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Comment by hellofunk | Hacker News Reader

To suggest that “bug wise“ it is the same between Mac and Linux is a bit of a stretch. I work in a team where the developers are mostly split between Mac and Ubuntu. Guess which ones often have problems joining zoom meetings or attaching their machines to a projector for a presentation? There are a lot of things that you generally don’t have to worry about much if you’re using a Mac. I’m not gonna say that one of these is better than the other, but to suggest they have equivalency wrt common scenarios is a bit strange.

Also, Mac is a certified UNIX environment, it is native.

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I think the corollary is "consider Ubuntu, but still don't skimp on hardware". Buy a proper laptop that ships with Ubuntu, buy a proper connector cable if you need one, etc.

I don't think paying more for hardware significantly changes the problem that was brought up.

I think what he is saying is, don't buy a cheap-ass Dell that runs Windows 10S, then expect to be development powerhouse where all the hardware works properly. He is suggesting buying a developer-oriented laptop that is designed and supported to be running Linux. You'll have less weird hardware quirks that way.

You can buy a $1000 laptop and still run into issues where your computer won't connect to a projector or a major application refuses to support your platform.

Yep, that's exactly what I meant - and peripherals too. I'm sure a big reason Apple products don't have problems video calling or connecting to projectors is high-end hardware, and I don't think the difference between MacOS and Ubuntu on comparable hardware is anywhere near as striking as their reputations would have you believe.

I really, highly doubt that. Autodetecting and using proper settings for a newly-discovered display device (projector) is fundamentally a software consideration, not hardware: the hardware into which you connect the display is capable of talking to it (maybe not at ideal resolution depending on specs, but whatever), but the OS needs to discover, detect, and configure the new connection properly.

The same is true for Zoom: things like accelerated video streaming are universally supported on laptop GPUs, but software support is spotty for some apps/OSes. Things like screen sharing are 100% software-side.

While I'd love to use a Linux workstation (and often do), it's simply not there yet in those areas. That has nothing to do with "high-end hardware" and everything to do with less robust software support than many alternatives--including MacOS.

I guess you could make the case that because MacOS has to support fewer kinds of hardware, they can spend more time on making software support robust, but I'm neither convinced of that argument nor convinced that's what you meant by your post.

You'd think that, but once I replaced my €5 AliExpress connector cable by a proper one, suddenly I haven't had any issues with projectors any more.

Likewise, if you use an underpowered laptop, or one for which Ubuntu doesn't have proper drivers, you're going to have a hard time using Zoom.

I'm not saying that you'll never have issues (which I'm sure holds for MacOS as well), or even that you might not have slightly more issues than on MacOS (see your last paragraph), but things are definitely not as bad as comments online would have you believe, because many of those can be ascribed to issues like I mentioned above.

> Guess which ones often have problems joining zoom meetings

As a linux user, I'd like to say that I've seen that happen just as often with OSX users on my team. I think that's just Zoom's shitty app. But I do agree about peripheral hardware issues plaguing Linux. Bluetooth headphones are still such a hassle on Ubuntu 20.04.

I think it's crazy to seriously consider using an OS where something as basic as Bluetooth is a hassle.

Bluetooth in general isn't a hassle. Bluetooth audio is a little bit of a hassle in the sense that there's a workaround that you have to do.

Bluetooth has never not been a hassle in my experience - and that goes for Android, Windows, Linux, OS X, iOS. There’s always something with the device or driver.

This goes especially for audio.

I’m going to guess that Apple peripherals + Apple OS on Apple hardware is actually hassle-free but then what’s the point of a standard.

This is definitely the largest drawback of Linux in general - support for peripherals and common communication/presentation software is really lacking. If I had a dollar for every time I had to muck around to get my headphones to work on Ubuntu, I wouldn't be posting here.

> support for peripherals and common communication/presentation software is really lacking

Well if peripherals vendor and "common communication/presentation software" didn't test on Linux, whose drawback is it now? That being said, I have used the following without any trouble on Linux: Slack, Discord, Teamviewer, Zoom, BBB and BlueJeans. Vendors don't put enough investment into testing for Linux due to comparatively low usage numbers - but that doesn't mean that it is a "drawback" of the OS.

As for hardware, as Vinnl explains above the way to go is buy certified hardware. Ubuntu and Red Hat folks certify a bunch of Dell and Lenovo laptops to work with Linux. I use Ubuntu on a Dell XPS 13 and I don't need to do ANY extra setup. Things just work (TM) - including my Sennheiser and Jabra headphones.

Seems like a trade-off based on my experiences. On Macs you'll get a less bugs in proprietary, user-oriented apps (like Zoom). On Linux you'll get a less bugs on free software apps, developer tooling and server side apps. Though I think it mostly comes down to where you spend most of your time and what you are working on.

To equate lack of peripheral support to "bugs" is hilarious.

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