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I had been using OS X for about 6 years until recently, I knew my way around, and I had made several customizations which made my life a lot easier.
Everything worked perfectly, my 4 year old Macbook Air was still fast as ever, but I wanted something new. The obvious choice would be the new Macbook Pro, and I did think about it, at first, until I realized that it’s just not worth the price.
Windows was never really an option, but I really wanted to try Linux. The only problem was — I was frightened (and as I later found out, for a good reason).
Enter XPS
Sure, there are many different laptops nowadays, most of them for a much lower price, but I wanted to preserve the advantages of my Macbook Air, it being very thin and lightweight, so I went for the new 2017 XPS 13 with QHD+.
First of all, it is an amazing laptop. It is very slick, thin, light, and the performance is incredible with my setup.
However, there are some quirks I don’t like seeing in a laptop at this price, such as an annoying coil whining, and I’ve read a few complaints about screen flickering (this is, thankfully, not a problem of mine).
Since it is very new, there are also some problems with linux compatibility. At first, I wanted to install Debian, but this idea quickly backfired when the installation couldn’t find the wireless adapter (which is quite a severe problem when you’re using Net Installation).
Finally, after some browsing, I decided to install Ubuntu 16.10, which works perfectly, except for really bad palm detection.
Enter Ubuntu
The installation was not a piece of cake. I have installed and used Ubuntu before, but I have never had to deal with the installation not recognizing my disks. I solved this by changing a few things in BIOS, but looking up what to change hurt bad.
(In case anyone’s wondering what I actually had to change: I am not skilled at dealing with BIOS, so I don’t dare making suggestions to anyone else, but the most important thing for me was to change the SATA mode to AHCI and disable SecureBoot, so that I would be able to see my disks)
After I had everything installed, the setup started and this was (and still is) by far the most excruciating part of it all — there are so many things on OS X that aren’t on Ubuntu.
I was used to the luxury of Alfred, BetterTouchTool, 1Password, Karabiner, and dozens (maybe like two or three) more, and now I had none of this; I had to find alternatives to everything. This is not easy at all.
Alfred (or Quicksilver)
The only alternative I found so far was Gnome Do, and it is… just awful. It doesn’t work on HiDPI out of the box, it has a very awkward user interface, and it can’t really do much more than the default Unity search. I really miss the Alfred’s dictionary and clipboard features, among others, but I think I will be able to survive in the long term.
BetterTouchTool
This is an amazing tool for setting gestures and hotkey, absolutely limitlessly. I have used it mainly for a couple of hotkey, but also to add gestures to the touchpad, which I mostly like using more than the mouse. There seems to be an alternative, though, which is Touchégg.
1Password
I’ve been using this password manager for a while now, and I still think it has the best user interface and integration (in terms of how you’re able to use that interface in browsers, for instance) of them all, although I haven’t tried them all, of course. However, I decided to give LastPass a go, which is a multiplatform, free (with fairly useful premium features) password manager.
Karabiner & Seil
These are apps for changing low-level keybindings, such as changing the Caps Lock to a Hyper key, which I fell in love with. Thankfully, Linux is not new to low-level customization, so I finally managed to create a similar key setup to the one I had on my Mac with xmodmap and setxkbmap. However, the workflow can never really be the same, because Command is just not the same as non-Mac Control. But since Linux really is quite customizable, I might find a way eventually.
Other apps
I also miss some of the professional apps I use, such as Photoshop or Word. The alternatives are just not an option (GIMP and LibreOffice), but I have faith that Wine or VirtualBox (or my Windows installation) will be a viable possibility.
Apart from these specific apps, the system also just feels a lot different. Apps and packages are installed differently, the Ubuntu Software Manager is useless (maybe I’m just using it wrong, but I just don’t like it compared to the Mac App Store), workspaces work differently, and much more, most of which is concerned with the keybindings.
Conclusion
So far, I am still alive and the laptop hasn’t burnt to the ground yet. I guess I will have to see how long this stays true.
Most importantly, though, the reason I decided to make such a sudden and drastic change was to try something new. I have used Ubuntu for a while in the past, but I had never really learnt how to use it. Now I have the opportunity to learn it well, just because I don’t really have another choice.
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