Matthew Garrett: How-To Drive Developers From OS X To Linux

[jimbohale]

I did UX design (along with a bunch of implementation) for many products in recent years. The guidelines I abide by included stuff you should like. I've listed a few below for your review.

1. Stuff comes from somewhere. Nothing just appears. If you click an icon that opens a dialog, the dialog should emanate from the icon, or in some other way be directly associated with the control. 1998 is over.
2. Always give the user immediate feedback for input, even if the input does nothing substantial (example: when using a touchscreen, every finger touch always showed an animated "shrinking dot" feedback).
3. Sometimes the user will have to wait after clicking or swiping or touching something. First, minimize any wait. Second, see rule (2). Third, indicate to the user why they have to wait, and if there is an extended period (over ~5s), provide a graceful way to exit.
4. Use physical analogs. Beyond "just appearing", provide weight, feel, and inertia to onscreen elements; it provides familiarity and comfort to the user.
5. Give user feedback top priority. Skipping frames is not an option. Provide an information / progress screen during processing so the user may review what is being processed and not distracted by a jerky UI.
6. Don't use interface polymorphism. A control should mean one thing regardless of context. If the control changes, changes its icon. Be honest with your controls: zoom-to-fit should mean zoom-to-fit, not something that varies according to context.
7. Develop for touch and wimp, and optimize for both.
8. Develop for HiDPI. Use SVG whenever possible instead of Raster. Use shadows and gradients that you tend to "feel" rather than see. This enhances visibility without being overwrought.
9. Fonts matter.

Oh well, back to work. Hope these sound familiar

I like you. You get it. I agree 100% with your methodologies.

Not strictly true. It depends on what you are doing. If there are things you need to do that your toolkit does not support (which unfortunately is not that uncommon), you need to talk to the display server.

That's true mostly. Obviously it should be avoided but things like hotkey support (i.e. for a VoIP application) for example don't exist in Qt (see: Mumble) so one has to write DS-specific callbacks for X (fucking annoying but works well enough), Quartz (easy), or Windows' DS (what is endianness? windows' apis clearly don't know. oh you're using windows vista? sorry this function just doesn't work here you have to call X then Y then Z THEN GUESS WHAT IT CHANGED AGAIN FOR WINDOWS 7 HAHAHAHA #ifdef). So yeah, I agree with your statement.

Also of note is I would gladly pay money to Red Hat if they supported my computer with something like ElementaryOS (I'm talking usability). Just give me updates and answer my bug reports and I would be a new level of happy. I have no qualms about paying money for things. Obviously I would think it should be open source but for those who just don't feel like dealing with it we'd pay someone to do it for us, hence RH. Helps everyone that way.

[chrisb]

I installed osx86 on my computer since I could not stand messing with my computer any longer. It was originally built for Linux. I've only used OS X since Mavericks was released.

Can we just clarify here that you are using and advocating installing pirated copies of OS X?

[Del_]

So, to re-iterate, my biggest complaints are:

• Lack of easy keyboard remapping. I can do it in an X config file but that's a lot of effort and restarting X. Something should do it for me.
• For whatever reason I and many others prefer OS X's UI to GNOME shell or Unity. I understand I can get feature-equivalent or look-equivalent and in the case of ElementaryOS, really close to both, but it's just not good enough. KDE is fine for some but not me.
• Compositing on Linux isn't that great when dealing with 3D but I expect Wayland to resolve that issue.
• Lack of a Time Machine equivalent. There are things that back up your files but NOTHING like Time Machine. I have a networked time machine backup server (netatalk on an Ubuntu NAS) and it's seriously the only thing worth using. If you system breaks because you did something stupid you can so easily just run the OS X installer again and restore from whichever time machine backup you want. You don't have to set up your machine again. You don't have to think about it and when it's done it's EXACTLY the way it was before something went wrong, and it's fast.
• Maintenance on Linux is too time-intensive.

