>seeing programmers who are absolutely smart enough to run their own Linux system on computers they actually own actively choose not to do so is very disconcerting.
I run macOS because Apple understands that QA testing is something of actual importance, and designing yet another package manager is not.
I do spin up Linux every now and again to see if it's good yet, and always walk away.
Why do documents print at ~50dpi on my network printer?
Why does the system simply not wake up ~20% of the time when I open my laptop's lid?
Why do I have to unplug and reconnect my USB WiFi Dongle every hour or so when the internet randomly drops out?
Why does the system stop recognising my USB SD Card reader occasionally, forcing me to hard reboot the system?
Why is the audio distorted over HDMI when I enable HDR?
Why does Kodi only detect a refresh rate of 30Hz when the system itself has no issues seeing that the monitor is 60Hz?
All of these are real problems that real users have had, but instead of solving them the Linux development community instead chooses to devote their time and resources navel gazing about systemd alternatives or creating a fragile AUR package for software that already has a sensible and officially supported distribution method.
All operating systems have bugs, and Apple doesn't have the QA it used to have. MacOS has basically been exclusively trending down in quality for a while now, while Linux continues to get better.
What you have to realize is that what Linux distros are doing is inherently more complicated. They're making a general purpose operating system intended to run on every computer.
Apple is making one operating system intended to run on maybe 0.1% of devices. Oh, and they also make those devices.
And MacOS is still trending down in quality, somehow.
You're not wrong about the downwards trend in quality but we're still a long ways off from macOS or even Windows having the same level of QA issues that Linux does, on a regular desktop system.
Windows basically barely works, and I would know because I use it daily at work. Core operating system components crash regularly. My task bar crashes a couple times a day, and takes explorer down with it. Sometimes the start menu just won't open for a while. And also teams kills itself silently, and then I miss notifications because I'm not pocket watching the task bar.
At this point, Linux is very far ahead of windows in terms of QA. And other things, like aesthetics and intuitive UI. I mean, Microsoft has like 5 different application styles across their own built in apps.
I think a lot of people have just not used KDE or even gnome in a while. They're pretty good. Consistent, intuitive, stable.
>I run macOS because Apple understands that QA testing is something of actual importance, and designing yet another package manager is not.
Apple demonstrated with their latest releases that they don't give a single fuck about QA. OSX 26 is very buggy. The corner resize debacle, the glass debacle, and problem after problem that has made it to the HN front page is enough to know they don't care about QA the way you think they do.
The list of problems are described are not typical, I've seen none of that running Linux. YMMV
Apple decided to focus on "Glass", an outdated UI style that was introduced in Windows Vista. They didn't have to, it wasn't wanted by anyone and it has caused significant embarrassment for apple and problems for users. Why couldn't they replace Finder with something actually useful? Why couldn't they fix the UI so "About this software" isn't the first thing on the first menu which is a waste of space. They made MacOS objectively worse.
> The list of problems are described are not typical, I've seen none of that running Linux. YMMV
Haven't run into any of those problems either. Linux has been a "just works" experience for me for nearly a decade now. Buying Intel hardware seems to have done the trick.
It's pointless to engage in such argumentation though. Even if the experience was poor, it wouldn't matter, because the cost of a "good experience" is being a serf in Apple's digital fiefdom, and that is an unacceptable moral failing. It's not about practicality, it's about not being reduced to begging the trillion dollar corporation for permission to do basic things with "your" computer.
I recently went (almost) all-in on Linux after many years on Windows. The final straw for me was that I paid for a "lifetime license" for Outlook, because I've been using Outlook for decades, and have every email I've ever sent or received in Outlook. Well, I upgraded the CPU on the server where I run the VM which hosts Outlook, and then Microsoft wanted me to purchase a full new copy of Outlook because of the CPU upgrade. That was it, I'm done.
I moved Linux Mint and Thunderbird for email, and it's honestly been great. I switched all of my Windows-based VMs to Linux Mint.
My main workstation/laptop is still on Windows due to some hardware issues, but I will work those out in time. Mainly I have a USB4 port that also outputs Displayport, which I connect to a Displayport splitter so I can run three 4k monitors. That's the only thing that I haven't solved on Linux, but I haven't put much time into it. And I don't really blame Linux for that, I more blame the laptop manufacturer for not fully supporting Linux.
On the other hand I’m very conveniently enjoying my experience, I don’t have to waste time screwing with stuff I have no interest in screwing with - like the OP’s examples, and if I want to run Linux I’ll just install it and do what I want or rent out some compute time somewhere.
Besides, you can buy a Mac and do whatever you want and go buy a bunch of off the shelf components to do whatever hobby stuff you want to do too.
Freedom, perhaps, starts with not making up and applying limitations on yourself.
> Freedom, perhaps, starts with not making up and applying limitations on yourself.
Nothing wrong with applying limitations to oneself. That's discipline, principles. It's important stuff.
The real problem is accepting the completely made up limitations that others apply on you. Corporation wakes up one day and just decides people can't run more than two virtual machines? That's stupid. Actually defending this with "but convenience" arguments as if convenience was supposed to override freedom? No.
Freedom isn't something you actively work towards. It's something you start with. It's the status quo. Others take it away from you. You can either accept it passively and enjoy the "convenience", or you can resist and go down the harder path. It's very disappointing to see people on Hacker News choose the former path.
You’re just living under the illusion of freedom. You are completely dependent on the decisions of others and their good graces for all of your computing needs, from the silicon to the Linux distro you use. You’re just drawing an arbitrary line a little further to feel like you’re in control, but you’re not.
Silicon? Sure. Billion dollar fabs are huge single points of failure. It's turning into a problem too due to the war on general purpose computing. Free software doesn't matter if we can't run it. Linux distro? Not really. It's only a matter of how much effort I want to put into things. I can make my own distro, I can't make my own trillion dollar fab.
