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Ask Slashdot: Mac To Linux Return Flow?
jasnw writes "I'm one of apparently many people who moved to OS X from Linux in the early/mid 2000s for their desktop system, keeping Linux boxes around for the heavy lifting and server work. I may also be part of a large segment of that group now considering a return because of all the iOS-ification of OS X, despite the fact that the Linux desktop still falls short in the 'it just works' area. I'm angry enough at Apple, and wary enough of Linux, that I might just go to using Windows 7 for the desktop (not Win8, however). What is the feeling/experience of other 'traitors' who run OS X for the desktop and Linux for everything else?"
You say that like it's a bad thing...
KDE tried to copy Windows as much as they could - when I saw their annoying Windows-esque dialogue when you connect a USB mass storage device I was done with that. Then Gnome chased the "everything is going Web 3.0 and mobile" dream so this leaves me with only sensible window managers like XFCE and LXDE. Any other ones I should try?
I don't really understand this. How does one become so particular about the desktop system?
I personally do prefer KDE. Having said that, you can put me in front of a Gnome, Cinnamon, Windows, OSX, Windowmaker, Enlightenment, Fluxbox, environment and I only need a couple of minutes to find my way around and be comfortable with it. My preference for KDE is marginal. It is not a deal-breaker.
What is it about that USB dialog that prevents you from getting your work done? How is it a show-stopper for you? You described it as annoying, can you elaborate? I really want to understand this because I seem to be the oddball here.
What exactly is this iOSsification people keep complaining about? There's nothing forced onto you that I can think of.
Quite a few things:
They got rid of spaces. You still have different virtual desktops, but I can no longer assign applications to always open in a particular one. They're also not always there, assigned in a configuration that was easy for me to remember, "from here, go to the desktop above to get to the browser, or the desktop to my right to get to xcode.
Applications no longer quit, instead they keep running in the background, if you click the red button. You can command-q for now, but they still try to retain state. Which is insane. When I open up a new video in quicktime, why would I want the last video that I watched to pop up in a window beside it? I keep having to go and close that other window. (At least now they give me the option to not save the current state of the desktop when I log out. No, I do not want to log back in and see what I was working on before. It's very unlikely I'll be working on the same thing. If I do have something that I always open every time I log in, and I do, I know how to set applications to start automatically every time.)
Applications are auto-saving on me. I don't mind that things auto-save into a backup file, for recovery purposes, but you should NOT overwrite the file I'm working on without my specifically clicking save. I know mac os x lets you get back to previous versions. That's cumbersome unless you're the one who chose to punctuate where each new version starts.
Applications are trying to save to iCloud by default, instead of the local drive. I don't have a problem with iCloud, but it shouldn't be the default location.
The launchpad displays applications in multiple screens and I gotta swipe right to see the other applications. That doesn't make any sense when you have a wheel mouse...I just want to scroll down. The applications folder still exists, so this one doesn't bother me as much, I can avoid using launchpad altogether.
When the iPhone came out, I remember many people saying that apple fully intended to eventually make OS X as locked down as iOS, and a bunch of people dismissing that as conspiracy theories. They have, however, been slowly moving toward that. They released the Mac OS X app store, which isn't really a problem. But then they made it so that you can't install any application that doesn't come from the app store by default, until you go and change the settings to allow it. My prediction is that the next step is going to be making it a setting that you can't get to without going to the command-line, and then they'll just not give you the option, and people will have to jailbreak their macs.
Warning: Opinions known to be heavily biased.