Ask HN: Has anyone moved away from Mac? I've been on a mac for 20 years, but recently I've been eyeing going Linux + Ryzen Mobile. Steam for gaming. For those of you that have moved, what has been your experience? |
Ask HN: Has anyone moved away from Mac? I've been on a mac for 20 years, but recently I've been eyeing going Linux + Ryzen Mobile. Steam for gaming. For those of you that have moved, what has been your experience? |
I have tried using Linux as a daily driver but can't. Years ago I used BeOS and then Linux as drivers but my needs expanded.
Issues with Linux... there's software that I need that doesn't have an equivalent that meets my needs on Linux so, I would need to limit my Linux usage to only the other things I need but...
Not all of the games I enjoy from steam work on Linux so at that point. It's Linux only for development.
I need zoom for working with other developers and it is less stable for me on Linux than Windows or Mac.
There's a few minor annoyances with Linux beyond that but...
Some personal software I refuse to move off means no Linux for that.
My favorite video game isn't available for Linux on Steam so, I didn't end up playing games on Linux.
I can do development on Linux except for the zoom problems.
I have Linux machines I can ssh into for doing kernel hacking, otherwise, WSL gives me everything I need for development and I get the rest from the few applications I use on windows.
I find Linux, windows, and macOS all flawed but for me Windows ones are the most acceptable.
I suggest you give Linux a go and see if it works out. Given you mention steam, start by verifying all the games you want are available on Linux.
The key reason of moving is that, Apple suddenly moved Korean/English change to another position. In Korea, the language changing key is positioned at the right of space. And in 2017, Apple suddenly erased the language changing key, and let user to guie "Caps Lock" button instead. And the original "Caps Lock" key, it is working only when pressing the "Caps Lock" key over 2 seconds.
I thought that Apple did a terror to Korean users. However, I just kept using the Macbook just by customizing the language change key to others by the 3rd p zarty key mapping program. ' By the way, Apple did more terrible thing at 2020. They suddenly removed "\" (Korean dollar symbol called "won"), and moved it to use the "`" key. The previous "`" key has been disabled when typing Korean. So when writing markdown content, whenever I need codeblock, it makes me crazy.
Furthermore, Mac has critical bug on language changing delay problem. If I press the language change button and keep going typing, the language change is adjusted after the following keys. This is called language chaning delay. Korean users are requesting t fix the bug for 20 years, but never be resolved.
- expected: 안녕하세요 여러분 (pressed 한영전환) Hello everyone
- actual; 안녕하세요 여러분 (pressed languge change key) ㅗ디ㅣㅐ ㄷㅍㄷ교oneReason being that many tools are only created to run on Windows, or maybe Linux if you're lucky. It's especially bad in the world of game development and modding, where pretty much everything is designed with a 'Windows first, everything else last' mentality.
In the olden days WINE made this possible to get round to a decent degree, but now I recall support for it has dropped off the face of the Earth on Mac OS, and options for running these tools without having a full-blown virtual machine going are very limited indeed.
As for my experience, it's been generally mixed. On the one hand, being sure that just about anything you need is natively available is a great feeling to have here, since there are numerous things I'd struggle to run on Mac that work perfectly on PC. At the same time, it feels like the front-end development world has got itself caught up in a Mac first phase when it comes to automation and development workflows, and now it's those aspects which are annoying to manage on this machine instead.
Most things didn't change much though. I tend not to use digital services created by the developer of the OS I'm using, so there wasn't really much of a change between say, iCloud and OneDrive or Safari vs Edge.
I'm still debating a replacement, but Linux on Ryzen is a leading option. I don't like Apple's recent work with macOS, and while the hardware seems to continue to be excellent, I'm not sure that's enough.
I've looked at Framework, Tuxedo, Lenovo ... nothing really looks great though, which is why I haven't made the jump. Yet.
At first I hated Mac, but then I got used to it. Eventually I bought MacBook for myself. The M processor is amazing. Silent, can last a whole day and more on battery.
