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Comment by Kalanos | Hacker News Reader

Getting your custom stack tuned feels great, but maintaining that entire stack across updates is daunting. You can't join meetings because your headphone/ mic/ video drivers aren't working? yikes. i trust apple to handle hardware and os for me.

I've switched to: macOS > brew (basic cli utils & gui apps) > some basic zshrc (not ohmyzsh) > docker (not environment managers) > done.

^ but i've lost trust for them to handle dev tools for me.

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> You can't join meetings because your headphone/ mic drivers aren't working? yikes.

I really don't know where you're getting this from. This isn't 2004 and you don't have to screw with ALSA drivers to get basic audio functionality on Linux.

On both PulseAudio and Pipewire, I've never had this problem and I know many others who haven't had issues either, and I really just don't think audio input/output is a gigantic issue on Linux (other than, obviously, if you have niche hardware, but I still haven't had audio issues other than when I tried to install Linux on a Chromebook using the MrChromebox coreboot UEFI firmware). Audio drivers failing is something that people like to throw out there even though it's not very common. I've literally never had my audio drivers suddenly fail on me. The only mic issues I've had are the ones I'd have on any other system, like choosing the wrong input device and wondering why no one can hear me.

> maintaining that entire stack across updates is daunting

I've had Arch installs for long, long times. IME and in many other people's experiences, Arch doesn't really break that much (read: at all for me) through updates compared to other distros (eg. Ubuntu). It's a good example of a distro that you'd want to use on a desktop for this exact reason.

It’s way better than it was before (though not 2004, I used Linux for a long time and even ~ 2012 BT audio was finicky), but it’s not as plug and play an experience as on windows and macOS. For example, see this issue where BT headphones drop to extremely bad audio when you want to also use the inbuilt mic: https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/616973/use-high-qua...

The solution to this is basically to remove pulse and install pipe wire, which is definitely not the default on most distros and not something you can do without technical skills and the time to manage the setup.

I've been a Linux user since before PulseAudio came onto the scene, and it's starting to get better. But, applications still have issues with new audio devices being connected or disconnected, and not detecting the change. Teams for Linux is a big offender here, but also OBS Studio.

Bluetooth headphones work too (which, with my previous experiences, I never expected to work beyond a tech demo), but they sometimes get stuck in HSF/HFP mode and have to be switched manually. But, at least there's a good GUI for it.

Thanks for sharing your experience

I've been on Arch a couple years now; before that MacOS. I'd say things break about as often as they did on MacOS. Maybe once a year. It's not like MacOS with Homebrew and a few dozen developer tools is bulletproof. But at least on Arch you are able to understand your own system and have half a chance of fixing things.

You're totally right about the real joy being in "getting your custom stack". On Arch, for one example, installing Docker is just "sudo pacman -S docker". On Mac you get a web page, "Docker Desktop" and a tray icon to look at for the rest of your life. On Arch everything is just so much easier.

Meanwhile, macOS, Homebrew, and Docker are all chock full of phone-home spyware, which is why I switched away.

It's a bit more work but at least I'm not fighting my computer the whole way to not spy on me.

i agree. the mental overhead is too much for me to justify, personally, for my own machine

So don't use Arch. Use Debian.

In 30 years the "you are using the wrong distribution" never gets old it seems.

Because it's still relevant, and there will never be a one-size-fits-all distro that satisfies everyone?

It works for the desktop OSes that actually matter and are worth selling software to, the fact that it is still relevant is the issue.

That's a great advice! On the other hand, what is it that Arch offers and Debian does not? (Asking this as a long time Slackware fan.)

What offer debian that arch doesn't offer? Arch it is really stable and with latest packages. I see debian as a pain in the ass when you want a new packages or you have to upgrade to a new version. I don't have those issues in arch.

Better package management. More stability.

I think pacman is one of the best package managers. And as I said, arch it is quite stable, a little less than debian, which stops me from using it in production, but good enough to use it daily.

Newer packages? A rolling release?

Or if you really don't want to have to deal with the overhead, choose macOS or Windows.

or Fedora

> You can't join meetings because your headphone/ mic/ video drivers aren't working?

Funnily the "oh wait my mic is not working, let me reboot" seems to happen all the time when my Mac-using coworkers join meetings.

That's probably more due to marketing for the Mac advertising "It just works", which attracts people with low technical aptitude.

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