Wal-Mart Offers Linux as Windows Alternative (2003)

Re:Wal-Mart Offers Linux as Windows Alternative (2003) by kelnos on Tuesday September 12, 2017 @02:49PM (#15230358)

We're a Mac shop developer-wise (I'm one of the dozen or so of us that runs Linux), and I hear no amount of grief from the Mac users for random problems with wifi, VPN, etc. They also complain of performance issues (hangs, lockups, etc.). Some of the perf problems are certainly caused by the "security" junk IT has put on the systems, which I'm lucky not to have. But overall I have fewer complaints running Linux on my dev box than other developers have with MacOS, it seems.

I wouldn't put a Linux desktop in front of a non-technical user (yes, I know, people are successful at this, but...), but I still find it to be a much better developer OS than MacOS is.

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Re:Wal-Mart Offers Linux as Windows Alternative (2003) by Kadin on Tuesday September 12, 2017 @02:58PM (#15230529)

I've been a Mac user for decades and I think I'm reaching the end of the line; it's always been just enough of a better overall experience to keep me paying the "Apple tax" over Linux on commodity x86 hardware, but the gap has seemingly been narrowing each year.

Sadly, too much of that narrowing is due to Apple ceding the advantage for me to be exactly happy with it (although there has been progress on the Linux front; things have come a long way, certainly). I'm still running MacOS 10.10 right now, and when something finally breaks, I don't know if I can stomach the thought of a forced upgrade to Sierra with its "System Integrity Protection". No, thanks.

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Re:Wal-Mart Offers Linux as Windows Alternative (2003) by tapoxi on Tuesday September 12, 2017 @05:13PM (#15232805)

You can disable System Integrity Protection pretty easily.

I've used Linux full-time at work, and while most things are fine, VPNs, WebEx meetings, Evernote, MS Office documents, Spotify and Skype are not. Spotify and Skype at least offer Linux versions, but they are for the most part terrible and not maintained.

With Windows running in a VM I could get through a workday just fine, but its an additional hassle and a good chunk of your RAM.

I'm using a Mac now (on Sierra), and for the most part its a great experience. That may change as this 2013 MBP dies and I'm forced to use that awful touch bar.

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Re:Wal-Mart Offers Linux as Windows Alternative (2003) by kelnos on Saturday September 23, 2017 @06:16AM (#15319074)

Yep, it still depends to some extent what apps you absolutely need. Fortunately I don't need any of the problematic stuff. We're on OpenVPN, use Zoom and LifeSize for meetings (both of which work fine using the native or web clients), generally use GDocs for most things, and personally I use Google Music (though when I last used Spotify I found their native Linux app to be fine... their Android app was much worse). I dunno, just depends on your needs, I guess.

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Re:Wal-Mart Offers Linux as Windows Alternative (2003) by Unklejoe on Wednesday September 13, 2017 @12:33PM (#15239912)

Spotify gives me absolutely zero issues on Linux. What type of issues are you seeing with it?

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Re:Wal-Mart Offers Linux as Windows Alternative (2003) by tapoxi on Tuesday September 26, 2017 @11:48AM (#15339694)

Unable to play local files without crashing, enabling MPRIS2 support so I could control Spotify from other apps resulted in a giant toast notification for every song in the middle of my screen, which I couldn't disable.

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Re:Wal-Mart Offers Linux as Windows Alternative (2003) by mavhc on Wednesday September 13, 2017 @04:47AM (#15236553)

Evernote, MS Office, Spotify and Skype all have web clients.

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Re:Wal-Mart Offers Linux as Windows Alternative (2003) by tapoxi on Wednesday September 13, 2017 @11:28AM (#15239183)

Correct, but they're very bad experiences compared to the native clients. Skype for instance (last I tried) didn't support screen sharing. Web Spotify won't let you listen to high quality audio or listen to local tracks. Office Web won't open or properly format large documents. Evernote's web UI (granted, as of 2014) was borderline unusable.

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Re:Wal-Mart Offers Linux as Windows Alternative (2003) by thebigspacefuck on Tuesday September 12, 2017 @03:38PM (#15231315)

Different expectations? With Linux you're kind of expecting to get your hands dirty whereas Mac is supposed to "just work".

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