I switched from macOS to Linux after 15 years of Apple

https://markosaric.com/linux/

by miles • 5 years ago

679 838 5 years ago

markosaric.com

toast42• 5 years ago

"I’m here to save you some time and energy by telling you that the distro you pick doesn’t matter that much. "

That's the point I stopped reading.

jneumann004• 5 years ago

I've been using Linux for years, so I've got my opinions about distros. Why should the distribution a new user pick matter that much? They can easily switch if they don't like the first one they pick.

read_if_gay_5• 5 years ago

GP probably conflated distro with DE, which is covered in the next paragraph in TFA, maybe shouldn't have stopped reading after all.

asciimov• 5 years ago

Stability of install.

New users probably shouldn't use a rolling release because updates can cause the install to be unbootable, leaving a bad impression of linux.

zepto• 5 years ago

Easily switch? You mean by reinstalling from scratch, or is there another way?

I’d like to know because I am interested in trying different distros but don’t want to have to keep setting up machines.

throw7• 5 years ago

Well, IMO, a new user should pick a distribution that has different DE's available in it's repository. That makes switching and trying different DE's very easy. As opposed to some distros which are specifically tailored to only a specific or supported DE.

shreddit• 5 years ago

And I’d like to know the reason

dmart• 5 years ago

It really doesn't. And the desktop Linux community's obsession with bundling a few tweaks and preinstalled applications as separate "distros", splintering the community into a million tiny sub-groups, is part of the reason it's failed to achieve mainstream popularity.

rovr138• 5 years ago

What's the best way to bundle those?

prox2• 5 years ago

Why is there such a fascination with having so many versions?

handrous4• 5 years ago

I'd agree that it doesn't matter much within a certain band of distros. Fedora vs. Ubuntu, for a new user without opinions about things like Flatpack or rpm vs. dpkg, doesn't matter much, sure, I agree. Throw in Slackware, Gentoo, Void, and Arch, and now it kinda does matter which you choose. Even Debian, since your software will be farther behind current releases and its preferences about things like non-free software are likely to be something you notice and have to deal with, one way or another.

But, among the small set of relatively user-friendly distros, sure, it doesn't actually matter that much. A generous reading would take that meaning from it, I think.

OtomotO• 5 years ago

That's why after trying out a few distros back in the day I settled with a rolling release one and truly learned linux.

I totally agree with the "uselessness" of too many distros but not with your conclusion.

There are multiple reasons for linux not being Mainstream on the desktop.

Windows comes preinstalled on 99% of all non self built laptops/desktops.

Installing an OS is not something the average user does.

It's different and people hate change, unless it's popular

fhood4• 5 years ago

I don't know if the splintering is that big a deal. For nearly everybody Ubuntu for personal use, rhel for enterprise right?

Ubuntu you just use gnome, and I've don't think I've ever actually seen redhat (or any centos) attached to a desktop environment.

cosmotic• 5 years ago

The splintering is real, but the differences between distros is also real. The pace of updates and the availability of packages is pretty important, as is a large community that you can lean on for support, even if passively by searching for solutions to common problems. Maybe you mean "of the 5 most popular distros it doesn't matter"; then sure.

phendrenad210• 5 years ago

I've noticed that people tend to think of the surface level of any desktop OS.

They think about the GUI, the command-line programs that ship with it (curl/grep/ls/etc.), the driver support, and the package manager it ships with. These are all trivial abstractions built on deeper facilities.

The farther down you go, the less people understand. Who actually can express the difference between X11 and Wayland that isn't full of weasel words and equivocation? What about mesa, or dbus, or pulseaudio? These are all core components that alter the "flavor" of a desktop Linux system. And yet, all distros basically use the same off-the-shelf components. They only change the higher level GUIs and package managers and stuff.

And people GROSSLY underestimate how much the kernel contributes to the "flavor" of Linux. (I could go on and on about how the GNU GPL directly impacts how drivers are developed for the kernel, or how the small number of core devs are overwhelmed by additions for hardware drivers which move rapidly and break things, and the subsequent vulnerability patches, leaving little time for desktop-focused improvements).

People tend to say things like "the kernel just manages the hardware" or "the kernel is just an interface layer for the hardware" or "MacOS and BSD are the same, only the kernel differs". If only they knew. The kernel is like a seed crystal that defines what can grow outward from there (without massive painful compatibility shims).

Lastly, people OVERestimate the importance of things that are entirely irrelevant to a desktop OS. Just look at how many desktop Linux users are arguing over SystemD vs SysV vs whatever else. Are desktop Linux users really digging into log files, and are annoyed that the log files are now in a binary format? Are desktop Linux users really annoyed that sudo is now part of systemd, instead of a standalone binary that they can swap out? I think the number is low, but the number of desktop Linux users arguing about such things is high.

SevenSigs• 5 years ago

Some distros are far less buggy then others... IE: I don't have any issues in Arch, but I did with Manjaro (often there was bugs that prevented updates to complete successfully).

BrissyCoder• 5 years ago

Not going to put much heed in the opinion of someone who used Apple operating systems for 15 years.

justwalt• 5 years ago

Good thinking, someone like that is permanently tainted.

andrewstuart• 5 years ago

Every time I use desktop Linux (I've only tried Ubuntu), it's an exercise in frustration simply because cut and paste is such an incredible pain.

I use cut and paste every few minutes.

The keys are not compatible with MacOS - why not? Surely this is an obvious need. I seem to recall the cut and paste keys aren't even compatible with Windows. The cut and paste doesn't even seem to work consistently across applications.

Instead of just using the GUI, I have to constantly break my workflow to think about what keys I'm pressing - that's not a great way to enable switching to Linux from another OS.

If cut and paste is painful then we're a long way from desktop Linux being viable for me personally. It seems such an easy thing to get right, but that's the essence of desktop Linux - 20 years down the track and the first thing you do cuts your finger.

I'd be pleased to hear if some other distro has nailed this or if it's a universal issue.

kraftman• 5 years ago

Could you describe the issue more? I've been using ubuntu for years and I've had plenty of issues, but cut and paste isn't one of them. It behaves exactly the same as windows for me.

xur172• 5 years ago

The keys are not compatible with MacOS - why not? Surely this is an obvious need. I seem to recall the cut and paste keys aren't even compatible with Windows. The cut and paste doesn't even seem to work consistently across applications.

Do you mean that they're not compatible with a macbook keyboard? control-c / x / v work fine on all of my Ubuntu computers, but I might be misunderstanding what issue you are running into.

DarmokJalad17012• 5 years ago

Now try doing that in the terminal.

bastardoperator• 5 years ago

MacOS uses cmd + c/v/x versus ctrl.

teekert• 5 years ago

I don’t understand this comment, you can select and then middle click to paste or you can ctrl-c ctrl-v… what does not work for you? This does not sound familiar to me (a decades long Linux user).

handrous4• 5 years ago

Two possible issues the poster may be encountering:

1) Copy-paste shortcuts are different in terminals, on Linux, than they are everywhere else. They are the same, on macOS.

2) Much like drag-n-drop, reasonable support for copy-paste of things that aren't plain text is less common on Linux than on macOS, and attempting it is more likely to either not work or have unexpected effects.

willismichael• 5 years ago

Elementary OS is the only distro I'm aware of in which the default terminal uses C-x C-c C-v for cut, copy, and paste.

gravypod• 5 years ago

What about cut and paste is painful? Is it the keys it's bound to? Cut and paste for me is cntrl+x and v. If you want to change the location of this button you can configure that in Ubuntu.

nomdep• 5 years ago

But in the terminal they are mapped to Ctrl+Shift+c and Ctrl+Shift+v so the muscle memory breaks and is super annoying

nathias• 5 years ago

the point of linux is making it your own, take the time to customize it ...

madars2• 5 years ago

You might be getting bitten by Linux having two clipboards https://codeyarns.com/tech/2017-01-18-the-two-clipboards-in-... . If you use a clipboard manager (e.g. gpaste or parcellite) they can be configured to synchronize the two. Windows uses Control-C for copying and that will for sure not be compatible with, say, terminal emulators (hence Shift-Control-C is very common). No idea about the waffle key.

hk13372• 5 years ago

Fedora 35+ is the closest I have come to really enjoying Linux. Fedora always seems a lot more polished and less edgy. I cannot really get into any of the other distros for the UI. I like using Debian for all command line.

yoyohello134• 5 years ago

Same. I've tried many, many distributions. Fedora definitely feels the most polished. Ironically, I find Ubuntu to be one of the worst, and it seems to be the default most people try.

(P.S. Fedora 34 is the most current released version)

3r8Oltr0ziouVDM3• 5 years ago

I've tried Fedora recently. The package manager didn't pass my stress test:

1. Did a minimal installation without a GUI. 2. Installed Gnome. 3. Installed KDE. 4. Uninstalled Gnome and KDE. The system ended up in a broken state: many important packages were deleted, I couldn't connect to the network, and the package manager stopped working.

MarcScott• 5 years ago

One of the things I actually liked about macOS was the ability to use ctrl+k and ctrl+y in almost every application (looking at you Microsoft), as that was what my muscle memory had me doing from using a terminal and emacs on Linux anyway.

jp_sc• 5 years ago

I complained about that for years until one day I founded you can actually remap Ctrl+C in your terminal, and the usual kill signal will still work when nothing is selected.

https://jpscaletti.com/p/5/til-remap-copy

globular-toast3• 5 years ago

Copy and paste works. 100%. You are doing something wrong. There might be subtle differences in behaviour and you might have to change settings, or get used to the new defaults. Remember, the old defaults are just something you learnt once. There's nothing special about them.

CRConrad7• 5 years ago

The [cut and paste] keys are not compatible with MacOS - why not? Surely this is an obvious need.

"Obvious"? Typical conceited Mac user. It's not as if the Mac were dominant in the computer or OS market.

I seem to recall the cut and paste keys aren't even compatible with Windows.

Depends: Your whine doesn't mention what these "incompatible" keys you're whining about actually are. If they're [Ctrl]-[Ins], [Shift]-[Ins], and [Shift]-[Del], then those are actually the Windows CUA standard ones. The silly [Ctrl]-[C|V|X] alternatives copied from Apple are not standard.

CalChris• 5 years ago

This was published on March 21, 2020 which is well before the introduction of the M1 MacBook Air and MacBook Pro on November 17, 2020.

herpderperator2• 5 years ago

I think this is important. I switched to macOS and stopped using my desktop completely because the M1 chip in my MacBook Air is so powerful it beats it by a long shot. It runs literally everything I do so smoothly and without emitting a single sound since there's no fan (and no coil whine under load for those who know what that is on the Intel MacBooks.) Unbelievably, it just doesn't get hot. I'm averaging temps under 30C without a monitor and under 35C with a 4k external monitor attached. Only brief bursts above that when compiling or doing something more intensive, but you don't even feel it. I do everything on this laptop. All my professional work, simultaneous Chrome profiles, dozens and dozens of tabs, video calls through Meet/Zoom, programming, VSCode, Photoshop, watching 4k videos, terminal, everything. It doesn't even stutter, and has NO FAN.

kazinator• 5 years ago

I was quite impressed when I ssh-ed into the M1 machine offered by the GCC Compile Farm, and found that it recompiles the TXR Lisp standard library in under 3 seconds.

inter_netuser• 5 years ago

does M1 run linux just a well?

hughrr3• 5 years ago

I just ssh into my desktop if I need more grunt. That’s a lot faster than an M1.

vayeate2• 5 years ago

I've been really happy with my M1 and it's my first Macbook ever, I've been a diehard Windows guy my entire life. So, so, so tired of loud and failing fans on my Windows machines, terrible trackpads, terrible displays, constant hardware issues, Windows update forcing shutdowns in the middle of meetings, malware-level upgrade prompts, etc etc.

Scarbutt• 5 years ago

Is this the 8GB version?

manachar• 5 years ago

Additionally the M1 Mac Mini is a remarkably nice little machine. Not perfect, but fits the"I just need a basic desktop machine" niche very nicely.

madars2• 5 years ago

And, notably, before Apple's announcement that they will incorporate some of their child safety features in macOS Monterey. No NeuralHash/CSAM scanning just yet though https://www.apple.com/child-safety/

oarsinsync• 5 years ago

As someone who's been locked into the Apple ecosystem since 2010, I was extremely hopeful that this article would help me.

Unfortunately, the writer does not use iOS devices, iCloud, FaceTime, unlikely to be using iMessage (although not explicitly stated), so this is great if you're hooked in macOS only, and not with iDevices & iCloud services as well.

everdrive• 5 years ago

It's important not to start using a service which will be difficult to cease using. This is how lock in occurs. It's not truly convenient if you're stuck with it.

jstx1• 5 years ago

It's not truly convenient if you're stuck with it.

That's a bit extreme. I would say that it's only inconvenient if you need/want to switch - everyone can make a guess about the probability that they will want to switch in the future, what effort it would take and whether that's worth it for the value they will get in the meantime.

pknomad4• 5 years ago

But that's a trade-off that most users are expected to have. I like how macOS can handle continuity of applications (iMessage, Apps, Fileshare) across multiple devices. I haven't seen any other OSs or ecosystem handle this as well as Apple's.

dylan604• 5 years ago

That works great if you're a nerd and only every communicate with other nerds. Once you try to talk to moms, your stuck using FB or messages. So, you can be definitely use the most secure stuff out there that gives you all the freedom to do exactly what you want, but you'll be on that island all by yourself. Enjoy

tw600040• 5 years ago

like the internet?

newsclues• 5 years ago

The service known as the Internet taught me this.

campground• 5 years ago

I use a Linux exclusively for my regular computing needs, development work, office stuff etc., and have an iPhone and iPad. The iPhone market is so much larger than the Mac market that Apple has designed the devices to work just fine without a Mac to plug in to. I do use Dropbox instead of iCloud for most files, but if I need to get a photo out of iCloud, the web interface works fine.

georgyo4• 5 years ago

I don't understand entirely. Apple has locked you into their walled garden.

But FaceTime and iMessage? There are plenty of alternatives. More importantly the alternatives have bigger user bases. What is making you feel locked into iMessage?

Interoperability between apple devices and services is good, but any individual service is not actually great. They are only good if you commit everything to apple.

So if you actually wanted to break free, switching from iMessage and FaceTime would be the easiest. Reduce your dependencies of stuff in the walled garden, then leaving that garden get easier.

Apple knows that switching from MacOS/iOS is hard if you use their services that only work on their devices. The solution is don't use their services even if you use their devices.

t-writescode2• 5 years ago

What is making you feel locked into iMessage?

When the not-tech savvy grandmother uses iMessage and FaceTime, it's hard to encourage her to switch to What'sApp or Discord.

easton2• 5 years ago

But none of those users will talk to me :(

acomjean2• 5 years ago

iMessage is a little weird.

I use other apps too, but somehow straight up SMS messages from non iPhone users seem to get routed to iMessage on my phone. The messages also seem to get forwarded to a computer if your logged in.

noahtallen• 5 years ago

What is making you feel locked into iMessage?

It’s hard because you have a whole family and/or friends on iMessage, and you need to get everyone to switch. That can be tricky. It’s doable, but it’s definitely harder than, e.g, copying your photos somewhere else. I can do that by myself, but I need to get everyone else on board to switch away from iMessage.

forrestthewoods• 5 years ago

Huh? I use iOS devices and do not own a single macOS device. iPhone + iPad + Windows desktop. It’s great.

I haven’t connected my iPhone to a PC is 6 years. iTunes is the worst piece of software ever made. Thankfully it hasn’t been needed or even useful for half a decade.

wcchandler4• 5 years ago

I’m in a similar situation. Once the core apps stop working as expected — iMessage, FaceTime, easy transfer of music to iPhone — I will be going back to Linux. I honestly can’t wait, but for now it’s not worth the time sink to get it installed on this 2010 MBP. Plus that would be an immediate loss of functionality for most of those applications without considerable research into FOSS alternatives.

2OEH8eoCRo0• 5 years ago

If you feel that trapped doesn't it piss you off?

derekp7• 5 years ago

I've been using Linux as my primary desktop since the early 90's. I used to dual boot as needed, then switched to Windows in a VM, but now I will RDP into a Windows server at work if I need to run a business app. But for the most part everything I do is either a web app or is in a terminal window. Of course that is a function of my particular career (Unix/Linux systems/network engineer/developer).

At home I use VLC for videos, or Chrome/Firefox for Netflix (and other streaming services). I also picked up a Chromebook tablet for various media consumption needs. I can't really think of the last time I needed a non-Linux system for anything.

pengaru• 5 years ago

I needed a non-linux system recently to update the firmware on a Digidesign Mbox... had to borrow someone's mac.

trangus_1985• 5 years ago

iOS devices, iCloud, FaceTime, unlikely to be using iMessage

Attack it piece by piece.

I have some experience de-siloing myself, and I have some insight on this. The first and most important thing is that you should (for the most part) not use anything that's a free hosted cloud service.

Find a cross platform equivalent to those services and start switching to them. Standards based hosted services are much easier to set up than self-hosting, and makes it MUCH easier to switch out later.

The first thing I'd recommend you do is get Signal installed. Figure out which of your friends are on there already, and just start sending them messages from that.

Next, register a domain. Your name is a good start, since you'll need it for email (and for, if the privacy landscape in the US continues on its trajectory, self-hosting)

Here are some good (non exhaustive) cross-platform alternatives that I use or have used:

- icloud photos: Google Drive, Smugmug (my fav), Flickr

- icloud mail/contacts/calendars: Fastmail (mail + card/caldav syncing)

- imessage/facetime: signal (im aware there's other chat clients but signal is me and my friends' go to. Discord, whatsapp, telegram, etc also exist)

- safari: Firefox with account set up

I pay less than $150 a year, and I get phone or email support with a real person for all of the services I use. I use an iphone, apple watch, with windows 10 on a laptop, and desktop linux. It all works together pretty well, and it really wasn't that hard to establish.

josephg5• 5 years ago

The hard one is continuity’s copy paste. I can copy & paste images and text seamlessly between my laptop and phone. I can’t think of a way to set that up myself any other way - maybe a custom app with a content box?

