Hacker News Reader

Comment by foz | Hacker News Reader

Reading this makes me want to keep developing on a MacBook. I love Linux, but when I'm reminded of all the wasted time and hacks spent on configuring hardware and researching problems, it makes me happy to stay trapped with OSX.

View on HN

On a new Lenovo laptop, the configuration hackery was rather limited: - disable UEFI and use BIOS - install Debian (wireless didn't work during the installation, but worked without a hitch afterwards) - copy-paste a script for decent powersaving settings (might have worked out of the box with KDE or GNOME, but I don't use desktop environments)

The only thing which does not work at the moment is most of the special function keys, which is no big deal for me as I don't really use the functionalites anyway.

Here's my OS X configuration script:

is that for UEFI or BIOS?

I've done nothing to make sure all my hardware worked on my favorite flavor of linux. My special keys also worked out of the box.

In addition I've spent exactly 0 minutes in the last 5 years figuring out hardware issues. You may have less success if you want to game or need 4+ monitor support; However I've been very happy in recent years with hardware support. There is literally nothing I've encountered in popular hardware that caused me any issues.

tsk tsk there are quite a few infuriating time machine settings that need to be changed out of the box

1) Time machine really shouldn't be running every hour. To change the period:

    # defaults write /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.backupd-auto StartInterval -int <number_of_seconds>

2) TM support for non-time-capsule NAS drives is shaky (even with those that claim to support time machine)

    # defaults write com.apple.systempreferences TMShowUnsupportedNetworkVolumes 1

That's the one you use to get focus follows mouse on MacOS X.

I feel like that when I use OSX. For example, like having to use a hack to show hidden files and the inverse scrolling idiocy. I have found my experience more glitchy than using Linux. I rather use Windows than OSX in that case. After a few system lockups, I gave up on my brand new macbook.

In the end, it does not matter. Use the best tool for the job. For me, I just work better in Linux.

I bought my laptop in September, popped out the HD and swapped in an SSD, and installed Linux Mint. No hassle, everything except my secondary videocard worked out of the box.

Following a few straightforward and well-documented steps, the second video card worked as well. Haven't had to change anything since, and I haven't experienced any breakage.

The wasted time and hacks that are required to get and keep a laptop running Linux have plummeted over the past 3 years, and your argument is rapidly losing its value. To me, it has reached the point of being irrelevant.

Can I ask what laptop you got? I'm seriously thinking of coming back to Linux if I can get something that "just works".

Sorry for the delayed reply, the laptop I got is a Sony Vaio S15.

And I did turn off EFI and enabled legacy BIOS in the menu, since I found EFI implementations to be severely bugged in a lot of cases, and I'd rather just avoid them until they become more reliable.

Hey, thanks for the reply! I'll check out the S15.

How much time is spent trying to install libraries on a Mac? Nothing beats aptitude/yum when it comes to installing software. Homebrew is nice, but if whatever you're looking for isn't in there (for me, pretty frequently), you're stuck either compiling stuff from source and digging through OS X's backwards filesystem layout or running a VM.

You can avoid those problems if you stick to certified hardware:

http://www.ubuntu.com/certification/

(I imagine the Red Hat ecosystem has something similar)

Not entirely true - my Dell E6420 is certified and yet had complications (poor Suspend support, touchpad had only basic support [now fixed 2 years later]). The NVIDIA GPU was supported as was sound/internet etc. I used the official Dell Ubuntu drivers and they didn't solve the original problems (much hacking did...).

Reply on news.ycombinator.com