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Comment by halfdan | Hacker News Reader

This.

I love Linux, but I also just want to be productive in my job. Gone are the days where I can spend hours happily compiling my own kernel to optimize the hell out of bootup time and slim it down. There's no single ready to use distro that has a somewhat modern feel to it (IMHO).

So I bit the bullet long ago, bought a Mac, made it feel as close as home as I could and I haven't spent a second trying to debug a random bug affecting my bluetooth, audio, graphics or wifi card since. The only thing I truly miss is i3wm.

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I also gave up on Linux. I ran Ubuntu 20.04 for about 6-8 months for work and play. I got tired of having to find workarounds for software.

I bought a Mac M1 mini late last year and shit just works. I don't regret the purchase a single bit. Would I prefer to be on Linux? Definitely.

Hopefully, software bundling tech like Flatpack and Snap will make the distribution and stability of software a lot better in the future.

I got tired of having to find workarounds for software.

That's probably because you have a good bit of time invested in particular pieces of software, and the change to a Linux equivalent means you would have to start learning that equivalent software all the way from scratch back to your current level of expertise.

Never having used Windows or MacOS as my 'every-day' operating system, I don't have to 'unlearn everything' before I get to start learning a Linux equivalent. So, I don't have any problems at all running my Linux system for everything I need. In fact, my moving to MacOS to get to your levels of expertise would be just as unproductive for me as it is for you to move to Linux.

This is a common dismissal of these complaints, but I don't think it rings true. Having used the "linux equivalent" of many pieces of software, it's clear to me that the equivalents are a lot more work than the non-linux software.

The use case I always use as an example is spell-checking multiple languages in a document. MS Word handles this automatically, you don't have to tell it that you're mixing languages. However, OpenOffice requires you to go the the general config and enable each language app-wide (meaning the multiple languages are now being spell-checked across all documents, not just this one). It's not only a broken design paradigm, it's a lot more work to find the config panel to enable multiple languages.

Having used the "linux equivalent" of many pieces of software, it's clear to me that the equivalents are a lot more work than the non-linux software.

To you.

Which was my point exactly. I don't have any difficulty in using my 'every day Linux apps' while you do.

As a counter example to your MS Word case, I find it so hard and annoying to install Windows software. In Linux, I open the software package manager, use the 'search' function and click on the desired software, then click on 'install' and it's done. And when there is an upgrade to that software, the package manager will automatically upgrade it on my machine.

This always comes down to a no true scottsman argument, right? I clearly haven't used the Linux apps enough, otherwise I would accept that they're just as good (if not better) than the non-Linux apps. Maybe you're right, but I'm just saying that just because you've found a possible explanation, you shouldn't assume that it's correct. There are other possibilities, such as me being right.

It's not that every Linux app is as good as it's non-Linux equivalent, it's that using either Linux/not-Linux for long enough makes you good at doing what Linux/not-Linux is good at. It's more like if you grew up driving tractors, and op grew up on a fishing boat. Tractors aren't less work - they are different work.

Well to re-state my position, I believe, based on my experience, that for most common tasks, starting with zero knowledge of both a commercial program and it's "Linux equivalent", the Linux equivalent is more work to accomplish the task. Likewise, once someone has mastered the commercial program, and also mastered the equivalent, I believe that the equivalent will still be more work to accomplish common tasks. The key connecting detail here is the common tasks, which are something someone would want to do in a general class of programs (such as lighten an image, write a book report on Moby Dick, or make a budget in a spreadsheet) before even choosing one.

Is there something better than Homebrew for package distribution in macOS?

Fink and MacPorts, for a given definition of "better." They at least don't abandon older OS releases as quickly.

What's wrong with homebrew?

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