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Why Run Linux On Macs?
jones_supa writes Apple has always had attractive and stylish hardware, but there are always some customers opting to run Linux instead of OS X on their Macs. But why? One might think that a polished commercial desktop offering designed for that specific lineup of computers might have less rough edges than a free open source one. Actually there's plenty of motivations to choose otherwise. A redditor asked about this trend and got some very interesting answers. What are your reasons?
The subject says it all
Vanity < Logic after all :)
http://www.gibby.net.au
My company buys apple hardware for everybody and I have been working on GNU/Linux for 15 years. I use the operating system where I'm most productive, which is GNU/Linux. Also, nowadays OSX seems to be more prone to problems that were reserved for windows users in the past, like unexplicable slugginesh, tons of crap loading at startup, etc. No thanks.
My other signature is a car
A recent employer issued me a new 15" MacBook Pro. I really liked the weight, battery life, screen quality, and the feel of the keyboard. But the non-PC keyboard layout drove me nuts. I.e., the absence of stand-alone keys like home, end, page-up, alt, etc.
If I was using only native Mac apps, I would have been okay enough. But I was accessing Linux GUI apps within a VM, and linux console apps via SSH. It was a real challenge to get decent Mac-to-PC key bindings. I also had real finger-memory issues as I'd switch between driving Mac and Linux programs from the same keyboard.
If I could get a laptop that's just like a MacBook Pro, except it had a PC keyboard layout and a 17" screen, I'd be all over it for my Linux work. But barring that, I'll choose a non-Apple laptop.
Lighter, thinner, longer time (battery), nicer... Boot on Linux for some work, boot on Mac for the rest.
Slashdot, fix the reply notifications... You won't get away with it...
whilst i find the practices of apple absolutely deplorable - forcing people to sign up for an ID in order to use hardware products that they have paid for, taking so much information that even *banks* won't work with them - bizarrely the amount of money that people pay them is sufficient for apple to spend considerable resources on high-quality components and design.
i have bought a stack of laptops in the past (and always installed Debian on them - see http://lkcl.net/reports/) and have found them to be okay, but always within 2 to 3 years they are showing their age or in some cases completely falling apart. the 2nd Acer TravelMate C112 i bought i actually wore a hole through the left shift key with my fingernail after 2 years of use. hard drives died, screen backlights failed, an HP laptop had such bad design on the power socket that it shorted out one day and almost caught fire. i had to scramble for a good few seconds to pull the battery out, smoke pouring out of the machine as the PMICs glowed.
about 6 years ago my partner had the opportunity to buy both an 18in and a 24in iMac at discounted prices. i immediately installed Debian on it: it took 4 days because grub2-efi was highly undocumented and experimental at the time. so i had a huge 1920x1200 24in screen (which over the next few years actually damaged my eyes because i was too close: my eyesight is now "prism" - i've documented this here on slashdot in the past), a lovely dual-core XEON, 2gb of RAM and it was *quiet*. there is a huge heatsink in the back, and the design uses passive cooling (vertical air convection).
awesome... except not very portable. and no spying or registration of confidential data with some arbitrary company that you *KNOW* is providing your details to the NSA, otherwise there's this conversation which begins "y'know it's *real* hard to get that export license for your products, if you know what i mean, mr CEO".
so, when i moved to holland i had to leave the 24in iMac behind - apart from anything, 2gb of RAM was just not enough. i leave firefox open for 4-7 days (basically until it crashes), opening over 150 sometimes even as many as 250 tabs in a single window. it gets to about 4gb of RAM and starts to become a problem: that's when i kill it. on the iMac, it was consuming most of the resident RAM. i compile programs: 2gb of RAM is barely enough for the linker phase of applications like webkit (which requires 1.6gb of RESIDENT memory in order to complete within a reasonable amount of time). i run VMs with OSes for study.
so i was used to the 1900x1200 screen now, where i could get *five* xterms across a single window. i run fvwm2 with a 6x4 virtual screen, and run over 30 xterms in different places, 3 different web browsers; as i am now developing hardware i run CAD programs in one fvwm2 virtual screen, PDFs in the ones next to it, i run Blender in one virtual screen, OpenSCAD in another, firefox in another, chromium in yet another, then i have to view and manage client machines so i use rdesktop to connect to those (move over to a free virtual window area to do it) - the list goes on and on.
