Linux is Making Apple Great Again
jasoneckert.github.io
jasoneckert.github.io
Every version had its bugs at release and were mostly fixed after a few point releases. If I recall, the only one that was fine from the start was 10.6 Snow Leopard, and that was only because 10.5 Leper was so bad.
Heh
2) XQuartz took a while, but is doing well.
3) was a big one in making upstream wine not work. with wine32on64 you can sure still pull the pinball party trick, but building that thing takes too much.
4) was specifically SIP for me, especially when they started making updates break with system changes. The ntfs-3g automount thing has always relied on replacing mount_ntfs [which is, by the way, not the proper way to make an fs on a Mac -- there's some filesystem bundle business], and now it's too much of a pain to still access the Windows drive.
I had started using OSX with Jaguar on my G4 PowerBook and Snow Leopard doesn’t stand out in my mind. I liked Lion more because it had full disk encryption and AirDrop.
It was faster, smaller, did just as much as leopard, just solid.
While I have soft spots for 10.2 as that’s when OS X finally became usable and 10.4 when it overtook Windows there’s not a chance I’d want to use any of the older versions on a daily basis - it’s never been better than it is now.
I have both in my collection. Including one tattered 2006 first-gen Intel MBP that I picked up from a trash heap and restored.
Every time I open that MBP up, the design makes me feel like a high-roller Hollywood producer. I was just thinking the other day that I wish I could have that machine with M1/M2 guts inside of it.
Those plastic MacBooks are also a joy to sit in front of.
And though I thought the unibody MacBooks/Pros looked spaced aged at the time, they kind of look unsightly today. Those black bezels are huge and obnoxious, and give the laptop a raccoon look.
It does for me. It was the first Intel-only release and at the time I had G4 Powerbook. I was quite pissed at Apple at the time.
Personal favorite release was 10.9/Mavericks.
Snow Leopard had a bug where using the guest account would wipe the data from the main account.
For me the tooling on MacOS is the only advantage that it offers. I am familiar with it which makes some tasks quite easy and the platform more powerful for me than Windows.
The latter offers alternatives by now and they are quite good as well. Powershell is in parts just a bit more modern than the average Linux shell or you can just install a Linux subsystem to begin with. For me it was a bit late to the party though, but this is one part where Windows really did improve a lot.
But both closed source OS have become worse overall. This isn't some nostalgia the parent hints at, there are certain features that can establish that pretty clearly. From ads to account requirements or thorough suggestions at least.
I don’t feel like MacOS is any more locked down than before. I think that is just a thing people say because it aligns with their computing philosophy and makes it easy to hate on Apple.
Ken Thompson, co-creator of UNIX, expressed disappointment with Apple's macOS, prompting him to transition to Linux, specifically Raspbian.
Apple's ARM-based Silicon architecture offers excellent hardware, but users like Thompson and Linus Torvalds find macOS restrictive.
The Asahi Linux project enables running an ARM64 Linux distribution on Apple Silicon hardware.
What linux can do but osx can? Because I always thought osx can do whatever linux do because its unix based
- systemd has some inspiration from launchd, but certainly not its documentation strategy - `du` doesn't have a `-b` flag (repeat for oodles of useful GNU flags baked into my fingers) - getting a "pristine" environment on macOS is a true PITA and a horror for CI (containers win massively here) - some things are only available through the UI (e.g., TCC.db edits are SIP-locked to when Preferences deigns to ask you) - useful window management (macOS is quite a bit behind even Windows' rudimentary tiling and focus management and even Windows has all kinds of sad quirks compared to what XMonad and Awesome provide)
My new windows used to split an ever smaller portion of my screen in a fibonacci spiral based layout. I could also move between windows with hotkeys.
Rectangle is useful in a pinch, but it's no tiling window manager.
I've been successfully using Witch to restore normal window-tabbing (in place of application-tabbing): https://manytricks.com/witch/
Unfortunately after MacOS ~Vista~ Catalina you still need to grant Witch permissions for each application you're alt-tabbing to that Witch hasn't seen yet, but considering I use ~6 apps 99% of the time, this works for me.
To get simple window tiling/placement, I found BetterSnapTool to be sufficient for my needs: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/bettersnaptool/id417375580?mt=...