It’s insanely useful, and such a drag when I don’t have it. (Eg when working from my Linux workstation)

toastal5• 5 years ago

https://prism-break.org/ offers a better list of alternatives. Moving from one proprietary service to another should be seen as a lateral move. If switching, may as well choose at least some options that don't spy on you.

ksec2• 5 years ago

The biggest one for me isn't anything you mention, It is iCloud Keychain. Due to all the security concern I have finally made the effort to use random password for almost everything now ( macOS even has a hidden password generator in KeyChain App if one of those site happen to have stupid password combination requirement )

But I cant even use it in Firefox on my Mac.

eric__cartman2• 5 years ago

Can't you migrate everything to a cross platform password manager like KeepassXC or Bitwarden? It seems quite clunky that the iCloud Keychain locks you to a particular browser and operating system platform.

m0zg2• 5 years ago

Do what I did and switch to Signal wholesale. Or at least to Telegram. Both have really nice desktop clients on Linux. Move to Brave Search as well - it has its own index and it's easily on par with Google in my experience.

I still have a few people on Messages, but they contact me through my iPhone, so I'm not losing anything. It baffles me why anyone on this site would use services that are not available across all major platofrms.

eddieh• 5 years ago

I think there's a huge amount of value in bringing more of the Linux and UNIX experience to the Mac. That way I can still use my iPhone and I can still us Logic and Pages, but I can run a window manager that I can modify and customize. That's just one aspect. It would be nice to have some other *nix features like procfs/sysfs, BSD jails (or at least better chroot support), tmpfs, etc.

systemvoltage2• 5 years ago

Desktop OS (Mac, Linux, Windows) needs an authoritarian single person designer that can dictate how UI/UX would work. Democratically developed interfaces suffer from the same paralysis that industrial design faces - You need Ettore Sottsass, Dieter Rams and Jony Ive of software UX/UI. Otherwise it’s an unfocused trend driven graphical gore that community tends to develop. A thousand squeaky wheels can’t stay aligned on the road.

I think they’re all broken. Not just Linux Desktop.

BurningFrog• 5 years ago

Back in the 90s, I think the Apple UI design team (whatever it was called) provided the best such dictated UI guidelines I've seen.

Just to make the point that it doesn't have to be one person.

systemvoltage2• 5 years ago

Agree but it needs to behave like an authoritarian little group - lots of autonomy and decision making abilities.

A lot of car designs are done by a single person aided by a small group of exceptional designers. That brings me to a second point - that team has to be the cream of the crop. Not any goof with design degree but a demonstrated long history of exceptional understanding of human to machine interaction. Apple attracted such people back in the day.

phendrenad210• 5 years ago

It's still not the same though. There was a lead designer, who was accountable to the CTO, who was accountable to the shareholders. There's downward pressure to stop analysis paralysis when it appears.

mixedCase2• 5 years ago

GNOME is the closest thing to that in an open source world, they build on top of one pretty specific vision and have a good set HIGs.

And if you don't like it, you're wrong. Not because your opinion is not valid, but because that's what you're requesting essentially.

AnIdiotOnTheNet16• 5 years ago

I think they’re all broken. Not just Linux Desktop.

Agreed. At this point it is just a matter of which brand of brokenness you tolerate best.

stelcodes8• 5 years ago

It doesn’t matter which distro you use… unless it’s NixOS. Declarative operating systems are the future. NixOS is incredible. My whole configuration is a git repo. My servers have the exact same neovim/tmux/zsh config as my laptop. Switching between desktop environments couldn’t be easier. Messed up your system? Simply choose a previous generation on the boot screen. Seriously, try NixOS.

Madeindjs• 5 years ago

Is it equivalent to initialize Git repository in $HOME ?

lightbulbjim2• 5 years ago

No. It replaces the FHS with a whole new vision of how the OS is arranged and managed.

lightbulbjim2• 5 years ago

I wholeheartedly agree, and I am a giant NixOS fan, BUT:

1. You need space for the Nix store, so it's not appropriate for every system (I like building small embedded appliances).

2. A six month release cycle can get a bit tiresome after a while. I know it's personal preference, but I wish it was a bit longer.

3. Or, in order to contribute to the project, you need to chase the dragon with the unstable channel.

4. Forcing all the system state through the funnel of a single config file is great, except that it doesn't cover home directories. I found that I ended up with a massive unmanaged blob of state in my home directory which I couldn't capture (I never tried out home-manager, maybe I should have).

This is not to detract from NixOS! NixOS is great, and I remain a massive fan :-). But on my personal systems I find myself using macOS and Debian these days. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

EDIT: Line spacing

stelcodes8• 5 years ago

Valid points. I definitely wouldn’t use NixOS on embedded. About contributing, You don’t really need to be on the unstable channel completely. I use a mix of stable and unstable packages. It’s not hard to do but it’s also not super intuitive either. And about home directories, I don’t use Home Manager either. I find that it introduced too much complexity and I don’t actually like it all that much. What I do is globally install all my packages and put configuration files in /etc. if the programs don’t have an /etc location to look for, I just create a symlink to config file in my home directory. That way all my config files are in my nixos-config repo.

I want to write a blog post about my way of setting up NixOS. There are many ways to go about it and I feel like mine prioritizes simplicity and doesn’t use complex Nix techniques, so it may be very helpful for beginners.

pmahoney• 5 years ago

For 1., it's possible (easy even? I've never tried this in a cross-compiling situation) to build packages on one system and push them to another via SSH.

I suppose an upgrade would still result in two copies of everything, at least temporarily, but at least the target system doesn't need source code, compilers, etc.

https://nixos.org/manual/nix/unstable/command-ref/nix-copy-c...

xaduha• 5 years ago

I used NixOS for years now and it would be my first choice for anything else, but I wouldn't use it for desktop.

Solus has that on lock for me and initially I didn't see it as particularly special, I too thought distros didn't matter much anymore. I thought I could switch away from it to any number of capable distros, but it never worked out and I returned to Solus every time.

phendrenad210• 5 years ago

So NixOS is great for using the same setup between computers. What about for people with one computer? Is it still good? Is it as easy as Ubuntu?

stelcodes8• 5 years ago

Yes definitely good for one computer! And I really think that NixOS is simpler than Ubuntu but there are many different ways of setting up your configuration repo and that is difficult for beginners. The way I do NixOS is very simple. And I really want to make a comprehensive guide on how to do it my way because it’s so nice! But I had to wrestle with it for many months to get to where I’m at with my config repo.

mixedCase2• 5 years ago

caveat: gargantuan learning curve. Expect to be learning a small yet slightly odd programming language and an ecosystem years in the making. As a distro it is strictly only useful for very technically minded people or people who rely on someone like that to maintain their distro for them.

But once you do learn it and fully prepared your set-up, it's amazing. Around a month ago I switched from Arch to NixOS after using the former for around a decade and I'm very happy with it despite its warts.

stelcodes8• 5 years ago

I agree that there is a large learning curve. It certainly took me a many months to get a good configuration repo going. But I see this as a failure of documentation rather than a failure of NixOS. The way I have my config setup is really not complicated, but it took so long to figure out the design. I really want to write a blog post series about how I do NixOS because I highly value simplicity and I think there are too many NixOS “learning” resources that are written by and for highly technical NixOS gurus. NixPills is a prime example of this. That blog post series is NOT for beginners. At all. But somehow is referenced as a learning resource.

quyse• 5 years ago

I've also switched from Arch (has been on it for ~10 years) to NixOS (~1 year so far), and fully agree it's amazing.

I've been thinking how interesting it would be to create a user-friendly Linux distribution on top of standard NixOS (similar to what Manjaro is to Arch), which would not require learning Nix language or tinkering with the configs. I mean, system configuration/choosing packages/drivers/kernels should not really require a user to write in Nix language - the sane choices can mostly be represented by a set of GUI checkboxes. There also could be GUI utilities for other Nix goodness, such as creating nix-shells with necessary dependencies available, declaring wrappers for proprietary software, or building temporary VMs. So, I would say, the user absolutely does not need to know a lot about Nix to fully appreciate robustness of NixOS way, and in principle, with the right tools/GUIs it can be very approachable for even non-technical users - it's just that user friendliness seemingly has not been a priority so far.

ubermonkey17• 5 years ago

I joke with a friend -- a serious emacs maven of 20+ years -- that he took up NixOS only because he was no longer daunted by emacs.

NixOS looks neat, but holy hell I absolutely do not have the time to deal with the learning curve OR the implicit abandonment of all the tools I use to do my job.

stelcodes8• 5 years ago

Lol emacs is honestly too complex for me to dive into. I like vim because it’s simpler! I seriously value simplicity. And wanting to stay on whatever works for you, that’s totally fair. If it ain’t broke don’t fix it. The beauty of NixOS is that makes all the package management and configuration completely declarative and versioned. And includes a huge amount of options that abstract away complex Linux tooling, making things “just work” for 99% of use cases.

heavyset_go7• 5 years ago

Can you bootstrap a NixOS installation via WiFi? I've been using Nix as a package manager, but I avoid distros like Arch that are (or at least were) a pain to install if you don't have an ethernet connection to bootstrap from.

jdreaver• 5 years ago

I've installed NixOS over wifi a few times, most recently for a desktop that wasn't next to my router and that I didn't feel like relocating to connect via ethernet. The fully featured install ISO (not the minimal version) comes with a GNOME desktop environment and you can point-and-click to set up your wifi for the install.

However, a fun trick I learned recently is to tether your phone to your computer while installing any Linux distro. My phone's tether connection over USB just looks like ethernet (as far as I can tell), so there is less fiddling around. My Android phone can tether to my wifi as well, so no need to use your cellular data.

AnIdiotOnTheNet16• 5 years ago

Declarative operating systems are the future.

Is there a version of this future where I don't have to learn a new language just to effectively use a computer?

stelcodes8• 5 years ago

Doesn’t every declarative tool require some new learned syntax? The Nix language is pretty damn good at configuration IMO. It is significantly less complex than python, for example.

Lafriakh• 5 years ago

I really love Linux an use it for a long time. But the quality of software in macOS is the big difference for me.

alexfromapex• 5 years ago

Yeah Linux needs some UX love

djhworld• 5 years ago

I switched from apple to Linux fora brief 6 month period, but sheepishly came crawling back to OSX when I got my M1 MacBook Air.

Using Linux was pretty awesome but there were a bunch of niggles that made it irritating, especially around battery life. No matter how many things I tried, power top and all the other battery tricks, it just wasn't that good.

The other was getting hardware accelerated video to work in Firefox, although I think Firefox finally supports it nowadays with recent versions.

blumomo• 5 years ago

My System76 Lemur Pro easily runs a complete business day on a single battery charge, on Pop_OS!. Thanks to its hardware, performance can be throttled (which I barely notice as it’s quite performing with standard settings) so that a single charge can last easily 12 hours.

pram2• 5 years ago

Uhh yeah my i9 MBP can last a 'complete business day' full of long Zoom calls and active churning Electron apps too. That is a pretty low bar imo

jacurtis3• 5 years ago

A complete business day of battery life is "table stakes" now with premium laptops.

- The M1 Macbook Pro get 20 hours of battery.

- The Lenovo ThinkPad X1 gets 20 hours of battery.

- The Dell XPS 13 gets 19 hours of battery

Those are probably the most popular laptop models in use today in the category of premium laptops, which is the category of computer I think the majority of people reading this comment will be using.

Cheaper laptops will not be as good as that, but evenmost of $600-800 laptops will get 8-10 hours of battery life.

jacurtis3• 5 years ago

I did the same thing. I was a Mac user, then Apple went through that period of time where there were no good laptops. I eventually bought a Lenovo and used it with Linux. Honestly my daily experience was fine most of the time, but you have to constantly worry about battery life to get the most out of it.

I switched back to a Mac with an M1 Mac and the battery lasts for days. I almost never use it plugged in now. I can go many days with normal use, not even compromising to conserve battery. On linux you need to use PowerTop and tweak it to the performance/endurance ratio you want. You are constantly thinking about it. The new M1 Mac doesn't require those compromises or even the need to think about it.

Also i'll add that you can TOTALLY get by on Linux. Linux users are quick to offer solutions like:

- "run that windows program in WINE"

- "there's a Gnome extension that does that"

- "I found a binary on github that will do what you want"

- "all you have to do is make a script and it'll do the same thing"

- "use [FOSS Program] instead of [Evil Corporate Program I really want], it works basically the same"

- "the native version of that program doesn't exist on Linux, but you can use the web version which is basically the same"

But when I switched back to Mac I remembered how I didn't have to make compromises anymore. I could have the programs I wanted, without the weird open source versions that weren't quite as good. Programs just installed, I didn't need to compile them or get the right installers or anything like that. You don't get weird incompatibilities of certain programs and your WM. You didn't worry about battery life or drivers anymore. I didn't need to use web versions. Yes I had to re-purchase some license keys for many apps but this doesn't bother me. I don't mind paying for software that improves my quality of life.

This isn't to shit on Linux. I actually use Linux all day long for work, just ironically I am SSH'd in via my Mac. Linux makes a great server. Its also a Good desktop. But Mac makes a better desktop. Call me a fanboy or a sellout. But I the experience isn't as polished as Mac and in many ways not even as "polished" as Windows (and that was hard for me to type out). Also don't tell me I am too stupid for Linux or didn't give it a chance or didn't learn it enough to enjoy it. I have a RHCA and LPIC-2 certifications. I work in Linux via the terminal 8 hours a day. I know how linux works, but as a graphical system I really would rather have Mac.

However to be fair, I run Red Hat Enterprise Linux on my work computer and that is the closest Linux distro to the Windows/Mac world that you will find. Virtually everything works out of the box and is reliable. It is worth the license fee IMO. You still compromise on app selection, but it does solve many of the annoyances around drivers and compatibility that other distros suffer with. It is far harder to customize, but if you just want something that you can install and start using like you would with Windows, then RHEL is the solution.

gardnr• 5 years ago

I didn't realise Apple had started making good laptops again. The last good machine I had from them was a 2015.

josephg5• 5 years ago

I have a similar story. I built a Linux workstation running Mint when apple’s laptops were bad. I love / hate it. The machine (amd x5800) is insanely fast and responsive compared to the laptop it’s replacing. But so many niggles:

- I use an apple trackpad and everything is weird with it. Sensitivity is all wrong and I still get spurious taps and clicks. FF doesn’t have smooth scrolling working by default. Intellij doesn’t support it at all. Driver is buggy too - sometimes after waking from sleep I have to power cycle my keyboard / trackpad for them to work.

- There don’t seem to be any consistency around keyboard shortcuts. Ctrl+C sometimes copies and sometimes sends SIGINT. What’s the shortcut for “move cursor forward one word” or “move cursor to end of line”? On macos those shortcuts are consistent in every app. On Linux? Nope! I can’t even configure intellij to use the shortcuts I’m used to because it doesn’t let you use the meta key as a modifier.

- Hibernate and sleep is buggy. Sometimes the machine just doesn’t come back up.

- I sometimes have a duplicate mouse cursor, just hovering over all my windows for no reason. I can’t get rid of it. Apparently it has something to do with hidpi but who knows what.

And so on. There’s so many little interactions where something is half broken and I roll my eyes and move on with my life. For all its flaws, I didn’t realise how good macos is until I switched to Linux. Linux is definitely better than it was - all my hardware more or less worked out of the box. But I’m still keeping an eye on apple’s rumoured M1X laptops.

yodsanklai• 5 years ago

What would be a practical reason to switch from MacOS to Linux? Also, what good laptop supports linux out of the box?

pjmlp6• 5 years ago

Basically all those folks that buy Apple hardware, when they actually should have been supporting Linux OEMs, because they don't use anything from Apple other than BSD userspace.

wcchandler4• 5 years ago

For me personally, I can’t update my laptop (2010 MBP) to the latest MacOS without trickery. It’s simply unsupported.

I plan on moving back to Linux once the core apps cease to operate — iMessage, easy transfer of music/audiobooks to iPhone, FaceTime.

Also, I’m pretty sure Dell and Lenovo have OoB support for Linux. Lenovo especially since RedHat is under the same umbrella.

phendrenad210• 5 years ago

Why would Linux on your 2010 MBP be better than your current MacOS on your MBP? Or is the real issue that you're looking to upgrade, and don't want to pay the Apple tax on new Macbooks?

Klonoar8• 5 years ago

I am not sure I understand this viewpoint. A 2010 MBP is ~11 years old at this point, which is an eternity given how the past decade of laptops have evolved.

If you buy any modern laptop that's not junk, you're going to be paying hundreds of dollars. I simply don't see why you wouldn't grab an M1 Air at this point.

Is it Big Sur/Monterey...? Like, if you could upgrade, would you?

imgabe• 5 years ago

I’ve been very happy with my System76 Linux laptop.

lbhdc2• 5 years ago

I find developing to be easier on linux. When working with things that have weird c/c++ dependencies, they are usually available through my package manager, as an example.

I have a thinkpad and I have been pretty impressed with the linux support. I get firmware updates through my package manager, which makes for a nice experience keeping it up to date.

jdoss2• 5 years ago

Thinkpads have pretty great Linux support. I haven't had any major hardware compat issues in a long time when installing Fedora on a Thinkpad.

tick_tock_tick2• 5 years ago

Native containers so no more docker VM eating all you CPU.

jay-aye-see-key• 5 years ago

Sometimes I use macOS for work and get reminded why I prefer Linux.

- homebrew is slow and brittle, between 10x and 100x slower than pacman in my experience, and the only package manager I've used that breaks at least every year

- homebrew is only a userspace package mananger, many applications have their own update mechanisms. I greatly prefer being able to update my entire system with one command.

