I started panicking mildly thinking my drive was failing or something.
And just before this, I finally managed to fix Spotlight pegging one core at 100% constantly. Next thing, I reboot into a laggy system. macOS is my favorite OS, but the shit I put up with... it's basically an abusive relationship at this point.
Same. Panic attack. Thought the SSD was dying. I ran Disk Utility diagnostics and started coming up with plans to reformat and restore as a last resort.
I genuinely thought the same thing. I opened my MBP and it was sluggish, felt like it was dead. Browser wouldn't load, Zoom wouldn't load, I rebooted and the same problems persisted. I honestly thought the hardware was giving out.
I almost cannot believe the actual cause. Absolutely awful experience.
Incredible I had the exact same thing. 2019 MB pro I bought for music production and ableton started to lag incredibly badly and the whole desktop was unresponsive. I started to search my email to see what warranty I had.
The thing you get with Linux is "more _predictable_ shit to deal with", not "less shit to deal with", no large capable desktop OS is perfect and never will be.
Anxiety from what Apple's agenda will do to your computer next update? anxiety from if a 1hr windows update is awaiting you when you turn your pc on? ... Linux awaits.
Linux awaits and then when it comes it borks WLAN driver, because canonical decided to replace a perfectly working one with WIP FOSS alternative, forcing users to switch to cable LAN until it reached feature parity.
Linux awaits and then when it comes it borks AMD driver, because AMD decided not to support older cards on the new FOSS driver, and the old perfectly working driver is not compatible with modern kernels, driver ABI be dammed.
Linux awaits and then when it comes it breaks hard disk encryption forcing a full install, and feeling lucky that I actually backup /home regurlarly.
Linux awaits and then when it comes half of the stuff doesn't work in Wayland.
Eventually I rather just deal with macOS, Windows, Android and leave Linux just for the kernel itself.
I haven't had to deal with any of that, but I've had Windows straight up refuse to boot multiple times and the only fix I found was to reinstall. I've now had to advise multiple people who couldn't turn on their WiFi in Windows (the switch just did nothing). I also couldn't fix that without a reinstall (not for a lack of trying). My family iMac refuses to import photos from an iPhone into Photos, failing the transfer silently. I have no idea how I'd even go about fixing that besides calling Apple and forcing them to fix it.
No man gets to deal with all of the possible computer problems, thankfully. But in my experience, most Linux problems have been fixable and I managed to fix them, while more closed OSs have left me stumped many times. I no longer believe that a computer can work without problems, so my priority is making sure that when problems appear, I can diagnose them and fix them easily.
Windows sometimes has these artificial problems, purely for market share play. Hell, I'm still a bit angry at them because of what they did to RE-DOS with Win 3.1 Beta. I was working in a small computer shop and we were blindly recommending MS-DOS as we were sure RE-DOS had compatibility problems. The tracking, and the constant nagging, silly software signing shenanigans...
So I agree, Linux problems are usually much more fixable.
Thanks, I already tried that. It does give an (easily missed) error from the underlying library there, but it's just some number that some other people are also complaining about on support forums.
If you have any other insights, I'd be happy to hear them. We have a workaround, but It'd be nice to get imports working again.
To each their own I guess, but in 20+ years of using Linux I've never had any of those issues. Maybe it's because I'm cheap an I run it on older laptops.
As for Windows... really no issues there other than forced errors of whatever absurd company policies are in place that cause software I don't want or need being forced on my machine.
Hell no. I work with RHEL every day, and while I'm by no means an expert, I would say I'm reasonably proficient with Linux.
Every time I've tried using Linux on the desktop, it's worked just fine until I tried to update something. Sooner or later, there's some broken patch or some incompatible thing here or there that breaks my window manager and throws me to the command line, ruins my network settings, overwrites my boot config or some other maddening mess. Linux works brilliantly, AS LONG AS YOU NEVER TOUCH ANYTHING
That's true in most Linux distros, I've been there, even with the most robust ones (like Debian). But then I found Manjaro, with a semi-rolling update system, that is a perfect balance between recent version updates and rock-solid stability.
