42 ms·

I switched from macOS to Linux after 15 years of Apple

• toast42 5y ago
  "I’m here to save you some time and energy by telling you that the distro you pick doesn’t matter that much. " That's the point I stopped reading.
  • jneumann004 5y ago
    I've been using Linux for years, so I've got my opinions about distros. Why should the distribution a new user pick matter that much? They can easily switch if they don't like the first one they pick.
    • read_if_gay_ 5y ago
      GP probably conflated distro with DE, which is covered in the next paragraph in TFA, maybe shouldn't have stopped reading after all.
    • asciimov 5y ago
      Stability of install. New users probably shouldn't use a rolling release because updates can cause the install to be unbootable, leaving a bad impression of linux.
      • wayneftw 5y ago
        What happens then is that the new Linux user soon needs a newer version of some package and they have to add a third party repo to their stable system and after having done this a few times, soon an update from one of them will cause the install to be unbootable. I've had a way better experience with desktop Linux when using a managed rolling release like Manjaro.
    • zepto 5y ago
      Easily switch? You mean by reinstalling from scratch, or is there another way? I’d like to know because I am interested in trying different distros but don’t want to have to keep setting up machines.
    • throw7 5y ago
      Well, IMO, a new user should pick a distribution that has different DE's available in it's repository. That makes switching and trying different DE's very easy. As opposed to some distros which are specifically tailored to only a specific or supported DE.
  • shreddit 5y ago
    And I’d like to know the reason
  • dmart 5y ago
    It really doesn't. And the desktop Linux community's obsession with bundling a few tweaks and preinstalled applications as separate "distros", splintering the community into a million tiny sub-groups, is part of the reason it's failed to achieve mainstream popularity.
    • rovr138 5y ago
      What's the best way to bundle those?
      • AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y ago
        Why would you bundle them at all?
      • petepete 5y ago
        I think Ubuntu-style 'flavours' of distro pattern work well. They're called Spins in Fedora.
      • alpaca128 5y ago
        Just don't. Why bundle stuff if the user can just install it using the package manager? It's easier to add to the system than remove redundant packages, and if the distro developers focus on the repositories and package management software it benefits everyone much more. That's one of the big reasons people go for Arch. Nobody cares if LibreOffice or Inkscape or whatever is preinstalled. Just put a usable appstore on the taskbar by default, it works for smartphones too. Many distros are about as necessary as Samsung's or LG's customized Android builds.
    • prox 5y ago
      Why is there such a fascination with having so many versions?
      • blacktriangle 5y ago
        Off the top of my head... Some people want to build everything from source. Some people want a preconfigured Gnome enviornment. Some people want a preconfigured KDE environment. Some people want a distro with the latest version of packages. Some people want a distro that is conservative about upgrading packages. Some people are running in VMs and don't need all that extra crap. Some people want a version that pedantically sticks to the spirit of the GPL. Some people want a version that is maximally convinient GPL be damned. I'm sure there's more reasons.
• chovybizzass 5y ago
  Manjaro/KDE ftw -- beats sMacOS hands down
• BrissyCoder 5y ago
  Not going to put much heed in the opinion of someone who used Apple operating systems for 15 years.
  • justwalt 5y ago
    Good thinking, someone like that is permanently tainted.
• andrewstuart 5y ago
  Every time I use desktop Linux (I've only tried Ubuntu), it's an exercise in frustration simply because cut and paste is such an incredible pain. I use cut and paste every few minutes. The keys are not compatible with MacOS - why not? Surely this is an obvious need. I seem to recall the cut and paste keys aren't even compatible with Windows. The cut and paste doesn't even seem to work consistently across applications. Instead of just using the GUI, I have to constantly break my workflow to think about what keys I'm pressing - that's not a great way to enable switching to Linux from another OS. If cut and paste is painful then we're a long way from desktop Linux being viable for me personally. It seems such an easy thing to get right, but that's the essence of desktop Linux - 20 years down the track and the first thing you do cuts your finger. I'd be pleased to hear if some other distro has nailed this or if it's a universal issue.
  • kraftman 5y ago
    Could you describe the issue more? I've been using ubuntu for years and I've had plenty of issues, but cut and paste isn't one of them. It behaves exactly the same as windows for me.
    • deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
  • xur17 5y ago
    > The keys are not compatible with MacOS - why not? Surely this is an obvious need. I seem to recall the cut and paste keys aren't even compatible with Windows. The cut and paste doesn't even seem to work consistently across applications. Do you mean that they're not compatible with a macbook keyboard? control-c / x / v work fine on all of my Ubuntu computers, but I might be misunderstanding what issue you are running into.
    • DarmokJalad1701 5y ago
      Now try doing that in the terminal.
• CalChris 5y ago
  This was published on March 21, 2020 which is well before the introduction of the M1 MacBook Air and MacBook Pro on November 17, 2020.
  • herpderperator 5y ago
    I think this is important. I switched to macOS and stopped using my desktop completely because the M1 chip in my MacBook Air is so powerful it beats it by a long shot. It runs literally everything I do so smoothly and without emitting a single sound since there's no fan (and no coil whine under load for those who know what that is on the Intel MacBooks.) Unbelievably, it just doesn't get hot. I'm averaging temps under 30C without a monitor and under 35C with a 4k external monitor attached. Only brief bursts above that when compiling or doing something more intensive, but you don't even feel it. I do everything on this laptop. All my professional work, simultaneous Chrome profiles, dozens and dozens of tabs, video calls through Meet/Zoom, programming, VSCode, Photoshop, watching 4k videos, terminal, everything. It doesn't even stutter, and has NO FAN.
    • kazinator 5y ago
      I was quite impressed when I ssh-ed into the M1 machine offered by the GCC Compile Farm, and found that it recompiles the TXR Lisp standard library in under 3 seconds.
    • inter_netuser 5y ago
      does M1 run linux just a well?
      • edgyquant 5y ago
        I don’t think the Linux port to M1 is complete yet
      • smoldesu 5y ago
        No, and it probably won't unless Apple releases GPU documentation or a kernel blob (neither of which are very likely)
• oarsinsync 5y ago
  As someone who's been locked into the Apple ecosystem since 2010, I was extremely hopeful that this article would help me. Unfortunately, the writer does not use iOS devices, iCloud, FaceTime, unlikely to be using iMessage (although not explicitly stated), so this is great if you're hooked in macOS only, and not with iDevices & iCloud services as well.
  • everdrive 5y ago
    It's important not to start using a service which will be difficult to cease using. This is how lock in occurs. It's not truly convenient if you're stuck with it.
    • jstx1 5y ago
      > It's not truly convenient if you're stuck with it. That's a bit extreme. I would say that it's only inconvenient if you need/want to switch - everyone can make a guess about the probability that they will want to switch in the future, what effort it would take and whether that's worth it for the value they will get in the meantime.
    • pknomad 5y ago
      But that's a trade-off that most users are expected to have. I like how macOS can handle continuity of applications (iMessage, Apps, Fileshare) across multiple devices. I haven't seen any other OSs or ecosystem handle this as well as Apple's.