- xcode is a fragile 10GiB pig that I don't want, but homebrew needs it

- docker has a significant performance overhead on macOS

- the tiling window managers available on macOS are less reliable and don't have the features I value

- some terminal based software is significantly slower on recent versions of macOS, even on a 2019 macbook. I'm not sure what's causing it but there is noticeable lag that I don't get on much older hardware with linux

- documentation; in my experience searching for error messages on macOS results in something like "paste this command into a terminal, no one knows why, and it will break again on the next OS release" or "plug the charger into the left usbc port not the right". Where as on linux I end up on the arch wiki with a fix that makes sense, and I've learned something I find valuable or interesting

- I don't like how macOS is visually turning into iOS, I like that I have the option to use what looks like a "desktop" on linux

I'm learning nix at the moment, and hopefully that can solve a lot of the problems I have with maxOS/brew.

macOS is good, linux is good, as always it depends on what you need.

qq4• 5 years ago

My Thinkpad works great. I can't say the same for other machines I own, or other laptops.

Timothycquinn• 5 years ago

I switched about 8 years ago. Tried OpenSuse for several years but have settled in on Ubuntu with ZFS root on HPE ZBook G2 and Z workstations. The only thing that may draw me back is the Apple M* chips.

the_solenoid4• 5 years ago

I manage hundreds of linux servers... from my windows desktop and mac laptop.

This will be super unpopular, but Linux missed the desktop boat 20 years ago, and my feeling as someone who at the time built his gentoo OS's from source, it was the fault of a few things:

1) Fragmented gui development. There were too many projects with none focusing on really making a better gui than mac/windows.

2) A lack of bread and butter 1st class "business" apps - you know, office. OpenOffice is fine, IF you are ok with the janky ui and no one knowing how it works.

3) lack of open source exchange type mail/cal/etc server and outlook-like client). Holy fudge, I tried to get this going and people just crapped on me for suggesting it.

4) Until recently, installing on laptops was an absolute crap shoot.

5) Just, apps, in general. Gimp is fine, but it has never been close to photoshop. GUI standards are all over the place, etc. People go to a platform because it has the tools they want. The real fallout from point 1 is no one would ever port apps to linux (a little hyperbolic - a lot of high-end post production apps and audio apps all made it over). Open source yadda yadda, thats nice (this is not a brush off, it IS nice), but the ecosystem could be light years ahead of where we are now.

Tenoke11• 5 years ago

GUI issues are probably the worst but there's also just more that you have to tinker with to fix/adjust on Linux, even on Ubuntu which is likely the most user-friendly distro.

Good luck getting multiple different sized monitors to work well out of the box (e.g. laptop + external) on Linux, sometimes even with tinkering you are left with subpar scaling on one. Mac on the other hand just handles whatever combo of monitors and resolutions you throw at it with nothing that you have to do on your side and has done so for a decade now.

Things are much more likely to eventually break if you use an installation too long - I rarely have issues with 5+ year old Windows but most distros don't even support that, and even if they do good luck getting through all the upgrades without having to tinker. Hell, I have to manually mess with PPAs at least once a year just to apply updates.

There's also just too much choice with so many of the options having drawbacks that are hard to distinguish between, especially for non-power users.

There's a ton of other stuff like that that we Linux users are used to so it's not too bad for us but that cause so many people who get a linux machine from a friend to eventually just pay for a Windows install on it since they can't deal with it..

caslon2• 5 years ago

Good luck getting multiple different sized monitors to work well out of the box (e.g. laptop + external) on Linux,

Just Works™ actually. Using a laptop/external simultaneous combo at different resolutions right now, and it's literally perfect. It even gets the scaling right. Not a second of configuration.

christophilus2• 5 years ago

Vanilla Fedora user here, after years of Mac and Windows. It works really well these days. Multiple monitors, including a 5k monitor. And personally, I find Gnome to be almost as good as the mainstream desktops and even better in some ways. YMMV.

vially• 5 years ago

Good luck getting multiple different sized monitors to work well out of the box (e.g. laptop + external) on Linux, sometimes even with tinkering you are left with subpar scaling on one

It sounds like you might still be using Xorg?

These are all solved problems in Wayland (that is, as long as the applications are native Wayland clients, and not running through XWayland) but some people are still reluctant or unable (see NVidia EGLStream debacle) to migrate yet.

herbst12• 5 years ago

Ubuntu which is likely the most user-friendly distro.

I think this is the biggest issue in the Linux user Space. This is simply a wrong assumption for at least a few years now.

Ubuntu, for some reason, tends more break way more dramatic than other distros (usually something with complex deps)

rrss• 5 years ago

6) Linux falls over under memory pressure

Tenoke11• 5 years ago

I've stopped having as much issues with this when I stopped using swap which must be one of the biggest traps for desktop in common linux guides. In my desktop I'd much rather something crash than my system to grind to a halt.

heavyset_go7• 5 years ago

earlyoom caught on and now distros like Fedora are shipping with it by default.

bitwize3• 5 years ago

I've rarely actually experienced this (even on HDD based machines). Sometimes the system will chug if a runaway JavaScript somewhere leaks all available memory, but I can usually switch (slowly) to a terminal, kill the offending process, and after a minute or two things will sort themselves out and be fast again. I suspect Ubuntu and them may have pathological kernel VMM and swap settings out of the box.

Lately I've been running with "swappiness" turned way down, but not with completely disabled swap. Eh, I've got 32 GiB of RAM now, my system can handle a few programs in memory -- even a couple of Electron ones.

scns12• 5 years ago

One of the first things i install is zram.

(edit) if it is not installed by the distro allready (eg dietpi). It creates a swappartition per thread inside ram, unused pages get compressed and stored there. Increases SSD lifetime by reducing writes to swappartition/file on disk.

dwrodri• 5 years ago

Spitballing a wild hypothetical that is probably wrong, but was inspired by what you said so I thought I'd share:

I wonder if the arrival of the 3D revolution was just a little too early for computer nerds to embrace an open source ecosystem from the get-go and how different it would've been if "If you want to run DOOM/Quake/Unreal Tournament then install OpenSUSE/Slackware so you don't have to bother Fiddling with drivers on DOS" would've been more commonplace.

From the 80s to the 2000s, video games became a multi-billion dollar industry that inspired two half-generations of kids to pursue careers in technology, but the world of FOSS was so focused on different use cases that the middle ground of "computer curious" kids probably wasn't as big of a revolution as it could've been.

Hopefully, the work Valve is putting into Proton/WINE + Steam Deck will give us a piece of that alternate history.

cryptoquick• 5 years ago

Proton is already pretty good. I expect it to get better. I've been daily-driving Arch on both a custom-built PC and a ThinkPad for 3 years and I haven't looked back, not even for games.

LAC-Tech3• 5 years ago

I will try some linux apologetics

1. What is great about the windows GUI? Virtual desktops depend on monitors, annoying popup notifications that cannot be disabled and its resource intensive. IMHO linux has always been light years ahead of windows for as long as I remember, theres dozens of window managers better than the windows one. I am never 100% comfortable in windows, it's so locked down I feel like I am living in a hotel.

2. I do everything with the google docs these days, even on windows. So do a lot of businesses.

3. Again, most people seem to be using google calendar.

4. I actually found it easier to install on laptops back in the day. UEFI made it more painful.

5. A lot of unix tools are 2nd class citizens on windows. You can use WSL but file access is dog slow compared to the real thing.

dboreham• 5 years ago

Use WSL2 for non-dog-slow filesystem.

ubermonkey17• 5 years ago

I do everything with the google docs these days, even on windows. So do a lot of businesses.

Some might, but goodness knows I've never run into one. The corporate America I have interacted with so far (30 year career, so not trivial) is Office all the way down, and deeply enmeshed with Exchange calendaring. (I mean, as an MSFT-hater from the 90s, it pains me to admit this, but Exchange calendaring is materially better than anything else. Sometimes, Redmond does things well.)

nixpulvis2• 5 years ago

UEFI really is an issue.

phendrenad210• 5 years ago

You can use WSL but file access is dog slow

You can also use WSL2, which has fast file I/O. Unless you're trying to write to files in /mnt/c, at which point the comparison makes less sense, and a more accurate comparison would be trying to write to files on a remote Windows machine from Linux (also slow).

compared to the real thing

Um, it is the "real thing". It's running in a hypervisor, on the real CPU core.

blix• 5 years ago

Virtual desktops depend on monitors

Why is this a negative? This is actually one of the largest pain points for me in switching from Windows/Mac to Linux.

jcelerier3• 5 years ago

IMHO linux has always been light years ahead of windows for as long as I remember, theres dozens of window managers better than the windows one.

I confirm, my pathway to linux started with using alternative shells & apps on windows to improve on the existing ones, bblean, xoblite, aston shell... good times

herbst12• 5 years ago

Not sure what you guys are doing all day. But I barely need a calendar and even more rare need any office software. When I document or plan I document in markdown in my favourite editor.

KronisLV• 5 years ago

Here's my own slightly out of touch that simultaneously holds true for me and doesn't for a very large part of the populace:

1) XFCE is the pinnacle of desktop environments: https://xfce.org/

It's extremely stable, looks good, works fast and is customizable. It works equally well on old underpowered devices, modern ones, as well as servers (should you ever need that sort of thing for whatever reason). It also has plenty of widgets without any of the modern bloat.

2) LibreOffice is great open source office software: https://www.libreoffice.org/

It started out as a fork of OpenOffice and has since become the mainstay under GNU/Linux distributions. It does word processing. It does spreadsheets. You can make drawings and visualizations in it. It does presentations. There's even a simple database offering in there, a la MS Access.

It also supports MS Office formats for the most part and can convert them to open ones with very few issues! The performance is also better than any web based offering. Plus, it's cross platform!

3) Thunderbird is perhaps the best mail client, regardless of platform: https://www.thunderbird.net/en-US/

It's stable, reliable and has its origins in Mozilla. It does everything i'd expect a mail client to do and i've had no problems with it to date. Plus, it's cross platform!

As for mail servers, i think that mail servers are a horrible mess for the most part, regardless of which platform you need them on. I think that your best bet in that regard is just using a Docker container that packages all of the components that you'd need: https://github.com/docker-mailserver/docker-mailserver

4) This is absolutely true, but then again, you can say the same about any piece of unpopular hardware.

Linux on mobile phones is a mess. Then again, even FreeBSD on certain pieces of desktop hardware oftentimes fails to work as well. Many years have passed, but this can still be problematic, given that perhaps we treat drivers wrong as an industry.

My cheap Chinese netbook (i'm not too well off financially) had the mouse not work on Fedora and some other distros. Sometimes the audio wouldn't work. Now, sometimes the mouse gets stuck in a state where it acts as a scroll wheel. In Windows, function keys worked as they should (after pressing the Fn key you could access them), but in Linux distros it was flipped and i found myself having to press Fn to use the F1-F12 keys, with no option in BIOS to flip this. The fingerprint scanner just doesn't work and isn't even detected. The Wi-Fi drivers didn't work and i had to compile them from some random GitHub repository that i found online. The distro didn't have GCC and the netbook doesn't have an ethernet port so i had to suffer through doing an air gapped install, which was problematic because of the dependencies. I got it working for the most part, but it was a pain.

Things really should be better. But that can probably only be achieved by either open drivers and open standards for most of the hardware out there, or by killing off about 75% of the hardware vendors out there, which in practice simply means that you only have to buy hardware that works well (e.g. Thinkpads).

5) The choices that i find myself making are rather easy - either i use open source software, or i do less.

However i agree for the most part with the observations about Linux not being an awfully popular platform for porting applications. I do think that this has three main causes: packaging being somewhat difficult to get started with (as well as needing to support a variety of distros), the GUI frameworks across Windows/Linux/Mac being a total mess and there being no "good" options out there, and then there also really not being a large commercial effort to make the struggle of porting something over worthwhile.

Interestingly, the GUI framework situation isn't such a large issue if you go with something like Lazarus, JavaFX or even Swing for your software, but those can be ugly, so people don't. Still, i'd argue that either of those have the potential to be better choices than Electron apps.

yoyohello134• 5 years ago

I've been using Linux desktop exclusively for about 5 years and I agree with everything you said.

Open source yadda yadda.

This is it right here. I think this is the main differentiator. At the end of the day whether a person is happy on Linux depends on how much they care about software freedom. I'm willing to put up with the Linux jank because free software is really important to me and aligns with my values.

kaladin-jasnah• 5 years ago

I feel like some Linux users (like me) stop noticing the jank over time since we slowly become very adept at coping with it (eg. finding good resources on how to solve the problem so we can find the fix pretty quickly, or just knowing the fix out of experience.

In the end, it gets not so bad. But GUI front ends for package managers, like [especially] GNOME Software are horrendous from my experience. Which is not so great of a look; of all the things that should be user-friendly it should be package management (IMHO). Package manager failures (conflicts, whatever) are handled horribly by GUI front-ends and even then usually require some expertise to fix, which is a pain. At least Fedora Silverblue nails the updates so that stuff usually doesn't break... but of all the things that were broken OOTB for me on my install... it was (duh!) GNOME Software.

deckard12• 5 years ago

I care about freedom more than most people using Linux these days.

But from a historical perspective, desktop Linux was only made possible by Nvidia and their closed driver. That's a sad fact. I've been on Linux "desktop" since 1995 or so. There are only two businesses that really gave much of a crap about Linux (other than Red Hat) and those were: id Software and Nvidia. ATI had total garbage for drivers for many many years. Practically up until AMD bought them. I built a HTPC back in 2005 around a passively-cooled ATI card trying to get it silent as possible. The idea was that I would use the Radeon driver on Linux and everything would just work. But it didn't. And I was stuck using Windows.

ATI shares part of the blame for why Linux never made it on the desktop. You can't have one of the two major video card vendors dropping the ball for so long and come out okay.

tellersid2• 5 years ago

I can't agree with that from a personal level. I have used KDE Plasma for a few years now and I really don't care much at all about software freedom.

It is ultimately just way better than Windows. Windows 10 is just an embarrassment.

peatmoss4• 5 years ago

I can’t agree with this in 2021, but not for the reasons one might think. I agree that native app development never became a cohesive or predictable thing. But then most apps that people use these days aren’t native.

Business apps: Google Docs & Microsoft Office both have web versions that are good enough for many people.

Mail / calendar clients: I am a nerd who prefers to use emacs for email, but I’m the weirdo—just like anyone who uses a native Outlook client. I also use Fastmail’s web interface, its iOS app, and the mail app on my iPhone. And even that is weird, because everyone just uses Gmail.

Laptop support: Yes that used to be a problem for Linux for varying definitions of “recently.” Used to be. My corp-issued laptop took to Linux just fine with nothing discernibly less functional than Windows.

The apps that don’t exist on the web are getting more and more niche.

ubermonkey17• 5 years ago

I do not interact with any professional contacts who use Gmail. It's universally Exchange in my professional life.

This MIGHT be because the invite/accept/scheduling setup in Exchange is so good that it's hard to sell anything else. It also might be that most big orgs are very wisely reticent to host their email with an advertising company.

I'm also gonna push back on the "web tools are enough for most people." I mean, how effective is the web version of Excel, really? Can it easily interact with local data stores for elaborate data mining and updatable queries? My guess is "probably not". How is it for macro development? My company works closely with the finance orgs of our client parties, and let me tell you a LOT of these folks are extremely advanced Excel users. Web tools aren't to par here.

Web Outlook is also pretty awful compared to the native version, quite honestly, as is Word. Maybe PowerPoint is okay, but I'm not a power user of PPT so I don't really know.

type0• 5 years ago

Gimp is fine, but it has never been close to photoshop.

You can use photoshop cc on linux

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jl3Pa8udFQQ

istingray9• 5 years ago

In terms of UI or actually under the hood?

I've found PhotoGIMP makes GIMP UI more like Photoshop, which helps me a lot: https://github.com/Diolinux/PhotoGIMP/releases

On a Mac I switched from Photoshop to Pixelmator no problem. Hoping PhotoGimp can help me do the same.

tkp• 5 years ago

Krita, while originally focused on painting, is also worth a try for image editing. It has effect layers missing in Gimp, and an easy to grasp GUI.

heavyset_go7• 5 years ago

This will be super unpopular, but Linux missed the desktop boat 20 years ago

Desktop Linux in 2021 is nothing like it was 20 years ago. Plasma Desktop is a great experience these days, and in my opinion, surpasses both the Windows and macOS desktop shell experiences while implementing features from both systems.

AnIdiotOnTheNet16• 5 years ago

Desktop Linux in 2021 is nothing like it was 20 years ago.

True, it's now significantly more complicated and there at least 300 more distros worth of fragmentation. But at least sound finally works!... usually...

herbst12• 5 years ago

I am such a fan of the way gnome shell reinvented distraction less desktop computing (essentially the thing metro should have been) that I feel sorry for people that can never try it.

Yes Linux desktops have been a complicated topic. But it's incredible easy to build something less distractive than windows 10.

lp0_on_fire2• 5 years ago

I just spun up a linux Desktop machine for the first time in almost a decade and agree that Plasma has come a long way but it's still rough around the edges and, well, slow. Not as slow as the Windows UI, but still slower than xfce or the like.

One problem I do have with Plasma (though this may just be how arch packages it) - Dolphin, the native plasma file manager, is not included by default. Yes, I know it's not much of an imposition to do pacman -Sy dolphin but a file manager seems like an integral part of the system to me worthy of being included in the base package for a desktop environment.

Little choices like that affect new user adoption.

simonh4• 5 years ago

The Linux desktop never made it because it’s a terrible platform for distributing commercial applications.

The brutal fact is commercial software is essential to the success of any desktop or mobile platform. That’s because it brings massive investment. The total ongoing investment in commercial applications dwarfs that of open source desktop applications, in developer-hours terms, probably thousands, or tens of thousands to one. Getting to that scale means paying people money, and not just developers. Artists, designers, QA and domain experts in the specialist fields niche apps serve. There’s just no way open source apps can possibly compete.

By failing to provide compelling support for commercial application development and distribution, the Linux desktop has starved itself of the breadth and depth of apps needed to succeed. When you’re competing with the Mac, Windows, iOS or Android you’re not just competing with Apple, Microsoft or Google. You’re competing with the hundreds of billions of dollars in app and service ecosystems that have been built around those platforms.

jacquesm6• 5 years ago

I actually love this aspect of Linux, and if it ever does become successful it will kill it for me. Because every medium that gains a certain level of popularity will bring along a whole raft of commercial parasites that will spoil the original experience. It happened to the web, it happened to smart phones and it certainly would happen to Linux if it ever did gain substantial traction on the desktop.

bgorman2• 5 years ago

Do you have any concrete criticism or are you just spreading FUD? How do Windows or Mac OS provide better support for commercial development?