Well, you're using the wrong distributions then. Use something stodgy but solid like stable Debian or a recent but not bleeding edge version of Mint and you should not have all too many things on your shit list. It won't be empty - printing will still trip you up every now and then, just like it does everywhere else to give an example - but it will mostly ' just work' unless you're trying to install it on truly exotic (as in "released this week") hardware. The overall facepalm experience will be comparable to that on Mac OS, better than that on Windows. Add to that the fact that it is free in every sense of the word as well as the glaring and welcome absence of draconic "features" like the one discussed in this thread and those Linux distributions will start to look very tempting.
Debian has abysmal hardware support( well gpus mostly). They need to do something about their kernels, my RX5700XT is miles ahead with the current kernel compared to whatever debian 10 ships.
AMD graphics require a firmware blob for all modern cards [0]. It used to be that the firmware was only needed for 3D acceleration and you could run X/text mode without the blob just fine, but that hasn't been true for years (I think since HD6000 series in 2010).
My Lenovo Windows laptop came installed with malware that MITMed all my https connections and also allowed anyone else to MITM all my https connections.
Would MacOS actually have prevented it? Would Superfish just have simply signed the binary? Sure it wouldn't have started up when the Apple servers are down, but that's a very small percent of the time.
Fair enough, but that's not a typical experience on either Windows or Linux in this decade - if that's happened to you, then I think you've just been incredibly unlucky.
On the other hand I was gifted a 2015 MacBook Pro 15 and I can't run away screaming fast enough from it. I know people rave about the touch pad, but when I use it I find apps get minimized, or don't launch or some other weird gesture causing behavior. I guarantee that this is classic PEBKAC. The other day a family member with a MacBook Pro asked me to assist them with Safari which on launch wouldn't appear. I was able to get it to appear by using the Finder or something which allowed me to pin/size Safari to one side of the screen, but on appearing the window simply displayed a single pixel frame with a black interior. I liked the process, launched it again but it did the same thing. I told them they would have more success with Google than me. I have never had those experiences with Windows. Yes I've had other lame experiences, but I can always solve them, it at least find a solution online. Again probably PEBCAK so no fan boy retorts please. In the end all programs and operating systems suck.
I have to say I also don't understand all the fanfare for the MBP trackpad. I have a 13" 2016 MBP, and I actively dislike the trackpad. You need to use far too much pressure to "click" (even when the resistance at the lowest setting), and there is something "off" about the mouse pointer tracking - I can't figure out what it is, like if it feels too smooth, too jerky, I don't know, but it feels wrong somehow.
Oh, I do like the gesture support, though even Windows 10 supports gestures nowadays.
I’m personally quite a big fan of the trackpad and gestures but I understand that they take some getting used to. If they are causing you frustration then you can turn them off under system preferences > trackpad in the “scroll and zoom” and “more gestures” sections. I’d recommend keeping most of the scroll ones and disabling most of the others, then one by one turning on any of the ones you think would be most useful as you get more used to them.
As for the Safari issue, I have no idea off the top of my head.
Disagree with Linux. I make an LVM snapshot before making any attempts to upgrade the graphics driver. It's a disaster. And don't say proprietary code, that's beside the point. Windows runs drivers in a way that one that crashes can be restarted without bringing down the kernel or the whole system.
FYI I've had the issue you describe half a dozen times with CentOS but literally never with Arch Linux (on both machines with similar nVidia cards, using the proprietary driver). In general I'm pretty impressed with Arch's package quality, I seldom encounter any issue and when I do it's patched very quickly.
I tried Arch Linux in a dual boot scenario on this System76 laptop and I don't recall why I switched back... I think it's because I tried to upgrade the graphics driver and got into state where I couldn't get X to run at all.
A co-worker keeps telling me to try Manjaro. I'm just not sure if I want to spend a weekend reinstalling all the stuff I use.
Very true. I have used Ubuntu and Fedora for a while, but when I switched to Arch, I never go back. Arch is described as bleeding edge, but another way to put it is it always has latest software, which is what a dev machine should be. My experience with installing Nvidia driver in ubuntu is nightmare. Tried official repo then failed, and tried different ppa and then failed again and again. At last, I found that I have an older kernel version and I need to compiled a latest kernel which is not in official ubuntu repo. I gave up at this point because I don't want to compile kernel every time I need to upgrade. With Arch, you always get the latest kernel and you won't usually missing feature from using an old LTS kernel.
