I installed Fedora Linux recently and used it for a few days. I did not spot a single bug, despite using it in a quite heavy scenario (Docker, Android Emulator, IDE, big file transfers). For example Windows had issues with sound drivers and GPU drivers, Linux is rock stable.
Also it was as easy as macOS install: I just installed it in a 5 minutes and it was ready to work. With Windows I had to spent hours to install all the drivers from the manufacturer website (I tried to let Windows to install their own drivers, but it did not find all the necessary drivers).
I have few issues with some Linux UI choices, for example I don't like Gnome 3 UI. But that's not a bug.
I used docker, that's what I used before. I'm aware of podman, but did not try to use it. But thanks for suggestion, I'll look into it.
PS I just tried to use it. I've got some permission denied errors from containers which were not present with docker. I guess podman is not ready as a complete replacement of docker for me.
It wasn't a suggestion, because it doesn't have all the features that many people utilized in the Docker ecosystem. Like Docker-compose. (Right now on 22 May 2021.)
There's podman-compose which seems to almost work for me, but not completely, yep.
If I would write containers myself from the scratch, I'd definitely try to ensure that podman works. But I'm using containers from other people, so I have to live with that for now.
I installed docker from the docker repository, it's definitely not a symlink to podman on my system right now. I did not check whether that symlink existed before docker installation, but I doubt about that.
I have solved the last "bug" by using xubuntu, which has an astonishingly stable, coherent and well integrated xfce desktop experience. There something similar for Fedora perhaps?
xUbuntu really is one of the better polished distros. When I had a spare laptop, I tried some distrohopping on it. Little quirks existed in most distros but it just felt like xUbuntu was the most (for the lack of better words) sane overall. Everything I'd change in XFCE on another distro was essentially what xUbuntu had configured by default.
The only thing I've had to do after installation, aside from installing my apps from repos, is to add the Mainline PPA and update the kernel to newest just to take advantage of newer kernel drivers for some of my hardware. Other than that, everything is there and everything works.
This is one of the reasons why I use openSUSE, it has automatic btrfs snapshots that let you roll back in case anything breaks. Tumbleweed is already one of the most stable rolling-release distros, and I haven't had anything break yet, but it's nice to have regular snapshots as an an extra layer of safety.
Fedora uses btrfs by default. I don't think that snapshots are enabled by default, but quick googling reveals some instructions which should enable snapshots for updates. I guess that might help to achieve similar behaviour.
Yeah, just put the interns on it next season. They'll just do the boring work the real programmers don't want to do. <eyeroll>
Whenever a solid Apple bash comes up on HN, people just throw statements around to the effect of "Apple -- as an entire software and hardware conglomerate -- just doesn't 'care' any more," and that nothing in the entire freaking stack should ever exhibit a bug. It's almost like NO ONE around here actually works in SOFTWARE or HARDWARE. I guess no one else here has ever shipped an uncaught bug. I sure have.
From my experience, the number of the kinds of issues being discussed here is EXCEEDINGLY low for the number of moving parts involved. I know, I know. Someone's going to say that since they do the whole stack themselves, they should NEVER ship a bug. Well, good luck with that. I'll believe it's humanly possible when I see it.
And don't even start with how Linux or Windows is any better. I've been at this for 30 years. I know better.
DSC, hardly an uncommon technology, worked perfectly in Catalina. It was entirely non-functional in public beta 1 of Big Sur.
Here we are at 11.3.1 and it is still absolutely, utterly broken. Legions of users of varying monitors, varying GPUs, can't access the full feature set of their equipment that they used to be able. There are Radar reports back to the betas.
Instead we get things like making sure you can buy AppleCare+ from the About This Mac option.
Or buy a Pro Display XDR, because it seems that that is all Apple cares about for external monitors.
In my opinion it's more buggy. The biggest difference is that many of those bugs are an active choice on Apple's part but I still see them as bugs. Especially because if people shout loud enough Apple changes the "feature" and says "this was a bug" but only if Twitter blows up enough. Otherwise it is a feature.
Hmm. I've not had any success with Teams on Linux. Oddly, the behavior is also quite client-dependent:
- Chromium: infinite login loop because why not
- Flatpak: login works, but says my account isn't eligible for Teams (which blocks joining as even a guest?)
- Firefox: doesn't even ask for a login and I can join, but no audio or video (either direction); chat works though
Note that I only join existing meetings, never create any, so why I can get to the call without logging in on Firefox, but am blocked from even joining elsewhere is a real mystery to me.
Also using Teams on Linux, but this one happens to all clients.
There's an authentication bug that causes a log in loop for anyone who signed up for a personal account using an email address that they also used as part of another MSN/live.com service (eg- as a secondary address), especially if your original Teams/O365 account was converted to a domain/business account.
If you log into live.com with your Teams email, add a different fallback email and remove your current one, that may help.
Teams is a case study in subtle and not so subtle bugs and ux issues:
Just yesterday we spent time in a team meeting because someones Teams instance was malfunctioning.
Sometimes restarting the application completely (be aware it idles in the systray) works, other times restarting the pc or disabling (or enabling) hardware acceleration will work. Other times it helps to move it to the built in monitor it seems.
And sometimes, like yesterday, nothing including
- all the above,
- disabling incoming video
- and reinstalling the application
works.
As for UX issues there's clicking on "join meeting" and continue working for a few minutes until you realize "ah, the first join meeting doesn't join the meeting, only opens the join meeting dialog".
Another winner: when you click on the 7 more people icon to see who else are online and it does nothing.
Or the fact that joining a started meeting is a multi step process (find calendar, find today, find the meeting click join and join).