Anyway, what even is this argument? Can't control everything, so it doesn't matter? Don't even bother trying? Just give up? Just accept your lot in life as a serf in Apple's digital fiefdom? I'm pessimistic about the future but even I haven't completely succumbed to such total nihilism yet.
You're trying to assert this big claim about freedom because some users can't I guess run more than 2 VMs on their MacBook Pro. Since we don't care we're not trying, we just gave up, we're serfs even. Well you're still a serf too your bounds of serfdom are just long enough to trick you into believing otherwise.
Who cares? I don't. I can't do anything with open source software either - like I'm going to spend hundreds or thousands of hours figuring our how any given software package works and that's going to somehow make me more free? C'mon. I can't tell Apple no anymore than I can tell someone maintaining a Linux distribution no.
The VM limitation is only for macOS guests, otherwise I can spin up as many VMs as I like, which is no different to doing so in Linux (since it cannot run macOS VMs).
Living as a taxpaying member of society is something that is imposed on us. If we refuse, violent men with guns show up at our doors to arrest us and seize our property. At least we get to try and vote out idiots imposing stupid quotas on the population.
The issue of computer freedom does not even come close to this. None of this is imposed on us. We have the power to choose differently at any time. We can choose not to accept the monopolistic corporation's terms.
I opened the article and it starts out saying it's a picture of his family. At first I thought the picture was Sam. Then I was like no, maybe it's his brother? And then I was like, that would be weird. So I googled "is Sam Altman gay?" And Google says, yes, he's openly gay and married. I had no idea. I thought it was interesting, because I've seen so many comments about Peter Thiel being gay, but never anything about Sam Altman.
I feel like this is perfect being the enemy of good. So lets say only 80% of their staff can get off Windows and the remaining 20% need to remain on it. That's a great start!
And a recipe for failure. All 100% of their staff needs to be moved off of Windows at the same time.
A few years ago, IBM tried to move everyone to LibreOffice from M/S Office. It failed, the reason why was top level execs and some others were allowed to stay on M/S Office. As time went on, M/S Windows became a Status Symbol. So people went begging and as time went on exceptions were granted. A few even went so far as to buy their own copy, which was allowed.
After 8 months IBM gave up. If you want things like this to succeed, you must be 100% in.
It's so funny you say that. Was literally just chatting to my wife the other day about how mediocre weddings are. You spend $20-$50k basically LARPing as landed British gentry, and end up having less fun than the average 21st, Christmas or New Year's. So much more stress in planning too.
My wife and I are not party people. We would never host a part with 100 friends and family for any reason other than our wedding.
It felt really special to see all my friends and family out there in the audience supporting my wife and I sharing our vows to each other. I was grinning like an idiot the whole ceremony because I was just so happy.
I had always loved going to my cousin's weddings. No one in my family is religious anymore (my uncle was a priest but left the priesthood, I was raised atheist), but we all do take marriage pretty seriously. I have 10 cousins and 4 sets of aunts and uncles, and all of them are still married to their first spouse. It felt very special to join that club. I was the second to last cousin to get married (I am also the second to youngest).
All my cousins had amazing weddings, too. They were all big parties that we had a lot of fun at. I felt like it was my turn to host one, and it felt magical. We got married at the downtown library, which is a special place for us. We love taking our kids there and showing them where we were married.
Having spent that money hasn't really changed my life in any significant way. I don't think anything would be different if I had an extra $60k. For the price of a nice car, we got a magical night that we will never forget, wonderful memories, and a fantastic way to celebrate our commitment to each other. It was a once in a lifetime thing. Way more valuable to me than a nice car.
I don't know. If you had 50 friends, reserved space at a decent restaurant, and got a DJ you could totally have a good time for what's been solidly under $10k even until recently in most of the country. Outfits + photographer + rings add, but there's obviously a lot of latitude to have a really fun time in that price bracket depending on what you like. And there are all kinds of alternatives. We have some friends who went to Italy with a wedding party of about 8 people (family and close friends) and had a great time. I don't think it was cheap, but it was probably below the low end of the $20k if some of the wedding party paid their own way and they had a really fun Italian vacation. We also have friends who just borrowed someone's house, got a pile of food delivered and had basically a game night wedding thing.
I know the kinds of weddings you speak of, and it’s sad, and hard to disagree.
Even more sad that for $20-$50k you /could/ have a super unique, awesome and even low-stress wedding (ok that last part depending on parents/relatives may be impossible), yet so many are the same songs (you know them all), same venues (estate, banquet hall, rooftop, etc), same food.
The article talks about the failure mode of kinship groups, but doesn't go into the fact that new migrants often enter into kinship networks that help them succeed. You see the same in religious communities as well - people pitching in not to leech off one another but to help everyone move ahead.
Maybe the problem is with Ghanaian values and not kinship itself.
I think mutual aid organizations and friendly societies of various kinds among American immigrants (at least historically) benefited from a strong selection effect: people willing to immigrate to a faraway country without a welfare system in pursuit of opportunity and wealth. That population is highly self-selected for work ethic, risk tolerance, and self-discipline. Those values probably stabilize social dynamics and minimize the wealth immolation and tall-poppy effects described in the article.
In other words, if everyone in a mutual aid society is a crab who crossed half the world and an entire ocean to escape the bucket, eventually said crabs stop acting like you'd expect crabs in a bucket to act, and their social dynamics are consequently less suffocating.
I was a bit surprised to read this. I didn't think I'd stand out in the sea of comments here. But to this, since a couple of years ago I had a break up, moved city, quit all social media and went outside to real events. HN is the only place I still comment on.
Even their $5 plan gives 4GB.
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