to work with specific distro, which alone is a big question until you try it. Repeat these steps for all the hardware in potential purchase, and good luck to find all the specs, because often it is just i5/16Gb/13". There also are unresearchable timebombs like fast battery discharge and sleep issues under non-supported OSes.

"Product" is at least a site like easylinux.com, where you see that in late 2016 you can buy compatible X,Y and almost compatible Z (bios-only fan control), and in 2015 there were A,B,C, and in 2014 D was the best choice. Please click on direct link, torrent or ftp to download a distro image that already contains all the specific drivers and software.

Obviously, I'm unable to provide any evidence for something that doesn't exist.

> Must confess that 10 years ago I lost around 5 years in deep linux setup & programming, and I know all that you say.

I am afraid you'll find the Linux of today is much different than a decade ago.

In regards to known working laptops, you mean something like this[1], this[2], this[3] or this[4] ?

Also you can just buy from [5] or [6] and have Linux preinstalled with all the correct drivers.

[1] - https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Category:Laptops [2] - https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Dell_XPS_13_(2016)#XPS_... [3] - https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/HP_Spectre_x360_ap012dx [4] - https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/MacBook [5] - https://system76.com/laptops [6] - https://www.entroware.com/store/laptops

And honestly you can just ask the community on Reddit/IRC/Distroo forums etc. about their experience with the model you want to buy, is that really a problem if you're a "Pro" user spending serious money on the machine?

It honestly just looks like you're too lazy to look. Or maybe you just made up your mind and refuse to budge even when provided evidence to the contrary - I honestly do not understand why you engage in a discussion then, you've already made up your mind.

I'm interested in Ubuntu LTS or Debian stable, not in school-rolled Arch that is known to be broken on each update. Second, it's wiki is filled with anecdotal tips (not even tips) that cover no real issues and provide no idea from which hardware to select. You should click on every configuration to check it, but no one will do. Because it is just words without any customer review or experience. Call it lazy, don't mind.

I'm watching local linux community for years despite not using it, and from what I see, Arch and blah-blah-wiki are still no Products. Curious if you really use this Arch and selected hw by its wiki, or you just googled for me, writing from ubuntu on 10-year old thinkpad. Locals can't really tell what to buy, because virtually everyone except those having ancient thinkpads have at least one issue. Some sit with charger always attached, some can't sleep, some have crashes because nvidia-blob, some because nouveau-blob, others just bought macbook and have no problems trolling linuxoids from osx.

5-6 seem to be not presented in my country.

I can spend some money on recent notebook (but don't get that 'serious' and 'pro' arguments, because we talk about regular user and regular hw) after just your hype, but what an idiot will I feel myself when it will lose wifi too often or fail to sleep on close. I understand you, arguing for linux on desktop is hard, because desktop is still few% of enthusiasts. Statistics prove it all.

> Arch that is known to be broken on each update

Arch has been rock solid for me for 5 years. You just seem to repeat stereotypes.

> Because it is just words without any customer review or experience.

The words have been written from experience.../head against wall/

> still no Products.

WTF is with this "products" - every Linux distro is a "product", even the kernel is a "product" if you will. I told you if you want professional support pay Canonical or RedHat, but you shouldn't need it if you have basic comprehension skills.

> Curious if you really use this Arch and selected hw by its wiki, or you just googled for me, writing from ubuntu on 10-year old thinkpad.

I indeed run it on VERY modern HW and am typing this from [this baby][1] and even run my home server on Arch, because it's been super stable for me, (on [2] if you're interested...)

[1] - https://www.obsidian-pc.com/en/portatil-clevo-p751dm2-g [2] - http://www.intel.co.uk/content/www/uk/en/nuc/nuc-kit-nuc6i7k...

> Locals can't really tell what to buy, because virtually everyone except those having ancient thinkpads have at least one issue.

Buy any Clevo or a Dell Dev Edition or even a modern HP laptop and you'll be fine.

> others just bought macbook and have no problems trolling linuxoids from osx.

As someone who has to use a MBP for iOS dev, I'll be very careful with the trolling, since there was no release of macOS since 10.6 without major issues, including Sierra. Not even talking 10.7, which was worse than Vista.

