Microsoft completes GitHub acquisition - <AUTHOR> https://blog.github.com/2018-10-26-github-and-microsoft/ <comment><USER3> Nat Friedman has cofounded Xamarin, he understands Open Source and I'm sure he'll do well as CEO of GitHub. I'm cautiously optimistic about it.

Microsoft could pull a Skype of course, but on the upside this might turn out to be a good thing, as in this climate many businesses, operating at scale and giving away so many freebies, are struggling and GitHub could have been the next SourceForge.

Who knows, maybe they'll even open source it. Fingers crossed.

<comment><USER4> What does "pulling a Skype" mean in this context? I remember when they bought Skype it was "bad." But do people really use Skype any less now than before?

<comment><USER5> Skype is a shell of its former self, everybody has moved over to facebook or discord. The few friends I have who did still use Skype as of a few months ago have migrated to Wire. I only know one person that uses it now and they only use it because they still have a real phone number attached to it.

<comment><USER6> I've hardly ever known a single person that has ever used Skype. I actually used to really like Lync when I worked for a company that used Office 365...but hated when they Skypified it. Microsoft Teams seems pretty awesome, but I haven't had the chance to use it. Skype does have a lot of business uses that it doesn't face any competition with...but they are features most people don't use.

<comment><USER7> After leaving Google Talk behind, Skype was my primary chat app for a few years, but a lot of people I used to talk to on it have primarily moved to Discord at this point.

I still like Skype more than Discord, but chat apps are wherever your friends are.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> > GitHub will retain its product philosophy. We love GitHub because of the > deep care and thoughtfulness that goes into every facet of the developer's > experience. I understand and respect this, and know that we will continue to > build tasteful, snappy, polished tools that developers love.

> Ultimately, my job is to make GitHub better for you.

Whenever I see a product claim it's "for you", I cringe. You just can't put something on the web or on TV and say "for you" and have it mean anything useful.

What I always loved about GitHub was that it was the underdog, so they naturally built tools so that a couple of developers in a garage (well, cafe) could have access to the same type of tools that a Fortune-100 company has (and has to pay companies like IBM big bucks to install and maintain). It's using technology to help those with fewer resources, which is to me the entire purpose of technology.

Almost everything I've seen from GitHub in the past year or two has been to help enterprise developers at big established companies. Creating giant workflows and integrating with legacy systems and such. The little things that individuals use are slipping through the cracks. When I reported that the milestone date-picker went away for Safari users, for example, they just told me "Sorry".

"Developers" has become a dirty word. It's a weasel word that companies use to try to convince me they're talking about me, while actually talking about someone and something completely different. If you can't be more specific than that, you're almost certainly wasting my time.

I miss the GitHub whose homepage had logos of little startups I'd barely heard of, and direct links to new and interesting repos. Now they've got IBM and SAP and Walmart logos. It's clear that the "developers" they're targeting no longer includes me.

<comment><USER3> > _Almost everything I 've seen from GitHub in the past year or two has been > to help enterprise developers at big established companies._

Companies eventually go after companies willing to spend money, otherwise they don't survive because consumers and startups are cheap and don't want to spend money on such productivity tools and services.

That or they could've shoved ads down your throat, or bundle spyware in the archives people download.

As they say, damned if you do, damned if you don't. Next time when you like a service that brings you value, pay for it (using the royal you here).

<comment><USER9> I don't think this is true. I paid for a personal GitHub plan for years to have the private repos and to support them, back when it was a simpler place. If 100k devs around the world did the same, they'd have enough plenty of money to do what they were doing then.

Instead they insisted on endless growth, hosting All The Projects without bound or limit and I'd say that's what puts them in hot water, needing crazy amounts of money that individuals can't provide.

<comment><USER10> OK! Let's work some numbers on this. 100k devs times $7mo personal account times twelve months. 100 000 * 7 * 12 = 8 400 000

$8.4 million in gross revenue a year. Out of this has to come all operational costs, all salaries, all benefits for staff, all other overhead, and so on. At west coast tech rates, that's low-30s number of people. Assume lower, since AWS and similar isn't exactly free. Do you think GitHub could have done every single thing they did at the time you have in mind with a double handful of engineers and sysadmins and managers? I must admit, I'm a little skeptical. Staffing a solid ops organization capable of 24/7 coverage takes at _least_ a dozen people.

I haven't even touched on taxes.

Business plans can easily be a thousand a month or more. GitHub has an offering of $21 per user per month, also for business. In either case this almost certainly offers significantly greater overhead that the individual plans do. You can get the same revenue numbers with significantly lower load with a third the number of users! Not to mention that you have fewer customers for the same amount of revenue, which makes support higher-touch but much easier in important ways.

With this in mind, it's easy to see why a group like GitHub might want to consider investing in supporting businesses. There's so much more margin there. Especially when you consider that their predecessors did not, and GitHub out-competed them in part due to the extra revenue that comes from strong enterprise support.

Services like GitHub don't get to sit still. Or else we'd all still be using SourceForge.

<comment><USER9> The margin per user argument is fine but I'm lamenting that it leads to a sort of digital gentrification.

Personally, from GitHub, I didn't want 9 9s or infinite bandwidth or feature creep or even to use it at my day job (Jira/Jenkins/prayer).

SourceForge is a scarecrow argument btw, it's the MySpace of its sort.

<comment><USER10> I don't understand. In what way is GitHub's increasing focus on the customers that pay the bills forcing you out? I understand that you don't care about maximum uptime or SSO or the vulnerability detection system, but are they in some manner making it impossible for you to continue using GitHub? Or are you displeased because you feel GitHub could be paying attention to the needs of users like you, instead of big corporate users? Perhaps you feel it's grown Jira-grade complicated, and is no longer suitable for personal projects?

Sourceforge is exactly like MySpace! Sourceforge once ruled the roost. It was, for many people, the only game in town. It got complacent, and thought it could stay top dog while only really caring about the not-particularly- profitable users or if there was a good way to make more money from the services it offered.

Competitors innovated, found other business models, and did much better. Now we have GitHub! Which has learned from the missteps of Sourceforge. One of which was failing to invest in features that high-margin customers value and will happily pay extra for.

<comment><USER9> No one is forcing me out, and I still pay a subscription (kudos to GitHub for not raising the price over the years even if the exchange from my currency to USD has made it slightly more expensive)

My original comment was an argument that the reorientation towards business clients was not an inevitability as the parent comment said it was. this mindset says products for rational, aware individuals (here, developers) are not worth building anymore since the margins aren't high enough. If these individuals aren't worthwhile clients anymore than they are only data to be traded.

<comment><USER10> Thank you for for clarifying! It's nice to know that you're not being forced out of anywhere by digital gentrification.

There is a very reasonable point that this should be enough for any company not addicted to endless, pointless growth. This is, after all, the ideology of a cancer! Customers should be respected, rather than treated as data- generators fit only to be traded upon. You have made this point wisely and well.

I think it's worth considering why a business might consider limiting its investments in competing for a pool of low-margin customers of limited size. Historical examples suggest that confining your investments to just this customer pool will often end with your customers being attracted away to other providers who have the resources to produce a superior offering. As a result, what should be a healthy and sustainable mindset of building for rational, aware individual consumers can easily lead to being out-innovated and out- competed.

An intelligent reader will note at this point that there is a lot of uncertainty in the previous paragraph. This person is right! There is a great deal of uncertainty at hand, as with all things in markets. With that said, the above scenari is more likely than not, and the expected gains from chasing high-margin customers are generally larger than the expected gains of opting to focus exclusively on low-margin ones in the face of competition.

To such services as GitHub, the consumer offering is not a way to collect data to be monetized. Indeed, the experience for single consumers is critical - <USER2> shows the key features and accustoms users to the product. A high-quality offering for rational, aware individual consumers is of paramount importance because it is where the real customer funnel starts.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> TFA mentions the community "paper cuts" issue tracker[1]. I'd love to know what's so hard about the standout top-voted issue[2] that it hasn't been implemented since being logged in 2014.

