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Comment by jmduke | Hacker News Reader

I'll say something that's vaguely awful: what's in it for me?

I use Linux at work and it's not bad, but I'm less productive on it with 95% of tasks than I would be with OSX. It looks worse (I recognize this is subjective.)

A lot of my friends use Linux and tell me that if I spend the right amount of time tinkering with it -- making it mine -- I'd reap the benefits of a bespoke OS, just like slipping on a suit that's tailored just for me.

But what's the point? I lose out on apps and aesthetics for hypothetical yields in productivity -- I don't want to do that.

In terms of your points:

- forced corporate policies: My employer forces a Linux desktop and either a Mac/Windows laptop.

- lack of hardware choice: I will take to my grave the assertion that the MacBook Air is the best laptop on the market. (Or at least the prettiest.)

- Closed operating software: This does not bother me.

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I used Linux exclusively for many years but switched to OSX for work some years ago. I still feel more productive in Linux, but it's because of a few tricks that I so far haven't found a good replacement for in OSX:

- Focus follows mouse without auto-raise - Instant switching between virtual desktops (not possible to disable the animation in OSX last time I checked) - Instantly open a new terminal window with intelligent window placement in the currently active virtual desktop.

Since these turned out to be a hassle in OSX, I've just gradually stopped using them, and resorder to a single desktop paradigm with more mouse clicking for navigation. All in all I feel like I'm working slower in OSX than in Linux.

However, the major problem with Linux is the looks and a host of small nice details that OSX just gets right. Instant search in Spotlight including Mail, I've grown accustomed to the Mail app (Thunderbird search is ridiculous compared to Mail.app, for instance), Time Machine, and a few other apps like 1Password.

If I could get a virtualization scheme where I could have one desktop with OSX and 3-4 desktops of Linux, that would be ideal. But I don't think that's possible with Parallels or VMware, and I'm not sure how well OSX would run virtualized under Linux.

The lack of good email clients on Linux is a real shame. I'd love to have something like Sparrow or Mailbox. 1password is also a sad thing to be missing.

As for the others, we have locate(1) for searching and rdiff-backup instead of Time Machine.

As for having desktops like that, if you mean monitors, then there's a great solution: Synergy. Hook up monitors to both computers and use Synergy to connect them.

I meant virtual desktops, mostly because I like to be able to take my laptop anywhere. I actually used Synergy at one point for my desktop setup (and also because the OSX mouse acceleration profile was broken for me for quite some time).

A cool hardware project might be to take a micro Linux ARM board with LVDS display output, mount it inside the CD bay in my laptop and make an internal LVDS switch to quickly switch between OSX and the Linux board. That would be pretty much ideal. :)

I wonder if it'd be possible to provide a virtual display to a small ARM board and embed it into a window, so that you'd have the virtualization effects (two OSes on one machine) without the speed loss

I think it's possible do to so, I remember seeing this ARM USB/HDMI board, which apparently can mirror the screen over USB: http://www.fxitech.com/technology/any-screen-ip/

Not sure how well it works, though.

I never used 1password (I don't own any Apple hardware), but if you need a password manager that works on Linux as well as Windows, KeePass (using Mono) is pretty good.

I'm using it on my laptop and desktop and use Dropbox to synchronize.

> If I could get a virtualization scheme where I could have one desktop with OSX and 3-4 desktops of Linux, that would be ideal. But I don't think that's possible with Parallels or VMware

Isn't that the main feature of VMWare Fusion? (Although it seems more targeted at integrating Windows into OS X, it looks like it supports Linux as well)

Yes, but I don't know of a way to give one Linux instance several desktops, and enable super fast and seamless switching between them.

GNOME 3 has a good search. Unity has a decent search too.

Can it also show inline previews of PDF files and search emails?

>A lot of my friends use Linux and tell me that if I spend the right amount of time tinkering with it -- making it mine -- I'd reap the benefits of a bespoke OS, just like slipping on a suit that's tailored just for me.