so i figured, "hmmm laptop... but with good screen. must have lots of RAM too, minimum 8gb, must have decent processor". i then began investigating, and found the Lenovo Ideapad. great! let's buy it! .... except their web site crashed. so i then - reluctantly - began investigating iMac laptops. 2560x1600 LCD, 8gb of RAM, dual-core dual-threaded processor: $USD 1500 and *in the UK*, with a U.S. keyboard so nobody was buying it. researched it, saw the success reports of people installing debian on it, knew it could be done: sold, instantly.
so now i am extremely happy with this machine - not with apple themselves - but with the hardware that i have. it's light, it's fast, it's a sturdy aluminum case, the fan only comes on if i swish large OpenSCAD models around in 3D (or if firefox gets overbloated as usual).
the only downsi
because people pay apple more money, so they can afford better designers and can get better components. [longer post explains more, see http://slashdot.org/~lkcl%5D
lenovo *used* to do this when they were IBM. IBM *used* to buy the more expensive components then run them at lower clockrates, which *used* to result in much more reliable products. the thermal stresses (even during normal operation) placed on ceramic packaging causes them to develop micro hairline cracks; high temperatures also cause migration of solder as well as the heavy metals within the silicon ICs themselves.
Apple still has one thing going for it: Predictable hardware. Even after 15 years or so of OS X, the range of devces is fairly overseeable. If a crew gets Linux to run on a mac, they've like also gotten the drivers and all the extras to run halfway properly.
But that's about the only reason to get a mac to run linux. Besides, I'd pick up this device these days. Awesome project - deserves every support they can get.
Bottom line:
You buy a mac for the awesome hard- and software integration and their sleek product design. Using a mac without its OS isn't that smart, IMHO.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
Typing this on a MackBook Pro, I wholeheartedly agree that the shiny reflective screen thing is a huge annoyance. In complex lighting I'm having to adjust the screen angle as I change my seating position from time to time.
I'm running OSX on this MacBook, but mainly because while I'm a Linux geek first, I work in a Windows/AD shop that formerly was a Netware shop that has had Macintoshes and Linux servers. I can use anything. OSX gives me enough command-line to be functional doing network administration easily and lets me interface to Linux boxes, and with the multitouch touchpad is quite good, the touchpad on my Lenovo Thinkpad Yoga running Windows is *almost* as good, the touchpad on my Alienware 17" running Linux kind of sucks compared all of the others.
To me it doesn't matter, the software I want to use runs on just about everything, and all of the platforms have their strengths and weaknesses.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
I run Xubuntu on a Macbook pro laptop because it was cheaper for the wanted hardware.. The requirements i had where:
- Good keyboard (i like it anyway)
- Good screen (1080 pixels high is just bad..)
- Good battery time. (getting 7-8 hours without problem)
- No dual gfx card.. Intel only...
- Good CPU.
- Size/Weight of laptop including AC adapter.. (since i do travel a bit)
When searching around i found a couple of laptops.. but none fit the requirements i had.. Either it had a good cpu and keyboard, but not a good screen or battery time. Or it was good screen/keyboard/battery-time but a slow CPU..
So in the end i found 2 options... Either one that was a bit heavy and price at around 2500EUR or the current macbook that i got for 2000EUR..
It is not perfetct hardware, but it does give back for the buck.. There are several negative things with it like lack of docking, non-replacable battery etc, but none of those are too important for me..
I run Linux on a 2009 Mac Pro, and no, an equivalent PC wouldn't be much cheaper, plus I do run OS/X on it occasionally for various reasons.
The Mac Pro is dead quiet, which is extremely important to me. The hardware is completely solid and well designed, I've only had one drive failure in 5 years of continuous use. It's as fast as the (Very expensive!) shared company development machine; I'm going to upgrade the CPU and memory on the Mac Pro and easily get another 3 or 4 years out of it. Almost all of my co-workers with PC's have suffered fan failures, power supply failures, etc etc and gone through at least one replacement cycle in that time.
