Comment by se32point1 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by se32point1 | Hacker News Reader

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Counterpoints for Linux:

- Compose key blows your "ABC - Extended layout out of the water." It's more powerful than anything else.

- ... I never really use my XPS 13 without a charger, because I don't really travel around much, but it also has USB-C like all the "cool stuff." I would imagine with some tweaking I can get better battery life but I know it does last a while on standby.

- You won't get mainstream-mainstream stuff on Linux, which is probably a problem for some, but for day-to-day usage many Adobe alternatives exist (Blender, Inkscape, Krita, GIMP), along with commercial and professional things (DAWs (eg. Renoise, Reaper, whatever), and DaVinci Resolve)

- /shrugs VNC maybe? Although there are some pretty small monitors out there that should work. (I use HDMI monitors). Advantages of not being in the Apple ecosystem is that there is more freedom.

- Use a keyboard and mouse. It's faster. And more useful. There are only so many things you can do with a trackpad.

- You don't need to do much customization on Linux either (especially something like Pop!_OS or Ubuntu). Things are a lot better (not perfect, but better) than they were before. Nothing like Windows where you have to uninstall the bloatware though

- I looked up the keyboard shortcuts for compose key and it seems like it takes a lot more typing to get to the characters I need than ABC - Extended: To get an acute accent I type opt-e o, for example, to get ó. The same on Linux is compose-'' o. Everything requires at least two characters with compose held down. There are a handful of characters/diacriticals that are shift-opt to reach, but the most common ones are less typing. Also muscle memory makes a difference.

- Many of the alternatives to mainstream stuff have compatibility issues. Maybe this is better now than the last time I've dealt with them last, but part of why I use word is that I need to send documents to people who use word and I'd rather not have surprises (smaller thing but still significant—Word for the Mac shows the word count at the bottom of the window. Word on Windows doesn't (or at least didn't the last time I used it) and Pages on the Mac will show wordcount only in a mini window.

I'm much more productive with a trackpad. MacOS also includes a number of shortcuts on the trackpad that don't work as well with a mouse (even Apple's magic mouse).

I'd note that some of it is also that I've been trained into the shortcuts that I have on the Mac (both keyboard-based and trackpad-based). Muscle habit goes a long way towards keeping someone on a platform.

Ah, so compose isn't actually held down. What we do is we press compose, then release, then do the combination we want. In this. Now, for ó, it's not actually compose (⎄ is compose's symbol) "o, it's ⎄'o, with an apostrophe, so it's not as bad. Indeed, there, are some pretty bad ones, like ⎄`+o, which gives you ờ (a Vietnamese letter), but it's still usable. The point of compose is the sheer number of combinations it has. Finding a new combination on https://www.x.org/releases/X11R7.7/doc/libX11/i18n/compose/e... is almost magical.

I mean, I'd just use PDF, but I get the need for Word. In that case... Office Online is an option? You can probably write up everything in a solution like LibreOffice (which is not as abominable as people make it out to be, and some of the horrid bugs it used to have have been fixed, but it's not perfect either), and export to DOCX, then check it through in Office Online and it should be good. LibreOffice does have word count in the bottom as well, which is a nice addition

Linux also supports trackpad gestures, although they are prone to not being as smooth or whatnot. Since I spend my life on the keyboard I use that instead, and it's just as productive. I find it annoying to go reach for my trackball.

Indeed, yes. Although I should probably take that into account too since I'm switching to a 60% keyboard that doesn't have arrow keys, and I'm going to have to relearn a lot of stuff. In the end, as others have said, switching to Linux feels bad in the beginning but you grow to love it as time passes. Sure, it has issues, such as these, but it also has other strong advantages.

I have a Dell XPS13 Developer Edition. I like it but the trackpad is the weak point for me. An external mouse is not the solution to that.

I haven't wanted to use a mouse since 2006. I much prefer the trackpad on my 2014 MBP to any mouse. For me it's worth it for the gestures alone.

Each to their own I guess.

Edit: The good news is that the trackpad support is improving constantly especially with Wayland.

Agreed on the Wayland point. Wayland isn't particularly usable yet, but we can keep hoping that it gets better. For now, there are some GNOME extensions or applications like fusuma.

And how do you scroll in any axis, swipe, zoom, 3D touch, etc with a mouse? There are plenty of things you can't do.

... In all fairness, I use a trackball, where I can scroll in any axis. Zooming, of course, can be done with a keyboard. I'm not even sure what 3D touch is.

What trackballs offer free scrolling? And something done with a keyboard is by definition something not done with a mouse. And 3D touch is something that's very convenient.

I don't know if you answered my question: what is 3D Touch? Sure, it might be convenient, but it's hard for me to imagine without knowing what it is.

> What trackballs offer free scrolling? My trackball (Marble Trackball from Logitech) offers it, with a little configuration. Effectively, you're holding down a button and using the ball as a scroll wheel, letting you move left and right. I can imagine that any trackball (since by nature they have the "ball") with some configuration could be used for free scrolling (at least, well, on Linux).

> And something done with a keyboard is by definition something not done with a mouse. We scroll on a mouse. We can also scroll on a keyboard (with arrow keys). So they are interchangeable sometimes. I know Windows also has a feature to emulate the mouse with arrow keys. So this isn't inherently true, unless I'm misunderstanding.

3D Touch is where you press deeper to activate some function.

Sure, you can do lots of things with a keyboard. But your suggestion was that a mouse is faster and more useful than a trackpad.

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