Hacker News Reader

Comment by zeveb | Hacker News Reader

> The consensus changed almost overnight, anyone using Apple wasn't a hacker anymore.

FWIW, I've (snarkily, unfairly, wrongly) thought that for many years now. I'm not defending that, because — as noted — it's snarky, unfair and incorrect. But I really have wondered why people who are liberated enough to not use Windows use macOS instead of going all the way to Linux. If you're willing to break the social norm, why not go all the way and be free?

> Either you're on Windows wishing you were using Linux, or you're on macOS wishing you were on Windows wishing you were using Linux.

Some of us just use Linux, and are happy.

View on HN

I love Linux on the server. For desktops, I believe it brings out all the worst qualities of the open source community: its inconsistent, has a tendency to skirt decision-making through configuration, fragmented, sometimes badly trying to copy windows/macOS, too eager to throw everything out and start anew etc. Just regarding the aesthetics, most Linux desktops seem to cater to the crowd that buys motherboards with LEDs and puts a window in their case.

> If you're willing to break the social norm, why not go all the way and be free?

Because Linux is only free if your time is worthless is still about as true today as ever before.

Oh sure, I can use most of my hardware without too many issues. It took me hours to configure my monitor because of some issue with EDID, but I'm willing to count that as an outlier.

The problem is I get Ubuntu working and then I still have to deal with fucking Unity.

OSX works out of the box with the hardware, and the OS is just a much more pleasant desktop experience while being a good enough OS to get work done (vs windows being more difficult).

> The problem is I get Ubuntu working and then I still have to deal with fucking Unity.

I solve that by using neither Ubuntu nor Unity:-)

> OSX works out of the box with the hardware, and the OS is just a much more pleasant desktop experience while being a good enough OS to get work done (vs windows being more difficult).

But macOS is only pleasant if impeding your workflow doesn't affect your pleasure.

Yes, certainly, trying to use one of the major desktop environments as a replacement for macOS may be worse (although I'm personally unconvinced: GNOME & Unity don't cause me pain like using a Mac, but I'm sure I could get used to the latter). But try using a tiling WM, with a good terminal emulator, an editor & a browser.

After having spent, maybe, two weeks total effort customising my environment, I have something which is a much more pleasant computing experience that either macOS or Windows. My computer gets out of my way when I need it to; it's an extension of my brain; it's a tool, not a toy I'm constantly playing with.

Frankly, the desktop metaphor was probably a mistake in the long run, and choosing to ape the desktop metaphor was probably a mistake for free software. We should have focused on the next advance, not tried to reproduce an advance, but this time with fewer resources and more folks pulling in different directions.

GUIs are great, but draggable windows really aren't so much. GUI elements are great, but being forced to mouse around for any action really isn't so much. Curated software can provide a great ride, but it's not so great when you need to get off the rails and explore new territory.

> But try using a tiling WM,

No. I don't want to. i don't get off on tweaking window environments and other BS. I don't want an ugly half baked interface.

This is why I honestly do think "linux is free if your time is worthless" is more than just a snarky comment.

> After having spent, maybe, two weeks total effort customising my environment

Two weeks. That's absurd. I can go into the apple store and buy a mac and just install homebrew. takes minutes.

> > But try using a tiling WM,

> No. I don't want to. i don't get off on tweaking window environments and other BS. I don't want an ugly half baked interface.

That's a bit like not wanting to use a jackhammer to break up asphalt because it doesn't have velvet handles. A tiling WM is neither ugly, nor half-baked, nor does it require tweaking (or require much).

> Two weeks. That's absurd. I can go into the apple store and buy a mac and just install homebrew. takes minutes.

That's a bit like saying it's absurd that it took four years to build the Golden Gate Bridge, when after all anyone can build a footbridge for his backyard in a weekend. The interface you have available to you on your Mac hinders you more than the interface I have available to me on my Linux boxes; the interface you have available to you on your Mac augments you less than the interface I have available to me on my Linux boxes. I invested two weeks, and they have made me an order of magnitude more productive.

This is, yet again, a case of the Blub Paradox. Surely you can see that there are less-powerful, more-painful interfaces to use than that of a Mac — is it so difficult to believe that there are more-powerful, less-painful interfaces than a Mac?

If you accept that it's at least possible, are you willing to entertain my contention that window management is in fact wasted time? Are you willing to entertain my contention that having all my regularly-used programs a few keystrokes away can be faster than moving my hands off of the keyboard and using the mouse? Are you willing to entertain my contention that a minimalist interface is — or at least can be — less distracting and thus enables one to enter the zone more easily and stay in it longer?

What a wonderful and generous explanation!!!

>Some of us just use Linux, and are happy.

Like you said, those are the ones who have "broken free". Everyone else (the "hackers") either use Windows and wish they used Linux or use macOS and wish they used Linux. But they don't actually use Linux, because [reasons].

To be fair to them, I don't use desktop Linux because [reasons].

> But I really have wondered why people who are liberated enough to not use Windows use macOS instead of going all the way to Linux.

I used Linux for years. I built a MythTV box and bought a digital TV tuner card for it and, later, a device to get the video from the cable box, along with an IR blaster to change the channels on the cable box. I have owned five laptops on which I used Linux exclusively (1 Dell Latitude, 1 HP EliteBook, and 3 Thinkpads). I built my desktop system for Linux. I have used Debian, Slackware, Ubuntu, Arch, Gentoo, and SUSE as my daily drivers, and have tried other systems like Mandriva and Fedora. I have compiled kernels and filed bugreports.

I now use OS X. In the end I got tired of desktops with tons of broken stuff. The transition away from GNOME 2 and KDE 3 was rough, with years of no usable major desktops at all. So I switched to barebones window managers like i3, FVWM, and Xmonad. (I have XMonad to thank for introducing me to Haskell, which I still use daily.) I got tired of reading man pages to do simple stuff like change my clock.

The thing that broke me in the end was doing my US income taxes. Our taxes are complicated so it helps to have software to do them. There's nothing for Linux. So I filled in my taxes on PDF forms. Even that was not easy: not all Linux PDF readers have the ability to do forms, and figuring out which ones do requires forum searching or trial-and-error. So I resorted to Adobe's non-free software. Even then, doing a US tax return on fillable PDFs is awful. I considered using an online service but I did not want a cloud solution for my private data.

That pushed me over and I got a Mac. I had actually tried Macs a few years ago when they were making the white plastic Macbook, but I returned it and stuck with Linux. I found that OS X had come a long way since I had last tried it. I enjoyed doing little things like downloading a song--things that would be a pain on Linux (do I have the right codecs installed? the right package?) And there's a ton of third-party software available. Some of it costs a few bucks, where something similar on Linux would be free--like a little tool to graphically show what is eating my disk space. But it's worth spending a few bucks to save hours hunting for something on Linux and fixing the breakage.

So that's why I don't use Linux. My time and my ability to get things done is more important than nebulous "freedom". Proprietary software provides an incentive to some companies to produce useful software. So be it.

>I got tired of reading man pages to do simple stuff like change my clock

Oh lord, I used a WM I loved on my EeePC, until I wanted to change the clock from 24 hour time to 12 hour time. Three days later, I still couldn't get it to display properly. I can't remember which WM it was, I feel like it was the one that shipped with Crunchbang.

You are mixing the WM and the panel/bar. They are usually separate things. Crunchbang used tint2 for the bar and openbox for the WM IIRC.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com