If you do things like change your keyboard layout to Dvorak/Colemak, go for it. It really is a more productive environment once you're used to it, but the trade-offs are similar. Yes, you can tailor everything the way you want, but it can be very time consuming and you lose out on the ability of having anybody else know how to use your computer.

Anecdote: I came from Arch Linux to OSX. I find the tight integration between hardware and software on my 2012 Air to be a breathe of fresh air from the hacking it takes to get basic hardware support sometimes on Linux. IMO, tools like vagrant make native OS matter much less nowadays as long as you are working in some kind of *nix environment.

> I came from Arch Linux to OSX. I find the tight integration between hardware and software...

I just went the other direction :). I agree, the hardware/driver issues are a pain. If you're using a desktop without wireless, you probably won't have issues. If you pick Ubuntu, any issues usually aren't too hard to fix.

If you're trying to install something like FreeBSD on a laptop with a non-broadcom card? God have mercy on your soul :(

That said, once you fix the issues, they're usually fixed for good. It's just the matter of the week of banging your head against the wall to figure it out. Relevant: http://xkcd.com/979/

> If you pick Ubuntu, any issues usually aren't too hard to fix.

I've tried various distros on my laptop (Thinkpad W500) but I was seriously impressed when Ubuntu had everything working (including WiFi and ACPI key bindings) out of the box.

Thinkpads have been officially Ubuntu certified for years now. They are probably the best laptop you can buy for GNU/Linux that doesn't have it already pre-installed.

Check out Linux Mint as well, I've been using it as my main distro for some months now. It's based on Ubuntu, but very clean and easy.

As a fellow OSX -> Arch person, I feel your pain. The experience of making Broadcom function is enough to drive a man insane.

> It looks worse (I recognize this is subjective.)

Yes, yes it is.

If you're using Ratpoison, well yeah, it's gonna be fugly. Gnome 3 and Unity look pretty sharp though, and Compiz and Clutter are at least as good as Quartz.

In fact, if you think nothing short of an OS X clone is pretty: How to Make Ubuntu Linux Look Like Mac OS X http://www.howtogeek.com/45817/

"Linux is ugly" is an outdated cliche. It used to be true. It's not anymore.

Please never use OS X clones.

But you're right that Linux stopped being ugly. Even in Tiling WMs, we're pretty beautiful now. My windows now have the same gaussian blur and shadow abilities as on Mac OS X, thanks to Compton. My status bar has beautiful text set by Pango and rendered by Cairo. My text rendering is as good (or better than, against transparency) in OSX, thanks to the Infinality patchsets.

Really, it's only ugly if you do it wrong. One way of getting it wrong is to try and imitate OS X.

I agree, but I realize not everyone else does.

Same goes for Windows.

You can make Linux look like anything you want. If what you want is a clone of your old OS, well, I can't help your aesthetic taste, but I can at least make you happy.

But it's not even clone, it's just awkward.

Unity is great. Wish someone would port it to Redhat (and clones) since my work deals mostly with those.

I know it's merely your opinion, but you seem to be using the terms "best" and "pretty" interchangeably. I find that very surprising, but maybe it's well-designed UX on Mac that you are referring to when you say "pretty"? Anyway, pretty is one of those things that I learned is worth sacrificing in favour of productivity - be that in code or when I choose my OS or tools.

If you're referring to the MacBook Air comment: I am very confident that the MBA is the perfect machine for me, but I am more so confident that there are people who have a much deeper understanding of the consumer hardware landscape than I do. Thus the qualifier of 'at least the prettiest': someone could very feasibly change my mind about the MBA, but I haven't seen anything else that looks quite like it.

Anyway, pretty is one of those things that I learned is worth sacrificing in favour of productivity - be that in code or when I choose my OS or tools.

I agree, but I don't think its so black and white (for me!) When my tools are well-crafted and attractive, I use them more frequently and with more vigor.

Aesthetics does impact functionality. The paint scheme and wall decorations in a room can definitely affect one's productivity in that room, and I'm sure that effect would be dependent both on the person and on the task at hand.

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