From Linux to OSX - 1 Year Later | Hacker News Reader

From Linux to OSX - 1 Year Later

batsov.com

62 pointsbozhidar129 comments

Interesting. I actually love the Command key. I see it as a Control key for GUI operations, leaving my actual Control key free for doing things in my Terminal. This is actually a big sticking point when it comes to trying to work on Linux workstations like we have at work -- GUI and console stuff end up munged under the same modifier key (and this is harder to change than you'd think, even with a lot of xmodmap work).

That said, I've also ditched my Caps Lock key entirely and turned it into a second Control key. Control-A has never seemed difficult to me, at least with this arrangement, but I'm not a home row typist (or an Emacs user -- I just use the Emacs bindings in text boxes and terminals).

Otherwise this more or less mirrors my experience, although mine was ~7 years ago (so the Linux desktop environment was even less mature at the time). I haven't found a need to shop around for as many alternative applications. In particular, you can have Terminal.app when you pry it from my cold dead hands.

I never forget that time when I was ssh-ed on some machine and was doing something very urgent, and wanted to copy some text from the terminal to text editor (it was an Ubuntu machine) and accidentally pressed control-c and killed the session. I could've killed someone.

IMO, the Command key is one of the best features of a Mac.

Another vote for "the Command key" (specifically, a modifier key distinct from the Control key on which to put the "more modern" shortcuts like copy, paste, kill window).

But then I was on text-mode Linux (and before that, text-mode Unix) for many years. I would understand if someone used to Windows did not like it.

I agree with your general point. I dislike most things about mac but their extra keys do make sense.

But control-c should not kill your session, only the currently running process. Control-d is what kills sessions. If you have no current foreground process the shell just starts a new input line. Still could be real bad obviously if a process is killed.

You're right. It didn't kill the session, it killed the process (Nutch (a search engine) was at its last stages of computing PageRank for tens of thousands of pages, which takes quite a while).

I watch co-workers struggle all day with their windows-based terminals logged into Linux machines. Copy is something like shift+insert or they have to go to edit > copy. So painful

Except for the fact that shift + insert is for pasting. ctrl + insert is for copy. Did not change till the old DOS days. Still works today, and even more, it works in my Konsole terminal emulator. There's nothing painful about that. Once you get it, it's like riding a bicycle.

Even more, selecting text for copy, then clicking a mouse button for paste is a pretty much standard workflow. putty uses the right click for paste, while Konsole / Gnome Terminal / etc. use the middle click for that. Don't know about other Windows terminal emulators though. The other emulators that I tried pretty much had the same underwhelming behavior as cmd.exe.

I have the opposite problem. There's one command - I think it's probably <C-w> (split screens in Vim) that I always hit every time I'm using a Mac, and it inevitably closes my entire terminal.

The nice thing about Linux is that I can at least remap these keybindings. On OS X, it's literally impossible to do a perfect remapping of the keys (trust me. I've tried.)

Hopefully I've saved recently (or run the process inside GNU screen....).

Cmd-W in OSX is default for close window, so that's probably it.

You say you've tried to fix it.. Have you tried these?

In Terminal.app, find the setting for "don't close this window unless no commands are running", and select it.

Or, in System Prefs/Keyboard/mappings or somesuch, override Cmd-W in Terminal.app to a noop.

If by <C-w> you mean control-w (I'm a vi user and don't know!), also take a look here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4497258

No, I already remap Caps_Lock to Esc - much more useful.

Thing is that you can't blame the keyboard for a PEBCAK. We all encounter that "never forget" moments at some point. Having a Command key is a moot point as the whole purpose of power user tools is this: having the power, and the consequences, at the finger tips. You know: "power is nothing without control", "with great power comes great responsibility", etc - stuff like this.

Don't get me wrong, I am not against specific boundaries for keeping people from doing potentially unwanted actions. But at some point, all the technical solutions to human errors are like sudo.

I use Super for GUI stuff on Linux (via xmonad, but any window manager will do). X11 also supports the Hyper modifier if you need another. I never found it easy to use the Option key, which seems to be the de facto standard substitute for Meta on Apple keyboards.

Yeah, I've managed to get a Linux box to recognize the Command key as super when I plug in an Apple keyboard. Some apps seems to look for actual scancodes, though, rather than for what X11 tells them the mappings should be.

My experience was pretty hit or miss, and mostly I ended up with an mismash of semi-random keybindings which is sort of the opposite of what I was shooting for. On the Mac developers have done a remarkably good job of adhering to a consistent set of shortcuts (down to things like Command-, for preferences).

The other issue is that most apps don't make it straightforward to bulk re-assign keybindings from Control to Super, and last I checked it was impossible to turn off menu accelerators for Gtk+ based apps (e.g., Alt+F to bring up the file menu in Firefox).

Most of the time what I want is to map Command->Super and Option->Meta, and have Super replace Control in all GUI app keyboard shortcuts leaving Control available for command-line apps, in general.

I value free, open source software more than convenience. For this reason, I will not use OSX or any other non-free operating system no matter how convenient they may be to use. That convenience comes at a great cost that I am not willing to pay.

A noble, socially-responsible choice. Kudos!

