6 ms·

I guess now is the best time to switch to Linux. MacOS 26 being super sluggish and looking like a soap bubble game for children. Windows becoming a SkyNet OS. M

I guess now is the best time to switch to Linux. MacOS 26 being super sluggish and looking like a soap bubble game for children. Windows becoming a SkyNet OS. Meanwhile Steam just announced their new hardware on SteamOS, emphasizing that users still own their hardware and can install whatever they want.

turtletontine 11mo ago
I’ve been using Linux distros daily for >10years now, and I only get more confident that I made the right choice. Pretty much the only things I miss out on are Microsoft Office and Photoshop. Gaming works astonishingly well on Linux these days with Steam+Proton.
- foobarian 11mo ago
  > Gaming works astonishingly well on Linux these days with Steam+Proton. This alone is the last frontier IMO. It's the only reason I still run Win11 on a gaming PC with a big Nvidia. Take that away and their marketshare will tank.
  - nartho 11mo ago
    I wouldn't call it the last frontier. Gaming works well enough for me to not have to worry about. I am, however, obligated to keep a Windows partition around because I do music production. If there are good DAWs that run natively on Linux, almost all plugins won't run on Linux. Everything plugin that runs as standalone or anything similar is guaranteed to not work on Linux. I am thinking about getting a Mac mini for music production only, seems it's probably the lesser of 2 evils
    - klaussilveira 11mo ago
      Which VSTs you had problems with? Have you tried LinVst?
  - thewebguyd 11mo ago
    Last frontier for gamers. I'm still on macOS for the foreseeable future as long as there's no Lightroom (Classic) or Photoshop on Linux. I'd even settle for CaptureOne or Exposure. DarkTable still isn't there, nor is the UI as easy to work with. Not to mention other business uses and different fields whose apps are exclusively Windows, not even mac and Windows. Windows has a captive audience. Yeah, Linux can and will take some, but it'll still be a small piece of the pie, unfortunately. Everyone else has no choice but to put up with the abuse.
- TremendousJudge 11mo ago
  Is there any video production software that runs on Linux well nowadays?
  - dfxm12 11mo ago
    I've used Shotcut, it's simple and easy: https://github.com/mltframework/shotcut https://github.com/mltframework/shotcut I've tried Kdenlive, but honestly, shotcut met my needs, so I didn't explore it too much: https://invent.kde.org/multimedia/kdenlive https://invent.kde.org/multimedia/kdenlive DaVinci Resolve is also available for linux. I've never used it though.
  - phibz 11mo ago
    Kdenlive isnt bad
  - JeanMii 11mo ago
    All the Davinci software runs well and I consider it class leading in its category of software. Design, sound production and cad are all lacking strong alternatives on Linux.
    - sprkwd 11mo ago
      https://reaper.fm https://reaper.fm has a Linux build.
- fletchowns 11mo ago
  > Gaming works astonishingly well on Linux these days They have certainly made a lot of progress, but there are many of us that will be stuck unless all the new AAA titles are supported. Battlefield 6 is a notable recent example of a wildly popular game that you can't play on a Steam Deck. Seems like it's really just the anti-cheat that is holding things up. I wish every game studio out there didn't have to come up with their own anti-cheat system. Is this something Valve could solve once and for all with their OS & platform? That seems like something that would make the 30% tax a lot more appealing to game studios.
  - netsharc 11mo ago
    I wonder if the solution would be multi-booting. Keep the OS open, but games with anti-cheat would boot out of its own partition, with a secured bootloader, and secured lightweight OS, just enough to load the game..
pjmlp 11mo ago
Until normies start getting fully working GNU/Linux laptops on PC stores, it will be the same migration story since Windows XP days, that gets repeated every single time Microsoft does something folks don't agree with.
- WolfeReader 11mo ago
  They also need tech support. Desktop Linux is in great shape, but most current Desktop Linux users are capable and willing to troubleshoot their own problems.
- thewebguyd 11mo ago
  Yep. And they will ultimately return them or be disappointed when [insert xyz app] doesn't work. Gamers are only one case that's currently being solved. Devs are already solved (except for iOS). Creatives are a different story entirely. If anything, Microsoft's decisions are more likely to boost mac sales than they are to create any kind of meaningful normie migration to Linux. Especially if Apple goes through with the rumored low-cost macbook. That thing will sell like hotcakes, and macOS share is already growing as is. We are many times more likely to see the "Year of the macOS desktop" than we are the "Year of the Linux desktop"
  - pjmlp 11mo ago
