9 ms·

> Luckily for Apple, Windows 11 is not exactly in a position to attract switchers. Yes, but Linux is finally in that position, not to mention we're seeing sili

> Luckily for Apple, Windows 11 is not exactly in a position to attract switchers. Yes, but Linux is finally in that position, not to mention we're seeing silicon from intel and amd that can compete with the M series on mobile devices.

deleted 9mo ago
[deleted]
bsimpson 9mo ago
I fell down the Nix hole this weekend, getting my corp Mac and my SteamOS Legion Go sharing a config. My corp device is a 5k iMac Pro that is going to be kicked off of the network when ARM-only Tahoe becomes mandatory later this year. I work at Google, which issued a Gubuntu workstation by default when I joined. I exchanged it for a Mac, which I've spent a literal lifetime using, because I didn't wanna fall down a Linux tinkering hole trying to make Gubuntu feel like home. Every corp device I've had has been a Mac. I'm reading this from a coffee shop. On my walk here, I was idly wondering if I should give Glinux (as its now called) a try when I'm forced to replace the iMac. SteamOS is making Linux my default environment in the same way Mac was for decades prior.
- theodric 9mo ago
  > ARM-only Tahoe Tahoe supports x86. It's the last macOS release that will do so. Did you mean that Google is banning any non-ARM Tahoe box?
  - bsimpson 9mo ago
    Well I guess the iMac Pro isn't on the lucky list then. I know it's losing updates (and therefore support) this year. Unfortunately, I looked into it, and my other options are an Asus CX54 Chromebook or a Lenovo X1. There simply aren't competitive alternatives to Mac hardware, at least not at modern Google.
dmitrygr 9mo ago
> not to mention we're seeing silicon from intel and amd that can compete with the M series on mobile devices. [[citation needed]], benchmarks please, incl battery life, not promises. "We are seeing" implies reality
Saline9515 9mo ago
Linux isn't in position regarding display/UI. It doesn't handles HiDPI (e.g 4K) screen uniformly, leading to a lot of blurry apps depending on the display abstraction used (Wayland/X11) and compositor (GNOME, KDE, etc, all behave differently). Let's not even talk about the case when you have monitors that have different DPI, something that is handled seamlessly by MacOS, unlike Linux where it feels like a d20 roll depending on your distro. I expect most desktop MacOS users to have a HiDPI screen in 2026 (it's just...better), so going to Linux may feel like a serious downgrade, or at least a waste of time if you want to get every config "right". I wish it was differently, honestly - the rest of the OS is great, and the diversity between distros is refreshing.
- jhasse 9mo ago
  GNOME still has some problems with fractional scaling, but KDE works perfectly. I'm using two displays, one with 150% and one with 100%. No blurry apps and absolutely no issues. Have you tried it recently?
  - cosmic_cheese 9mo ago
    KDE is in better shape than GNOME, but there are still some nits. Nearly all the available third party themes for example are blurry or otherwise render incorrectly with fractional scaling on.
    - cwillu 9mo ago
      So don't use a third party theme.
      - cosmic_cheese 9mo ago
        Problem is, the stock themes aren't to my taste at all.
        nish__ 9mo ago
        Why not send a pull request to one of your theme maintainers?
jdejean 9mo ago
Tahoe is uniquely bad in so many ways, so I tried the Asahi Fedora Remix with Gnome on my M2 Mac Mini. Aesthetically I was more attracted to Gnome, it feels like what we lost with Tahoe. Tahoe to me feels like a really chopped Android skin or something. I made it a few weeks on the Fedora Remix but ended up having to switch back to Mac over missing webcam drivers and other random hardware issues. Plus there’s little OS things that Mac does that make it really hard to go elsewhere.
- Mistletoe 9mo ago
  >ended up having to switch back to Mac over missing webcam drivers and other random hardware issues This has been my experience every time I try Linux. If I had to guess, tracing down all these little things is just that last mile that is so hard and isn't the fun stuff to do in making an OS, which is why it is always ignored. If Linux ever did it, it would keep me.
  - tuckerman 9mo ago
    I think this is true with an arm mac (and would be tricky to fix that, props to the Asahi folks for doing so much) but for a lot of other hardware (recent dell/asus/lenovo, framework, byo desktops) I find Linux complete. I'm sure there is hardware out there that with struggles but I've not had to deal with any issues for a few years now myself.
  - ryang2718 9mo ago
    It can be very device specific unfortunately. Thinkpad tend to work quote well. I had a Framework that my wife took from me and it's truly fantastic, works out of the box.
  - black_puppydog 9mo ago
    My understanding is that the asahi team have been doing incredible work exactly with doing the non-fun bits. They just chose to do it on the hardware of a company that's extremely hostile to this kind of effort.
    - 9mo ago
CSSer 9mo ago
Yeah, and gaming aside from anti-cheat isn't a broken mess anymore either. Valve has made sure of that.
carlosjobim 9mo ago
Linux doesn't have much in the way of quality apps for people who aren't programmers, server administrators, or gamers. Most people want to get productive work done with their computer, and OS X has top tier apps for every need possible. No good e-mail app, no good office apps, no good calendar app, no good invoicing app, no good photo editing app, no good designer app, etc
- TheDong 9mo ago