    • dylan604 5y ago
      That works great if you're a nerd and only every communicate with other nerds. Once you try to talk to moms, your stuck using FB or messages. So, you can be definitely use the most secure stuff out there that gives you all the freedom to do exactly what you want, but you'll be on that island all by yourself. Enjoy
      • muyuu 5y ago
        my mum is too much of a normie to use computers regularly at all, which helps she either calls or messages, which from the lock-in standpoint is just better and perfectly adequate - it means much less spurious messaging
• systemvoltage 5y ago
  Desktop OS (Mac, Linux, Windows) needs an authoritarian single person designer that can dictate how UI/UX would work. Democratically developed interfaces suffer from the same paralysis that industrial design faces - You need Ettore Sottsass, Dieter Rams and Jony Ive of software UX/UI. Otherwise it’s an unfocused trend driven graphical gore that community tends to develop. A thousand squeaky wheels can’t stay aligned on the road. I think they’re all broken. Not just Linux Desktop.
  • BurningFrog 5y ago
    Back in the 90s, I think the Apple UI design team (whatever it was called) provided the best such dictated UI guidelines I've seen. Just to make the point that it doesn't have to be one person.
    • systemvoltage 5y ago
      Agree but it needs to behave like an authoritarian little group - lots of autonomy and decision making abilities. A lot of car designs are done by a single person aided by a small group of exceptional designers. That brings me to a second point - that team has to be the cream of the crop. Not any goof with design degree but a demonstrated long history of exceptional understanding of human to machine interaction. Apple attracted such people back in the day.
    • phendrenad2 5y ago
      It's still not the same though. There was a lead designer, who was accountable to the CTO, who was accountable to the shareholders. There's downward pressure to stop analysis paralysis when it appears.
  • mixedCase 5y ago
    GNOME is the closest thing to that in an open source world, they build on top of one pretty specific vision and have a good set HIGs. And if you don't like it, you're wrong. Not because your opinion is not valid, but because that's what you're requesting essentially.
  • 5y ago
• stelcodes 5y ago
  It doesn’t matter which distro you use… unless it’s NixOS. Declarative operating systems are the future. NixOS is incredible. My whole configuration is a git repo. My servers have the exact same neovim/tmux/zsh config as my laptop. Switching between desktop environments couldn’t be easier. Messed up your system? Simply choose a previous generation on the boot screen. Seriously, try NixOS.
  • Madeindjs 5y ago
    Is it equivalent to initialize Git repository in $HOME ?
    • lightbulbjim 5y ago
      No. It replaces the FHS with a whole new vision of how the OS is arranged and managed.
  • lightbulbjim 5y ago
    I wholeheartedly agree, and I am a giant NixOS fan, BUT: 1. You need space for the Nix store, so it's not appropriate for every system (I like building small embedded appliances). 2. A six month release cycle can get a bit tiresome after a while. I know it's personal preference, but I wish it was a bit longer. 3. Or, in order to contribute to the project, you need to chase the dragon with the unstable channel. 4. Forcing all the system state through the funnel of a single config file is great, except that it doesn't cover home directories. I found that I ended up with a massive unmanaged blob of state in my home directory which I couldn't capture (I never tried out home-manager, maybe I should have). This is not to detract from NixOS! NixOS is great, and I remain a massive fan :-). But on my personal systems I find myself using macOS and Debian these days. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ EDIT: Line spacing
    • stelcodes 5y ago
      Valid points. I definitely wouldn’t use NixOS on embedded. About contributing, You don’t really need to be on the unstable channel completely. I use a mix of stable and unstable packages. It’s not hard to do but it’s also not super intuitive either. And about home directories, I don’t use Home Manager either. I find that it introduced too much complexity and I don’t actually like it all that much. What I do is globally install all my packages and put configuration files in /etc. if the programs don’t have an /etc location to look for, I just create a symlink to config file in my home directory. That way all my config files are in my nixos-config repo. I want to write a blog post about my way of setting up NixOS. There are many ways to go about it and I feel like mine prioritizes simplicity and doesn’t use complex Nix techniques, so it may be very helpful for beginners.
• Lafriakh 5y ago
  I really love Linux an use it for a long time. But the quality of software in macOS is the big difference for me.
  • alexfromapex 5y ago
    Yeah Linux needs some UX love
• djhworld 5y ago
  I switched from apple to Linux fora brief 6 month period, but sheepishly came crawling back to OSX when I got my M1 MacBook Air. Using Linux was pretty awesome but there were a bunch of niggles that made it irritating, especially around battery life. No matter how many things I tried, power top and all the other battery tricks, it just wasn't that good. The other was getting hardware accelerated video to work in Firefox, although I think Firefox finally supports it nowadays with recent versions.
  • blumomo 5y ago
    My System76 Lemur Pro easily runs a complete business day on a single battery charge, on Pop_OS!. Thanks to its hardware, performance can be throttled (which I barely notice as it’s quite performing with standard settings) so that a single charge can last easily 12 hours.
    • pram 5y ago
      Uhh yeah my i9 MBP can last a 'complete business day' full of long Zoom calls and active churning Electron apps too. That is a pretty low bar imo
    • jacurtis 5y ago
      A complete business day of battery life is "table stakes" now with premium laptops. - The M1 Macbook Pro get 20 hours of battery. - The Lenovo ThinkPad X1 gets 20 hours of battery. - The Dell XPS 13 gets 19 hours of battery Those are probably the most popular laptop models in use today in the category of premium laptops, which is the category of computer I think the majority of people reading this comment will be using. Cheaper laptops will not be as good as that, but evenmost of $600-800 laptops will get 8-10 hours of battery life.
      • antongribok 5y ago
        I'll add an LG Gram 17 to that list. 19-20 hours of battery, and a nice 16:10 screen. Also, super light. Everything on default Fedora just works out of the box.
• yodsanklai 5y ago
  What would be a practical reason to switch from MacOS to Linux? Also, what good laptop supports linux out of the box?
  • pjmlp 5y ago
    Basically all those folks that buy Apple hardware, when they actually should have been supporting Linux OEMs, because they don't use anything from Apple other than BSD userspace.
  • wcchandler 5y ago
    For me personally, I can’t update my laptop (2010 MBP) to the latest MacOS without trickery. It’s simply unsupported. I plan on moving back to Linux once the core apps cease to operate — iMessage, easy transfer of music/audiobooks to iPhone, FaceTime. Also, I’m pretty sure Dell and Lenovo have OoB support for Linux. Lenovo especially since RedHat is under the same umbrella.
    • phendrenad2 5y ago
      Why would Linux on your 2010 MBP be better than your current MacOS on your MBP? Or is the real issue that you're looking to upgrade, and don't want to pay the Apple tax on new Macbooks?
      • wcchandler 5y ago
        It wouldn’t be. But once the native apps stop working as expected I will have no reason to stay on the MacOS platform, ergo, my transition back to Linux.
    • Klonoar 5y ago
      I am not sure I understand this viewpoint. A 2010 MBP is ~11 years old at this point, which is an eternity given how the past decade of laptops have evolved. If you buy any modern laptop that's not junk, you're going to be paying hundreds of dollars. I simply don't see why you wouldn't grab an M1 Air at this point. Is it Big Sur/Monterey...? Like, if you could upgrade, would you?
• Timothycquinn 5y ago
  I switched about 8 years ago. Tried OpenSuse for several years but have settled in on Ubuntu with ZFS root on HPE ZBook G2 and Z workstations. The only thing that may draw me back is the Apple M* chips.