[1] [https://github.com/isaacs/github/issues?q=is%3Aissue+is%3Aop...](https://github.com/isaacs/github/issues?q=is%3Aissue+is%3Aopen+sort%3Areactions-%2B1-desc)

[2] [https://github.com/isaacs/github/issues/283](https://github.com/isaacs/github/issues/283)

<comment><USER12> Probably nothing, just that it wasn't interesting to the devs (e.g. they don't feel that is a paper cut) and/or was not pushed/promoted by management, leading to nobody working on it.

Plus I'm guessing many/most GH employees aren't looking at this, this kind of listings is generally a bummer/PITA, and fixing them is a thankless job: once you've done so, all you get is "finally, took you long enough".

<comment><USER11> More like "Finally, thank God" (the implementer becomes a God for the day).

This is the paradox of GitHub. The product itself is closed-source, so the outsiders cannot do the work to implement that feature themselves, no matter how much they want it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> This is some great FrontPage news

<comment><USER14> what's the Outlook for GitHub ?

<comment><USER13> After the merge, we'll probably branch out and become an even better SharePoint for developers

<comment><USER15> The pace has been surprisingly Clippy for an acquisition of this size.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> My reservations about Microsoft's acquisition of GitHub are not that they might ruin it or whatever, but that I've no interest in adding to the value of any Microsoft product by being their user.

For the same reason I use a Gnu/Linux operating system. Truthfully there are things that I imagine MS or apple might do better, but that's beside the point for me. It's a political stance.

<comment><USER17> If you start a project somewhere, choose a competitor.

FOSS development is way too much concentrated on GitHub already, it's unhealthy. But there is no problem in most people not thinking like you either.

Overall, I think the acquisition was good, if no other reason, just because there are enough people that dislike MS for pushing some diversity on the FOSS hosting game.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> The title in this case is not very clear because it's out of context. Should be something like "the Microsoft acquisition of GitHub is complete" to be more factual and instantly understandable.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, good point. Updated the title.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> So when I write a project in C, will Github show me a popup recommending I switch to C# for a faster, safer development experience?

Microsoft feels like an untrustworthy friend to me -- I'll go to a party at Microsoft's house, but I wouldn't let Microsoft hold my wallet.

<comment><USER20> To be fair, a (hypothetical) non-morally-bankrupt hosting provider would do just that but for Rust instead of C#.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I remember that GitHub was paraded as boss-less company. But now they ended up in big pile of hierarchy.

</comment><comment><USER22> Just a friendly reminder: Corporations are not humans. Corporation's acts are driven by profits. Last decade Microsoft CEO was describing Linux as "communism". Some say, till this day Microsoft would go after hardware manufacturers who use Linux for patent fees, having covert patent war vs Linux. [1]

I really like how Microsoft is now, all open, free, unicorns and rainbows. Hell, they're producing some terrific open source themselves and support community.

But lets not forget - corporations are not people. Next CEO may use Github to put obstacles on OSS movement's way. Just because it is good now, doesn't mean it will be good tomorrow, or in 10 years.

P.S. Personally, I really happy where Microsoft is heading right now, and I think they're doing terrific job with their open source projects. You go Microsoft. I hope OSS way would be successful enough so MS would embrace it even more... But you never know.

EDIT: [1] I'm aware that Microsoft recently joined Open Invention Network patent pool. But there're criticism that contributed patents are not important ones. I tried to find ExFAT patents, but couldn't in OIN list. Also, it is really hard to find full OIN contributed patent list. Here's US patent numbers MS going around asking money for, couldn't find any confirmation of all of them being contributed 5579517 5758352 5745902 6286013

<comment><USER23> Well. It's almost a philosophical dilemma at this point.

You can either fear the future and hence never enjoy what's good _today_. Or you can forget the future and actually enjoy the present.

GitHub didn't exist 15 years ago. Something better will probably be there in 15 years from now.

If GitHub changes direction and becomes a bad citizen, we'll go elsewhere.

<comment><USER24> > If GitHub changes direction and becomes a bad citizen, we'll go elsewhere.

Unless they buy and shut down any alternative that gathers more than a thousand users.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Wonder if they'll decide to open source Windows via GitHub.

<comment><USER26> Dream on

<comment><USER27> It's not without precedent!

With .NET Core [0], and ChakraCore[1] (Edge's JS engine) both being open sourced. And them having thrown the entirety of MS-DOS [2] up under the MIT license, and making a bunch of new tools and stuff under open licenses (VSCode, TypeScript, msbuild, etc...). I honestly wouldn't be surprised if they started making a push to open up many parts of Windows.

Already some devs on the Edge team have said publicly that they are working on open sourcing the whole rendering engine from Edge, and seeing that they are moving toward having Windows be more of a "platform" and less of "software you buy", it makes sense that it could eventually become an open source (or at least "open core") product.

I don't think it will happen this year, but I do think that if MS keeps going in this direction, it's more likely than not to happen eventually.

[0] [https://github.com/dotnet/core](https://github.com/dotnet/core) [1] [https://github.com/Microsoft/ChakraCore](https://github.com/Microsoft/ChakraCore) [2] [https://github.com/Microsoft/MS-DOS](https://github.com/Microsoft/MS-DOS)

<comment><USER28> Was hoping to see MS-DOS 6.22 :-(

I think MS in the past few years has made huge strides...

<comment><USER25> They recently release the source for MS-DOS 2.x or was it 3.x...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Interesting joining OIN was driven by GitHub acquisition.

Did MS confirm that them joining OIN includes non aggression with exFAT and ActiveSync patents?

</comment><comment><USER30> Please fix search. A simple deduction would go a long way. So many times are there 30 pages of the same file.

<comment><USER30> Deduction = deduplication

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Honestly I'll be happy no matter how this turns out. If this deters developers as a result, it should open up more potential for new platforms. If it does great, then open source as a community will continue to grow and be backed up by the credibility of Microsoft.

</comment><comment><USER32> Nitpick: Nat Friedman's GitHub profile [1] does not have STAFF badge yet.

[1] [https://github.com/nat](https://github.com/nat)

</comment><comment><USER33> I sometimes view projects on GitHub, but do not use it (nor do I use git at all; I prefer Fossil) for my own projects, so I am unaffected.

</comment><comment><USER34> The benefits or Microsoft owning GitHub seem to keep rolling in. The visual studio integration has gotten much better already and I'm excited to see how they begin to integrate github into Azure.

<comment><USER35> A lot of the Azure documentation has been in GitHub for ages - made me wonder if MS viewed them as an acquisition target more than a year ago.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> Embrace, extend, extinguish.

<comment><USER37> Yep, but the other way around. Open source was Microsoft's fiercest enemy, and now it's managed to root deep inside the company, eating it from the inside out, turning Microsoft into something very very different than what it was 15 years ago. We won!

<comment><USER38> Everybody does open source now. IBM, Facebook, Microsoft, Google, you name it.

One way to look at is that code is no longer that interesting, data is more important.

Does any of those share their data under an open license?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> Crossing fingers...

</comment><comment><USER40> I'm keeping a close eye on repos such as py-kms.

</comment><comment><USER41> How long before GitHub moves to Azure?

Having it in RackSpace and AWS is bad optics, but they also must know Azure is not stable enough for something as large and visible as GitHub.

I expect this to be the first integration they try. Stockpiling the popcorn.

<comment><USER6> "but they also must know Azure is not stable enough"

In what universe is this true? Azure is the backbone of large things in corporate America, especially in banking and healthcare that you never even think about. Things a lot more important than someone's repo being inconvenienced.

Any migration will be painful, but to say Azure as a service isn't up to the task is just nonsense.

<comment><USER42> From practical experience, I would say Azure is a moving target currently. Things beyond virtual machine and networks feel like moving targets.

For the sectors you cited that might not matter since those will not be using cloud resources but rather the common virtual machine workload.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> > Ultimately, my job is to make GitHub better for you.

Who asked you to make GitHub better though? It's pretty darn good already. I fear that the new CEO will try to make things better when they are already good. I'm really scared that GitHub will end up like Azure DevOps, perhaps get merged or shut down entirely when they feel they have feature parity. Currently there is no great GitHub alternative IMHO and for selfish reasons I wish Microsoft could just leave it. The most I am scared is to wake up one day and see the most ugly "Metro" UX applied to GitHub.