  > people who aren't programmers > No good e-mail app, no good office apps, no good calendar app, no good invoicing app ... People who aren't programmers use Gmail, Google Docs, Google Calendar, Stripe Invoicing, etc for those various use-cases. Firefox and Chrome work just fine on Linux, so Linux has all the apps people actually use these days on computers.
  - carlosjobim 9mo ago
    The only people I meet who voluntarily use web apps in their day to day are Linux users who have convinced themselves that it is good enough because there aren't any good native apps on Linux. And then you of course have corporate, who will not switch from Windows. Nobody will voluntarily spend all day working within Gmail or Google docs. You also conveniently cut out photo editing and design in your quote. Edit: Also I wonder if all you server-admins, programmers and gamers would have switched to Linux if your only option was to do your work or gaming within a laggy and inadequate web-app? But you want other people to suffer that.
    - jamespo 9mo ago
      I don't know if you've noticed, but Microsoft are moving apps to web versions as well.
      - carlosjobim 9mo ago
        And OS X has top tier native apps for any use case imaginable. With a very healthy ecosystem of boutique developers and indie developers. If the idea is moving from Windows to something better, then Mac is usually the answer. Unless you're a server admin, programmer, or gamer. Then Linux is probably great. Everybody wants to have tools that work well for the task.
akagusu 9mo ago
No, it is not. Apple went down to the same level of Linux, not Linux that became as good as Apple. Unfortunately today it is a race to the bottom.
- nine_k 9mo ago
  As a long-term Linux user, and a regular macOS user, I must say that the motion is mutual. Linux has become way better, and macOS, somehow worse. But resizing and moving windows nearly , and switching between windows (not whole apps) has always been problematic in plain macOS, for reasons mysterious to me.
  - GeorgeOldfield 9mo ago
    i agree on the software level, but then we have hardware. M cpus, touchpads, battery life. it's hard to justify using PC hardware.
zapzupnz 9mo ago
In the Hacker News bubble, maybe. In the real world, not even close. The reasons why many a person chooses to use macOS, outside of the "YoU bUy It FoR ThE lOgO" that many hard-core technologists seem to believe, don't exist in any desktop environment. Sometimes, people think "it can be made to look similar, therefore it's the same" (especially with regard to KDE), and no, just no.
- immibis 9mo ago
  What are those reasons?
  - zapzupnz 9mo ago
    It's a mountain of little things that add up rather than a few killer features. It's the way drag and drop is a fundamental interaction in text boxes, the proxy icons in title bars, how dragging a file to an open/save panel changes that panel's current folder rather than actually move a file. It's how applications are just special folders that are treated like files, how they can update themselves independently of each other or any system packages, how you conventionally put them in the /Applications folder so you can put that folder on the Dock to use directly as a launcher. It's how all text fields consistently support emacs-style keyboard shortcuts, respond appropriately to the system-provided text editing features such as the built-in Edit menu, text substitutions, and writing features. It's how you can automate most Mac-assed apps; how you can extend the operating system through app-provided and user-created services to every other application that handles text, files, images, PDFs, through the built-in APIs using AppleScript, Automator, and Shortcuts. It's how the whole program rather than its last window is the fundamental unit of an application such that document-based applications can exist without a window without also polluting some system tray with an unnecessary icon, how that means workflows expect more than one window open. It's how there's a universal menu that works for every app, not just conforming ones (i.e. KDE's global menu only shows KDE apps' menus; other apps need a plugin or just don't show at all), how the help menu has a search field to look for menu items, how keyboard shortcuts are bound to the menu items are bound arbitrarily within the program's settings window and can thus be assigned globally in System Settings, how this means all of an application's main features are therefore accessible via the menu bar, how that creates consistency in the menus. Those are just some things off the top of my head but there are plenty of others, some a bit more user facing, some less. Just examples, a non-exhaustive list. I'm sure those who don't care about these things will dismiss it but if you've been using a Mac since before macOS, before OS X, or even before Mac OS X, these are things you won't drop for Linux just because the design is a bit uglier. Of course, if none of these things matter, then the swap is easier. It doesn't mean any DE is a drop-in replacement by any means. Many of the things that make some DEs "Mac-like" are skin deep.
J_cst 9mo ago
This year's too early, but next year for sure.
pjmlp 9mo ago
Windows has a much better chance, alongside WSL, even with all its warts than Linux. GNU/Linux isn't sold in shops like macOS and Windows for regular consumers, until it goes out from DYI and online ordering, it will remain a niche desktop system.
elAhmo 9mo ago
"Linux is finally in this position" is a meme at this point.
- RamblingCTO 9mo ago
  This year will be the year of the linux desktop for real, I swear!
m-schuetz 9mo ago
> Yes, but Linux is finally in that position I've heard that for almost 20 years now, but it never was.

