Playing with Operating Systems

[Joelist]

Hi!

Over the past few months my job has had me in an environment where I have gotten to spend quality time with several different operating systems. On the laptop front I have been using Windows 10, OSX Mohave and on my personal daily driver have been tinkering with Linux Mint, Elementary OS and BSD. So I thought I would record some observations:

Windows 10: I still am not crazy about the tiled UI but I have to admit the OS has grown up a lot in pretty much every other respect. Nowadays it is fast, well behaved and pretty easy to set policies on. We do turn off Cortana and also in Setup use Privacy Center to turn a lot of stuff off. Also Edge is unsuitable at present for our browser needs but the new Edge seems very promising.

Elementary OS: What a turd! It's supposed to be the usability king of Linux but it ran so choppy in Live mode it was useless, and all attempts to actually install it in dual boot mode were unsuccessful - I even turned off Secure Boot and everything to make it easier. I think the core underlying issue is GRUB in this case. I may give it another shot.

BSD: It should say something that I had an easier time getting BSD Unix running even though no one updates it anymore than Elementary OS. As an OS, it was sort of a novelty in that it was not especially usable. But at least you could attempt to do things with it which is more than I can presently say for Elementary OS.

Mint: Right now Mint wins the Linux contest mainly by default as I was actually able to get it installed and running. I'm running Linux Mint 19.1 (Tessa) Cinnamon edition. So far it seems decent enough if a tiny bit choppy . The big weakness here is productivity in Office terms - the only option is LibreOffice which I have to say is still just as bad as I remember. Unintuitive UI, export fidelity not good and generally second rate.

OSX Mohave: To be honest this is far and away the most polished OS in the list - even more so than Windows. It is fast, everything looks and acts consistent and it has first class applications. I use Brave browser on the Mac and in Windows and Office 2016 Mac is far better than LibreOffice or iWork and in fact it is more polished than the version of Office on Windows.

Just some thought - screenshots will follow.

 

[Joelist]

Item of note on the Linuxes and BSD - I had to go into the firmware and manipulate some settings in oder to get the installations to work. Specifically I had to switch the SSD controller from RAID to AHCI. That enabled the install to happen as otherwise the Mint installer could not see the SSD. I also had to turn off Secure Boot in the UEFI so that Mint could update smoothly.

 

[Joelist]

Here is Mint. On Mint I use Chromium as Brave is not available.

 

[Joelist]

Here is Windows 10:

 

[Overmind One]

I have really become a fan of Windows 10 after being forced to deploy and use it at work. We also deploy Mojave on the new 2018 MacBook Pros, and I like it too. I had been a years-long Linux user, and I may go back to it as my primary OS, and virtualize my current Windows 10 install. It came with my new Dell when I got it a few months ago. I am concerned that my GTX 1060 might not work with it. I need that for my games! But I could dual boot it.

How do you like Linux 19? My last one was 18 (Rosa). I know there was an 18 (Sarah), and 19 is supposed to be a lot different...Im curious. Also, you can tweak Libre Office to use Microsoft fonts and also to save in Office formats by default.

 

[Joelist]

It's okay. I'm a tad disappointed that it is a bit choppy especially when the laptop is sporting a dedicated nVidia graphics card. But then again unlike Elementary OS I at least got it running.

With LibreOffice I did reset the defaults to save in the Office xml formats (which have been open source for years).

My most pleasant surprise was how Windows 10 has grown up. And I so have to say that OSX Mojave (which is a fully certified Unix) is far and away the best non-Windows OS. The level of polish, the first class applications it can run just blow the others away.

 

[Joelist]

And....it looks like there are GRUB replacements afoot:

http://www.rodsbooks.com/refind/

 

[Overmind One]

And....it looks like there are GRUB replacements afoot:

http://www.rodsbooks.com/refind/

Interesting! I kinda like the minimalist GRUB boot loader, but I suppose it has gotten very long in tooth, having been part of Linux for decades. I think they should have kept it simple like the Windows Boot Loader, because now it has to load images too.

 

[Joelist]

The problem is GRUB is worse than useless on UEFI based systems. And for the past three years I think all new PCs and Macs use UEFI. As I discovered when trying to get Mint to work on newer hardware GRUB corrupted the MBR and I was fortunate to be able to repair it.