Very funny to see HN hate on Microsoft and Google but then love a company where they cannot even run an app on their mobile platform without Apple's permission or only a certain number of VMs on the hardware they own .
HN is not one person. I'm very happy to hate on all of them. I see what you mean though. I've given up on getting normal people to care, but seeing programmers who are absolutely smart enough to run their own Linux system on computers they actually own actively choose not to do so is very disconcerting.
>seeing programmers who are absolutely smart enough to run their own Linux system on computers they actually own actively choose not to do so is very disconcerting.
I run macOS because Apple understands that QA testing is something of actual importance, and designing yet another package manager is not.
I do spin up Linux every now and again to see if it's good yet, and always walk away.
Why do documents print at ~50dpi on my network printer?
Why does the system simply not wake up ~20% of the time when I open my laptop's lid?
Why do I have to unplug and reconnect my USB WiFi Dongle every hour or so when the internet randomly drops out?
Why does the system stop recognising my USB SD Card reader occasionally, forcing me to hard reboot the system?
Why is the audio distorted over HDMI when I enable HDR?
Why does Kodi only detect a refresh rate of 30Hz when the system itself has no issues seeing that the monitor is 60Hz?
All of these are real problems that real users have had, but instead of solving them the Linux development community instead chooses to devote their time and resources navel gazing about systemd alternatives or creating a fragile AUR package for software that already has a sensible and officially supported distribution method.
All operating systems have bugs, and Apple doesn't have the QA it used to have. MacOS has basically been exclusively trending down in quality for a while now, while Linux continues to get better.
What you have to realize is that what Linux distros are doing is inherently more complicated. They're making a general purpose operating system intended to run on every computer.
Apple is making one operating system intended to run on maybe 0.1% of devices. Oh, and they also make those devices.
And MacOS is still trending down in quality, somehow.
You're not wrong about the downwards trend in quality but we're still a long ways off from macOS or even Windows having the same level of QA issues that Linux does, on a regular desktop system.
Windows basically barely works, and I would know because I use it daily at work. Core operating system components crash regularly. My task bar crashes a couple times a day, and takes explorer down with it. Sometimes the start menu just won't open for a while. And also teams kills itself silently, and then I miss notifications because I'm not pocket watching the task bar.
At this point, Linux is very far ahead of windows in terms of QA. And other things, like aesthetics and intuitive UI. I mean, Microsoft has like 5 different application styles across their own built in apps.
>I run macOS because Apple understands that QA testing is something of actual importance, and designing yet another package manager is not.
Apple demonstrated with their latest releases that they don't give a single fuck about QA. OSX 26 is very buggy. The corner resize debacle, the glass debacle, and problem after problem that has made it to the HN front page is enough to know they don't care about QA the way you think they do.
The list of problems are described are not typical, I've seen none of that running Linux. YMMV
Apple decided to focus on "Glass", an outdated UI style that was introduced in Windows Vista. They didn't have to, it wasn't wanted by anyone and it has caused significant embarrassment for apple and problems for users. Why couldn't they replace Finder with something actually useful? Why couldn't they fix the UI so "About this software" isn't the first thing on the first menu which is a waste of space. They made MacOS objectively worse.
> The list of problems are described are not typical, I've seen none of that running Linux. YMMV
Haven't run into any of those problems either. Linux has been a "just works" experience for me for nearly a decade now. Buying Intel hardware seems to have done the trick.
It's pointless to engage in such argumentation though. Even if the experience was poor, it wouldn't matter, because the cost of a "good experience" is being a serf in Apple's digital fiefdom, and that is an unacceptable moral failing. It's not about practicality, it's about not being reduced to begging the trillion dollar corporation for permission to do basic things with "your" computer.
I recently went (almost) all-in on Linux after many years on Windows. The final straw for me was that I paid for a "lifetime license" for Outlook, because I've been using Outlook for decades, and have every email I've ever sent or received in Outlook. Well, I upgraded the CPU on the server where I run the VM which hosts Outlook, and then Microsoft wanted me to purchase a full new copy of Outlook because of the CPU upgrade. That was it, I'm done.
I moved Linux Mint and Thunderbird for email, and it's honestly been great. I switched all of my Windows-based VMs to Linux Mint.