Sorry, I just don't see it that way. Don't get me wrong, I prefer open source, all else being equal, but software is a tool for me to achieve some other goal. If paying someone for proprietary software allows me to more quickly or cheaply achieve my real goal, then that's great. What exactly is irresponsible about that? What exactly is ignoble about that?

I think this mostly comes down to things like vendor lock-in. Yes, the tool enables you to more effectively do something, but at the cost of certain freedoms to you.

For instance, I can buy a hammer because it will make it much easier to drive nails than without one, but the handle is too long. So I can saw the end off to suit my purposes. You can't with proprietary software.

Also, don't make the mistake that free == libre. It's the fact that you're paying for proprietary software, not that your paying for it.

You're trading short-term convenience for long-term flexibility.

Although only about 1 percent of the computer-using population chooses to run Linux, the competition provided by Linux has had a positive effect on proprietary OSes, which benefits computer users who will never run Linux.

One example of this beneficial effect is the appearance of the netbook. Only after netbooks running Linux gained significant market share did Microsoft consent to license Windows to netbook makers at a price that made any sort of sense given the low retail price of the netbook. If Linux has not been an option for the early netbook makers, it is likely that hardware makers would never have been able to persuade Microsoft or Apple to consent to allow the product category to be created in the first place.

An argument can also be made that without at least a small fraction of computer users running Linux on their desktops, Linux would not have been able to capture the hearts and minds of corporate decision-makers with the result that Linux use on corporate servers might not have exploded the way it did in the late 1990s and first years of the 2000s. Certainly, Linux activists claiming to understand the thinking processes of corporate execs were saying at the time (late 1990s) that Linux needs desktop users in order to be taken seriously by mostly-Windows-desktop-using corporate execs and IT managers.

I will concede that at least some people (particularly, perfectionistic people like me or people who are easily annoyed) by will waste less time learning how to admin their machine if they run OS X than if they run Linux. And I will concede that the time and effort of these people would probably result in more social good if it were spent earning money and donating that money to a philanthropy than if it were spend learning how to adminning a Linux box. But that does not detract from the fact that if all you know about a person is that they run Linux, they're doing more "expected good" (a statistical term) for the world than someone who all you know about them is that they are a computer user or an OS X user.

You're making a different point now than what I took you to mean before. Not only that, but the OP would really be doing something noble if they were making open source, contributing in some other way if they aren't a coder, than with some holier-than-thou complaint about other peoples choices (i.e. OSX).

> . If paying someone for proprietary software allows me to more quickly or cheaply achieve

You're confusing the tradeoff. The tradeoff is not about money; libre software can be sold as well.

The point in question is whether you should have to (or even be able to) sacrifice your intrinsic rights, such as your right to modify your own property for your own purposes.

Whether or not you paid money for it is irrelevant to that aforementioned right.

Intrinsic right? That's a weird statement to me. What about the creator, don't I have an intrinsic right to determine the terms by which I distribute my creations?

What makes you believe any of these things are intrinsic? Is that a faith based belief?

The US has the first sale doctrine, and there are similar laws in other parts of the world. The seller has no rights over property after they sell it.

The definition of property is fuzzy, and I can sell you bits that don't include source code. The OP is arguing that source code is an intrinsic right. I don't see that.

I agree, but how hardcore do you take it? I'm on the fence about switching to a Linux-libre OS and wondering if anybody has any experience with it.

The biggest thing to remember is that you need to select hardware that will work with Linux (just like how the vast majority of Mac users use Apple hardware). The issue is knowing what to get. If you're in the market for a laptop, I would highly recommend the ThinkPad X1 Carbon. It's a great piece of hardware by itself, and the Linux compatibility is there as well.

That's good to know. I'm currently on a t400s, and I was wanting to upgrade to the X1 Carbon, but I hadn't seen anything about it on thinkwiki yet.

Take a look at this review: http://ftbeowulf.wordpress.com/2012/08/30/lenovo-x1-carbon/

Yeah, I've been using Linux for years, and I currently have a System 76 laptop that comes with Linux installed.

I'm more worried about switching to the "GNU Approved" OSes, like Trisquel or Parabola. They have a modified "Linux-libre" kernel with non-free modules removed, and they usually block non-free software by default in the package manager.

I want to do it, because it does make me feel better to use all free software, but I don't want a crippled user experience. I'll put up with a little extra work to get things like Gnash working instead of Flash, but if certain drivers just aren't there, I'm not comfortable just giving up core functionality. Not yet, at least.

Here's a review of the X1 Carbon with Ubuntu by someone who owns a System 76 laptop: http://ftbeowulf.wordpress.com/2012/08/30/lenovo-x1-carbon/

I don't know anything about the "pure" OSS OSes.

I'm curious about your thoughts outside of software. This is a sincere question because I often see so much passion about the topic in software, but rarely outside.

Do you only play free games, listen to free music and read free books? What about the electronics you use, the architecture of the buildings you live in and the car you drive?

"Books Were the First Open-Source Software"

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/seth-roberts/books-were-the-fi...

The analogy breaks down for most things outside of software (even hardware, to a degree), because the basis for the argument in favor of free software is the four freedoms[1], which are themselves mere extensions of the rights of purchase.

