11 ms·

Commercial OSes (both Windows and MacOS) now feel so insanely agenda driven, and the agenda no longer feels like anything close to making the user happy and pro

Commercial OSes (both Windows and MacOS) now feel so insanely agenda driven, and the agenda no longer feels like anything close to making the user happy and productive. For Mac, it feels like Apple wants to leverage what came out of VisionOS and unify the look and feel of mobile and desktop--two things no one asked for. For Windows, it feels like ads for their partners and ensuring they don't fumble the ai/agent transition the way they did with mobile. Linux is SUCH a breath of fresh air. No one wants it to be anything other than what you want it to be. Modern desktop Linux has a much improved out of the box experience with good support for all the hardware I've thrown at it. And Claude Code makes it very fast and trivial to personalize, adapt, automate, etc.

raw_anon_1111 9mo ago
Come back when I can run Linux on a laptop that has 12+ hours battery life, runs fast, that’s lightweight, quiet and doesn’t cause infertility from the heat when I put it on my lap…. Using an x86 laptop in 2025 is like using a flip phone 6 years after the iPhone came out. Of course if you are a gamer, ignore everything I just wrote.
- mecsred 9mo ago
  You mean the framework Ive been running for the past 4 years or so?
  - raw_anon_1111 9mo ago
    You mean the same ones that consistently get bad reviews for being hot, with poor battery life, heavy and sub par screens? https://community.frame.work/t/fw-16-review-the-good-the-bad-the-ugly/56831 https://community.frame.work/t/fw-16-review-the-good-the-bad...
    - smj-edison 9mo ago
      It's important to distinguish between the Framework 13 and the Framework 16. The Framework 16 is by far the most ambitious of the two, and so it has had a lot more issues. I use a Framework 13, and I've loved it. It's light, has a solid frame, and runs Linux great. The battery life isn't great, and the speakers aren't either, but I've been able to mitigate the latter with EasyEffects.
    - mecsred 9mo ago
      If the 16 performs worse in the power efficiency department, that is not great, but it doesnt make my machine run any worse. Calling it heavy is crazy to me, the thing is tiny. If you think it's heavy you'd have trouble using an iPad. The screen thing was a shitty manufacturing issue, they released a kit to fix it, which I luckily didnt need since mine came after they fixed it in production.
  - plagiarist 9mo ago
    I've got a Framework I am not too upset with, but the battery life (especially during sleep) is definitely one of my gripes. I still have yet to try powertop or other tools to optimize, maybe I would be proven wrong.
    - dale_glass 9mo ago
      Sleep just ceased to exist in the last few years and got replaced with an always on, low power mode. I believe the reasoning was partly that suspend to RAM had serious reliability issues due to the complexity of saving the state, partly that people starting expecting cell phone-like performance where eg, mail is always received.
      - mixmastamyk 9mo ago
        Depends. The Intel models still support sleep on Linux (at least up to 12 or 13 gen, AMD boards only nap.
- yoldshaddup 9mo ago
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- greenavocado 9mo ago
  Besides the 12+ hour battery life which is only achievable with ARM processors, everything described can be accomplished easily for the typical slightly above average computer user with Kubuntu today. I installed latest Kubuntu on my old 2015 MacBook Pro and it runs ice cold now when playing YouTube videos with Firefox whereas before it ran hot even with a Mac fan control app
  - raw_anon_1111 9mo ago
    So everything but good battery life is achievable on a portable device? “Besides that, how was the play Mrs. Lincoln?” This isn’t 2015… ARM Macs have been out for six years
    - cogman10 9mo ago
      If you know what to look for, you can also get good battery life. The 268V CPU will give you pretty good battery life.
    - xerox13ster 9mo ago
      Come on, buddy, at this point, nobody could take you seriously. You are attributing to the software and OS a difference that exists because of hardware. You can’t seriously sit here and say Linux battery life on x86 doesn’t reach your par when you’re comparing it to a completely different computing architecture. You’re comparing apples to oranges and complaining the oranges are more sour than the apples. Run Asahi Linux and tell me how it goes.
      - raw_anon_1111 9mo ago
        I don’t care why it’s better. Whose fault is it that Linux gets worse battery life on every computer that also runs Windows or MacOS?
        redeeman 9mo ago
        it doesnt on thinkpad p16s
- xerox13ster 9mo ago
  Given that this is your stance and demands for laptop hardware I have to assume that you have never once participated in the laptop market prior to the M1 releasing? That’s the only way your unrealistic expectations make sense. Of course, people have been parroting that about Linux on laptops for over a decade. I never understood it, since I’ve never had any significant issues with Linux on my laptops.
  - raw_anon_1111 9mo ago
    Yes and I also had a flip phone before the iPhone came out and a 90 pound CRT before large CRTs got affordable. In fact my first computer was a 1Mhz Apple //e with 128KB of RAM.
    - xerox13ster 9mo ago
      I’m not sure what your point is? You were ahead of the curve on displays and behind the curve on phones and I guess congrats on the 2e start, I had an early Mac. What does this have to do with the price of CPU cycles in clamshell PCs? You abstained until ARM because you could see the future and you knew that the specs you demanded we’re gonna be available eventually?
      - raw_anon_1111 9mo ago
        My point is that because something is acceptable before something else came along better doesn’t mean it’s acceptable now. Would you have been okay if Android phones had still been BlackBerry clones 7 years after the iPhone came out?
        xerox13ster 9mo ago
        I don’t know what to say to that other than I pity that mindset.
        raw_anon_1111 9mo ago
- deleted 9mo ago
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- prezk 9mo ago
  Linux will run on most platforms, so just pick up a fast, lightweight laptop, and select a conservative power profile for longer battery life and less heat, and don't run 32-thread machine learning jobs on it. A 12-hour laptop battery life is a little bit of a red herring: yes, you can get it on efficient ultrabooks and MacBooks, with light use like web browsing or office work, on low brightness and minimal background apps. This is true on MacOS, Windows and Linux. The first two may be better at handling low power modes on hardware peripherals, but OTOH on Linux I have a better control over background tasks. I have an absolute trash travel laptop from last decade, running Fedora Linux, and it lasts for multiple days if I keep it mostly closed and just open it for whatever browsing/editing I need on the road.
  - raw_anon_1111 9mo ago
    And how many laptops running Linux are light, power efficient, fast, quiet with good battery life? My 16 inch M3 MacBook Pro runs 5 hours at 80% brightness doing development with my USB powered (video and power from one USB cord) portable monitor. The Mac battery is powering the monitor https://a.co/d/gHqpcs3 https://a.co/d/gHqpcs3
    - prezk 9mo ago
      Pretty much every laptop on the planet will run Linux. Maybe your optics are tinted because you seem to be a Mac person, and Linux support for newer Macs has known issues with low power modes. I note how your 12+ hour claim was reduced to 5 hours when you actually put it to real work. It's still impressive, of course, but 5 hours aren't out of reach for Ryzen laptops either. BTW, I have a RISC-V platform with 8 1.6GHz CPUs that uses under 5W under full load; on your 100Wh battery it would last for 20 hours. It's not a complete system, and performance lags behind Apple/Intel CPUs, but I think in few years RISC-V may take a bite out of both.
      - raw_anon_1111 9mo ago
        It’s not “running Linux” that’s the issue. It’s running Linux and getting good battery lifez And a 1.6Ghz RISC V CPU isn’t exactly “fast” in 2026 or even 2021. You noted that it was 5 hours when powering a second monitor from its USB port. Not just displaying video from the USB port, the monitor is getting power from the USB port. How long do you think your 5 hour laptop would last powering an external display - again not just video out, also supplying power?
- tazjin 9mo ago
  Xiaomi, Honor and Huawei make ARM-based notebooks like that. The closest to your description is probably the Qingyun line of laptops.
- Rayosay 9mo ago
  I think that the ThinkPad X13s Gen1 might meet these requirements. It is my favorite ARM Linux laptop I've ever used. It has great support in Debian 13 (trixie), and it feels pretty smooth and fast. It doesn't have any fans, stays cool, and I regularly get a full day's worth of battery life out of it with margin to spare (10-12 hours). It's better than the newer Snapdragon X1 Elite based ThinkPads, in my opinion, even though it isn't quite as fast because it is passively cooled, is easily fast enough that I've never noticed it feeling "slow", has good driver support in mainline Linux and Mesa (which took a few years to be fully worked out, but is there now), and it's readily available for a good price (on eBay).
  - oliwarner 9mo ago
    Have you managed to get sleep states to work? I'd love mine but it never sleeps properly. Ubuntu but I'd change for sleep.
    - Rayosay 9mo ago
      I haven't really played around with that much, sorry. I don't typically use sleep on my laptops. I prefer to either hibernate or just shutdown and start up again when I need it. I'd guess that the X13s hardware support in Ubuntu is likely as good as Debian, and switching probably wouldn't help you much. I have noticed that newer kernel versions (notably 6.12 and later) and the latest firmware (as of sometime last year) really fixed a lot of little issues for the X13s. That probably makes a bigger difference than the distro. I'd check to see which versions you're using.
  - zekrioca 9mo ago
    It seems this laptop is not available any longer. Are there any ARM alternatives you are aware of?
    - Rayosay 9mo ago
      I'm hoping that the new Snapdragon X2 Elite based laptops coming out this year will beat it. Qualcomm seems to have been trying to upstream driver support for them earlier than the X1. Then it's up to what kinds of laptops OEMs offer with them. Personally I'd still just get a used ThinkPad X13s Gen 1 on eBay at this point if I were going to buy another one today because they're available for around $400, and I don't see anything better that's passively cooled, with great battery life, and great Linux support available at the moment. I hope there will be a better, faster alternative in the near future. I'd gladly upgrade.