Nope, there have been a few issues with BSOD that have impacted quite a lot of people. The latest one was with nvidia drivers being old that caused BSOD after update.
In a previous company the IT dept had to revert a forced by MS update manually on each machine by “hacking” and deleting and replacing files as it was causing BSOD.
It happened to me pretty much every other forced windows update, from broken graphics drivers to non functional start menu.
I just replaced that pos with a mac mini....
I use centos 7 for my daily driver, it'll get 8 on it next hardware upgrade. Touch wood not a single problem with that for years now, and amd5000/nv3000 are looking very tasty.
I believe you must have been using Windows 7 without updates for the decade, because with windows 10 every[1] update[2] borks the system so much that Microsoft had to pull updates. And last but not the least, a big guide to fix problems caused by a forced, mandatory windows update[3]
Meanwhile on Linux, I cannot upgrade to the new kernel that contains a lot of support and fixes for my new shiny AMD Ryzen chip because it completely breaks the Nvidia driver, refusing even to boot.
Apple may suck, but it still sucks less than the alternatives
> Meanwhile on Linux, I cannot upgrade to the new kernel that contains a lot of support and fixes for my new shiny AMD Ryzen chip because it completely breaks the Nvidia driver, refusing even to boot.
Well that's the problem with Linux distros for the desktop in general. A user upgrading a newer version of a single system component risks breaking the whole desktop: systemd, libdrm, x11, whatever and something else doesn't work. I'm even excluding drivers here but again it's clear what happens when a user finds that out for themselves on Linux. If they even have the time and energy to do all that digging and googling of cryptic errors.
To save yourself the time and frustration, Just keep using Windows 10 with WSL2. I don't have any reason to dual boot to a Linux desktop any more due to this.
And I believe you must not have been using Windows, and are relying too much of news of incidents affecting small numbers of people.
It is - quite clearly - a gross exaggeration that "every update borks the system".
Aside from MacOS, I use Windows 10, and have done for several years. I have the Microsoft Action Pack, which means I get multiple Windows 10 Enterprise licenses - and no forced updates.
Ain't that the truth with every OS. I use Windows for gaming, PopOS for work on my desktop and MacOS for work on my laptop. The amount of weird issues is about constant.
But linux is free both as in free beer and in free speech, windows required you to pay the Microsoft tax to use, and lastly macOS required you to pay a premium on hardware.
That freedom of Linux comes at a cost that people aren't paid to take care of the level of details other OS have.
Paying $100 for Windows seems like a better solution if you just want a working OS without a hassle.
And what premium do Mac hardwares have? It seems I paid what they deserved as I can't find anything better in the market. Even moreso now that M1 is out, it seems all Windows machines have premium.
> That freedom of Linux comes at a cost that people aren't paid to take care of the level of details other OS have.
What do you mean "take care of the level of detail"?
I can download Debian right now, install it on hardware in about 10min, and get everything to work rock solid without any hitch.
I can't say the same about either Windows 10 or macOS.
In fact, I had mojave crash and reboot more times in the last month than Ubuntu 18.04 since it was released, and mojave is preinstalled in its own target hardware, which is supposed to be high-end, while Ubuntu is installed on a cheap laptop that cost between a third and a fourth of my apple laptop.
>> That freedom of Linux comes at a cost that people aren't paid to take care of the level of details other OS have.
>> Paying $100 for Windows seems like a better solution if you just want a working OS without a hassle.
I've been running Fedora for 15 years and haven't had any of those pesky Linux issues for at least 8 of those years. Meanwhile, I was issued a new Windows laptop at work just last week and it Sucks pretty bad. It's smooth and polished, but with all the advertising and "first ones free" preinstalled shit it feels a lot like Facebook rather than a computer. I'm glad its me-at-work being monetized and not me at home...
I can't help but think you meant, "I've accepted there's no real way to salvage and diagnose my computer when it breaks so reformatting it has become second nature. I always keep an up to date Win10 install USB ready, and I even have a second hard drive that I keep all my files on."
With Macs, you have to put up with MacOS and Apple (one big premium is lack of choice). It's also not that easy to self-administrate without MDM, and software options are relatively limited if you come from either Linux or Windows.