deleted 9mo ago

[deleted]

bsimpson 9mo ago

I fell down the Nix hole this weekend, getting my corp Mac and my SteamOS Legion Go sharing a config. My corp device is a 5k iMac Pro that is going to be kicked off of the network when ARM-only Tahoe becomes mandatory later this year. I work at Google, which issued a Gubuntu workstation by default when I joined. I exchanged it for a Mac, which I've spent a literal lifetime using, because I didn't wanna fall down a Linux tinkering hole trying to make Gubuntu feel like home. Every corp device I've had has been a Mac. I'm reading this from a coffee shop. On my walk here, I was idly wondering if I should give Glinux (as its now called) a try when I'm forced to replace the iMac. SteamOS is making Linux my default environment in the same way Mac was for decades prior.

theodric 9mo ago
> ARM-only Tahoe Tahoe supports x86. It's the last macOS release that will do so. Did you mean that Google is banning any non-ARM Tahoe box?
- bsimpson 9mo ago
  Well I guess the iMac Pro isn't on the lucky list then. I know it's losing updates (and therefore support) this year. Unfortunately, I looked into it, and my other options are an Asus CX54 Chromebook or a Lenovo X1. There simply aren't competitive alternatives to Mac hardware, at least not at modern Google.

dmitrygr 9mo ago

> not to mention we're seeing silicon from intel and amd that can compete with the M series on mobile devices. [[citation needed]], benchmarks please, incl battery life, not promises. "We are seeing" implies reality