Let's see,

• http://lmgtfy.com/?q=xmodmap+gui&l=1
• Did I get this. You don't like KDE, for no good reason. A desktop built by and for Qt developers. Hence you use OSX. Can you elaborate on this one?
• Compositing isn't perfect on any OS I guess, but in KDE you can easily turn it on/off.
• Incremental disk images is not a good back-up plan regardless of OS. On a linux set-up you start up with a kick-start image you roll out on LAN (ten minutes and your new machine is up). Network folders are network folders and backed-up on servers, this is where all your work should reside. Your home folder should also be available over the net, and backed-up with increments. If you do need special packages on specific machines you keep inventory lists for packages on those, rolled out again using yum/apt. In a multi-user environment a proper set-up is an investment. You seem to be steering into chaos, moving server tasks onto clients (no wonder, OSX has no place in a server room). In very small shops I guess your approach can somehow work (as long as you are lucky that is, count your blessings).
• Give us a hint on why maintenance is time-intensive. I use Red Hat at work on certified workstations/servers from HP, Dell and IBM. There is *no* maintenance except from upgrading Red Hat version every odd year. The only issues we have is faulty memory chips and nvidia driver fuck-ups. Change the memory chips and keep on testing nvidia drivers till you find a half decent one. That's it. Been doing it daily for over a decade now.

I really would like to learn more about why people choose OSX (or iphone for that matter), but I have a feeling you are in it for the half-eaten apple, rather than the practicalities. The practicalities we can fix, people falling for the half-eaten apple is harder. Glad to be proven wrong though.

[jimbohale]

Can we just clarify here that you are using and advocating installing pirated copies of OS X?

Mavericks doesn't cost anything so no, and considering my owning of a MBP and spending money on the app store I don't think they care.

[doom_Oo7]

Mavericks doesn't cost anything so no, and considering my owning of a MBP and spending money on the app store I don't think they care.

It doesn't make it legal :

2. Permitted License Uses and Restrictions.
A. Single Use License. Subject to the terms and conditions of this License, unless you have purchased a Family Pack or Upgrade license for the Apple Software,
you are granted a limited non-exclusive license to install, use and run one (1) copy of the Apple Software on a single Apple-branded computer at a time

http://images.apple.com/legal/sla/docs/macosx106.pdf

(however I think this license should be disputed, like with the european court for instance)

[jimbohale]

Let's see,

• http://lmgtfy.com/?q=xmodmap+gui&l=1
• Did I get this. You don't like KDE, for no good reason. A desktop built by and for Qt developers. Hence you use OSX. Can you elaborate on this one?
• Compositing isn't perfect on any OS I guess, but in KDE you can easily turn it on/off.
• Incremental disk images is not a good back-up plan regardless of OS. On a linux set-up you start up with a kick-start image you roll out on LAN (ten minutes and your new machine is up). Network folders are network folders and backed-up on servers, this is where all your work should reside. Your home folder should also be available over the net, and backed-up with increments. If you do need special packages on specific machines you keep inventory lists for packages on those, rolled out again using yum/apt. In a multi-user environment a proper set-up is an investment. You seem to be steering into chaos, moving server tasks onto clients (no wonder, OSX has no place in a server room). In very small shops I guess your approach can somehow work (as long as you are lucky that is, count your blessings).
• Give us a hint on why maintenance is time-intensive. I use Red Hat at work on certified workstations/servers from HP, Dell and IBM. There is *no* maintenance except from upgrading Red Hat version every odd year. The only issues we have is faulty memory chips and nvidia driver fuck-ups. Change the memory chips and keep on testing nvidia drivers till you find a half decent one. That's it. Been doing it daily for over a decade now.

I really would like to learn more about why people choose OSX (or iphone for that matter), but I have a feeling you are in it for the half-eaten apple, rather than the practicalities. The practicalities we can fix, people falling for the half-eaten apple is harder. Glad to be proven wrong though.