Sure, a PC *can* be almost as good, it's just that usually they aren't.
It makes a lot of sense if you want to edit 4K video at 1:1 resolution and still have space left for palettes and windows.
From a hardware perspective, Apple devices rock. If one disregards the "walled garden" aspect, most of their equipment is well thought, with great usability and clever solutions for some annoying PC problems. That said, there are some problems:
- because they are so good, they also manage to create planned obsolescence with greater competence; other makers, while generally producing worse products, can now and then make a product that lasts forever (in the "Volkswagen Bug" sense); because of the "walled garden", these superb devices won't work with Apple things...
- some problems arose out of philosophical stances: the double-click, for instance, out of a then prevailing notion that mouses should have one button (double-click IMHO being one of the greatest turn-offs in a GUI).
From a software standpoint, one might consider Linux better than "Applesoft", because Apple software is aimed at a certain target public, which aims at not really using the PC. There's a lot of defaults and "unique better ways" of doing things. In real life, a developer or a power user might want to have a more equipped tool belt. Linux (IMHO) is more faithful to the Unix idea than OS X. Ultimately, perhaps one could install a better shell (or even Bash) and use OS X' BSD roots -- but like one considers *BSD, Linux stands stands out as a wilder frontier. Some people like that, just not the usual Apple clients.
From a human point-of-view, I was once asked whether using Linux would give any advantage over using Windows. I took into consideration the context and the nature of the one who asked... and concluded in that case it was better to stay in Windows. That was in 2003 or 2004. Fast forward to 2015 and it's becoming clear M$ is not a long term option anymore. Human attitudes change slowly, so perhaps I failed in my reply: I should have recommended Linux use, just for the technical prowess gains. Same thing with Linux versus OS X.
(I'm not an Apple fanboy, I think. Of the 8 computers in my house, only two are Apple hardware, and one of them is > 5 years old.) The rest are either Acer or System76.
A lot of people buy Apple hardware because it's a known quality and (relatively) easy to get fixed. You (probably) know you're going to pay a little extra, but you know the build quality is generally consistently good and if there are hardware issues you can take it into an Apple Store and get it fixed fairly quickly.
It's fine for people that buy PC hardware all the time to say that a particular brand or model is good price and excellent quality. Most people don't want to do that much research for a laptop or desktop. And many have burnt themselves with buying something expensive and had it go bad in a couple years or need to be troubleshooted over the phone or mailed back due to some obscure issue. Better to drag it to the local Apple Store for many.
Help! I'm a slashdot refugee.
Funny, at x-mas I had some friends over, and there was two of them using brand new Mac Book Pros but neither of them was running OSX. Linux was the desktop of choice, one also had Win8 but we ended up installing Win8 on the other one as well so we could play Elite Dangerous together. Those MBPs aren't so bad once you get a useful OS on them, I can certainly see why they are so popular.
Nothing compare to the Air or the 5k iMac.
And yet Mac fans will use that argument to buy a Mac mini or a Macbook Air beacause they can't afford that iMac. Even most of those getting an iMac really want a real tower (such as a Mac Pro) but are stuck with the iMac because they can't afford it.
With Mac hardware, you are out of luck if you want:
-A laptop with a display larger than 13" which doesn't cost an arm and a leg
-A real tower (not all-in-one) with space for video cards, hard drives, and expansion
-A gaming PC
-A tablet/PC convertible, or even a touch screen in general
"Wrong. At least on my 2009 MB Pro 3- and 4-finger touch has been working out of the box on Ubuntu for many years." Yeah, and how many apps in Ubuntu understand and use it?
The price/performance ratio for Macs has always been highly dependent on what kind of device you're getting. Since the G4 iBook (which is when I started using Macs) their notebooks have been a pretty good value for what they did, especially if you want to run some kind of unixoid without having to fiddle around or compromise on capability. Since the unibody MBP they're pretty damn robust, too.
Their desktops, on the other hand, cater exclusively to a) people who need big workstations and b) people who see a sleek form factor, no fans and fewer cables on the desk as serious value-adds. I fall into neither of these categories, which is why my desktop is built from COTS parts.
