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Comment by evlapix | Hacker News Reader

I have challenged myself with the same question. After giving Ubuntu another chance, I realized how frustrating its inconsistencies are. For example: "cmd+,".

Maybe I haven't been with Ubuntu long enough to see through these slight details, but they make all the difference for me.

Another solid advantage is that when you hit a wall on Ubuntu and start googling around for a solution, you typically need to sort through several pages of "What's your configuration". On OS X, there is no such issue.

Disclaimer: I'm probably not a power user by HN's definition.

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I very much agree here! Ubuntu's 90% of the way there, but when you're used to things like Cmd+, for preferences, not having it is frustrating.

That said, more and more I'm moving to the cloud for doing things that aren't Emacs or a shell, and I'm thinking that Ubuntu and a tiling wm are all I'd really need to be productive. I've tried in the past but it just never seems to gel for me in terms of usability.

More like 90% of the way to being half as good as Windows.

If you actually use expose and drag and drop on a Mac (e.g. try dragging a file to a choose file button in a web browser) you'll quickly realize just how far behind every other OS is. It's not just that the Mac has deep UI advantages over Windows/Linux/etc., but that it's had them for ten years and it's ingrained into the DNA of third party apps.

> More like 90% of the way to being half as good as Windows.

That's pretty harsh and rings of fanboy-speak. Have you tried Ubuntu recently? Compiz (which has been around for 5 years) replaces and dare I say improves on expose, and you can drag/drop files into choose file buttons.

Yes, I know you said it's the long-lasting/deep integration that makes those features compelling, but I fail to see any examples of that integration that warrants such a negative blanket statement.

What a lot of people don't know is that you can drag and drop a file/folder icon onto any OS X file open dialog. The dialog will then browse to that folder or select that file.

And what's more, you can drag the icons from application titlebars and it has the same effect! Try it with icons in file browser trees inside 3rd party OS X apps, AND IT STILL WORKS! Try dropping the icons directly onto textfields that are meant to contain file paths (ones bound to browse buttons) AND IT STILL WORKS!

This is what having a consistently applied collection of user interface controls, and the first party devs dogfooding them, does for an OS.

> I'm thinking that Ubuntu and a tiling wm are all I'd really need to be productive

For me that's where the road in the long term is going. At the moment Ububtu is still a little to rough for everyday use (for me at least). But I give it another one or two years and the quirks will be gone.

And then it will be: tiling WM + terminal + vim (and a browser). Tiling WMs are just too productivity friendly to pass up on. :]

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