TIL something new… My hate for MacOS took over common logic. 2.8GB, 3 seconds file transfer on USB was to beautiful to be true. After some further investigation and hints from @[email protected] @[email protected] I learned that Linux writes to cache before writing it to the device, to see whats happening in the background: sync & watch -n 1 grep -e Dirty: /proc/meminfo.

Still, the transfer speed on Linux was slightly faster than on MacOS. My rant was unjustified, It just my fault for being clueless on some more advanced Linux stuff. But I learned something new today, so this post was actually helpful !

Howerver, I still hate MacOS and will probably give Asahi remix a try.

Thanks to everyone !

Hey guys ! I’m getting tired/bored of MacOS’ shenanigans… Yesterday was the last drop that make me think of trying an alternative.

While trying to upload a 2.8 GB file over to an USB-C stick it took like 8 minutes? Okay that’s “good” enough if you only do it from time to time… But 25 files takes literally 1h30min… Are we in 2001?

I mean the exact same 2.8GB file, with the exact same USB-C stick took FU***** 3 seconds on Linux !!

Ohh and don’t think I didn’t tried to “fix” the issue, after a long search on the web I came across a lot of people having similar issues that aren’t fixed since 2 major updates? With a total radio silence from the shiny poisonous Apple…

Among other things I tried:

  • Disable Spotlight indexing sudo mdutil -a -i off
  • Reformat the USB stick from Mac
  • All available filesystem FAT32, exFAT…(yes even MacOS native APFS)
  • Another USB stick
  • …

Enough is enough. I was willing to learn their way of thinking for my personal experience and somehow always got my way around to reproduce what I learned on Linux to Mac. But now that there is an alternative OS, I think I’m ready to get back home.

So does anyone here already gave Asahi Remix a try? If so what was your experience with it?

I read their FAQ and most of their documentation and it seems good enough for daily drive (except for some quirks here and there) but I wanted to hear from people who already made the jump and how was their personal feeling.

PS: I got that MacOS for my birthday from a family member with good intentions. That wasn’t a personal choice. While I’m more than happy and thankful for the gift, I totally hate it more and more… Especially because MOST of my self-hosted services, applications, scripts, are open source.

  • nanook
    7•1 month ago

    Just because the USB C is rated at a transfer rate of 4.8Gb/s doesn’t mean the flash memory or the controller is capable of anywhere near that speed. I have a 2TB USB flash drive but it is slower than a mechanical hard drive as far as transfer speed goes.

      • nanook
        1•1 month ago

        @BudgetBandit The M1s are a genre I’m not familiar with as the MacPro is the last Mac I owned, since then I’ve been assembling my own machines from components.

      • @[email protected]OP
        0•1 month ago

        And I guess there isn’t any way to “uncap” the throughput without being an even more Smartass? 😄

            • @[email protected]
              1•1 month ago

              Its GB/s! My external SSD is capable of 2GB/s and I get around 1.9~ish with my desktop and 1.7~ish with the Mac.

              Wait I did the maths and it doesn’t look right

    • @[email protected]OP
      0•1 month ago

      Yeah I get that, that’s not my point. The same USB stick on Linux takes seconds, while on a MacBook air 1 rated at 10Gb/s takes 8 minutes??

      Same USB stick, same file, other system.

      • @JonnyRobbie
        5•1 month ago

        Yeah, those three seconds were probably just to the kernel cache - on the contrary - most linux desktops has the unfortunate design decision that they showed the source to kernel cache progress instead of source to dest. I hope you tried to safely eject the drive before removing it and waiting the rest of the hour for that.

        • nanook
          3•1 month ago

          @JonnyRobbie @N0x0n I would suggest from a terminal window as super user type sync, that will flush anything buffered in memory out to disk, and then do a df to see if it is mounted, if so umount it first.

        • @[email protected]OP
          2•1 month ago

          Ohhh? Interesting… First time I heard that and somehow rings a bell… I think I need to investigate your lead. Makes me feel a bit stupid right now.

          :/

          • @JonnyRobbie
            3•1 month ago

            It might have been fixed in most modern DE’s right now - I’m not sure about the current state. But it used to be the problem…don’t ask how I know…

            • @[email protected]OP
              1•1 month ago

              Hey :) Thanks for the pointer. This was to beautiful to be true ! I searched around the web and found out what is actually happening in the background (learned something new and important so thank you!). And effectively It was writing to the cache and I wasn’t aware that was a thing on Linux.

              The command I used to track it down: sync & watch -n 1 grep -e Dirty: /proc/meminfo. Took me some time to come across the right command and realize what’s happening.

              Will update my post right way (BTW is still hate MacOS !)

      • nanook
        3•1 month ago

        @N0x0n Ok, well these days I run a self-assembled computer but back in the day I had a Mac Pro, it had quad Xeon processors and 32GB of RAM (I upgraded from the stock 4GB) and STILL it was slow, so I loaded Linux onto it and never looked back. I miss garage band that was fun to tinker with but otherwise there isn’t much I miss.