OS X Is No Longer On My Main System, But I Already Have Regrets

[mmstick]

Wow, what's going on here? I didn't know users here thought so poorly of Linux as a desktop. I switched to Linux exclusively along with the rest of my family over a year ago and didn't have a single problem anywhere -- still don't have any problems, user experience is just exponentially growing lately. I can't think of a single thing that Linux can't do better than any other OS, besides gaming.

[89c51]

Nothing to see here people. If you want a linux laptop buy one that the manufacturer supports linux on it officially. Not something with windows and expect it to work flawlessly after installing linux.

Alternatively you can live with the shortcomings of this.

[Andrecorreia]

five pcs

five pcs in the house (4laptops) all with linux, no windows, ubuntu, manjaro and arch, all working well. i see a lot of stupid guys in this forum every day, but today wtf, is simply to much, well i go play dota 2 and stop loosing time with users who say every day "linux rock" but their OS is not linux

[stqn]

XFCE is actually one of the better desktops for hidpi, (…), but the lack of an OpenGL compositor is causing huge problems with tearing on recent laptops (Sandy Bridge onwards require a compositor that does page-flipping otherwise there will be tearing - there is a "tearfree" option in xorg but it impacts performance, and I don't think that any distributions enable it).

Compton doesn’t work? I use it to get a tear-free desktop and videos, but I have a first gen Core i3.

And yes Xfce is by far the best DE.

[GreatEmerald]

Nothing to see here people. If you want a linux laptop buy one that the manufacturer supports linux on it officially. Not something with windows and expect it to work flawlessly after installing linux.

Alternatively you can live with the shortcomings of this.

"Shortcomings" being what, exactly? This article is about Michael not liking XFCE's DPI settings and the fact that peripherals require cables. Whether or not the battery time is different is yet to be determined.

And plenty of laptops work flawlessly after installing Linux, you just need to be aware of the hardware specs and possibly also the firmware. Of course, if you don't want to do that, then yes, choosing a preinstalled computer makes the most sense.

[liam]

I went ahead and quoted this. Simply because it's so very true. I'm going to add to it, that it's not just a Windows/Linux/Mac thing. I recently 'upgraded' my phone from a Nokia N9 to a Samsung Galaxy Note 3. After about a day, I've decided that once I can get my Sim card back out of the Note 3, I'm just going to use it for testing out Android software and maybe writing some for it, and using my N9 as my main phone. It's just better in every way, except hardware. Which means of course that it's the software that stinks. I'll probably end up putting Sailfish on it, if someone can get that working.

But on the note of scammy-looking third party software. It's horrible on Android as well as Windows. EVERYTHING is freaking ad supported. Unless you want to fork out the dough, but most of the 'apps' that I use are pretty typically just little free ones that shouldn't need access to all of my information, and shouldn't need to pull advertisements in constantly. Sure there were a few ad-supported bits of software for the N9, but the majority of them were just awesome.

But the usability of Android drives me NUTS! After having Harmattan MeeGo and it's slick three screen setup, Android is like going back to my Atari ST days, where if you wanted a semi-decent desktop experience, you had to install one of the replacement desktops, which of course ate far more memory, and tended to crash back to the built-in ROM most of the time anyhow.

That's the same feeling I get whenever I load up Windows 7 or Windows 8 after being in Gnome for so long. Gnome is a simple, elegant UI that stays out of your way for the most part, and lets you work in your applications. I think that the biggest "Gnome-Shell sucks!" complaints is that the shortcuts need to be more obvious. But the very same could be said about Windows 8.x. Hell, I still only know of one way to close applications, and that's by using the trusty Alt+F4.

Which brings me back again to Android. You have to hold the damned Home button down to bring up a task list? Then scroll up and down to select the task to switch... Or if you swipe apps left or right they will close (TouchWiz from what I've read added the little "close all apps" button, which is nice.) Freaking annoying and out of the way.