    Not every Dev is a UNIX developer, for some reason this misunderstanding keeps being repeated. Proton is a betting on the wrong horse, until Microsoft decides to put an end to it, in whatever way they feel like it. They own Windows, and are one of the biggest publishers in the industry, when grouping all studios they own. Apple margins are too much for economies not on the same level as USA. I do agree with devices being returned, this happened quite often with netbooks.
  - NoGravitas 11mo ago
    Chromebooks seem to be fairly successful, despite [insert xyz app] not working on them.
- LennyHenrysNuts 11mo ago
NexRebular 11mo ago
And as linux is becoming more and more a corpo controlled monoculture, the time has never been better to switch to *BSD and illumos where true freedom awaits.
- sekh60 11mo ago
  You mean the *NIXes that via their license hold dev freedom (and corporate freedom without the forced source publication) over user freedom (the purpose of the GPL)?
anvuong 11mo ago
Unfortunately the most popular distro (Ubuntu - Canonical) is behaving more and more like Microsoft. I updated to 25.10 last week and it decided to ignore my settings, reset the snap priority and reinstall the snap firefox package, all without my consent. I was fed up when Canonical decided to hijack apt to inject their own proprietary closed-source snap packages, now after having dealt with it again and again after each major upgrade, I just switched to Fedora Gnome a few days ago and I'm not missing anything with Ubuntu.
- xeonmc 11mo ago
  Perhaps SteamOS will take up the mantle.
  - WorldMaker 11mo ago
    Or distros taking cues from it like Bazzite.
- neilv 11mo ago
  Corporate ethics-wise, Canonical is vastly better than Microsoft. But I prefer Debian Stable, for reasons both pragmatic and on-principle: https://cdimage.debian.org/debian-cd/current/amd64/iso-dvd/debian-13.1.0-amd64-DVD-1.iso https://cdimage.debian.org/debian-cd/current/amd64/iso-dvd/d... (Or people can go to a confusing download page: https://www.debian.org/distrib/ https://www.debian.org/distrib/ )
  - sekh60 11mo ago
    The Amazon Lens was pretty bad ethically.
    - happymellon 11mo ago
      > Canonical is vastly better than Microsoft. However Canonical apologised, and removed it. Microsoft doubled down, adding more adverts.
  - 11mo ago
BeFlatXIII 11mo ago
IIRC, MacOS 26 sluggishness is a problem with Electron, not a mistake on Apple’s part.
naIak 11mo ago
"MacOS 26 being super sluggish" is the kind of thing I only read here on this website. For me and everybody I know who upgraded to it it's running fine.
- johaugum 11mo ago
  Can confirm, has been flawless for me. I waited until 2 weeks after release to upgrade, possible I avoided some initial friction that way. The only device I’ve found more sluggish after this recent OS upgrade is my Apple Watch Ultra (gen 1). Animations when navigating the OS are noticeably sluggish where the previous version was smooth as butter. This degradation has persisted through multiple minor version updates since, so it seems to be permanent. Disappointing for what is marketed as the most powerful watch in their lineup.
- Gigachad 11mo ago
  Yeah on my M1 it’s running as fast as it ever did. I have experienced a bug on both my personal and work Mac on 26 where the internal screen fails to turn on sometimes when using an external display. Hoping that gets fixed but otherwise I have no issues.
- deafpolygon 11mo ago
  m4 and m4 pro here, runs like butter
- rsynnott 11mo ago
  It was painfully slow if you were using Electron crap for a few weeks, due to an Electron bug. This may have coloured peoples' impressions.
grishka 11mo ago
Linux (with the "traditional" userspace) is a mess on the inside, has always been, and will always be. It blows my mind that there still isn't a universal, easy way to compile binaries that would run on any distro, of any version — something that all other mainstream OSes have solved from day one. Yes, I know that AppImage and Flatpak are a thing. No, they are not the answer, because they, too, all come with their own issues.
- thewebguyd 11mo ago
  There's a reason that Win32 is currently the stable ABI for Linux (via Wine/Proton). And you know what? Tbh, I don't see a problem with that. If it keeps improving and eventually expands beyond gaming and can start running some of the stuff that can't currently (modern office, adobe stuff, etc.) then why not? There's decades of windows-only apps that there's just not enough time or talent in the world to re-create for Linux, so might as well put effort into Windows compatibility and just start running Windows apps.
  - grishka 11mo ago
    I don't disagree with that, but I feel like ReactOS is more promising in this regard, as it reimplements not only win32 API/ABI, but also the NT kernel with its stable API/ABI, so it would allow using Windows drivers as well. I mean, no translation layer is better than even the best translation layer :)
marak830 11mo ago
I switched 3 weeks ago. (First Ubuntu now the badly named POP!_OS), and couldn't be happier. Fast, a slight learning curve(took me a weekend), and I'm back gaming and coding regularly.
sunaookami 11mo ago
Surely 2026 will be the year of the Linux desktop!