The reason Mac OS and Windows have more users is because of pre-installs. It is almost impossible for a regular user to find a PC with Linux preinstalled on it, so application developers ignore the platform.

Lots of companies have successfully built commercial GUI products on top of linux. However most of these products are specialist tools (e.g. EDA, video editor) or embedded. I don't see anything fundamentally wrong with the development or distribution tools.

bdw5204• 5 years ago

The issue isn't that Linux lacks proprietary applications. Its that Linux development focuses on apps that appeal to people who write code and this means Linux has a highly technical userbase that prefers open source software.

If Linux desktops had a critical mass of users that were willing to buy proprietary software, the proprietary software companies would make Linux software for the same reason that game development companies make games for Nintendo's underpowered gaming hardware if it sells well (but don't if it ends up flopping like the Wii U).

To get to that critical mass, Linux desktop needs something that Mac and Windows don't offer that appeals to the average non-technical computer user. The single best opportunity for Linux was when Microsoft came out with Windows 8 with its awful new "Metro" interface. If a Linux distro had a GUI that was at least as good as Windows 7, out of the box support for Windows applications, drivers that just work and major OEMs willing to sell it preinstalled at the time, it would have drawn Windows users. Right now, thanks to Valve's efforts at getting Windows games to run on Linux, the Steam Deck is likely to be the most commercially successful GNU+Linux computer ever made because it can run most of your Windows Steam library and gaming is the main reason consumers buy Windows these days (the needs of low end consumers who just want to read email and be spied on by Facebook are best served with an iPad or Chromebook).

Linux is, on the surface, a much more appealing platform than iOS or Android for developers because there's no monopoly app store taking a 30% cut and demanding you take features out of your software. Its also more appealing than Mac because there's no Gatekeeper program that you have to take extra steps to get around. Developers tolerate these practices because the users are on those platforms and especially because Apple products tend to sell to wealthier people who are more willing to spend money on software than Android or Windows users (let alone Linux users who are generally believers in open source and some of whom are "free software" advocates who agree with RMS's views on the immorality of proprietary software). Ultimately, software companies will go where the users are. Platforms don't have to cater to them. They have to attract the users which forces the software companies to release their software for the platform. When you focus on making a platform that appeals to software companies instead of users, you end up with the Epic Games Store which has lots of software but few users.

sudosysgen7• 5 years ago

Android was (massively) successful with very very few native commercial software.

elliotlarson• 5 years ago

I totally agree with this. This may be an unpopular opinion, but I feel like Electron is really helping here. I've been a Mac user since 2003, but built an Ubuntu based desktop recently. The fact that I can run Figma, VSCode, Slack, etc. means it's actually a workable solution. I know Electron is slow, but I don't think producing native software for Linux is economically viable or commercially interesting for a lot of companies. But if a company is building with Electron, I get the impression that it's not a lot of extra work to support Linux and it means the platform actually gets an app. Ironically, I think this will make Linux a more reasonable choice for day to day work and will eventually result in increasing the economic viability of producing software for the platform.

clarkmoody• 5 years ago

We're building a cross-platform commercial application[0] in Rust (with Iced[1]), and it's deployed for Windows, MacOS, and Linux. We get blazing-fast speed and cross-platform operation without Electron or Web tech bloating the build.

Distribution to Linux has been fine so far, and hopefully we're part of the solution to the problem you've outlined.

[0] https://cryptowat.ch/apps/desktop

[1] https://github.com/hecrj/iced/

AussieWog933• 5 years ago

I release maintain a small commercial open-source app (partner app for a piece of open source hardware), and I don't think people understand how burdensome "proper" Linux binary distribution can be until they actually try it.

Linux accounts for about 5% of my users, and for whatever reason the community thought it would be a good idea to fragment that minority further into Arch users, Debian users, CentOS users, OpenSUSE users, Ubuntu users (14, 16, 18 and 20, all with different glibc versions).

Modern tools like AppImage make this at least somewhat standard, but Windows has had sane, standardised installers for almost 3 decades now.

cies• 5 years ago

commercial software

All the commercial (proprietary) software I run (and my colleagues run) is web based nowadays. The commercial (proprietary) software we build is also web based nowadays.

Sure there are exceptions. But for most office work: web based is the norm.

The fact that linux does fine in this area can be reduced from the fact that Chromebooks haven't flopped.

swiley• 5 years ago

The brutal fact is that the web has the same APIs that iOS has at this point.

You should not be running closed apps on your OS. Ever.

frobisher• 5 years ago

Do tools like Electron not alleviate linux app development pains?

peakaboo• 5 years ago

The Linux desktop never made it because it’s a terrible platform for distributing commercial applications.

Good. Please let Linux continue to remain exactly what it is now, an amazing operating system for people who want to avoid Microsoft and Apple.

I certainly don't want it to "make it" so commercial apps take over.

polote• 5 years ago

I've been using the same arch + i3 setup for at least 5 years, never had to change my habits due to an update (except thunderbird which is becoming worse and worse). I've lost a lot a lot of time setting up hibernation and sleep and solving broken depencies, but I have never been limited by gui tools, quite the opposite actually, it is easier to use Pacman than what you need to do on windows or mac.

I honestly don't see what I would gain using Mac or windows , except that hibernation works from the start

lugged2• 5 years ago

Same sentiment here. About 7 years of arch and i3. Machine migrations are literally dd or rysync commands.

I am in love with the fact my OS layer just does not change at all. It's boring and I like it that way.

codethief• 5 years ago

~8-9 years of Ubuntu + i3 (and 11 years on Ubuntu in total), on 4 different laptops (3 Thinkpads), all using the same set of dotfiles and working stably for years.

Installing Linux on a laptop is pretty much painless these days. Also, the neat thing about being able to (re-)store my configs / dotfiles is that I can run my install script on any machine and 5 minutes later the entire machine is completely set up and feels like one of the machines I've been using for years. Back in the 2000s I went through the process of reinstalling Windows a bunch of times and I still remember how painful that was because after installation everything had to be reconfigured and customized in some GUI, which would take hours and never result in quite the same setup I used to have. Now with Linux I've been using the same setup for the past 10 years across machines. (Which is nice as it allows me to tweak my settings over time.)

herbst12• 5 years ago

I honestly don't see what I would gain using Mac or windows , except that hibernation works from the start

And even that. My only longer Mac experience was a MBP (2016?) and this machine (and none of my co-workers) wasn't able to re attach a external monitor and external keyboard after hypernating. The time I worked there nobody found a solution

bamboozled• 5 years ago

Here's the thing, what do you need a desktop to do? I use Gnome 3 on wayland, and I don't really pay attention to the "Desktop", I do 90% of my work in a web browser and a terminal.

I use gimp and inkscape sometimes.

Gnome 3 is perfect for 99% of what I need it to do.

I still own an iPhone, it compliments my Linux laptop well where I do my serious work, the phone is a toy.

kbelder2• 5 years ago

Equally or more pertinent: What does an office admin, an assistant merchandiser, a product designer, or a copy editor use their desktop for?

They use a Web browser, email, calendar, word processor, spreadsheet, an image editor, and a dozen smaller proprietary apps that are absolutely essential to their job.

I think it may be the last of those... all the various industry specific apps that are hindering Linux as much as the obvious big players like Microsoft. I think word processing on Linux is fine; but your company's eight year old customized CRM tool will never, ever, be available on anything but Windows. Or specialized document scanner. Or sales commission tracker.

0x0nyandesu• 5 years ago

It's way better these days. I'm on Gentoo now and game on it

hindsightbias2• 5 years ago

super unpopular

Only if you’re not in 99.9% of the computer user base.

silisili2• 5 years ago

As someone using Linux on the desktop for a looong time, I don't have any real arguments against any of these except 1(I quite like Gnome).

I think it just comes down to how you uses a computer. I mainly program, web browse, and listen to music. I don't game, watch movies, nor use or want to use 'business' apps. Abiword is about the most business app I use with any regularity. If I -have- to do something else, usually GDocs can handle it.

Re: 5) It might depend on the person. I've only ever used Gimp, and while it has redone the UI multiple times, and some things remain nonintuitive, I find myself around it well enough. When PhotoPea launched with its PS style UI, I wanted to give it a try to see what I was missing. I find myself lost, probably how a PS user feels going into Gimp.

BeefWellington2• 5 years ago

I don't game, watch movies, nor use or want to use 'business' apps. Abiword is about the most business app I use with any regularity. If I -have- to do something else, usually GDocs can handle it.

A lot of the items that GP and you are discussing are, from my perspective, complaints about Linux circa 2005, maybe 2010 in a few cases.

I do all the above things and problems are rare. To the point where I ditched my Windows install for gaming. Steam's work on Proton means games seem to just work with the exception of specific Anti-Cheat software in certain games (and even in those games it's usually just MP that doesn't work).

KDE Plasma gives me basically the Windows 7 desktop interface with whatever window dressing I want and virtual desktop support out of the box. Plus, I can do everything that Linux can without any Windows overhead.

Maybe I'm really lucky re: productivity stuff but honestly I don't have a ton of complaints about it.

eloisant• 5 years ago

Interestingly, if you like games Linux is by far a better OS than macOS.

Thanks to Valve's Proton, now most Windows games work flawlessly on Linux. When you install them from Steam, you don't even have to know they're Windows binaries, they just work.

paganel• 5 years ago

For me as a programmer the biggest issue with Linux on desktop was the wifi thing, you were never sure if it would work out of the box or if you needed to copy some obscure .bin files found on the Internet so that it would work with your wifi adapter. I think I lost a day or two on this about 15 years ago when I last set up a Linux desktop machine for myself.

The second thing (and which you mention) is the laptop install situation, I was never sure if running Linux on whatever laptop would work, and if yes if it would work 100%, meaning no wifi/sound/battery drain issues. That was one of the main reasons that has kept me away from Linux since then. Granted, if Apple goes on its current way of trying to restrict access to its machines I may make the switch back sometime in the near future.

jacurtis3• 5 years ago

I've had the experience you are talking about in the past, But this is mostly gone now. Most of the distros ship with wifi drivers so you can do an internet install.

Most wifi cards on Laptops now are either Intel or Killer. So most distros will ship with these common ones. They also usually ship with universal drivers for things like trackpads and monitors so that at least everything "works" out of the box on a fresh install. However you still are best hunting down specific drivers for your equipment to get the best experience or performance.

My personal experience is that if you use a Dell or Lenovo laptop, that you won't need to worry about compatibility. These two companies in particular seem to have the best linux support so their equipment generally just works. I have found HP to "mostly" work. Good luck with Asus or Gigabyte. I wouldn't even try a lesser brand than those.

Battery life on Linux is a mixed bag. There are tools you can install that can give you incredible control over your battery and drag a battery's life out much longer than you would get from the same laptop on Windows. But you will need to constantly manage it and be aware of it. For example I need to go into the terminal and manually change a profile every time I connect and disconnect from the charger. As opposed to Mac and Windows that mostly manage themselves to get the best performance/battery life ratio. I found that if you don't do anything with Linux and just run it on battery that you will get substantially lower battery life than the same device would give you on Windows.

tellersid2• 5 years ago

I bought a usb adapter with the penguin on it. I don't even know what it is called.

That was 5 years ago and I never looked back. I think that adapter is the secret key. Once you have that it doesn't make sense why you wouldn't use KDE Plasma.

I literally only know LS MKDIR and then conda commands. I don't know what any folder does outside of /home. I don't care about these things. Everything has always just worked and if something breaks I can reinstall in about 10 minutes.

The experience people describe on here is what I remember in 1999 when I spent a week trying to get my soundcard to work and gave up.

freedomben5• 5 years ago

It's much better now. The last time I had a problem like this was around 2012 on a cheap walmart laptop that I installed Xubuntu 10.04. Mot wireless cards now are Intel or Realtek which are both fine (though Intel is the best). Especially if you buy a Dell or Lenovo you're in good shape.

herbst12• 5 years ago

WiFi is basically fixed with all modern chips. Same with laptops.

Let's be real you won't buy the cheapest Fujitsu or whatever anyway. You are going to get a proper ThinkPad or something and than Linux is the faster and better working system either way.

Jenda_3• 5 years ago

I'm using Linux on various laptops since 2010 and I haven't seen any problems. These are from multiple vendors and categories:

Asus EEE 1005HA

Asus U36G

HP EliteBook 8470p

HP ProBook 430 G6

ThinkPad x220

Acer that I don't remember by model number (I have installed it for others)

Yes, the wifi issue is solved since like 2013. You usually only need to install firmware, which is a standard package from your distribution's repository (some user-friendly distribution even do this for you).

techrat3• 5 years ago

Gonna be one of those to disagree to some extent.

I flirted with Linux but never used it full time until about 2017 when the C710 Chromebook came out. What I really wanted was a basic laptop that was cheap enough to toss into a bag. So I nuked ChromeOS and started using ChrUbuntu.

Windows 10 had been out for about 2 years by that point and it became an increasing source of frustration, but I also knew I couldn't stay on Windows 7 forever.

What surprised me was that I came to prefer using my ChrUbuntu laptop despite having a much, much, MUCH more powerful desktop.

Windows 10 broke me. Why? How?

Inconsistency in the UI. Still finding old shit buried under several layers of new shit. It was still all shit in the end.

Ads in the Start Menu.

Haphazard driver support.

Forced updates and starts. Kind of a problem when you're trying to do a 17 hour overnight render job, y'know...

The problems I had in Windows just didn't seem to exist in Linux. The things people said "Oh, you have to go to the command line to fix everything" didn't seem to ring true at all. The memes, stereotypes, the disclaimers and talking points, all of it, were badly out of date. With Ubuntu, I could install from LiveUSB, entirely graphical, go through less steps during the installation process compared to Windows and still install software like Steam, vendor specific drivers and other stuff without ever touching the command line. AND Ubuntu doesn't piss me off by forcing me to restart when I don't want to.

After that, I continued to have BSOD's in Windows 10 with hardware that ran flawlessly under Ubuntu.

Networking, filesystem management was slower in Windows 10. I didn't have any issue getting Samba working in Linux to use with the NAS drives during video editing and transfer.

Google Drive was more than good enough when it came to office file compatibility. In the production house I worked out of, it came to be the preferred method. Gone was the Office shackles... and rightly so, after decades of email attachments being the viral vector for Windows systems, it's safer to just share a Drive link.

It was also because of the overhead of management that the house ended up switching from Outlook/Exchange to GoogleApps completely.

The more we did online, the less it mattered what type of system we were using.

The last, and still current, issue we still had? Adobe. After Apple's Final Cut fiasco, Adobe's failure to provide themselves as an alternative on Linux based setups was a major disappointment.

So, at this point... I have a separate airgapped Windows 7 box that runs my offline Adobe CS apps. They don't get updated and they don't need to be. (Why Win 7? Windows 10 BSODs on that box, too.)

Recently did an upgrade on my main system as well. Had a Ryzen 7 2700X setup that ran great for 3 years. Decided to make that my Windows 10 sidebox for apps that still don't quite work under Wine (though Proton is really helping to reduce that number of apps) and... yep. Have gotten hard freezes and BSODs for the first time when all I did was format the SSD to put Windows 10 on it.

Windows is decades of crap compressed into an OS. Despite having started with MSDos5.0 and Windows 3.0, using WinNT4 through to Win7 as my primary and only OS... I find Windows cumbersome, clunky, kludgy and badly implemented compared to where Ubuntu is today.

Year of the Linux desktop? Fuck off. People repeat that like it's some great joke, but the honest truth is... I use Linux now despite never having had a Linux background because it is less annoying to use than Windows.

chopin• 5 years ago

I didn't have any issue getting Samba working in Linux to use with the NAS drives during video editing and transfer.

I switched to sshfs as soon as I migrated my home infrastructure to Linux. It's much faster compared to Samba at least if you have low performance hardware on the NAS side. I wanted authentication and you don't have to fiddle with Kerberos.

heresie-dabord2• 5 years ago

Windows 10 broke me

mWindows 11 will be the greatest Windows yet, said Redmond marketing.

Linux is the only reason why I ever discovered a love for programming and computing.

sjcoles2• 5 years ago

I manage hundreds of Linux desktops (VDI, laptops, desktops) and about 75 Windows 10 laptops.

I see at least 25 Windows tickets for every Linux desktop ticket.

Sure I am paid more than an equivalent Windows admin but the ongoing cost of support is far less. Stuff just doesn't randomly stop working like in Windows. It's really nice.

noirbot2• 5 years ago

How much of this is because the Linux users are more likely to know how to fix their own stuff/not break it in a weird way compared to the Windows users?

a_square_peg• 5 years ago

Yep. This was it for me. I’m getting a MacBook just so I can run Word and Outlook.

overgard• 5 years ago

Until recently, installing on laptops was an absolute crap shoot.

Sadly, it still is. I have a System76 Oryx running the manufacturers distro and I still have issues with hybrid graphics, Wifi breaking randomly, Bluetooth devices not connecting, and the the fans spinning up like crazy and the UI freezing for seconds at a time. On a laptop built for Linux! I still like it but I can't tell anyone it "just works"

jcelerier3• 5 years ago

Sadly, it still is. I have a System76 Oryx running the manufacturers distro and I still have issues with hybrid graphics, Wifi breaking randomly, Bluetooth devices not connecting, and the the fans spinning up like crazy and the UI freezing for seconds at a time. On a laptop built for Linux! I still like it but I can't tell anyone it "just works"

I mean, my laptop is a MSI GS65 and :

- fans spin up like crazy randomly

- if I plug an ethernet cable, I have to disable & reenable the adapter on windows

- sometimes on reboot the mousepad won't work and I have to power off and wait and power back on

- sometimes on reboot the HDMI won't work and I have to power off and wait and power back on

and all this on Windows, Linux also have the two last problems (though much less since some recent kernels) but not the two first.