If you sell me something, you cannot tell me that I can't modify it for my own use, for example. You as the seller can't tell me that I'm not allowed to resell my textbooks, or to modify the frames on my eyeglasses, or to hire my friend to fix my vacuum cleaner.

Proprietary software licenses do do that - the main difference is that is a non-rivalrous good; I can redistribute software without losing access to it myself. Because of that, people think it's somehow 'wrong' to say that I should be allowed to purchase a program and then resell it to another person, but if you look at it the other way, that's no more 'wrong' than purchasing a physical good and then reselling it.

In the South, it used to be common to sell property on the condition that the purchaser never sell it to a black person (I think they still used the term Negro or 'colored' then). If I remember correctly, that was first deemed illegal in certain parts not because it's horribly racist, but because it violates the principles of first sale: you've sold me something, and now you can't tell me what I'm not allowed to do with it.

[1] http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html

Quick aside, there are still (in NZ at least) various conditions that you can attach to property sales. For example, if your property had some native rainforest on it, you could state to whomever you sell it to that they are not allowed to mess with that part of the land (e.g. chop trees down), and whenever they onsell they must also make that a condition of sale.

Yes, though the justification behind those are the negative externalities for society at large; ie, destroying a rainforest/killing off an endangered species, etc. And even then, they're limited. (They have them in the US too - homeowners' associations are an example).

But outside of real estate, I can't think of any analogous practice outside the information market - you don't sell me a book on the condition that I not loan it to a friend, write notes in the margins, or even burn it.

That's because the analog market has natural logistical limitations for copying and improvement.

I cannot OCR a paper book I own, make modifications to it and then publish it on the web. Nor can I photocopy that book and give it to friends.

> natural logistical limitations for copying and improvement.

There's also a marginal cost beyond the first unit, whereas for software, there is none.

> I cannot OCR a paper book I own, make modifications to it and then publish it on the web.

You'd be violating a copyright, which is a separate point of discussion, but I'm talking about the physical book itself. You've sold me a bunch of paper bound together, and I'm allowed to modify (or destroy) it, as well as resell it to someone else.

Textbooks and eyeglasses are guarded by copyright and patents. I cannot improve on the design of Oakley sunglasses and hire a firm to manufacture them. I can modify it for myself, but that is a much more limited form of freedom. Microsoft probably wouldn't care if I somehow reverse engineered Windows and modified it for myself only.

Same goes for architecture. When I buy a house, I can make modifications to it. But I don't think I have the right to hire construction companies to build new houses based on the design.

Electronics and car companies guard heavily the schematics and designs that makes it possible to repair their products much less reproduce them.

Edit - One more thing: Just the ability to modify something you own (like textbooks or sunglasses) does not make it free. For example, I've made many modifications to OS X through utilities and configuration. The fact that OS X doesn't come with source code is equivalent to Textbooks not coming with their LaTeX source.

> Textbooks and eyeglasses are guarded by copyright and patent

I'm talking about the physical book, not the words contained within.

> When I buy a house, I can make modifications to it.

When I buy software, I should be able to make modifications to it.

> Microsoft probably wouldn't care if I somehow reverse engineered Windows and modified it for myself only.

That's explicitly prohibited by the license. Whether or not you think they'll enforce the license in your case has no bearing over the fact that it does violate it, and free software advocates argue that such licenses cannot be nonenforceable.

In any case, patents are a separate issue altogether. So is copyright, actually - free software licenses are a way of twisting current copyright law into doing the opposite of what it was meant to do: provide freedom.

Let's take a step back and look at the goals of free software. It's not just to modify and tweak things I own, it's to allow me to modify, enhance and contribute that work back to the community.

By that yardstick, most textbooks and eyeglasses are not free. I can't improve a textbook and put it online. I can't put my improved sunglasses on the market (even if it was non-profit).

So why are people revolted by a copywrited and patented (hence unfree) OS, but have no qualms using other non-free products?

Personally, I think free and proprietary products can co-exist. Both models produce innovations which ultimately benefit society.

> By that yardstick, most textbooks and eyeglasses are not free. I can't improve a textbook .... I can't put my improved sunglasses on the market (even if it was non-profit).

Yes you can - the product in that case is physical, not digital. You can certainly turn the pages of a book into an origami creation and sell that on a secondary market if that's what you want to do. You can sell modified copies of physical products to your heart's content.

> You can sell modified copies of physical products to your heart's content.

Yes, but only in a very limited way. You've only mentioned examples where I can modify the original physical atoms.

I cannot modify and re-distribute the ideas present in textbooks. It is those ideas that have the most value, not the paper it's printed on.

definitely prefer open source but sometimes have to delve into the other to get the outcome sought. aversion to buying a product and now owning it though. should be yours to do with as you please.

I would prefer to use only open source, but I am not technically literate enough. I have used both Windows and Linux for 16 years, and had been using Linux more and Windows less for the first nine years. Over the past 7 years, since getting on the Internet, I have mostly used Windows, because I have not managed to get any of the Linux distros I have tried to work over a dial-up modem.

I'm a hardcore Linux user, a sysadmin, developer of some kinds and an humble desktop user. For some IOS projects I have to use an hackintosh.