> I can spend some money on recent notebook (but don't get that 'serious' and 'pro' arguments, because we talk about regular user and regular hw)

You do what you will - we're talking about a pro here, because this is a post in context of people being disappointed with the newest MBP not being Pro enough for the "Pros".

> what an idiot will I feel myself when it will lose wifi too often or fail to sleep on close.

You have NO IDEA of the irony of this - my 2015 MBP randomly looses WiFi every second day or so, google, "macbook pro loses wifi", it as I am far from alone.

> arguing for linux on desktop is hard

It is in some ways, but I don't care what OS you run and have no desire to "convert you ", I just want to disprove the perceptions that were true a decade ago and have long since been resolved.

Just to give an example of how frustrating this is, i.e. "I tried PulseAudio in 2005 and it sucked, PulseAudio suckzzz!", yeah, it's 2016 and it no longer sucks, in fact it's pretty awesome.

Bravo sir, I could not have said it better myself. I purchased a brand new XPS15 ubuntu 14.04 and it was a disaster -

The battery lasted about three hours, the $300 graphics card did not function at all because of poor drivers (graphics switching is still theoretical on even user friendly linux os' because of dark age xserver)

I had to spend two weeks to get the wifi working by messing around with conf files

The concept of hardware/software integration seems to evade the general purpose computing industry to the detriment of us all, I am not sure why someone hasn't built a tightly integrated linux laptop yet.

At this point the GUIS look pretty decent and there is plenty of software (most people only use browsers anyway) we just need to get the basics working well.

Did the machine come with Ubuntu out of the box, or did you install it yourself? That is one of the reasons my company went with System76. They ship with Ubuntu installed and will provide support, drivers for all the hardware, etc. The OryxPro is a nice desktop replacement.

Shipped with it from dell

Shipped with Dell but wifi not working? I don't buy it.

The Broadcom wireless card my XPS 13 (9343) Developer Edition shipped with absolutely does not play well with Linux. Including the Ubuntu 14.04 version it shipped with.

It's a known issue, and that's not all. When the machine originally launched there were huge problems with the audio, the trackpad, the bluetooth, and the screen brightness control.

You don't have to buy it. I did... for $1100, and now it mostly sits on a shelf. I had to go back to my MacBook Air to get multi-modal work done. I can use Linux as a primary machine if the only thing I ever use is Emacs. The instant I have to venture across different applications and different modes of content creation (docs, code, slide decks, etc.) it's a very bespoke and inefficient experience.

The Broadcom fix is literally one apt-get install command. The driver issues keep happening because companies are loathe at releasing drivers for Linux or even provide support and assistance for third party drivers. Here's looking at you Realtek.

Also I don't understand how something can be bespoke and inefficient at the same time. With MacOS, you learn the Apple way, with Linux you have the freedom to create your own workflow. This freedom is what stops Linux from being a noon friendly OS, and frankly, I am happy about that.

The driver itself is horribly, horribly unstable.

Also. I definitely do not have "the freedom to create my own workflow". No amount of my trying, including digging into window manager, UI toolkits, and application code for KDE, GNOME, or Xfce resulted in my being able to provide consistent keyboard shortcuts across the board. So I wasn't able to get to a point where I could use 30-years of muscle memory and predictability in and across the UX to facilitate my work.

I'm not a noo[n]. I'm a distributed systems engineer and functional programmer.

This "Linux is open source, so it can do anything!" trope is really annoying.

I did not intend to call you a noo[n] (and neither to misspell it that way. Typing on the phone is hard). Neither did I mention anything related to open source to cause you any annoyance.

Linux offers a lot of pick your own adventure style options for everybody. Yes, it takes a bit of time to get used to it, but so does getting used to the cmd/ctrl abomination in Macs. I don't see people complaining about that.

The only application that by default violates the normal keyboard shortcuts is the terminal and even that has menu options for changing them to what you like. I don't know what application doesn't respect common shortcuts to break your muscle memory but I then I am not a distributed systems engineer so what do I know.

Dell XPS 13 has a special "developer" edition, which comes with Ubuntu 14.04 pretested and preinstalled.

