iPad-only is the new desktop Linux | Hacker News Reader

iPad-only is the new desktop Linux

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43 pointstdurden56 comments

This seems to be making the point that using an iPad is a 'badge of pride' because it's 'challenging'; trying to make the point that Linux is also difficult to use. Except, it's not the same type of challenge at all.

Linux usability can actually be pretty good, but it's dependent on familiarity, the desktop environment, the distro, the choice of installed applications; everything is customizable, and making most of that customization requires a willingness to research, understand, tinker.

An iPad is locked down to the point of hurting usability, the 'share' system is vastly inferior to Android's 'intents', split-screen mode just recently arrived, mouse support is intentionally missing. Trying to use it as a desktop replacement is borderline masochism. Frankly, it's nothing like desktop Linux, even if you're in an unfamiliar desktop environment.

I started using Linux on the desktop in 2001 and have only used other OSes casually since then.

Linux is incredibly productive for me and I'm pretty worthless on other operating systems. And I'm old enough that I'm no longer willing to put in the time to learn a new one.

Ubuntu does what I want; I don't have to configure things and It Just Works 99% of the time. Plus it's free, so there's no financial incentive to use something else.

Can I ask you a honest question? How much time do you spend on ISM that the OS actually matters to you that much? I've heard a lot of people saying I'm more productive on X, but in every case I never had real examples of OS specific reasons why they were more productive as in every case it boiled down to the Application ecosystem they end up using.

Say you are a Java (it's easy, common, and cross platform) developer this means you need your Eclipse/Netbeans IDE, a JVM and or some Java based web server. So you have your IDE+JVM on the OS, and development/deployment & test environment on a virtual machine, does it really matter to you if you are running Linux, Windows or OSX in this case? All you use and see is Eclipse, a text editor, Virtual Box and a web browser.

Yes, when spending most of the day in front of a cross-platform IDE the OS has very little effect. But the OS has an effect on configuration side of things. Due to working in parallel with different projects and systems I need to have multiple versions of JDK available, a set of multiple build tools in different versions and multiple application servers. I have used Windows, OSX and Linux for development and Linux has been the easiest environment to set up and maintain and Linux VMs also solve the multiple app servers-problem. I don't have that much experience with OSX (only got my MacBook Pro a couple of months ago) and so far it feels quite alien. While there's the familiar power of Unix lurking in the back the GUI side feels very cumbersome and something I feel I have very little control on. Is that the Apple usability magic that people usually talk about?

Yes, it's rather silly. Desktop Linux is like having a machine shop. It's a steep learning curve, but you can do amazing things. Advanced tasks on the iPad is like a dancing bear: it's impressive that it can even be done, but the actual dancing sucks.

I love the dancing bear analogy, but I'd argue that Linux on the desktop isn't a difficult learning curve. Not in 2016, anyway.

The Linux desktop is different than Windows 10 or the MacOS, but it isn't harder, IMO.

Yeah, in 2016 you don't need to configure X or edit CHAP scripts. I think some people still hang on the allure of days gone by.

For the average user (who uses w10 or osx) linux is miles more difficult. Turn on your mac, login to apple, and 1 click download anything and it works. Linux has dependencies, and not-so-straightforward app store, and plenty of little differences that aren't obvious like osx. Thats what makes it so powerful though.

This is going to change with projects like snap and flatpak. Soon every app will be come bundled with its own dependencies like Windows exe's

As someone who remembers apt-get update taking only a couple seconds back in the debian etch days, That sounds horrible.

> Desktop Linux is like having a machine shop. It's a steep learning curve, but you can do amazing things.

IME, the learning curve for Linux (post-installation, at least) is waaaay less steep than Windows. When I went off to college and got tired of my Dad calling me every few days with another question or concern about his Windows computer, I switched him to Linux Mint and haven't been bugged since. It's too much to expect of the average user to use a Windows computer: constant fears of malware, a system tray polluted with two dozen startup programs that they didn't consent to, frankly idiotic design decisions like "Let's install updates and refuse to turn off for ten minutes, regardless of whether this laptop needs to be shoved into a backpack right now".

The main difficulty in desktop Linux is hardware compatibility stuff, but IME that mostly boils down to a couple careful decisions right at the beginning. I've had something like four Thinkpads over the last ~10 years and I've yet to have hardware problems of any significance. People occasionally comment that it's ridiculous to have to constrain one's hardware choices based on the OS they want to use, but that's pretty much exactly what many people do for Macs, so I don't think it's all that weird (and certainly worth it).

Except that to those of us who cut our teeth on DOS & Windows, and grew to the point that going away from the GUI was either the mark of doing something the hard way or because of a specific failure, *nix presents a vastly different working paradigm.

Not to mention compatibility issues and other general issues.

I grew up on DOS and Windows, and never felt that way. The console was always for when I ran into limitations imposed by whatever GUI I was in.