The beautiful N9 on the other hand. You swipe to the left and you have your tasks screen, press and hold on the screen and there are little X buttons on the upper right of the live window boxes. Or you can press the close all. Then just press done. It's also far more intuitive, in my mind, to scroll up and down for the application list. At least I finally found how to change that on TouchWiz. I've tried other launchers/Home screens, and they all seem to be rather buggy. In fact, that's been my impression with most of the software for Android. In fact, at one point I had removed 'Lookout' and then the lock screen and settings would constantly crash.

So yeah, just because something becomes mainstream, and people get used to all the weird random issues with them, then accept them as "that's how things are supposed to work" and then the underdog ones end up making better overall user experiences, they are shit because "well, I don't know how to use that, and little things are breaking! Waaaah! I'll go back to Windows because when I whine about Linux, they tell me just to go back to Windows anyhow!" Truth usually is, these type of people are almost impossible to help, because they go in with "well it sucks didn't work like I am used to." so there is no way to convince them otherwise. My mother is that way. I set up a dual-boot on her laptop, and she hardly goes into Linux because "well, I don't know how to work it." I have showed her how, but she's old and forgetful, so it doesn't really stick.

I agree with others, Michael should probably dump (X)Ubuntu and just go with Debian, and then from there decide on a shinier DE. Though I will say it's funny he says that Ubuntu has worse fan/battery performance on that laptop. On my HP Touchsmart (granted it's pretty old now in computer years) Windows 8.1 almost constantly leaves the fan on, and Linux the fan is silent unless I'm doing something CPU intensive. Android-x86 is somewhere in between. Surprisingly enough, Android on the tablet is a lot nicer than it is on my Note3. If only I could get the touchscreen to work, been looking into that, but everything else works, including screen rotation.

Ah, that was a long rant, that's what happens when you become unemployed. Cheers!

First, why Debian? Why not arch, fedora, suse, or any of the other major distros?
Second, you complain about apps being ad supported but then also complain about having to pay for apps in order to avoid ads? You can certainly avoid both by only installing oss apps (there are plenty of those... I seem to recall an
app store that provided such), but, if you can afford it, just pay for the apps.
Third, someone needs to explain to me how harmattan is better than android. I know there are tons of qt/nokia fans who loved this phone (well, not limited to just those people but, from my observations, they're the majority) but what, exactly, about android is getting in your way?
Fourth, I use gs as my primary de but I don't understand this obsessive refrain of it"getting out of your way". Maybe I've not used the"right"environments but I haven't noticed them getting in my way unless you're talking about them not allowing me to work in the most efficient way.

[calc]

Of course XFCE doesn't work that great on newer hidpi hardware considering its barely maintained anymore. Its last official release was nearly 2 years ago.

[stqn]

Of course XFCE doesn't work that great on newer hidpi hardware considering its barely maintained anymore. Its last official release was nearly 2 years ago.

Many individual components of Xfce have been updated since then.

http://archive.xfce.org/feeds/project/?C=M;O=D

It?s wonderful that you registered just to post FUD.

[calc]

Many individual components of Xfce have been updated since then.

http://archive.xfce.org/feeds/project/?C=M;O=D

It?s wonderful that you registered just to post FUD.

You of course realize 4.11.x is still in pre alpha state and 4.10 was released 2 years ago, right?

I obviously can't post urls yet so look at the main site page and the 4.12 roadmap.

[profoundWHALE]

My favourites right now are:
#1: Openbox (see Crunchbang)
#2: Unity (see Ubuntu)
Note, unity is in a transition period or in other words a bit of an awkward stage.
#3: Gnome 3 (see Fedora)
Bonus: Cinnamon (see Linux Mint)
For those who like Windows style.

Although something I miss from KDE is the multiple audio volume control. That was nice. Soon I think I'm going to make a 90% Transition over to Linux because of the amount of things in Windows that have been breaking. I was one of those people that installed the windows 8 Steelseries RAW gaming mouse driver on Windows 8.1 (the version for Windows 8.1 hadn't been released yet) and it destroyed my OS like nothing else. It simply would not boot, would not restore and would not repair. That was just one of many examples.