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I'm currently in a phase where I'm deciding if I switch to Linux or MacOS. But it has become clear that staying on Windows is no longer an option. I've been a

I'm currently in a phase where I'm deciding if I switch to Linux or MacOS. But it has become clear that staying on Windows is no longer an option. I've been a Windows user since version 3.0. Maybe even earlier versions since I was using DOS initially. It's sad to see into what they've turned it. Well, they'd just have to stop the spying and it would be somewhat tolerable, but that's not an option for them.

julianeon 3y ago
As someone who’s been on Linux on and off for close to a decade (full time last few years) I’ve noticed something interesting. Now that so many apps have a browser version and prioritize the mobile version, the isolation caused by being on Linux keeps decreasing. Between your phone and your browser, that’s not quite 100% coverage, but it’s very good and improving all the time. You use your phone when you need a work app you can’t get on Linux, and if you can, the browser version of the app. And of course if it natively supports Linux there’s no problem at all. A decade ago, being all Linux was basically untenable. Now I barely have to mention it to people. It’s been a dramatic change in a short time span.
- TheCapeGreek 3y ago
  I've been on linux for the better part of the last 6 years. Legitimately the only times I can recall _not_ being able to do something on Linux were a handful of use cases: - Multiplayer games: Steam Proton largely solves compatibility for a lot of games now, but the included DRM and anti-cheat for some multiplayer games made them unplayable. - Certain specialist tools like Photoshop, some CAD software, etc. Open source in this space is better in compatibility. For the rest of the time I'd do the same as you say: stick to web apps, use the mobile version, etc. I switched to Mac this year because the M1+ battery life is best-in-class for the price, and I sorely needed a cheaper solution for work than an inverter + batteries to survive South Africa's loadshedding. That, and that some Laravel tooling is smoother on macOS than anywhere else these days.
  - pipes 3y ago
    I tried multiple times to use Linux as primary desktop. I gave up. Windows hardware support for consumer devices is just better. And games, especially old games. Linux is amazing , but for a everyday machine. I've given up on Linux, I don't have time to configure it. Also every desktop ui Ive used on it isn't quite as polished as windows.
    - vladvasiliu 3y ago
      > Windows hardware support for consumer devices is just better. YMMV. My run-of-the-mill corporate hp-recommends-windows laptop's webcam was unsupported under Windows for approx. a year after I bought it. Worked OOB on Linux since day one. Ditto for my other run-of-the-mill corporate hp-recommends-windows laptop's intel iGPU: it had a tough time outputting 4k@60Hz over the hp dock. Had to do a weird dance of unplugging and replugging the monitor at just the right time to make it work. Fixed after some Windows update half a year in. 0 issues since day one on Linux. Also, on this particular machine, you better have an external mouse for installing Windows, since it doesn't recognize the touchpad. Ditto for the integrated intel wifi card. Bonus points for Windows insisting on connecting to the internet (the pc doesn't have any onboard wired network). Last I tried, it was win11 22h2. The computer is a 2020 model.
    - iforgotpassword 3y ago
