Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by betterThanTexas 404 days ago
> Nothing's stopping us from creating an alternative desktop environment for the Mac, such as XQuartz.

Yea but why use a mac at that point? I don't see anyone on the linux side of things making anything that acknowledges why people use macs in the first place; the entire ecosystem is built to reproduce the IBM PC (...in a unix/like environment). Particularly with its disastrous keybindings and perplexing UI decisions.
2 comments
zapzupnz 404 days ago
The pipeline from Windows to Linux is fairly clear. The pipeline from Mac to Linux is less evident; the dyed in the wool Mac users tend to stay that way, using Linux for work rather than a daily driver.

Queue a Mac-to-Linux user to contradict this, and there's plenty of them, but we Mac users are truly the dictionary definition of the sunk cost fallacy in more ways than one.

link
cosmic_cheese 404 days ago
It doesn’t help matters that desktop environments that try to do things “the mac way” and don’t just mimic macOS superficially (like Pantheon/elementary) don’t exist. Everything is either Win9X-like (KDE, Cinnamon, XFCE, LxQt, etc) or tablet-like (GNOME). For the most part, to a longtime Mac user switching to Linux feels like switching to a bizarre alternate universe Windows that’s built around the Linux kernel instead of the NT kernel.
link
anthk 403 days ago
GTK 2/3 has a setting to use the Emacs keybindings. Pair it with Budgie with a menubar and a dock and you are set.
link
gyomu 404 days ago
Apple hardware quality is just orders of magnitude beyond what competitors do. The day this stops being true (whether because Apple slips too much, or because competitors step up in major ways - not sure which is likelier) I expect we’ll see a lot more Mac-to-Linux migrations, with the virtuous circle kind of benefits that this can bring.
link
thewebguyd 403 days ago
> The pipeline from Windows to Linux is fairly clear. The pipeline from Mac to Linux is less evident; the dyed in the wool Mac users tend to stay that way, using Linux for work rather than a daily driver.

This has been my own observation as well. Although I do have to say, System76's COSMIC DE has been the first one that is actually making me consider going to Linux full time since I've switched to Mac from it. macOS has only been continuing to annoy me more and more lately.

The problem for me is hardware. Asahi isn't there yet, and I'm not giving up my M4 Pro MBP. There's no other laptop on the market that checks all the same boxes. But for now, I've just bypassed the mac's weak points by using Aerospace, and if I'm honest with myself I don't want to give up the ecosystem integration either.

link
DiscourseFan 404 days ago
I've been burned by ArchLinux too many times before...
link
rezmason 404 days ago
> Yea but why use a mac at that point?

I ask myself that with increasing frequency. Looking at all the Linux options feels like wandering through Akihabara, but one day the macOS that remains will be so unlike the macOS I enjoyed, that I'll jump the fence.

Anyway, if someone does make a new Mac desktop environment, it'd probably be for fun more than anything. Or a Terry Davis scenario.

link