Home and hotel – Switching from macOS to Ubuntu on a Dell XPS 13 laptop
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Seriously though, that's the main reason I use OSX... It's usually compatible with the random toolsets my clients use without any additional tweaking.
But I still have my Macbook pro at the office, it never leaves the desk there.
My ambulatory laptop is a Thinkpad X260 running Fedora.
I have none of the issues described in the article
But you do raise valid points. I work in an organisation that loves Microsoft and store-bought solutions like Skype for Business.
My answer is to use a tablet for video conference calls, a Pixel C in my case but any modern tablet will work.
So with that solved the only major gripe I have with using Linux professionally is all the enterprise VPN solutions that in one way or another require Windows.
Juniper JunOS pulse for example, I haven't been able to get that working on Linux. They do have an official Linux client but like you said, it requires some finagling.
Other than that though I think Linux has come a very long way from the old mentality that you had to spend long nights getting everything to work.
I used to do that, but the last 5-6 years I've been too busy with work to bother. So I was using mostly Apple until about 4 years ago when I bought a Thinkpad X230 and started using Fedora.
Another issue that doesn't come up often but is quite debilitating is when I need to screencast to someone. Wayland isn't supported anywhere so I have to logout and log back in with X just to screencast.
None of the other issues you mentioned affect me, projectors and hdmi screen sharing works just fine.
"Can you please share your screen?"
Not to mention that you won't be able to share if you're using a tablet.
Obviously it's not for everyone but I've made it work for my situation.
By applications I can only remember trying Google screencasting, through hangouts to youtube for example.
But I think I tried one more that I lost the name to.
Since you're running Fedora, you can probably do something like:
sudo dnf install openconnect NetworkManager-openconnect
The official PulseSecure client for linux manages to install but then fails to launch with ubuntu 16.04...
So I was lead down a path where I needed a script that would answer host checker.
But couldn't get that working and gave up, only gave it one evening so far.
I loaded Fedora 26 and 27 on my new X270 and things went flawlessly. I won't say there are never any issues but it's pretty plug and play these days.
Is the situation any better elsewhere? On windows at work we constantly have issues with desktop sharing over skype freezing and have to fall back to WebEx and deal with it's sound not working properly, we'll often end up with a hybrid of voice calls on skype and screen sharing with webex and all the wasted time dealing with that. I had an hour long meeting on WebEx yesterday where I could barely hear anyone.
These aren't things I've tried to do on linux so I can't comment on how well supported they are, but let's not pretend they work seamlessly in the microsoft world either.
I do now have a MacBook Air, which I got for testing a program I'd written on a real machine. I like the form factor - it's lightweight and fine for basic web browsing, similar to a chromebook.
I have a macbook pro that I use exclusively for music (Ableton Live) and it's been far more hassle.
So, anecdotal stories are yarns, yo.
(I say this as an Ubuntu and macOS developer, thus user: its functionally a point where Ubuntu could un-seat macOS in terms of ease of use, on .. admittedly a very much wider range of hardware.)
As for the MacBook hegemony, I point my wavy hands at things like the GPD Pocket, and its future off-spring.
But I'd go one step further and argue that, as a developer, Linux can give you a unique experience if you stick to its strengths:
* Use a minimal distribution with few moving parts -> Things rarely break, and if something does it's usually easy to fix
* Try functional package management and administration (NixOS) -> Easy to reproduce setups, trivial to rollback, no dependency hell
* Try a simple keyboard-driven desktop -> A tiling window manager (XMonad), a web browser (Firefox) and Emacs (with Org, Magit, Eshell, Dired, Notmuch...) work incredibly well
I do agree that the freedom of choice that you are mentioning is a great benefit of Linux and FOSS software in general, though.
On the other hand I never had any serious issue with my XPS running Ubuntu, or my desktop PCs (running Linux exclusively since 2003). So YMMV, and the plural of anecdote isn't statistics. On my book, Linux works largely better and more predictably than MacOS by a large margin.
And this is in turn is seriously un-true.
* With my Macbook, I can be almost ironclad certain that if I close the lid to sleep, it will wake up. With Ubuntu (or any Linux really) you have 99,5% certainty, which is great, until it isn't and you lose work.
* Battery life if still miles behind macOS+Macbook levels unless you compromise somewhere (resolution, portability, etc.)
* Apple is quite a heavy-handed overlord that pushes changes through, and developers have to adapt or die to them. Ubuntu has no such power.
* Most macOS developers also 'naturally' stick to platform conventions, so all applications feel at home and look and work as expected
* The ease-of-use of Apple's 'global menu' cannot be overstated. It may not matter much to techies, but for my mother or grandma the fact that 'Print' is always under 'File' and 'File' is in the menu bar regardless of which application is being used is magic. Same goes for 'Edit', 'View', etc. They never have to hunt for these things again[1]
That's not to mention Touchpad gestures, Spaces (best implementation of virtual desktops), scaling, font rendering, updates that rarely if ever bork everything, ecosystem integration with your phone and tablet (Continuity, shared copy-paste and remotely-triggered tethering are a godsend), etc. etc.
