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Kinda at a loss for OS/DE at the moment. Lived on Windows for over 2 decades (completed work via a Linux VM). Windows 8 was horrid and Windows 10/11 is hostile

Kinda at a loss for OS/DE at the moment. Lived on Windows for over 2 decades (completed work via a Linux VM). Windows 8 was horrid and Windows 10/11 is hostile towards user experience (etc, etc privacy, but mostly user experience). Used MacOS for half a decade after that and loved the Unix terminal and tight desktop experience but underpowered and overpriced hardware had me running a hackintosh for over half of that time. The move to M1 (and general difficulty maintaining a Hackintosh) means that MacOS is off the table for me. I am currently daily driving Gnome 4 on Fedora and loving it. It has some user application UX issues (like Google Chrome mouse scrolls slowly) and some questionable desktop environment design decisions - but overall a nice place to land. Not quite as nice as MacOS but it gets the job done. It's sad that after 30 years on computers, my user experience has gotten worse - Gnome 4 came along at the perfect time to catch a bunch of MacOS and Windows refugees and I pray the developers push it in a direction where it becomes the most ergonomic desktop environment available on the Desktop - at least for engineers.

nikodunk 5y ago
Same story for me. Landed on Gnome 4x series Fedora after ditching macOS for engineering after a decade. iCloud, iMessage, appleTV etc etc hooks just got too intrusive and made things too unresponsive in my case.
- mulmen 5y ago
  Messages is basically unusable after Big Sur. The new windows are a huge step backwards. Notifications are mind bogglingly broken. Reminder sync with iCloud… doesn’t. Spotlight indexes Time Machine directories, which create more deltas for Time Machine to index, sending the Spotlight service into a feedback loop. Etc, etc, etc. I’m hopeful the next MacOS shakeup is similar to the recent return to sanity in hardware. Apple hardware is finally recovering from Ives’ fever dream. The OS needs saving next.
mulmen 5y ago
The current MacOS desktop environment is, generously, a dumpster fire. But it’s also miles ahead of anything else on the market. The last decade of desktop environments feels like a march backwards, or perhaps even vertical, into some kind of alternate reality where the UI is designed to get in the way instead of enable. Modern desktop environments are a painful death by a thousand cuts. This is a rant but a desktop environment is my hammer. It is the tool I use more than anything else. The experience is sacred. And yet it is defiled annually. I never feel more helpless than the first moments after a MacOS upgrade. Like all my power has been stripped. It hurts.
- YPPH 5y ago
  All I want is macOS with window snapping and a maximise button. Their absence makes shifting from Windows very difficult. I can't understand why these basic features have not been added, yet the OS receives changes that, as you rightly point out, tend to defile the user experience. I can't understand why people would want to make windows full screen in ordinary situations. It seems to be something I would only want to do on rare occasions, given that you lose quick access to the menu bar. Magnet/Rectangle are third-party fixes for the former. But it's a basic function that should be built into the OS.
  - mulmen 5y ago
    To be clear, I think the power in a windowing desktop environment is not having to maximize windows. That’s a compromise for small screens. When I upgraded my 2014 RMBP to Big Sur I lost the ability to compose multiple windows because of the grotesque enlargement of the window header. The ability to snap to fill the screen may be useful on tiny screens but with Mac hardware shouldn’t be as important because the real estate (pixels!) should be there to use and arrange individual windows. Even multiple windows per app. Modern MacOS (post OSX) got away from the classic MacOS (<=9) workflow and now occupies an awkward position of having the worst characteristics of Windows, Gnome, and OSX.
    - YPPH 5y ago
      Sure, but if I want to use one app on my screen and still have access to the menu bar, it means awkwardly dragging the window around to fill gaps. In Windows, it's one click. Similarly, if I want two apps side by side, it's even more awkward. Ideally I would want to avoid wasting pixels by having unfilled areas, so it's a lot of finnicky dragging to make sure they align up. In Windows, it requires two clicks.
      - mulmen 5y ago
        Double click the window header. It will fill the space below the menu bar. Double click again and it will return to the previous size. Agreed snapping would be nice. Windows does this well out of the box. MacOS leaves way too much quality of life to third party apps.
1_player 5y ago
> It has some user application UX issues (like Google Chrome mouse scrolls slowly) Try the "Chromium Wheel Scroll Smoother" extension. It's a hack, but I've managed to make scrolling as fast as Firefox is, which I much prefer.
modo_mario 5y ago
Similar story (tho a bit less than 2 decades) KDE on manjaro here.