Laptops just suck.

freedomben5• 5 years ago

dang, this is seriously disappointing. have you alerted system76 support? they have been known to fix drivers, so worth reporting.

I've been using Lenovo Thinkpad's with no problems at all. I just ordered a Frame.Work laptop that I'm stoked for. Hopefully it goes well.

ergo14• 5 years ago

My dell e5470 will bluescreen 80% of time when connecting a screen via HDMI on windows 10. Nothing like that happens under linux. The "it just works on other platform" is a myth - they all suck in different ways.

ant6n• 5 years ago

4) Until recently, installing on laptops was an absolute crap shoot.

It still is. I mean it will sort of work, but power management, battery management, and even obvious things like swap drives may just not work right after install.

cutler• 5 years ago

6) fontconfig

gerdesj3• 5 years ago

I manage 1000s of Windows servers from my Linux laptop and desktop. I also manage 1000s of Linux boxes too.

I don't denigrate your approach with Windows but please don't tell me I can't do x because I literally can on Linux.

My Linux devices are often domain joined - I log into an AD (used to be eDirectory but wth) I don't care. AD is quite a decent LDAP directory - not as good as eDir though but I doubt many here are capable of discussing that little number. I make huge use of Kerberos - all my browsers can connect to my Apaches etc with SSO if I so wish. Let's Encrypt and putting AD and vCentre CA certs into the various places like /usr/local/share/whatever and running the maint script keeps the browsers from getting upset.

I used to have email via GroupWise but we moved to Exchange back in the day (2011 from memory) I've used Evolution EWS since then. Provided you get your endpoints and DNS in line then you can use Kerberos, otherwise it's NTLM ... lol. You can put Exchange behind HA Proxy. That gets you loads of extra goodies like being able to hide squidgy bits and upping the SSL/TLS to the point where you can make say Exchange 2013 PCI/DSS compliant.

I have no idea why you fixate on GIMP, there are so many graphics apps available it is quite embarrassing. Have a look at say Krita.

Ditch OpenOffice. LibreOffice is capable and where the development is happening. Back in the day I was a MS Office trainer (and a few other things). I know what leading and kerning actually means and dealing with hanging indents, n and m dashes and all the rest. Upper case used to be stored in the upper row of cases in a printer's workshop, leading was shims of lead to move letters up and down. I taught Lotus 1-2-3 macros to company execs as well as Super Calc and even Excel. I can write macros in more languages badly than I care to recall. I wrote a Finite Capacity Scheduler (yes: finite) in Excel VBA for a pie factory near Plymouth. I'm quite happy with LO. It's quite capable in my opinion.

I've got loads of CAD options - I'm a fan of 3D printing. LibreCAD and OpenSCAD are absolutely belting and getting better every month. Blender is quite capable I'm told. I have not even started on that little number but I gather it is absolutely the dog's nadgers. Apparently film studios use it.

I have so many high quality options available to me using Linux. I'm 50 years old. I've used computers from ZX80 and I still have a Commodore 64 (with a USB interface now). My first real PC was a 8086. I managed to get a cracked copy of AutoCAD to work on my 80286 with a 80287 co-processor that my parents bought me for my birthday at something like £120 back in 1987ish.

I'm a sysadmin so not too fussed about IDEs but there are an absolute shitload of them available. Bear in mind the real difference between a Linux distro and Windows and Apples: We've always had an appstore and it is part of the system and not a bolt on.

When I type:

  # emerge -Uve --deep --newuse @world
  # yay -Syu
  # apt update && apt upgrade

etc, I update everything. Everything. Apart from the first one (which may involve a pact with the old gods) they will all finish within a few minutes at most.

I've seen Windows updates last for days at worst. At best it takes at least 15 minutes. On average you'll need around 30 mins except for Defender updates.

So:

1) Take your pick - for me KDE 2) LO for Office apps. There are so many first class apps it's hard to create a starting point 3) Evo + EWS. OK I'll accept that there is only one app here. You do get all functionality including calendar. You also have more options for notifications 4) Really? 5) You have access to a ridiculous amount of software from a central source

I think that open source has already surpassed closed source stuff by quite a long way. I own my own company and live and die by my choices. I've been doing IT for about 30 years and for about the last 15 of those I have not used MS software on my personal gear.

I wrote this a while back but I do keep it up to date: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Intranet - might be handy for someone integrating Linux in a Windows world.

jraph• 5 years ago

There were too many projects with none focusing on really making a better gui than mac/windows.

I don't think the target is "better than mac/windows", but I'd argue KDE focuses a lot on making a good UI. Read [1] a bit, you'll see that a lot of work is done on fixing usability bugs and bringing small improvements to an already great desktop environment.

By the way, I've entered in a store that sells computers and noticed the Windows laptops. I was shocked to see myself think "Wait, are they selling computers on Plasma now?". If think it was Windows 11, it's amazing to see that it really resembles Plasma with a white theme.

[1] https://pointieststick.com/

marcosdumay• 5 years ago

You know, all of those were true at some point, but things change, and not in a good way, but in a way that makes Linux much more competitive.

About your #1, well a few tried and for some people they succeeded, but for most people KDE got about equally good some time ago, and both Windows and MacOS kept getting worse and worse. The result is that KDE is much better than those now.

About #2, with the new Office365, Windows is also lacking a reasonably good outlook-like client. The exchange OWA is a much better alternative now, and you can access it from Linux just as easily as from Windows.

anigbrowl• 5 years ago

Agree completely. Back around 2000 my daily driver was running Red Hat, Gnome, and Enlightenment DR16 and it felt like The Future. I still have a linux laptop that I use regularly but honestly don't like it that much compared to Windows.

Considering picking up and older Mac now that the hardware is finally affordable prices as more of it hits the used market. Not sure if I'll leave MacOS on it or install windows or Linux.

zepearl3• 5 years ago

You're not wrong (you're probably right in the context of the article which focuses on "desktop from MacOS"), but in my opinion here we're once more generalizing too much => I think that being happy with Linux and as well distro [X] is linked to the type of work you do & the type of person you are.

On one hand telling a random MacOS/Winows-person to switch to Linux is most probably NOK. Image&video editing & office apps and probably other stuff (doubts about audio apps - I loved Linux+"Jack"+filters when playing guitar as an amateur) are not as good as on those OSs.

On the other hand telling the same to a techy guy/girl >might< be OK. E.g. a huge amount of programming languages can be installed & handled very easily, many different filesystems (with their pros&cons) are available, same for networking stuff (e.g. Wireguard, nfs with multiple connections since kernel ~5.3, bundle multiple separate TCP/IP connections together, etc...), same for virtualization technologies(Xen, KVM, multiple container flavours), etc... is available to be installed&configured&used quite easily, a lot of stuff can be read/dealt through "/sys" and "/proc" (makes it easy e.g. when reversing-engineering a controller), etc... . It's literally "dreamland" if 1) you wish for something like that (or maybe you aren't even aware that something like that can be done easily on this SW-level) and 2) you're able&willing to invest time in it.

E.g. in my case, on the desktop, I'm super happy with Linux+Gentoo; I guess because I'm a pure techy guy + picky hehe:

I don't have a strong need for any "office" app (Libreoffice is more or less ok for the basic stuff that I need, graphics editing is more or less ok with the available apps), at the same time I want some things (e.g. placement of some windows when I start them, remapping of keyboard keys, ...) to be set up "just as I want them to be" which cannot work with Windows (and I'm excluding OSx by default as being too protective - e.g. bought many years ago an iPod nano 6th gen, could not copy to it files from Linux as the iPod storage was encrypted therefore I threw it away) => yes, Linux & the distro is not easy to handle, but that in turn made me learn a lot of stuff, which in turn made me able to handle a lot of extra stuff (e.g. recently to install ~20 different DBs to do tests & in some cases proof-of-concepts, to understand better networking & tunnels to then work around limitations at work, a lot more stuff...), which in turn made me able to handle as well servers.

hakube• 5 years ago

those software you mentioned that are on Linux are opensource. You're really comparing corporate developed software to a software that was developed by a community for free. It's like you're comparing apples to oranges. And this statement is really old, I've seen it in years. Linux apps are better now and gives more functionality and control than bloated apps on Windows and Mac.

Of course, Gimp will never be close to Photoshop because it never aimed to be

stereoradonc• 5 years ago

I completely agree with this assessment. I hate data-lock ins, from the proprietary applications, but the "open source" equivalents have inconsistent UI. Open Office, for example, never rebranded itself or had similar effects to MS Office.

busymom0• 5 years ago

Regarding number 5, I would highly recommend trying out Photopea.com It's basically Photoshop inside browser (works offline) and I have been using it for creating all my screenshots and icons for my app store listings for 3 years now. It's built by a solo developer.

ekianjo• 5 years ago

Linux desktop does not need to be dominant to be relevant. Business apps are important but you seem to forget most people hardly use anything but 1 percent of what Excel or Word can do anyway. I agree that cal, mail situation is not ideal though. Laptops is a no problem if you restrict yourself to certaiin brands.

as for apps, I dont know, Linux is superior in many ways for non GUI work. If you need photoshop then yeah this is not the right OS for you. But I would not want to touch anything Adobe with their dirty subscription models. its not true of all categories though. Krita for digital painting is amazing. Blender for 3d work too. The real answer is... it depends.

nailer• 5 years ago

This is why WSL is amazing - apt-get is superior to homebrew and macports and the hardware support is unmatched.

mark_l_watson3• 5 years ago

As much as I enjoy my System 76 Linux laptop where everything, including CUDA setup for the GPU “just works,” I find a M1 MacBook Pro just makes more sense for my workflow. For fun, I have a very small Lenovo Chromebook that is a partial replacement for my iPad for web surfing and consuming media, and the Linux container support also just works when I want that, and with a nice UI.

userbinator• 5 years ago

a little hyperbolic - a lot of high-end post production apps and audio apps all made it over

...and some very expensive (6-figure prices - per year) IC design software is Linux-only. Look at Cadence Virtuoso, for example. Not available on Windows nor Mac.

Aperocky5• 5 years ago

Except... how do you manage them? With an UI?

I don't know but I've always interacted in terminal, making the fact that I use macOS not significant.

the_solenoid4• 5 years ago

On the terminal of course, with apps like SecureCRT

vmception• 5 years ago

I manage hundreds of linux servers... from my windows desktop and mac laptop.

Exactly. Except I am quite pleased how OpenOffice is right now, but I digress back to agreeing with you.

I use Linux everywhere, just rarely on bare metal. All the linux I use is in memory somewhere. My bare metal machine recreational and general use machine is Mac. It runs Windows but it hasn't in two years.

The OS isn't the hill I'm here to die on. Its just the fact of life.

Gimp. I shudder at the thought. Honestly at this point, I feel the same about Gimp as I do about people clinging onto to pre-subscription Photoshop. Its like these arbitrary and clueless bragging points they now both have to rationalize life choices - whether it is an attempt to stick it to the man because they became the get of my lawn people resistant to change without realizing it, or because they actually can't afford it and this is also a byproduct of their life decisions. In either scenario, there seems to be a lack of observation that the commercial products are lightyears ahead now and there is no point in intentionally inconveniencing yourself for a cause nobody else cares about.

liquidify• 5 years ago

What audio apps made it over? Audio is a gaping hole in Linux land. No drivers, no major support, no major DAW's, etc.. I can't move to linux primarily because of audio... not because of the other stuff you mentioned.

mackrevinack4• 5 years ago

bitwig and reaper are major daw's imo

wyclif• 5 years ago

This is why musicians are almost uniformly on macOS. I love Linux and I've been using it since 1998, but there's a lot of work to be done on the audio front for them to catch up to Apple.

scns12• 5 years ago

Agree to disagree partially. Bitwig is a major DAW, runs on Ubuntu. Native Instruments interfaces have their drivers in the kernel. YMMV with other DAWs/interfaces though.

eitland3• 5 years ago

A couple of corrections from my perspective (Used Windows since 3.1 in 1995, worked and supported others on Windows until 2012, switched to Linux around 2006 after having used it on and off since 2001):

There were too many projects with none focusing on really making a better gui than mac/windows.

Many of us have preferred Linux desktops for a decade or two.

Calling a desktop gui better when it lacks the basics like multiple virtual desktops is quite a stretch IMO. Same goes for not being able to update your kernel without getting a brand new desktop environment either you want it or not. Same goes for not being able to customize CMD-tab on Mac.

A lack of bread and butter 1st class "business" apps

so far so good until this:

OpenOffice is fine, IF you are ok with the janky ui and no one knowing how it works.

In fact for many years OpenOffice, now Libre Office has been less alien to large segments of the user base.

For a number of things it has also been significantly better at times: I remember very well having to import a certain report patched together by four others to use an actually working styling system.

lack of open source exchange type mail/cal/etc server and outlook-like client)

This was a good point for a long time. I can work around it by using my iPad for this these days.

Until recently, installing on laptops was an absolute crap shoot.

Having Linux work better on laptops than Windows is the default state for most laptops and have been for a decase. Last big issue was a screen resolution problem solved by installing the 915 driver using synapse on nc6230 or something back in 2006.

Getting a Windows machine to stop lagging unpredictably though, that is job best left for a specialist. Some come working out of the box, but those are the exception.

(Although it should be noted that I hate lagging as much as designers hate misalignment.)

Rd6n6• 5 years ago

I personally find gnomes keyboard driven Ux to be the best option out there. Managing multiple workspaces/desktops in Mac is almost as good, but isn’t even close in windows.

Foss projects do need to attract more ux designers though. I was telling a friend the other day about how amazing blender is… but had to admit it was so unintuitive/un-discoverable that you can’t really use the program without going through fairly specific tutorials for what you are trying to do

unixhero• 5 years ago

(1) This is not a problem.

(2) Wrong. Just by you saying "Open Office" means that you are out of touch. You are stuck back in 2010. There is no pathos here. If you have not gotten the memo that Open Office is dead and the project that took over and continued improving is called Libre Office, then it is a sign you are out of touch. Libre Office is not janky, and hundreds of thousands of users beg to differ.

(3) There are several. Thunderbird and Evolution. However you always have your outlook.com for work email.

(4) Wrong. Recently? Define recently. The last 10 years has been a joyride.

(5) Wrong. Krita for photoshop workloads is amazing. Applications are thriving.

laurent923• 5 years ago

And right when Ubuntu would have become up to paar with Windows, bahm, Unity came, Alt+Tab didn’t work, the docker didn’t accept new icons, the Meta key blanked the screen (to display a search bar full-screen) and we were back to a young buggy desktop again. Linux is the ever-restarting progress.

What the Linux desktops lacked is powerful leadership, period.

herbst12• 5 years ago

This might be true about Ubuntu. But what about Fedora? Manjaro? Arch? Or even Debian?

I would only recommend Ubuntu to people I dislike.

reilly3000• 5 years ago

The latest versions of LibreOffice are really quite good. They have implemented the Ribbon-style nav as an option and have some decent default styles. I was pleasantly surprised when I last used it.

mackrevinack4• 5 years ago

i learned recently that gimp has a command palette that you can access by pressing the / key. this might sound a bit over the top but its been a game changer for me. no more having to scan though icons looking for whatever tool, just type something like /crop. its makes it very quick to create or delete layers, open things like levels, colour balance etc

I'm surprised the photoshop doesn't have the same feature. it would makes things so much easier for online tutorials just to name the tool or setting instead of having to list out the full location in the file menu (which is something that might be subject to change in future versions)

globular-toast3• 5 years ago

Fragmented gui development. There were too many projects with none focusing on really making a better gui than mac/windows.

Not really true. Windows has copied loads of stuff from Linux GUIs over the years. I began to notice this around Windows Vista.

A lack of bread and butter 1st class "business" apps - you know, office. OpenOffice is fine, IF you are ok with the janky ui and no one knowing how it works

This is valid. Shouldn't be so bad today with web apps being a thing.

lack of open source exchange type mail/cal/etc server and outlook-like client). Holy fudge, I tried to get this going and people just crapped on me for suggesting it.

Yeah, because MS locks other mail clients out. Thunderbird is an excellent email client. Outlook is some proprietary business messaging thing that also happens to support email (badly).

the_solenoid4• 5 years ago

Fragmented meaning if I was taking a year or 2 to get a code base up for a linux port, I have to take one of a few roads. 1, my app is specialized enough where we dictate the rules and probably it runs well on just one distro, or I have to account for all the different flavors of GUI and windowing systems to target users with their current setups. The former I think happened all the time with specific apps, the latter kept commercial devs far away.

I think the situation is less bad now, but my point was the boat had mostly sailed.

Thunderbird is fine (i use it daily), but nothing touches the functionality of outlook (on windows - not the limited versions that exist on the web and elsewhere). And I was as anti MS as anyone back then, but once I had to actually implement exchange servers as part of my job vs using sendmail and a bunch of random crap - there was just no contest. I always knew it was important, but it really is the killer business app.

And now that you dont need to hire 1.5 people minimum to manage it, and pay for servers and infrastructure etc to get the benefits, it is now more a killer app than ever, to those who need it. (really, I hope to never manage on-location exchange ever again)

lostlogin• 5 years ago

2) A lack of bread and butter 1st class "business" apps - you know, office. OpenOffice is fine, IF you are ok with the janky ui and no one knowing how it works.

Having recently reentered the world of the full MS and Office stack, janky shit is the standard. Word - the app, online and teams. None of them work right. The meme where someone thinks they’ll just move an image is accurate. Headers and footers, formatting and most other parts are actually broken or have unpredictable behaviour across apps that are presumably supposed to be the same?

I feel like an old man shouting into a void, but it isn’t right how crappy the industry standard has become.

bodge5000• 5 years ago

Your right, teams and office are really very janky. The difference is, if you launched it for the first time without seeing it before, you'd think (if you were a normal person) it looks clean and modern and so on.

You open up OpenOffice for the first time, it looks like software from 10 years ago.

I hate teams with a searing passion, but the thing is though it does break, it looks pretty good doing it.

dude4you• 5 years ago

1) Fragmented gui

Question of taste. Really. If you like an os inspired by sonic the hedgehog, Mac and windows is for you.