• the_solenoid 5y ago
  I manage hundreds of linux servers... from my windows desktop and mac laptop. This will be super unpopular, but Linux missed the desktop boat 20 years ago, and my feeling as someone who at the time built his gentoo OS's from source, it was the fault of a few things: 1) Fragmented gui development. There were too many projects with none focusing on really making a better gui than mac/windows. 2) A lack of bread and butter 1st class "business" apps - you know, office. OpenOffice is fine, IF you are ok with the janky ui and no one knowing how it works. 3) lack of open source exchange type mail/cal/etc server and outlook-like client). Holy fudge, I tried to get this going and people just crapped on me for suggesting it. 4) Until recently, installing on laptops was an absolute crap shoot. 5) Just, apps, in general. Gimp is fine, but it has never been close to photoshop. GUI standards are all over the place, etc. People go to a platform because it has the tools they want. The real fallout from point 1 is no one would ever port apps to linux (a little hyperbolic - a lot of high-end post production apps and audio apps all made it over). Open source yadda yadda, thats nice (this is not a brush off, it IS nice), but the ecosystem could be light years ahead of where we are now.
  • Tenoke 5y ago
    GUI issues are probably the worst but there's also just more that you have to tinker with to fix/adjust on Linux, even on Ubuntu which is likely the most user-friendly distro. Good luck getting multiple different sized monitors to work well out of the box (e.g. laptop + external) on Linux, sometimes even with tinkering you are left with subpar scaling on one. Mac on the other hand just handles whatever combo of monitors and resolutions you throw at it with nothing that you have to do on your side and has done so for a decade now. Things are much more likely to eventually break if you use an installation too long - I rarely have issues with 5+ year old Windows but most distros don't even support that, and even if they do good luck getting through all the upgrades without having to tinker. Hell, I have to manually mess with PPAs at least once a year just to apply updates. There's also just too much choice with so many of the options having drawbacks that are hard to distinguish between, especially for non-power users. There's a ton of other stuff like that that we Linux users are used to so it's not too bad for us but that cause so many people who get a linux machine from a friend to eventually just pay for a Windows install on it since they can't deal with it..
• dukeofdoom 5y ago
  So which is the top distribution now for desktop. Last time I tried was Slackware.
  • jdoss 5y ago
    Give Fedora Linux a try. It has been my daily workstation professionally and personally since 2007ish. Fedora 34 is pretty fantastic for hitting the ground running after you install.
  • blacksmith_tb 5y ago
    'Top' could mean 'most popular' or 'I think this one is best'. I tend to just use stock Ubuntu (which with Fedora vies for the first of those senses), though some distros that are based on it like POP!_OS and Elementary are kind of appealing.
  • seph-reed 5y ago
    I highly, highly recommend Elementary OS. https://elementary.io/ https://elementary.io/ It's the only OS I know of that's remotely close to MacOS in terms of aesthetic, and with Proton I can play pretty much every game on Steam.
  • bakoo 5y ago
    I prefer Mint Cinnamon, which feels like a better looking and more polished Ubuntu with saner defaults.
  • juniperplant 5y ago
    Either Ubuntu (Canonical) or Fedora (Red Hat).
• peterburkimsher 5y ago
  I want to switch to Linux, and made an external USB SSD with about 20 different distros on their own partitions. The installation for some was much easier than others! But this week, I was reminded why I still use Mac OS 10.13. On my Mac, I tried to install ffmpeg with rubberband support. When trying to compile it, brew gave cryptic error messages and eventually failed. For something else, I tried installing qemu, also using brew. There were a load of errors telling me I'm using an outdated OS and should feel bad about it, and again, it failed after 156 minutes with some libiconv error that I don't even totally understand, never mind know how to resolve. Something to do with having imagemagick already installed. I tried downloading an image from docker, and the docker-machine wasn't running, and even when I started it, the pull command from dockerhub still failed. On a Mac, these kinds of errors are unusual. On Linux, build errors like that are normal. I want to be able to install software in less than half an hour. Whether it's brew, apt-get, yum, pip, npm, or whatever other package manager you wish for - recompiling all my software is extremely slow, and by the time it's finished I've already moved on to something else. For as long as software continues to be distributed as binaries for Mac, in a dmg or pkg, I'll continue using my Mac. I do still have to recompile sometimes, but it's something I dread, because of the huge amount of time it takes. Requiring this for every software package on Linux is what's pushing me away from the platform.
  • throitallaway 5y ago
    IMO the power of Linux distros is the package manager. The ~2.5 hour journey that you described on macOS should take less than a minute on most Linux distros. During my (somewhat brief) time with macOS, brew was a primary source of frustration. You say that recompiling software is slow and errors during compilation are normal on Linux. I don't find myself compiling software very often. Most things are grabbed as binaries by the package manager. For everything else there's the AUR (which I rarely experience issues with.)
    • AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y ago
      > IMO the power of Linux distros is the package manager. The ~2.5 hour journey that you described on macOS should take less than a minute on most Linux distros. Unless of course said software is not in your repo, then expect that it will take at least 2.5 hours.
• pier25 5y ago
  I've been considering doing this too for my dev machine. Thankfully I'm not trapped into the Apple ecosystem as I don't use any of their services (iCloud, Messages, FaceTime, etc). On my work machine, 99% of the time I just use VSCode, terminal, Git, Docker, and a browser... I reckon all those will actually run better on Linux than macOS.
  • phendrenad2 5y ago
    MacOS is basically Unix, so I don't think it'll run better due to the OS. The real reason to switch to Linux is you can get much more powerful hardware than Apple sells (or sells for a reasonable price).
    • mishafb 5y ago
      Docker on Mac is actually running in a VM, since containers are a linux feature, not unix. You can't develop for linux servers like you can on a linux machine.
      • pram 5y ago
        Literally any workload in the cloud is going to be running in a VM, this is total nonsense lol
        • solraph 5y ago
          The GP is talking about how developing using docker on a Mac involves a separate VM running Linux, not the production deployment. If your application involves lots of files, then docker has to spend a bunch of time syncing files between the host OS and the Linux VM. It's a pretty well known problem. If you're dealing with a few smallish files you won't notice it, but applications with lots of little files (Node, Python, etc) will have to sync all those files, and that can be pretty slow.
    • Klonoar 5y ago
      ...for a desktop, sure. For laptops, there is currently no real comparison on power and price. I very much hope the rest of the industry can respond to the M1.
• Shadonototro 5y ago
  Gnome is the reason why people don't stay on linux I was so happy when Valve announced they'd ditch debian/ubuntu and gnome
  • lbhdc 5y ago
    One of the reasons I enjoy using linux is the endless things you can customize, including the DE. You can easily switch your DE to something more inline with your preferences. Or you can install a spin with your preferred DE already enabled.
  • argvargc 5y ago
    Why is Gnome the reason people don't stay on linux? The article makes it look great to anyone familiar with macOS, which while it has faults is generally regarded as a pretty good OS GUI. Is there something bad about Gnome the article is missing?
    • hack-news 5y ago
      I've used different Linux DEs for over 15 years now and only recently started using GNOME 3... it's opinionated but I find it to be extremely polished. I would disregard everything on HN about Linux.
• sarasasa28 5y ago
  ok nice blog
• grafelic 5y ago
  I think you would need to be a tinkerer to enjoy the Linux experience fully. I've running Linux on desktop (and servers) for 15 years at least and there has always been tinkering, although much less the last 5 years or so.