When you say that "going away from the GUI was either the mark of doing something the hard way or because of a specific failure", it's true about windows because the windows command line was basically unsupported territory.

The Windows command line ecosystem was a stagnant ghetto for a long time.

You had to use an uncomfortable and ugly program to access it and the environment itself barely moved from DOS.

PowerShell was the first real progress in a long time and now they've arrived at 'lets just run bash on windows'.

For me the article boils down to this:

> No, hear me out. See, Linux users don’t care how much easier we say it is in our non-Linux worlds. Sure, they say it’s because of open access and free as in scotch ale and yadda yadda yadda, but really? They like the challenge.

This statement is completely unsubstanicated. If you don't agree with it, don't bother reading the article, it all henges on it.

The article is not actually about desktop Linux. The author tries to draw an analogy, it does not actually matter much whether it resonates.

The article boils down to: using an iPad for your day to day tasks is possible but so restrictive you might wonder why people would try to. Much like many people try (tried) to use Linux for day to day tasks and found it is (was) too restrictive.

I myself can't argue. My current main os is NixOS and I've found it usable but as a newbie much more restrictive than for example Ubuntu or Arch. Would I recommend it? Would you like to use the next generation of more perfect operating systems? Only if you like a bit of a challenge..

I don't get this idea that desktop Linux is challenging, not at all. I've been using a Linux box as my primary desktop since 1999, and as my sole desktop since 2000. It's not challenging, it just works.

I won't say that there are never challenges, but they are rare and — unlike Windows and macOS — if I search a little I'll find an answer and am able to bend the OS to my will.

I disagree entirely - as someone who has dual-booted w/ Linux since 2002.

1) Driver issues (becoming less of a problem as time goes on) but it used to be a headache even for tech-savvy people to get their drivers to "just work" and so help you god when you decided to update...

2) While a large majority of users need little less than a working internet browser - there is a large niche for gaming that has only recently started to be supported by developers on Linux distros - Steam only in recent years. Likewise for many professional niches - the software is developed for Windows/Mac and may or may not support Linux at all.

3) UX of many things is either missing or lackluster. This has made great strides in the past 5ish years but many things still rely on users having at least some knowledge about config files and knowing their way around a command prompt. At the least, RTFM. All are arcane black magic to many computer users.

Not to mention, package what-nows? sudo?

It isn't user-friendly in the least for the common user. It's powerful and "not too hard to Google a few things" for more tech-savvy users, but tech-savvy users aren't most users.

>I don't get this idea that desktop Linux is challenging, not at all. I've been using a Linux box as my primary desktop since 1999

Isn't that fact a huge tell-sign that perhaps you're not the kind of person for whom desktop Linux would be challenging?

You speak of 2000, but historically even people like ESR, Linus Torvalds, JWZ etc have found Linux bad at usability and ease of installation.

Of course people used to tinker to e.g. get 3D working, or with basic setups that don't need anything special driver-wise, won't notice.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qHGTs1NSB1s http://news.oreilly.com/2008/07/linux-torvalds-on-linux-dist... https://plus.google.com/115250422803614415116/posts/hMT5kW8L... http://gensho.acc.umu.se/pub/debian-meetings/2014/debconf14/... http://www.catb.org/~esr/writings/cups-horror.html

https://www.jwz.org/blog/2005/06/that-was-in-fact-the-final-... https://www.jwz.org/doc/linuxvideo.html https://www.jwz.org/doc/linux.html

> Isn't that fact a huge tell-sign that perhaps you're not the kind of person for whom desktop Linux would be challenging?

Well, sure — but I didn't spring forth fully-formed from my father's forehead knowing how to use Linux. As a matter of fact, until I switched I was a Mac user.

And FWIW both my liberal-arts brother and his liberal-arts wife are now using Linux. My sister-in-law discovered the command line within a week.

I won't deny that there are things which are painful in Linux. But are they more common than painful things in Windows? I had to get a Windows machine to do some work on, and it's utterly terrible. I don't just mean the 'this doesn't work the way I'm used to' stuff: that's to be expected. I mean things like randomly prompting me for a smartcard PIN over and over again, when Linux would ask but once. I mean things like wanting to download OS updates as one large file, rather than many small files — which can mean that it's impossible to update the OS on a small disk.

I've not used macOS enough in the last decade to really have a critique; every time I use it, I want to hurl the computer through a window, but I freely admit that may simply be down to unfamiliarity, which is no more a critique of macOS than it is of Linux. It is annoying that I can't use a tiling window manager, though.

> See, Linux users don’t care how much easier we say it is in our non-Linux worlds. Sure, they say it’s because of open access and free as in scotch ale and yadda yadda yadda, but really? They like the challenge. Figuring out how to do what they used to do on a Mac or Windows PC is part of the allure.