The experience is - in one word - disgusting. It lacks common denominator keyboard shortcuts and keyboard bindings. It lacks sane default simple applications like a decent terminal emulator. ( Yes Windows lacks is too). unavailability of a great package manager - all of us knows it, homebrew or macports doesn't cut it - makes me vomit. Unfamiliar key bindings makes me think twice or thrice before typing , "Which key should I use for this? Apple or Option? How can I skip to end of line? Why I'm at end of file now?" Also some desktop choices are not ok for my liking; switching to full height windows instead of full screen windows with the maximize button? Why on earth I would opt-in for loosing screen real estate? So many details.

Most of the time I can't help myself to stop restarting into Linux. I get slower and distracted. I have to install Mozilla Stack (Thunderbird and Firefox).

This may be only me but, I hate OsX. And I'm not starting on the "wanna be walled garden-ness."

decent terminal emulator. -- lie.

makes me vomit. -- visit your local physician.

Unfamiliar key bindings -- "Unfamiliar" by definition = "I don't know it" which isn't the OS's problem. You've gotta admit Command-C for copy being different than Control-C is brilliant.

switching to full height windows -- it's not a maximize button, it's an "optimal size" button. If your content is 500px wide, you don't need a 1000px wide window full of white space.

may be only me -- I'm pretty sure it is (check their stock).

Terminal as a decent terminal emulator? I believe you are referring to iTerm2 but that's not the default.

unfamiliar key bindings, look for any other keyboard except OsX ones and show me the apple or the option or the command keys then I will back.

For the "Optimal Size button", the underlying operation does not account for the contents width, it only accounts for the desktop height.

The world is not running on OsX or Apple hardware. They have a decent userbase but not the whole computer users are using one.

1. Terminal.app is a very good app. I switched to iTerm 2 a while back, but only because of a few minor features that I could've lived without. What are your problems?

2 & 4. You don't run a Hackintosh and expect it to work. If you want OS X, you buy a Mac. And all Macs (except the Mini) come with standard Apple keyboard.

3. I'm not sure what you're talking about. There's no "magic" algorithm that all apps use. Each app can use its own "algorithm" and can account for screen width as well. Just because Finder.app (most of the time) just grows the height doesn't mean all apps should do it, or are doing it.

Terminal app is a sufficient terminal emulator. But it lacks most of decent options. Can you split windows? Use tabs? Can you change color profiles? May be so many simple decent ap choices are lacking from it. Also I'm not even talking about the lack of simple Terminal emulation modes. I told you I'm a system administrator and I live in terminals. So Terminal.app is not cutting for me.

What's wrong with a Hackintosh other then legal and ethics issues if it's running well? I used Apple hardware and my criticisms were the same.

and for the 3, If every app is using it's own algorithm than I'm really on the wrong side of the issue. And my criticism lacks proper bases. I have to take it back. But again, why not a maximise button?

Can you split windows? Use tabs? Can you change color profiles?

Yes to all though you can only split windows horizontally. Terminal is a really good app. iTerm2 is great too but a little slower than Terminal in my experience.

I have to switch my os to check these. If you are right It's better than what I think about it.

"Can you split windows?" - CMD+D splits vertically "Use tabs?" - yes, CMD+T "Can you change color profiles?" - yes "why not a maximise button?" - there is a separate fullscreen button now if you want maximize

> "Can you split windows?" - CMD+D splits vertically

Nitpick: it's different. Cmd+D splits the current buffer in two allowing to view two parts of the same output without scrolling, whereas in iTerm2 it splits into two distinct buffers, each with its own shell.

I arguably prefer the Terminal.app feature, when I have the other one with window management like with Window Magnet, which happens to handle any window, not just what's inside the terminal (in which case I'd simply use vim or tmux splits)

Terminal has tabs (had it since early 00's).

The lack of split panes was what made me switch to iTerm. I don't use it that often, but it's a "nice to have" feature. Terminal.app has split panes, but it's not "two sessions, side-by-side", rather "different windows into the same session", which I personally don't like much.

And you're right. You can't change the color profile like http://kde-look.org/content/show.php?content=86353 , which might be a bummer for some one like you (you can change the 16 ANSI colors to look less horrible though!).

Why no maximize button? I don't know the reasoning behind that, but I don't miss it. Full screen apps are amazing (for one monitor scenarios), and OS X has a nice handy feature called "Hide Others" (Command-Option-H) that gives you a distraction-free experience without making the app ridiculously large (and showing you a million white pixels!)

[1] touches upon this issue and has good arguments for it.

But of course, power users need more "power", so I also use the wonderful Moom[2] which combined with "Zoom" and "Full Screen" fulfills 100% of my windowing needs.

[1]: http://www.macyourself.com/2011/02/06/why-doesnt-mac-os-xs-g...

[2]: http://manytricks.com/moom/

> And you're right. You can't change the color profile like http://kde-look.org/content/show.php?content=86353

I may be missing something but I don't see how it's different from what has been available since Lion (and since Tiger with a SIMBL plugin). I've been using Zenburn and Solarized since what seems like forever.

What now? I think your mind box may be severely out of alignment with the rest of the world. (It's not an unusual occurrence among extreme computer people.)

Four points. Four points only:

• Terminal.app is perfect. Except for the crashing.