Now if you were touting that Linux is much easier to tweak exactly to your liking, I'd heartily agree. But even today, I'd much rather recommend someone a Macbook than have them deal with the headache that Linux desktop _can_ be.
[1] Yes I know Ubuntu had a global menu. They nixed it, and the Gnome extension is a hack that doesn't work for everything
Oh man, how? Virtual desktops where alt+tab doesn't cycle through windows only on the current desktop are completely broken (they're just a large virtual screen), and last I used Spaces there was no option to change this.
As far as your point goes: it depends on if you see your Spaces as isolated desktops, or just 'more desktop space' which you can then loosely thematically organise. I fall into the latter category, and I suspect as Apple has chosen that cmd-tab style because most people do.
If you just want more desktop space, why not alt-tab between programs? They're all going to show on the same screen, anyway. Even disregarding all this, the fact that Apple didn't even give me the simple option of hiding programs on other spaces from alt-tab was one of the main reasons that made me switch to Linux.
As far as Apple not giving you the simple switch.. that’s just how Apple is. Again, I like it, because it means any Mac or iPhone I pick up I can instantly work on.. with Linux, the shortcuts differ even between Ubuntu and Fedora! That unified ‘foundation’ gives developers a solid base they can bolt stuff onto. For example, Spectacle. Its a sort-of window manager that would never work if it had to keep dozens of key configurations in mind.
On a sidenote, you needn't have switch to Linux. Command-Tab-Plus[1] has the feature you want ('Isolate applications in Spaces').
Thanks for the command-tab-plus shoutout, I later found Witch (IIRC) that did the same, but it was a bunch of annoyances that drove me to switch (no "Cut" in the Finder, homebrew didn't exist, the Spaces thing, etc). I do miss Photoshop and Lightroom, but I have a second Windows partition I use for those.
Of course it doesn't prove anything, but simply reminds that YMMV.
Updates are always breaking something, to the point I had to convince her to update to (High) Sierra, so I could install new Xcode, because she didn't want to.
Font rendering is ugly, too bold, I can't look at it. Touchpad is somewhat acceptable - I've used both better and worse. Spaces aren't really useful. But those of course are up to personal taste.
I had some contact with OS X somewhere around Tiger and Yosemite. I had some contact with iOS somewhere around 7.0. I do remember them as quite stable and problem-free, although not really the most usable nor exciting for me personally. Recently I started to have contact with newest macOS and newest iOS, and damn, it feels like every mention of "not having to deal with headaches" regarding those OSes is as poor joke. There are so many of small glitches and annoyances, bugs and poor UX decisions, that I really feel like my Arch is more polished, and that's something. Not even speaking about phones.
For the last two years I've found Ubuntu Studio a superlative OS to be running on both MacBooks and generic PC workstation/laptop hardware, and I've found the condition and quality - and overall user experience - of both MacOS and Windows to have gone rapidly downhill by comparison.
So, I dunno. You say tomato, I say Ubuntu is awesome.
But let's ponder for a second: why did web developers world wide embrace OS X about a decade ago? Because it was a bona-fide developer platform and a state-of-the-art desktop, giving access to all the proprietary tools that are missing in Linux, for example the Adobe suite, MS Office, etc.
What I'm positing is that the real contender for macOS is not Linux, it's Windows, with the awesome Linux subsystem which, to the best of my knowledge, is as undistinguishable from the Linux environment as the Darwin/POSIX layer in macOS.
For instance, if I install Atom on Windows, I can't just pop open my WSL terminal and install gulp or whatever and have Atom find it. On a Mac, it's as simple as a `brew install whatever` and then any GUI application can use the newly installed program.
If Microsoft burned the Windows kernel to the ground and started with BSD or something so that Windows was actually Unix-y under the hood, I'd switch in a heartbeat.
On the other hand, even without cygwin you could use a windows command line package manager such as chocolatey.
Everything unix-y is not always good, Windows has some novel ideas too. The main difference is that Windows is more GUI oriented and Unix is text oriented. Windows has APIs and Objects, whereas in a perfect Unix unix world everything needs to be a text stream.
I lived in the Unix world for a long time and I still use various BSDs and/or Linux. Yet after years preaching the Unix way, now I think one needs to choose the right tool for the job, there really is no silver bullet.
In reality, app development with a real IDE such as Visual Studio or Jetbrains products is much more comfortable for me. It's true that these tools limit your expression, but they also alleviate a lot of mental burden. If I don't have to waste brain cycles on typing commands, flexing my fingers through various M-x C-x positions etc. I seem to be able to write faster and with greater ease. On the other hand the code I write in my text editor is usually very dense and more beautiful to look at.