2) A lack of bread and butter 1st class

What are you lacking? OpenOffice not good enough? Use softmaker. Does windows actually have an SSH by now?

3) lack of open source exchange type mail/cal/etc

Evolution, Thunderbird and a few proprietary ones

4) Until recently, installing on laptops was an absolute crap shoot.

I had not had a problem in 20 years

5) Just, apps, in general. Gimp is fine, but it has

Fair point. I have used Photoshop with wine for some specific color maps

herbst12• 5 years ago

Lack of software is such a one sided argument always. As Linux user it took me forever to find proper alternatives on a Mac and I still have no idea how and if I can replace and use some for me common things on windows. Which is the only OS I can't get looking like I want to either way

the_solenoid4• 5 years ago

1) is 2 points (the second touched on by point 5). 1st, it makes development stupid if you have moving targets (not as bad today, but ffs it was horrible in the early days). 2nd is 99.99% of consumer computer users have a hard enough time with OS GUIs that hold their hand - the fact I cannot sit someone down to any 3 random linux machines and have the same experience (again MUCH worse 20 years ago) means it can never make desktop inroads.

2) here is where peoples blind spots can be, but they really reallllly don't understand that MS made some apps that basically need to be aped feature for feature to allow for migration to linux as a desktop. Again touching on familiarity (as in with the gui) but also feature set. People who make money writing certain things can't use certain apps because the features needed by those users don't exist because the software (at the time it needed to be) wasn't mature enough.

3) Thunderbird and evolution are not replacements for outlook. Exchange/outlook had database backed mail and calendaring. No one to this day is even remotely close. Not google, not anyone. This is the biggest app in business for better or worse. Not only did you have database backed calendaring and email, but you also had ridiculously fine-grained group policy management, and way better tools for retention (and this is actually a bfd) If an oss replacement had been made 15-20 years ago the computing landscape would be hugely different.

Only windows gets the full feature set to this day - ios/mac/android/web all don't get the full thing (because no/limited GPOs)

There WAS a project called zimbra or something, and I think they knew replacing exchange was a holy grail (and wanted to benefit monetarily), but iirc it was a paid thing, and never took off in any meaningful way.

4) remember, you, we, are not 99.99% of computer users. I have had hmm, 4 linux laptops over the years, and while fine, it was never problem free. Driver support mostly came down to age and brand, most of them were Dells.

josteink2• 5 years ago

This will be super unpopular, but Linux missed the desktop boat 20 years ago,

Nothing to feel bad about saying. As a mass-market option it absolutely did. There was no flood of new users coming along back then, and there wont be this time around either.

But for me as a developer, I still think a Linux-desktop is the best desktop I can get. So that's what I'm going to use.

And that's all I care about. That the wider masses run Windows or MacOS doesn't really bother me at all. After all, why should it?

anotheryou• 5 years ago

RE 2 and 3: browser apps will do the trick once they mature. I hate office on the web because of the horrible UI legacy ported from the desktop, but it's still an impressive implementation. Another example would be chromebooks with google docs. Google docs is really really well with much less of the legacy bloat others have.

heresie-dabord2• 5 years ago

In its beginning, Apple marketed its computers as easier to use. The GUI was a selling strategy. Applications tied themselves to the GUI and suddenly consumers were buying a computer to use Adobe products, with a little browsing and e-mail on the side.

Eventually, competitive pressure forced Microsoft to develop ("heavily borrow") a GUI. All sarcasms aside, mWindows has become usable. But this GUI is a heavy cost.

GNU-Linux is a success. For the generations of people who were sold "a GUI", Linux is often seen as too hard. But for people who found easy access to compilers and other tools through GNU-Linux, there is nothing better.

There is room for all these operating systems, obviously. As for which one is best, there is no contest in my mind. The one that does not lock me in and lets me build what I need is an easy winner.

peterhung• 5 years ago

I agree that there are many apps missing on Linux.

But that depends on the type of users: for devs & office workers, I think Google suite can replace MS Office and many Internet apps can help with many other types of everyday app that's available on Mac or Window.

dukeofdoom• 5 years ago

So which is the top distribution now for desktop. Last time I tried was Slackware.

jdoss2• 5 years ago

Give Fedora Linux a try. It has been my daily workstation professionally and personally since 2007ish. Fedora 34 is pretty fantastic for hitting the ground running after you install.

blacksmith_tb• 5 years ago

'Top' could mean 'most popular' or 'I think this one is best'. I tend to just use stock Ubuntu (which with Fedora vies for the first of those senses), though some distros that are based on it like POP!_OS and Elementary are kind of appealing.

seph-reed2• 5 years ago

I highly, highly recommend Elementary OS. https://elementary.io/

It's the only OS I know of that's remotely close to MacOS in terms of aesthetic, and with Proton I can play pretty much every game on Steam.

bakoo• 5 years ago

I prefer Mint Cinnamon, which feels like a better looking and more polished Ubuntu with saner defaults.

juniperplant2• 5 years ago

Either Ubuntu (Canonical) or Fedora (Red Hat).

peterburkimsher• 5 years ago

I want to switch to Linux, and made an external USB SSD with about 20 different distros on their own partitions. The installation for some was much easier than others!

But this week, I was reminded why I still use Mac OS 10.13. On my Mac, I tried to install ffmpeg with rubberband support. When trying to compile it, brew gave cryptic error messages and eventually failed. For something else, I tried installing qemu, also using brew. There were a load of errors telling me I'm using an outdated OS and should feel bad about it, and again, it failed after 156 minutes with some libiconv error that I don't even totally understand, never mind know how to resolve. Something to do with having imagemagick already installed. I tried downloading an image from docker, and the docker-machine wasn't running, and even when I started it, the pull command from dockerhub still failed.

On a Mac, these kinds of errors are unusual. On Linux, build errors like that are normal.

I want to be able to install software in less than half an hour. Whether it's brew, apt-get, yum, pip, npm, or whatever other package manager you wish for - recompiling all my software is extremely slow, and by the time it's finished I've already moved on to something else.

For as long as software continues to be distributed as binaries for Mac, in a dmg or pkg, I'll continue using my Mac. I do still have to recompile sometimes, but it's something I dread, because of the huge amount of time it takes. Requiring this for every software package on Linux is what's pushing me away from the platform.

throitallaway• 5 years ago

IMO the power of Linux distros is the package manager. The ~2.5 hour journey that you described on macOS should take less than a minute on most Linux distros. During my (somewhat brief) time with macOS, brew was a primary source of frustration.

You say that recompiling software is slow and errors during compilation are normal on Linux. I don't find myself compiling software very often. Most things are grabbed as binaries by the package manager. For everything else there's the AUR (which I rarely experience issues with.)

AnIdiotOnTheNet16• 5 years ago

IMO the power of Linux distros is the package manager. The ~2.5 hour journey that you described on macOS should take less than a minute on most Linux distros.

Unless of course said software is not in your repo, then expect that it will take at least 2.5 hours.

smoldesu2• 5 years ago

Why would you use brew instead of your system's integrated package manager?

sarpeedo• 5 years ago

I wouldn't necessarily generalize issues using brew on a mac to issues all package managers on linux. Some of those errors might be attributable to OSX locking down application installation. You can install binaries on linux just like with any other OS most people just prefer to use package managers.

bobbylarrybobby• 5 years ago

Well brew is absolute crap, and most Linux package managers are better. I’d suggest using nix for macOS in single-user imperative mode. It functions pretty much like brew except it never pukes all over itself.

rossy• 5 years ago

On a Mac, these kinds of errors are unusual. On Linux, build errors like that are normal.

I think it's the opposite, and the errors that you encountered are a good example of why, since they all appear to be Mac/Homebrew-specific.

On my Mac, I tried to install ffmpeg with rubberband support. When trying to compile it, brew gave cryptic error messages and eventually failed.

The FFmpeg in my distro's packages (OpenSUSE) and in Ubuntu's packages comes with rubberband already enabled. They are binary packages - no compilation needed, and it all just works. When I last used Homebrew I was surprised at how often it needed to compile things. For Linux users, compilation is rare.

For something else, I tried installing qemu, also using brew. There were a load of errors telling me I'm using an outdated OS and should feel bad about it, and again, it failed after 156 minutes with some libiconv error that I don't even totally understand, never mind know how to resolve.

libiconv is not a thing in GNU/Linux. In Linux, iconv() is part of libc. libiconv is only used to port software to platforms which don't have iconv, or have an iconv() which is deficient in some way. Also, again, my distro and Ubuntu both include a binary package for qemu - no compilation needed.

Whether it's brew, apt-get, yum, pip, npm, or whatever other package manager you wish for - recompiling all my software is extremely slow, and by the time it's finished I've already moved on to something else. [...] Requiring this for every software package on Linux is what's pushing me away from the platform.

I think you have the wrong idea about apt-get and package managers on Linux. Most distro package managers do not compile your software. Almost all the popular distros have binary package managers, which means compilation errors (on your machine) are not possible. Ironically, Homebrew (and Cygwin) users spend a lot more time compiling than Linux users do, so don't let your experience with Homebrew colour your opinion of Linux. They are not alike.

commoner6• 5 years ago

Unless you're using one of the very few Linux distributions that require you to compile everything from source (such as Gentoo), almost all of the packages are precompiled binaries and there is no compilation involved on your end.

CRConrad7• 5 years ago

But this week, I was reminded why I still use Mac OS 10.13.

[Goes on to illustrate all the problems he's had... On MacOS.]

For as long as software continues to be distributed as binaries for Mac,

Apparently it isn't, is it, since you've been compiling so much?

in a dmg or pkg, I'll continue using my Mac.

So when are you quitting?

I do still have to recompile sometimes, but it's something I dread, because of the huge amount of time it takes.

On MacOS. So you're dreading Linux. Impressive logic.

Requiring this for every software package on Linux

[Citation needed]

is what's pushing me away from the platform.

The wrong one. All the shit you've been whining about should logically be pushing you away from MacOS.

pier256• 5 years ago

I've been considering doing this too for my dev machine. Thankfully I'm not trapped into the Apple ecosystem as I don't use any of their services (iCloud, Messages, FaceTime, etc).

On my work machine, 99% of the time I just use VSCode, terminal, Git, Docker, and a browser... I reckon all those will actually run better on Linux than macOS.

phendrenad210• 5 years ago

MacOS is basically Unix, so I don't think it'll run better due to the OS. The real reason to switch to Linux is you can get much more powerful hardware than Apple sells (or sells for a reasonable price).

mishafb• 5 years ago

Docker on Mac is actually running in a VM, since containers are a linux feature, not unix. You can't develop for linux servers like you can on a linux machine.

Klonoar8• 5 years ago

...for a desktop, sure. For laptops, there is currently no real comparison on power and price.

I very much hope the rest of the industry can respond to the M1.

pier256• 5 years ago

Docker runs ways faster on Linux.

Also, I own a cheap Chromebook and in general Chrome seems to runs much smoother than on my expensive iMac.

incadenza• 5 years ago

At the moment Docker and Kubernetes are the reason I’m using Linux at work. Without those I’d just use the M1.

Shadonototro• 5 years ago

Gnome is the reason why people don't stay on linux

I was so happy when Valve announced they'd ditch debian/ubuntu and gnome

lbhdc2• 5 years ago

One of the reasons I enjoy using linux is the endless things you can customize, including the DE. You can easily switch your DE to something more inline with your preferences. Or you can install a spin with your preferred DE already enabled.

argvargc2• 5 years ago

Why is Gnome the reason people don't stay on linux?

The article makes it look great to anyone familiar with macOS, which while it has faults is generally regarded as a pretty good OS GUI.

Is there something bad about Gnome the article is missing?

sarasasa28• 5 years ago

ok nice blog

grafelic• 5 years ago

I think you would need to be a tinkerer to enjoy the Linux experience fully. I've running Linux on desktop (and servers) for 15 years at least and there has always been tinkering, although much less the last 5 years or so.

argvargc2• 5 years ago

Genuine question:

By "tinkering" do you mean every once in a while something really important completely stops working and you have to pull your hair out in the middle of some important work in order to get that thing fixed so you can use your computer properly again, which usually involves a series of incomprehensible steps you found on the 17th page of a phpBB forum thread?

Or...?

Because, that being one primary reason many people choose macOS over Windows, it would really suck.

Asking because the article was interesting, Gnome looked great, and it'd be genuinely fantastic if this assumption on my part was wrong.

pantalaimon4• 5 years ago

Unless you are on a rolling release distribution things don't just stop working out of the blue.

But if you want to have some new thing or change something so it works more how you would like, that can lead to some tinkering.

harlekein2• 5 years ago

To me it means I think of a workflow which would make things smoother for me, I make it so I can do that. But it takes tinkering.

I see something nice someone is using or has done. Then I can copy their config, but that's their personal config and I want something slightly different. That takes tinkering.

OSX is basically: Use it as designed. And it's designed for what most people want, but if you want to push the boundaries of that you are going to have a frustrating experience.

brightball• 5 years ago

Similar story for me. Switched 5 years ago after 10 years with Apple. You have to be pretty determined to make the switch.

I love it. I’m really happy with the switch and have no plans to ever go back but it’s a decision you need to choose and commit to. I’d never recommend it to somebody else. If Linux is right for you, you will seek it out and make it happen.

istingray9• 5 years ago

As someone new to Linux from 20 years on a Mac -- what's the deal with everything being free?

Seriously, where are the "take my money" opportunities. I don't want free OpenOffice. I want to pay $100 for something better, whatever the heck that is, maybe a little less clunky. I don't want free open source Notes app, I want to pay for something that's polished.

The Linux community is incredibly giving and passionate and it seems like it's all "free" but sucks up my time. I couldn't even figure out how to slow the scroll of my trackpad on Ubuntu after lots of digging.

Please, coming as a Mac user, take my money.

ksec2• 5 years ago

Generally speaking the Linux community thinks that money is somewhat evil. There are little "take my money" moment. Most value only comes from services and support, not a common or sustainable stream of revenue on consumer computing.

Which is fundamentally different to the Apple and Mac platform. It is the polish app and "take my money" market. And for most part it is doing exceptionally well. ( On macOS, not MacBook )

istingray9• 5 years ago

That's helpful context. If there's good pro-Linux developers and apps worth buying from, let me know. i.e. on Mac Panic, Pixelmator, BBEdit. Would love a Mail alternative. Thunderbird is...not for me.

I'll take the opportunity to recommend Standard Notes. They have great Linux support, it's basically an Apple Notes replacement with E2EE for $50/year.

Take my money!

okamiueru2• 5 years ago

That's could be part of it, at least for some. However, to me, much more important is the open source nature of things, and not so much that it is free. In fact, it consider free and proprietary to be worse than something I'd pay for, since I assume I'd be the product.

Open source means supporting a collective achievement that is shared by humanity.

I use FreeCAD, not because it is better than Fusion 360, and not because one is less expensive, but because the latter is owned by a corporation that exploits knowledge investment (i.e. Free for students, free for everyone to "jk we just wanted you to invest in learning it")

The same goes with most Linux software. The only exception is the operating system itself and gnome, which I find to be miles better than the commercial alternatives. It's so much better, it isn't even a contest. Of course, the caveat is software availability, which to some extent also includes drivers. But that is hardly Linux's fault, although that detail makes little difference to the end user.

Open source also means, to a much larger extent, the absence of dark patterns. Drivers aren't accompanied by telemetry software with a company logo.

mgbmtl• 5 years ago

A lot of developers pay for their IDE (PHPStorm, for example). And a lot of software accept donations. I don't think people think money is evil, but to accept it, you need to be able to receive it, and that might be too much overhead for a lot of people.

Also, Mac is a much bigger market than Linux on the desktop, and tends to be used by people with money (for the expensive hardware). More of a profession, less of a hobby.

eric__cartman2• 5 years ago

There is paid commercial software for Linux, like MATLAB or Wolfram Mathematica. But the sad truth is that many companies like Microsoft aren't interested in offering MS Office for Linux. A lot of FOSS projects do make money by offering things like 24/7 support and security updates guaranteed for x amount of time (see Ubuntu Extended Security Maintenance). Also a lot of software is used by big companies that do have an interest in sponsoring the development on something they depend on. Where it be by contributing development time themselves or donating money to the developer fund.

Maybe as Wine advances we'll be able to use more and more commercial Windows software, kind of like what is happening with games. But I'm not holding my breath yet.

istingray9• 5 years ago

Is there a way to pay for WINE to encourage this? For example Parallels costs $80 on a Mac to run Windows, seems reasonable enough.

tech234a• 5 years ago

Microsoft does offer Teams, Edge, and VS Code on Linux these days.

est315• 5 years ago

There is definitely a proprietary desktop software market for Linux.

For your office example, try WPS office. Never used it myself but I heard good things. There are paid text editors like sublime or the stuff that jetbrains is building. There is also lots of Linux desktop software in the SFX industry.

istingray9• 5 years ago

Oh Sublime looks great, like BBEdit on Mac. $30 not bad. Thanks for the rec!

Checking WPS out now: https://www.wps.com/premium $30/year, not too bad. The fact that their free version runs on ads is a turnoff from a brand standpoint.

yoyohello134• 5 years ago

My main problem is I don't want proprietary software. I want to pay for FOSS software. I have a rolling monthly fund where I donate to projects I like. A lot of Linux users scoff at paying for software, but I think the Linux community would really benefit from fostering more of a donation centric culture.

hindsightbias2• 5 years ago

it's all "free" but sucks up my time.

Linux is for users who don’t value their time.

dpbriggs• 5 years ago

That's a terrible take. I enjoy having control over my computer and software. There's not some PM somewhere pushing a crappy change to forward their career.

freedomben5• 5 years ago

I've been using Linux exclusively for 10 years now and I value my time more than anything. I save a ton of time by being on an environment where I can finely tune my setup for my desired workflow and automate absolutely everything.

neop1x2• 5 years ago

This is definitely not true generally! I value my time high as well and I have been using Linux for many years. System updates are no worse than any other system, I would even say easier as I don't need to reboot every time. I have been using VSCode, Libreoffice, GIMP, VLC, Firefox, KiCAD, MPV, VLC and many other apps (mostly CLI) - mostly backend development, docker, databases, webapps - and I had wonderful experience doing so. I can imagine it may be more difficult for graphic designers and a like but I can imagine that even in that category some people are using only basic features doable in SW like GIMP and yet are still paying a lot for subscription-based proprietary software unnecessarily.

