Comment by jlarocco
2 months ago
Something to keep in mind is that you don't have to use GNOME. There are a ton of window managers that run on Linux, and you can find one that works better for you.
There's not much choice on Mac unless you install Linux on it.
There's such thing as one DE being less convenient than other, but it's far less important than it being reliable and easy to get help with. We've changed DEs at work a couple of times, and it's never because of usability, it's because the old one became unsupported or wasn't compatible with something.
Same with X11 vs Wayland. I don't care which, I just want the one that works, and want to never hear about the other one again. Linux Mint comes with X11. It didn't work on my fairly standard PC because of something about graphics switching.
Mac is just a different philosophy. Yes there are window managers for mac if you really want to replicate linux window management. That is possible for you. There are several tools for this, e.g. Amethyst.
But really mac is less about having every square inch of your monitor filled with a dozen different applications sized perfectly to fit the exact information you want on these screens. You can of course do this if you like but thats not really the philosophy.
The philosophy is that this is a real life desktop. Just like papers on your desk. Do you resize papers various ways and print them to maybe 3 inches across and lay them out on your desk such that you can see every paper at once, no space from one page to the next? No. You have piles. You thumb through piles and pull out stuff you need and lay them loosely next to eachother. Nothing is fixed in any constraints. Stuff can overlap or have space in between.
This is exactly how windows management works in macos. It is simply a different philosophy, but it is much closer to how desktop management actually works in real life with a physical desktop and physical papers.
> Yes there are window managers for mac if you really want to replicate linux window management.
Not really. None of the "window managers" for macOS actually play the role of compositors on Wayland or window managers on X11. macOS has exactly one window manager, plus a bunch of apps that run automation against it and sometimes call themselves "window manager".
> This is exactly how windows management works in macos. It is simply a different philosophy, but it is much closer to how desktop management actually works in real life with a physical desktop and physical papers.
Most window managers (and the vast majority of the popular ones) on Linux are also like this. It's called a "floating window manager". Tiling window managers are cool but they're marginal even on Linux.
I spend time in the digital realm because I hate paper. Paper is a horrible analogue with real world limitations we should have left behind in the 90s.
It's dumb and pretentious
interesting point, but in a real desktop, or multi-desktop setup, you can have different things on each one and look at them one by one, by table. The alt+tab default behaviour on MacOS is not that. This is my problem with their design choice.
I've never used it that way ever since I was a little kid using OS 8. macOS even copied the Windows snap system, and I use it.
It's linux, you can do everything in the terminal. I've never understood what purpose a "desktop" serves.
Want to start Firefox? type "fir<tab>" in your terminal and hit enter.
Want to see your files? Type "ls" and hit enter. Learn just a tiny bit about pipes, wildcards, and utilities and you can leave those mouse-pushers in the dust.
> Learn just a tiny bit about pipes, wildcards, and utilities
Or I could use a desktop on expend my limited mental energy on things more relevant to me. It’s far easier for me to remember things in a visual or spatial manner.
These days I can say the same, I used to enjoy trying to minimize my mouse usage and fiddling with tiling window managers but now I just can't be bothered.
And the weird thing is that the type of mental effort required is not even a useful one per se, it's more like a strain (to me) than something that makes me sharper.
Still some things are easier in a GUI while others in a CLI, just depends on their nature and how often do you have to engage with them. But after a while navigating windows by Alt+Tab (Alt+`) or the mouse is fine really. I don't care to reach for Super+PgDown/PgUp when I can move my mouse to the corner of the screen and scroll to change the workspace.
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Do you adjust audio settings in the terminal? I've been moving away from using my mouse but anything related to audio or display settings intimidates me.
If I want to start a program I can click its icon in the taskbar, if I want to see my files I can click the file manager in the taskbar, and since these actions are done with the mouse I can simultaneously lie back in bed while eating trifle with a long spoon.
I don't see what point you're trying to make. Those two examples work identically in the OSX terminal.
You gotta add firefox to your PATH first, but yeah, this isn't what the terminal is useful for.
You can't use Firefox in the terminal
You can't use it "in" the desktop either, you just start it from there. Same as with the terminal.
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