      Hardware is hit or miss. Had very good experience with ThinkPads. I don't get the old games part. This is something where Linux absolutely shines, a lot of old Win9x games run perfectly fine on Wine, but fail on modern Windows for weird reasons. The biggest hurdle is usually DRM and Anti-Cheat, but I guess I'm lucky here because I don't play any competitive multiplayer games but more casual stuff. Also I don't use Nvidia. ;) I just switched completely about a decade ago. Don't even remember what the final straw was. I guess what "helped" was that at the time I was very busy with life and really only had the most basic demands for my computing needs outside of work, so any shortcomings in areas like gaming didn't matter. Basically needed a browser and a text editor. When things got better two or three years down the line, well, it has already been a while since I used Windows, so any shortcomings were just part of life I guess, but also I just figured more and more stuff out over the years. I guess, and that comes down to personal preference, another thing that greatly helped was that I'm just not focused on convenience and somewhat of a minimalist, so I use i3 as the window manager and no further desktop environment. I don't use any file manager but just the terminal. No gvfs, every USB drive gets mounted and unmounted via terminal. I do use NetworkManager but only via nmcli. I guess having grown up on DOS left some impact. It just means less moving parts, so no stupid surprises after an update like "my KDE/gnome file manager suddenly doesn't show any thumb drive I plug in anymore". I don't pretend Linux is ready for the average Joe. More and more people seem to think so, but I wouldn't even give it to my mom even though her only use case really is browsing the web and writing a letter about twice a year.
lynguist 3y ago
The memory management on Linux is worse than in Windows and Mac. Mac has an efficient memory compression and dynamic swap system, Windows also has one, but a little bit less efficient in my personal experience, and on Linux you have to configure zRAM or zSwap and they don’t work as well. You can’t keep memory pages as compressed data in RAM what you can do in Mac and Windows. The out of memory behavior is also very bad on Linux, where it will just lock your system. On Mac it will spill swap to disk as much as you have disk space. That is one anecdote for how Linux has a bit an inferior user experience.
- vladvasiliu 3y ago
  > The out of memory behavior is also very bad on Linux, where it will just lock your system. Don't modern distributions come with the OOM killer? On my Arch system I didn't have to do anything to have the one from systemd.
  - lynguist 3y ago
    My anecdote is this: I had a Ubuntu 20.04 VM from university with 64 GB memory and my process needed 70 GB and it did lock my system. And the anecdote continues: I ran a 55 GB process on a 16 GB Mac and it finished without a problem and without me having to configure anything.
    - vladvasiliu 3y ago
      I don't think Ubuntu 20.04 is considered "modern" in this discussion, though macos did, at the time, already have ram compression. Also, as a curiosity, do you know how much swap there was? Usually, distros only create a limited amount of it. But I agree, as a user, you shouldn't have to worry about that.
    - Agingcoder 3y ago
      You’re comparing apples and oranges here. Independently of the operating system , your 70g process might have an actual working set of 70 g, while the 55g might have had a working set of 1 gig. Furthermore your Vm was running most likely in a shared environment, your swap partition running on shared not super fast io, etc - you may not even have had 64g of ram ( despite your Vm claiming the contrary ). Your Mac on the contrary, has what is says it has.

