Farewell, macOS | Hacker News Reader

Farewell, macOS

preslav.me

43 pointstodsacerdoti35 comments

I think it is time hacker news filters out these kind of desktop migration stories. It almost seems the authors write them to convince themselves of something, unsure what exactly.

But it doesn't seem like there is any valuable hacker news worthy information in any of them.

I agree they are low value, but they do help others to do the something similar.

This is not much different than posts that are like "I migrated my service to docker", "how I went from chef to ansible"

What I find most low value is that these posts usually happen directly after they completed the first step, so there is no retrospective of what did and did not work. It is impossible to know if the author will stick with it or not.

There is still a some value in expressing their discontent with the trends, and people up voting it means that many others feel the same. And that should give some warning to Apple, and give confidence to others to go else where.

I think you’re right about these desktop migration stories being similar to the docker, ansible, chef stories.

I would love to see them all go away for similar reasons. There never seems to be an honest exploration of the “why?”

Telling me you switched from macOS to Ubuntu is as interesting as switching from Cheerios to Lucky Charms... make a case for why I should care or I don’t.

>It almost seems the authors write them to convince themselves of something, unsure what exactly.

That they can drop OS X because of a few minor bugs and instead use a half-assed desktop and be as productive. It's like breaking the chains, right? Right?

> That they can drop OS X because of a few minor bugs and instead use a half-assed desktop and be as productive.

I've used Linux (KDE, XFCE, GNOME, Unity), macOS and Windows in the past 15+ years and I can tell that KDE and macOS are very even productivity wise. Some people can work on simpler desktops like XFCE and GNOME faster.

I just had to reboot my Linux workstation because building's UPS batteries had to be exchanged. Otherwise it runs for years unless I reboot.

That half-baked desktop operating system is way more flexible and faster in some tasks when compared to macOS. Vice versa is also equally valid.

Currently I use Linux and macOS daily. I'd never buy an apple Desktop while I'd never buy a non-apple laptop (because of hardware, mainly).

Moreover, if Debian can achieve 7+ hours of battery life on an old EliteBook 850G2 with onboard graphics, it's possible to use apple hardware as power efficient with Linux.

While I upvoted you I respectfully disagree. I have a couple of Apple laptops lying around and I tinkered with the idea of at least dual booting Linux on some of them but I was always afraid something would go wrong. Stories from people who did it just now are valuable because they tell me exactly what is working and what still needs to be done.

You’re forced to read these... So yes, by all means let’s only allow stories that endlessly fawn over any minor shift that Apple makes!

You know that hardly anyone outside of the SV bubble uses Macs right?

Apple has many users outside SV. Here in Canada I see people using Macs a lot.

It's so weird to read these kinds of things. I work for a software company in Dallas, Texas, where almost all 200 or so employees uses Macs. It's very, very common around here, although by no means universal.

Welcome to the resistance. I’ve been running Ubuntu on my MBP for a year now and have had zero issues, even with the retina display. No special drivers needed, at least for my model. I keep it dual boot so I can work on mobile apps in OS x, but I suspect apple will screw me out of that option to try and force me to upgrade at some point, and at that point, iPhone apps will become something I don’t work on, or I’ll use a remote build service for them.

> I was positively surprised that Ubuntu picked up the native resolutions of both displays

This makes me curious, because I on the other hand would be astonished if it didn’t pick up the native resolution of all displays. So I’m interested in what the mental model is that leads to being surprised when it does work—I know there’s plenty of stuff that I don’t know how it works and may guess incorrectly! As it stands, the only sort of mental model that I can think of is the screen telling the OS “I’m a such-and-such type of display and my resolution is so-and-so”, either when you plug the device in or when the OS asks.

There's a tool to show the EDID [1] information.

  $ sudo apt install read-edid
  $ sudo get-edid | parse-edid
  ...
  Modeline        "Mode 0" 594.00 3840 4016 4104 4400 2160 2168 2178 2250 +hsync +vsync
  ...

Perhaps the mental model comes from using Windows? I don't know what combination of hardware, dongles, docks and monitors causes it, but some of my non-technical colleagues end up with their monitors in non-native resolutions with Windows 10.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extended_Display_Identificatio...

Hmm, yeah, I guess a long time ago some screens did tend to end up with the “generic plug-and-play monitor” driver and have it not know what the true resolution should be. I’d forgotten about that, not having seen it happen for at least ten years.