Once in a few months I consider switching back to Linux on thinkpad or framework laptops, but reading reviews such as loosing battery when hibernating, noise from the fans, thermal throttling, just makes me love Mac more.
I spend 60% of my time in neovim and 30% in Firefox, so the OS does not bother me much, it’s still *nix based with the addition of having all the popular apps. And I like the ecosystem.
Then there's the issue (maybe personal) that I don't trust Linux not to give me trouble with drivers. Network drivers in particular are a pain in the ass to deal with because, well, you're out of a network connection (persistent broadcom card issues in the past).
Linux is fine, it's similar enough to macOS (and Windows, for that matter). For my tastes, all the OSes require some tweaking and compromise. I don't understand the fascination with tiling window mgmt, and disable it everywhere (was surprised it got added to macOS Sequoia). I love having different wallpapers on virtual desktops. Etc etc, there are all sorts of different setup options are available on one platform but not another.
It turns out that my stumbling block is the trackpad and keyboard -- I know this issue is highly specific to each individual, so you may not care about this. I haven't tried them on a Framework laptop but they're both horrible IMO on the Thinkpad. (Other people tell me that I'm crazy and they love the keyboard, so YMMV.) The trackpad feels like plastic crap and responsiveness is subpar. Causing a right-click by pressing slightly right of center is annoying. The page up/down keys in the inverted-T pad get in the way. Even on Mac, I didn't like the era of full size left-right arrows, and bought a couple spare old Mac keyboards that don't have those keys. Thankfully Apple fixed that in more recent designs.
Since I code all day, I'm constantly using the key sequences for copy/paste and search/replace. Maybe with time you can switch your muscle memory for these things, but I think it's simple to do these things on a Mac keyboard and not quite as easy (e.g. ctrl/shift-insert) on Linux/Windows.
However, the issues that you'd run into are most likely going to be different than the ones I did. You're probably just going to have to try it and find out if you like it or not.
I don't really use a lot of pro software for non-programming tasks, so I don't miss them. Flatpak and GTK based applications are more than OK for the majority of tasks I have to do. And for the rest, it's easy to write some scripts. The main pros for me were no annoyances from corporate headquarters (pushing whatever services) and sensible configuration choices.
I'm not a gamer, but for development Debian Linux is absolutely perfect. Having multiple screens allows me to have reference information a mere glance away.
I have toyed with other people's recent Macs and I find that with each upgrade Apple increasingly locks you into their ecosystem and ways of working.
I am not a fan of extended use of laptops. By sitting so close to the LCD you end up with myopia and other eye aliments.
So I now need to ask macOS for permission to open certain apps after every update - and that is not one click process. Before that it was just 'right click and open' so I expect that at some point I would not be able open them at all. But even current situation is not acceptable. Once this mbp dies I will move to Linux - I'm not gamer and there is 1 app I need to figure out alternative for. I already had to make sacrifices with apps when moved from Windows years ago - so I'm ready for that.
I think for my phone, I'd still prefer iOS -- I think the lack of freedom can be a form of protection, in terms of maleware.
My next laptop will probably be a Linux laptop -- I'm thinking Debian or Xubuntu. (I like XFCE, aesthetically and in terms of resource cost.)
If anyone has suggestions, I'm basically looking to just do music/movie streamin and light text editing -- maybe fire up a Parrot VM to run some tests. Battery life is more important to me than processor/ram.
At home I was Linux for the longest time, running VFIO passthrough to a windows VM. Once WSL2 got released, Im fully on Windows. WSL2 does everything I need in terms of Linux, so now I pretty much have the best possible setup since I can run any software. Pytorch with GPUs within WSL2 works great as well.
You do have to get Windows Pro though to be able to disable a bunch of stuff, but once you do its a pretty smooth experience.
Note I don’t really use any Mac apps (well, just apps that are available on other platforms, like vscode, chrome), so that wouldn’t stop me from switching.
At home I'm 100% iPadOS and iPhoneOS (also have a Kindle that I use daily). When I'm not at work I've been able to eliminate all "computer" use.
