I switched to Linux and felt the same feeling you did though. Happiness to be back in a nice new system where I feel at home!
- sharing screen in hangouts puts chrome on every virtual desktop so now you can't click on chrome to navigate to that desktop
- slack crashes silently every 24 hours
- virtual desktops is a mess, if one window overflows into another desktop, then when you click on that app ubuntu will take you to the desktop where you see the least amount of your application, usually just a few pixels on the top of the screen
- copy-paste sucks balls, in some applications it's ctrl-c in others its shift-ctrl-c and some applications will copy to clipboard if you select a string
- keyboard support is terrible, in intellij i can't type `or ´ or ~ but I can type all those in gedit and then i have to copy paste them over
- ctrl-a and ctrl-e don't work in most applications, even though these are old school shortcuts that work nearly everywhere on a mac
- installing applications is always terrible on ubuntu. You can install from their app-store, if that works (50/50 odds) but you can't get intellij there, or sublime. To install sublime I had to find a blog post with 4-5 steps I needed to do. For intellij I also found a blogpost, but when I need to upgrade intellij I couldn't find it anymore and had to delete everything inside my intellij folder and copy a new intellij in.
Also, I don't have to restart my wifi 5 times a day anymore, which is kind of a nice win.
EDIT: Oops, I thought these were complaints about windows (highly plausible!). actually it's unix under windows. Apologies.
I can only guess the desktop you used but I assume we talk about Unity/Wayland. Ubuntu removed Unity meanwhile for the Way cleaner Gnome Shell (however I don't know if they have some custom bullshit in there again)
Shortcuts are often miss configured on system level. I noticed nonsense issues therelike as well on Ubuntu.
There are highly different software repository concepts like pacman and the AUR on arch where you have a package selection right there you could never experience anywhere else.
What I am trying to say is that there is no one Linux, I don't like vanilla Ubuntu. However having used any OS in the recent years I love going back to MY Linux.
Edit:// oh the shortcuts are also likely due to the VM I just realized
He's also running unknown version of Ubuntu, probably old, that he doesn't know how to use properly. Odds are really great he's one of those that pastes unknown terminal commands from blog posts to achieve goals he doesn't quite understand and his install is screwed up in some way that would require hours of troubleshooting or 30 minutes to install over top of.
Its like reading an analysis of Chinese quisine written by a guy who only buys past date 99c frozen dinners.
Unfortunately, I'm not aware of any way to turn off this behavior.
there are three main was of "installing applications on ubuntu":
1. main software repositories; this is essentially 1-click install (if you go through the software management application) 2. installing from a PPA (e.g. Sublime); this is 1-line copy/execute (add-apt-repository XYZ), then update (apt update) and 1-click install 3. rarely, you install binaries directly; this is a double click.
none of them is terrible. the vast majority of the Ubuntu/Debian linux software is provided and installed via 1. (update obsessed users use 2.), which is a much faster workflow than windows, and immensely safer.
If a software is fidgety in a version 3 installer, it has nothing to do with Linux, as it's almost exactly the counterpart of the typical windows installation, it's just badly packaged by the developer; binary installers are a small minority anyway.
> copy-paste sucks balls, in some applications it's ctrl-c in others its shift-ctrl-c and some applications will copy to clipboard if you select a string
this is not correct. Ctrl+C/V are the standard, the exception (not "some applications") being the terminal, because Ctrl+C has different semantics.
> keyboard support is terrible, in intellij i can't type `or ´ or ~ but I can type all those in gedit and then i have to copy paste them over
you may have a misconfigured keyboard. run the live version of ubuntu, test the keyboard with the installer, then configure the same on your installed system.
> this is not correct. Ctrl+C/V are the standard, the exception (not "some applications") being the terminal, because Ctrl+C has different semantics.
I agree that it sucks (in a CMD shell). It's the reason I switched to a Mac when I became a developer. Maybe it's come a long way. I've heard good things about PowerShell, too, but honestly haven't played with it much.
As far as the Linux subsystem, I wouldn't use it for anything serious. It choked the first time I tried installing Elixir. I'd probably rely on a Vagrant VM running in VirtualBox (or whatever VM host makes the most sense on Windows).
what the hell does ctrl-e do?
I have 3 different distros running on as many machines all work fine and one is based on ubuntu LTS. Probably what you should be running but whatever.