My main workstation/laptop is still on Windows due to some hardware issues, but I will work those out in time. Mainly I have a USB4 port that also outputs Displayport, which I connect to a Displayport splitter so I can run three 4k monitors. That's the only thing that I haven't solved on Linux, but I haven't put much time into it. And I don't really blame Linux for that, I more blame the laptop manufacturer for not fully supporting Linux.
On the other hand I’m very conveniently enjoying my experience, I don’t have to waste time screwing with stuff I have no interest in screwing with - like the OP’s examples, and if I want to run Linux I’ll just install it and do what I want or rent out some compute time somewhere.
Besides, you can buy a Mac and do whatever you want and go buy a bunch of off the shelf components to do whatever hobby stuff you want to do too.
Freedom, perhaps, starts with not making up and applying limitations on yourself.
> Freedom, perhaps, starts with not making up and applying limitations on yourself.
Nothing wrong with applying limitations to oneself. That's discipline, principles. It's important stuff.
The real problem is accepting the completely made up limitations that others apply on you. Corporation wakes up one day and just decides people can't run more than two virtual machines? That's stupid. Actually defending this with "but convenience" arguments as if convenience was supposed to override freedom? No.
Freedom isn't something you actively work towards. It's something you start with. It's the status quo. Others take it away from you. You can either accept it passively and enjoy the "convenience", or you can resist and go down the harder path. It's very disappointing to see people on Hacker News choose the former path.
You’re just living under the illusion of freedom. You are completely dependent on the decisions of others and their good graces for all of your computing needs, from the silicon to the Linux distro you use. You’re just drawing an arbitrary line a little further to feel like you’re in control, but you’re not.
Silicon? Sure. Billion dollar fabs are huge single points of failure. It's turning into a problem too due to the war on general purpose computing. Free software doesn't matter if we can't run it. Linux distro? Not really. It's only a matter of how much effort I want to put into things. I can make my own distro, I can't make my own trillion dollar fab.
Anyway, what even is this argument? Can't control everything, so it doesn't matter? Don't even bother trying? Just give up? Just accept your lot in life as a serf in Apple's digital fiefdom? I'm pessimistic about the future but even I haven't completely succumbed to such total nihilism yet.
You're trying to assert this big claim about freedom because some users can't I guess run more than 2 VMs on their MacBook Pro. Since we don't care we're not trying, we just gave up, we're serfs even. Well you're still a serf too your bounds of serfdom are just long enough to trick you into believing otherwise.
Who cares? I don't. I can't do anything with open source software either - like I'm going to spend hundreds or thousands of hours figuring our how any given software package works and that's going to somehow make me more free? C'mon. I can't tell Apple no anymore than I can tell someone maintaining a Linux distribution no.
The VM limitation is only for macOS guests, otherwise I can spin up as many VMs as I like, which is no different to doing so in Linux (since it cannot run macOS VMs).
Living as a taxpaying member of society is something that is imposed on us. If we refuse, violent men with guns show up at our doors to arrest us and seize our property. At least we get to try and vote out idiots imposing stupid quotas on the population.
The issue of computer freedom does not even come close to this. None of this is imposed on us. We have the power to choose differently at any time. We can choose not to accept the monopolistic corporation's terms.
I use a Macbook for work and do all my development via ssh on remote Linux instances. Each OS is doing what it does best. I last tried a Linux laptop for development in 2020 and my conclusion was the same as in 2010: never again for at least a decade. I have better things to do than fix broken drivers and curse at shitty trackpads.
Please avoid these kinds of sneers that characterize the whole community as being united in “hate” or “love” for any particular company or technology.
HN is a diverse global community and its views about most topics form a normal distribution, and most people here are able to form nuanced opinions that consider the positives and negatives in all these topics. This kind of “very funny” swipe relies on a caricature that's easy to portray if you focus on the loudest voices on one side of any discussion but falls away if you make the effort to read the discussions in depth.
Paraphrasing F. Scott Fitzgerald? "The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function."
Holding contradictory ideas isn't the laudable skill. Any uncritical person can believe conflicting things without being troubled by them. The genius is holding such ideas in disbelief long enough to let evidence alter or evict them.
I agree that holding inconsistent thoughts is not desirable. I don't think the thoughts in this case need to be contradictory and many times are not. I, personally, admire the HW they design and the polish that Apple delivers, while hating how closed their platform is. Am I contradicting myself?
I did not know F. Scott Fitzgerald was the source of the phrase, TIL. I just picked it up somewhere and paraphrased it since I thought it applies here.