The display scaling is pretty much solved by using Wayland as a display server protocol. I've been using it using it under Fedora as it is the default there and the results have been good. There are some issues to be aware of as screen sharing and remote desktop not working entirely as they should, but it's been solid otherwise.

If you have Ubuntu installed I believe you can change the session to Wayland when signing in. Or give Fedora a spin, it's my favourite mostly vanilla GNOME experience.

This is so brave. A modern version of a hero. I look into the future and see that these people will be considered trailblazers of their time. It's a life and death situation changing OSs, we should idolize them.

I did this with a ~2011 MacBook Air that came with a 60G hard drive. A couple of years ago I went to upgrade OSX and it turned out I didn't have enough disk space, even with minimal apps installed, so I wiped it, installed Ubuntu and ended up having 45G left over. It was a great way to extend the life of that hardware and I haven't had many issues. The only apps I'm using are terminal and a browser, though.

Yeah, so novel to install Ubuntu in 2020.

LOL looks like this has become such a common tale now and this instance is the straw that broke the camel’s back. The Mac-faithful of HN have been angered with your peasant tales! You will be flagged and must never speak of this again!

Well... that ain’t gonna happen, hate to break it to ya. I switched to Manjaro years ago and never looked back. I’m still excited about it and glad to talk about any and all aspects of my multiple workstations that all run perfectly. I’m really happy with them because unlike my Mac, an update has never bricked any of my machines or stopped me from running apps with their “safety” measures.

Sorry Mac users that your passion for computing has withered away at altar of Apple and now you want to stop others from discussing their own kits. It’s to be expected though - Apple gives you no freedom, so you want to take it away from everyone else... Good lick with that!

Promise to let us know when you revert back after some obscure issues cause partial or total software problems? Thanks!

I think for me at this point MacOS is the main reason to stick with Macs. While from user perspective it didn't get much better (maybe it got worse?) since Lion release in 2011, I still find it a major advantage of Macs.

If I were to switch to another system, I'd probably go with another laptop too - I'd get something with HDMI port, maybe touch screen, maybe the Lenovo laptop-tablet thing? There's been quite some innovation out there that Apple simply ignores, yet I can't convince myself to try Ubuntu or Windows again.

Right. I like my MacBook Air just fine but I could be easily convinced to try other hardware. OS X, you can pry from my cold dead hands.

Yes. Even with the latest buggy and ugly Big Sur update, there’s still nothing better than macOS.

I don't understand it. If you want to run a Linux distro, cool! And maybe if you have an old MacBook laying around, give it a try on that hardware. But especially on the new Apple Silicon models, trying to run an OS that the hardware was absolutely not designed for seems like an exercise in masochism given that there is hardware out there that runs various flavors of Linux perfectly well.

Please see this[1] great resource from Daniel Roschka for what works and doesn't on the various macs out there.

More often than not 2.4ghz wifi will work, but 5 ghz will not. Additionally, restore from sleep is still an issue.

In short you'd likely be better off selling the mac and buying a thinkpad.

[1]https://github.com/Dunedan/mbp-2016-linux

There will be some limitation when switching from macOS to Ubuntu, I guess. However, this alternative looks promise.

Big tech may reconsider about privacy in their product very soon.

These posts are similar to the "I quit Twitter/Facebook/other social media" announcements to the world declaring their freedom from said entanglements.

Ironic: I used to install Windows 10 and Linux on older Macs because they couldn't run the newest macOS.

The Moment I saw GNOME I lost interest in reading further. Good luck, though.

I'm very surprised it runs well. These machines seem designed to not run anything other than macOS.

BTW, I can't wait to see how Linux does on the new M1 Macs.

This is a very odd comment to me.

What would make you think a general operating system wouldn't work well on it?

I remember horror stories on HN that the newer touchpads are completely unusuable under Linux.

For both hardware and software reasons.

Apple hardware is not generic hardware you can buy off the shelves. Expecting driver problems is not odd because of that.

When I worked for Canonical, one of my teammates had one - a 15" Retina MBP. He tried, for months, get Linux installed on it. In the end, he used a VM.

The pre-touchbar macbook pros were still ok. Past that is another story.

I wouldn't even try on a touchbar unit.

Author did not mention trackpad at all. I have my doubts the trackpad works well, or nearly as well as macOS. Without it being mentioned, I just shaked my head and went on.

Don't let the door hit you on your way out...

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