"- keyboard support is terrible, in intellij i can't type `or ´ or ~ but I can type all those in gedit and then i have to copy paste them over"
Do you really believe people have this issue? Do you think we all have emailed ourselves documents full of all the characters are OS are too broken to recognize? Something is screwed up about how your vm or your vm software is configured that you are blaming on the OS. I have used over a dozen distros in a multitude of versions and none had any problem with hitting a key and having a character appear on the screen.
"virtual desktops is a mess, if one window overflows into another desktop, then when you click on that app ubuntu will take you to the desktop where you see the least amount of your application, usually just a few pixels on the top of the screen"
This sounds sub-optimal but may I suggest you keep windows on one screen. Most environments provide a hotkey to move a window to a certain screen and many provide hotkeys to resize it to either fill the entire screen or some portion thereof like the left/right/top/bottom half or just drag the window all the way onto the screen you intend to use it on.
Personally I prefer the way i3wm handles virtual desktops. They are PER monitor. Optimally you just assign each workspace to a particular output. Example 1-5 on left monitor 6-0 on right and switch a given output and to a given workspace with one click of super or cmd + number.
Want to view your chat app on the right monitor while leaving your browser alone on the left cmd + 7. Its also substantially lightweight which means it would work better on a vm.
The great thing about it is that there isn't ONE way to handle virtual desktops there are a bunch of different environments available one of which probably works optimally for you.
"- ctrl-a and ctrl-e don't work in most applications, even though these are old school shortcuts that work nearly everywhere on a mac"
Many applications are configurable but honestly different environments different conventions this isn't a bug its just a difference.
"- installing applications is always terrible on ubuntu. You can install from their app-store, if that works (50/50 odds) but you can't get intellij there, or sublime. To install sublime I had to find a blog post with 4-5 steps I needed to do. For intellij I also found a blogpost, but when I need to upgrade intellij I couldn't find it anymore and had to delete everything inside my intellij folder and copy a new intellij in."
Installing applications is fantastically easy and works every single time. Most common stuff is available in the repo and you can apt install foo or use the gui if you like.
Most less common stuff is available in a 3rd party repo. If you need such the workflow is google ppa somesoftware note the ppa involved and run
add-apt-repository ppa:something apt-get update apt install foo
if you get bored and want to automate that in fish
function ppa
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:$argv
sudo apt-get update
if [ $argv[2..-1] ]
sudo apt install $argv[2..-1]
end
end
example want newer gimp
ppa otto-kesselgulasch/gimp gimp
When you say it works 50/50 you don't mean that it fails half the time you mean that it installs almost all things just fine save for a few quite frankly mediocre poorly chosen apps that you simultaneously actually pay money for but don't get good support for your environment.
This is probably because your environment is some 7 year old version of ubuntu that is similar to what your servers are running. Seriously the last time I installed intelij I just had to unzip an archive, add to path, and tell it where to get java. This "Install" in /opt actually survived multiple distros and worked without complaint.
Shockingly the instructions you found on the internet probably didn't cover the case of running new sofware on an obsolete base.
Ubuntu Unity was always too opinionated and lacked the necessary UX testing IMO. (Yep, they seemed to have tested it, but not on enough power users; some power users (a lot of them around here it seems) love Unity. Others like me find it a producrivity disaster, probably for some of the same reasons as you found.
That said, a lot of the rest seems like a mix of misunderstandings and broken config either in the host or in the VM.
The shortcuts for text fields on Windows are not consistent either, are they?
I am very used to the organization of shortcuts on macOS, especially those for text editing. Strangely, that's what I miss on Linux the most now. However, it's probably easier to provide them to users when there is only one mainstream GUI toolkit (and, for instance, in Office for mac some of those shortcuts don't work).
in the mean time I'm stuck just like you in the world of linux. My primary desktop pc for the past 9 months was my galaxy note 8 with a usb c to hdmi adapter. it has an incredible chromebook like UI when docked and has all the linux tools i need! I've even been able to write an app and submit it to the app store all from there. You really cant go back after you've tried one device life and it makes filming and editing content for my youtube channel seamless since video never leaves the 256gb SD card inside my phone.