It handles magnetic corners and placement via hotkey. I mostly work with a dock and external keyboard, so I bound CMD+SHIFT with numeric keypad buttons to reflect the placement (e.g: CMD+SHIFT+NumKey7 -> put the window in the top-left corner). I don't miss the hotkeys when I'm without dock because anyway the screen would be too small, so I resort to just alt-tabbing.
MacOS cannot run Docker containers natively, if you are a developer today that is a pretty big annoyance. The solution basically being to run Linux on MacOS.
The article quotes Ken. Then in the next paragraph says “macOS move slowly towards closed standards and tighter control.” But is that what Ken was saying? That part isn’t a quote, and on a quick first read I almost thought that was the reason Ken gave.
Raspberry Pi is no more open than Apple. Sure it runs Linux, but is the ARM processor Raspberry Pi uses open? I recall it wasn’t.
So here are my questions:
1. Why did Ken throw away “zillion years in Apple”?
2. What Pi hardware is Ken using? Pi doesn’t come in laptop or desktop form factor.
3. How is driver support on Ashai? Is everything working?
4. Is there any laptop out there made from aluminum with a strong frame? And a 120hz mini LED or OLED display?
When I’ve look at the options from System76, Framework, Dell, Lenovo and others they all look like my PC laptops from the 2010’s just slightly thinner.
I don’t trust LG, Samsung or Lenovo. The latter due to its history with malware.
I’m pretty sure he is running Rasbpian on some laptop and not using a Pi as his “daily driver” ;)
The article only deals with your question #3, and the answer is yes, everything's working.
As of the fourth question, the key message seems to be: don't buy a Framewok or System76 Linux laptop... the best Linux laptop is a Mac.
As I got older, I got less time to fiddle with drivers on linux (Nvidia/noveau drivers ptsd, wifi drivers…) why can’t it just work!?
The title should be the other way around: Apple is making Linux Great Again.
Having limited but excellent hardware configuration makes writing stable software easier.
Working in the current times on my MBP seems like I finally have my linux install “set up just right.”
Yeah, I tend still to toss around a dotfiles repo, stay in vi often, but stuff like vscode, obsidian, ios file sync, etc… just works.
Upgrades don’t brick shit.
I dunno. I am grateful I don’t have to use wsl/wsl2/cygwin anymore to get tools I need.
I always thought os x is better than linux because its unix and it haves windows like software(ms office and adobes) and no other laptop better than macbook pro for me
Dont get it wrong i use linux on my desktop and server and currently burning tumbleweed iso to a dvd
"All your 32-bit programs are dead now, yes including your paid-for games. Lol."
"OpenGL and Vulkan weren't invented here, we'll make the same thing, but not compatible, instead of supporting them."
Apple's file system is still shite. "file cannot be deleted because the disk is full" is a Kafka style nightmare message.
Mac users are also a significant horror when you go asking for help with any of this, they generally have gone full Stockholm syndrome and will blame the new victim rather than the captor.
I don't buy Apple hardware, but this quote could be applied to just about every big manufacturer.
folks thoroughly flamed the 9front community for using holocaust imagery (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25778940) and this is sort of a parallel choice.
I think you might want to take a step back from politics for a bit and take a deep breath.
I would advise you refrain from putting words in my mouth.
Good job?
A little introspection may be helpful.
Also recognize it's a tired game of both ends of the political spectrum to convince people the other side is full of monsters who want to destroy them. Look at wartime propaganda. There's plenty of room to disagree with each other and be passionate about our convictions without involving that element.
If your response is, "no but really..", start reading from the top again.
Except if you're working class, then all bets are off. People can laugh at you, dismiss you as white trash, kill your livelihood and tell you to "learn to code" when businesses still getting huge tax cuts "outsource", and your local jobs die, and so on.
Again, start from the top.
If that's seriously true, then there's even less reason to consider this "a little thing called fun."
> Look at wartime propaganda.
Whether or not wartime propaganda is justified, war is not "a little thing called fun."
MAGA's are not good people, regardless of how scared they maybe of others.
Their fear makes them dangerous as they lack the emotional intelligence required to allow others to exist without their approval. Also, they are often well armed and have bene involved in many mass shootings.