  • argvargc 5y ago
    Genuine question: By "tinkering" do you mean every once in a while something really important completely stops working and you have to pull your hair out in the middle of some important work in order to get that thing fixed so you can use your computer properly again, which usually involves a series of incomprehensible steps you found on the 17th page of a phpBB forum thread? Or...? Because, that being one primary reason many people choose macOS over Windows, it would really suck. Asking because the article was interesting, Gnome looked great, and it'd be genuinely fantastic if this assumption on my part was wrong.
    • pantalaimon 5y ago
      Unless you are on a rolling release distribution things don't just stop working out of the blue. But if you want to have some new thing or change something so it works more how you would like, that can lead to some tinkering.
      • zepearl 5y ago
        Agree - a rolling-release-distribution (e.g. Gentoo, which is the one I'm using) can update anytime any software/program to any major higher version (which might have "breaking" changes) anytime => I never do any update when I know that I'll absolutely need the system anytime soon (e.g. not now that I'm changing flat as I need Libreoffice&Cups to write&print docs).
    • harlekein 5y ago
      To me it means I think of a workflow which would make things smoother for me, I make it so I can do that. But it takes tinkering. I see something nice someone is using or has done. Then I can copy their config, but that's their personal config and I want something slightly different. That takes tinkering. OSX is basically: Use it as designed. And it's designed for what most people want, but if you want to push the boundaries of that you are going to have a frustrating experience.
• brightball 5y ago
  Similar story for me. Switched 5 years ago after 10 years with Apple. You have to be pretty determined to make the switch. I love it. I’m really happy with the switch and have no plans to ever go back but it’s a decision you need to choose and commit to. I’d never recommend it to somebody else. If Linux is right for you, you will seek it out and make it happen.
• istingray 5y ago
  As someone new to Linux from 20 years on a Mac -- what's the deal with everything being free? Seriously, where are the "take my money" opportunities. I don't want free OpenOffice. I want to pay $100 for something better, whatever the heck that is, maybe a little less clunky. I don't want free open source Notes app, I want to pay for something that's polished. The Linux community is incredibly giving and passionate and it seems like it's all "free" but sucks up my time. I couldn't even figure out how to slow the scroll of my trackpad on Ubuntu after lots of digging. Please, coming as a Mac user, take my money.
  • ksec 5y ago
    Generally speaking the Linux community thinks that money is somewhat evil. There are little "take my money" moment. Most value only comes from services and support, not a common or sustainable stream of revenue on consumer computing. Which is fundamentally different to the Apple and Mac platform. It is the polish app and "take my money" market. And for most part it is doing exceptionally well. ( On macOS, not MacBook )
    • istingray 5y ago
      That's helpful context. If there's good pro-Linux developers and apps worth buying from, let me know. i.e. on Mac Panic, Pixelmator, BBEdit. Would love a Mail alternative. Thunderbird is...not for me. I'll take the opportunity to recommend Standard Notes. They have great Linux support, it's basically an Apple Notes replacement with E2EE for $50/year. Take my money!
      • notwhereyouare 5y ago
        I’m using mailspring for my email client
      • tpmoney 5y ago
        Closest to BBEdit, and worth paying for is SublimeText https://www.sublimetext.com https://www.sublimetext.com
    • 5y ago
• riazrizvi 5y ago
  Does anyone know of a good resource to identify and explain unnecessary launchctl daemons, that I can then disable? My $4k Intel Macbook, new this year, can’t even smoothly handle cursor movement in vim/neovim because of the bloatware and possibly T2 chip interference, and it is driving me up the wall. Or if anyone has experience running the nearest thing to an open source version of MacOS, I’d love to get your pointers. If I can’t solve this then I will switch to Ubuntu but as others have pointed out, I can see it will be a big time sink, that I’d like to avoid.
  • Klonoar 5y ago
    That... makes no sense. A default macOS setup should not have issues with cursor movement due to anything in launchctl. Where are you even pulling the T2 bit from...? Are you using stock Terminal.app or iTerm2? The latter is notably improved and might benefit you if you haven't tried it.
• buserror 5y ago
  Errr, I switched from Apple (II, and mac) after 20+ years of being a professional developer to -- Linux/embedded. To be fair, I was also a UNIX developer all that time, starting with Minix all the way back then, to Pr1meOS, HP/UX, SunOS, Solaris and blah blah. The fact I had that UNIX background is what saved me. I was really highly technical and very highly rated Mac dev until about 2006 when I realised this was a lost cause. I would not stand developing for the apple business these days -- these days, I can use my "embedded" skills on linux (or bare metal) and "be the tree that stands out from the forest" -- these days on Apple-land you are just chowder. Mind you, I might have audio working on my linux workstation, but I can't seem to get the mouse wheel doing the right thing. That's the price to pay, and I might grumble about it (a lot) but it's better than having half the available API your app used to use just diseapear into thin air.
• rsyring 5y ago
  I don't use Linux b/c it's the best desktop. I use it for two fundamental reasons: 1. With enough time and effort I can make it do whatever I want it to do (that can be done). 2. I'm a Python web developer and we deploy to Linux so it means I only really need to learn one OS (time to learn is in limited supply for me as man who cares about family life). What this means practically for me is that 95% of what the OS provides works the way I want it to. I have a handful of things I customize and I've scripted those (Linux is great for scripting) so it's easy to apply when I refresh my OS every 1-2 years. It also means I don't have to do things the Apple way, I can make it work the way I want it to work (within reason). It also means I don't have an OS that will put advertisements in the start menu (that was the last straw for my family using Windows, everyone uses Linux now). I realize if I was a lawyer and needed Microsoft Office or a designer and needed the Adobe Suite, then I couldn't take this approach or would need to run a different OS in a VM. I wish the Linux desktop would be an attractive target for all popular commercial apps to support it. But I'm not holding my breath, that's not why I use it.
  • theshrike79 5y ago
    > 1. With enough time and effort I can make it do whatever I want it to do (that can be done). I did this when I was younger. Now I have more money than time, so I'm prepared to pay to spend less time making stuff do what I want it to do. > It also means I don't have to do things the Apple way, I can make it work the way I want it to work (within reason). I used to fine-tune my system with the weirdest shit, every corner of the screen did a different thing, all 3 buttons did different things to windows depending on where you clicked. Now I just use macOS pretty much vanilla out of the box. If I use Linux, I just use the defaults. Copying over settings to multiple computers is just way too much bike-shedding for me.
    • tomwojcik 5y ago
      Regarding copying over settings between macOS and Linux, powerusers usually maintain their own dotfiles and it's not a problem to make it somewhat OS-agnostic, so you can set up a similar environment within minutes.
• hathawsh 5y ago
  From my perspective, the era of switching desktops is over--I don't really have to choose anymore. These days I can run all the operating systems I need at once. I can run a Windows virtual machine in Linux and vice versa. If I need to run a Mac app, I can rent a VM on AWS. My Mac developer friends run Docker Desktop, which actually runs Linux. I remember a time when the host operating system was an important choice that limited what kinds of things you could do with a computer. It's really not anymore IMHO.
  • skrtskrt 5y ago
    > My Mac developer friends run Docker Desktop Mac Docker is insanely resource-heavy since it runs through that virtualization layer instead of being native. Definitely a major source of frustration unless you keep your Docker stack very, very small or have an absolutely max-spec Macbook Pro.