I haven't hand-configured a laptop since 2009, when I switched to Mageia Linux. I don't know how they do what they do for hardware support, but it's frickin' brilliant.

What I find really laughable is when people say macOS Sierra or the new MBP2016 is underwhelming, and then they start talking about something as inferior as Elementary OS and laptops that doesn’t even have a useable touchpad.

You can get laptops with extremely good hardware at a better price than the MBP. For example, Dell's XPS series is the best example. Fantastic screen, fantastic trackpad, good build quality, and equivalent specs despite being a model year behind. In terms of hardware, the MBP is pretty bad value.

The OSes are miles behind though.

I've had several Dell laptops over the years (4 from ~2003-2012), and while things may have changed in the last 4 years, I would be very surprised to see even a halfway decent trackpad, build quality, and battery life from Dell. I also have the HP Spectre x360 (from Microsoft Build 2015), which was considered to be one of the best Windows laptops available at the time, and its trackpad is one of the most awful devices I've ever had to use. The rest of the laptop is great (screen, keyboard, build quality, even battery), but if I hadn't gotten the laptop for free, I would've returned it for the trackpad alone.

I do agree that you can pick up a good linux laptop that will run circles around today's MBP (system76 fully spec'd lemur or gazelle) but, imo the overall industrial design leaves a bit to be desired.

I have a Dell XPS Developer edition - I definitely think it's a step in the right direction. I agree with you in terms of screen and build quality. The battery life is mediocre at best. The trackpad isn't terrible but it's certainly not something I'd compare to my MacBook (even a 2010 model). OS complaints aside, mac trackpads really stand out.

I feel the need to respond here because in every thread about MBPs people mention the Dell XPS line as an alternative, and after buying one I can NOT recommend it as a good buy.

The Dell XPS laptops have got one thing going for them: relatively good build quality. They don't feel or look cheap, which already puts it ahead of most PCs in the market. Just walk into your local Best Buy and see the junk they are selling to people.

From my experience the most recent Dell XPS 15" has several issues, but I'll mention the two object and non-anecdotal issues:

- They suffer from "coil whine," which is when internal components resonate and cause an audible high frequency noise. It is super annoying, and a huge disappointment for a ~$2k purchase. Even the new Dell XPS 13" which just got refreshed with the new Intel Kaby Lake processors still suffers from this, which shows Dell didn't care to fix a widely documented issue that has been known for a long time. Just Google "dell xps coil whine."

- The 4K screen has way too much glare, and they quickly strained my eyes. The low resolution version don't suffer from this, but I imagine most people are getting the 4K touch display.

I won't get into the Mac vs Windows vs Linux debate, because you won't be enjoying the XPS with buzzing noises and glares in your eyes with any OS.

Ater wasting time with the Dell XPS, I went and happily paid the Apple "premium" for the 2016 MBP. And don't get me started on Thinkpads, they are simply not what they used to be.

> MPB is a pretty bad value

You show me laptop with the level of hardware/software integration as a MBP, and a no-BS *nix desktop experience, and I promise you I'll be the first one in line to buy one.

It boggles the mind that no "PC" manufacturer has done what Apple has done with hardware design and integration. Apple has been hitting it out of the park for at least 4-6 years, plenty of time for some other company to do it themselves. Even Microsoft is struggling (although the "Surface" products are really good)

The only thing I can think is that it's really difficult and expensive to iron out all those little hardware bugs.

It is without a doubt not easy task to release a product with the polish of a MBP, but as you said, you would think there would be something competing at an equal level by now.

I don't think Lenovo's efforts lived up to the glory of the Thinkpad line, but I will give them credit for the X1 Carbon. Though the Carbon only comes in a 14" model.

From an industrial design standpoint, the Surface Book is fantastic and demands respect. I bought the Surface Book when it first came out, and that thing was always overheating, which is a no-go for something trying to be a tablet/notebook. It also suffered from various issues when it launched. Microsoft actually asked Best Buy to stop selling them for a brief moment while the issues were fixed.

> It is without a doubt not easy task to release a product with the polish of a MBP, but as you said, you would think there would be something competing at an equal level by now.