I'm a software dev but since we're only 2 techies at work I also maintain about 40 Windows PC, 3 Hyper-V hypervisors (with something like half a dozen Windows server, the rest are Linuxes) and the printers.
If Windows 10 was unstable I should be swamped. But I spend more than 90% of my time on software dev.
And the machines are not new with fresh installs, I all migrated them manually from Windows 7.
The unspoken rule didn't change because it's Windows 10: never install a fresh release of an OS right away (I'm still on 20H1). And judging by the comments I read here it's true for MacOS too.
FWIW I switched from XP to Vista 1 or 1.5 year after its release date. It has been a great OS for me, I never had a problem with it (except that it's then they started with the bullshit telemetry).
Of course YMMV, but since late Vista stability isn't a major issue anymore.
Activation, for example. An activated and running Windows system can turn into a nagging SOB by something as simple as enabling a motherboard's Ethernet adapter in BIOS.
A level of detail I value is that none of that BS is baked into systems I use. Doesn't matter whether those who did not do so were paid for it or not.
Had this happen to me after installing a secondary SSD. Windows was deactivated, and wouldn't reactivate. I ended up having to use the Windows Restore tool before I could activate again. Having to reinstall all of your programs is never fun.
I had a new mobo broken in 1 week and replaced it with the same model and it ended up license being invalid despite the mobo being the exact same model.
I had to make a phone call since none of the methods Windows or the internet suggested worked and that phone literally took 30 min to reactivate my license again. That wasn't fun.
True. Linux is the best value and the best developer experience IMHO - unless you need commercial software that is Win/Mac only. Even then you can virtualize which is safer too. I can also easily get a Darcula theme OS-wide for Gnome so..
As developers and engineers, we ought to be jumping off this platform like a sinking ship. It's clear that they want to lock it down like the iPhone. Why else would they be measuring which apps are in use if they didn't want to control it?
If your argument is "compatibility research", you're missing the other warning signs.
If I do any simple math calculation in Spotlight it pegs all cores at 100%. Its easily reproducible and really annoying because I've used spotlight as a calculator for years.
My music software became completely useless on catalina, and I was also running into issues with spotlight so I disabled it. I downgraded(painfully) to Mojave and my system is so much speedier. wish I could completely switch to linux.
yeah, but in the end, choice of OS is secondary to choice of application. I'm staying on Mojave for the foreseeable future, but I'll stay with Mac because Logic Pro is not available on any other platform. Sometimes applications are fungible, or you're lucky and your critical application is available on multiple platforms, but sometimes there are only certain applications that can do what you want. I run a MacOS System 7 for software to edit my Yamaha VL-1. I run MacOS 9.2.8 due to hardware drivers for a Korg OasysPCI. I run MacOS 10.6.8 Snow Leopard because is is the last OS that runs rosetta and keeps numerous PowerPC apps that never made the jump to Intel. I'll keep Mojave running when eventually I have to jump to Arm because I'm sure a lot of the software I run won't make the jump to Arm. I'd LOVE to drop any of those systems, but each exists because there are applications that do not have replacement on modern OS'es.
And that, my friend, is exactly why they bought Logic. Don't know if you were in the music game back then, but they way it played out was:
- Logic had the pole position for non-pro-tools music at the time, and sold (IIRC) for about $600
- Apple bought Logic and stated publicly "we will not discontinue it on windows"
- I think a year later, might have been two, they cancelled it on windows
- Some time later, they dropped the price, and also put out garage band, using Logic's engine.
- Logic's product roadmap (from what I've heard) became more general user friendly (can't attest to this personally though)
Basically, anything Apple owns becomes part of the plan to get you on a mac and iEverything, secondary to whatever it's originally purpose is. I won't touch any music software now that doesn't run on at least 2 operating systems. Fortunately most of them now realize the importance of this.
I'd recommend looking at other options like Reaper, Cubase, or Digital Performer, all of which have been improving steadily and can on windows or OSX.
Personally I'm sticking on High Sierra, and doubt my next machine will be a mac. Man I'm going to miss Bash everywhere though. Sigh
And just before this, I finally managed to fix Spotlight pegging one core at 100% constantly. Next thing, I reboot into a laggy system. macOS is my favorite OS, but the shit I put up with... it's basically an abusive relationship at this point.