    • thevagrant 5y ago
      That's right. M1 can be fast as hell but it's still not that great if you use Docker.
• forgotmypw17 5y ago
  My computer is my "work station", so I don't want anything to change how it works without my asking for it. Only FOSS has given me that so far. With the others, I inevitably run into "interface I'm used to changes without my consent".
  • AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y ago
    I think that's only true if you never update your FOSS software, which the FOSS community in general seems to think is akin to skinning puppies. Otherwise it seems to me that FOSS developers are just as prone to changing interfaces for the sake of change as everyone else.
    • forgotmypw17 5y ago
      It's true for many projects, and I usually stop using them after it happens for the first time. Eventually, some software remains, against odds, stable. If not in the defaults, then after I apply my text-based, human-readable, source-matchable configuration files. Also, I recently found Chicago 95 and am very pleased with the results of that five-minute shellscript :D
  • jwbwater 5y ago
    It's the only option that frees you from the effects of someone else's greed.
• ElijahLynn 5y ago
  Every Linux distro needs to adopt something like the Arch User Repository (AUR). It is hands down the nicest way to install packages out of all OSes, including Mac and Windows. Everything is in the AUR, and if it isn't it is fairly easy to wrap it up and put it there yourself. Or one can just use Arch + `yay` and move on already!
  • _-david-_ 5y ago
    It seems better to use flatpak, snap or appimage. These can be created once and run on any distro. Flatpak and snaps also include permissions on a per application basis so you can have some level of sandboxing. It is also easy to have proprietary applications which could help with more widespread Linux usage.
    • ElijahLynn 5y ago
      That does seem better in the long run, especially if one has a very large disk drive. Until all packages are packaged up correctly, which could be many years from now. Something like AUR will be a necessity.
      • _-david-_ 5y ago
        Flatpak allows for sharing dependencies so disk space is less important. Often times software don't use the same versions though.
    • pantalaimon 5y ago
      flatpak and snap feel so heavy - the startup times are reason enough to dislike them
      • AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y ago
        Flatpak also has unescapable limitations. For instance, Flatpak-installed Wireshark cannot actually capture packets. There is no way to give it the permissions at all.
• xedrac 5y ago
  As someone who has used Linux almost exclusively on the desktop for the past 10 years, I recently bought a Windows laptop to use with Piano Marvel. I was astonished at just how awful the Windows experience was. From the mandatory online user accounts, to the pre-installed garbage. Not to mention the in-your-face-constantly notifications, and forced updates. Using Linux feels unshackled and more polished.
  • AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y ago
    I would agree wholeheartedly with the former, but definitely not the latter. I keep going back to Windows because I'm sick of constantly dealing with all the little headaches that crop up whenever I use a Linux Desktop.
    • fsflover 5y ago
      Which little headaches? Sounds like you are using hardware designed not for Linux if you have hardware problems.
      • deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
      • AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y ago
        It is not just hardware problems. Hardware problems I can be understanding about because there are millions of devices out there and I can't reasonably expect all of them to be supported. No, there are plenty of software problems too. In a recent media PC build I couldn't get sound to work if a browser was launched from Kodi, even after several hours of faffing about with pulse. It wasn't hardware, the sound worked fine in Kodi. I frequently find myself in scenarios where I want to install software that is not in the repo (every distro has this problem). If there is no PPA or AppImage I will either have to hack up some other distro's package to make an appfolder version or build it from source myself in a VM. That's pretty annoying for something that's trivial in other OSs. OBS can't seem to remember the various video capture sources between reboots. To be fair to Linux there might be a viable way for it to do so[0], but it isn't using it. And a ton of other little things I've forgotten because they're so common to my experience of using Linux I don't bother to remember them. Elsewhere in this thread you can read that other people have the same death-by-a-thousand-cuts thing going on, it's very common. [0] I imagine using udev supplied device names or something instead of just what's under /dev/video.
• m0zg 5y ago
  Feels like we have no choice but to switch to Linux for serious work nowadays. Next gen Apple laptops will be selling you out to your respective governments for storing unapproved memes and saying unapproved things. They'll also be locked down progressively tighter, so Apple is able to extract more rent out of you even though you think you "own" the hardware. A decade ago I've resolved to not do any serious, long term work using tooling and operating systems that aren't Free. I've yet to regret this decision. It only makes sense that we don't allow trillion dollar corporations to deny us access to our own work 10-20-30 years from now. It also makes a ton of sense to store long term work in formats for which you could _debug the code_ if it rots over time. I'm not a fundamentalist, though, so I use Windows for hobbies (audio recording, photography), but even then I watch out that the actual underlying work is stored in formats that I could in a pinch read with libre tooling on a libre OS of my choice.
• jijji 5y ago
  i switched to linux in 1992 and never looked back
• c-smile 5y ago
  From native developer perspective... Just tried to compile my Sciter project, full rebuild scapp executable in particular - standalone Sciter binary (HTML/CSS/JS). - Windows / Visual Studio / VC++ - 58 seconds. Self assembled machine, i7 / 4 cores - Linux / Code::Blocks / GCC - 3 minutes 24 seconds. MacMini 2018, i7 / 6 cores - MacOS / XCode / LLVM - 4 minutes 20 seconds. MacMini 2020, M1 So no surprise that I am using Windows as my primary dev platform. As always, YMMV, depends on what you are using your machine for.
• shmerl 5y ago
  Congrats! Linux on the desktop is very good. I see no point in using macOS for anything.
• GekkePrutser 5y ago
  I also moved away from Mac as main personal driver like the article writer but I moved to FreeBSD which has less corporate influence. However the shadow side is much less hardware support. For me that worked out fine but it won't be for everyone. One of the things I love is not being stuck with one company's choices anymore. I can decide when I want to install updates, not beg Microsoft not to reboot my computer. I can decide how I want the UI to function instead of Apple forcing their way on me. I'm not having to work around a bunch of tie-ins to cloud services which both MS and Apple do heavily. I don't have to go out of my way to block telemetry. My computer doesn't check if every app is approved by its vendor (Mac notarisation). I don't have my own computer spying on me. It's a bit more work but it really makes me feel like my computer is my computer again. It's so worth it.
• throwaway234292 5y ago
  Please fix the link to the gnome website[0], it returns 404. Just link to https://www.gnome.org/ https://www.gnome.org/ instead. Nice article and welcome to Linux! [0] https://www.gnome.org/gnome-3/ https://www.gnome.org/gnome-3/
• synergy20 5y ago
  After 20 years using Linux as my desktop, my new job mandates macbook as the sole corporate computer, I probably rejected the offer should I had known this restriction.
• joelbondurant 5y ago
  I've barely used anything but Linux desktops for over a decade. MacOS is Linux for senile old blue hair grandmas and little computing appliance kids.
• pope_meat 5y ago
  My favorite thing about booting up my windows partition is that I immediately have to restart for updates.
• young_unixer 5y ago
  The main thing I dislike about it assumption that all software should go through the distribution's package manager, instead of application developers distributing their software directly to users. This assumption has the important consequence that distros don't provide a stable interface (libraries, etc) that applications can depend on. Two years from now your binary may stop working when the distribution updates their libraries. Most people think the package manager model is an advantage, because it makes installing things that are in the package manager easier, but in reality it comes at a big cost for anything that isn't in the package manager or doesn't want to be in it, including most commercial software.