Unfortunately even the notebooks are becoming less attractive as Apple is focusing on the "I want my notebook to be as light and thin as possible" demographic at the expense of everyone else. My next notebook will still run OS X because I'm used to it but it won't come from Apple.
USE HOT GRITS WITH STATUE OF NATALIE PORTMAN (NAKED AND PETRIFIED)
If the trendy new flat grey-on-grey visuals annoy you, try the "Increase contrast" option in the Accessibility System Preference. It doesn't restore the visual scheme to what it was (which had its own problems), but it's different enough that it may appeal to you. My eyes are fine, but I'm not a big fan of the war on contrast.
If you want a vision of the future, imagine a youtube comments section scrolling - forever.
You know what? I'm a "lapsed Apple guy"... ran MacBook pros for years, had iPhones... now I'm Android and Windows. Reason? The "Genius Bar". Yeah... I'm going to take 2 hours out of my day to go to the closest Apple store... which is in the mall... which sucks because I hate malls. I have to fight for parking, battle my way past the Starbucks stand where the hipsters are yelling at the Barista because the milk has .01% too much foam on their triple-espresso low fat low carb mocha latte frappucino hot... to finally put my name on the list for the Genius where I'm in a one hour queue to get some just-out-of-college hipster who was probably earlier yelling at that same barista to waggle his waxed moustache ends at my laptop and tell me that it's broken. I freaking know that. Then they tell me how they could fix it there but this is a return-to-base factory warranty and that I now need to go fight my way to the FedEx store in a different freaking mall to ship the tucker to Cupertino and be sans laptop for a fortnight.
You know what? When my Alienware dies, Dell will SEND A FREAKING TECH TO MY HOUSE. On my schedule... not a cable-company "sometime-between-10am-and-2020", but a guy who calls me up and makes an appointment to make sure I'm home. If he doesn't bring the part he'll take it with him and either ship it return-to-base himself or he'll get the part overnighted. I don't need some 20-something hipster telling me it's broken... I have being working in technology since before he was born (most likely) and I can diagnose this shit in my sleep.
Oh, and you know what? Every MacBook Pro I've ever purchased has gone back to base for some warranty repair. All of them. Except my last one which suffered a GPU problem literally the week after the warranty expired (one of the many 2011 model 15" units with cracking solder balls that Apple still won't admit is a problem). That latter was the last straw for me... Apple products are beautiful but every one of them has been fundamentally flawed, and their support is a joke. My Alienwares (I have three) have been rock solid... only a lid replacement on an M11xR1... and again Dell sent a tech to my house to fix it. I have an AW15 on order too to replace the MBP... which is away to get the solder balls repaired AT MY COST and then will find its way to eBay. Thus will end my Apple experience.
Oh, and as much as Apple fanboys like to give Microsoft shit, I am typing this on a first-gen Surface Pro that is my take-everywhere PC, has traveled extensively and has been absolutely rock solid. Five years ago if you had told me I'd EVER say that about a Microsoft product I would've seriously laughed in your face.
I switched from Debian to OS X in 2004, then from OS X to Ubuntu in 2014. The story of the switch back is told in full here. That meant that the cheapest route for me was to install a distro on my MacBook, because I already owned it :). And it really is good hardware, so I'm happy with the amount I paid for a high-quality laptop that fulfils my needs.
The interesting part of the switch for me is the question "why not use OS X"? There are all sorts of bugs in OS X and its applications, just as there are in Linux, GNU and their applications. The difference is that I'm allowed to fix the bugs in GNU, and other people can take advantage of those fixes. So I've been learning about GTK+ and Vala, as well as getting back up to speed with GNUstep, so that when I find a bug I can contribute a fix back.
Plenty of other posters have discussed that there are cheaper GNU/Linux-compatible laptop choices, and indeed had I not already owned a MacBook I probably would've considered some of those. But "cheapest" is a non-goal for me, or at least far down the chain below reliable wifi, good battery, solid construction and (to the extent that this is at all an option on any laptop) decent keys.