Yesterday I'm also sure I had an instance of sound getting through before I joined.
Still, somethings works flawlessly for me: jumping seamlessly from one device to another during a meeting is fantastic.
Sound is OK for me. Background switching is ok etc etc.
I'm not sure whether that's a Linux specific issue. I've used teams on an older MBP and also on newer PCs (8th gen i5) with Windows, and the lag is always there for some reason. I've found ticking "disable animations" helps a little.
I have a very beefy laptop at work but with Teams I'm feeling like I'm using my old 133 MHz PC again. Everything takes so long to open that I'm growing increasingly mad when using it. Plus the statuses of my contacts are consistently wrong.
Well, Teams has problems using my external USB mic on Linux Mint 19.3, when e.g. Zoom has no problems with it. Otherwise no significant bugs using Mint for last 5 years or so both on desktop and laptop.
I recently had to go through the hell of setting up a Java development environment, plus Android emulation, on my new M1 MacBook .. mid-way through, I was cursing myself that I wasn't just using a Linux machine .. but okay, eventually, SDKMAN came to the rescue. For a while there it really felt pretty regressive ..
Your "average" Linux distro isn't "buggy" as you claim.
You sound like someone who either hasn't used Linux, or extrapolates their experiences from one specific distro, to all distros.
I say this as someone who uses Linux daily. Specifically, Arch Linux, with testing repos enabled. The only bugs I run into are from using Git master versions of software that I'm interesting in testing.
I've used Linux since it was first available in the mid 90s.
I use it at work and on machines at home. It is almost certainly more reliable than Windows and MacOS as a server. However, the context here is desktop UI and laptops.
Linux does exceptionally well considering there is almost no money at all going into this use case. But there are many bugs, sometimes due to hardware (e.g ACPI inconsistencies, even Thinkpads have issues) and because of software churn (few fix bugs in their spare time, it's more fun to create something new).
If you wish to pretend that everything is perfect and there are no problems, then you aren't helping Linux either.
> I've used Linux since it was first available in the mid 90s. I use it at work and on machines at home. It is almost certainly more reliable than Windows and MacOS as a server. However, the context here is desktop UI and laptops.
Desktop UI is where Linux tends to shine. Laptops... oh, those are a royal mess, usually.
> Linux does exceptionally well considering there is almost no money at all going into this use case.
No money at all? There are countless developers being paid to work on the Linux kernel. And on other pieces of software in userspace ~ usually by Red Hat.
> But there are many bugs, sometimes due to hardware (e.g ACPI inconsistencies, even Thinkpads have issues)
Hardware-related bugs are always an unpleasant can of fun...
> and because of software churn (few fix bugs in their spare time, it's more fun to create something new).
Bugs caused by software churn are also a thing. I personally haven't noticed anything major from many packages in the main repos.
> If you wish to pretend that everything is perfect and there are no problems, then you aren't helping Linux either.
Oops, I could have worded things slightly better, as in "not as "buggy"' instead of 'not "buggy"'. I sometimes miss words, only to realize later.
> Linux does exceptionally well considering there is almost no money at all going into this use case. But there are many bugs, sometimes due to hardware (e.g ACPI inconsistencies, even Thinkpads have issues) and because of software churn (few fix bugs in their spare time, it's more fun to create something new).
This is me figuring out my Optimus without Mux.
My screen freezes when laptops (ASUS N76VB) resumes from sleep. (I don't know which state S1 - S4.)
So I have "Fixed" the issue. But this was a problem of the HD Audio device driver? in the NVIDIA 740m?
It was difficult to fix and I'm thinking about making a GitHub repository thing about it.
>You sound like someone who either hasn't used Linux, or extrapolates their experiences from one specific distro, to all distros.
Ironically you've just described the biggest problem with Linux, and the biggest non-solution often proposed "Problem with distro Y? Just use distro X".
But I'm not saying this as blaming Linux about the brokedness. They're doing amazingly well for the huge amount of combinations of hardware and software they're supporting.
Apple, on the other hand, has decided to seriously limit the amount of hardware they support, which makes it a much easier effort to support those ones.
Mac os hasn't just worked for developers for a long time.
They missed the entire container revolution with docker. I still come across Devs using Mac's that are afraid of docker because it's too confusing and black box. (It's Linux in there right?)
At work we have a rather overengineered method of proxying to our production services for security reasons. Mac users are currently constantly having to deal with abstraction layers on top of abstraction layers to make things barely reliable. I just use a systemd unit file and haven't looked at it in years.
Homebrew tool, while great for more obscure things, it should really only be a fallback, not the default. It's basically a confusing and black box version of the AUR.
BSD/apple ways of doing things are just annoying. It's fine for the average user. But for Devs that want to do things in the same way they do them on their server it's just another hoop to jump through.
The sad thing is that moving every Dev in the company over to Linux would probably be worthwhile long term, but I really don't think they have the willpower to relearn things even if they are that much better.
I evaluated it less than a year ago, and it froze after about 30-60 seconds. This happened about five years ago as well, when I evaluated it last time. It turns out to be the global search that somehow just... freezes the whole program while indexing.
To be honest, outlook for mac isn’t particularly great either. It is not much of a step up from outlook web access, which is what I ended up using on linux after trying all the mail clients. Evolution with the ews plugin came close, but required a ton of configuration and the tasks integration was never quite right.
> To be honest, outlook for mac isn’t particularly great either.
I've never used Outlook for Mac, but there's the Apple Mail.app on the mac which works great with Exchange. I'd choose it over Outlook on Windows every time.