turtletontine 11mo ago

I’ve been using Linux distros daily for >10years now, and I only get more confident that I made the right choice. Pretty much the only things I miss out on are Microsoft Office and Photoshop. Gaming works astonishingly well on Linux these days with Steam+Proton.

foobarian 11mo ago
> Gaming works astonishingly well on Linux these days with Steam+Proton. This alone is the last frontier IMO. It's the only reason I still run Win11 on a gaming PC with a big Nvidia. Take that away and their marketshare will tank.
- nartho 11mo ago
  I wouldn't call it the last frontier. Gaming works well enough for me to not have to worry about. I am, however, obligated to keep a Windows partition around because I do music production. If there are good DAWs that run natively on Linux, almost all plugins won't run on Linux. Everything plugin that runs as standalone or anything similar is guaranteed to not work on Linux. I am thinking about getting a Mac mini for music production only, seems it's probably the lesser of 2 evils
  - klaussilveira 11mo ago
    Which VSTs you had problems with? Have you tried LinVst?
- thewebguyd 11mo ago
  Last frontier for gamers. I'm still on macOS for the foreseeable future as long as there's no Lightroom (Classic) or Photoshop on Linux. I'd even settle for CaptureOne or Exposure. DarkTable still isn't there, nor is the UI as easy to work with. Not to mention other business uses and different fields whose apps are exclusively Windows, not even mac and Windows. Windows has a captive audience. Yeah, Linux can and will take some, but it'll still be a small piece of the pie, unfortunately. Everyone else has no choice but to put up with the abuse.
TremendousJudge 11mo ago
Is there any video production software that runs on Linux well nowadays?
- dfxm12 11mo ago
  I've used Shotcut, it's simple and easy: https://github.com/mltframework/shotcut https://github.com/mltframework/shotcut I've tried Kdenlive, but honestly, shotcut met my needs, so I didn't explore it too much: https://invent.kde.org/multimedia/kdenlive https://invent.kde.org/multimedia/kdenlive DaVinci Resolve is also available for linux. I've never used it though.
- phibz 11mo ago
  Kdenlive isnt bad
- JeanMii 11mo ago
  All the Davinci software runs well and I consider it class leading in its category of software. Design, sound production and cad are all lacking strong alternatives on Linux.
  - sprkwd 11mo ago
    https://reaper.fm https://reaper.fm has a Linux build.
fletchowns 11mo ago
> Gaming works astonishingly well on Linux these days They have certainly made a lot of progress, but there are many of us that will be stuck unless all the new AAA titles are supported. Battlefield 6 is a notable recent example of a wildly popular game that you can't play on a Steam Deck. Seems like it's really just the anti-cheat that is holding things up. I wish every game studio out there didn't have to come up with their own anti-cheat system. Is this something Valve could solve once and for all with their OS & platform? That seems like something that would make the 30% tax a lot more appealing to game studios.
- netsharc 11mo ago
  I wonder if the solution would be multi-booting. Keep the OS open, but games with anti-cheat would boot out of its own partition, with a secured bootloader, and secured lightweight OS, just enough to load the game..

pjmlp 11mo ago

Until normies start getting fully working GNU/Linux laptops on PC stores, it will be the same migration story since Windows XP days, that gets repeated every single time Microsoft does something folks don't agree with.

WolfeReader 11mo ago
They also need tech support. Desktop Linux is in great shape, but most current Desktop Linux users are capable and willing to troubleshoot their own problems.
thewebguyd 11mo ago
Yep. And they will ultimately return them or be disappointed when [insert xyz app] doesn't work. Gamers are only one case that's currently being solved. Devs are already solved (except for iOS). Creatives are a different story entirely. If anything, Microsoft's decisions are more likely to boost mac sales than they are to create any kind of meaningful normie migration to Linux. Especially if Apple goes through with the rumored low-cost macbook. That thing will sell like hotcakes, and macOS share is already growing as is. We are many times more likely to see the "Year of the macOS desktop" than we are the "Year of the Linux desktop"
- pjmlp 11mo ago
  Not every Dev is a UNIX developer, for some reason this misunderstanding keeps being repeated. Proton is a betting on the wrong horse, until Microsoft decides to put an end to it, in whatever way they feel like it. They own Windows, and are one of the biggest publishers in the industry, when grouping all studios they own. Apple margins are too much for economies not on the same level as USA. I do agree with devices being returned, this happened quite often with netbooks.
- NoGravitas 11mo ago
  Chromebooks seem to be fairly successful, despite [insert xyz app] not working on them.
LennyHenrysNuts 11mo ago