Nobody thinks it's fun, except the people who wear the red hats.
People who aren't partisans one way or the other could not give less fucks.
But even bona fide leftists have used red hats ironically and in comic sketches ever since they appeared.
If anything, it's probably people who wear the red hats who would be "insulted" ("oh, you're making a mockery of our slogan!")
The author appears to be Canadian, so maybe he's just oblivious.
> But even bona fide leftists have used red hats ironically and in comic sketches ever since they appeared.
Of course. But the article author doesn't appear to be mocking the MAGA movement, just using an ill-advised expression and photo to make an unrelated point.
An author has to know their audience. Whether or not you personally believe that MAGA revulsion is "justified", it's a mistake to put off a large portion of one's audience, even if that was unintentional.
The author is just using it as a meme-template of "Make X great again", repurposing something considered tacky as a joke, as countless others have done. Obviously ironically, the same way people would use "Just say no" or other slogans ironically. In fact, it's pretty obvious they're anything but sympathetic to the original thing to use it jockingly like this.
It's time to stop being so negative to anything that's not sterile corporate speak, sanitized six ways from Sunday by HR and marketeers.
Just Say No was a largely ineffective advertising campaign from over 30 years ago.
MAGA is the slogan of the previous and possibly next POTUS. This is serious business, and there's a lot at stake. Perhaps democracy itself? I make jokes all the time, but I wouldn't casually joke about this.
And your conclusion is asinine. They love memeing the slogan.
If you do not look at Trump and his memetic strategy and see the rise of fascism in the USA, you have not been paying attention.
Of course that's also what everybody making a bad comparison would say. "I'm my case it's justified".
In fact, if Hitler was re-incarnated in the 21st century, something he would have added "my opponent is literary Hitler" to his playbook - dehumanizing the other side.
But of course those who do that only do it becaue they're "justified" in doing it.
Here’s what the author might add: (1) What did Ken Thompson find off putting about Mac OS? (2) What was wrong with Linus’ screen that couldn’t be fixed and how did switching to Linux fix it? (3) What benefits of running Linux vs Mac Os inspired the author to write this article?
Those three points, or similar, might make this article more interesting and valuable.
I remember this incident so I can elaborate.
While Apple is known for "consumer premium" hardware, they have not necessarily been leading on anything. They source premium hardware from a few generations ago and mass produce it and market it at "consumer premium" prices.
When Linus was trying to find a replacement for his older Macbook, he was unimpressed by the screen resolution and quality went with a Dell XPS 15 Developer Edition instead. This was around 2015.
My approach to making MacOS awesome for me, is using Nix on Darwin. I really enjoy codifying my MacOS setup and I have set things up in a way where my MacOS build is almost indistinguishable from my NixOS builds when it comes to the appearance, keyboard shortcuts and overall workflows.
* Docker performance - even the top-of-the-line MBP I have cannot handle a few services in a docker-compose before starting to error about loosing CPU cycles or the TCP/IP communication between the services dying
* I cannot use a proper titling WM like i3/sway. There are some hacks but they fall apart and they're nowhere near as configurable as I would want
* I get attacked by ads telling me to upgrade to iCloud+
* Most importantly - it is very different than the environment where I run stuff (Linux node/server/etc.) so there's another layer of complexity and problems attached when developing on it to be deployed there compared to developing on Linux (even a different distro than the target)
* In general I feel like the OS is treating me like an idiot when using it - the feeling is displeasing
I find the lack of self awareness astonishing.
This is not a question of "setup macos takes effort X vs setup linux (on M2 laptop) takes effort Y" this is a question of "doing nothing (keep existing system) is no effort while setting up a new system (new hardware, new architecture, etc) is major effort"
Linus Torvalds when asked on a Real World Technologies forum whether he would buy an Apple Silicon laptop, he responded with:
I’d absolutely love to have one, if it just ran Linux. I have fairly fond memories of the 11” Macbook Air (I think 4,1) that I used about a decade ago (but moved away from because it took Apple too long to fix the screen - and by the time they did, I’d moved on to better laptops, and Apple had moved on to make Linux less convenient). Apple may run Linux in their cloud, but their laptops don’t. I’ve been waiting for an ARM laptop that can run Linux for a long time. The new Air would be almost perfect, except for the OS. And I don’t have the time to tinker with it, or the inclination to fight companies that don’t want to help.