Yeah no xmodmap has never worked for me.
I don't like KDE because I think its ugly. I used it for about a year.
KDEs compositing never had any issues on my system, which is why I say gnome can do it better than they are doing it.
LOL WUT I would never ever in a million years put my home folder on a network share. Ever. I put a lot of things on a network share and my home folder is not one of them. For servers the whole kick start thing is good but I myself would not do that for my workstation. That seems quite pointless for me. Incremental backups are useful, as they help prevent user error. They don't cure it but they help. I dont know why you are saying I delegate server tasks to clients as I don't.
That's great that you are able to make it work, but red hat right now has no appeal to me.

I'm typing on my nexus 7 so pardon the drawn out ness. The reason I choose os x over Linux with elementaryos being the closest competitor is that it is just so much easier to use in general and it looks pretty. Again, taking a good look at elementaryos will reveal a lot. If red hat picked up elementaryos and supported it like they do rhel then I would use and pay for that. I guess another reason although less valid is just how good xcode is for c and c++. Its interesting to me that one does not yet exist for Linux that works that well particularly with debugging but I can live with qt creator without regret.

[jimbohale]

It doesn't make it legal :

http://images.apple.com/legal/sla/docs/macosx106.pdf

(however I think this license should be disputed, like with the european court for instance)

I know but I don't think anybody (i mean apple) cares. Its relatively mainstream and apple isn't losing anything. I suspect they intentionally turn a blind eye as they would rather have people unofficially install it and pay money through apps but without apple having to support them. I do think it should be disputed as well and tbh it wouldn't surprise me if apple released it to the masses with some sort of driver wrapper around like Linux or something. Their kernel is mostly open source they could make it work.

Also I have an apple sticker on my computer so they can't sue me for that (just kidding it just won't come off without scratching, stuck it on as a joke)

[Del_]

Yeah no xmodmap has never worked for me.
I don't like KDE because I think its ugly. I used it for about a year.

Hm, so you have a very strange keyboard and strange taste. Not sure what to learn from that.

LOL WUT I would never ever in a million years put my home folder on a network share. Ever. I put a lot of things on a network share and my home folder is not one of them.

What kind of business do you work in? It starts to sound more like a teenage basement for every post you write. I also have difficulties with the rest of your post, are you sure you are not just a teenager looking to kill some time on a forum?

another reason although less valid is just how good xcode is for c and c++. Its interesting to me that one does not yet exist for Linux that works that well particularly with debugging but I can live with qt creator without regret.

Care to mention what debugging needs xcode covers that the likes of qt creator, kdevelop don't?

[Anarchy]

I know but I don't think anybody (i mean apple) cares. Its relatively mainstream and apple isn't losing anything. I suspect they intentionally turn a blind eye as they would rather have people unofficially install it and pay money through apps but without apple having to support them. I do think it should be disputed as well and tbh it wouldn't surprise me if apple released it to the masses with some sort of driver wrapper around like Linux or something. Their kernel is mostly open source they could make it work.

Also I have an apple sticker on my computer so they can't sue me for that (just kidding it just won't come off without scratching, stuck it on as a joke)

If you run a business and earn money with it, someone might report you and then Apple will be almost obliged to take measures against your actions. Microsoft does that and has programs for employees that report on businesses that use unlicensed/pirated Microsoft products. Apple doesn't do that because most of the Apple users stick almost religiously to what Apple says what you as a user should and should not do. If hackintosh machines become more popular then Apple will also be obliged to struck down the banhammer on individuals and companies who break their rules.

Anyway, until it hasn't been settled in court whether you as an individual are allowed to run osx on non-Apple hardware I'd recommend you be a bit more careful.

[chrisb]

Mavericks doesn't cost anything so no, and considering my owning of a MBP and spending money on the app store I don't think they care.

Mavericks is not free. The cost of Mavericks is incorporated into the price of Apple hardware. Whether or not you own other Apple hardware is irrelevant, you have infringed Apple's copyright (and hence broken the law) by downloading a cracked copy of OS X and installing it on your PC. Your excuse is basically "Apple don't care about my piracy" - but if they did not care, then why would they bother to include protection functions that require cracking? The fact that you have to install a cracked copy means they do care, at least enough to add protections to try and stop people like you from doing it.