- bee_rider 9mo ago
  Why would anyone come back? Nobody is bothered by you having a device that you like, and nobody cares if you replace it. People without this particular 12 hour battery life requirement (which is quite niche, most of us live near plugs) are talking about what works for them.
  - cocoto 9mo ago
    Battery life is the best selling point of MacBooks and the reason these are selling like crazy. I’m a full time Linux user and I’m even considering buying a macbook and running a Linux VM full time because of the battery.
    - bee_rider 9mo ago
      Just to be clear this is entirely a response to what I have in the parentheses, right? Ok, perhaps it is not niche. I don’t know. I have never had to use a laptop for 12 hours without any ability to recharge but if that’s a common use case I’m happy that folks are finding a way to satisfy.
      - bigstrat2003 9mo ago
        No it's pretty niche. Most people don't have a need for super long battery life.
    - pjmlp 9mo ago
      They certainly aren't in Europe, Africa or Asia, as not everyone has the income to afford Apple prices.
  - palata 9mo ago
    I am a Linux fanboy and I totally agree that I am almost always near a plug and don't need that kind of battery life. But when I can go for days on my work Macbook without charging (and I am a developer, so I do compile stuff), I kinda wish I could have that on Linux, too. And again, I don't need it. Just like I don't need a fast Internet connection, but well... :-).
- rwyinuse 9mo ago
  I love my expensive Macbook at work, but at home old my old Thinkpad running Linux is a godsend. The performance is perfectly adequate for all my daily non-work needs, battery lasts several hours, and since the thing has little monetary value, I can be pretty careless with it, in an environment with small kids running around and doing random things. At this rate, I think it will last me well into 2030's. I'm not going to buy a new Macbook with my own money as long as I can't install Linux on it. I don't want perfectly fine machines to turn into e-waste, or at least become insecure once the original manufacturer decides not to offer OS updates anymore.
  - wwweston 9mo ago
    Pre-lenovo or post? any particular model?
- everdrive 9mo ago
  >is like using a flip phone 6 years after the iPhone came out. I was doing this and it was great. I only had to get a smart phone for work, and I hate the stupid thing.
- oliwarner 9mo ago
  Like the ThinkPad T14s or any other Snapdragon X Elite, or better? Apple chips are great in this space but they're not alone.
- faust201 9mo ago
  One good thing is choice. You are free to use macOS or even windows. But this battery argument is bull shit 15 years ago it was so difficult to find charging points. Not now. I have never ever been in a situation the I needed to be away from charging for > 6 hours. 6-10 hours is really possible. If your working or life demands that then pity you. I have better life/work. And again choice. You are free to use macOS or even windows.
  - raw_anon_1111 9mo ago
    My “work life” involves business travel - consulting. My personal life involves month long stints of me working outside the home and even at home, I am sometimes working on the patio enjoying 80 degree weather in the middle of winter in Florida…
    - faust201 9mo ago
      > travel - consulting That's why pity
      - raw_anon_1111 9mo ago
        It’s really nice - I get miles and hotel points I can use for personal travel and I can extend my work trips and bring my wife along and make it a weekend getaway. I pay for my wife out of pocket for the flight.
- RiverCrochet 9mo ago
  Most of Linux's laptop woes is due to two things: A. ACPI which is a sprawling, overengineered mess created by Microsoft, Intel, and Toshiba, and B. ACPI-specific things like sleep and power being tested only for Windows B is a direct result of two things: 1) crappy outsourced firmware developers, and 2) Microsoft's 1990s strategy of disallowing OEMs from offering systems with other operating systems preinstalled. So, not really Linux's fault. If the interfaces that controlled all the laptop goodies were exposed as normal hardware (and documented) instead of gatekept behind ACPI methods that have to be written by firmware vendors that can often barely spell the menu options correct in the setup screens, then this issue would not exist. UEFI is ACPI's successor and carries on this legacy. It's disappointing that it's seeping into the ARM world.
  - timschmidt 9mo ago
    > If the interfaces that controlled all the laptop goodies were exposed as normal hardware (and documented) instead of gatekept behind ACPI methods that have to be written by firmware vendors that can often barely spell the menu options correct in the setup screens, then this issue would not exist. > UEFI is ACPI's successor and carries on this legacy. It's disappointing that it's seeping into the ARM world. Arm (and Risc-V and other arches) Linux has https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Devicetree https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Devicetree instead of ACPI, which is better in that it declaratively documents the hardware in a system and how to access it. However, the hardware support which can be found in the Arm ecosystem is in no way better than that for x86 laptops. Many SoC manufacturers still don't put any effort into upstreaming drivers or device trees, many devices are still only supported by tossing a single release of a heavily patched kernel over the corporate wall and then forgetting about them.
- lpcvoid 9mo ago
  Just buy any modern Laptop? What you describe hasn't been an issue for at least ten years now.
  - azangru 9mo ago
    > any modern Laptop When I looked up Dell Pro Max 16, I found a thread complaining that its camera doesn't work: https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=307529 https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=307529 And there are numerous other reports of how various modern laptops have various problems under linux. So no, "any modern laptop" is not a good recommendation. It should be specific models.
    - topocite 9mo ago
      I have two laptops running linux. One is a MSI gaming laptop with RTX card that no one would recommend for linux. I had to try about 10 distros before I settled on linux mint. Everything else had some problem but the driver manager on linux mint made setting up the RTX so flawless. After 8 months of use, it is the best machine I have ever used. If I had just stuck with my old favorite KDE neon though I would have been posting on how not to get MSI if you want to use linux.
- nhhvhy 9mo ago
  I recently switched to Debian on my laptop (Zephyrus G14) because it was the only way I could get it to NOT run into the problems you described. Went from ~2 hours of battery life to 10, and no more of the constant jet engine level fan activity I experienced with windows.
- bigfatkitten 9mo ago
  I was doing that on my Thinkpad X220 a decade ago.
- bigstrat2003 9mo ago
  Bro I don't care how long the battery life is. I use my laptop plugged in 90% of the time. The portability is so I can change what location I'm sitting at, not so I can be unplugged constantly.
  - palata 9mo ago
    I am a Linux fanboy. But man, when you try the battery life on the latest Macbooks... it can last for days of work without charging.
  - distances 9mo ago
    It's the same for me. I understand that people do want to use them without plugging in, but I would imagine at least most developers prefer external screens, right? For me the battery is good enough when it can last two back-to-back meetings without me getting worried, so about 2.5 hours. Otherwise it stays plugged to USB-C.
    - raw_anon_1111 9mo ago
      I have a portable external screen that I carry in my backpack when I travel and when I work away from home. https://a.co/d/6P7gfGA https://a.co/d/6P7gfGA And this stand Metal Tablet Stand, a Portable... https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0C4KH2GH3 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0C4KH2GH3 The monitor is both powered and the video comes from one USB cord. My MacBook Pro can run 5-6 hours while powering the monitor. I couldn’t do that if the laptop by itself only last 3 hours. Every now and then I use my iPad as a third monitor.
al_borland 9mo ago
I find it so odd that Apple put so much weight behind the VisionOS design, rolling it out to all platforms, considering so few people have Vision Pro. The justification for bringing some iOS ideas to macOS made sense, because everyone knows how to use iOS and is familiar with those conventions. I’m curious if we’ll see another major shift with the new deign lead, or if the higher ups will want to run with Liquid Glass for a while after so much investment, and not wanting to alienate users by radically changing design direction too often. Or if Liquid Glass is here to stay as long as we have Vision Pro, because VR/AR demand that style of UI, so everything else needs to fall in line for consistency’s sake. I think I’d be more apt to switch to Linux if it wasn’t for all the mobile integration macOS and iOS have. Giving that up is a tough sell. It also means finding new solutions for managing photos, music, notes, and a bunch of other things. I also struggle to find non-Apple hardware I find acceptable. I’ve used Linux on and off for over 20 years, and in the past few years is gotten to the point where I think I could daily drive it with little to no compromise, in a bubble. But mobile really bursts that bubble.
- xerox13ster 9mo ago
  KDE Connect
- layer8 9mo ago
  It’s not actually really the same as the visionOS design, merely inspired by it.
- Wowfunhappy 9mo ago
  > I find it so odd that Apple put so much weight behind the VisionOS design, rolling it out to all platforms, considering so few people have Vision Pro. I suspect they began working on Liquid Glass before the Vision Pro was publicly unveiled, so they didn't know what the public response would be. What I honestly find more baffling is that they thought the Vision Pro would sell well. It just isn't a good product. Perhaps they're still banking on a future where the Vision Pro becomes a pair of real glasses. In which case, Liquid Glass is the type of interface you'd want to have.
  - 9mo ago
t43562 9mo ago
Even within the range of Linux distros there are some that feel more agenda-driven than others. That's the absolute wonder of it. One can sidestep the flamewars and just use another distro that suits likeminded people. On the other hand I think this makes it difficult to provide a perfect experience - you have to stay closer to the herd if you want trouble free computing. You have the choice.
- nwallin 9mo ago