I sometimes compare the situation between living in the Unix world and Windows world with the two fractions in Game of Thrones. Unix people represent the Wildlings, they're brave, free, do not recognize authority, do everything by themselves, live in harsh conditions, yet they are happy because they live a straight-forward and free life. Microsoft people represent the other side of the wall, they're not free, but they have technology, civilization, more population. And there seems to be a great wall between these users.
Wat is nice though is that the terminal in VSCode can be set to an Ubuntu terminal, I wish the entire Git stack could also be. And then, please also add sshfs...
I'm a bit of a purist when it comes to Open Source software and Linux, but for a family computer on Windows 10, I can now have all my Linux stuff and my wife can have her Adobe suite and proprietary Photo printing software. recently there is also very decent hardware available like the Dell XPS 15 line. If my 15" 2011 MBP dies I don't think I'll go for a Mac again.
I do feel sad, there are really only a couple of things holding me back from getting the whole family on Linux.
> If Microsoft burned the Windows kernel to the ground and started with BSD or something so that Windows was actually Unix-y under the hood, I'd switch in a heartbeat.
Sounds like a really bad idea. Windows NT kernel is far superior than the BSD kernel. Fact that WSL is a subsystem to NT kernel tells you that. If they need BSD support, they would implement that as well as a subsystem.
When people complain about Windows, it is usually the win32 subsystem they complain about. That has nothing to do with the NT kernel.
After last major update the interop for WSL works very well.
i'm also looking for a non-android non-ios smartphone, so if anyone knows something decent...
"Feels like" mind you. Completely subjective.
well not anymore
Windows that spawn in random places (such as the 3rd external monitor way outside my FOV), instead of following a logical rule like "on the same desktop as the cursor" or "on the desktop where this app is usually located".
Windows that get stuck in the middle of one of the fullscreen-related animations.
I can go on and on.
I run Solus (Gnome) on an Asus bx410 and I have 0 issues. Would really love it though if the DPI would adapt to the monitor and keep everything the same size.
Oh, I shouldn't say more or my comment will be longer than the article.
Cook your own food, eat well.
At some level, you feel the systemd, Gnome, Wayland integration as something force fed to Ubuntu.
Battery life with the FHD screen is amazing, I can work two 7-8 hour work days on a single charge. At idle I'll get over 22 hours.
The updates for OS and BIOS are more polished than Windows or Mac.
Fedora's a bit wonky with some Asus laptops though. If Fedora is flawless with an XPS 13, I'd probably buy that.
- iio-sensor-proxy has a 90 degree offset by default, meaning that the display is rotated to portrait mode when the laptop is flat. This was the biggest problem IMO, but locking the rotation once fixes it for subsequent boots. Rotating the laptop to portrait puts the display in landscape mode, so iio-sensor-proxy is either reversing the orientation from the sensor or the sensor is reversed.
- There are wifi errors in the log when shutting down. Something about key removal, but has no impact when using
- Really odd ^@^@^@^@^@^@^@... pattern also when shutting down
- Boot takes 3-5 minutes with full disk encryption, but I have a mechanical drive
- dmesg had some other strange things in it, but I remember thinking "Is there any platform where boot results in no error messages? That would be nice". I'm sure Windows has similar things.
I do hate that I cant get fractional scaling (yet) with GNOME. Other than that, things are how you expect them to be.
How bad can the MacOS terminal really be?
High praise.
* http://jdebp.eu./FGA/a-command-interpreter-is-not-a-console....
It was a joke; highlighting that comparing anything favourably to the pile of crap that is the traditional Windows command interface (window, or interface, it really doesn't matter for the comparison) is barely worth recognition for its obviousness.
I'm glad it gave you so much amusement.
Years ago I had Witch installed for awhile to do what you're talking about. If I remember correctly, by default cmd-` would flip through just windows, but I'm pretty sure you can mix them in and have cmd-tab flip through both.
As for a package manager, what are your needs? Since you can't repackage the OS, "package managers" are quite a bit different in macOS and Windows. I've generally liked Homebrew, but when trying Windows and looking at Chocolatey I was really confused (I believe I was hoping to compile/install libraries instead of applications). I think Nix has a lot of potential. I wish I could use it more in Linux and macOS (and I wish it had more polish).
Unfortunately, all laptops in that class seem to have non-replaceable RAM. So for 16gb I'd have to get the $1,499.99 configuration of the XPS 13. It doesn't have a 1 tb drive option, but Crucial sells one for $289.99. The XPS has the webcam below the screen next to the keyboard. Not only do you look up your nose, my fingers showed up. I also very much dislike proprietary chargers, but I'm not enthusiastic about going all-in on USB-C.
The Mac still cost more, but not double the price like I was expecting. I know the battery will last, the ssd is faster than one on SATA, it'll last 5+ years if I need, and will resell well if I take care of it.