<comment><USER44> I have slowly moved most of my projects to GitLab. The UX is a little different, but you also get unlimited private repositories for individuals and organizations.

<comment><USER45> Thanks for sharing this! I'd love to hear if you have more feedback on how is GitLab's UX different. Particularly, what do you think GitLab could do better here?

<comment><USER46> Not OP, but is there a way to preview Markdown when writing up your project's Wiki as you are typing?

Alongside this, is there also a way to change the order of Wiki Pages?

<comment><USER47> The wiki edit screen has a Markdown preview tab [https://www.dropbox.com/s/ouq7mwgazyyv6nc/Screenshot%202018-...](https://www.dropbox.com/s/ouq7mwgazyyv6nc/Screenshot%202018-10-26%2008.21.06.png?dl=0) but it disables typing.

I think you can override the default index of pages with a custom one.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: LightPaper for Mac – Free Markdown editor - <AUTHOR> http://clockworkengine.com/lightpaper-mac/ I'm not the author of the app (nor i have any connection with them, just a random user). iA Writer and Writer Pro aren't well suited for me as a developer. They feel quite "strange" to me. Mou is a good option (free too) but still missing some features. So far this, this editor is the most complete user-friendly. Hope it helps! <comment><USER2> Thanks for sharing! I've added LightPaper to my curated list of Markdown editors.

I'm maintaining a repo¹ with a collection of Markdown resources, listing the abundances of 𝗠⬇ dialects, parsers, editors², stylesheets, … Please feel free to commit!

[¹] [https://github.com/rhythmus/markdown- resources](https://github.com/rhythmus/markdown-resources) [²] [https://github.com/rhythmus/markdown- resources/blob/master/m...](https://github.com/rhythmus/markdown- resources/blob/master/markdown-apps.yml)

<comment><USER3> Nice lists!

Maybe you can enable the GitHub wiki so that others can edit them using "Markdown" too?

The lists are provided in yet another plain text format (YAML). Reading them using the GitHub website is not so nice, and it feels weird especially as it's about Markdown a direct format-competitor..

<comment><USER2> Thanks for the hint! Done:

[https://github.com/rhythmus/markdown-resources/wiki/Nota- ben...](https://github.com/rhythmus/markdown-resources/wiki/Nota-bene)

If there were only that much support for YAML (as regards parsers, stylesheets, and integration in e.g. Github), as there is for MD…

IMO, Markdown is for text (i.e. continuous reading), while YAML is for structured data (not sequentially read, but randomly accessed/queried).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Interesting. Just yesterday I decided to start blogging again with Octopress, and conducted a fairly extensive search for a good Markdown editor for OSX, and found nothing impressive. Mau gets tons of attention, as does Marked, but neither does a good job of handling an octopress post with code blocks.

I'd ended up giving up and just going back to Sublime, but LightPaper handles my use case perfectly, so...nice. I think I'll be using this.

<comment><USER5> Mou is really annoying in the way it handles history. I guess it's author never heard of the command pattern, because Undo-ing the history doesn't consider the autocompletions Mou did and just generally doesn't work and mess up your document. Then Redo-ing helps cementing the mess.

Also the editor is very lacking in functionality, in term of text manipulation.

I started by liking Mou, then working around the issues, then getting pretty angry at it from all the time I wasted trying to make it work - all that just to get a live editor. Ended up setting a Grunt task.

I've reported those problems to the author who didn't seem to give a damn.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> The title claimed it's "the best", but I find it hard to consider any software the best of its kind when it's only available on one platform.

<comment><USER7> Good thing it's available on more than one platform? [http://clockworkengine.com/lightpaper- android/](http://clockworkengine.com/lightpaper-android/)

Although in my experience, the best software of its kind is usually limited to one platform. Otherwise, you're stuck catering to the lowest common denominator of all supported platforms.

<comment><USER8> The Android version is _not_ free.

<comment><USER9> The pro is paid. There's a freeware version too

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> No talk of Windows alternatives here, and since I just setup a Win machine yesterday, I found Markdown Pad 2 [1]. There's both free and paid version. It seems to get the job done for me for now. I am a Mou user on Mac.

Just installed this, will check it out, especially the git-hub jekyll pages stuff...

[1] [http://markdownpad.com/news/2013/introducing-](http://markdownpad.com/news/2013/introducing-) markdownpad-2/

</comment><comment><USER9> Title should be - The best Markdown editor for Mac and Android (and it's free).

</comment><comment><USER11> So far I was really enjoying Mou App[0], but this looks like a step forward.

[0][http://mouapp.com/](http://mouapp.com/)

<comment><USER12> Any particular reason this is better than Mou? The only advantage I can see from the website is the tabbed file viewer, but I guess I've missed something. (10.8+ seems a disadvantage over Mou, it has versions for 10.6 & 10.7)

<comment><USER5> Mou is not a very serious editor. It's just convenient because of the live reload and some Markdown highlighting/styling. You quickly get insane working with the lacking text manipulation features and the depressingly broken undo/redo.

<comment><USER13> The reason I use Mou is for the LaTeX integration. Haven't found another editor that does that.

<comment><USER5> It's just using MathJax.js

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Looks like a good alternative.

FWIW, I am very happy now with:

1\. [Haroopad - The Next Document processor based on Markdown]([http://pad.haroopress.com/](http://pad.haroopress.com/))

2\. [mouapp.com]([http://mouapp.com/](http://mouapp.com/))

Haroopad mainly because it is open source and based on node-webkit and very compatible across platforms.

<comment><USER15> Thanks for the link to Haroopad! I installed it and looks really nice, super easy and fast.

A couple initial downsides...

\- I thought Chromium had spell checking, but you don't get it in node-webkit apparently, or it's been disabled. Must have spell check, even poor Chrome spell check.

\- Export to HTML - The resulting document doesn't look quite as good in Chrome as exported HTML as it does in the preview pane in the editor; so it's not quite WYSIWYG. There are ways to customize the style of the export, the preview pane itself is HTML... (Export to 'Plain HTML' and put your own .CSS?) But it would be really nice if 'Export as Styled HTML ' got you a matched document at least in Chrome.

\- I think word wrap is broken on the editor pane - it should wrap entire words at the end of the line, not cut words in half, right?

Saving documents directly as .md is an interesting trade-off. It's just plain text, which makes things oh so simple. But I'm not sure if this eliminates the possibility for having any non-visible text or meta-data at all inside the document, so that might cut off future features. Not a downside of Haroodpad really, just a consideration for using naked markdown. Most will probably see this as a pro not a con.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Sadly, it doesn't deal with YAML frontmatter, that is often used in blog engines like jekyll (github pages) and middleman.

(found that issues can be filed here: [https://github.com/ClockworkEngine/LightPaper- Support/issues...](https://github.com/ClockworkEngine/LightPaper- Support/issues?state=open))

</comment><comment><USER17> I don't see how it's "best" or even "better". Mou, mentioned by others, works better. Mou struggles with large Markdown files, but at least it doesn't have strange display issues when scrolling up and down in the editing window, and it shows more useful visual cues in the editing window.

Currently my workflow for writing blog posts is: iA Writer for the initial draft, then tidy up in Mou, then stick it on swombat.com. LightPaper seems too fragile to fit in that without hassling me along the way.

</comment><comment><USER18> any looking for a decent web app dedicated to markdown editing [https://stackedit.io/](https://stackedit.io/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Super nice! Thanks for suggesting

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Also only for Mac. Should say in title.

</comment><comment><USER20> There is also nice Texts[1] and working on Windows and Mac OS X.

[1] [http://www.texts.io/](http://www.texts.io/)

</comment><comment><USER21> Seems nice. Unfortunately I feel a bit left out since the old 2006 intel iMac (core2duo) I was given (for free) won't ever be updated past Snow Leopard (10.6).

Any reasons why more and more applications are 10.7 or 10.8 only (like Sublime eg) ? This iMac is still responsive and a joy to use (much more than my Vaio i5 laptop).

<comment><USER22> This is how OSX has always worked. Not upgrading to the latest really isn't an option in Apple land. Because new apps tend to only support the two most recent versions of OSX. Both to take advantage of new APIs, and to not have to expend the energy to maintain compatibility with old versions of OSX.