  I think it's great that there are Linux projects where the people in the project are obviously unhinged fanatical idealists sent on a mission by god to do <whatever> in the One True Way. I wouldn't use any of those projects, but it's great that they exist, and sometimes their good ideas percolate out to projects that I do use. Like fine, they're gonna make a distro that only uses software under one of the FSF's free as in freedom copy-left open source licenses, not just excluding closed source software, but also binary blob device firmware and software distributed under one of those filthy permissive licenses. That's great. It's fucking unusable, but it's awesome that it exists and it's great that they're doing it.
  - herdymerzbow 9mo ago
    Curious to hear which good ideas had their origin in a distro run by fanatical idealists. Not asking for evidence to try and disprove you. Genuinely curious!
    - t43562 9mo ago
      Framing it as "fanatical" is a way of not understanding people's needs sometimes and that makes it harder for oneself to admit when they got it right - after all you don't want to find that you've turned into "a fanatic." I like rolling distributions. Fedora was my longtime ship and at the beginning it was a pain because I always wanted to build something that wasn't available - the newest version of something like python. Then you wouldn't be able to build it because it had dependencies that needed to be newer also than what Fedora had. I spent countless hours sorting out dependencies, clashes with the versions that were already installed that I couldn't remove, building and rebuilding things to keep them working and fixing @#$%@ SELinux permissions issues that made things fail extremely mysteriously. I tried making my own updated RPMs to ease the dependency management but that turned out to be so hard to do that I gave up in frustration - some tiny mistake and you have to go through almost the whole process again to get an updated RPM. One would have mysterious failures in the RPM build process that were extremely difficult to debug. Then RedHat fixed the problem in an even worse way: by releasing new versions at a crazy rate. The upgrade process never seems to go smoothly for me. Ubuntu was/is more uptodate generally but it's based on exactly the same strategy. Packaging on Ubuntu seems to me to be an even more incredible mess of confusion with documentation that doesn't help one iota. I tried various things but the one that stuck with me was Artix. It's rolling and it sometimes breaks e.g. today when the new nvidia 590 drivers installed and they don't work with my old card. The upside is that it's always at the bleeding edge and I rarely need to build things myself - and if I do I usually already have the required dependencies. Packages also install with all the development headers etc and for me that is just a luxurious simplicity. I could also understand the PKGBUILD files and use makepkg without even needing to see the documentation. It just works. It also doesn't use systemd. That's a preference you might call fanatical but I did after all get off windows to use Linux partly so that "the man" wouldn't tell me what to like so why would I accept that kind of thing on Linux? I use dinit instead and that is what I would have liked systemd to be - a service manager with a simple file format that is a million times easier to write and more reliable than system V init scripts and the ability to use it for running things in a user session as well .... and nothing else. Anyhow this is all driven by my personality - I like trying out new things. I'm not fantatical, I think?? My computer is a toy for my mind. My work machines can be "reliable."
blauditore 9mo ago
>unify the look and feel of mobile and desktop Lol, that's what Microsoft tried 10+ years ago and everybody gave them shit for it, especially Apple fans. Now Apple is "inventing" this again.
- 1over137 9mo ago
  Lots of Apple fans are giving Apple shit for it now too.
  - josephg 9mo ago
    The new glass look is just so bad. It feels cheap, like a child’s toy. And performance is worse as a result. I’ve turned it off on my phone, via the accessibility settings. But it’s clear Apple doesn’t test the UI layout much with the new glass look turned off. Lots of controls are subtly misaligned now. I regret updating. I have a Linux workstation. On Linux, nobody has the power to foist new ideas - good or bad - onto all users. All the arguing and bike shedding is one of Linux’s big weaknesses. But it’s also a huge strength. The desktop experience hasn’t gotten worse over the last 20 years like it has on windows and macOS. Programs start more or less instantly, as they should on modern hardware.
    - dunham 9mo ago
      > But it’s clear Apple doesn’t test the UI layout much with the new glass look turned off I turned it off and the keypad buttons for screen time passcode became white on white.
      - swader999 9mo ago
        That's suboptimal
- snek_case 9mo ago
  Ubuntu also tried this with Unity. They were hoping that Ubuntu would become more popular on tablets if they had a more tablet-friendly UI... They imposed this on desktop users even though nobody asked for it and basically nobody used Linux on a tablet. It was kind of a disaster. Ubuntu is a commercial entity though, so yeah, prone to the same kind of bad management decisions. as Microsoft and Apple. At least with Linux you have options. Personally I just want Linux to keep becoming more reliable over time, and have better support for energy-saving features on laptops. It's sad that Ubuntu still has issues waking up from sleep mode in 2025. Somehow those problems haven't been fixed in 20 years.
bee_rider 9mo ago
Windows is a bizarre product at this point; it is what the company is famous for, but it is small beans next to Azure, right? Nobody would get into the Operating System business to make money I think, the going rate is $0, subsidized by something (an ad company, a hardware company, or general kindness and community spirit).
- MarsIronPI 9mo ago
  No, Windows still has Windows tax, which is why I always choose "No OS" when buying a machine. MacOS/iOS/iPadOS were never for sale separately, so we can't judge the price. Android sure is subsidized though.
  - g947o 9mo ago
    Android does have a cost. While the OS itself is free, any manufacturer that wants to put Play Store, which is almost every company outside China, needs to pay Google a license fee, which effectively pays for Android. Of course there are also ads everywhere in Android and Android apps that helps pay the bill.
    - MarsIronPI 9mo ago
      Wow, so the only OSs with no money in them are the FOSS ones. Makes sense, though. (No, at this point Android hardly counts as FOSS anymore.)
      - jm4 9mo ago
        Someone has to pay for it because it’s expensive to develop. There’s a ton of money in Linux just like there is in proprietary operating systems. There are like 4000-5000 kernel contributors and most of them are doing this work on some company’s payroll. There’s an enormous amount of resources going into Linux to the point where a proprietary OS couldn’t possibly keep up. The real genius of Linux is the economic model, getting companies to buy into it and actually delivering value far in excess of what it costs anybody to contribute. It’s winning precisely because the value proposition cannot be matched.
Macha 9mo ago
It's typical business logic. It's not enough to focus on making the product better than the user, you must have a "big" product vision and you're only allowed make changes that align with that product vision. So when that vision is something that users are ambivalent on (3D TV, AI operating system, etc...), well tough, that's still all they're getting until it hurts the company financially or the next executive has a different "big idea". :(
1over137 9mo ago
Commercial OSes (both Windows and macOS) are also both American, and lots of people are trying to de-Americanize.
- cyberpunk 9mo ago
  Yep, I'm in this boat. After years of macs my next will be a FreeBSD Desktop. edit: Although phone is much harder. I guess I'll just turn all the 'stuff' like icloud off, use only signal and my banking/etc apps, and get a separate camera.. Anyone found a less painful way to live without an iPhone/Android?
  - Forgeties79 9mo ago
    As someone who had been in the Apple ecosystem since Windows XP, it was difficult to lose that constant seamless interplay between my phone and computer. But honestly? The trade-off was worth it in the end. I’m 8mo into Linux-only desktop and man…it’s great.
    - 20after4 9mo ago
      Look into KDE Connect¹ - it provides some of that seamless experience. It even has some basic support for syncing between iOS and Gnome, but it's originally designed for seamless integration between Android and KDE's plasma desktop. 1. https://kdeconnect.kde.org/ https://kdeconnect.kde.org/
      - Forgeties79 9mo ago
        I use it some but it’s just not the same. Very useful and well built don’t get me wrong.
      - heavyset_go 9mo ago
        Works on macOS and Windows, too.
  - barnabee 9mo ago
    GrapheneOS is not quite "without" Android but it's without what makes it bad (Google) and works fine for me. I hear LineageOS is ok too.
rrgok 9mo ago
As if Linux was/is not agenda driven. People really forgot I guess.
- bee_rider 9mo ago
  By agenda-driven, I think they mean the commercial operating systems are designed with the intention of improving the uptake of other products and services by the companies that sell them. I think you are referencing something more like a political agenda. And Linux to some extent, GNU even more so are motivated by a political agenda: user empowerment. It is just… a good agenda.
- b00ty4breakfast 9mo ago
  Obviously, you can't build something as complex as a modern operating system without intention, and therefore an "agenda" but I have a feeling you know what OP was getting at. I also know that the impulse to be a pedant is strong because I fight it every day, ha!
- morshu9001 9mo ago
  Was going to say, the online help always baits you into using OpenJDK which doesn't work for random stuff, or in older times there was those non-default "non free" repos you needed to add if you wanted wifi to work.
Forgeties79 9mo ago
I turn on my computer, the desktop shows up…and that’s it. No random windows, no popups about some bundled software I don’t use or how my subscription for X service I don’t want isn’t activated. A chime and a blank screen. Bazzite made my computer fun again.
shevy-java 9mo ago
I agree with you. Microsoft really has gotten bad in this regard. In the past, the operating system was kind of semi-useful. Now one has to wonder what the real agenda is. For me the quitting point was the recall-sniffing on everyone; I don't care if this can be disabled. To me it means that the USA wants to monitor me non-stop. That's a no go. (I was already using Linux before, so I don't depend on Microsoft anyway, but it now meant that I also need to stop using secondary computers with a Microsoft-tainted operating system. I can not trust the USA in any regard anymore with the TechBros in charge. They killed all goodwill and reputation.)
themafia 9mo ago
