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I’ve given strong thought to switching away from macOS. I too have been a Max user all my life, a Macintosh Plus being the first computer in our house. I would

I’ve given strong thought to switching away from macOS. I too have been a Max user all my life, a Macintosh Plus being the first computer in our house. I would get fed up at Apple’s hardware choices or its limitations on users. I have had a dozen Linux computers with various systems on them. I don’t know if it’s because they were Dell machines, or if it’s an Ubuntu thing, but I have had almost every single one turn into a brick after a Canonical-issued update. The kind of brick where you have to boot into the boot loader and into single user mode (?) and start issuing arcane commands to try to recover your system with some old kernel. The thing that keeps me on my Mac is that I can mess around with Unix computing all day, and then go back to being with done when I want to get back to using my computer. I don’t feel confident like that with Linux.

fanatic2pope 4y ago
My experience is that what holds Linux back is NVidia. Their proprietary drivers work great when you first install them, but inevitably break on update bringing you to a text mode emergency command line. When I made the switch to Linux in 2018 I made the conscious decision to avoid Nvidia hardware and it has worked out really well.
- dagmx 4y ago
  NVidia have moved most of the driver stack on to device local firmware instead. The parts of their driver that interface with the GPU are now largely open source as a result. Of course this only applies to more recent GPUs so doesn’t invalidate your comment
  - chupasaurus 4y ago
    Only if you think that firmware doesn't "interface with the GPU", 2 biggest parts of their driver are that and profiles for games/apps (which are accessible by design though), and they've open-sourced the loader of firmware recently.
troad 4y ago
I'm sorry to hear about your experience! I feel like noting that my primary driver has been Kubuntu on an (nvidia) laptop for a few years now, and it's been the most pleasant experience. Sure, you get rough edges every now and again, but I was honestly getting rougher edges on the Mac (it's been a long time since they 'just worked', alas). Certainly no involuntary grub prompts to date, thankfully! Happy as a clam with my Linux laptop as a daily driver, including for gaming (!) and work.
opan 4y ago
You might like Guix System or NixOS for their concept of "generations" and easy rollbacks. It's pretty hard to break your system majorly. At worst you roll back and then figure out what broke (when you feel like it), and then you can even do partial upgrades and skip certain packages if they caused issues after an upgrade.

fanatic2pope 4y ago

My experience is that what holds Linux back is NVidia. Their proprietary drivers work great when you first install them, but inevitably break on update bringing you to a text mode emergency command line. When I made the switch to Linux in 2018 I made the conscious decision to avoid Nvidia hardware and it has worked out really well.

dagmx 4y ago
NVidia have moved most of the driver stack on to device local firmware instead. The parts of their driver that interface with the GPU are now largely open source as a result. Of course this only applies to more recent GPUs so doesn’t invalidate your comment
- chupasaurus 4y ago
  Only if you think that firmware doesn't "interface with the GPU", 2 biggest parts of their driver are that and profiles for games/apps (which are accessible by design though), and they've open-sourced the loader of firmware recently.

troad 4y ago

I'm sorry to hear about your experience! I feel like noting that my primary driver has been Kubuntu on an (nvidia) laptop for a few years now, and it's been the most pleasant experience. Sure, you get rough edges every now and again, but I was honestly getting rougher edges on the Mac (it's been a long time since they 'just worked', alas). Certainly no involuntary grub prompts to date, thankfully! Happy as a clam with my Linux laptop as a daily driver, including for gaming (!) and work.

opan 4y ago

You might like Guix System or NixOS for their concept of "generations" and easy rollbacks. It's pretty hard to break your system majorly. At worst you roll back and then figure out what broke (when you feel like it), and then you can even do partial upgrades and skip certain packages if they caused issues after an upgrade.