Comment by AussieWog93
10 hours ago
>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.
>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.
TL;DR you sacrificed your freedom for convenience, you think quality assurance is worth being at Apple's mercy, you signed away the keys to "your" machine so they can "manage" it for you along with the rest of your life.
Meanwhile I'm running about a dozen of development virtual machines right now. I'm limited only by the amount of RAM my computer has. It never even occurred to me that some gigacorporation out there would have thought to limit the VMs their own users can spawn. Every day, they reach a new low.
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.
2 replies →
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).
>TL;DR you sacrificed your freedom for convenience
Yes I did, just like you did when you chose to live as a taxpaying member of society rather than a hermit scouring the bush for berries and fish.
Enjoy your 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.
1 reply →