Saline9515 9mo ago

Linux isn't in position regarding display/UI. It doesn't handles HiDPI (e.g 4K) screen uniformly, leading to a lot of blurry apps depending on the display abstraction used (Wayland/X11) and compositor (GNOME, KDE, etc, all behave differently). Let's not even talk about the case when you have monitors that have different DPI, something that is handled seamlessly by MacOS, unlike Linux where it feels like a d20 roll depending on your distro. I expect most desktop MacOS users to have a HiDPI screen in 2026 (it's just...better), so going to Linux may feel like a serious downgrade, or at least a waste of time if you want to get every config "right". I wish it was differently, honestly - the rest of the OS is great, and the diversity between distros is refreshing.

jhasse 9mo ago
GNOME still has some problems with fractional scaling, but KDE works perfectly. I'm using two displays, one with 150% and one with 100%. No blurry apps and absolutely no issues. Have you tried it recently?
- cosmic_cheese 9mo ago
  KDE is in better shape than GNOME, but there are still some nits. Nearly all the available third party themes for example are blurry or otherwise render incorrectly with fractional scaling on.
  - cwillu 9mo ago
    So don't use a third party theme.
    - cosmic_cheese 9mo ago
      Problem is, the stock themes aren't to my taste at all.
      - nish__ 9mo ago
        Why not send a pull request to one of your theme maintainers?

jdejean 9mo ago

Tahoe is uniquely bad in so many ways, so I tried the Asahi Fedora Remix with Gnome on my M2 Mac Mini. Aesthetically I was more attracted to Gnome, it feels like what we lost with Tahoe. Tahoe to me feels like a really chopped Android skin or something. I made it a few weeks on the Fedora Remix but ended up having to switch back to Mac over missing webcam drivers and other random hardware issues. Plus there’s little OS things that Mac does that make it really hard to go elsewhere.

Mistletoe 9mo ago
>ended up having to switch back to Mac over missing webcam drivers and other random hardware issues This has been my experience every time I try Linux. If I had to guess, tracing down all these little things is just that last mile that is so hard and isn't the fun stuff to do in making an OS, which is why it is always ignored. If Linux ever did it, it would keep me.
- tuckerman 9mo ago
  I think this is true with an arm mac (and would be tricky to fix that, props to the Asahi folks for doing so much) but for a lot of other hardware (recent dell/asus/lenovo, framework, byo desktops) I find Linux complete. I'm sure there is hardware out there that with struggles but I've not had to deal with any issues for a few years now myself.
- ryang2718 9mo ago
  It can be very device specific unfortunately. Thinkpad tend to work quote well. I had a Framework that my wife took from me and it's truly fantastic, works out of the box.
- black_puppydog 9mo ago
  My understanding is that the asahi team have been doing incredible work exactly with doing the non-fun bits. They just chose to do it on the hardware of a company that's extremely hostile to this kind of effort.
  - 9mo ago

CSSer 9mo ago

Yeah, and gaming aside from anti-cheat isn't a broken mess anymore either. Valve has made sure of that.

carlosjobim 9mo ago

Linux doesn't have much in the way of quality apps for people who aren't programmers, server administrators, or gamers. Most people want to get productive work done with their computer, and OS X has top tier apps for every need possible. No good e-mail app, no good office apps, no good calendar app, no good invoicing app, no good photo editing app, no good designer app, etc

TheDong 9mo ago
> people who aren't programmers > No good e-mail app, no good office apps, no good calendar app, no good invoicing app ... People who aren't programmers use Gmail, Google Docs, Google Calendar, Stripe Invoicing, etc for those various use-cases. Firefox and Chrome work just fine on Linux, so Linux has all the apps people actually use these days on computers.
- carlosjobim 9mo ago
  The only people I meet who voluntarily use web apps in their day to day are Linux users who have convinced themselves that it is good enough because there aren't any good native apps on Linux. And then you of course have corporate, who will not switch from Windows. Nobody will voluntarily spend all day working within Gmail or Google docs. You also conveniently cut out photo editing and design in your quote. Edit: Also I wonder if all you server-admins, programmers and gamers would have switched to Linux if your only option was to do your work or gaming within a laggy and inadequate web-app? But you want other people to suffer that.
  - jamespo 9mo ago
    I don't know if you've noticed, but Microsoft are moving apps to web versions as well.
    - carlosjobim 9mo ago
      And OS X has top tier native apps for any use case imaginable. With a very healthy ecosystem of boutique developers and indie developers. If the idea is moving from Windows to something better, then Mac is usually the answer. Unless you're a server admin, programmer, or gamer. Then Linux is probably great. Everybody wants to have tools that work well for the task.