There was an adjustment period when I'd use my partner's MacBook Pro for a few random things. The last thing I remember doing on one was my taxes in 2023. But past 2 years now I just did them on the iPad and it was fine.
It's been great.
A friend who is also in the same situation is however going to Surface Pros. He swears its on par with Mac on hardware.
But I've installed Bluefin-dx on my gaming PC and work laptop. I love it. It's similar enough to Mac OS and really solid.
I really think this era of MBPs was the best. I'm kind of shocked how well my 2014 still works.
I've got a 2010 iMac that my kid uses running Sonoma (macOS 14) via OpenCore Legacy and it works great for him. I'm currently waiting on a wireless card to give him Bluetooth 4 so he can use Airdrop.
I guess that's probably also why I feel like this is the wrong solution for me. I don't want to have to deal with issues on this laptop. If I pull a system update, I want it to install without a problem, automatically, overnight, and not require hours of debugging and reverting and then finding a fix a week later.
I appreciate the effort and skill that goes into making it, and if this was a less critical device for me it might well be the right solution.
Also, I agree re: peak MacBook. The keyboard is good, the ports are good, they're tough, and I really can't believe that the performance has been enough for over 10 years. It'll be a sad day when I move on.
I have a 2018 Mac mini running Ubuntu well. It actually dual boots macos as well using the refind bootloader. Refind can be installed and booted from a USB key as well so pretty straightforward to try. Make a empty partition from macos for Linux. Then boot Linux iso and install there. Boot refind and you can select which os to use. The 2018 mini even supports esxi and windows if you want to quad boot
Laptops in general are built to a price point. Personally, I only find the gaming laptops sufficiently appealing, but the price tags put me off.
Have you considered a desktop / minitower for the bulk of your work? Multiple LCDs are great for productivity. Then a ChromeBook might suffice for on the road use.
That strategy, which I think ran from early OSX through until mid-2010's? worked, and you'd see the results, with a sea of glowing Apple logos, even at Linux conferences.
I think they've changed since then. It feels now like developers are not a priority, even as they've re-added some power-user features in recent years.
As for longevity, I think my current laptop speaks for itself. It's now 11 years old, and going strong. I've carried it around the world, dropped it numerous times, and it's been the best laptop I've every owned. They do artificially force an end-of-life, usually at around 7 years old, for their operating system. I don't really have a problem with that: I appreciate that it's difficult to continue to support old hardware in new releases, and I think that timeframe is reasonable. I'd prefer that it was explicitly stated, and I'd prefer it was longer, but ... it's not bad, really.
Over the years I have had many devices: desktop PCs, Unix workstations, Linux workstations, and laptops from 6" to 17". In the early 2000s I bought a 12" Powerbook, which was my first Mac -- the motivation was to get seamless Microsoft Office document support on a Unix system, and it did a fine job of that. Eventually I spilled water on it, and replaced it with a 13" unibody MacBook, which I later upgraded to the current 15" MacBook Pro.
I currently have a work-supplied dual Xeon 56 core, 192GB RAM, 8TB SSD monster Dell with 2x27" screens on my desk which is used for my day job compiling a large proprietary C++ application. That's the right kind of machine for that job, and I wouldn't do it on a laptop by choice.
But for my personal stuff, while I'd previously set up my laptops as a secondary device to be used when travelling, when I got the 2014 MBP, I deliberately upgraded to the 15" screen, maxed out the CPU, and got a big SSD so I could make it my primary device. And that's been a model I have liked a lot.
I don't travel anywhere near as much these days, and could probably revert to a desktop instead and just access that remotely via Tailscale when I travel, but ... I like having everything in the device in my hand.
But it's a good point: I should probably reconsider.
This is why I never made the jump to Linux. Around 2017-2019 Apple's Laptops had gotten really bad. I was considering moving to Linux, but I've had several situations where I've run normal Ubunutu updates from Canonical and found myself unable to boot. I don't know if this is common, I don't think I was doing anything unusual (stock Ubuntu).