> and ensuring they don't fumble the ai/agent transition They've already fumbled it. > the way they did with mobile. It's the exact same way they fumbled with mobile. They were very late to the party and decided to buy their way in. It _never_ works.
- mixmastamyk 9mo ago
  MS was almost two decades early to the mobile party, and still fumbled it. Because they didn't have the usability insights around touchscreens that others pioneered. Also could never name things—they named it Wince.
  - o2xda2s 9mo ago
    I had a wince device before the iPhone existed 2005 ish.. An o2 XDA 2s ... There was flash for the OS ... All your files were stored in ram... Internet was a 56k dialup speeds... The arm CPU was anemic.... Wince also had issues if left on too long.. I.e. phone stopped giving audio in a call ... All in all was cool, the slidenout keyboard I miss but terrible software ... The lack of durable user files made it a fail.
SilentM68 9mo ago
Windows has evolved into the world's highest security risk. MacOS feels like Eye Candy due to its increasingly inaccessible price for people with low resources. So, price and security are the reasons why I switched to Linux.
- TacticalCoder 9mo ago
  > Windows has evolved into the world's highest security risk. It has always been.
  - SilentM68 9mo ago
    That unfortunately is true, for the most part. Whether this is due to financial reasons or for lack of engineering best practices, I can't say. All I can say is that, switching to Linux has led to significantly less cost, technical or spyware issues, not counting the issues which I created out of ignorance.
- derrheat 9mo ago
  Getting a macbook is cheaper than it has ever been. You can get a new m4 macbook air for around 750 on amazon. The prices of apple laptops have been dropping every year despite inflation in the rest of the economy....
  - SilentM68 9mo ago
    Yes, prices have gone down over the years, but still unaffordable by people who can afford less. Don't get me wrong, MacOS graphics, aesthetics, GUI, are awesome and I like its consistency but there are cons, too. They typically have a higher upfront cost, limited upgrades, fewer ports/software options, repair challenges. For comparisons, I purchased an Acer Helios 300, three or four years with the following specs: The Acer Predator Helios 300 Processor: Intel® Core™ i7 Memory: 16 GB RAM Storage: 512 GB SSD Display: 15.6" Full HD (1920 x 1080) IPS ComfyView Graphics: NVIDIA® GeForce RTX 20xx. I upgraded the machine's drives, to three, run Windows on the 500GB SSD drive, Linux on a 2TB M.2 drive and have a 4TB storage drive. This is not something that I could do on a MacOS without a significant price upgrade. As such, I would say that MacOS is restrictive as far as hardware upgrade, and price. It's just Eye Candy for most people.
nailer 9mo ago
I’m stuck in a world of AirDrop and expecting my phone to know the Wi-Fi password on my laptop, so I’m not gonna leave MacOS but it absolutely does suck. It used to be that Spotlight file finding was broken, but as of the last today Finder file finding is broken too. This is on multiple new Macs.
- immibis 9mo ago
  If you only need to airdrop between your own devices, try out KDE Connect. It uses the network (WiFi) but I think there's also a Bluetooth mode in beta.
pedalpete 9mo ago
Mac feels like it is constantly trying to sell you on their cloud services. A few times a day it will tell me that I haven't backed up to the cloud. Windows is strangely less direct, but will regularly automatically try to save something to onedrive and force a subscription. Plus, it is just full of ads and nonsense.
- ElCapitanMarkla 9mo ago
  Ugh it annoys me so much that the desktop etc is all in one drive without me setting it that way. But then there is still a desktop/documents directory in the usual spot under your profile, just the files don’t appear if you actually look at the desktop.
- wilkystyle 9mo ago
  It makes sense. Services is their second largest division, and it accounts for just under a quarter of their annual revenue (and growing).
- acomjean 9mo ago
  I’ve noticed on my work machine, it really really really wants me to save my new document to one drive. It was about three clicks in the save dialog to get back to a local drive. They were sneaky about it, with a switch to “turn on autosave” only working when you save to the cloud. I miss my Linux work machine with Libre office.. https://www.windowscentral.com/microsoft/microsoft-office/microsoft-is-making-word-automatically-save-new-documents-to-onedrive-by-default https://www.windowscentral.com/microsoft/microsoft-office/mi...
  - ahartmetz 9mo ago
    >turn on autosave” only working when you save to the cloud Oh wow, that's pretty evil. No technical reason, "would be a shame if something happened to your unsaved changes"...
- trueno 9mo ago
  as a dude who uses all three heavily for work & personal (windows/linux/macos) macos doesnt even come close to windows in the "trying to sell me on the cloud services" front. microsoft ddos's my brain with sign in with an o365 account at every corner of computing now. microsoft products are actually insane now. i have quite a few mac vms for development things and ive had no issue just disabling all the icloud pieces & my usage in these environments seems to be pretty damn quiet the way i like it. windows has gone completely bonkers damn file explore has network service call stacks summoning bing wtf is going on there. feel like i have to shower after using windows now it's crazy. reminds me of early 2000s when HP laptops were just filled with bloatware when you bought them, except microsoft has now baked this unforgettable experience into their operating system. i will remain on macos for my personal device until other hardware manufs make great hardware. i have the pleasure (or displeasure) of using lots of different devices for work so ive got a stack of thinkpads and surfaces and a couple frameworks even and apple is still leading the charge on the bonkers hardware that fits in my backpack. im loyal to no one in the end and have no dog in this fight, but i would really enjoy if someone could catch up to apples chip developments for mobile desktop computing. id love something that is as refined and performant+efficient as my m4max pro but runs linux. all in all i think device/manuf tribalism is the lamest part of computing and it's always been in my best interests to try them all myself and switch on a whim to whatever feels like it meets my needs. im in a unique position to use a lot of diff devices and os's with what i do and there's undoubtedly frustrations with all of them. there's always going to be a free spirit inside me that champions linux to the ends of the horizons though, but apple is undeniably in a unique position to r&d bankroll tsmc, design their own soc, develop hardware and software and marry all of those things together. it's cool shit, and they'd score a lot of goodwill if they just documented their damn stuff so linux distributions could just work on these devices rather than requiring some crazy reverse engineering effort and all the associated mailing list drama that came with asahi.
dana321 9mo ago
Windows 10 and Sequoia are the last two versions before the complete and utter enshittification of these operating systems.
sbochins 9mo ago
I feel like cli agents are the main benefit of going back to Linux. It’s such a joy to have all the solutions to customizations and fixes I want completely automated, using an agent that can control anything I permit and understands my OS completely.
heavyset_go 9mo ago
Windows and macOS are now sales funnels for the various subscriptions Microsoft and Apple offer.
protocolture 9mo ago
Commercial OS's are terrible, but theres nothing that gets me on guard more than someone claiming theres an "agenda". The word has lost all meaning.
sshine 9mo ago
> Claude Code makes it very fast and trivial to personalize, adapt, automate I used Claude to define some CS exam computers using NixOS; it was just GNOME, but with a few tweaks made via dconf. For example, add a maximize icon next to the X (close) in the menubar, make the dashbar behave like a dock with smart autohiding. On a Tailscale VPN so I can service them. And with a few programs preinstalled, preconfigured and pinned to the dock. System users for every student. And with mirroring the screen at a certain resolution by default. Anything I hadn’t tried before, I just asked it to make. The dconf tweaking in particular was so much easier than when I tried to do this manually.
AviationAtom 9mo ago
It's interesting to think how incredibly clunky, unintuitive, difficult, unpleasant to the eye, and just generally painful the Linux desktop experience used to be. These days Linux has proved it's usefulness on the desktop, both to novices and power users alike. I have no doubt that 2030s will be the decade of the Linux desktop. Perhaps until 2038 anyway.
- pjmlp 9mo ago
  On build your own PC desktop with known parts, yeah. On random laptop regular people buy at computer stores and needs to be reversed engineered by volunteers, it will be business as usual.
theodric 9mo ago
> No one wants it to be anything other than what you want it to be I wish I could agree, but the recent push for Wayland only, or GNOME deciding to deprecate middle-click paste, or further reliance on systemd, comprise a non-exhaustive list of examples of things I don't want, and which may end up pushing me off the platform again on the desktop. There are definitely opinionated agendas in Linux (and open source more broadly), and the relative instability of Linux as a target makes forking and maintaining a project + dependencies often unrealistic for a single person... which is how these big projects are able to exert so much influence.
wewewedxfgdf 9mo ago
You paint a very rosy picture of Linux. It's a mess of disparate highly inconsistent systems. The Linux user experience matches what it is - a random bunch of developers developing random software in the way they like with a very thin patina of consistency failing to hide the mess. It's nowhere near as fabulous as you are making out - it's fanboiism to say otherwise.
- guax 9mo ago
  As opposed to the highly cohesive and unified way Large corporations with thousands of developers work. A hive mind of likeminded individuals all working towards a single blissful objective with no distractions or competing ambitions. Not a single legacy being kept without reason, only purpose.
- schubidubiduba 9mo ago
  You are wrong. Linux desktop is incredibly fabulous in 2026, and I am reminded of it everytime I have to use Windows for work or gaming.
codingrightnow 9mo ago
I am curious about how you are improving the Linux experience with claude code. Can you dive into that a little?
etrvic 9mo ago
I've been using macOS since 2020, but for the last year I have seriously considered switching to Linux. macOS Catalina felt really fast, easy to use, and lacked the useless features they kept adding and the ipadOS like interface they began implementing. In 2020, the feature set felt much more intentional.