The quote is there because the author felt the same way, and the situation has improved since Linus said that.
Not that the blog is very substantial, but the point of the quote isn't what you thought it was.
I have spent dramatically more time delving into OS nonsense to solve issues on the Windows machine, from "ghost" controller inputs making WPF applications unusable to audio devices randomly disappearing to some weird HDCP interaction causing my display to turn off when Disney Plus is loaded in Firefox.
I do not have nearly the same amount of trouble with my Linux machines; nor does my boyfriend, who is not a technical professional and uses Xubuntu exclusively.
Yes, Linux on the desktop can require tinkering, but it's not always the case. With the right hardware choices and some thoughtful setup, it can be remarkably stable.
That is one of the issues Apple has been solving at least since 20 years ago when I started using mac books. You don't have to think anything, plug and work.
I am not an apple fan boy and I wish I had an alternative (which I tried during these 20 years) but mac books has been the only solution that has worked so far for me.
Honestly to me macOS is a bigger pain to deal with.
For example, the scanner in the mfp in my office stopped working after some system update (this one I never got working again, I just rdp into windows machine now and then copy over the scan). Another problem was with flickering display when connected over TB3 dock with M1 macs -- and no such problem with Intel macs in the same dock (it was "solved" by buying another dock). Software-wise, I had to edit /etc/ppp/ip-up & ip-down scripts to get correct routes for IPSec vpn. I had to manually add hunspell dictionaries, if I wanted working spellcheck. For a certain period, smb didn't work in Big Sur out of the box, because installer/updater was putting incorrect owner on a system file needed (/private/var/db/mds/messages/$(uid)/se_SecurityMessages) And so on, and so.
So yes, there is definitely tinkering, unless you have very narrow use cases, that happen to 100% align to Cupertino marketing scenarios.
I, not too long ago, did end up having to reinstall Ubuntu when changing the screen resolution went wrong for some reason.
Me either.
I'd help remove and reinstall the drivers, the printer would work for a few days... then a windows update would occur, and the printer stops working. My intervention recurred at least five times throughout summer, it was probably simply ignored as broken most of summer to not overly aggravate me.
The elderly owner of this new computer was ready to buy a new printer, entirely blaming the hardware. It was very clearly the operating system + driver at fault, but she's not the most computer literate person.
It's 2023 and MS still can't make a USB printer stay configured properly across updates.
And don't even get me started on the FOX News propaganda embedded in whatever gadget has replaced the start menu. What a raging dumpster full of tire fires MS Windows has become.
I don't have a Mac, but Windows has become quite needy and bloated. While Linux has become easier to install, harder to mess up and less jarring with interface changes in the last decade.
I work with a lot of different people with a lot of different operating systems.
Today, for most people and their needs, Linux is an EASIER operating system to deal with than Mac Os OR Windows.
As much as I would love to credit the amazingness of Linux, it's mostly because a lot of people can do everything they need in a browser + a few basic apps.
> I find the lack of self awareness astonishing.
You don't understand the context. That is a comment from Linus, and he is going to run Linux on his laptop. So the comment is referring to either using a laptop that is reasonably well supported by Linux with no changes, or using the Apple one which at the time was not well supported. So he would have to tinker to get it working.
Mind you, it's not really true that Linux = tinkering these days. I just got a new laptop with Windows on it. I thought I'll give it a try since I haven't used it for a few years.
Hyper-V was pretty clunky inflexible but it worked. The console / graphics driver for the VMs is horrible and clunky, no apparent way to change that, probably some obscure registry option or 3rd party thing I'd have to download.
After installing and setting up a few VMs, I was informed (for about the 15th time since booting) that Windows had something it needed to restart for. Upon return, all hyper-v images and snapshots were gone or corrupted. It wouldn't even start until I messed around with the filesystem. Until then the entire manager refused to start because some snapshots were corrupted or something. No option to ignore, delete, or try to recover them.