  • fragileone 5y ago
    AppImages are a common format for commercial apps which avoid package managers. The fact that package managers exist doesn't produce any "big cost" for using these instead, except that they're larger because all the libraries they use are bundled with the executable.
• bitwize 5y ago
  > The idea was to take baby steps and split my time between Mac and Linux but I quickly stopped turning on my MacBook. I know that feel. I started wanting to "try out" Linux in 1995 or so but after a few shirt months my Windows partition languished, unused and unbooted-into.
• jtdev 5y ago
  Yah, Apple’s recent decision to pilfer my files has given me the final push to purchase a System76 Linux machine for my daily driver.
• beermonster 5y ago
  > My advice to you coming from macOS is to explore Gnome using either Debian or Fedora. I love Debian. But really, if you want the best experience on the desktop you really want to be using a rolling release distro or something that’s released more often than Debian. If you’re coming from MacOS something like elementary OS [1][2] might also be a good starting point. [1] https://elementary.io/ https://elementary.io/ [2] https://blog.elementary.io/elementary-os-6-odin-released/ https://blog.elementary.io/elementary-os-6-odin-released/
• headsoup 5y ago
  I've been on Linux for the last four years now and there are only two particular things that are painfully missing: Stronger hardware driver support from vendors and Photoshop. (Krita/GIMP/etc just aren't quite there yet, not to mention that most content/tutorials/etc are Photoshop oriented).
• zanethomas 5y ago
  I won't be buying another apple computer (never had any of their other devices). Part of the reason for this is that with the new apple-only chips they will be able to finish locking the operating system down and forcing everyone to buy software from the app store. That's their revenue model going forward.
• nbzso 5y ago
  Personal experience and opinion: Ex Apple user (20+ years), changed lot of roles, nowadays I manage, design and implement front-end stuff. My last Linux Desktop tinkering was at the time when Suse Desktop was the power behind creation of compiz (don't remember exactly) and was a nightmare. I am familiar with Ubuntu/Debian as servers, never intended to use Linux Desktop seriously. So as I sad numerous time here I switched my company to Arch/Manjaro on Apple Hardware, some of the engineers are with KDE, some with Gnome and I don't here any complains whatsoever. We are adapted all the work to Linux Desktops in record time, but this is not the important point that I want to share. The important point is in the semantics of the following words related to computing: User Control. Transparency. Security. Peace of mind. Apple progressively lost me with all Unification of the platforms and ignoring professionals constantly. Recent "scanning fiasco" cured my fetishism completely. I am running Manjaro with Gnome and find that with minimal technical effort I have unique UX (Gnome Layout Switcher with tiling option) which makes me more productive than macOS. I never expected so painless transition, honestly. On a commercial software: I will pay double or triple the price for Affinity Designer port to Linux. I have asked in the past and they answered No, but we will see in the future.
• codyswann 5y ago
  Give me an easy way to write (and test) iOS apps on Linux, and I'm all about switching (again).
• zyngaro 5y ago
  I don’t buy a MacBook for the software (macOS) but for the hardware. Apple simple makes the best laptops. They are second to none.
• test542 5y ago
  If Adobe Premiere ran on linux I would use it. But because it doesn't, I can't use linux, and that's all there really is to it for my particular use case. Any kind of big multifaceted analysis of linux is irrelevant to people like me. I tried installing Ubuntu studio, the OS marketed for "creatives", and the first part of the experience is incoherent dialogs asking you to manually type the number of bytes you want your linux partition to have. You have to type in an 15 digit number or something not knowing how severe the consequences might be if you get this number wrong. Maybe you'll just waste a lot of time, maybe your computer hard drive might get fucked up and become unusable (until you invest even more time in learning how to fix it). I was repulsed and stopped trying to install it. I don't have enough free time. I installed ubuntu back in 2010 and I don't remember it being so bad. Maybe my priorities in life changed. I'd love to be a linux guru but I don't have time.
• Decabytes 5y ago
  The three things I wish were better on Linux were Wayland, the Audio stack, and the software packaging process (no one seems to be able to agree between flatpak, app image, or snap) I feel like that would go a long way to making things better
• ThinkBeat 5y ago
  A better title would have been "What is Linux and how to install Linux on a PC" I clicked in hoping for an in-depth comparison between Linux in 2021 and macOS, and pain points were had moving to Linux from macOS. There are a lot of those posts around but reading a new one I hope to learn more about what has been developing. This is a fairly generic "How to install Linux", with a little bit of padding. The most interesting bit of it I thought was "My MacBook 4-year-old MacBook wasn’t too compatible with Linux. This is counter to my own experience, but I probably have not done it on that specific vintage. Anyone know what the issue is that model?
• cirrus3 5y ago
  > I wasn’t too locked into the Apple ecosystem. I don’t have an iPhone so the integrations were not necessary for me. I didn’t use iCloud, FaceTime or Siri either. If all of these are key to you, switching to Linux may not be worth it.
• perfopt 5y ago
  I have been using Windows 10 as my main machine for 3 years now. In the past I have used MacOS as my main machine and Linux for home projects. The author says - "I used Windows before purchasing my first MacBook but returning was not in my considerations due to the state of that OS with inbuilt ads, bloat and privacy concerns." What in-built ADs? I have not seen any so far
  • n8cpdx 5y ago
    https://www.windowscentral.com/how-remove-advertising-windows-10 https://www.windowscentral.com/how-remove-advertising-window... Its even worse if you buy an OEM device or get stuck with Windows 10 Home. With Home, once your PC finds out you have WiFi, it will not let you set up the device without a Microsoft Account, and it will remember your WiFi details even if you kill the OOBE and restart. (among countless other extremely user-hostile features Microsoft has added)
• fareesh 5y ago
  Is Gnome still painfully slow/laggy? I switched to KDE about 5 years ago and never looked back.
  • esarbe 5y ago
    Gnome is awesome. Gnome 40 brought some nice performance improvements. Using it on a six years old netbook with 4 GB of RAM and i3.
  • juniperplant 5y ago
    Apparently it depends on the hardware. And by that I don't mean whether you have a powerful CPU/GPU combination. If you're lucky, it's smooth as butter. Personally I'm in the unlucky group (i3-6100U + HD 520). Work is being done to improve the situation: https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/mutter/-/merge_requests/1441 https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/mutter/-/merge_requests/1441
• deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
• jwmoz 5y ago
  See you again in a few months!
• diragon 5y ago
  What I hate about Gnome is that it's almost perfect but its paradigm includes huge huge window borders. Oh well, on the plus side there's an actually perfect desktop out there already: i3. And sway potentially. I do miss Gnome's full-assedness (attention to detail and their strong opinions/focus) sometimes.
• mherrmann 5y ago
  It's like coming home from a hotel. In a hotel (on Mac), everything is designed and catered for. At home (on Linux), you have to do the dishes but you can set things up just the way you want them.
  • mackrevinack 5y ago
    that's actually a really good analogy. and staying at hotels can be annoying sometimes, like having the room cleaners bother you, or in the restaurant trying to enjoy your dinner in peace the but the waiter keeps bugging you every 5 minutes!
• shell0x 5y ago
  I'm not sure if that's common knowledge, but I recently found out that KDE has a distribution called KDE Neon with the latest KDE releases. https://neon.kde.org https://neon.kde.org I installed it on a USB flash drive and it's not bad.