This is the same company that has jumped across three processor families and two major OS architectures. Apple has never been very concerned with backwards compatibility.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Android user here. When you link with Dropbox, Lightpaper wants to create its own folder to store documents in, and cannot get out of that folder.

It would be nice if I could access, oh you know, all the pre-existing Markdown content I have arranged in multiple folders and already syncing down to different places.

This is a fail for me. [Draft]([https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.mvilla.dra...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.mvilla.draft&hl=en)) does nicely on Android, and [Dillinger.io]([http://dillinger.io/](http://dillinger.io/)) on desktop/browser.

<comment><USER24> Looks like they have chosen to only use App Folder permissions rather than full Dropbox. I suppose it helps in getting production approval, but then if other apps are able to get them I wonder why can't lightpaper.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Looks good. I will check it out.

My current setup is Marked 2 and vim (most of the time). Simple and works well.

[http://marked2app.com/](http://marked2app.com/)

</comment><comment><USER26> The best markdown editor for me would be a minimal web app (vertical split, implicit URL generation, no settings). There is no particularly good solution for efficiently writing and sharing Markdown notes.

<comment><USER27> Have you tried out [http://socrates.io/](http://socrates.io/) ?

<comment><USER28> Or [http://dillinger.io/](http://dillinger.io/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> I currently use Sublime Text 2 in distraction free mode + the SmartMarkdown package + a tweaked Solarized theme with some extra markdown syntax highlighting. Works for me ;)

</comment><comment><USER30> I dont't know. Why do need people a specialised markdown editor? Use your favorite editor, install a markdown add-on and your done.

Do I miss something?

<comment><USER10> Having a live preview is pretty nice when you start getting into slightly more complicated documents? Especially when you start working in specific markdown varients, like github, table addons, code, etc...

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> I love markdown, but sometimes I just wanted to share my MarkDown with the world and a github repo was too much, so I created: [http://gorgeapp.appspot.com/](http://gorgeapp.appspot.com/)

It is completely free, also it has a preview...

Fell free to use it and leave feedback...

Sorry, I just don't make money out of it, so I won't consider this ads... :)

<comment><USER28> The title says "beatiful".

<comment><USER31> I like it... Anyway I agree that my sense of beauty is not conventional...

<comment><USER28> Your sense of "beaty", you mean!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> i'm surprised no one has mentioned Marked 2 from Brett Terpstra - [http://marked2app.com](http://marked2app.com)

it's a Markdown document viewer that displays changes as you make them in your favorite editor (ST3 in my case).

what puts it over the top for me is its perfect rendering of Github Flavored Markdown.

<comment><USER10> Oooh, nice find. I almost didn't learn about this because it was so far down. This fits my workflow perfectly...

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> I have been using [https://stackedit.io/](https://stackedit.io/) for sometime and I find it way too satisfactory in terms of it's features, can be popped open anytime in a browser and works offline too.

I would like to hear, what is the core problem that LightPaper is trying to solve here!

</comment><comment><USER34> Claiming something is the best without backing it up with solid arguments seems like link-bait to me.

</comment><comment><USER35> Would be nice if it supported the git extensions for syntax highlighting.

</comment><comment><USER36> What? No Syntax Control?

Looks great. Does it support Github flavor?

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm using it right now and it supports Github flavor partially. No strikethrough, no autolinking, no code syntax highlighting.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> bah! "Can't open because it's from an unidentified developer"

Anyway, fixed that:

System Preferences > Security & Privacy > Allow Apps Downloaded from Anywhere

<comment><USER38> A better workaround is to right-click the download and then select Open, which will then ask you if you really want to open. That way you maintain the additional protection in general while still bypassing it for this (and similar) instance.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> If you use Mac, kobito ([http://kobito.qiita.com/en](http://kobito.qiita.com/en)) is also a nice editor, there is not much English information though.

</comment><comment><USER40> the best markdown editor BY FAR is IPython Notebook. What other markdown engine will render math (mathjax) and do syntax highlighting for you. I ended up grabbing all their js for a markdown-based blog platform I built myself

another neat markdown hack is to get the quicklook markdown renderer (if you're on os x) and then use copy in the github markdown CSS. you can see immediately what you're README.md files are gonna look like right away in finder

</comment><comment><USER41> Well hey, this isn't Vim/Emacs! False advertising! ;)

</comment><comment><USER42> looks like it doesn't know that markdown supports tables.

<comment><USER43> Markdown itself does not support tables, you need to fall back to pure html tables as per the spec

[http://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown/syntax](http://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown/syntax)

<comment><USER44> Well at least the Pandoc markdown dialect supports three types of tables: [http://johnmacfarlane.net/pandoc/README.html#tables](http://johnmacfarlane.net/pandoc/README.html#tables)

I have to admit that none of them satisfies me completely (sometimes I wish for mediawiki table support) - but at least they are faithful to the principle to be recognizable as tables in text editors.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> The syntax highlight latency is very unnerving. Why is it not real-time? NSTextView is certainly up to the task.

</comment><comment><USER46> Scrolling is unusable on mountain lion.

</comment><comment><USER47> I find the refresh of the preview very slow, and I miss the latex math expressions. But great job!!

</comment><comment><USER48> How does it compare with Mou?

<comment><AUTHOR> Quite similar to be honest (Mou was my favurite editor so far) but this is really a step forward - IMHO. Interface is a lot better and it supports flavored markdown (having to double-space for newline makes using Mou quite a pain).

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> Came here hoping that there would be a linux release? :/

</comment><comment><USER50> Thank you so much!

</comment><comment><USER50> iOS in the plans?</comment>


India lifts porn ban after widespread outrage - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-india-33783539

<comment><USER2> Well, after all, it was only a symbolic gesture.

Short of cutting off the internet, it's impossible.</comment>


Erlang/OTP 20.0 is released - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/erlang/otp/releases/tag/OTP-20.0 <comment><AUTHOR> This I like from it:

* Dirty schedulers: This allows easy integration of blocking C-based libraries. So for example can wrap something like RocksDb and make it available to the rest of the VM easier. Or libcurl and others.

* DTLS documented in the API, experimental : This lets it parse and talk to WebRTC clients

* Erlang literals are no longer copied when sending messages : This is kinda of a sneaky one. By default With some exceptions Erlang VM usually copies data when it sends messages. However, in this case module literals (constants, strings, etc) will be another thing that's not copied when messages are sent between processes. There is a hack to dynamically compile configuration value or other tables of constants as a module at runtime. So if you use that hack, you'd get a nice performance boost.

* code_change, terminate and handle_info callbacks optional in the OTP behaviors. This is very nice. I always wondered why I had to write all that boiler plate code.</comment>


Racing to space, together - <AUTHOR> https://www.csmonitor.com/Science/2018/0129/Racing-to-space-together <comment><USER2> Just a small note. Map seems to have missed off NZ who have just launched an orbital rocket.

Only mentioning it because I am from NZ and consider it one of the countries most significant technical achievements of the last decade.

<comment><USER3> New Zealand missing from a map? Inconceivable!

<comment><USER4> Not an uncommon thing [http://worldmapswithout.nz/](http://worldmapswithout.nz/)

To be fair that map does have a (heavily distorted) NZ, just says Australia is looking at space and neglects to mention that NZ is already there

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Interesting how it falsely characterizes the US as currently having human spaceflight capabilities.</comment>


Gary McKinnon's fight inflicted heavy blow by extradition review - <AUTHOR> http://www.computerworlduk.com/news/security/3311676/gary-mckinnons-fight-inflicted-blow-by-extradition-review/

<comment><USER2> Amazing the resources that can be wasted on a case like this.

A 488-page review put together by an independent panel which came to the conclusion that the US and UK are substantially similar? How many man-years and taxpayer dollars did that consume?

Extradition among democratic countries should be more or less automatic.</comment>


Nobody in Hong Kong Wants a Tesla Anymore - <AUTHOR> https://qz.com/1024886/nobody-in-hong-kong-wants-a-teslanasdaq-tslaanymore/ <comment><USER2> I hate to state the obvious, but with an announced end of the incentives, two things are to be expected: a peak of demand just before the end and the steep drop after. Whoever wanted a Tesla just got one.