raw_anon_1111 9mo ago

Come back when I can run Linux on a laptop that has 12+ hours battery life, runs fast, that’s lightweight, quiet and doesn’t cause infertility from the heat when I put it on my lap…. Using an x86 laptop in 2025 is like using a flip phone 6 years after the iPhone came out. Of course if you are a gamer, ignore everything I just wrote.

mecsred 9mo ago
You mean the framework Ive been running for the past 4 years or so?
- raw_anon_1111 9mo ago
  You mean the same ones that consistently get bad reviews for being hot, with poor battery life, heavy and sub par screens? https://community.frame.work/t/fw-16-review-the-good-the-bad-the-ugly/56831 https://community.frame.work/t/fw-16-review-the-good-the-bad...
  - smj-edison 9mo ago
    It's important to distinguish between the Framework 13 and the Framework 16. The Framework 16 is by far the most ambitious of the two, and so it has had a lot more issues. I use a Framework 13, and I've loved it. It's light, has a solid frame, and runs Linux great. The battery life isn't great, and the speakers aren't either, but I've been able to mitigate the latter with EasyEffects.
  - mecsred 9mo ago
    If the 16 performs worse in the power efficiency department, that is not great, but it doesnt make my machine run any worse. Calling it heavy is crazy to me, the thing is tiny. If you think it's heavy you'd have trouble using an iPad. The screen thing was a shitty manufacturing issue, they released a kit to fix it, which I luckily didnt need since mine came after they fixed it in production.
- plagiarist 9mo ago
  I've got a Framework I am not too upset with, but the battery life (especially during sleep) is definitely one of my gripes. I still have yet to try powertop or other tools to optimize, maybe I would be proven wrong.
  - dale_glass 9mo ago
    Sleep just ceased to exist in the last few years and got replaced with an always on, low power mode. I believe the reasoning was partly that suspend to RAM had serious reliability issues due to the complexity of saving the state, partly that people starting expecting cell phone-like performance where eg, mail is always received.
    - mixmastamyk 9mo ago
      Depends. The Intel models still support sleep on Linux (at least up to 12 or 13 gen, AMD boards only nap.
yoldshaddup 9mo ago
[dead]
greenavocado 9mo ago
Besides the 12+ hour battery life which is only achievable with ARM processors, everything described can be accomplished easily for the typical slightly above average computer user with Kubuntu today. I installed latest Kubuntu on my old 2015 MacBook Pro and it runs ice cold now when playing YouTube videos with Firefox whereas before it ran hot even with a Mac fan control app
- raw_anon_1111 9mo ago
  So everything but good battery life is achievable on a portable device? “Besides that, how was the play Mrs. Lincoln?” This isn’t 2015… ARM Macs have been out for six years
  - cogman10 9mo ago
    If you know what to look for, you can also get good battery life. The 268V CPU will give you pretty good battery life.
  - xerox13ster 9mo ago
    Come on, buddy, at this point, nobody could take you seriously. You are attributing to the software and OS a difference that exists because of hardware. You can’t seriously sit here and say Linux battery life on x86 doesn’t reach your par when you’re comparing it to a completely different computing architecture. You’re comparing apples to oranges and complaining the oranges are more sour than the apples. Run Asahi Linux and tell me how it goes.
    - raw_anon_1111 9mo ago
      I don’t care why it’s better. Whose fault is it that Linux gets worse battery life on every computer that also runs Windows or MacOS?
      - redeeman 9mo ago
        it doesnt on thinkpad p16s
xerox13ster 9mo ago
Given that this is your stance and demands for laptop hardware I have to assume that you have never once participated in the laptop market prior to the M1 releasing? That’s the only way your unrealistic expectations make sense. Of course, people have been parroting that about Linux on laptops for over a decade. I never understood it, since I’ve never had any significant issues with Linux on my laptops.
- raw_anon_1111 9mo ago
  Yes and I also had a flip phone before the iPhone came out and a 90 pound CRT before large CRTs got affordable. In fact my first computer was a 1Mhz Apple //e with 128KB of RAM.
  - xerox13ster 9mo ago
    I’m not sure what your point is? You were ahead of the curve on displays and behind the curve on phones and I guess congrats on the 2e start, I had an early Mac. What does this have to do with the price of CPU cycles in clamshell PCs? You abstained until ARM because you could see the future and you knew that the specs you demanded we’re gonna be available eventually?
    - raw_anon_1111 9mo ago
      My point is that because something is acceptable before something else came along better doesn’t mean it’s acceptable now. Would you have been okay if Android phones had still been BlackBerry clones 7 years after the iPhone came out?
      - xerox13ster 9mo ago
        I don’t know what to say to that other than I pity that mindset.
        raw_anon_1111 9mo ago
deleted 9mo ago
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prezk 9mo ago
Linux will run on most platforms, so just pick up a fast, lightweight laptop, and select a conservative power profile for longer battery life and less heat, and don't run 32-thread machine learning jobs on it. A 12-hour laptop battery life is a little bit of a red herring: yes, you can get it on efficient ultrabooks and MacBooks, with light use like web browsing or office work, on low brightness and minimal background apps. This is true on MacOS, Windows and Linux. The first two may be better at handling low power modes on hardware peripherals, but OTOH on Linux I have a better control over background tasks. I have an absolute trash travel laptop from last decade, running Fedora Linux, and it lasts for multiple days if I keep it mostly closed and just open it for whatever browsing/editing I need on the road.
- raw_anon_1111 9mo ago
  And how many laptops running Linux are light, power efficient, fast, quiet with good battery life? My 16 inch M3 MacBook Pro runs 5 hours at 80% brightness doing development with my USB powered (video and power from one USB cord) portable monitor. The Mac battery is powering the monitor https://a.co/d/gHqpcs3 https://a.co/d/gHqpcs3
  - prezk 9mo ago
    Pretty much every laptop on the planet will run Linux. Maybe your optics are tinted because you seem to be a Mac person, and Linux support for newer Macs has known issues with low power modes. I note how your 12+ hour claim was reduced to 5 hours when you actually put it to real work. It's still impressive, of course, but 5 hours aren't out of reach for Ryzen laptops either. BTW, I have a RISC-V platform with 8 1.6GHz CPUs that uses under 5W under full load; on your 100Wh battery it would last for 20 hours. It's not a complete system, and performance lags behind Apple/Intel CPUs, but I think in few years RISC-V may take a bite out of both.
    - raw_anon_1111 9mo ago
      It’s not “running Linux” that’s the issue. It’s running Linux and getting good battery lifez And a 1.6Ghz RISC V CPU isn’t exactly “fast” in 2026 or even 2021. You noted that it was 5 hours when powering a second monitor from its USB port. Not just displaying video from the USB port, the monitor is getting power from the USB port. How long do you think your 5 hour laptop would last powering an external display - again not just video out, also supplying power?
tazjin 9mo ago
Xiaomi, Honor and Huawei make ARM-based notebooks like that. The closest to your description is probably the Qingyun line of laptops.
Rayosay 9mo ago
I think that the ThinkPad X13s Gen1 might meet these requirements. It is my favorite ARM Linux laptop I've ever used. It has great support in Debian 13 (trixie), and it feels pretty smooth and fast. It doesn't have any fans, stays cool, and I regularly get a full day's worth of battery life out of it with margin to spare (10-12 hours). It's better than the newer Snapdragon X1 Elite based ThinkPads, in my opinion, even though it isn't quite as fast because it is passively cooled, is easily fast enough that I've never noticed it feeling "slow", has good driver support in mainline Linux and Mesa (which took a few years to be fully worked out, but is there now), and it's readily available for a good price (on eBay).
- oliwarner 9mo ago
  Have you managed to get sleep states to work? I'd love mine but it never sleeps properly. Ubuntu but I'd change for sleep.
  - Rayosay 9mo ago
    I haven't really played around with that much, sorry. I don't typically use sleep on my laptops. I prefer to either hibernate or just shutdown and start up again when I need it. I'd guess that the X13s hardware support in Ubuntu is likely as good as Debian, and switching probably wouldn't help you much. I have noticed that newer kernel versions (notably 6.12 and later) and the latest firmware (as of sometime last year) really fixed a lot of little issues for the X13s. That probably makes a bigger difference than the distro. I'd check to see which versions you're using.
- zekrioca 9mo ago
  It seems this laptop is not available any longer. Are there any ARM alternatives you are aware of?
  - Rayosay 9mo ago
    I'm hoping that the new Snapdragon X2 Elite based laptops coming out this year will beat it. Qualcomm seems to have been trying to upstream driver support for them earlier than the X1. Then it's up to what kinds of laptops OEMs offer with them. Personally I'd still just get a used ThinkPad X13s Gen 1 on eBay at this point if I were going to buy another one today because they're available for around $400, and I don't see anything better that's passively cooled, with great battery life, and great Linux support available at the moment. I hope there will be a better, faster alternative in the near future. I'd gladly upgrade.
bee_rider 9mo ago
Why would anyone come back? Nobody is bothered by you having a device that you like, and nobody cares if you replace it. People without this particular 12 hour battery life requirement (which is quite niche, most of us live near plugs) are talking about what works for them.
- cocoto 9mo ago
  Battery life is the best selling point of MacBooks and the reason these are selling like crazy. I’m a full time Linux user and I’m even considering buying a macbook and running a Linux VM full time because of the battery.
  - bee_rider 9mo ago
    Just to be clear this is entirely a response to what I have in the parentheses, right? Ok, perhaps it is not niche. I don’t know. I have never had to use a laptop for 12 hours without any ability to recharge but if that’s a common use case I’m happy that folks are finding a way to satisfy.
    - bigstrat2003 9mo ago
      No it's pretty niche. Most people don't have a need for super long battery life.
  - pjmlp 9mo ago
    They certainly aren't in Europe, Africa or Asia, as not everyone has the income to afford Apple prices.
- palata 9mo ago
  I am a Linux fanboy and I totally agree that I am almost always near a plug and don't need that kind of battery life. But when I can go for days on my work Macbook without charging (and I am a developer, so I do compile stuff), I kinda wish I could have that on Linux, too. And again, I don't need it. Just like I don't need a fast Internet connection, but well... :-).
rwyinuse 9mo ago
I love my expensive Macbook at work, but at home old my old Thinkpad running Linux is a godsend. The performance is perfectly adequate for all my daily non-work needs, battery lasts several hours, and since the thing has little monetary value, I can be pretty careless with it, in an environment with small kids running around and doing random things. At this rate, I think it will last me well into 2030's. I'm not going to buy a new Macbook with my own money as long as I can't install Linux on it. I don't want perfectly fine machines to turn into e-waste, or at least become insecure once the original manufacturer decides not to offer OS updates anymore.
- wwweston 9mo ago
  Pre-lenovo or post? any particular model?
everdrive 9mo ago
>is like using a flip phone 6 years after the iPhone came out. I was doing this and it was great. I only had to get a smart phone for work, and I hate the stupid thing.
oliwarner 9mo ago
Like the ThinkPad T14s or any other Snapdragon X Elite, or better? Apple chips are great in this space but they're not alone.
faust201 9mo ago
One good thing is choice. You are free to use macOS or even windows. But this battery argument is bull shit 15 years ago it was so difficult to find charging points. Not now. I have never ever been in a situation the I needed to be away from charging for > 6 hours. 6-10 hours is really possible. If your working or life demands that then pity you. I have better life/work. And again choice. You are free to use macOS or even windows.
- raw_anon_1111 9mo ago
  My “work life” involves business travel - consulting. My personal life involves month long stints of me working outside the home and even at home, I am sometimes working on the patio enjoying 80 degree weather in the middle of winter in Florida…
  - faust201 9mo ago
    > travel - consulting That's why pity
    - raw_anon_1111 9mo ago
      It’s really nice - I get miles and hotel points I can use for personal travel and I can extend my work trips and bring my wife along and make it a weekend getaway. I pay for my wife out of pocket for the flight.
RiverCrochet 9mo ago
Most of Linux's laptop woes is due to two things: A. ACPI which is a sprawling, overengineered mess created by Microsoft, Intel, and Toshiba, and B. ACPI-specific things like sleep and power being tested only for Windows B is a direct result of two things: 1) crappy outsourced firmware developers, and 2) Microsoft's 1990s strategy of disallowing OEMs from offering systems with other operating systems preinstalled. So, not really Linux's fault. If the interfaces that controlled all the laptop goodies were exposed as normal hardware (and documented) instead of gatekept behind ACPI methods that have to be written by firmware vendors that can often barely spell the menu options correct in the setup screens, then this issue would not exist. UEFI is ACPI's successor and carries on this legacy. It's disappointing that it's seeping into the ARM world.
- timschmidt 9mo ago
  > If the interfaces that controlled all the laptop goodies were exposed as normal hardware (and documented) instead of gatekept behind ACPI methods that have to be written by firmware vendors that can often barely spell the menu options correct in the setup screens, then this issue would not exist. > UEFI is ACPI's successor and carries on this legacy. It's disappointing that it's seeping into the ARM world. Arm (and Risc-V and other arches) Linux has https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Devicetree https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Devicetree instead of ACPI, which is better in that it declaratively documents the hardware in a system and how to access it. However, the hardware support which can be found in the Arm ecosystem is in no way better than that for x86 laptops. Many SoC manufacturers still don't put any effort into upstreaming drivers or device trees, many devices are still only supported by tossing a single release of a heavily patched kernel over the corporate wall and then forgetting about them.
lpcvoid 9mo ago
Just buy any modern Laptop? What you describe hasn't been an issue for at least ten years now.
- azangru 9mo ago
  > any modern Laptop When I looked up Dell Pro Max 16, I found a thread complaining that its camera doesn't work: https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=307529 https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=307529 And there are numerous other reports of how various modern laptops have various problems under linux. So no, "any modern laptop" is not a good recommendation. It should be specific models.
  - topocite 9mo ago
    I have two laptops running linux. One is a MSI gaming laptop with RTX card that no one would recommend for linux. I had to try about 10 distros before I settled on linux mint. Everything else had some problem but the driver manager on linux mint made setting up the RTX so flawless. After 8 months of use, it is the best machine I have ever used. If I had just stuck with my old favorite KDE neon though I would have been posting on how not to get MSI if you want to use linux.
nhhvhy 9mo ago
I recently switched to Debian on my laptop (Zephyrus G14) because it was the only way I could get it to NOT run into the problems you described. Went from ~2 hours of battery life to 10, and no more of the constant jet engine level fan activity I experienced with windows.
bigfatkitten 9mo ago
I was doing that on my Thinkpad X220 a decade ago.
bigstrat2003 9mo ago
Bro I don't care how long the battery life is. I use my laptop plugged in 90% of the time. The portability is so I can change what location I'm sitting at, not so I can be unplugged constantly.
- palata 9mo ago
  I am a Linux fanboy. But man, when you try the battery life on the latest Macbooks... it can last for days of work without charging.
- distances 9mo ago
  It's the same for me. I understand that people do want to use them without plugging in, but I would imagine at least most developers prefer external screens, right? For me the battery is good enough when it can last two back-to-back meetings without me getting worried, so about 2.5 hours. Otherwise it stays plugged to USB-C.
  - raw_anon_1111 9mo ago
    I have a portable external screen that I carry in my backpack when I travel and when I work away from home. https://a.co/d/6P7gfGA https://a.co/d/6P7gfGA And this stand Metal Tablet Stand, a Portable... https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0C4KH2GH3 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0C4KH2GH3 The monitor is both powered and the video comes from one USB cord. My MacBook Pro can run 5-6 hours while powering the monitor. I couldn’t do that if the laptop by itself only last 3 hours. Every now and then I use my iPad as a third monitor.