JeremyNT• 5 years ago

If you want, you can run a lot of proprietary Windows software in wine, so this is already an option for you.

However, a lot of open source software projects will also accept donations in addition to code (if you do not have time to contribute the latter) so if you find something lacking there may be an easy way for you to help. I like to pick a few OSS projects every year to make some donations to. I have always figured it would be better to help improve the open source solutions than it is to look for proprietary ones.

istingray9• 5 years ago

Appreciate you sharing your experience how it works. Glad to hear Windows software is an option.

benhurmarcel• 5 years ago

There are more and more paying/professional-quality software that is available on Linux, mainly due to the popularity of Electron and subscriptions:

- Companies choose Electron to reduce the cost of supporting Windows and Mac, which has the side effect of making Linux supported easily even if the market isn't there. People sure like to complain about Electron but it has been very beneficial for Linux desktops.

- Selling Linux software has always been hard, mainly due to piracy and a widespread aversion to closed-source software within Linux users. With subscription business models being more popular/acceptable nowadays, which comes along a requirement to be always-online, such services are more easily available on Linux too.

For example Linux has VSCode, Spotify, 1password, Bitwarden, Obsidian, Slack, Discord, Skype, Typora, Simplenote, Inkdrop, Wordpress, Microsoft Teams, Zoom, Signal, Atom, Ghost… It has improved drastically from even just 10 years ago, when almost no popular software/service was available.

And that's not mentioning the general shift to using webapps instead of desktop apps (Google Workspace, Office 365, most email services, Jira, Github, Asana…), which obviously makes Linux much more viable.

slumpt_• 5 years ago

Write once run everywhere has really become a reality with Electron in a practical sense that wasn’t ever quite as real before.

A lot of mudslinging about performance but for a devoted team it’s very possible to build a solid web app.

Love what it’s done for software

awinter-py• 5 years ago

feels like some important apps are starting to distribute on linux -- tbh steam may be the most important of these because it contains such a diversity of other software and has a microtransaction system

dec0dedab0de• 5 years ago

It's a chicken and egg problem. Nobody pays for free software, so noone who makes software does the boring things. It sucks up your time because the boring things they don't want to do is that 10% that would make it easier.

Ofcourse there are exceptions, and I am surprised there aren't more companies that go with the ardour model. They give away the source but charge for binaries.

I would even like it if they charge for everything but have it be open source, so you can't download an "official copy" unless you pay.

lostgame• 5 years ago

Coming from a Mac, and the commercial software world; such as using software like Photoshop or Logic Pro instead of GIMP or Ardour - the polish, standardization and reliability are way, well; worth the damn money.

There is an age-old axiom that 'free isn't free', and Linux quite literally embodies everything about that for me.

When I can get native, commercial software for Linux; without interpreter layers such as WINE, I, along with the majority of the rest of computer users, will consider it. Until then, there are far too many compromises for me to consider it.

I would so much rather pay for a piece of software I rely on - especially every day - and get the support that comes with it to boot - than have it for free. And so do millions of others.

sagarm2• 5 years ago

There is an age-old axiom that 'free isn't free', and Linux quite literally embodies everything about that for me.

The entire world runs on Linux and other F/OSS software like Python, Ruby, GCC, Clang, MySQL, Spark, VSCode, etc etc.

The programs you're talking about aren't the only kind of value out there.

When I can get native, commercial software for Linux; without interpreter layers such as WINE

Valve has integrated their version of Wine (Proton) into Steam with great success. Wine isn't a bad option for the kind of GUI tools that tend not to be popular on Linux.

acomjean2• 5 years ago

There are a few paid apps. Bitwig for music and DaVinci Resolve Studio 17 (there is a free version of DaVinci too), Jetbrains dev tools (intellij,phpstorm, pycharm).

Coming to it, it is a little weird at first. Note that on Mac at least there's the garage band/imovie/ iphoto apps available for free with the OS too.

Your right though, the everything is free and unsupported (usually the take my money moment is for support) . For example I needed to do some minor video editing, what do I use..? There are some major apps that tend to stand out: LibreOffice/Krita/Gimp among others.

I'm using POPos so I tend to find a list of applications and see what's available pre-packaged for my version of linux.

Even Unreal Engine can build on linux with work. Its a bit of a pain, but maybe I'm used to it now..

kbelder2• 5 years ago

I was trying to think of a distribution platform to sell programs on Linux. Steam, kind of?

Seems to be an unfilled niche. Is an opensource app store that sells closed-source software possible or reasonable?

TimTheTinker3• 5 years ago

Pianoteq is also available for Linux.

seph-reed2• 5 years ago

Try Elementary OS. They have a sweet pay-what-you-want model, and the UI is really nice. I'm always surprised how many people overlook it, given that it's IMO the only OS I know of with a nice UI that can play games.

https://elementary.io/

ElijahLynn3• 5 years ago

I hear you, that would be nice to have more premium apps that are paid. I personally would gladly pay for premium apps, even more so if I pay and they are open source.

Until then, here three quality paid apps for Linux:

* Lightworks - professional video editing with GPU support * Bigwig Studio (like Ableton live, creating EDM style music, midi arrangements etc) * Maya - 3D animation software (Pixar uses this too) * IntelliJ/PhpStorm/Pycharm/Rubymine/etc IDEs for coding

scns12• 5 years ago

Excuse my correction but it is Bitwig and it is awesome. Funny typo though, the actual leader in that niche (DAW optimized for live playing) would be Ableton Live, and Bitwig was written by former Ableton employees.

danShumway2• 5 years ago

A lot of Open Source software products operate on the opposite notion. They won't take your money, you have to give it to them.

I use almost entirely Open Source tools as a game dev for various reasons (some ideological and some practical). All of them get money from me on a monthly basis. It's a security thing; I give them money because I want them to stick around and because there are features that they're working on that I'll need for future projects. Paying them money is much more cost efficient and much safer than trying to build all of my own tools, and much safer and more future-proof than buying into commercial engines.

What I get out of that arrangement is closer relationships with the developers, slightly more input into how software gets built, but mostly just confidence that the products will get better and an increased likelyhood that devs will fix things that are incredibly annoying to me. And some software products (Blender in particular) have shown that this model can work really well if there's enough buy-in from the community. Blender/Krita will even let you sponsor development on specific features if you're willing to pay enough money.

Unfortunately, like with anything else, products suffer if there's not enough funding, and a lot of Open Source products are underfunded. There's an open question in the OS world about how you get people to donate voluntarily rather than forcing them to give money. People don't have the perspective I describe above, it's not an intuitive way to the think about software.

But if you're not in that boat, if you're actually willing to pay money purely to get better software, that's a solveable problem today. Many Open Source products support donations, and at the scale you're talking about (equivalent to Mac, one or two devs make something really good as their job), getting donations to the point where people can work on a project full time would be enough to get the kind of quality boosts you want. Most Open Source projects accepting donations are not at that level yet, but again, if you genuinely want to pay money to increase software quality, you can do that.

But it does require a shift in thinking, you have to break away from the philosophy that the Mac ecosystem has aggressively drilled into you that says you pay for access to things. In Mac, the way you support developers is you pay for access, and as a side effect they build better apps. In Linux, (most of the time) you pay for development, not access. Everyone understands in theory that we pay for software because we want the software to improve. But theory is different than practice, emotionally we buy software because we have to. In Linux with Open Source, if you want software to get better you are forced to internalize the underlying theory -- you have to get your brain to actually believe that you are paying for continued development instead of access to something that already exists. And then at that point, you realize that kicking someone $5-10 a month so that they'll add new scripting APIs to Tiled is actually a really good deal.

Mac's system has the advantage that it forces everyone to participate, so it's easier for Mac developers to get enough money to focus on building really polished products. Mac doesn't require its users to believe that they're paying for development. The weakness of Linux's system is it doesn't force everyone to participate in supporting the ecosystem, so there's way less funding. But while that's a legitimate criticism of Open Source, it's also a purely social/psychological phenomenon. There's no law of nature that means we couldn't collectively pay developers of Open Source apps enough so that they could devote the same amount of time to development as Mac devs do.

And if we did that, then quality would skyrocket, Mac is proof of that. The Mac app ecosystem proves that you don't need giant companies to have great software, all you need are a few developers per-app that can afford to put all of their attention into their apps instead of just their free time.

chipotle_coyote4• 5 years ago

That's a really interesting way of thinking about it. I'm so far not willing to switch away from the Mac because of the app ecosystem, and it's largely because of small, Mac-only applications with just one or two developers. (I also really do like the macOS UX, even if Big Sur gives me more nits to pick, but I'm sure I could adjust to something else.)

The big issue, I guess, is that social/psychological phenomenon you're referring to. I've noticed on HN that when discussions come up about how creators -- artists, fiction writers, journalists, filmmakers, etc. -- are or should be compensated for their work, there is a very loud contingent that invariably pops up arguing, in effect, that creators shouldn't expect any compensation at all. "Nobody is owed a living," and "if they really want to create, they'll do it for free." I can't help but suspect that is also a pretty big stumbling block for funding the creation of free software: everyone philosophically appreciates the free as in speech aspect, but an awful lot of free software consumers seem to be pretty in love with the free as in beer aspect, too.

nightfly• 5 years ago

I'm a long time Linux user who got an M1 Macbook Air from work having about the inverse problem. Every little thing costs like $10-50 and it adds up. And the level of polish I've seen isn't really _that_ great. I've paid for things like BetterTouchTool, BetterSnapTool, and Alfred for basic easy features. I still can't get BetterTouchTool to reliably start on boot :/

At this point I've stopped trying to refine my work environment anymore, just because I'm tired of being nickeled and dimed for every little thing

reasonabl_human2• 5 years ago

What do those window management tools accomplish that Rectangle doesn’t for free? I recently switched to macOS as a daily driver for work and the non-existent window management in macOS is disappointing

nicce• 5 years ago

I’m also long time Linux user and thinking for swapping to Mac on new MBP releases. Are you telling me that I can’t use same tools anymore than in Linux? I dont really care abot gui tools or gui tweaking. Terminal and browser is enough. I have lived with the illusion that almost anything with source code is possible to make work. E.g brew even automates this.

gitgud• 5 years ago

There's many FOSS alternatives out there, they're just not as easy to find!

[1] I've been a Ubuntu user for 6 years and just got a Mac for work.

jamil7• 5 years ago

Side note, I’ve recently switched to Raycast after seeing them advertise an appkit role on HN and found it be a really great Alfred replacement. Not sure what the future business model is but it’s free right now.

https://www.raycast.com

theshrike796• 5 years ago

I gladly pay for stuff. That means that the developer has motivation to keep the software up to date.

Open source relies on the kindness of strangers, sometimes a project has critical mass (or a corporate sponsor) to keep it alive, others just fizzle out. Then I need to spend time finding a replacement.

For example: this is why I chose Newsblur as my Google Reader replacement, they took my money. And I haven't regretted my choice even once.

Oh and Alfred really doesn't have a replacement anywhere. I bought Soulver just because of the Alfred integration.

aldanor• 5 years ago

Instead of BetterSnapTool, just use Rectangle (brew install rectangle).

Re: Alfred, I think it's best in class, and I'm personally happy to pay for it. There's free alternatives (Raycast or w/e it's called), but they're years away in features and usability.

Aperocky5• 5 years ago

I don't want free OpenOffice. I want to pay $100 for something better

For me the better thing is also free, it's called markdown.

Agree on trackpad though, someone has probably hacked something together but hardware driver is kind of hard to make as third party.

duckmysick• 5 years ago

Markdown is not a replacement for office apps. It's a markup language.

I can't use markdown to open a .docx file for a revision my client sent me.

jordigh• 5 years ago

Who do you want to take your money?

Someone wrote bash. There's no company behind it. It's mostly just Chet. How do you want to pay Chet? I'm not sure he even accepts donations.

Looking through my bash history to see what I use most often, I think of the OpenSSH devs wrote ssh. Then I think that lots of volunteers wrote Emacs. Oh, oauthtool, I use that often. I should figure out who wrote that. I suppose there's all of the Linux hackers who wrote each part of my kernel. Mercurial as my git. Hey, I wrote parts of that, so at least my debt there feels paid. Ah, there's the Mate developers who forked from Gnome 2 long ago and are now mostly doing basic maintenance on that codebase. Some GNU hackers wrote each of the coreutils but that was long ago and someone else is maintaining them now. Oh, Firefox, of course, the OS-within-an-OS. That also has its own few hundred hackers over the decades that should be paid.

How am I supposed to be paying all of the thousands of people who each wrote a little part of my OS? Apple didn't pay all of the people who wrote the free parts of their OS either. Did you?

There simply is no societal structure in place to pay the people who wrote this stone soup of an OS.

eitland3• 5 years ago

Feel free to use IntelliJ and Jetbrains tools generally like I do and Sublime Text (like I did) and fell free to support a number of the open source packages you like best :-)

I prefer to keep it mostly free as that was how I could afford it back in the days but there's nothing wrong with using pid products you like.

I also try to give back a bit extra now that I can afford it.

freedomben5• 5 years ago

I love you! You are the exact kind of users we need in the community and I'm ecstatic to see that you're here :-)

I think stuff for you is coming, you're just a little early and a lot of things are in development. That said, Elementary OS was trying to offer the type of thing you're looking for.

It might be time for me to jump back into the desktop app market. I used to make (IMHO) really nice polished Qt apps primarily for Linux but also available for Windows and Mac. I quit doing it because the market collapsed around 2014, but maybe it's time to get back in !!

istingray9• 5 years ago

What a warm welcome! Thank you!

riazrizvi• 5 years ago

Does anyone know of a good resource to identify and explain unnecessary launchctl daemons, that I can then disable? My $4k Intel Macbook, new this year, can’t even smoothly handle cursor movement in vim/neovim because of the bloatware and possibly T2 chip interference, and it is driving me up the wall. Or if anyone has experience running the nearest thing to an open source version of MacOS, I’d love to get your pointers.

If I can’t solve this then I will switch to Ubuntu but as others have pointed out, I can see it will be a big time sink, that I’d like to avoid.

Klonoar8• 5 years ago

That... makes no sense. A default macOS setup should not have issues with cursor movement due to anything in launchctl. Where are you even pulling the T2 bit from...?

Are you using stock Terminal.app or iTerm2? The latter is notably improved and might benefit you if you haven't tried it.

buserror• 5 years ago

Errr, I switched from Apple (II, and mac) after 20+ years of being a professional developer to -- Linux/embedded. To be fair, I was also a UNIX developer all that time, starting with Minix all the way back then, to Pr1meOS, HP/UX, SunOS, Solaris and blah blah. The fact I had that UNIX background is what saved me. I was really highly technical and very highly rated Mac dev until about 2006 when I realised this was a lost cause. I would not stand developing for the apple business these days -- these days, I can use my "embedded" skills on linux (or bare metal) and "be the tree that stands out from the forest" -- these days on Apple-land you are just chowder.

Mind you, I might have audio working on my linux workstation, but I can't seem to get the mouse wheel doing the right thing. That's the price to pay, and I might grumble about it (a lot) but it's better than having half the available API your app used to use just diseapear into thin air.

rsyring• 5 years ago

I don't use Linux b/c it's the best desktop. I use it for two fundamental reasons:

1. With enough time and effort I can make it do whatever I want it to do (that can be done).

2. I'm a Python web developer and we deploy to Linux so it means I only really need to learn one OS (time to learn is in limited supply for me as man who cares about family life).

What this means practically for me is that 95% of what the OS provides works the way I want it to. I have a handful of things I customize and I've scripted those (Linux is great for scripting) so it's easy to apply when I refresh my OS every 1-2 years.

It also means I don't have to do things the Apple way, I can make it work the way I want it to work (within reason).

It also means I don't have an OS that will put advertisements in the start menu (that was the last straw for my family using Windows, everyone uses Linux now).

I realize if I was a lawyer and needed Microsoft Office or a designer and needed the Adobe Suite, then I couldn't take this approach or would need to run a different OS in a VM. I wish the Linux desktop would be an attractive target for all popular commercial apps to support it. But I'm not holding my breath, that's not why I use it.

theshrike796• 5 years ago

1. With enough time and effort I can make it do whatever I want it to do (that can be done).

I did this when I was younger. Now I have more money than time, so I'm prepared to pay to spend less time making stuff do what I want it to do.

It also means I don't have to do things the Apple way, I can make it work the way I want it to work (within reason).

I used to fine-tune my system with the weirdest shit, every corner of the screen did a different thing, all 3 buttons did different things to windows depending on where you clicked.

Now I just use macOS pretty much vanilla out of the box. If I use Linux, I just use the defaults.

Copying over settings to multiple computers is just way too much bike-shedding for me.

tomwojcik• 5 years ago

Regarding copying over settings between macOS and Linux, powerusers usually maintain their own dotfiles and it's not a problem to make it somewhat OS-agnostic, so you can set up a similar environment within minutes.

hathawsh• 5 years ago

From my perspective, the era of switching desktops is over--I don't really have to choose anymore. These days I can run all the operating systems I need at once. I can run a Windows virtual machine in Linux and vice versa. If I need to run a Mac app, I can rent a VM on AWS. My Mac developer friends run Docker Desktop, which actually runs Linux.

I remember a time when the host operating system was an important choice that limited what kinds of things you could do with a computer. It's really not anymore IMHO.

skrtskrt2• 5 years ago

My Mac developer friends run Docker Desktop

Mac Docker is insanely resource-heavy since it runs through that virtualization layer instead of being native. Definitely a major source of frustration unless you keep your Docker stack very, very small or have an absolutely max-spec Macbook Pro.

thevagrant• 5 years ago

That's right. M1 can be fast as hell but it's still not that great if you use Docker.

forgotmypw172• 5 years ago

My computer is my "work station", so I don't want anything to change how it works without my asking for it.

