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Can you please explain what exactly you get from the Apple desktop you don't with any of those options? I'm currently forced onto a mac for work and I find it l

Can you please explain what exactly you get from the Apple desktop you don't with any of those options? I'm currently forced onto a mac for work and I find it lacking in almost every way other than an ever so slight advantage in beauty. So besides dpi-scaling issues linux is known for, whats the draw? Some hotkey that does a thing? Some visual candy? Smoothness in transitions? Whatever it is, it's hard for me to imagine it being worth the tradeoff. I can't even name desktop workspaces on a Mac! I'm reviewing the "new features" section on Monterey: https://www.apple.com/macos/monterey/features/ https://www.apple.com/macos/monterey/features/ and I'm not seeing much other than a few known areas (multi-device support if you bought fully into the apple ecosystem, etc). With most "I tried linux desktop" people it's a problem of DE/WM, but you seem to be beyond that so I'm genuinely curious.

runjake 5y ago
> Can you please explain what exactly you get from the Apple desktop you don't with any of those options? A more cohesive experience across the desktop and applications, eg.: - The look and feel is uniform. Admittedly somewhat less so, these days now that the Apple Human Interface Guidelines are largely ignored. - Mac apps and generally more stable. - Mac apps generally have more features. - The Mac apps I use generally tend to tie into the hardware (hw acceleration, drivers, etc) much better. The benefit of controlling the vertical, I suppose. - The keyboard shortcuts both exist and are the same across apps. - The design patterns. - The AppleScript/x-callback-url, etc). - Third party apps generally tend to fit well into the above. On Linux, almost everybody seems to have their own ideas on how an app should be arranged. With full desktop environments, like GNOME and KDE lessen this, but it's still really, really common. That said, my money is still on Linux and other open source OSes, because I don't want a single company telling me what I can and can't do.
- emkoemko 5y ago
  yea like Mac not supporting Vulkan... or that Safari browser we have to make constant workarounds for, its the new IE5
  - bni 5y ago
    MoltenVK is integrated into Vulkan now so Vulkan works fine on Mac
  - rimliu 5y ago
    You mean Safari, that browser that does not kill your battery?
jolux 5y ago
Not OP but I have extensive experience as a user of all three major desktop systems. Aqua, the macOS desktop, is by far the most stable and consistent, and in my experience the most usable and powerful as well. A few things that stand out about it to me vs GNOME 3, KDE Plasma, Xfce, LXDE, and whatever the Windows interface is called: - The consistency of the menu system, and being able to search and use the menus of any app from the keyboard with shift-cmd-?. This is like having Emacs M-x or Sublime/VSCode shift-cmd-P in every desktop app. - Being able to assign custom keyboard shortcuts for any menu option in any app. - Emacs keybindings for editing text in every text field (including on the web). I believe GNOME Tweaks is supposed to do this, but I could never get it to work reliably and universally like macOS. - Native app ecosystem. Third-party Mac software is generally the most polished, though not quite as much exists as for Windows. - System animations. This is a small one, but it makes things more fun and makes the whole system feel fluid and “organic,” for lack of a better term.
zaptheimpaler 5y ago
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- leephillips 5y ago
  Linux works fine for me, but I don’t use a desktop. I totally agree with you that they are disasters, with poor documentation and multiple conflicting ways to make settings. Firefox crashing is probably a Firefox problem. You can set the scaling to be anything you want on X, just set the Xft.dpi number in your .Xresources file. One problem with your Hackintosh install is that it’s closed source, no? As far as you know it’s exfiltrating your financial information to China.
- KptMarchewa 5y ago
  >When people say Linux just works fine for them I genuinely think like am I crazy or cursed or something? People who do that generally don't use Gnome, but i3/swaywm/xmonad and multitude of tools where you're in control what happens.

runjake 5y ago

> Can you please explain what exactly you get from the Apple desktop you don't with any of those options? A more cohesive experience across the desktop and applications, eg.: - The look and feel is uniform. Admittedly somewhat less so, these days now that the Apple Human Interface Guidelines are largely ignored. - Mac apps and generally more stable. - Mac apps generally have more features. - The Mac apps I use generally tend to tie into the hardware (hw acceleration, drivers, etc) much better. The benefit of controlling the vertical, I suppose. - The keyboard shortcuts both exist and are the same across apps. - The design patterns. - The AppleScript/x-callback-url, etc). - Third party apps generally tend to fit well into the above. On Linux, almost everybody seems to have their own ideas on how an app should be arranged. With full desktop environments, like GNOME and KDE lessen this, but it's still really, really common. That said, my money is still on Linux and other open source OSes, because I don't want a single company telling me what I can and can't do.

emkoemko 5y ago
yea like Mac not supporting Vulkan... or that Safari browser we have to make constant workarounds for, its the new IE5
- bni 5y ago
  MoltenVK is integrated into Vulkan now so Vulkan works fine on Mac
- rimliu 5y ago
  You mean Safari, that browser that does not kill your battery?

jolux 5y ago

Not OP but I have extensive experience as a user of all three major desktop systems. Aqua, the macOS desktop, is by far the most stable and consistent, and in my experience the most usable and powerful as well. A few things that stand out about it to me vs GNOME 3, KDE Plasma, Xfce, LXDE, and whatever the Windows interface is called: - The consistency of the menu system, and being able to search and use the menus of any app from the keyboard with shift-cmd-?. This is like having Emacs M-x or Sublime/VSCode shift-cmd-P in every desktop app. - Being able to assign custom keyboard shortcuts for any menu option in any app. - Emacs keybindings for editing text in every text field (including on the web). I believe GNOME Tweaks is supposed to do this, but I could never get it to work reliably and universally like macOS. - Native app ecosystem. Third-party Mac software is generally the most polished, though not quite as much exists as for Windows. - System animations. This is a small one, but it makes things more fun and makes the whole system feel fluid and “organic,” for lack of a better term.

zaptheimpaler 5y ago

leephillips 5y ago
Linux works fine for me, but I don’t use a desktop. I totally agree with you that they are disasters, with poor documentation and multiple conflicting ways to make settings. Firefox crashing is probably a Firefox problem. You can set the scaling to be anything you want on X, just set the Xft.dpi number in your .Xresources file. One problem with your Hackintosh install is that it’s closed source, no? As far as you know it’s exfiltrating your financial information to China.
KptMarchewa 5y ago
>When people say Linux just works fine for them I genuinely think like am I crazy or cursed or something? People who do that generally don't use Gnome, but i3/swaywm/xmonad and multitude of tools where you're in control what happens.