NexRebular 11mo ago

And as linux is becoming more and more a corpo controlled monoculture, the time has never been better to switch to *BSD and illumos where true freedom awaits.

sekh60 11mo ago
You mean the *NIXes that via their license hold dev freedom (and corporate freedom without the forced source publication) over user freedom (the purpose of the GPL)?

anvuong 11mo ago

Unfortunately the most popular distro (Ubuntu - Canonical) is behaving more and more like Microsoft. I updated to 25.10 last week and it decided to ignore my settings, reset the snap priority and reinstall the snap firefox package, all without my consent. I was fed up when Canonical decided to hijack apt to inject their own proprietary closed-source snap packages, now after having dealt with it again and again after each major upgrade, I just switched to Fedora Gnome a few days ago and I'm not missing anything with Ubuntu.

xeonmc 11mo ago
Perhaps SteamOS will take up the mantle.
- WorldMaker 11mo ago
  Or distros taking cues from it like Bazzite.
neilv 11mo ago
Corporate ethics-wise, Canonical is vastly better than Microsoft. But I prefer Debian Stable, for reasons both pragmatic and on-principle: https://cdimage.debian.org/debian-cd/current/amd64/iso-dvd/debian-13.1.0-amd64-DVD-1.iso https://cdimage.debian.org/debian-cd/current/amd64/iso-dvd/d... (Or people can go to a confusing download page: https://www.debian.org/distrib/ https://www.debian.org/distrib/ )
- sekh60 11mo ago
  The Amazon Lens was pretty bad ethically.
  - happymellon 11mo ago
    > Canonical is vastly better than Microsoft. However Canonical apologised, and removed it. Microsoft doubled down, adding more adverts.
- 11mo ago

BeFlatXIII 11mo ago

IIRC, MacOS 26 sluggishness is a problem with Electron, not a mistake on Apple’s part.

naIak 11mo ago

"MacOS 26 being super sluggish" is the kind of thing I only read here on this website. For me and everybody I know who upgraded to it it's running fine.

johaugum 11mo ago
Can confirm, has been flawless for me. I waited until 2 weeks after release to upgrade, possible I avoided some initial friction that way. The only device I’ve found more sluggish after this recent OS upgrade is my Apple Watch Ultra (gen 1). Animations when navigating the OS are noticeably sluggish where the previous version was smooth as butter. This degradation has persisted through multiple minor version updates since, so it seems to be permanent. Disappointing for what is marketed as the most powerful watch in their lineup.
Gigachad 11mo ago
Yeah on my M1 it’s running as fast as it ever did. I have experienced a bug on both my personal and work Mac on 26 where the internal screen fails to turn on sometimes when using an external display. Hoping that gets fixed but otherwise I have no issues.
deafpolygon 11mo ago
m4 and m4 pro here, runs like butter
rsynnott 11mo ago
It was painfully slow if you were using Electron crap for a few weeks, due to an Electron bug. This may have coloured peoples' impressions.

grishka 11mo ago

Linux (with the "traditional" userspace) is a mess on the inside, has always been, and will always be. It blows my mind that there still isn't a universal, easy way to compile binaries that would run on any distro, of any version — something that all other mainstream OSes have solved from day one. Yes, I know that AppImage and Flatpak are a thing. No, they are not the answer, because they, too, all come with their own issues.

thewebguyd 11mo ago
There's a reason that Win32 is currently the stable ABI for Linux (via Wine/Proton). And you know what? Tbh, I don't see a problem with that. If it keeps improving and eventually expands beyond gaming and can start running some of the stuff that can't currently (modern office, adobe stuff, etc.) then why not? There's decades of windows-only apps that there's just not enough time or talent in the world to re-create for Linux, so might as well put effort into Windows compatibility and just start running Windows apps.
- grishka 11mo ago
  I don't disagree with that, but I feel like ReactOS is more promising in this regard, as it reimplements not only win32 API/ABI, but also the NT kernel with its stable API/ABI, so it would allow using Windows drivers as well. I mean, no translation layer is better than even the best translation layer :)

marak830 11mo ago

I switched 3 weeks ago. (First Ubuntu now the badly named POP!_OS), and couldn't be happier. Fast, a slight learning curve(took me a weekend), and I'm back gaming and coding regularly.

sunaookami 11mo ago

Surely 2026 will be the year of the Linux desktop!