<comment><USER3> Yep. The March sales numbers directly show this, but it wouldn't have made as nice a headline.

Therein is the art of this kind of cheap click-based journalism; look around until you find something that looks surprising or disturbing, and then _immediately stop thinking_ lest you discover why this thing is actually completely unremarkable.</comment></comment>


Kicksend Goes Mobile For Instant, Async Sharing Of Big Files - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2011/12/16/kicksend-goes-mobile-with-a-new-iphone-app-for-instant-asynchronous-sharing-of-big-files/

<comment><USER2> Here's a link to the iPhone app itself: <http://itunes.apple.com/us/artist/kicksend/id485429894>

</comment><comment><USER3> This is such an annoying problem now, especially in video/audio production on location, or conferences. In the past you've been stuck setting up on-site infrastructure to share things, and then training/debugging/supporting everyone who needs to use it, or recording email or postal addresses and figuring out how to exchange stuff afterward.

A mobile solution from Kicksend is great, and I'm really looking forward to using it next time I'm at a conference.</comment>


Elementary OS – Fast, open, privacy-respecting replacement for Windows and macOS - <AUTHOR> https://elementary.io/ <comment><USER2> Some of the comments here feel weird.

Elementary OS has picked a specific niche, and its arguably the best distribution in it. It has a really well designed and consistent UI experience, and you can't break it. I think most of you just don't realize how difficult linux is for people who barely understand how to use a Mac or Windows machine.

Furthermore, linux is a world where mainstream distributions still release with horrible UI experiences with numerous typography mistakes, icons of different sizes and grid alignment imbalances everywhere.

Like check out this Mint (grey theme) screenshot: [https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/43/Li...](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/43/Linux_Mint_17_MATE.png/1200px- Linux_Mint_17_MATE.png) and compare it with elementary OS here [https://news- cdn.softpedia.com/images/news2/elementary-os-0-...](https://news- cdn.softpedia.com/images/news2/elementary-os-0-5-juno-gnu-linux-distro-could- use-ubuntu-s-snappy-technologies-518038-2.jpg)

Mint is great, but seriously. Look at that logo render. Even worse, look at the start bar. Every single text and logo has a different height. I mean how do you even do something like that unintentionally?

I am using XFCE right now, and it's great because its much faster than KDE or Gnome on this old laptop. But it sure isn't a pretty UI. I know a MSc. designer and she claims using my laptop makes her physically sick and dizzy. I don't care as much, but I can see the point. Everything is misaligned, in the start menu, the task bar, the apps. In the window bar the buttons and the minimize arrow aren't the same size. I mean seriously, whoever did this just did not care about Ui.

I don't think ElementaryOS is for everyone. If you have any interest in non- standard repos, recent kernels or doing stuff in commandline, you are just better off elsewhere. I understand their choices, but I don't use it because of how they do the app store, among other things.

But if you just want a computer that runs, looks good and doesn't break if you do X, then I think ElementaryOS is the #1 choice in the Linux world, and we should be thankful that it exists.

<comment><USER3> Weird argument. Because I have given Linux systems to the elderly before. People with little to no experience with computers. Guess what they were all fine.

My mother was a long time windows user. Kept getting viruses. She was converted to Ubuntu and has used it for over a decade now without issue.

Linux is far easier for people than you think. My mother is a senior citizen now and this is her second computer.

The UI concerns you bring up are just silly, They are about the same as you buying a new hammer and it having an inconsistent wood grain or a metal burr.

<comment><USER4> Yeah same experience here. Installed gentoo on our home computer for my mom and dad and once i showed them how to open Firefox, they were happy as clams. The only issue was when my dad wanted to install tax software

<comment><USER5> Basically, they'll be okay as long as they only use the browser.

When they need to edit a MS Excel file, or use their digital signature (mandatory for companies in my country), or use some accounting software... or anything like this, you understand that Linux isn't as ready for the mainstream desktop as we think it is.

<comment><USER6> Your country mandate digital signature that aren't cross platform?

<comment><USER7> "Cross platform" is in the eye of the beholder.

How easy is it to use for someone that thinks their browser IS the internet to install and use?

<comment><USER6> Browser extensions?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The project is interesting and I have to give it props for being one of the few Linux distros that's put the necessary level of thought into UI/UX and made consistency a priority.

That said, I question some of their technical choices, most namely the choice of Vala as the project's official language. Not that Vala is bad, but it's incredibly niche at best and I think it severely limits contributions. Not many are going to want to learn a new language that's scarcely used elsewhere in order to be able to work on any kind of project.

<comment><USER9> This kind of attitude towards less popular programming languages is very damaging to the field of software engineering. Domain-specific languages are our best tool to combat the excessive complexity of software. The difficulty of learning a new programming language is overblown.

<comment><USER10> > The difficulty of learning a new programming language is overblown.

This is a value judgement, ripe for disagreement.

Why do you think learning a new programming language is not difficult, as others perceive?

<comment><USER11> I think once you know 2 (or 3 if the 2 are as similar as, say, Java and C#), picking up new ones is comparatively easy. New paradigms can be challenging (looking at you, Prolog and Haskell) but quite doable.

However, if you resent being forced to learn a new language, or if you are more of a copy/paste developer than someone who really understands what you're doing[0], yeah, a new language can be a very challenging barrier.

[0] I want to be clear: most people start out with very little clue what they're doing in programming. That isn't meant as a disparaging description. I wrote (and copy/pasted) a hell of a lot of code before I started understanding the underlying mechanics of it all, and I'm still baffled by a lot of the development world (again, hi Prolog and Haskell).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I've recommended Fedora to several "I'm scared of computers" people recently and the experience has been very good. The new GNOME does require 5 minutes of tutorial, but after that they've been completely happy exploring on their own.

The new "Software" app is an excellent GUI for installing new apps and updating the system.

Personally I use Macs but if I didn't, Fedora would probably be my next choice. It has by far the best "out of the box" experience of any Linux distro I've seen.

<comment><USER13> For the "I'm scared of computers" crowd, isn't it still a bit hands-on to get proprietary codecs so you won't run into to problems watching things like YouTube?

<comment><USER3> Ubuntu even has an option to install these at install time

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Reading the comments here, it seems we don't realise that ElementaryOS is run by a small team of mostly volunteers, who are doing this as a "free" service to the rest of us.

Lets take a moment to appreciate the immense perseverance, sacrifice, hard work put in by the team behind the project. The work done is pretty slick and complete. I hope there is a philanthropic minded HN member here who can help them with a generous funding, so they can keep building this awesome tool.

</comment><comment><USER15> I don't get the hate, really. It's the only distro I've used in the past few years with a "nice enough" desktop where my Mac instincts translate across and where I can use anything packaged for Ubuntu with zero hassles.

I've been running it on a low-end Chromebook for a long while now, and upgraded from 0.4.1 to 5.0 via the CLI (not recommended, but feasible if you know what you're doing), and other than the ultra-niche app ecosystem (which I don't need, since I mostly run Firefox, Docker and VS Code on it, besides dev packages) it has zero weirdness.

Well, except for the mail client. It has improved, but every single time I try to use it to send out some notes while away from my regular machines it breaks somehow, and there is zero addressbook/calendar integration (I have Thunderbird installed, but keep trying the built-in mail client after each update because I like the UI).

<comment><USER16> mail on 5.0 is just plain broken when used with gmail. refuses to log in.

<comment><USER17> Just setup a google app password.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I'd love to have a Linux distro with the frontend of Elementary OS and the backend of Nixos. And I say that as a Microsoft employee. Are there efforts to make Nixos grandma-worthy? Or are the only pretty distros all reskins of Ubuntu?

<comment><USER19> You might be interested in this PR: "[nixpkgs] elementary: init a 5.0 Juno" [https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/pull/48637](https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/pull/48637)

I'm actively trying to build some cool things with Nix/NixOS and then write up a series of blog posts. Several recent discussions on the Discourse and at NixCon have been focused around Nix/NixOS user experience, at least.