akagusu 9mo ago

No, it is not. Apple went down to the same level of Linux, not Linux that became as good as Apple. Unfortunately today it is a race to the bottom.

nine_k 9mo ago
As a long-term Linux user, and a regular macOS user, I must say that the motion is mutual. Linux has become way better, and macOS, somehow worse. But resizing and moving windows nearly , and switching between windows (not whole apps) has always been problematic in plain macOS, for reasons mysterious to me.
- GeorgeOldfield 9mo ago
  i agree on the software level, but then we have hardware. M cpus, touchpads, battery life. it's hard to justify using PC hardware.

zapzupnz 9mo ago

In the Hacker News bubble, maybe. In the real world, not even close. The reasons why many a person chooses to use macOS, outside of the "YoU bUy It FoR ThE lOgO" that many hard-core technologists seem to believe, don't exist in any desktop environment. Sometimes, people think "it can be made to look similar, therefore it's the same" (especially with regard to KDE), and no, just no.

immibis 9mo ago
What are those reasons?
- zapzupnz 9mo ago
  It's a mountain of little things that add up rather than a few killer features. It's the way drag and drop is a fundamental interaction in text boxes, the proxy icons in title bars, how dragging a file to an open/save panel changes that panel's current folder rather than actually move a file. It's how applications are just special folders that are treated like files, how they can update themselves independently of each other or any system packages, how you conventionally put them in the /Applications folder so you can put that folder on the Dock to use directly as a launcher. It's how all text fields consistently support emacs-style keyboard shortcuts, respond appropriately to the system-provided text editing features such as the built-in Edit menu, text substitutions, and writing features. It's how you can automate most Mac-assed apps; how you can extend the operating system through app-provided and user-created services to every other application that handles text, files, images, PDFs, through the built-in APIs using AppleScript, Automator, and Shortcuts. It's how the whole program rather than its last window is the fundamental unit of an application such that document-based applications can exist without a window without also polluting some system tray with an unnecessary icon, how that means workflows expect more than one window open. It's how there's a universal menu that works for every app, not just conforming ones (i.e. KDE's global menu only shows KDE apps' menus; other apps need a plugin or just don't show at all), how the help menu has a search field to look for menu items, how keyboard shortcuts are bound to the menu items are bound arbitrarily within the program's settings window and can thus be assigned globally in System Settings, how this means all of an application's main features are therefore accessible via the menu bar, how that creates consistency in the menus. Those are just some things off the top of my head but there are plenty of others, some a bit more user facing, some less. Just examples, a non-exhaustive list. I'm sure those who don't care about these things will dismiss it but if you've been using a Mac since before macOS, before OS X, or even before Mac OS X, these are things you won't drop for Linux just because the design is a bit uglier. Of course, if none of these things matter, then the swap is easier. It doesn't mean any DE is a drop-in replacement by any means. Many of the things that make some DEs "Mac-like" are skin deep.

J_cst 9mo ago

This year's too early, but next year for sure.

pjmlp 9mo ago

Windows has a much better chance, alongside WSL, even with all its warts than Linux. GNU/Linux isn't sold in shops like macOS and Windows for regular consumers, until it goes out from DYI and online ordering, it will remain a niche desktop system.

elAhmo 9mo ago

"Linux is finally in this position" is a meme at this point.

RamblingCTO 9mo ago
This year will be the year of the linux desktop for real, I swear!

m-schuetz 9mo ago

> Yes, but Linux is finally in that position I've heard that for almost 20 years now, but it never was.