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Also, just generally death by a thousand cuts with ridiculous numbers of small annoyances. This used to be the difference. But between Preview.app bugs (crash

Also, just generally death by a thousand cuts with ridiculous numbers of small annoyances. This used to be the difference. But between Preview.app bugs (crashes all the time when previewing beamer slides, slow rendering, jumping through slides in non-linear order), sticky or stuck keys on the butterfly keyboard, ancient UNIX userland (yes, you can install newer versions with Homebrew or Nix), weird bugs when running XQuartz, etc. The gap is narrowing pretty quickly. Also, I have been using NixOS on my Linux workstation at home. I like it so much that I want fully declarative system configurations everywhere ;).

OJFord 8y ago
And on macOS, when I hit them it's generally hard to find a solution. On Linux, there's an Arch wiki page, or something.
spindle 8y ago
NixOS made a big difference for me too.
ncol 8y ago
I can't agree. I work in enterprise Linux. We essentially make distributions, build systems, customized kernels etc. Linux, desktop Linux especially, is the worst of the big operating systems. It certainly has qualities, but if you make a table with all the different things to expect from an operating system and you look into each section without being too subjective Linux will come last overall. And I don't think it really is changing. Ever wondered why Ubuntu doesn't really seem to be getting better, mostly just shifting technologies around? Well, that is because it essentially reached the level that desktop Linux is at. Anything else is going to be going in the direction of something like Android and even that isn't necessarily up to the standard of the alternatives. I would like to elaborate, but I think it is pretty futile to do so online, which is pretty telling in itself. One example that should challenge people view would be the ssh default story that is on the front page right now. Everything in Linux is pretty much like that if you dig deep enough. And while its competitors aren't perfect either, they are just far more consistent. Because that is a major selling point for them.
- cs02rm0 8y ago
  Ever wondered why Ubuntu doesn't really seem to be getting better, mostly just shifting technologies around? Lack of either a near complete monopoly or a track record with dedicated, quality hardware. Throw in some questionable leadership decisions. I don't think there's anything inherent to Linux that's unable to level up on the desktop, but the people best placed to shake things up are probably manufacturers who'd rather take a cut of a Windows license. Windows has certainly been consistent in not offering an SSH client at all for a very long time.
  - phendrenad2 8y ago
    I think there are things inherent to Linux that make it unable to ever reach the level of usability that MacOS provides. On MacOS there is one way to do everything. Want to make a desktop GUI app? XCode has a project template for you. If you deviate from the APIs it suggests, you’ll get nothing but pain. On Linux, there is no default window API. You have to choose between Qt and GTK and <a billion other things>. That leads to fragmentation at the windowing system level. And just think, that fragmentation happens at all the other levels too. Ubuntu has removed some of the fragmentation, since it’s so popular that you can just target Ubuntu and let your application fail on different configurations (or worse than failure - technically work, but require tons of tweaking in config files. Ugh). However, Ubuntu has reached the point, IMO, where to provide better UX, they would need to start making Ubuntu actually incompatible with other Linux distros, or push the Linux community to adopt new standards that are better for desktop linux. A perfect example is Wayland: supposedly Wayland is a lot better than X11 for desktop purposes. It’s just too bad that Ubuntu can’t just break compat and blaze their own path here, or we would probably have a great Linux UX story already.
    - ncol 8y ago
      In my opinion most of the distributions are starting from the wrong end. They start with kernel, add package management, decide which services to run, which toolkit to use and then make some utility applications. Sometimes over a few different distributions. This mean not only that it is hard to convince people why they should change things, but that when you made the improvements you want you end up stalling since you haven't actually tackled the things that are lacking. What you should do is the opposite. They should start with the toolkit, the network infrastructure, the management utilities or something else that would be the use-case. Once you have e.g. a solid toolkit that is attractive to developers and people start making good applications the rest is a matter of time. There is of course a reason why people don't do this, which is because it is hard. But hard is good, it is complexity that will kill you. This is of course essentially why Android and Chrome OS is successful in their own right.

OJFord 8y ago

And on macOS, when I hit them it's generally hard to find a solution. On Linux, there's an Arch wiki page, or something.

spindle 8y ago

NixOS made a big difference for me too.

ncol 8y ago

I can't agree. I work in enterprise Linux. We essentially make distributions, build systems, customized kernels etc. Linux, desktop Linux especially, is the worst of the big operating systems. It certainly has qualities, but if you make a table with all the different things to expect from an operating system and you look into each section without being too subjective Linux will come last overall. And I don't think it really is changing. Ever wondered why Ubuntu doesn't really seem to be getting better, mostly just shifting technologies around? Well, that is because it essentially reached the level that desktop Linux is at. Anything else is going to be going in the direction of something like Android and even that isn't necessarily up to the standard of the alternatives. I would like to elaborate, but I think it is pretty futile to do so online, which is pretty telling in itself. One example that should challenge people view would be the ssh default story that is on the front page right now. Everything in Linux is pretty much like that if you dig deep enough. And while its competitors aren't perfect either, they are just far more consistent. Because that is a major selling point for them.

cs02rm0 8y ago
Ever wondered why Ubuntu doesn't really seem to be getting better, mostly just shifting technologies around? Lack of either a near complete monopoly or a track record with dedicated, quality hardware. Throw in some questionable leadership decisions. I don't think there's anything inherent to Linux that's unable to level up on the desktop, but the people best placed to shake things up are probably manufacturers who'd rather take a cut of a Windows license. Windows has certainly been consistent in not offering an SSH client at all for a very long time.
- phendrenad2 8y ago
  I think there are things inherent to Linux that make it unable to ever reach the level of usability that MacOS provides. On MacOS there is one way to do everything. Want to make a desktop GUI app? XCode has a project template for you. If you deviate from the APIs it suggests, you’ll get nothing but pain. On Linux, there is no default window API. You have to choose between Qt and GTK and <a billion other things>. That leads to fragmentation at the windowing system level. And just think, that fragmentation happens at all the other levels too. Ubuntu has removed some of the fragmentation, since it’s so popular that you can just target Ubuntu and let your application fail on different configurations (or worse than failure - technically work, but require tons of tweaking in config files. Ugh). However, Ubuntu has reached the point, IMO, where to provide better UX, they would need to start making Ubuntu actually incompatible with other Linux distros, or push the Linux community to adopt new standards that are better for desktop linux. A perfect example is Wayland: supposedly Wayland is a lot better than X11 for desktop purposes. It’s just too bad that Ubuntu can’t just break compat and blaze their own path here, or we would probably have a great Linux UX story already.
  - ncol 8y ago
    In my opinion most of the distributions are starting from the wrong end. They start with kernel, add package management, decide which services to run, which toolkit to use and then make some utility applications. Sometimes over a few different distributions. This mean not only that it is hard to convince people why they should change things, but that when you made the improvements you want you end up stalling since you haven't actually tackled the things that are lacking. What you should do is the opposite. They should start with the toolkit, the network infrastructure, the management utilities or something else that would be the use-case. Once you have e.g. a solid toolkit that is attractive to developers and people start making good applications the rest is a matter of time. There is of course a reason why people don't do this, which is because it is hard. But hard is good, it is complexity that will kill you. This is of course essentially why Android and Chrome OS is successful in their own right.