al_borland 9mo ago

I find it so odd that Apple put so much weight behind the VisionOS design, rolling it out to all platforms, considering so few people have Vision Pro. The justification for bringing some iOS ideas to macOS made sense, because everyone knows how to use iOS and is familiar with those conventions. I’m curious if we’ll see another major shift with the new deign lead, or if the higher ups will want to run with Liquid Glass for a while after so much investment, and not wanting to alienate users by radically changing design direction too often. Or if Liquid Glass is here to stay as long as we have Vision Pro, because VR/AR demand that style of UI, so everything else needs to fall in line for consistency’s sake. I think I’d be more apt to switch to Linux if it wasn’t for all the mobile integration macOS and iOS have. Giving that up is a tough sell. It also means finding new solutions for managing photos, music, notes, and a bunch of other things. I also struggle to find non-Apple hardware I find acceptable. I’ve used Linux on and off for over 20 years, and in the past few years is gotten to the point where I think I could daily drive it with little to no compromise, in a bubble. But mobile really bursts that bubble.

xerox13ster 9mo ago
KDE Connect
layer8 9mo ago
It’s not actually really the same as the visionOS design, merely inspired by it.
Wowfunhappy 9mo ago
> I find it so odd that Apple put so much weight behind the VisionOS design, rolling it out to all platforms, considering so few people have Vision Pro. I suspect they began working on Liquid Glass before the Vision Pro was publicly unveiled, so they didn't know what the public response would be. What I honestly find more baffling is that they thought the Vision Pro would sell well. It just isn't a good product. Perhaps they're still banking on a future where the Vision Pro becomes a pair of real glasses. In which case, Liquid Glass is the type of interface you'd want to have.
- 9mo ago

t43562 9mo ago

Even within the range of Linux distros there are some that feel more agenda-driven than others. That's the absolute wonder of it. One can sidestep the flamewars and just use another distro that suits likeminded people. On the other hand I think this makes it difficult to provide a perfect experience - you have to stay closer to the herd if you want trouble free computing. You have the choice.