I've recently been building a package set of tip builds of Wayland stuff (sway, screenshot/screenrecord/notification utilities), including instructions for using them on Ubuntu via Nix. I'm also building out a set of packages and modules for Kube/Containerd/Kata-Containers for perfectly repeatable offline- first clusters. I think these two projects can be leveraged to evangelize Nix and NixOS nicely, and dovetails into UX efforts as I build my list of rough spots and fix a number of issues in nixpkgs and random OSS projects along the way.

Also, Gnome-Shell and KDE work perfectly in NixOS anyway, and can be easily made to look just like they do on any other distro... I just recently switched to Sway, coming from KDE (~1.5 years) after GNOME (6+ years?). Not any significant visual differences than when I was using Arch Linux.

<comment><USER20> Great work! Thank you!

At the moment it seems that a lot of NixOS users (including me) prefer a keyboard-centric window manager to a full desktop environment, but obviously (well I think it's obvious, anyway) there's a place for Pantheon on NixOS too. A big place, I should think.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I'll be honest.. I tried elementary os when they first released it but never got it's charm.

It always felt like an inferior version of macOS... Which I don't like.

I personally prefer to develop on a Linux install... But elementary OS is not what I'd use if Linux is an option

<comment><USER22> Inferior macOS is how most of my experiences with Linux distros have felt. Maybe the desktop environments just aren't my thing, the inconsistent UIs feel sloppy, and I always ending up needing to drop down to a command line to fix something or other is was annoying.

Elementary doesn't fix needing to drop to a command line, and the UIs are only unusually consistent and well thought when you stick with the built in software. But the overall experience of it feels like someone actually thought about it more than the alternatives I've tried.

<comment><USER23> Check out Solus OS

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Question: This may pertain more to GTK, but does gtk/elementary os have an equivalent to macOS's core animation libraries? Particularly to support interactive / fluid interfaces (see [https://developer.apple.com/videos/play/wwdc2018/803/](https://developer.apple.com/videos/play/wwdc2018/803/) )? I did a cursory look and couldn't find much.

I've been fairly familiar with macOS development particularly for trying to do more experimental UI (fluid animation) the past few years, but have been staring at linux/elementaryOS more.

<comment><USER25> libdazzle (developed for GNOME Builder) has some fancy animated widgets and whatnot

[https://valadoc.org/libdazzle-1.0/index.htm](https://valadoc.org/libdazzle-1.0/index.htm)

<comment><USER24> interesting. I think the better path (for myself at least) may be to see where people have extended libcairo for uses of interactive animation, and see how cleanly Pantheon approached problems like switching desktops (not even macOS has always gotten it right - mission control's top desktop bar was sluggish in either Yosemite or El Capitan then they decided to hide it upon initial gesture later on).

<comment><USER25> cairo is for custom drawing — if you're looking into that kind of animation, sure. If you want to animate GTK's GUI widgets, cairo probably won't be super helpful

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Linux is not ready for mass market. I think, proprietary file formats, vendor lock-in, monopolistic and restrictive trade practices etc. are reasons why users dread switching OSs.

I my opinion, OS itself has very little value to the end user. The end user needs a fertile userland. The end user should be free to trivially switch platforms without disrupting the userland one bit. This is not some pipe dream. It is very much possible.

Open standards and strict adherence to them need to be enforced. Data formats need to be portable not just across platforms, but across competing software. This is our right. No one should deny this no matter how powerful.

<comment><USER27> > proprietary file formats, vendor lock-in, monopolistic and restrictive trade > practices etc. are reasons why users dread switching OSs.

That certainly used to be true, but I think most of those issues have fallen away, and it's mostly just about applications and unpredictable hardware support. Despite the efforts of proprietary OS vendors to invent new whiz-bang features, most people use the OS as a launcher for their Web browser and the collection of applications that they actually care about (office suite, games, professional tools like Photoshop). Proton is a really big deal because it unblocks migration for the people whose key applications are games from Steam.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> 70/30 split for apps is ridiculous and a non-starter. Apple and Google can demand that because of market share. This experiment cannot.

<comment><USER29> > 70/30 split for apps is ridiculous and a non-starter. Apple and Google can > demand that because of market share. This experiment cannot. reply

I wouldn't compare elementary OS's fee to that of Apple and Google.

Apple and Google take that 30% and keep it as profit, while elementary put it back (some percentage of it, I assume) into the project in the form of bounties a BountySource to fix bugs and improve the project. The more the project improves, the more users it will have, the more your app will sell, etc. etc.

Also, your bitter downplaying of the project by calling it an "experiment" vs. Apple and Google and the whole negative tone of your comment is pretty annoying. You're the one comparing the project to the biggest tech companies in the world, not them. Weird.

<comment><USER30> Oh come on. Google and Apple also reinvest money into improving their offerings.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> I used Elementary OS for a few months this year.

It's quite nicely designed in places, but is based on Gnome 3 - which doesn't make sense for an OS that is all about UX, because Gnome 3 makes plenty of bad decisions and Elementary inherits them. Still, they have done their best to contain them and I think it's better designed than any other modern Linux desktop.

Couple of failure points:

\- the mail client is buggy to the point of being unusable. You could say that about any Linux GUI mail client, but this one is particularly bad.

\- Alt-Tab behaviour is strange and awful.

If you want OS X but can't afford it, this is as close as you'll get, but it's a long way off.

</comment><comment><USER32> What advantages does Elementary have over (its upstream) Ubuntu? It just looks like a different GTK/GNOME Shell theme to me.

<comment><USER33> Well, for some people that is a pretty big advantage. I'm on Ubuntu 16.04 now, running Unity. Despite all its bad press I love Unity - it perfectly fits my workflow and just gets out of your way. (Not like Gnome Shell, where a third of your screen real estate is gone just with various menubars, each of which you could park a truck on.)

Gnome Shell on 18.04 pretty much killed Ubuntu for me. Next time I set up my computer, I'm going back to Elementary. (I used it some years ago, but it was still very buggy. I'm hoping they've fixed some of those since.)

<comment><USER34> Unity still works perfectly fine on 18.04 for me. There is still some maintenance going on, so it can be an ok choice for the near future.

<comment><USER35> Yeah, I'm still using unity 7 on 18.04. I see that it is still working in 18.10 and quite likely on 19.04. Hopefully, it'll last another LTS cycle. Technically, it should continue to work as long as xorg isn't dropped, which probably won't happen anytime soon. The only downside is that unity7 is so closely tied to ubuntu that you can't use it with any other distro. I generally like Fedora/RHEL like setups for servers, but I can't use anything other than unity (right now) for laptops.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> elementary is not for me because it limits configuration a little bit too much to my taste, but it's a wonderful project.

One of the cons of Linux--which is the OS I use exclusively--is that most apps are made by programmers, and programmers often don't care and don't have design skills. elementary OS looks absolutely stunning, and it's perfect if you stick to curated apps and you just want something that works.

Most importantly, they were able to finally find a way for devs to get paid, so that they can continue working and debugging their apps. On this aspect, I really don't understand the critics: people need money in life. If a project brings a little bit of money, you can keep working on it. End-users win because there are updates, less bugs, and new versions instead of abandoned projects.

In addition, as for their 70/30 fee they redistribute the money (I don't know in what percentage) on BountySource, so that the project gets developed further.

Honestly, other distros have a lot to learn from elementary.

<comment><USER36> "Most importantly, they were able to finally find a way for devs to get paid, so that they can continue working and debugging their apps."

This is the most exciting part of elementary IMO: it is a model for free software to bring in some cash and fund full time development.

<comment><USER29> Definitely. They were the first to do that, so it wasn't easy.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> I've been using Elementary for 2-3 weeks and it's really good. Still far behind MacOS, but it's the best I've felt about a linux distro becoming a mainstream alternative. I've used Pop_OS! as well and while it's good, I wish System76 would have just backed Elementary OS. Elementary is a good base but needs a larger community and more resources to become legit.

</comment><comment><USER38> Elementary is a fine distro, but short off being pretty and not afraid to ask for money what does it i really achieve that I can't get on other bigger distros?

<comment><USER39> At the moment, not a whole lot, but if you're in the group of older MacBook [Pro] users who are looking to upgrade, don't like the options from Apple, but love macOS, then it makes the transition less painful.

My hope is that it will further distinguish itself with time.

