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MacOS Catalina: Slow by Design?

(sigpipe.macromates.com)
2031 points jrk | 4 comments | 22 May 20 15:39 UTC | HN request time: 0.421s | source
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halotrope ◴[22 May 20 16:29 UTC] No.23273850[source]▶
I am using Ubuntu 20.04 on a Thinkpad X1 Extreme Gen2 and you would be surprised how "normal" it feels as a development machine. Sure there some little annoyances, the touchpad behaves a little worse than on windows, sound is a little worse. But the most important things, Keyboard and Screen are excellent. The system in general does not feel like the horror stories that people keep telling about linux on desktop(notebook). Now that WSL2 is getting Cuda even windows looks workable. Their new terminal app is amazing. After a decade of Mac notebooks it was quite liberating and I would not switch back even if the flaws in macOS would be fixed. It is for sure the nicest of the big 3 operating systems but for development work Ubuntu is hard to beat for me. YMMV but it won't hurt to look around you what else is there.
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Myrmornis ◴[22 May 20 18:10 UTC] No.23275130[source]▶
I would love to switch back to Linux but Apple's Retina displays are absolutely beautiful and there is no way I could enjoy going back to anything with noticeably lower pixel density on a laptop. I'd like to be told I'm wrong, but as far as I know it's not really possible to recreate a comparable high pixel density experience under Linux on a laptop.
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1. cosmojg ◴[22 May 20 18:16 UTC] No.23275194[source]▶
Two years ago, I helped a friend install Ubuntu Linux on a Retina Macbook Pro, and it worked like a charm. If you're looking for a new laptop entirely, there are loads of 4K+ Linux-compatible laptops out there (ThinkPads are probably your best bet).
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2. davrosthedalek ◴[22 May 20 19:54 UTC] No.23276192[source]▶
It seems the new Dell XPS finally have a touchpad which is close to the ones on the MacBooks. The touchpad and display are the two things which hold me back from switching away from Apple.
3. Myrmornis ◴[22 May 20 23:27 UTC] No.23278276[source]▶
Thanks. What do you think about this post? The author sounds knowledgable and I think it contradicts what you said to some degree (in that the experience and app support is not good even though Linux is installed on a machine with a high dpi display):

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22958647

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4. cosmojg ◴[23 May 20 03:19 UTC] No.23279578[source]▶
I don't know about Ubuntu, but my experience with Gnome on Arch Linux and Arch-derived distributions has been pretty good as far as high-DPI displays go. I've only had to make minor tweaks to a few configurations here and there depending on the application.

If you want to avoid tweaking, stick to native applications, and perhaps more importantly, go for a manufacturer with proper firmware support for high-DPI screens like System76 (Adder WS), Dell (XPS 13), or Lenovo (ThinkPad P1/P53/X1).