julianeon 3y ago

As someone who’s been on Linux on and off for close to a decade (full time last few years) I’ve noticed something interesting. Now that so many apps have a browser version and prioritize the mobile version, the isolation caused by being on Linux keeps decreasing. Between your phone and your browser, that’s not quite 100% coverage, but it’s very good and improving all the time. You use your phone when you need a work app you can’t get on Linux, and if you can, the browser version of the app. And of course if it natively supports Linux there’s no problem at all. A decade ago, being all Linux was basically untenable. Now I barely have to mention it to people. It’s been a dramatic change in a short time span.

TheCapeGreek 3y ago
I've been on linux for the better part of the last 6 years. Legitimately the only times I can recall _not_ being able to do something on Linux were a handful of use cases: - Multiplayer games: Steam Proton largely solves compatibility for a lot of games now, but the included DRM and anti-cheat for some multiplayer games made them unplayable. - Certain specialist tools like Photoshop, some CAD software, etc. Open source in this space is better in compatibility. For the rest of the time I'd do the same as you say: stick to web apps, use the mobile version, etc. I switched to Mac this year because the M1+ battery life is best-in-class for the price, and I sorely needed a cheaper solution for work than an inverter + batteries to survive South Africa's loadshedding. That, and that some Laravel tooling is smoother on macOS than anywhere else these days.
- pipes 3y ago
  I tried multiple times to use Linux as primary desktop. I gave up. Windows hardware support for consumer devices is just better. And games, especially old games. Linux is amazing , but for a everyday machine. I've given up on Linux, I don't have time to configure it. Also every desktop ui Ive used on it isn't quite as polished as windows.
  - vladvasiliu 3y ago
    > Windows hardware support for consumer devices is just better. YMMV. My run-of-the-mill corporate hp-recommends-windows laptop's webcam was unsupported under Windows for approx. a year after I bought it. Worked OOB on Linux since day one. Ditto for my other run-of-the-mill corporate hp-recommends-windows laptop's intel iGPU: it had a tough time outputting 4k@60Hz over the hp dock. Had to do a weird dance of unplugging and replugging the monitor at just the right time to make it work. Fixed after some Windows update half a year in. 0 issues since day one on Linux. Also, on this particular machine, you better have an external mouse for installing Windows, since it doesn't recognize the touchpad. Ditto for the integrated intel wifi card. Bonus points for Windows insisting on connecting to the internet (the pc doesn't have any onboard wired network). Last I tried, it was win11 22h2. The computer is a 2020 model.
  - iforgotpassword 3y ago
    Hardware is hit or miss. Had very good experience with ThinkPads. I don't get the old games part. This is something where Linux absolutely shines, a lot of old Win9x games run perfectly fine on Wine, but fail on modern Windows for weird reasons. The biggest hurdle is usually DRM and Anti-Cheat, but I guess I'm lucky here because I don't play any competitive multiplayer games but more casual stuff. Also I don't use Nvidia. ;) I just switched completely about a decade ago. Don't even remember what the final straw was. I guess what "helped" was that at the time I was very busy with life and really only had the most basic demands for my computing needs outside of work, so any shortcomings in areas like gaming didn't matter. Basically needed a browser and a text editor. When things got better two or three years down the line, well, it has already been a while since I used Windows, so any shortcomings were just part of life I guess, but also I just figured more and more stuff out over the years. I guess, and that comes down to personal preference, another thing that greatly helped was that I'm just not focused on convenience and somewhat of a minimalist, so I use i3 as the window manager and no further desktop environment. I don't use any file manager but just the terminal. No gvfs, every USB drive gets mounted and unmounted via terminal. I do use NetworkManager but only via nmcli. I guess having grown up on DOS left some impact. It just means less moving parts, so no stupid surprises after an update like "my KDE/gnome file manager suddenly doesn't show any thumb drive I plug in anymore". I don't pretend Linux is ready for the average Joe. More and more people seem to think so, but I wouldn't even give it to my mom even though her only use case really is browsing the web and writing a letter about twice a year.

lynguist 3y ago

The memory management on Linux is worse than in Windows and Mac. Mac has an efficient memory compression and dynamic swap system, Windows also has one, but a little bit less efficient in my personal experience, and on Linux you have to configure zRAM or zSwap and they don’t work as well. You can’t keep memory pages as compressed data in RAM what you can do in Mac and Windows. The out of memory behavior is also very bad on Linux, where it will just lock your system. On Mac it will spill swap to disk as much as you have disk space. That is one anecdote for how Linux has a bit an inferior user experience.

vladvasiliu 3y ago
> The out of memory behavior is also very bad on Linux, where it will just lock your system. Don't modern distributions come with the OOM killer? On my Arch system I didn't have to do anything to have the one from systemd.
- lynguist 3y ago
  My anecdote is this: I had a Ubuntu 20.04 VM from university with 64 GB memory and my process needed 70 GB and it did lock my system. And the anecdote continues: I ran a 55 GB process on a 16 GB Mac and it finished without a problem and without me having to configure anything.
  - vladvasiliu 3y ago
    I don't think Ubuntu 20.04 is considered "modern" in this discussion, though macos did, at the time, already have ram compression. Also, as a curiosity, do you know how much swap there was? Usually, distros only create a limited amount of it. But I agree, as a user, you shouldn't have to worry about that.
  - Agingcoder 3y ago
    You’re comparing apples and oranges here. Independently of the operating system , your 70g process might have an actual working set of 70 g, while the 55g might have had a working set of 1 gig. Furthermore your Vm was running most likely in a shared environment, your swap partition running on shared not super fast io, etc - you may not even have had 64g of ram ( despite your Vm claiming the contrary ). Your Mac on the contrary, has what is says it has.