• You can't honestly argue the command key is strange while the windows key isn't (which was a direct copy of "hey, Apple has their own key, why not us?" Also see: recycle bin versus trash can).

• The lil' green button adjusts for width but at max height (unless you are iTunes). It's up to each application to determine how the button should best destroy your viewing experience.

• Do you want to be the most popular or the best? Sugar water or make a difference in the world? Sounds like you may have a case of Bieber Fever.

Are you trying to be sarcastic?

- Terminal.app. If it's perfect what use has iTerm2?

- I'm not ok with windows key too. It has the same twisted mind after it. Also will be out of context but for the record I'm hating Turkey governments hate and movement against Turkish-Q keyboard layout.

- In this optimized button context, I was mistaken about it being a maximize button and it's underlying algorithm. I backed my criticism. But why be different and choose this strange button instead of maximize?

- I can't follow you here.

> If it's perfect what use has iTerm2?

1. alternative 2. hardcore usage 3. opensource

BTW your precious iTerm2 does not handle ICC color profiles, whereas Terminal.app does, and on calibrated screens it shows.

Windows has a perfectly serviceable array of shortcuts available on keyboard that don't have the custom Windows key. The 'windows key stuff' is mostly fluff.

> unfamiliar key bindings, look for any other keyboard except OsX ones and show me the apple or the option or the command keys then I will back.

Huh? On any non-Apple keyboard, the alt keycode corresponds to Command, and the windows keycode corresponds to Option. Since their positions are usually reversed vs Apple keyboards, you can swap them around via the standard Keyboard preference panel.

The problem is that the Command key is also used to do some things that the Alt key isn't on Windows, and there's no way to separate them or rebind the shortcuts (anymore).

Not to mention that you can't remap arbitrary keys in OS X without using third-party software, most of which you have to pay for.

Not that I mind paying for software, but I do mind paying for basic functionality that was present in the last version of the OS.

Is the complaint here that Mac OS (any version) isn't Windows?

The alt key on Windows doesn't do the same things the command key does in Mac OS, because they are different operating systems. What an utterly vacuous point.

KeyRemap4MacBook[1] is free.

[1] http://pqrs.org/macosx/keyremap4macbook/

That doesn't let you remap arbitrary keys; it lets you remap keys in the configurations they've pre-defined for you. That's not the same thing.

Also, the implementation is really wonky, so if you want to do a circular remap (ie, A->B, B->C, C->A), you'll end up with really weird interactions.

It's a stopgap hack at best.

http://www.paulgraham.com/disagree.html

You're so close! Just put some respect in this and it'd be one of the best refutations i've seen on HN in ages.

Thank you randall. I lack the ability to down vote (for the seiji's comment) but this made my day. Thank you :)

Respect would require increasing the word count. Hopefully the jump-right-in-and-comment formatting conveyed a half sense of playfulness and half irrational zealotry.

After all, mild humour is always more hilarious when fully explained.

I'm curious on the shortcomings of Homebrew (other than like-to-have packages) + app store. And the Terminal, you can have zsh/fish if you want or use iTerm2 for crazy features.

On shortcuts: you're just used to another way, it's not the system's fault. It's possible to use both Windows and OSX without much difficulty after getting used to it.

At least 50% of the joy of using a mac is due to the hardware and integration.

From my personal experience using homebrew it is two things.

1) The lack of packages combined with lack of quality of the packages (e.g. they do not build or have a poor defaults).

2) That homebrew installs stuff under /usr/local as owned by your user. That does not meet the expectations of UNIX applications and seems to me like it could be unsafe due to messing with expectations. Stuff under /usr/local/bin is supposed to be owned by root:root.

The good part of homebrew is that writing homebrew scripts seems easier than writing dpkg or rpm scripts.

That's a good summary. Thank you.

The greatest shortcoming is the lack of packages. After using debian, homebrew is a toy.

This is why you use macports ;)

I'd like to add two more:

1. Installing everything from source (normally I don't mind compiling, but large packages can take an hour or two. Ironically, OS X doesn't need to support many different architectures, so there's no excuse for not having binary compatibility like Linux does).

2. It doesn't manage the entire system. The process for installing from a .dmg or from the app store is completely different from homebrew, and the two don't talk to each other well (or really at all). I want a single source to manage all of my executable files and their configurations, not a small handful that each manage part of it.

How is running as user less safe than as root?

In OSX, /usr/local is really user-space. It comes empty on an install, and the system never touches it (that means no mess with /opt). The FHS also doesn't mandate /usr/local/bin to be owned by root. Don't root-owned utilities go in /usr/sbin?

Because the ability to write to a directory in a user's PATH makes it easy to trick this user into running arbitrary code. And /usr/local is a particularly poor choice for package management in a system like OS X without a "universal" package manager, because lots of prepackaged, precompiled third-party software already uses it. It's also not a particularly good idea to put your package manager's paths ahead of the system paths in PATH unless you want shell scripts to mysteriously break when some package pulls in an unanticipated dependency that includes newer, older, or different tools by the same name as system utilities (two examples that come to mind are HEAD from libwww-perl on a case-insensitive filesystem and xattr from the Python module of the same name; also GNU foo where the OS ships some GNU-incompatible version of foo). Instead, create another directory to hold symlinks for the few utilities you want to override system defaults (on my own systems, these include python, emacs, and git).