• jillesvangurp 5y ago
  Considering as well. What's stopping me at this point is actually very little. One of the main points is that I need access to xcode for business reasons. But it's a pretty minor point as I'm actually not an IOS developer but just the one person in the company that can build our Cordova app with IOS. I'm actually OK with the stability of the software eco system. Most/all I care about is available on Linux, and actually works better there. I'm mostly a backend developer, so intellij, vs code, docker (definitely better on linux), and lots of command line tools (all designed for unix type environments) all work fine on Linux. All the business stuff is cloud/browser based these days so I don't need MS Office or other stuff that was a big deal 13 years ago (when I last used Windows). And the few things that aren't are glorified electron apps that are available in the snap store. I don't actually use any mac specific stuff that I care about (basically non of the i-* stuff). Never was that impressed with that stuff. I even process photos in Darktable (on a mac!) because I like it that much. And that is definitely going to be faster and nicer on Linux. Also, my steam library should come back alive once I move to a Linux desktop thanks to wine/proton being a thing now. I know my way around Linux of course as I've been doing devops and data processing long enough and have been dabbling with but never committed to Linux on my own machines since the nineties. So, why don't I? Just two reasons remaining: finding good laptops that come close to my 15" MBP hardware is pretty hard. Apple did a nice job and they are miles apart from all the me too options out there for windows users. There are a few OKish things out there and they are similarly priced to macs. But it seems it's always something you are compromising on. And the second reason is just the amount of hassle involved with using Linux. It's a never ending stream of stuff that should work but clearly isn't which then leads to hours of researching why it isn't. Printer not printing, standby not doing its thing, etc. I've been there done that. Fine as a hobby but stressful when you have more important things to do. I recently installed arch in qemu on a mac. Actually works fairly nice. But it took me ages to get networking working. I could see myself using this and I get why Valve picked this for their Steam console.
• otar 5y ago
  I was like full-time Linux desktop user for the 10 years, then switched to Mac and never looked back. Linux had all the opportunities to be really good, but the development process was slow, hardware compatibility was a crap and occasionally I would loose a day or two after a postponed update (which got fixes already) to make it work again. I don't really understand why Canonical/Ubuntu dropped Gnome and worked 7 years for Unity, then switched back to Gnome again. 7 years developments and contributions to the Gnome could really make a difference.
• RepresentSpace 5y ago
  I find it extremely hard to uninstall software from ubuntu unless the software was installed from snapcraft. Due to the absence of a window's equivalent `Uninstall or Change Program`, I can't even recommend it to my parents either. There are a lot of ways to install software, but to uninstall you need to know what is installed and that isn't as simple as Windows/macOS. Also since Netflix and Prime Video does not support 1080p playback on Linux (irrespective of your browser), I can't use it as my only OS either.
  • approxim8ion 5y ago
    why is that? I would assume GNOME Software or whatever graphical software package manager was installed would be enough for uninstalling things.
• rcarmo 5y ago
  I haven’t switched, but I am running a new Linux laptop over Summer break and it’s been great so far: - The software (Elementary OS 6): https://taoofmac.com/space/blog/2021/08/16/1200 https://taoofmac.com/space/blog/2021/08/16/1200 - The hardware (Lenovo Ryzen laptop): https://taoofmac.com/space/blog/2021/08/26/1400 https://taoofmac.com/space/blog/2021/08/26/1400 I’d say that for a developer it’s a pretty much perfect set up these days. Definitely not so much for corporate work.
• sandreas 5y ago
  For nearly one month now I am working on switching from MacOS to linux desktop and after experimenting a lot, the switch is pretty near. I'm using a Lenovo T460s WQHD, and the most important advice I could give you: - First try with a VM is ok, but if you really plan to switch, try on REAL HARDWARE - most of the issues I had was not using hardware with Linux support (e.g. Wifi) - Don't try to "rebuild" MacOS or Windows - change the mindset to linux - Plan a huge amount of time (weeks) for getting a neat set up and try at least for 4 Weeks, before you give up - Make a list of what are really MUST have features at the end and keep it as short as possible - Understand at least the fundamentals of the boot process, the X Server, Desktop Environments/Window Managers/Display Managers, Terminal / Shell / TTY - Don't switch distro too early - if something does not work, try to stick to your choice and fix the problems For everyone who's interested, I ended up using Artix Linux (Arch, no systemd) with encrypted ZFS on boot and KDE as desktop environment, and I'm pretty happy so far. Resources I recommend are: https://github.com/openzfs/openzfs-docs/blob/91d28894a74a19f1a528227925ceb5ff45dc236a/docs/Getting%20Started/Arch%20Linux/Artix%20Linux%20Root%20on%20ZFS.rst https://github.com/openzfs/openzfs-docs/blob/91d28894a74a19f... https://int3ractive.com/blog/2018/make-the-best-of-macbook-touchpad-on-ubuntu/ https://int3ractive.com/blog/2018/make-the-best-of-macbook-t... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=exQh0_JKBJQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=exQh0_JKBJQ https://github.com/esjeon/krohnkite https://github.com/esjeon/krohnkite https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC2eYFnH61tmytImy1mTYvhA https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC2eYFnH61tmytImy1mTYvhA
• kamaitachi 5y ago
  Interestingly, I just made the swap the other way. I've been using Linux since the late 1990's (SuSE 5.x) and using Debian as my sole OS for the last 15+ years. I took the plunge and bought a MacBook Pro M1 about 6 months ago. What I miss about Linux: - the choice of different desktops (warts and all!) - zero friction software development (all the open source tools just work) - privacy and open source What I like about MacOS: - as you'd expect, the OS and hardware are really integrated (suspend/resume butter smooth and faster than my Debian/Thinkpad experience) - integration with my iPhone (sharing passwords, iMessaging on my laptop) After 6 months on MacOS, I'm still in two minds as to whether my move was a good one. Time will tell, but the pull of Linux lingers. Edit: formatting
• apatheticonion 5y ago
  I try desktop Linux every year and honestly, Gnome 40 is getting close, but Linux has a long way to go on the desktop before it rivals MacOS or Windows in terms of cohesive user experience. This is an unpopular opinion in the FOS world but; I know I can donate, but I would love for there to be a high end desktop linux project that had a paid license. It was actively maintained, adequately staffed and produced a user-centric distribution that could rival the high quality user experience you see in MacOS. I tried to learn how to write a desktop environment a while ago and I am nowhere near smart enough for that. I just want there to be an alternative to Windows and MacOS that is actually nice to live in on a daily basis.
  • Popegaf 5y ago
    https://zorin.com/os/pro/ https://zorin.com/os/pro/ is basically what you're looking for
    • mackrevinack 5y ago
      zorin is looking nice these days. ive been using pop os for maybe 2 years now but i think i might switch. im not quite sure zorin counts as being "adequately staffed" though. as far as i know its just 2 brothers from Ireland working in it all this time, but maybe they have more staff these days. i can't imagine how they could pull off zorin os and also zorin grid with only two of them
  • approxim8ion 5y ago
    I don't know about MacOS, but I do feel Windows is far from cohesive. The jump from GTK to Qt is no more than the jump from an older native Windows application to something in UWP for example.