They've got the basics in place, which is no small task given they've essentially created their own desktop environment. They have a long road ahead of them before they catch up to distros like Mint in terms of features, but with more of the underpinnings in place (like their new cloud providers API), I'm hoping it starts to feel more complete during the next couple releases.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> I am currently on this os, it's pleasant most of the time, but it crashes 75% of the time on unlocking the lock screen. It also starts having windows flicker for a few seconds at random after a few days of uptime. I use Nvidia GTX 1080, it seems to work well otherwise.

<comment><USER41> How can something that "crashes 75% of the time on unlocking the lock screen" be "pleasant most of the time" to use??? If Windows, OSX or Linux did that, would we even use them? Look I like to support open source projects, but junk is junk and if this thing crashes like you say so... it's junk.

<comment><USER40> My solution was to disable the lock screen at home. But I still can't disable accidentally pressing the lock key combination. It doesn't seem to be configurable in the keyboard settings.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> Whenever I see a skeuomorphic desktop it reminds me to make a donation to Arch.

<comment><USER43> Can you explain what you mean? From what I'm seeing there isn't any skeuomorphism in Elementary.

<comment><USER44> In this case I think they meant "dimensional" rather than skeuomorphic. Elementary isn't flat, but that's a selling point in my opinion.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> Elementary is a good Chrome OS alternative. I just wish Chrome OS was officially available for PCs.

</comment><comment><USER46> I'd recommend [https://getsol.us](https://getsol.us) if you asked me what Desktop Linux distro to get.

<comment><USER47> I too love solus, but I'm a bit concerned with the ongoing project stability with it's creator and technical leader(ikey) leaving the project. It's been such an amazing project.

What do other think, can it continue to be relatively stable and not break things too much going forward?

<comment><USER46> Have you read/listened to this? [https://getsol.us/2018/10/27/in-full- sail](https://getsol.us/2018/10/27/in-full-sail)

I'm hopeful, it's great to have BDFL at the start, but community takeover should and does happen at some point. Maybe this is it.

<comment><USER47> Yes, been following it closely. Let's hope it survives because it's a great distro.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> All comments here are either: A. "I'm so glad I'm on Linux distro A and not Windows but the UX and UI is terrible", followed by "have you tried distro B, it solves the problems of A" B. "I'm on distro B and not Windows, but package management, upgrade and/or compatibility is terrible", followed by "have you tried distro C, it solves the problems of B" C. "I'm on distro C and not Windows, but it doesn't support my audio or video equipment and I need to install and/or spend a few hours searching and compiling various solutions online until my machine is a Frankensteinian monster and while it works for me, it's not for everyone" followed by "have you tried distro A, it solves problems of C" I love the flexibility of Linux in some respects, but I've had stability issues on Ubuntu and Mint, UX issues on some Fedora based ones, and Puppy Linux, compatibility issues in Elementary (and fixes that were available in Ubuntu never made it to Elementary and I got tired of waiting). I've gone through way too many distros finding the one that works for me and none have been really as pleasant as described by people. For work I have to use a Mac, and the inconsistencies in keyboard shortcuts annoys me each and every day. Not to mention non - standard UI components stand out like a sore thumb - especially window maximizing, rescaling, browser and IDE shortcuts, etc. I wouldn't be using it if I didn't have to. Honestly, the OS that I have had the least trouble with and the most enjoyment was Windows XP, closely followed by 7. 8 was a mess of UI and UX oddities, and 10 is only marginally better. If there was a version of windows that was as streamlined as XP for the modern world, I'd fork out $50-100 for it considering the time it would save me and my time being worth more than the hassle, and that my contribution might help subsidize the cheaper community or pirated editions of the OS.

</comment><comment><USER49> I ran various distros as a kid growing up, then went years as a professional running Mac. Elementary is the only distro I've not felt stupid friction running on my Chromebook. I know there are other considerations, but as a daily driver, this is easily one of the best distros I've seen

</comment><comment><USER50> Digital products illicit emotional responses just like physical ones. Aesthetic clouds our judgement when it comes to usability—it's a well documented universal design principle and affects people's sense of usability regardless of culture, location, or education.

There's a relevant XKCD for this discussion: [https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/kerning.png](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/kerning.png)

Some folks value privacy and control over appearance. Their sense of value from both outweigh any cons of a bad UI. Others can't move past how a UI feels. Both positions are completely valid.

OSS needs more UI design talent—if you've lodged complaints here, pick a project/distro, dig through the contribution guidelines, and improve the UI.

</comment><comment><USER51> I've been using elementary OS since a few years on my main machine and really like it but there are a few quirks that bother me.

For example I can't use the WiFi drop down to change networks but instead have to open the network manager to scan for new networks. Also when right clicking on external disks in the file manager to mount disks the dialogue appears not where I've clicked but a few centimeters above. Stuff like that. I've come to live with all those flaws and very rarely have to boot up Windows to use software like Photoshop/Illustrator.

Overall I can recommend elementary OS and have convinced some friends and family to switch from Windows to it.

</comment><comment><USER52> I've been using Elementary OS for a few major versions now. It's become my main desktop OS.

I'm a bit worried about putting too much into the "store" and their own browser, but so far it hasn't impacted me any. Anything that applies to Ubuntu proper applies in eOS for the most part, but the UX is just much more polished.

When I first saw it I was worried of too much "MacOS" like (which I'm not a fan of), but that has't been the case for me at all.

<comment><USER53> For what it's worth, elementary does not create Epiphany; that's the GNOME browser and is largely a GUI wrapper around WebKit, the exact same engine as in Safari.

AppCenter is a way to serve the app developers who were already attempting to target the OS while also enabling both them and elementary to cover (some) costs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER54> What kind of apps does Elementary OS support?

Can I install .deb packages or other Linux-compatible ones?

Otherwise it's going to be hard to adopt an OS if there are not enough of the apps I use, no?

<comment><USER51> I've been using elementary OS for the past two years or so; you can use everything that runs on Ubuntu which of course includes .deb packages.

<comment><USER36> Does it support snaps as easily as Ubuntu does?

<comment><USER39> I've never used a snap, but I believe they have a snap manager in the curated section of their App Store, and it looked pretty straightforward.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER55> Anyone tried installing this on a MacBook? I've got an older Pro that keeps running Kernel at 60%+ of CPU - apparently just one of those bugs that MacOS has that "just work" like that.

I really want to install another OS, but both Ubuntu and Fedora can't see the available partition space, and can't find a wireless driver.

Given that Elementary OS is advertising itself as a replacement for MacOS, has anyone tried it and got anywhere with it?

<comment><USER56> I installed it a year or so ago on an old 2014 MBP. It's battery was bulging and bending the casing so I knew it was on its way out... I used elementary os for a few months, mostly just using it for spotify, occasional programing, surfing the web.

Worked fine, and in this case, added some life to some older hardware.

<comment><USER55> cool, thanks for the info. I'll give it a try... :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER57> I used El.OS for 3 straight years and had to drop it for business reasons. The OS is excellent. Highly recommend it if you are not bound by your business needs.

</comment><comment><USER58> Seems pretty interesting, I might try it out later. Does anybody have experience using this to revive an old computer (ie make it faster and more useable)?

</comment><comment><USER59> All I want is an OS with a lightning fast UI and '08 thumb drive sized footprint, idc about privacy. Gimme ultra lightning fast Casino-electronic- craps-game-level fast UI and shouldn't weigh too much like I said

Who cares about privacy? If they're based in the US/EMEIA you can sue the pants off anyone that disrespects your privacy and win in court

<comment><USER60> Build your own! Arch Linux is a great base to start with. Check out /r/unixporn for examples!

</comment></comment><comment><USER61> I tried to use the OS multiple times through the recent years, but every time there's a missing feature that breaks all bi+lingual user experience: You cannot switch the keyboard layout for each window separately. Seems like they do not care about anyone except exclusively English speaking audience.

<comment><USER62> That's unfair. If you're not bilingual yourself, wanting to switch keyboard layout per window is extremely non-obvious. It would never have occurred to me.

<comment><USER61> That's why almost all OS have this as an option. You either change the layout globally or per window (or application, doesn't make that much difference).