I feel Ubuntu could have been there if they had continued their effort to create a rock-solid Gnome 2 experience instead of starting to copy Mac for no good reason (dock, window decorations, alt-tab handling etc).

Now Ubuntu has lost a few years of development time and what once made a hardcode KDE fan like Gnome now feels completely alien to the point where I have stopped even testing the LTS releases.

A friend of mine returned his surface pro 4 after 48 hours. A software update bricked it and it would not turn on. It really put me of buying one. My current laptop is ten years old an still going strong with a ram and sad upgrade If it died tomorrow I don't know what I would replace it with.

Meh. I was issued a Macbook with some version of Mac OS X by my employer as well. Shitty screen, no trackpoint. Very very sharp edge on the front making it very difficult to rest your hands nicely. Chaotic GUI, outdated software (esp. Bash etc.), weird keyboard with missing keys. No proper package manager, no proper development software (Intel Compiler?) and not even a compiler at all if I don’t sign up with an Apple account.

Honestly if you put together fancy slides in Keynote, it might work (though Beamer is still nicer). I even managed to set up the email client and read emails occasionally when my workstation was rebooting. After two years I asked for a laptop with Linux and nicer keyboards and I couldn’t be happier.

I don't know man, I've been more-or-less following this discussion of the last several days, and keep seeing all this "nothing compares to MacOS because... Woo". I work on a fucking mac all day, every day, impatiently waiting to get back home to my Ubuntu desktop. Oh yes, I dislike laptops with their small screens and toy keyboards. I carry this macbook from work back and forth, only to plug it into real peripherals when I actually have to use it. Because no, Photoshop on a coffee shop is not realistic, it's dumb. Also this "Nothing works right, on any of them." Funny, that is what I think of MacOS. I'll restrain from ranting. In short, I absolutely, completely, strongly, disagree with you here.

I'm in the same boat, however, I've always dual-booted Linux using OSx for casual use and Linux for work. I'm not sure what I'll do hardware wise, because the terrible keyboard, lack of: function keys, esc key, and lack of magsafe make it unusable for my workflow. However, I've recently moved from awesomeWM to KDE Plasma as a DE with the Arc Dark theme. I have to say, I finally don't miss OSx with this setup.

Very useful, intuitive UX, Alfred like functionality out of the box, very nice UI (not just for linux, for anything!), productive workflow, and gets out of your way when you need to get things done.

I still have to find a hardware replacement with a great keyboard, solid trackpad, killer battery, and great display, but my OS concerns are finally resolved.

Edit: Repo with screenshots: https://github.com/varlesh/Arc-Dark-KDE

As a security analyst I make use of Linux, MacOS, and a few different versions of Windows on a daily basis. They all have issues that I find incredibly frustrating and they all have aspects that I really enjoy.

You apparently have a strong preference for MacOS. Lots of people do, but many people dislike it. IMO, there isn't a clear winner.

Windows? It's really not that bad.

I can see the marketing now. "Switch back to Windows: it's really not that bad."

I thought that was the marketing for Windows 7 after the Vista fiasco.

Why would they say that?

They could simply point out all the things that you can do on Windows that you cannot do on macOS because Apple will not let you.

I would go so far as saying it's actually rather good now, and I replaced the Windows OS on every laptop and workstation I got from 1999 (Slackware :) to 2013 with Linux and a highly customized FVWM config, so I consider myself having a high bar.

Although I did use a Mac as a workstation for a couple years ~ 2010, and found that particularly trying, so that may factor in to how people receive my assessment. It was close to what I wanted, but still far enough away to just generally annoy me by not being configurable enough to actually do what I wanted.

I've been dying for details about Windows 10 and the linux subsystem, and don't actually know anyone who uses it for serious work. Is it actually a replacement for the BSD-based goodness of OSX? Do you get GCC, Make, instantly-functional Python, etc. etc. etc.? Or are there a ton of rough edges? Seriously considering jumping ship to Microsoft and buying a Surface here...