    • apatheticonion 5y ago
      You're actually right about that. Windows has been on the user experience decline for some time now. Rather than looking for ways to improve the user experience, they are looking for creative ways to introduce Microsoft Teams. Windows 7, while aged (and possibly viewed through nostalgia), was a pretty amazing cohesive experience. There is literally nothing I do now that Windows 10 does better than Windows 7 (other than the actual requirement for software support). Not only does 10 take longer to start-up, but the start menu was destroyed and the new Microsoft Store app design (UWP?) is hideous and unintuitive. I tolerate Windows now because of software support. I have nowhere else to play my games and don't even think about VR on a non-windows platform. MacOS is certainly a better example of cohesive design (with some caveats, like their Window management is from the 90s). I would love to see a Linux desktop environment take the best things from MacOS and the best things from Windows. Gnome 40 is _really_ close and that makes me very happy
• globular-toast 5y ago
  I've been using GNU/Linux on desktop for over 15 years at this point. So glad that I don't have to use the latest versions of Windows which just keep looking worse and worse every year, to almost unbelievable extents. Mac OS I've always considered a kind of toy, akin to Android or tablet OSes. Cute, but there are far more important things. I just couldn't imagine running a non-free OS on my own computers. Linux happens to be the one that I'm familiar with and I trust but that could change (although as the years go by, I doubt it will). But running a proprietary thing? There's just no way. I won't do it. Imagine installing wheels on your car that belong to someone else and having to ask permission whenever you want to drive. It's the same thing.
• deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
• comprev 5y ago
  >My latest MacBook was four years old and was starting to feel a bit bloated and slow. It felt like a time to get a new one. #FirstWorldProblems right here! Seriously, a few hours doing a data backup and clean OS install would make the laptop feel snappy again...
• bluenose69 5y ago
  I made the reverse switch, many years ago. I made the switch because macOS lets me use the commercial products I need to deal with administrators (MS word, excel, mainly), while also letting me use unix. As I understand it, modern windows environments provide a linux layer, and so they would be a viable choice now, except if you want your desktop to integrate easily with other apple products. One thing I don't miss about linux is the level of fiddling that it required. At one point linux was the only alternative to expensive workstations (betraying my age here) and so it was worth the pain of rebuilding the kernel, messing with code to get sound cards to work, etc. But the 1990s are over: you can get good power on a desktop without much expense, and if you know unix, you can hook up to large clusters in any academic environment, for computations that take days or weeks to complete. Although I respect those who use linux desktop environments, I have stopped recommending it, at least to those more interested in getting work done than in exploring operating system mechanics.
• Octabrain 5y ago
  My story: I did exactly the opposite From Linux to MacOS. And this after more than a decade of using Linux for my work and my desktop. Everything began because I started to have battery and dock station issues with Fedora running on the Dell laptop that my previous employer provided me with. Then I asked IT and they suggested and somehow convinced me to try a Macbook pro and after debating with myself I finally did it. I struggled for a bit because of the brain muscle and all the habits in terms of configuration but I eventually adapted to it. At home, I happily continued using Linux. Even I bought a new Thinkpad not so long ago (p14s Gen1 with Ryzen 7 pro) and installed Linux right away as always. The performance was decent but I had many issues with my dock station (in my setup at home), suspend and some system crashes due to the GPU driver (Over Ubuntu and Fedora). I finally got tired and bought a MacBook pro for personal usage too. I would like to summarize a few points that pushed me on my decision apart from the issue I mentioned: - At this point of my life, I only want technical challenges on my work (DevOps Engineer), not in my personal computer. I got sick of upgrading the kernel and having to spent a couple of hours every now and then fixing something. I just want to turn on a button and type. That's it. - Also tired of the elitism of the Linux community in general. That feeling of superiority I've detected in many forums from people that presumes of using that twisted distro or Windows Manager. - Also tired of the huge amount of toxicity and fanaticism (systemd rants, Canonical/Ubuntu sucks, this and that). - The quality of the laptop (material and display). Mac devices are expensive. I spent on mine 2800£ but I think it worths the investment comparing it with any of the numerous Dell/Acer/Thinkpads I've owned before. - Lack of software. Apart from computers, I like to make music. Options like Cubase are not available for Linux. - From a users perspective, the philosophy of 'everything has to be free' (free in terms of price). Note: Any of the previous points are just *personal* appreciations and conclusions and just have changed things in terms of personal tooling. For infrastructure I managed, Linux forever. Maybe (and probably) I am not right or being unfair but ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.
  • PeterWhittaker 5y ago
    Our stories are similar. +1000.
• _aavaa_ 5y ago
  No mention of Albert[1] anywhere in the article. It's the real replacement for spotlight. --- [1] https://albertlauncher.github.io/installing/ https://albertlauncher.github.io/installing/
• gravstar 5y ago
  Linux lost when it decided users didnt need to know 1. What a computer is. 2. How a computer works. From the article: "This means that the most important choice you have at the start of your Linux journey is to determine the desktop environment you want to try..." You are the reason the world is breaking.
• hack-news 5y ago
  This website and its astroturfed opinions are a sad joke.
• taylodl 5y ago
  I won't switch from Mac OS to Linux because of Logic Pro. Are there DAWs available for Linux? Yes, and I don't like them. Are there DAWs I'd be willing to use other than Logic Pro? Absolutely! But that doesn't help my situation: 1.) They only run on Windows or Mac OS 2.) They're considerably more expensive Having said that, there are some people who really like Reaper. I keep trying it and I keep going back to Logic Pro - and that's what keeps me on Mac OS. Bottom line? It's the application software that will determine which OS you run.
• cj76 5y ago
  I switched to Linux after 20 years of Windows! Linux is just fine, I don't want it to become the best OS (already is)
• Black101 5y ago
  Some distros are far less buggy then others... IE: I don't have any issues in Arch, but I did with Manjaro (often there was bugs that prevented updates to complete successfully).
• midrus 5y ago
  You'll be back sooner than you think. Linux on the desktop has tons of problems, some of itself, some of the hardware you have to use with it, specially if we're talking about laptops. Using Linux on the desktop is like trying to use Mac OS for your servers. Just don't. Save yourself a lot of pain. I also dislike many things about Mac os and apple in general, but the alternatives aren't any better.
• bishop77 5y ago
  Around 2015 I did the exact opposite. I still manage linux servers but gave up the desktop experience in favour of macOS. The main reasons were: 1. Inconsistent UI experience (GTK/QT). For me screen aesthetics is important, I spent countless hours configuring my desktop (theming, matching icons, recompiling the FreeType package just to enable the then-patented font hinting, etc). But even then some applications were somehow different: OpenOffice/Firefox for example brought their own rendering engine. While this issue has been solved to a certain degree, I still don't see that level of polishing as in macOS. Certain niche distros (e.g. ElementaryOS) try to lure users with carefully selected (otherwise very fine!) screenshots but it takes just a few clicks to see that the whole thing is utterly broken. 2. Related to the previous point: handling HIDPI monitors. Again, GTK/QT/slightly exotic applications have to be configured separately and even then it is a hit-and-miss. 3. The messy state of sleep/hibernation. When I raise this issue, I'm always told that this is not a Linux issue but the buggy implementation of the ACPI specs by the hardware vendors. Well, as the WINE team managed to reimplement WIN32 bug-by-bug, I think it's not far fetched to ask the kernel driver guys to circumvent these incomplete/buggy firmwares.