nikodunk 5y ago

Same story for me. Landed on Gnome 4x series Fedora after ditching macOS for engineering after a decade. iCloud, iMessage, appleTV etc etc hooks just got too intrusive and made things too unresponsive in my case.

mulmen 5y ago
Messages is basically unusable after Big Sur. The new windows are a huge step backwards. Notifications are mind bogglingly broken. Reminder sync with iCloud… doesn’t. Spotlight indexes Time Machine directories, which create more deltas for Time Machine to index, sending the Spotlight service into a feedback loop. Etc, etc, etc. I’m hopeful the next MacOS shakeup is similar to the recent return to sanity in hardware. Apple hardware is finally recovering from Ives’ fever dream. The OS needs saving next.

mulmen 5y ago

The current MacOS desktop environment is, generously, a dumpster fire. But it’s also miles ahead of anything else on the market. The last decade of desktop environments feels like a march backwards, or perhaps even vertical, into some kind of alternate reality where the UI is designed to get in the way instead of enable. Modern desktop environments are a painful death by a thousand cuts. This is a rant but a desktop environment is my hammer. It is the tool I use more than anything else. The experience is sacred. And yet it is defiled annually. I never feel more helpless than the first moments after a MacOS upgrade. Like all my power has been stripped. It hurts.

YPPH 5y ago
All I want is macOS with window snapping and a maximise button. Their absence makes shifting from Windows very difficult. I can't understand why these basic features have not been added, yet the OS receives changes that, as you rightly point out, tend to defile the user experience. I can't understand why people would want to make windows full screen in ordinary situations. It seems to be something I would only want to do on rare occasions, given that you lose quick access to the menu bar. Magnet/Rectangle are third-party fixes for the former. But it's a basic function that should be built into the OS.
- mulmen 5y ago
  To be clear, I think the power in a windowing desktop environment is not having to maximize windows. That’s a compromise for small screens. When I upgraded my 2014 RMBP to Big Sur I lost the ability to compose multiple windows because of the grotesque enlargement of the window header. The ability to snap to fill the screen may be useful on tiny screens but with Mac hardware shouldn’t be as important because the real estate (pixels!) should be there to use and arrange individual windows. Even multiple windows per app. Modern MacOS (post OSX) got away from the classic MacOS (<=9) workflow and now occupies an awkward position of having the worst characteristics of Windows, Gnome, and OSX.
  - YPPH 5y ago
    Sure, but if I want to use one app on my screen and still have access to the menu bar, it means awkwardly dragging the window around to fill gaps. In Windows, it's one click. Similarly, if I want two apps side by side, it's even more awkward. Ideally I would want to avoid wasting pixels by having unfilled areas, so it's a lot of finnicky dragging to make sure they align up. In Windows, it requires two clicks.
    - mulmen 5y ago
      Double click the window header. It will fill the space below the menu bar. Double click again and it will return to the previous size. Agreed snapping would be nice. Windows does this well out of the box. MacOS leaves way too much quality of life to third party apps.

1_player 5y ago

> It has some user application UX issues (like Google Chrome mouse scrolls slowly) Try the "Chromium Wheel Scroll Smoother" extension. It's a hack, but I've managed to make scrolling as fast as Firefox is, which I much prefer.

modo_mario 5y ago

Similar story (tho a bit less than 2 decades) KDE on manjaro here.