Sorry fsniper, but most of your criticisms are either factually wrong and/or based in ignorance.

Not sure what you mean by common denominator shortcuts, but if you mean things like Quit/Cut/Paste/Print/Save/New/Undo then you're dead wrong. Exists, and largely unchanged for nearly 30 years. And they're highly consistent. If it's a menu command, it's the command key.

Mac OS X does not lack a decent terminal emulator. You might have missed it, the program is called Terminal.

You might be right about the package managers, but many people would disagree with you.

There is no maximize button.

You installed Firefox and Thunderbird, so what's the problem? Are you trolling now?

If you are thinking of only OsX world, yeah they have never changed for the last 30 or more years, but the world is not only osx. I'm not a single desktop user, I occasionally switch between boxes and only OsX makes my motor memory to fail.

I'm sorry but I can't think of Terminal as a decent Terminal emulator.

Not having a maximize button invalidates my criticism but brings another one of unfamiliar titlebar choices.

I'm not trolling, I'm speaking of defaults.

"I'm sorry but I can't think of Terminal as a decent Terminal emulator."

Well I'm sorry but unless you explain exactly what the shortcomings are to stop it being 'decent' your comments are nothing more than trollish bigotry. You are just coming across as arrogant and ignorant.

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4497397

I can't think of top as a decent process monitor, but I don't blame debian for that.

Shift clicking the green bobble maximises (really maximises, apart from the unremovable Menu bar) the window.

Not allowing the user to add this functionality (even if it's a hidden option in a config file somewhere) is sub optimal in my opinion.

There are some great things about OSX but there are a few small but frustrating things too.

Thank you. This is a really helpful comment.

I switched from Windows and Linux to OSX.

I found there were many things that I did not know, and had to learn.

How do I rename a file in the GUI? (right click, select "get info", change the file name in the box, etc.)

How do I do keyboard text navigation? Option (or alt)left or right arrow will move one word. Command left or right arrow will move to the beginning or end of a line. Adding shift will select the text. (etc etc.)

How do I turn off the sound when I turn my machine on? (Don't turn the machine off, or use a third party software.)

There's some things which can't be done.

But, in the end, computers are tools, and people need to be comfortable with their tools. So use whatever fits your needs.

"How do I rename a file in the GUI?" Click once to highlight the file and click again to rename it. No need to go into the "get info" menu.

"How do I turn off the sound when I turn my machine on?" Mute the computer before shutting it down.

"the sound" that I think he wants to suppress is the startup chime, which can't be turned off because it serves a very specific hardware debugging purpose related to the boot process. There are hacks that can turn down the volume of the chime but it cannot be completely turned off.

Strange. When I mute my computer before rebooting or shutting down, it does not make the sound.

But you have to mute the computer before you shut it down. Remembering to perform an action every single time in order to prevent a startup chime is sub-optimal. Having an option to turn it off would be better than relying on a 3rd party hack.

>>> How do I rename a file in the GUI? (right click, select "get info", change the file name in the box, etc.)

you can just press the Return key to rename a file.

ha! Thank you!

I thought it would 'do an action' (launch or open). I do need to learn more.

switched to linux long time ago. keep OSX bc of ease for some things, but have more than one computer for this reason. definitely a tradeoff but one i sure found worthy. never did figure out the sound issue.

The experience is - in one word - disgusting

Really?

It lacks common denominator keyboard shortcuts and keyboard bindings

No it doesn't. Emacs/bash key combos are everywhere. These are the oldest and most important key sequences in use on any computer. CTRL-A, CTRL-E, META-F, META-B, META-D, CTRL-K - and they pervade the Cocoa/Nextstep text engine. They're everywhere.

It lacks sane default simple applications like a decent terminal emulator

Really? Terminal is pretty awesome in some ways. For example, with the Gnome terminal app, when you resize the window, lines aren't readjusted for width and you end up either cropping lines or leaving a blank space to the right. Terminal seems to be one of the few terminal emulators that gets this right.

Unfamiliar key bindings makes me think twice or thrice before typing

I don't understand this. Doesn't this just mean that you haven't gotten used to it?

How can I skip to end of line?

CTRL-E, like I said. If you're an Emacs nut (and I am) you can even edit the file ~/Library/KeyBindings/DefaultKeyBinding.dict to make these key bindings work in ANY text field that uses an NSTextField object in ANY OSX application.

There's even a global kill-ring. It's awesome. Clearly there were some real Emacs fans who worked on the original Nextstep text engine.

switching to full height windows instead of full screen windows with the maximize button? Why on earth I would opt-in for loosing screen real estate

It's a 'resize' button, not a maximize button. For many applications, especially those whose content is a fixed or maximum size (like web browsers), a maximize button with a large screen is just silly - you'd waste screen real estate with white or blank borders. What the 'resize' button does is and should be application-specific. For a web browser, it should resize the window to the size of the content. Ditto a word processor. For an IDE like XCode and Eclipse, it should maximize (and both of those do).

This may be only me but, I hate OsX

It sounds to me like you haven't put much energy into figuring it out and finding the best workflow - certainly not nearly as much energy as I've put into learning the esoterica behind Linux abominations like XKB and Gnome 3. And I would never say that Linux disgusts me - far from it. I think Linux is great.