<comment><USER62> Welp, TIL.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER63> I don't like the "Pay What You Want" system they have to download the OS. It feels misleading that you have to click on custom then enter 0 to download for free.

I totally understand how important donations are to keep a project going but this one rubs me off the wrong way. I hope I'm not the only one.

<comment><USER64> This is a relatively recent change. I remember that they used to be much clearer about this back in Loki.

<comment><USER65> They've had this since at least 2015, so not really all that recent.

<comment><USER64> Must have been Freya, then.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER66> I find Ubuntu 18 LTS version quite promising both as a developer and normal non-dev user of desktop.

</comment><comment><USER67> All I can say is wow, this has been missing for a long time! If there was ever a time for an Acer, Asus, Dell, etc to sponsor a new product and pitch to corp/gov, this would be it.

</comment><comment><USER68> Looks promising. It would be great if they can offer a scaled down version (something like Lubuntu) which we can install in single board computers (like RaspberryPi).

<comment><USER15> The Raspbian distribution has recently been improved to the point where it has a decent (if less polished) experience. I have a Pi desktop for developing in Arduino, and it's great with the newest 3B+.

</comment></comment><comment><USER69> To be a macOS replacement, an OS needs to work well on Apple hardware. Does Elementary OS now work well on Apple hardware? The last time I tried it, it did not.

<comment><USER70> With the T2 chip only macOS can run on Apple hardware now.

<comment><USER71> That's not true at all: [https://support.apple.com/en- us/HT208330](https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT208330)

<comment><USER72> The lastest news about that seems that the feature is actually not working or bugged out : [https://unix.stackexchange.com/a/471124](https://unix.stackexchange.com/a/471124)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER73> Moving my parents' PC to Elementary cut down the support time to single-digit hours per annum.

That and making sure Firefox has uBlock Origin configured.

</comment><comment><USER74> Someone knows if this is a good fit for a dev machine: Rails, React, PostgreSQL & Elastisearch? VS Code?

<comment><USER75> Its based on Ubuntu, so whatever you can install on Ubuntu should work on Elementary. Only issue I've run into is while adding an apt repo(for docker I think) I needed to point it to bionic instead of juno.

<comment><USER76> That's a common problem I had too, I often have to modify install scripts because of it

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER77> I use Linux without a desktop environment. Works excellent; much better than Windows.

</comment><comment><USER78> If it didn't use gnome and somehow skinned KDE to be that pretty I'd be all about it.

<comment><USER79> What a weird thing to say when the whole point of this OS is a focus on consistent user experience, with a negative focus on "does it tickle a power user's tech stack fancy".

<comment><USER78> There's something inherently gross about running my desktop in some sort of Frankenstein-javascript-single-threaded-modify-with-css mess that I'd rather avoid. And KDE has been faster for me. KWin is amazingly quick. What KDE lacks is the polish that the Gnome based desktops enjoy — if it has that I'd doubt a reason for Gnome to exist.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER80> Wow, looks cool. The background makes it feel like Mac OS X...

</comment><comment><USER81> I wonder when they will introduce icons in the desktop :)

</comment><comment><USER82> the linux desktop landscape has really changed. Ubuntu is no longer the cool os for the newbies with the rise of manjaro,mint,solus,elementary

</comment><comment><USER83> It's basically just Pantheon with a custom skin. You can get similarly good results using the "arc" theme and any decent ubuntu-based distro.

<comment><USER53> You realize elementary has created the entire Pantheon desktop environment, right? So, "It's just their desktop environment with their stylesheet, their apps, and the AppCenter ecosystem," is basically what you are saying. In which case, yeah, that's exactly what elementary OS is.

</comment></comment><comment><USER84> Shame their app store is a great meme.

</comment><comment><USER85> But not for Linux?

</comment><comment><USER86> So it's a replacement for macOS that looks just like macOS? Hmm...

<comment><USER79> Only if you squint and ignore the rest of the sentence? It's an alternative to both macos and windows for people who not just not care about what their OS is, but have better things to do with their life than even bother to know what OS they run. As long as it's a pleasant, stable, consistent UI, and lets them do "the things they want to do" rather than "install the apps they need to do the things they want to do".

And yeah, that means if at any point you might go "but it doesn't have X and that's okay, you can download the source and run make" then you're already way beyond who this OS is for. It's supposed to be "as dumb" as MacOS with the app store, or Windows with the windows store.

<comment><USER86> But macOS is exactly that already?

<comment><USER79> It's also prohibitively expensive due to the hardware you need to legally own before you can even use it, and is _only_ supported for that hardware instead of allowing you to use whatever you can afford?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER87> I think there are 2 fundamental problems with Desktop Linux:

1\. Linux doesn't even have a rock-solid gui toolkit on which different environments can be based:

        a. The one which runs on Ubuntu by default and which is probably used on 90%+ installations of desktop Linux is GTK which is utterly a major nightmare to develop GUIs with.

        b. The Qt library which powers KDE is simply not used all that widely. The flagship desktop environment using Qt is KDE which is downright ugly in its default installation.

2\. Once problem 1 is solved, people should realize that a usable desktop is not just the Window manager and 3 apps which are blessed by the desktop environment team. It is 100s of thousands of hours of using by many users. It needs stability for other apps to develop around this ecosystem, both Mac and Windows have had a rocksolid GUI library powering their ecosystems for decade+ period and apps develop around them. Without stability and a new shitty GUI library every 2 years, Elementary OS or not, the desktop environment situation on Linux will continue to be shit.

<comment><USER88> Qt was used on unity8. But it didn't (at that time, and probably not now either) have a comparable UI component library to MacOS (or iOS). I know, because we made one from scratch - which wasn't a great idea either.

Flutter would look interesting if it picks up steam for desktop apps.

<comment><USER87> It's very disappointing to learn that after more than 25 years of Linux being launched, there is not a single decent GUI SDK available.

Much more damning is that RedHat whose entire business model was around making an enterprise ready Linux (server and Desktop) could not build a decent GUI toolkit.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER89> It looks nice, and it may be a replacement for ChromeOS or some other limited system, but it's not a replacement for Windows and MacOS.

</comment><comment><USER90> It's just a window manager and not even a very good one.

</comment><comment><USER91> Is it binary-compatible with Windows & Mac OS? If it's not, then it's not a replacement and the title should be changed to reflect that. I respect the idea of speed and privacy (though I'm still a minimalist - I believe in using 16/32-bit and less than 1GB RAM). But before I can "replace" Windows, I need an OS that actually works like Windows.

<comment><USER82> wtf

<comment><USER92> It's a valid comment. Most of the 'replacement for macOS' comments here essentially pre-suppose that people _only_ use macOS because it looks pretty and...? What? That people just play with Finder and TextEdit all day?

If I can't run Lightroom or Affinity Photo on ElementaryOS (hint: I can't) then it isn't a replacement for macOS.

I _know_ I can use DarkTable or GIMP, but I don't want to because they are lacking in various ways that make them less useful, to me, than the apps I named above.

(I've been using Linux as a daily driver for two years now, have been administrating Linux servers for nearly two decades - I _know_ Linux).

<comment><USER82> well your's is a valid use case. I just didn't understand why OP was expecting it to be binary compatible. It's just a distro

<comment><USER91> Because it's being called a "replacement for Windows and MacOS". I take issue with that, because it's provably not. All use cases are valid. It doesn't matter if you're using it for work or play, there is no invalid use case as long as it works for that user. And if you're touting an OS as a replacement, you have to take that into account.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Better time drop downs for ranges: jQuery Time Autocomplete - <AUTHOR> http://7shifts.com/blog/better-time-drop-downs-jquery-timeautocomplete/

<comment><USER2> Wow, this looks like a really cool plugin. Disclaimer: I may have written it.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I love that even if the display is in 12 hours, I can type in a 24 hour value and it'll understand and format it correctly.</comment>


Show HN: Airplane-mode – an HTTP caching/mocking lib inspired by in-flight wifi - <AUTHOR> http://jeremiak.tumblr.com/post/104203708481/airplane-mode-an-npm-module-inspired-by-runscope <comment><AUTHOR> Jeremiah is a friend of mine and I liked this project so I thought I'd share it.</comment>