Debian: I can help friends get going on Ubuntu with the same skills I set up servers on any cloud service I might ever want to use.
If I wanted to do something less mainline, I'd probably be looking at NetBSD instead of arch if coming from macOS.
That said, Terminal.app in Tahoe is one of the few apps that got meaningful under-the-hood updates. If I was a macOS terminal enthusiast, Tahoe might not be all bad news.
Thanks for the suggestion but that's just for Chrome/Chromium isn't it?
It's a nice start but really I'm looking for something that works for the entire screen desktop. I did have a plugin for Gnome that sort of worked (Meta+scroll) but it's very clunky compared to the macOS equivalent.
it is, but as Omarchy is heavily based on web apps, which include Figma, Notion, Google Photos, etc. it works there too.
And in the native apps, such as Terminal, Obsidian, etc., you can just use ctrl++ or ctrl+-. At least that is how i use it. Or what specific apps you need that?
the same for me (e.g. yabai didn't work anylonger properly with latest update). But for the past 2 months (or so), I couldn't be happier with Omarchy. It's a Linux build that comes with all the Mac specifications out of the box and is set up as a tiling window manager, which is what I used on macOS. But no more bugs, and it just works. Plus I can tweak my own OS, if I need to change something. In case of interest, I wrote a little here: https://www.ssp.sh/blog/macbook-to-arch-linux-omarchy/ (It was also on Hacker News: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44955923)
As someone coming from mac, i didn't know about basic things. So one thing I found, don't put your none-mac on a desk mat, it's very bad for thermal throttling. So that helped a ton. I also found that when plugged in in powermode, the lenovo was always on high power, therefore fan on. By switching to balanced, that turned of as well.
But also, as I stuck with Omarchy, I wanted a more beefier machine, as I work all day on the laptop. So with the new machine, Tuxedo latest version, I don't have any fans anymore too, just because it's much faster and better thermal. I will eventually write these up in a second part of the article.
I was able to fix the fan always running issue by changing the fan mode for both my Asus laptop and old macbook pro; I am using silent mode or equivalent and that seems to be fine. there are policy files for throttle_thermal_policy/fan_boost_mode, and you can use a systemd service to set to whatever is your preferred mode.
I have one too, 2013 I guess. I just use it as storage (samba-drive I guess) connected to my mini-computer (hp800) that runs hp800. I do occasional backups via rsync. It works. I also store some images etc. that I don't use there. But I only run a RAID, so I don't have the NAS backuped as well. I still have them in my old macbook backups. But not sure how to properly solve that dilemma of backing up a very large multiple TBs NAS, as I can't afford many more disks and another server to run just for that. If you have any a simple solution, I'm all ear :)
borg is one that pops up all the time, maybe i need to look into that more deeply. I like rsync, but it's creating huge backups. thanks for the suggestions and help, much appreciated.
OP here, thanks for the comment. True, I should have elaborated a bit more. Actually my 10 years old MacBook is still running as my wife's computer and the 15 years computer, I gave to a friend, which used it for a long time (not sure if still).
My comparison was with Windows PCs, that always were super slowish after 2-3 years. The built quality always felt cheap. The battery was done after 2 years. Maybe it was also an unfair comparison, that I bought cheaper PCs, but at work I recently had to a dev HP laptop much later, and I had a very similar experience.
So maybe the problem is more windows than the PCs, but if you have used MacBooks, then you definitely know the difference. Running a Lenovo now, I love the much other things. Let's see how long it holds. ThinkPads are defenitely in a similar categories as Macbooks, kind of unbreakable. Love them too.
Definitely just a Windows issue, and even there I'm sure Windows 7 (the last usable Windows) on a 10 year old computer with an SSD would still feel fairly snappy. I use Linux on a ~9 year old computer and everything except editing photos/videos is instant. I don't know whether to expect demosaicing to be faster on newer CPUs. IIRC a new CPU might have hardware decode for 10 bit 4:2:2 h265, so that would help.
> My comparison was with Windows PCs, that always were super slowish after 2-3 years.
If a Windows PC is "super slowish" after 2-3 years, that's a Windows problem. You may want to run Linux as your main OS and booting Windows in a VM only for critical needs. Good Linux installs don't get "super slowish" at all unless you're running them on real bottom-of-the-barrel hardware.
agreed. that's why i moved on now from macos to linux :). also installed Omarchy linux on a very old dell laptop, and it was super fast compared to windows.