Sigh... This again? Figuring out how to do things is not part of the allure. Linux is my native ecosystem. I never have to "figure out how to do what they used to do on a Mac or Windows PC." It's the other way around: I have to figure out how to do what I normally do on Linux elsewhere, and very often the answer is, "You can't do it, " because Windows and Mac don't provide the same level of customization. Many of my regular workflows are just not possible on Windows/Mac.

Except iPads don't run Linux, and iOS is ridiculously locked down and has very few usable apps for typical desktop needs (Android also has this issue, so I'm not shitting on iOS only).

What are "typical desktop needs"? Microsoft Office? Web browsing? What else?

Emacs. And, uh, some kind of browser, I guess.

> Emacs

You seem to have confused "my desktop needs" for "typical desktop needs".

Context is Linux desktop.

Jailbroken iPad has all the "Linux" essentials you might need. Combined with a Bluetooth keyboard and SSH to a remote server, you've got a decent dev machine.

Sorry, but imho a cheap Dell would be more comfortable to work on than some weird ipad/bluetooth keyboard/whatnot combo.

And decent only starts on the far other side of that spectrum.

I think it would be interesting to see the amount of productivity people lose using their iPads.

In my experience my iPad means I am using my laptop a lot less, but it's taking me more time to do the same things I did on the laptop on my iPad.

With the advent of ultraportable laptops a few years ago, I've almost entirely stopped using my tablet(s). The upsides of a smartphone's form factor are self-evident, but a suitably light laptop is (IME) so far superior to a tablet in comfort, usability, and efficiency that the category has been practically obsoleted for me.

My current laptop has a 13 inch screen and roughly the dimensions of an 11 inch macbook air. There are very few times I find it less convenient than a 7 inch tablet, and almost none compared to a full-sized tablet.

There may be value in using an iPad as a dev machine simply because it provides a separate environment for only doing dev work. Given that habit (and thereby procrastination) depends greatly on environment, it's possible that using an iPad strictly as a dev machine could increase productivity by subconsciously associating the iPad environment with efficiency. That is, if you're on your iPad, you know you shouldn't be messing around, and you use it only for work. Whereas if you're on your laptop you might be tempted to lapse into time sinks that you already associate with your laptop.

I tried doing some serious writing on an iPad (with external keyboard) a few years back.

The number of times I needed to touch the screen or switch apps made it a pretty inefficient experience.

If I wanted a 'cheap' device to write on again I'd probably try a Chromebook

One is talking about software and the other is talking about hardware form factor.

If the form factor is uncomfortable, sometimes you can't program around a solution.

That's actually all the "GNU" parts of gnu/linux that people mention here and there when being pedantic about linux distributions. No linux involved at all as long as you are on darwin.

I think it depends heavily on what you're using your computer for.

One of my parents owns both an iPad and a laptop, and the laptop barely sees any use anymore. He's got a keyboard case, and, while I hate that keyboard, he's perfectly happy with it. Email and browsing are about equally good on iPad as they are on a computer. Browsing might even be better what with the no flash. It plays video games & runs Netflix, and that's about all that matters. I don't think he cares two beans about multitasking. The iOS office apps may or may not be good enough; the last time he cared about document editing was pre-retirement so I don't know that he's really put them to the test.

Challenging? Nah. I'm pretty sure he settled into it because, for him, it's easier.

Ive been on the fence about this, with my last two years of schooling coming up, i really don't want to carry any books, most of which I'm able to find online. I also have to commute across the bay which takes 90min, can't leave shit in my car because there is no locked trunk (if i don't take BART)

This 2009 15in literally is the only 15in macbook no to have video card issues released in the last 10 years? But the downside is that its heavy.

Okay so that leaves 2-3 options realistically. Retina Macbook nice screen, light weight, downside the keyboard is really small, fingers become cramped, computation power might become an issue, although a deeper dive into the benchmarking might give insight into that.

15in Retina, Screen+ , Speed+, Power+, Cost(---): seriously these 15in computers are baller, but i can buy another car for the price of this computer.....

iPad Pro + Virtual OS X host - get to have something light weight, easy to do things with (read,code,surf,roll blunts), downside can't always be online unless getting cellular, VNC might be destroying data caps, memory also becomes problematic, as well as what the author stated which was broken workflows with documents....

Anyone have input to this? What works for y'all?

its never going to happen, but OS X on iPadPro would be the solution to all of this >.>

iOS and Android works fairly well if all you are doing is working on one App at a time. Considering something simple as copying a password from a password manager to paste on target app is already very awkward process on Android...

Something I can do in less than 5 seconds on desktop takes 30 seconds in those, so I'm not sure how they can be compared to Linux desktop.

Its fun just to try and list the cultural clashes in the article, like the linked author tried to include as many as possible.

