Switching from MacOS: Developer Environment | Hacker News Reader

Switching from MacOS: Developer Environment

blog.elementary.io

15 pointsMayzie12 comments

>>>I am a professional web developer ... working with an amazing graphic designer/illustrator who designs everything you see on System76.com.

But doesn't design it using ElementaryOS, seeing as it has no graphic design software —or design it using any Linux, for that matter, seeing as no Linux distro has any professional grade design software...

>>The column view is a nice option for those of you used to that in macOS...

Except it doesn't have the preview pane from the column view in OSX Finder. So is nowhere near as useful.

Don't get me wrong, I applaud what you're trying to do with elementary OS and appreciate that you probably see the general disappointment over the latest MBP as a great opportunity to get elementary on the radar of disillusioned Apple users. But to try and pass elementary off as a viable alternative is just daft.

* A crippled Finder-lite

* Some pretty notifications

* A dock

* A mediocre email programme and browser

* A terminal

* A text editor with syntax highlighting

* An image viewer

* A PDF reader

* An app store which is completely empty, apart from what comes with the default install.

Did I miss anything?

I'm no graphic designer, so sorry if it's not applicable, but Inkscape and Krita is insufficient? The beauty of linux is that you don't really need a distro to have any specific software, because there are always multiple options available, even if it's sometimes not quite as polished as the Mac or Windows eqiuvalent. It can often surprise you though.

Krita is getting there but it's no Photoshop at the moment.

Good to know.

At least no-one suggested that godawful Gimp as a Photoshop alternative

>> Did I miss anything?

Civility?

Aw, diddums!

I'm a professional full-stack developer. I get such a kick out of all these Linux distros trying to think: Hey, you can totally just go to us as a developer. Here is why I can't just go: I expect the environment to work for me. I need this environment to get out of my way. I need to solve problems before I have them. All the little things that stop me from doing what I want, develop software.

Here is what I irks me:

No, xTerm and Terminator don't cut it. I need color control, including themes, gamma, and events. I need font control, UTF8 and powerline pro. I need full UI control, including no bars, no scrolls, full screen. I need full key control, including mapping, meta, disabling and arrow-keys with meta support. I need copy/paste working.. for real.. with system-wide integrated buffers and vim.

I need full discoverability, network, printers, etc. Mac can find a printer on the network, install its own driver and just work. Same with scanners.

I don't need packages for apps. One of the best things about Mac is install and uninstall an app is dragging to or deleting out of the Applications folder. That an app is just a special folder that I can peer into if I need to. Apt-get is fine for system tools, but not applications.

One of the most underrated features is file containers, DMGs. Double-click and they mount. Application installation becomes trivial and.. cannot fail with some "lock file is open" crap. They're also wonderful for keeping a set of related files together.

The UI is one of the most consistent out there. Apps aren't perfect, but I have general expectation what will be in menus. I also know the menu will always be at the top of the GUI. Speaking of: full-screen support is amazing, and with exposé it's a snap just jump between window with hot-keys.

Office-type tools are generally overly complex and not-integrated. I may be able to use X for email and Y for calendar, but I have to configure the same things in each. There is no centralized concept for accounts, messages, and notifications. Seriously, go into the System Preferences and really consider all the settings that can be controlled and are system wide. I can configure every important system configuration with it, including setting all forms of sharing.

PDF should be integrated by default. I should be able to view them, annotate them, drag-and-drop rearrange/build them. I should be able print them from the print menu.

Preview is one of the most underrated, under-appreciated, under-noticed apps. It has a crap load of power, but it's so simple people generally don't realize what they're doing. It can scale, crop, and rotate. It can adjust size, color, and resolution. It can scroll through a directory and give a slideshow. It can annotate, mask, and create contact sheets. It can work with pictures, animated files, movies and documents. It can be scripted through AppleScript to do all of these things. And, is integrated with most apps through the system application hand-off.

And, NO. I am not going to sit down and configure these things. I have plenty of fun setting up my own configuration for my development environment. I don't want to set up Samba. I don't want to apt-get applications. And most importantly, I don't want to have to sudo apt-get upgrade. The system should tell me: "it's time to upgrade, when is it convenient for me to do it, as I have already downloaded the package and it's ready to go."

Fundamentally, what macOS gets right more than anyone else is "things work." Sure, there are things that get broke, but most of the time I can plug this or that thing in, and it just appears: drives, card readers, floppies, networks, printers, displays, accounts, applications, games, and on and on..

It's not about what distros can do, it's about what I don't have to do.

I completely agree. I switched to Apple around a decade ago because I got tired of the yearly reinstall-windows ritual and installing printer drivers and having to send my laptop for repairs.

There's a lot I don't like about Apple, but the 'just works' thing, at least for my use case, is absolutely true.

After the MBP announcement I started looking into alternatives, but all of them fell short.One example:

if I buy new MacBook, I'm up in running in no time because of Time Machine. I've already Time Machine'd at least one laptop ago and things are still doing fine. Or if my current MacBook Air fails, I can easily set up an old-ish Mac Mini with my entire system. Almost no downtime.

That right that, much as I hate to admit it, is enough reason to suck it up, eventually, and buy a really expensive MacBook Pro in a year or so.

And then there are Mac-only apps and iOS-only apps like OmniFocus that I use constantly, a nice touchpad (main reason I'm not getting an XPS), a sleep/hibernate mode that somehow still works better than the altnerative, and the fact that I can walk into any Apple store and have my problems taken care of because of Apple Care.

Now I fully understand that for many people the somewhat ridiculously high price of the new MBP (in Europe, at least) does not weigh up against all these things. But for me they're worth overpaying. Begrudgingly, but still.

They are losing some goodwill though. I'm keeping my ears to the ground and I'll jump ship if I think it's worth it.

No split panes in the terminal application?

Not in the default terminal app. But that functionality is "sudo apt install terminator" away.

What I don't like about these "eye-candy" distros is packaging--do they have the required human resources to ensure packages are always up to date, especially when security problems arise?

>You can also install any downloaded .deb file designed for the version of elementary OS (or underlying version of Ubuntu or Debian)

Installing external .deb packages is usually the worst idea: the application will break when the ABI of one of the linked libraries changes, for example.

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