Switching to OS X from Ubuntu
I’m currently moving from my Ubuntu setup to OS X. What made me even thinking about the change? I actually felt, that the company I work for really loves Mac environment and many solutions there are Mac-oriented (but not Mac-centric, which is cool). It was a bit hard to run dev environment on Ubuntu (but it was possible with some effort).
The funny thing is that while I was starting my new job my pretty 3 year old laptop started to behave really weird. Down arrow just stopped working, there was also problem with decreasing brightness functional key. All in all I felt like I really have to buy new computer and I decided to try new MacBook Pro — the one with touch bar. The overall experience is influenced both by hardware and software, because they are highly coupled.
Edges
I feel like you could cut your skin with every single edge. It may look awesome but it’s really uncomfortable.
Keyboard
I’m super accustomed to Yoga 2 Pro small keyboard. Of course the biggest challenge is using Command key instead of Control. But not always. And it’s still hard for me to find alt when I write polish ą or ż. But I’ll get used to. I also miss all functional button like delete, home, end etc. I now I can use them with “fn” key, but I don’t know where to look for them. Rectangle with arrows… even if I’m used to vim hjkl I still use arrow in console or when I interact with windows. And tiny up and bottom arrows are really hard to hit.
Touchpad
Geeez, it’s just enourmous. And what’s even more funny — sometimes you can’t drag icon from left top corner to right bottom corner, because you lack space on it. I guess force touch will some day introduce new level of interaction, but right now it’s almost useless.
Touchbar
Useful, shiny. Extends the experience — I like it.
Interactions
On Linux most of the interactions I had were made from keyboard level. I could start terminal, browser etc with shortcuts, I could easily jump between every single window I wanted, customize it etc. And now I feel like I’ve lost my keyboard super powers. It seems that this giantic touchpad is the most important sensor.
Coding
It’s my main activity, so it has to be efficient and supported heavily. And now I understand why there was vagrant and docker hype. Of course it was about isolation of smaller parts, but it seems that it helped a lot in day-by-day coding. On Linux / Ubuntu you could just you the very same tools that you use on servers — libraries, package managers etc. But when it comes to OS X you have additional layer — shiny system with AppStore package manager. How can you install newest openssl or make sure the Ruby will work? NFC. But then you just install vagrant with Ubuntu box and you can get back to business. Hopefully I miss something (yeah, I know, brew, which still suck) and someone will show some awesome tool. Right now I believe virtualization is the way to go.
The terminal? The basic one is hard to use — you can’t even close it with Ctrl+d. Why would I even want inactive terminal turned on? Oh, and I forgot that it has some shortcuts that you may find really hard to change (if that’s possible at all). So yeah, iterm2 FTW. I also understand the towards tmux now — it’s the same as virtualization tools — it makes OS X suck less by avoiding it’s natural interface.
Fun time
It’s the first time since 10 years that some normal programs work on my computer. I no longer feel like 3rd class citizen — so I like it. Compare any program window program from Ubuntu and OS X and you’ll see huge aesthetic distance. It’s totally different level of experience.
Overall experience
I’m still a bit frustrated with the change, but hopefully I’ll learn all the tricks that will make my work super productive. Changing the system is always painful experience.