  You need to install a giant lame IDE just to get
  a bunch of command line development tools?

That hasn't been true since earlier this year. If you login to developer.apple.com, you can download the "Command Line Tools for XCode" from here:

  https://developer.apple.com/downloads/index.action

No "lame" IDE required. But you might think that IDE is not so lame the first time you use Instruments...

To add to that: I think XCode is the most powerfull IDE I've ever used when it comes to coding c/c++/objective-c.

I have a macbook air and have some projects where I write cross platform C and C++ libraries (Linux/OS X/Windows via mingw), currently using Makefiles and a text editor. I use and like IDEs when programming python, C++ on Windows and javascript and certainly wouldn't mind a powerful C IDE. Can XCode help in this case or do you have to basically be writing Mac/iOS apps to access that power? Also can XCode work nicely with Makefiles or do I have to buy into a special platform specific build system (again a problem with the whole cross platform thing)?

"Can XCode help in this case or do you have to basically be writing Mac/iOS apps to access that power?"

I'm also very interested to get the answer of this.

Within the last year I have moved my work desktop (iMac) to Windows - RDP(actually Remmina/FreeRDP are looking good on Linux recently), VPN etc. just works better there - and development laptop (MBP) to Linux.

More and more as Linux matures and OS X gets buggier/fancier, I don't see the need to use OS X. I am running KUbuntu 12.10 beta on my 2010 MBP and it is pretty pleasant to work with - boots fast, nothing crashes, wi-fi connects and stays so, suspend resume works, no proprietary drivers needed. I did have to do some little hackery to do an EFI install and disable the Nvidia crap and that gives me very good battery life.

To get me to stick to OS X - Apple needs to do significantly better. Each release gives me new headaches and no features I need - bad battery life, Wi-Fi issues, graphics glitches - I can at least try to fix those with Linux.

What annoys me about OSX is the whole "copy app to install"

"please wait while 500 megs are being copied". Oh hi non-shared libraries.

I also don't see what's so great about iTerm2, some lights would be interesting. Otherwise I'll claim Konsole is the best termminal emulator in the world, bare none just like that too :)

Finally I do agree that OSX gets Spotlight right. The Linux look alikes for this feature plain sucks. But that's probably the only thing I can see.

> What annoys me about OSX is the whole "copy app to install"

As opposed to "press a button (or 30) to copy/install"?

No -- as opposed to pacman -S package (or whatever his former distro used). Having come to Linux from OS X, I agree that OS X installations are pretty inferior to Linux's.

OSX does have homebrew (or macports if you're so inclined), which IMO is better than the usual package manager in a linux distro; it doesn't litter the disk with init scripts or config files, you always know where things are being installed to. Copy to install is only for GUI apps.

> Copy to install is only for GUI apps.

That's the problem - you have two completely different installation methods, neither one of which is particularly UNIX-y, and neither of which is capable of talking to the other in a reliable manner.

> IMO is better than the usual package manager in a linux distro

It's incapable of handling binary installations, which is remarkable considering the hardware variation is far less than there is for Linux, it installs to /usr/local, it doesn't integrate well with language-specific package management tools, and it can't update system files.

> it doesn't litter the disk with init scripts or config files

I've never once had this problem with Linux; the man pages for any Linux package manager should provide a straightforward way of figuring out which package own which files.

> you always know where things are being installed to.

Because they're not installed to the right place.

I can't count the number of times an OS X package has told me that I need to add such-and-such folder to my $PATH. Hint: if you're requiring me to change my $PATH so that your installed file works, you're not installing it properly.

While there are other arguable issues, the whole point for me as that it's copying the 500 megs for the app because of all the static lib versions 'n stuff.

Then again we're comparing OSX to Linux, not Windows (Linux installs are ONE click, which is also less than OSX in fact)

Unfortunately, even assuming static API's, changing ABI's mean having third party packages and central shared libraries isn't going to happen.

Regarding the Control key - you can swap that with the absolutely useless "Caps Lock" key: http://thehelpfulhacker.net/2012/02/15/killing-caps-lock/

Now you can do CapsLock-a, CapsLock-e, etc. all day, which is much easier.

..and you've swapped from using an open OS to buying an OS from a company that fires patent lawsuits left and right. You've also bought that company's hardware.

I grant you it's convenient in many ways to use OS X, but supporting companies that commit patent mayhem is not good for our industry.

(Yes, yes, I know the competition isn't clean either, blah blah. But you switched from Linux.)

>> iTerm2 is the ultimate terminal emulator. It alone warrants the purchase of a Mac.

This is quite a strong statement and caught me a little off guard. What particular features does iterm2 offer that make it so stellar? I'm genuinely curious, as I haven't ever felt the burning need for a "better" terminal emulator on OSX (or Linux for that matter).

I'd love to see the run down on that as well. I spend 8-10 hours a day in Terminal.app, usually with 15-20 console tabs open, and I've certainly used iTerm2 for a few weeks, just to get a sense of what I'm missing - but I've always come back to Terminal.app.

I will agree, though, that the Terminal environment on the Macintosh singlehandedly causes me to use the OS X environment instead of windows - and this is after using SecureCRT/Putty for 6-7 years - so it's clearly not a case of "You love what you are used to."