nwallin 9mo ago
I think it's great that there are Linux projects where the people in the project are obviously unhinged fanatical idealists sent on a mission by god to do <whatever> in the One True Way. I wouldn't use any of those projects, but it's great that they exist, and sometimes their good ideas percolate out to projects that I do use. Like fine, they're gonna make a distro that only uses software under one of the FSF's free as in freedom copy-left open source licenses, not just excluding closed source software, but also binary blob device firmware and software distributed under one of those filthy permissive licenses. That's great. It's fucking unusable, but it's awesome that it exists and it's great that they're doing it.
- herdymerzbow 9mo ago
  Curious to hear which good ideas had their origin in a distro run by fanatical idealists. Not asking for evidence to try and disprove you. Genuinely curious!
  - t43562 9mo ago
    Framing it as "fanatical" is a way of not understanding people's needs sometimes and that makes it harder for oneself to admit when they got it right - after all you don't want to find that you've turned into "a fanatic." I like rolling distributions. Fedora was my longtime ship and at the beginning it was a pain because I always wanted to build something that wasn't available - the newest version of something like python. Then you wouldn't be able to build it because it had dependencies that needed to be newer also than what Fedora had. I spent countless hours sorting out dependencies, clashes with the versions that were already installed that I couldn't remove, building and rebuilding things to keep them working and fixing @#$%@ SELinux permissions issues that made things fail extremely mysteriously. I tried making my own updated RPMs to ease the dependency management but that turned out to be so hard to do that I gave up in frustration - some tiny mistake and you have to go through almost the whole process again to get an updated RPM. One would have mysterious failures in the RPM build process that were extremely difficult to debug. Then RedHat fixed the problem in an even worse way: by releasing new versions at a crazy rate. The upgrade process never seems to go smoothly for me. Ubuntu was/is more uptodate generally but it's based on exactly the same strategy. Packaging on Ubuntu seems to me to be an even more incredible mess of confusion with documentation that doesn't help one iota. I tried various things but the one that stuck with me was Artix. It's rolling and it sometimes breaks e.g. today when the new nvidia 590 drivers installed and they don't work with my old card. The upside is that it's always at the bleeding edge and I rarely need to build things myself - and if I do I usually already have the required dependencies. Packages also install with all the development headers etc and for me that is just a luxurious simplicity. I could also understand the PKGBUILD files and use makepkg without even needing to see the documentation. It just works. It also doesn't use systemd. That's a preference you might call fanatical but I did after all get off windows to use Linux partly so that "the man" wouldn't tell me what to like so why would I accept that kind of thing on Linux? I use dinit instead and that is what I would have liked systemd to be - a service manager with a simple file format that is a million times easier to write and more reliable than system V init scripts and the ability to use it for running things in a user session as well .... and nothing else. Anyhow this is all driven by my personality - I like trying out new things. I'm not fantatical, I think?? My computer is a toy for my mind. My work machines can be "reliable."

blauditore 9mo ago

>unify the look and feel of mobile and desktop Lol, that's what Microsoft tried 10+ years ago and everybody gave them shit for it, especially Apple fans. Now Apple is "inventing" this again.

1over137 9mo ago
Lots of Apple fans are giving Apple shit for it now too.
- josephg 9mo ago
  The new glass look is just so bad. It feels cheap, like a child’s toy. And performance is worse as a result. I’ve turned it off on my phone, via the accessibility settings. But it’s clear Apple doesn’t test the UI layout much with the new glass look turned off. Lots of controls are subtly misaligned now. I regret updating. I have a Linux workstation. On Linux, nobody has the power to foist new ideas - good or bad - onto all users. All the arguing and bike shedding is one of Linux’s big weaknesses. But it’s also a huge strength. The desktop experience hasn’t gotten worse over the last 20 years like it has on windows and macOS. Programs start more or less instantly, as they should on modern hardware.
  - dunham 9mo ago
    > But it’s clear Apple doesn’t test the UI layout much with the new glass look turned off I turned it off and the keypad buttons for screen time passcode became white on white.
    - swader999 9mo ago
      That's suboptimal
snek_case 9mo ago
Ubuntu also tried this with Unity. They were hoping that Ubuntu would become more popular on tablets if they had a more tablet-friendly UI... They imposed this on desktop users even though nobody asked for it and basically nobody used Linux on a tablet. It was kind of a disaster. Ubuntu is a commercial entity though, so yeah, prone to the same kind of bad management decisions. as Microsoft and Apple. At least with Linux you have options. Personally I just want Linux to keep becoming more reliable over time, and have better support for energy-saving features on laptops. It's sad that Ubuntu still has issues waking up from sleep mode in 2025. Somehow those problems haven't been fixed in 20 years.

bee_rider 9mo ago

Windows is a bizarre product at this point; it is what the company is famous for, but it is small beans next to Azure, right? Nobody would get into the Operating System business to make money I think, the going rate is $0, subsidized by something (an ad company, a hardware company, or general kindness and community spirit).

MarsIronPI 9mo ago
No, Windows still has Windows tax, which is why I always choose "No OS" when buying a machine. MacOS/iOS/iPadOS were never for sale separately, so we can't judge the price. Android sure is subsidized though.
- g947o 9mo ago
  Android does have a cost. While the OS itself is free, any manufacturer that wants to put Play Store, which is almost every company outside China, needs to pay Google a license fee, which effectively pays for Android. Of course there are also ads everywhere in Android and Android apps that helps pay the bill.
  - MarsIronPI 9mo ago
    Wow, so the only OSs with no money in them are the FOSS ones. Makes sense, though. (No, at this point Android hardly counts as FOSS anymore.)
    - jm4 9mo ago
      Someone has to pay for it because it’s expensive to develop. There’s a ton of money in Linux just like there is in proprietary operating systems. There are like 4000-5000 kernel contributors and most of them are doing this work on some company’s payroll. There’s an enormous amount of resources going into Linux to the point where a proprietary OS couldn’t possibly keep up. The real genius of Linux is the economic model, getting companies to buy into it and actually delivering value far in excess of what it costs anybody to contribute. It’s winning precisely because the value proposition cannot be matched.

Macha 9mo ago

It's typical business logic. It's not enough to focus on making the product better than the user, you must have a "big" product vision and you're only allowed make changes that align with that product vision. So when that vision is something that users are ambivalent on (3D TV, AI operating system, etc...), well tough, that's still all they're getting until it hurts the company financially or the next executive has a different "big idea". :(

1over137 9mo ago

Commercial OSes (both Windows and macOS) are also both American, and lots of people are trying to de-Americanize.

cyberpunk 9mo ago
Yep, I'm in this boat. After years of macs my next will be a FreeBSD Desktop. edit: Although phone is much harder. I guess I'll just turn all the 'stuff' like icloud off, use only signal and my banking/etc apps, and get a separate camera.. Anyone found a less painful way to live without an iPhone/Android?
- Forgeties79 9mo ago
  As someone who had been in the Apple ecosystem since Windows XP, it was difficult to lose that constant seamless interplay between my phone and computer. But honestly? The trade-off was worth it in the end. I’m 8mo into Linux-only desktop and man…it’s great.
  - 20after4 9mo ago
    Look into KDE Connect¹ - it provides some of that seamless experience. It even has some basic support for syncing between iOS and Gnome, but it's originally designed for seamless integration between Android and KDE's plasma desktop. 1. https://kdeconnect.kde.org/ https://kdeconnect.kde.org/
    - Forgeties79 9mo ago
      I use it some but it’s just not the same. Very useful and well built don’t get me wrong.
    - heavyset_go 9mo ago
      Works on macOS and Windows, too.
- barnabee 9mo ago
  GrapheneOS is not quite "without" Android but it's without what makes it bad (Google) and works fine for me. I hear LineageOS is ok too.

rrgok 9mo ago

As if Linux was/is not agenda driven. People really forgot I guess.

bee_rider 9mo ago
By agenda-driven, I think they mean the commercial operating systems are designed with the intention of improving the uptake of other products and services by the companies that sell them. I think you are referencing something more like a political agenda. And Linux to some extent, GNU even more so are motivated by a political agenda: user empowerment. It is just… a good agenda.
b00ty4breakfast 9mo ago
Obviously, you can't build something as complex as a modern operating system without intention, and therefore an "agenda" but I have a feeling you know what OP was getting at. I also know that the impulse to be a pedant is strong because I fight it every day, ha!
morshu9001 9mo ago
Was going to say, the online help always baits you into using OpenJDK which doesn't work for random stuff, or in older times there was those non-default "non free" repos you needed to add if you wanted wifi to work.

Forgeties79 9mo ago

I turn on my computer, the desktop shows up…and that’s it. No random windows, no popups about some bundled software I don’t use or how my subscription for X service I don’t want isn’t activated. A chime and a blank screen. Bazzite made my computer fun again.

shevy-java 9mo ago

I agree with you. Microsoft really has gotten bad in this regard. In the past, the operating system was kind of semi-useful. Now one has to wonder what the real agenda is. For me the quitting point was the recall-sniffing on everyone; I don't care if this can be disabled. To me it means that the USA wants to monitor me non-stop. That's a no go. (I was already using Linux before, so I don't depend on Microsoft anyway, but it now meant that I also need to stop using secondary computers with a Microsoft-tainted operating system. I can not trust the USA in any regard anymore with the TechBros in charge. They killed all goodwill and reputation.)

themafia 9mo ago

> and ensuring they don't fumble the ai/agent transition They've already fumbled it. > the way they did with mobile. It's the exact same way they fumbled with mobile. They were very late to the party and decided to buy their way in. It _never_ works.

mixmastamyk 9mo ago
MS was almost two decades early to the mobile party, and still fumbled it. Because they didn't have the usability insights around touchscreens that others pioneered. Also could never name things—they named it Wince.
- o2xda2s 9mo ago
  I had a wince device before the iPhone existed 2005 ish.. An o2 XDA 2s ... There was flash for the OS ... All your files were stored in ram... Internet was a 56k dialup speeds... The arm CPU was anemic.... Wince also had issues if left on too long.. I.e. phone stopped giving audio in a call ... All in all was cool, the slidenout keyboard I miss but terrible software ... The lack of durable user files made it a fail.