It's certainly worth playing with, but I'm not sure I'd depend on it actually working for any given task yet. YMMV of course, but you really want to give it a spin before you put any purchasing choices behind it.

e.g., for my uses, I am constantly running into 'rough edges'. Huge swathes of /proc are missing, which breaks a lot of tools I simply expect to work. As an example, I have a very simple script for tooling with my raspberry pis. It does an ipv6 broadcast ping (ff02::1) on my ethernet interface, and ssh's to the address that returns. Nice easy way to solve the chicken & egg of sshing to a device that has no address configured yet.

On 'Bash on Ubuntu on Windows', it fails because I can't use the -I(interface) option with either ping or ping6 - setsockopt(SO_BINDTODEVICE): Protocol not available. (and you can't broadcast without that, because the broadcast address is the same on every interface, so it can't figure it out itself).

Then I can't list my own IP address, either the new way (ip addr show - SO_SNDBUF: Invalid Argument) or the traditional way (ifconfig - /proc/net/dev doesn't exist), which was my script's other requirement - because if I broadcast on my own interfaces, I'll also reply to them, so I need to know my own address to exclude it from the replies.

Most of this may be very situational, or may be me doing things the wrong way, and may not affect what you expect to run on a linux subsystem. But it did hammer home for me quite quickly, that this isn't a unix environment - it's a very shallow veneer.

I'll say this: I switched to MacOS after smashing my last Windows (XP) laptop to pieces on the wall in a fit of rage ten years ago. Since then, I'd honestly completely forgotten how a computer could possibly drive a person to physical violence, until I bought a Windows (10) laptop recently just to play some games, and OH MY GOD. It is so, so unbelievably mindbogglingly fucking terrible.

Have an upvote just for the most creative and heartfelt rant I've read in a while.

I'm still amazed at your impression though, as I'm happily using Linux on my laptops and feel like everything works as it should (because I can get my work done).

Exactly. In addition to the functional problems you outlined, every Linux GUI I've tried feels fake and plasticky, like it was designed for kids. Gnome is miles ahead of where it used to be, but design-wise it is now at about Windows 98-level.

Is there a problem attracting quality graphic designers to open source projects?

I think it requires a change of mindset. I've been using Linux exclusively on all of my machines since 2004. I started with KDE and then switched to Gnome 2 and finally Gnome 3. Everything looks clean and normal to me. On the other hand, every time that I need to use Windows (even Windows 10) it feels strange. So I guess it's a matter of perspective.

You make a good point. Sounds like we are at a crossroads: do we cater to what's familiar or are we trying to attract new users (like this post aims to do)?

In my opinion, there is no reason the design can't be made to look better while still maintaining the familiarity (like OS X mavericks did, for better or worse).

That's fine that you love macOS so much. Seriously. I can even forgive the condescension towards other OSes.

But believe it or not, people exist that prefer other operating systems.

I myself am a gamer as well as a developer, so my primary OS at home is Windows 10. My secondary one which I use for development and writing is Ubuntu 16.10. I recently began abandoning Mac - not because the OS is horrible or Apple is a bad company, but because it no longer syncs with my personal flow. Well, that, and I can no longer justify the pricetag.

> being stuck with USB 2

FYI there are macOS compatible PCI-E USB 3 cards available. Apparently some of the newest USB-C PCI-E cards work too though I haven't tried it myself.

Yes, I have 2009 Mac Pro (which cost me all of $300 on craigslist, and now also has 32GB of ram, raided SSDs, and GTX 750Ti ) with a usb3 card in it that works just fine. That said, I have Gnome 3 on my laptops and I find it be pretty practical, too.

The OS market is just too concentrated. If you want a modern OS with decent support you have basically three options: Windows, iOS/Mac, or Android. Even the car industry beats that and no one talks about the car industry leading innovation. (You can add Linux via RedHat and Ubuntu to that list and it's still only four options)

Windows is the better OS. Microsoft never dropped support for power users. They give you options to do everything that you want to do, way more than macOS. It's also got the better business model. That's why every business in the world runs on Windows and not on Apple's OS.

Build your own dream workstation, run osx86: http://www.osx86project.org

Works with laptops too, just be super careful what you buy. Might work on a Thinkpad P70, not sure.

You're just used to osx. I had the same feeling the other way around. Install a distro and give it some time, you'll get used to it.

I suspect the political-correctness dogs around here might bark at your wording, but I still think you've nailed it.

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