From what I remember, the default terminal emulator on OSX does not even allow customising the color palette! I was able to only change the foreground and background color, and forced to stick to one of the predefined themes for the rest. On the other hand, I doubt iterm2 can achieve the flexibility and customisability of urxvt, which for me is still the #1 terminal emulator. Just my two cents to add to the discussion :)

> From what I remember, the default terminal emulator on OSX does not even allow customising the color palette!

For what it's worth, at least in Mountain Lion you can change the ANSI palette in Terminal.app. That said, it would never have occurred to me that this is something someone might want to do :).

Come on. The default "blue" color is ridiculously ugly. I always thought of it as a punishment for those who want to mess with OS X.

Compare that disgusting color palette with a sane one: https://github.com/pstadler/optometrist

I guess people don't know how to use google:

http://osxdaily.com/2012/02/21/add-color-to-the-terminal-in-...

While I don't agree that the default scheme is "disgusting", I have to admit that the alternative presented there is rather attractive.

Perhaps I'll give this a go for a while.

> From what I remember, the default terminal emulator on OSX does not even allow customising the color palette! I was able to only change the foreground and background color, and forced to stick to one of the predefined themes for the rest.

This certainly hasn't been true since at least 10.7, and I think for longer than that.

That's really not true: You can completely customize the terminal.app colors (background, foreground, cursor, selection highlight, ansi colors, etc.), the window transparency and blur-effect, both for active and inactive windows. You can save your customizations as themes.

http://www.iterm2.com/#/section/features

Looks to me like it just exposes many of the out-of-the-box Linux terminal features that aren't immediately obvious & require Googling to setup. But saying that it is so amazing it alone warrants ditching Linux and going Mac is a ridiculous statement that certainly wasn't intended to be taken at face value.

Alfred[0] has to be one of the most valuable (as far as $/usefulness) pieces of software I've ever bought. Besides the Spotlight-style file/app search, can also manipulate files/dirs, does pasteboard history[1], and one-shot terminal commands; without having to drop whatever I'm doing for another window.

[0] http://www.alfredapp.com/

[1] not part of Alfred, but pbcopy/pbpaste in the terminal are your friends.

You can also use it for math expressions, type in URLs to quickly open them, search Google and Wikipedia. It's completely changed the way I compute. The only time I see the app tray anymore is when I accidentally make it spring up from the bottom with my mouse.

perhaps macports is better, but AAPL will f* you over with time, after the honeymoon. And this applies to OSX updates too, even if you fork over the money

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4433082

back to linux. (it has ruby too.)

The App Store is where you send your not-so-sophisticated computer relative to. In theory, applications there, are less likely to hose your operating system.

In practice - lots of stuff that you have to get off of the App Store such as LittleSnitch, Arq, SuperDuper, QuickSilver, Carbon Copy Cloner - basically, anything that needs to plumb into the internals of the OS, or break outside the sandbox, will have to be purchased from a third party - and run the (greater) risk, of course, of doing damage to your OS.

I turned Spotlight indexing off on my Lion install to stop regular bouts of unresponsiveness on my 2011 Mac mini (with hard drive, not SSD).

Is your hard drive almost full? I've found that when drive space is running very low, OSX deletes some of Spotlight's cache, probably to make sure there's space for hibernation and swap. When it gets back enough space, it rebuilds the cache again.

The problem is that if you are constantly orbiting a certain point of fullness, it goes crazy and keeps deleting and rebuilding all the time, causing slowdowns.

47% of capacity with 248 gigs free.

> Programs like launchctl (for instance) are not exactly fun to work with, but they do get the job done.

One thing I like about launchd is that on OS X, there is one standard way to launch daemons. On Linux, there are a thousand ways to launch daemons. launchd also has a bunch of features, one of which is to start services on demand, upon connection to a socket, something Ubuntu hasn't had until the latest 12.04 (http://manpages.ubuntu.com/manpages/natty/man8/upstart-socke...). I do agree, however, that OS X shouldn't be used for anything more than a desktop workstation.

> On Linux, there are a thousand ways to launch daemons.

Depends on your distro, really - Arch keep things fairly centralized and simple.

I never really got the hang of Ubuntu, though, by comparison.

I really liked BSD style rc.d and now Arch and other distros are moving to systemd but Ubuntu won't ship it in 12.10.

launchd isn't bad, but it lacks good admin tools. Even upstart has better admin tools than launchd, and systemd has the best you could ask for.

What is so great about the OS X Desktop? (Honest question; As a long term Mac OS (X) user who switched to Linux about a year ago I am really wondering...)

Also, has a heavy computer user I mainly switched to Linux/FreeBSD because of the much improved customization possibilities. While the default OS X experience might be superior to GNOME/KDE, I now get a lot of things done a lot faster since I could make my machine exactly fit my needs. I really cannot imagine why any (not platform depending) programmer would ditch Linux for OS X just because the defaults work better.

Sorry, how did this get so many points? Most of it is rubbish. All I hear is "Wah wah wah I like the control key, I don't understand the command key wah wah". And some of it is factually incorrect.

OSX is good for developers with families. The wife and kids are happy and you're pretty happy too. Win-win all the way around.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com