SilentM68 9mo ago

Windows has evolved into the world's highest security risk. MacOS feels like Eye Candy due to its increasingly inaccessible price for people with low resources. So, price and security are the reasons why I switched to Linux.

TacticalCoder 9mo ago
> Windows has evolved into the world's highest security risk. It has always been.
- SilentM68 9mo ago
  That unfortunately is true, for the most part. Whether this is due to financial reasons or for lack of engineering best practices, I can't say. All I can say is that, switching to Linux has led to significantly less cost, technical or spyware issues, not counting the issues which I created out of ignorance.
derrheat 9mo ago
Getting a macbook is cheaper than it has ever been. You can get a new m4 macbook air for around 750 on amazon. The prices of apple laptops have been dropping every year despite inflation in the rest of the economy....
- SilentM68 9mo ago
  Yes, prices have gone down over the years, but still unaffordable by people who can afford less. Don't get me wrong, MacOS graphics, aesthetics, GUI, are awesome and I like its consistency but there are cons, too. They typically have a higher upfront cost, limited upgrades, fewer ports/software options, repair challenges. For comparisons, I purchased an Acer Helios 300, three or four years with the following specs: The Acer Predator Helios 300 Processor: Intel® Core™ i7 Memory: 16 GB RAM Storage: 512 GB SSD Display: 15.6" Full HD (1920 x 1080) IPS ComfyView Graphics: NVIDIA® GeForce RTX 20xx. I upgraded the machine's drives, to three, run Windows on the 500GB SSD drive, Linux on a 2TB M.2 drive and have a 4TB storage drive. This is not something that I could do on a MacOS without a significant price upgrade. As such, I would say that MacOS is restrictive as far as hardware upgrade, and price. It's just Eye Candy for most people.

nailer 9mo ago

I’m stuck in a world of AirDrop and expecting my phone to know the Wi-Fi password on my laptop, so I’m not gonna leave MacOS but it absolutely does suck. It used to be that Spotlight file finding was broken, but as of the last today Finder file finding is broken too. This is on multiple new Macs.

immibis 9mo ago
If you only need to airdrop between your own devices, try out KDE Connect. It uses the network (WiFi) but I think there's also a Bluetooth mode in beta.

pedalpete 9mo ago

Mac feels like it is constantly trying to sell you on their cloud services. A few times a day it will tell me that I haven't backed up to the cloud. Windows is strangely less direct, but will regularly automatically try to save something to onedrive and force a subscription. Plus, it is just full of ads and nonsense.

ElCapitanMarkla 9mo ago
Ugh it annoys me so much that the desktop etc is all in one drive without me setting it that way. But then there is still a desktop/documents directory in the usual spot under your profile, just the files don’t appear if you actually look at the desktop.
wilkystyle 9mo ago
It makes sense. Services is their second largest division, and it accounts for just under a quarter of their annual revenue (and growing).
acomjean 9mo ago
I’ve noticed on my work machine, it really really really wants me to save my new document to one drive. It was about three clicks in the save dialog to get back to a local drive. They were sneaky about it, with a switch to “turn on autosave” only working when you save to the cloud. I miss my Linux work machine with Libre office.. https://www.windowscentral.com/microsoft/microsoft-office/microsoft-is-making-word-automatically-save-new-documents-to-onedrive-by-default https://www.windowscentral.com/microsoft/microsoft-office/mi...
- ahartmetz 9mo ago
  >turn on autosave” only working when you save to the cloud Oh wow, that's pretty evil. No technical reason, "would be a shame if something happened to your unsaved changes"...
trueno 9mo ago
as a dude who uses all three heavily for work & personal (windows/linux/macos) macos doesnt even come close to windows in the "trying to sell me on the cloud services" front. microsoft ddos's my brain with sign in with an o365 account at every corner of computing now. microsoft products are actually insane now. i have quite a few mac vms for development things and ive had no issue just disabling all the icloud pieces & my usage in these environments seems to be pretty damn quiet the way i like it. windows has gone completely bonkers damn file explore has network service call stacks summoning bing wtf is going on there. feel like i have to shower after using windows now it's crazy. reminds me of early 2000s when HP laptops were just filled with bloatware when you bought them, except microsoft has now baked this unforgettable experience into their operating system. i will remain on macos for my personal device until other hardware manufs make great hardware. i have the pleasure (or displeasure) of using lots of different devices for work so ive got a stack of thinkpads and surfaces and a couple frameworks even and apple is still leading the charge on the bonkers hardware that fits in my backpack. im loyal to no one in the end and have no dog in this fight, but i would really enjoy if someone could catch up to apples chip developments for mobile desktop computing. id love something that is as refined and performant+efficient as my m4max pro but runs linux. all in all i think device/manuf tribalism is the lamest part of computing and it's always been in my best interests to try them all myself and switch on a whim to whatever feels like it meets my needs. im in a unique position to use a lot of diff devices and os's with what i do and there's undoubtedly frustrations with all of them. there's always going to be a free spirit inside me that champions linux to the ends of the horizons though, but apple is undeniably in a unique position to r&d bankroll tsmc, design their own soc, develop hardware and software and marry all of those things together. it's cool shit, and they'd score a lot of goodwill if they just documented their damn stuff so linux distributions could just work on these devices rather than requiring some crazy reverse engineering effort and all the associated mailing list drama that came with asahi.

dana321 9mo ago

Windows 10 and Sequoia are the last two versions before the complete and utter enshittification of these operating systems.

sbochins 9mo ago

I feel like cli agents are the main benefit of going back to Linux. It’s such a joy to have all the solutions to customizations and fixes I want completely automated, using an agent that can control anything I permit and understands my OS completely.

heavyset_go 9mo ago

Windows and macOS are now sales funnels for the various subscriptions Microsoft and Apple offer.

protocolture 9mo ago

Commercial OS's are terrible, but theres nothing that gets me on guard more than someone claiming theres an "agenda". The word has lost all meaning.

sshine 9mo ago

> Claude Code makes it very fast and trivial to personalize, adapt, automate I used Claude to define some CS exam computers using NixOS; it was just GNOME, but with a few tweaks made via dconf. For example, add a maximize icon next to the X (close) in the menubar, make the dashbar behave like a dock with smart autohiding. On a Tailscale VPN so I can service them. And with a few programs preinstalled, preconfigured and pinned to the dock. System users for every student. And with mirroring the screen at a certain resolution by default. Anything I hadn’t tried before, I just asked it to make. The dconf tweaking in particular was so much easier than when I tried to do this manually.

AviationAtom 9mo ago

It's interesting to think how incredibly clunky, unintuitive, difficult, unpleasant to the eye, and just generally painful the Linux desktop experience used to be. These days Linux has proved it's usefulness on the desktop, both to novices and power users alike. I have no doubt that 2030s will be the decade of the Linux desktop. Perhaps until 2038 anyway.

pjmlp 9mo ago
On build your own PC desktop with known parts, yeah. On random laptop regular people buy at computer stores and needs to be reversed engineered by volunteers, it will be business as usual.

theodric 9mo ago

> No one wants it to be anything other than what you want it to be I wish I could agree, but the recent push for Wayland only, or GNOME deciding to deprecate middle-click paste, or further reliance on systemd, comprise a non-exhaustive list of examples of things I don't want, and which may end up pushing me off the platform again on the desktop. There are definitely opinionated agendas in Linux (and open source more broadly), and the relative instability of Linux as a target makes forking and maintaining a project + dependencies often unrealistic for a single person... which is how these big projects are able to exert so much influence.

wewewedxfgdf 9mo ago

You paint a very rosy picture of Linux. It's a mess of disparate highly inconsistent systems. The Linux user experience matches what it is - a random bunch of developers developing random software in the way they like with a very thin patina of consistency failing to hide the mess. It's nowhere near as fabulous as you are making out - it's fanboiism to say otherwise.

guax 9mo ago
As opposed to the highly cohesive and unified way Large corporations with thousands of developers work. A hive mind of likeminded individuals all working towards a single blissful objective with no distractions or competing ambitions. Not a single legacy being kept without reason, only purpose.
schubidubiduba 9mo ago
You are wrong. Linux desktop is incredibly fabulous in 2026, and I am reminded of it everytime I have to use Windows for work or gaming.

codingrightnow 9mo ago

I am curious about how you are improving the Linux experience with claude code. Can you dive into that a little?

etrvic 9mo ago

I've been using macOS since 2020, but for the last year I have seriously considered switching to Linux. macOS Catalina felt really fast, easy to use, and lacked the useless features they kept adding and the ipadOS like interface they began implementing. In 2020, the feature set felt much more intentional.