Huawei has a similar mode and i cant wait for google to support it. they do natively support windowed mode and moving apps freely but i mean just add a chromebook ui to the screen when u dock a pixel 3 and you will be golden :)
ideally i need to get a copy of OpenJDK installed and build with gradle but this was much easier.
Expo also allows you to build an iOS blob from Android entirely assuming you have a way to get it onto an iphone through testflight.
Can a machine have "insanely good IO" if dongles are required for everything from iPhones to hard drives to memory cards? I could agree that a machine with 4 thunderbolt ports on top of the regular complement of power, USB-A, and SD slots would be insanely great. But I'm living the dongle life and not loving it.
Four thunderbolt ports is great. One adapter to plug in all of the things you mentioned is also great. iPhones and hard drives don't need dongles, they just need cables. A USB-C to USB-B 3.1 cable is $1.33 from Monoprice; USB 2.0 version is just $1.12. Not too shabby.
For iPhones: the only times I've had to plug my iPhone into my laptop is doing development, but a cable for that only costs $20.
But let's compare it to the previous (2015) MacBook Pro: two USB ports and two Thunderbolt-and-Displayport ports, and HDMI. Five ports total, but no flexibility. Our office was full of DP-to-DVI dongles already, so swapping one dongle for another seems like a no-op. Difference now is that we can buy USB-C monitors which also serve as a power source and a USB hub, meaning one cable to plug in my entire desk. That's something you can't really get on the old MacBooks (at least, not without spending a lot more than it costs to do it on the new MacBooks.
So yeah, the machine has "insanely good IO", and once the rest of the world catches up it'll be even better.
I mean, that's the thing. Apple jumped ahead, and USB-C just isn't common. (At least, for me. I can't name any device I've used or even heard of that uses USB-C.) So, it's a less than practical option if you're in the market for a laptop, not so much insanely good.
I wouldn't buy a computer with only serial and parallel ports because none of my devices use them, and I wouldn't buy a computer with only USB-C ports, because none of my devices use them.
Though to be fair the Mavic Air controller charges with micro USB
USB-C to X cables solve most of the problems, but I have a 3-port USB-C to USB-A dongle for legacy stuff ...
I understand the desire to make the machine thin, which means the old USB had to go. But taking out the SD card slot makes it seem like they don't want you to have an easy way to add more onboard (-ish) storage space.
I never understood this complaint. AFAIK, I've never seen a macbook with a lightning port or the older 13-pin iphone port. If someone had an iphone, they had a USB-A to lighnting cable. Now they need a USB-C to lightning cable. Then you can use the macbook to charge your phone, or the usb-c charger that charges your laptop to charge your phone. Or yes, you can get a usb-c to usb-a dongle - but you can just as easily get the appropriate cable. I'm also seeing that Apple is going to start producing usb-c chargers for iphones and ipads (with a usb-c to lightning cable) in the near future.
I'm a macbook + android user, so I've had USB-C phones for a while, so now I can use the same cable and charger for my laptop or my phone.
iPhones don't come with these, so it basically means you have to go out and buy another cable, which won't work with any of the wall charger power bricks that came with your previous iPhones. I understand a change needs to be made at some point, but it's strange for Apple to ship computers with no ports that are compatible with their iPhones.
I work in many environments and just bring a charge cable with me.
Of course, the iphone was just one of many things that I was noting isn’t compatible. External hard drives? Thumb drives? SD cards? All easily plugged into my previous Apple laptop, but require a dongle here. I have a mini-hub, but even that isn’t great because it can’t charge anything.
$9.99 on Amazon. So I spent $30.
The problem is that when they purchased the iPhone, it came with said cable.
I purchased an iPhoneX this year and it comes with, you guessed it, a USB-A cable. So in order to connect it to my new Apple laptop I need to buy either a $20 cable or a special dongle? If Apple wants to go all in on USB-C then they shouldn’t still be shipping their top of the line “futuristic” phone with USB-A cables.
But obviously they already know that they would have gotten many dissatisfied customers complaining about having to buy a cable just to ‘connect their phone to their iTunes’ if they did that.
I shut it down before a trip to Montreal; two weeks later I came back and it wouldn't boot. No idea why. Had to restore from a previous system snapshot and re-install a bunch of drivers and windows updates.
It's a lot better than it was, but there's still strange, ridiculous stuff that crops up seemingly out of nowhere.