Okay that's a pain in the butt, I'll start out just using ssh to get to some systems elsewhere. Hallelujah, ssh client is finally provided out of the box. Turns out the shell is the biggest piece of garbage and makes it impossible to do much over ssh.
The internet browser is horribly slow and unresponsive. Guess I'll have to install something sane. I give up.
I pick it up a couple days later and decide to have another try. The thing chews battery when it's suspended, it almost ran flat after a couple of days. No doubt I'd have to go in and tinker with settings or get a 3rd party thing to do it for me to improve that.
Start trying to install another VM. The input system gets stuck thinking the down arrow key or pg down is being held. Then goes unresponsive.
Corruption, data loss, crashes, at least a dozen reboots after about 2 solid days of using it (and achieving less than nothing) and that was with Windows mostly-installed already. Not to mention a poor out of the box environment for doing anything.
I'm sure after installing a bunch of stuff on it and changing a bunch of settings it could be made to work okay. By contrast I ended up installing a Linux distro on it in about 30 minutes, one reboot, and that comes with editors and compilers and git and a reasonable web browser. Nothing had to be changed except screen brightness and track pad sensitivity.
For me, for the work I do on my laptop, Linux works great out of the box and Windows seems to require a lot of tinkering. So a lot of it comes down to what you're doing with it I think. Windows is great for running games and Microsoft software I'm sure.
On apple there's no package management for the entire system, sure you can add brew (or others). Then a ugly patch work of plugins (many are mentioned on this thread) to get alt-tab, better window management, etc. Sadly seems like apple's opinionated view of the desktop battles with plugins, so often the options/decisions are different for each major apple release.
I find it easy to believe linux users spend more time fighting apple's decisions then if they could just have a universal package manager and control over the window manager and have fast/easy access to containers.
Hell I likely waste minutes a day fighting cut/paste on OSX. If you use apple native apps, iterm2, and xquartz seems like the state diagram for cut/paste is way too complex for me to remember.
At least for a linux user, Apple's cut/paste seems horribly broken and limited. I'm used to copying images and documents into thunderbird for attachments, into web UIs to upload, and general things act as I expect. On apple for whatever reason I end up saving it to a file, then finding it with the finder, then uploading it by naming the dir/file. I'm rather puzzled, since NextStep seemed to have gotten drag and drop to work perfectly, not sure what Apple did to break that.
Can we just put it to bed already?
What do you mean? "Exactly what a countryside simpleton ("Ignaz", at the time and place) would adopt as a stance"?!
Somebody takes an innocent expression and tries to taint it, you do your part in deflating the tainted use, you renormalize - that's what you are supposed to do. The article author uses irony.
Agreed.
> this is a literal Nazi-ism
Uh…what? I’m struggling to recall the locations of the concentration camps in the USA.
We also shouldn’t keep the guy I don’t like is Hitler meme alive.
My reply was to the above statement.
First, Hitler rose to power by appealing to workers (despite actually being pro business). He broke the law and was put on trial, but this only caused his support to increase.
On the basis of his celebrity he was able to raise money and win election to government. He went on to use the Reichstag fire as a pretext for taking over the government he was ostensibly there to serve.
So it’s intellectually fine to draw parallels between Nazi Germany and the extreme right in the US because those parallels really do exist.
It’s the diminution of these parallels that I find disturbing. Such as the use of a divisive political symbol in a technical article.
Are you referring to the roughly 50% of the country who voted for, and according to current polls slightly over that who plan on voting for former president Trump?
That's a mighty broad brush you're painting with there.
To be accurate, ~29% of eligible voters, from ~47% of the vote with ~63% turnout.
And of course millions of people in the country are ineligible to vote, the majority of whom are youths.
74 million is a large number nonetheless. Roughly 22% of the population.
You didn't think this joke was funny, and that's fine. I thought it was funny, and that's fine.
Calling it a "Nazi-ism", is also fine, but if that means he shouldn't be allowed to say it, that is not fine.
See the following picture, it kinda captures the point:
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FrrVOoFXoAEOWYe?format=jpg&name=...
Its behind windows in every step, desktop experience, app support(no games!) And more, while not being as pure / techy friendly as Linux.
Didn't know that ashai got so far!, how is it on laptops? And can I use the custom kernel on anything else? Like fedora / Ubuntu?