My school age kids use ipads as their primary computer at school and that carries over into home use. No matter what the linked article's author experienced as a professional journalist as "normal", to today's kids the ipad will be the new "normal". Maybe they'll be a human interest article in a decade about trying to use old fashioned desktops and laptops to do real work, instead of professional tablets that everyone uses.

Much like linux is useless on the desktop because no matter how many desktops its deployed and used upon, if it can't run Excel2013 then the small segment of the population that uses that software will never shut up about it being useless to everyone because its useless to them until their itch is scratched. Just like a skyscraper without parking for every employee is obviously useless because over 90% of the countries population drives cars to work. You just can't argue with special snowflakes who refuse to acknowledge they're special snowflakes.

There is a side dish that when I got started with computers in 1981 the UI was not user friendly and almost everyone was a noob, and now we have no noobs left but the UIs are all weird and exclusively noob focused. Its a stereotype that any discussion of "ease of use" WRT computers isn't a discussion about actual use, its a discussion about fads and styles in UI design and 99% of everything has been tried, heavily promoted, and discarded in the past. Therefore its unsurprising that today's standard sucks because UIs have always sucked and always will. That makes all this "easier" "harder" stuff just nonsense. Merely different ways to do things. In the linked article he doesn't like which directory in dropbox Byword links to, blah blah who cares. For all past and present and eternity it'll always be possible to complain about UIs and its completely content free.

The linked post not really about hardware or UI design but how per app sandboxing and lack of a shared local FS has restricted productivity on the iPad pro.

I've always likened iOS to living in a bunch of lavishly outfitted tents: they look great and are really comfortable. However each tent could only be of a certain size since there is no solid foundation and when the heavens decide to rain it is impossible to go from your bedroom to the kitchen without getting wet. The other OS may be an ugly Stalinist house with very small windows and unpolished concrete floor, but they are objectively better at serving the purpose of in door dwelling I.e. shielding people from the elements.

Still waiting on a terminal-emulator/external keyboard combo that handles alt and ctrl in an emacs-friendly way (I simply can't retrain my brain to use esc for M-). If it also allows me to remap caps-lock to ctrl, I'll rename a child after it.

I think the author is correct that some people use an iPad as a badge of honor - I am a little guilty of this.

Both my iPad mini 4 and iPad Pro are fine for writing books in markdown, using an online publishing platform like leanpub, performing research and note taking, accessing servers via SSH terms, and consuming content. For work, the trick is getting really fast at switching between apps and have a good memory when you can't see things side by side.

Where they fall short is in programming. I do a lot of work on remote servers and have SSH + term + Emacs set up nicely, but sometimes I really need IDEs like IntelliJ or RubyMine to be really productive programming. So, I keep a few Ubuntu laptops around.

Used this for awhile on my old iPad when my main laptop was broken. iSSH, a wireless keyboard + cloud virtual machine and you can pretty much do anything you need for dev work as long as you have a cellular or wifi connection.

Windows didn't get the top position in desktop usage because it had such a good UI. Neither does the iPad really work well as a desktop replacement.

It's all about laziness. If (for whatever reasons) I use this device for most of my tasks for most of the day, I have an incentive to use it for all of my tasks.

This might lead to a "challenge" but at least I don't have to start up the laptop with Windows or boot into Windows to get my tasks done. And sometimes, you just decide that this "important" task wasn't that important after all and just work around it.

Seems like a good scenario for a Chromebook. You can buy two or more for the price of one iPad. And install Linux on it if you want.

I think this would provide another good alternative

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/andromium/the-superbook...

Who knows how well it would work in practice though

I always found peculiar of computer science in general the fact that once something has got good enough, people in the field feel the urge to throw everything out of the window and rebuild the whole thing, just a tiny bit differently, possibly making the same mistakes that have been done in the past.

From the creators of "PC is dead, long live IOS"

Remind me again the argument for using the ipad instead of a... say mac air... or the macbook? 1 pound? 2?

Sure there are some people for which this is critical... like the guy who is 40 pounds overweight but buys a new 10000$ new road bike because it's 1 pound lighter...

11 hour battery life, built in SIM card, drawing UI sketches for clients (not an Air though, I have a pro)

I really don't see the hype around the iPad Pro. Doesn't it make sense to get something like the Surface instead which is a full Intel machine in the same form-factor running the desktop version of Windows 10; rather than limiting yourself to Apple's walled garden?

I think that is very bad comparison.

I have an Android tablet with proper Debian desktop installed. With keyboard, mouse, USB hub... It even runs Java...

Is it arm or intel? If it's arm, please give us the model number. I wants.

someone took 20years to understand what a walled garden design means. I am trying really hard to not be offensive in this comment...

But linux is easier to use than windows?

Not anymore. You can run bash on Windows now.

I think the headline and comparison of iOS to Linux shows the author doesn't really understand the technology being written about.

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