Comment by bowlich | Hacker News Reader

Comment by bowlich | Hacker News Reader

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I guess to each their own. I've slowly grown to hate OSX on my MacBook in comparison to the ease of use that I get out of my daily driver -- Ubuntu on my desktop.

OSX seems far too opinionated on things. It keeps installing Itunes even though I've gone through and deleted it repeatedly. It won't let me uninstall all of the Apple software that I have zero use for (I have no use for a word processor suite). I spend 100% of my time either on Firefox, Thunderbird and the Terminal. I have nearly zero use for any other gui applications and would like to uninstall everything down to the bare minimum of applications and processes to do my work.

Too many terminal applications are subtly different between what I have available on Linux vs OSX, and I'm frequently having to resort to compiling them myself to get feature parity. Shell scripts need to be every so slightly altered to account for the fact that its running on OSX and not Linux -- I'd like to be able to write it once and then run it on my dev machine, virtual machine, and server without needing to make these changes.

OSX likes to liter hidden files all over the place that I need to remember to exclude from git repositories.

These are all little things, but they're little things that have grown over the years to really irritate me and I probably won't be doing a MacBook on my next upgrade.

"To each their own" is when everything else is equal. I don't think that's the case comparing Linux to macOS. And I've used Linux for close to 8 years of my life, on and off, I'm not an Apple defender. Their OS is just better.

I got upset about the things you've said too, after going from Linux to macOS. Linux is much "cleaner" (and FreeBSD even more so). But back on Linux now I get way more upset when Bluetooth doesn't work, when the battery on my laptop isn't recognized (I got a Thinkpad with a removable battery), when the trackpad is glitching. Right now I have a nagging issue that the laptop wont charge when it hits 0% battery unless I unplug it and remove the battery, then plug it again. This is a Thinkpad, which I got specifically because it's said to be hassle-free on Linux.

I'd love to complain about hidden files and the bad situation of package management on macOS, that'd be a luxury. I don't think even the most ardent Linux defender can argue macOS isn't miles away as a consumer OS. You have to be in a very specific bubble of distro+hardware for Linux to never crap out some hardware on an upgrade, before even going into the merits of the UI/UX comparison.

I mean to each their own in terms of your use case may vary based on the UI/UX of your choice. I can see a need for OSX if a big chunk of your workload is going to be in graphic design, front-end development, or some kind of management role where you're spending days looking at spreadsheets or word docs.

I'm also not defending Linux as a consumer OS, but as an OS for use in a work environment tuned purposely to maximize the efficiency of an employee working as a developer who is deploying to Linux from OSX. I'm often bewildered as to why I run into so many back-end developers who are deploying to Linux, yet using OSX for their daily driver.

I suppose the hardware issues that you cite. I've had the occasional hardware issue, maybe once every two or three years that takes a couple hours to track down and fix. My workflow doesn't really make use of pointing devices, and I've never owned a bluetooth device that I've needed to connect to a workstation, so I haven't come across those issues. Battery would be a horrid pain though.

> I'm often bewildered as to why I run into so many back-end developers who are deploying to Linux, yet using OSX for their daily driver.

It's very obvious: they use a personal machine for work only 8h a day and want their OS to be usable the other hours of the day and weekends. It's not that they necessarily prefer macOS for programming, but they prefer macOS for everything else they spend most of their time on. Or, alternatively, they have done so for so long they're more productive on macOS (admittedly a worse OS for programming) than Linux.

Just think of it like this: my demands from a development environment are much less strict than from a consumer OS. For developing all I need is a terminal and some programs, that's it. For a consumer OS all I need is what every other consumer needs: a functioning system 100% of the time with good usability.

It's much easier to run a VM than to constantly fix hardware issues or usability quirks that are out of your control as a user.

Your idea seems to make more sense when you use one for work and have a personal notebook for whatever else. Some people can't have that, or just don't want to. That was my original idea when getting a Linux notebook, but when I had to use it as a personal machine it became much less adequate.

> "To each their own" is when everything else is equal.

No, it is a question of preference. I am way more produtive on Linux than on macOS, because my window manager of choice (i3wm) is very customized to my needs and basically impossible to replicate on macOS (you can come close, however things doesn't work as it should).

> when the battery on my laptop isn't recognized (I got a Thinkpad with a removable battery), when the trackpad is glitching. Right now I have a nagging issue that the laptop wont charge when it hits 0% battery unless I unplug it and remove the battery, then plug it again. This is a Thinkpad, which I got specifically because it's said to be hassle-free on Linux.

This seems to be a hardware issue, since even if the battery is not recognized by Linux (say, bad ACPI tables) it should recharge anyway (you wouldn't have indication of it charging, unless your Notebook has a LED indicator for it).

A prove that this is a hardware problem is that you probably would have the same issue on Windows. If you doesn't it maybe a problem that only happens on Linux, however I find it very strange (and dangerous) that Lenovo would leave battery management entirely to the OS.

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