Only FOSS has given me that so far. With the others, I inevitably run into "interface I'm used to changes without my consent".

AnIdiotOnTheNet16• 5 years ago

I think that's only true if you never update your FOSS software, which the FOSS community in general seems to think is akin to skinning puppies. Otherwise it seems to me that FOSS developers are just as prone to changing interfaces for the sake of change as everyone else.

forgotmypw172• 5 years ago

It's true for many projects, and I usually stop using them after it happens for the first time. Eventually, some software remains, against odds, stable. If not in the defaults, then after I apply my text-based, human-readable, source-matchable configuration files.

Also, I recently found Chicago 95 and am very pleased with the results of that five-minute shellscript :D

jwbwater• 5 years ago

It's the only option that frees you from the effects of someone else's greed.

ElijahLynn3• 5 years ago

Every Linux distro needs to adopt something like the Arch User Repository (AUR). It is hands down the nicest way to install packages out of all OSes, including Mac and Windows. Everything is in the AUR, and if it isn't it is fairly easy to wrap it up and put it there yourself.

Or one can just use Arch + `yay` and move on already!

_-david-_2• 5 years ago

It seems better to use flatpak, snap or appimage. These can be created once and run on any distro. Flatpak and snaps also include permissions on a per application basis so you can have some level of sandboxing. It is also easy to have proprietary applications which could help with more widespread Linux usage.

ElijahLynn3• 5 years ago

That does seem better in the long run, especially if one has a very large disk drive. Until all packages are packaged up correctly, which could be many years from now. Something like AUR will be a necessity.

pantalaimon4• 5 years ago

flatpak and snap feel so heavy - the startup times are reason enough to dislike them

zepearl3• 5 years ago

I did use the AUR a few years ago when I was installing some Kodi component on an Arch distro, but I wasn't thrilled about it.

I personally prefer Gentoo's way: user-owned "overlib"s for special stuff (and you would check the overlib's history to understand how committed the owner is), the rest merged into the main repository (if if manages to be merged, depending on QA).

AnIdiotOnTheNet16• 5 years ago

It is hands down the nicest way to install packages out of all OSes, including Mac and Windows.

Hard disagree. The best way to install software of all the OSs I've ever used was the original Macintosh way: Just copy a single file. The same thing was used in RiscOS, NeXT, and a few others and is the inspiration for AppImage.

xedrac• 5 years ago

As someone who has used Linux almost exclusively on the desktop for the past 10 years, I recently bought a Windows laptop to use with Piano Marvel. I was astonished at just how awful the Windows experience was. From the mandatory online user accounts, to the pre-installed garbage. Not to mention the in-your-face-constantly notifications, and forced updates. Using Linux feels unshackled and more polished.

AnIdiotOnTheNet16• 5 years ago

I would agree wholeheartedly with the former, but definitely not the latter. I keep going back to Windows because I'm sick of constantly dealing with all the little headaches that crop up whenever I use a Linux Desktop.

fsflover• 5 years ago

Which little headaches? Sounds like you are using hardware designed not for Linux if you have hardware problems.

m0zg2• 5 years ago

Feels like we have no choice but to switch to Linux for serious work nowadays.

Next gen Apple laptops will be selling you out to your respective governments for storing unapproved memes and saying unapproved things. They'll also be locked down progressively tighter, so Apple is able to extract more rent out of you even though you think you "own" the hardware. A decade ago I've resolved to not do any serious, long term work using tooling and operating systems that aren't Free. I've yet to regret this decision. It only makes sense that we don't allow trillion dollar corporations to deny us access to our own work 10-20-30 years from now. It also makes a ton of sense to store long term work in formats for which you could _debug the code_ if it rots over time.

I'm not a fundamentalist, though, so I use Windows for hobbies (audio recording, photography), but even then I watch out that the actual underlying work is stored in formats that I could in a pinch read with libre tooling on a libre OS of my choice.

jijji• 5 years ago

i switched to linux in 1992 and never looked back

c-smile• 5 years ago

From native developer perspective...

Just tried to compile my Sciter project, full rebuild scapp executable in particular - standalone Sciter binary (HTML/CSS/JS).

- Windows / Visual Studio / VC++ - 58 seconds. Self assembled machine, i7 / 4 cores

- Linux / Code::Blocks / GCC - 3 minutes 24 seconds. MacMini 2018, i7 / 6 cores

- MacOS / XCode / LLVM - 4 minutes 20 seconds. MacMini 2020, M1

So no surprise that I am using Windows as my primary dev platform.

As always, YMMV, depends on what you are using your machine for.

shmerl• 5 years ago

Congrats! Linux on the desktop is very good. I see no point in using macOS for anything.

GekkePrutser2• 5 years ago

I also moved away from Mac as main personal driver like the article writer but I moved to FreeBSD which has less corporate influence.

However the shadow side is much less hardware support. For me that worked out fine but it won't be for everyone.

One of the things I love is not being stuck with one company's choices anymore. I can decide when I want to install updates, not beg Microsoft not to reboot my computer. I can decide how I want the UI to function instead of Apple forcing their way on me. I'm not having to work around a bunch of tie-ins to cloud services which both MS and Apple do heavily. I don't have to go out of my way to block telemetry. My computer doesn't check if every app is approved by its vendor (Mac notarisation). I don't have my own computer spying on me.

It's a bit more work but it really makes me feel like my computer is my computer again. It's so worth it.

throwaway234292• 5 years ago

Please fix the link to the gnome website[0], it returns 404.

Just link to https://www.gnome.org/ instead. Nice article and welcome to Linux!

[0] https://www.gnome.org/gnome-3/

synergy20• 5 years ago

After 20 years using Linux as my desktop, my new job mandates macbook as the sole corporate computer, I probably rejected the offer should I had known this restriction.

pope_meat• 5 years ago

My favorite thing about booting up my windows partition is that I immediately have to restart for updates.

bitwize3• 5 years ago

The idea was to take baby steps and split my time between Mac and Linux but I quickly stopped turning on my MacBook.

I know that feel. I started wanting to "try out" Linux in 1995 or so but after a few shirt months my Windows partition languished, unused and unbooted-into.

jtdev• 5 years ago

Yah, Apple’s recent decision to pilfer my files has given me the final push to purchase a System76 Linux machine for my daily driver.

young_unixer• 5 years ago

The main thing I dislike about it assumption that all software should go through the distribution's package manager, instead of application developers distributing their software directly to users.

This assumption has the important consequence that distros don't provide a stable interface (libraries, etc) that applications can depend on. Two years from now your binary may stop working when the distribution updates their libraries.

Most people think the package manager model is an advantage, because it makes installing things that are in the package manager easier, but in reality it comes at a big cost for anything that isn't in the package manager or doesn't want to be in it, including most commercial software.

fragileone• 5 years ago

AppImages are a common format for commercial apps which avoid package managers. The fact that package managers exist doesn't produce any "big cost" for using these instead, except that they're larger because all the libraries they use are bundled with the executable.

beermonster2• 5 years ago

My advice to you coming from macOS is to explore Gnome using either Debian or Fedora.

I love Debian. But really, if you want the best experience on the desktop you really want to be using a rolling release distro or something that’s released more often than Debian.

If you’re coming from MacOS something like elementary OS [1][2] might also be a good starting point.

[1] https://elementary.io/

[2] https://blog.elementary.io/elementary-os-6-odin-released/

headsoup• 5 years ago

I've been on Linux for the last four years now and there are only two particular things that are painfully missing:

Stronger hardware driver support from vendors and

Photoshop. (Krita/GIMP/etc just aren't quite there yet, not to mention that most content/tutorials/etc are Photoshop oriented).

zanethomas• 5 years ago

I won't be buying another apple computer (never had any of their other devices).

Part of the reason for this is that with the new apple-only chips they will be able to finish locking the operating system down and forcing everyone to buy software from the app store.

That's their revenue model going forward.

nbzso• 5 years ago

Personal experience and opinion: Ex Apple user (20+ years), changed lot of roles, nowadays I manage, design and implement front-end stuff. My last Linux Desktop tinkering was at the time when Suse Desktop was the power behind creation of compiz (don't remember exactly) and was a nightmare.

I am familiar with Ubuntu/Debian as servers, never intended to use Linux Desktop seriously.

So as I sad numerous time here I switched my company to Arch/Manjaro on Apple Hardware, some of the engineers are with KDE, some with Gnome and I don't here any complains whatsoever. We are adapted all the work to Linux Desktops in record time, but this is not the important point that I want to share.

The important point is in the semantics of the following words related to computing: User Control. Transparency. Security. Peace of mind.

Apple progressively lost me with all Unification of the platforms and ignoring professionals constantly. Recent "scanning fiasco" cured my fetishism completely.

I am running Manjaro with Gnome and find that with minimal technical effort I have unique UX (Gnome Layout Switcher with tiling option) which makes me more productive than macOS. I never expected so painless transition, honestly.

On a commercial software: I will pay double or triple the price for Affinity Designer port to Linux. I have asked in the past and they answered No, but we will see in the future.

codyswann• 5 years ago

Give me an easy way to write (and test) iOS apps on Linux, and I'm all about switching (again).

zyngaro• 5 years ago

I don’t buy a MacBook for the software (macOS) but for the hardware. Apple simple makes the best laptops. They are second to none.

test542• 5 years ago

If Adobe Premiere ran on linux I would use it. But because it doesn't, I can't use linux, and that's all there really is to it for my particular use case. Any kind of big multifaceted analysis of linux is irrelevant to people like me.

I tried installing Ubuntu studio, the OS marketed for "creatives", and the first part of the experience is incoherent dialogs asking you to manually type the number of bytes you want your linux partition to have. You have to type in an 15 digit number or something not knowing how severe the consequences might be if you get this number wrong. Maybe you'll just waste a lot of time, maybe your computer hard drive might get fucked up and become unusable (until you invest even more time in learning how to fix it). I was repulsed and stopped trying to install it. I don't have enough free time. I installed ubuntu back in 2010 and I don't remember it being so bad. Maybe my priorities in life changed. I'd love to be a linux guru but I don't have time.

Decabytes• 5 years ago

The three things I wish were better on Linux were Wayland, the Audio stack, and the software packaging process (no one seems to be able to agree between flatpak, app image, or snap)

I feel like that would go a long way to making things better

ThinkBeat• 5 years ago

A better title would have been "What is Linux and how to install Linux on a PC"

I clicked in hoping for an in-depth comparison between Linux in 2021 and macOS, and pain points were had moving to Linux from macOS.

There are a lot of those posts around but reading a new one I hope to learn more about what has been developing.

This is a fairly generic "How to install Linux", with a little bit of padding.

The most interesting bit of it I thought was "My MacBook 4-year-old MacBook wasn’t too compatible with Linux.

This is counter to my own experience, but I probably have not done it on that specific vintage.

Anyone know what the issue is that model?

cirrus3• 5 years ago

I wasn’t too locked into the Apple ecosystem. I don’t have an iPhone so the integrations were not necessary for me. I didn’t use iCloud, FaceTime or Siri either. If all of these are key to you, switching to Linux may not be worth it.

perfopt• 5 years ago

I have been using Windows 10 as my main machine for 3 years now. In the past I have used MacOS as my main machine and Linux for home projects.

The author says - "I used Windows before purchasing my first MacBook but returning was not in my considerations due to the state of that OS with inbuilt ads, bloat and privacy concerns."

What in-built ADs? I have not seen any so far

n8cpdx2• 5 years ago

https://www.windowscentral.com/how-remove-advertising-window...

Its even worse if you buy an OEM device or get stuck with Windows 10 Home.

With Home, once your PC finds out you have WiFi, it will not let you set up the device without a Microsoft Account, and it will remember your WiFi details even if you kill the OOBE and restart. (among countless other extremely user-hostile features Microsoft has added)

fareesh• 5 years ago

Is Gnome still painfully slow/laggy? I switched to KDE about 5 years ago and never looked back.

esarbe6• 5 years ago

Gnome is awesome. Gnome 40 brought some nice performance improvements. Using it on a six years old netbook with 4 GB of RAM and i3.

juniperplant2• 5 years ago

Apparently it depends on the hardware. And by that I don't mean whether you have a powerful CPU/GPU combination.

If you're lucky, it's smooth as butter. Personally I'm in the unlucky group (i3-6100U + HD 520).

Work is being done to improve the situation: https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/mutter/-/merge_requests/1441

jwmoz• 5 years ago

See you again in a few months!

diragon• 5 years ago

What I hate about Gnome is that it's almost perfect but its paradigm includes huge huge window borders.

Oh well, on the plus side there's an actually perfect desktop out there already: i3. And sway potentially. I do miss Gnome's full-assedness (attention to detail and their strong opinions/focus) sometimes.

mherrmann• 5 years ago

It's like coming home from a hotel. In a hotel (on Mac), everything is designed and catered for. At home (on Linux), you have to do the dishes but you can set things up just the way you want them.

mackrevinack4• 5 years ago

that's actually a really good analogy.

and staying at hotels can be annoying sometimes, like having the room cleaners bother you, or in the restaurant trying to enjoy your dinner in peace the but the waiter keeps bugging you every 5 minutes!

shell0x• 5 years ago

I'm not sure if that's common knowledge, but I recently found out that KDE has a distribution called KDE Neon with the latest KDE releases.

https://neon.kde.org

I installed it on a USB flash drive and it's not bad.

jillesvangurp• 5 years ago

Considering as well. What's stopping me at this point is actually very little. One of the main points is that I need access to xcode for business reasons. But it's a pretty minor point as I'm actually not an IOS developer but just the one person in the company that can build our Cordova app with IOS. I'm actually OK with the stability of the software eco system. Most/all I care about is available on Linux, and actually works better there.

I'm mostly a backend developer, so intellij, vs code, docker (definitely better on linux), and lots of command line tools (all designed for unix type environments) all work fine on Linux. All the business stuff is cloud/browser based these days so I don't need MS Office or other stuff that was a big deal 13 years ago (when I last used Windows). And the few things that aren't are glorified electron apps that are available in the snap store.

I don't actually use any mac specific stuff that I care about (basically non of the i-* stuff). Never was that impressed with that stuff. I even process photos in Darktable (on a mac!) because I like it that much. And that is definitely going to be faster and nicer on Linux. Also, my steam library should come back alive once I move to a Linux desktop thanks to wine/proton being a thing now. I know my way around Linux of course as I've been doing devops and data processing long enough and have been dabbling with but never committed to Linux on my own machines since the nineties.

So, why don't I? Just two reasons remaining: finding good laptops that come close to my 15" MBP hardware is pretty hard. Apple did a nice job and they are miles apart from all the me too options out there for windows users. There are a few OKish things out there and they are similarly priced to macs. But it seems it's always something you are compromising on. And the second reason is just the amount of hassle involved with using Linux. It's a never ending stream of stuff that should work but clearly isn't which then leads to hours of researching why it isn't. Printer not printing, standby not doing its thing, etc. I've been there done that. Fine as a hobby but stressful when you have more important things to do. I recently installed arch in qemu on a mac. Actually works fairly nice. But it took me ages to get networking working. I could see myself using this and I get why Valve picked this for their Steam console.

otar• 5 years ago

I was like full-time Linux desktop user for the 10 years, then switched to Mac and never looked back.

Linux had all the opportunities to be really good, but the development process was slow, hardware compatibility was a crap and occasionally I would loose a day or two after a postponed update (which got fixes already) to make it work again. I don't really understand why Canonical/Ubuntu dropped Gnome and worked 7 years for Unity, then switched back to Gnome again. 7 years developments and contributions to the Gnome could really make a difference.

RepresentSpace• 5 years ago

I find it extremely hard to uninstall software from ubuntu unless the software was installed from snapcraft.

Due to the absence of a window's equivalent `Uninstall or Change Program`, I can't even recommend it to my parents either. There are a lot of ways to install software, but to uninstall you need to know what is installed and that isn't as simple as Windows/macOS.

Also since Netflix and Prime Video does not support 1080p playback on Linux (irrespective of your browser), I can't use it as my only OS either.

approxim8ion3• 5 years ago

why is that? I would assume GNOME Software or whatever graphical software package manager was installed would be enough for uninstalling things.

rcarmo• 5 years ago

I haven’t switched, but I am running a new Linux laptop over Summer break and it’s been great so far:

- The software (Elementary OS 6): https://taoofmac.com/space/blog/2021/08/16/1200

- The hardware (Lenovo Ryzen laptop): https://taoofmac.com/space/blog/2021/08/26/1400

I’d say that for a developer it’s a pretty much perfect set up these days. Definitely not so much for corporate work.

sandreas• 5 years ago

For nearly one month now I am working on switching from MacOS to linux desktop and after experimenting a lot, the switch is pretty near.

I'm using a Lenovo T460s WQHD, and the most important advice I could give you:

  - First try with a VM is ok, but if you really plan to switch, try on REAL HARDWARE - most of the issues I had was not using hardware with Linux support (e.g. Wifi)
  - Don't try to "rebuild" MacOS or Windows - change the mindset to linux
  - Plan a huge amount of time (weeks) for getting a neat set up and try at least for 4 Weeks, before you give up
  - Make a list of what are really MUST have features at the end and keep it as short as possible
  - Understand at least the fundamentals of the boot process, the X Server, Desktop Environments/Window Managers/Display Managers, Terminal / Shell / TTY
  - Don't switch distro too early - if something does not work, try to stick to your choice and fix the problems

For everyone who's interested, I ended up using Artix Linux (Arch, no systemd) with encrypted ZFS on boot and KDE as desktop environment, and I'm pretty happy so far. Resources I recommend are:

https://github.com/openzfs/openzfs-docs/blob/91d28894a74a19f...

https://int3ractive.com/blog/2018/make-the-best-of-macbook-t...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=exQh0_JKBJQ

https://github.com/esjeon/krohnkite

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC2eYFnH61tmytImy1mTYvhA

kamaitachi• 5 years ago

Interestingly, I just made the swap the other way.

I've been using Linux since the late 1990's (SuSE 5.x) and using Debian as my sole OS for the last 15+ years.

I took the plunge and bought a MacBook Pro M1 about 6 months ago.

What I miss about Linux:

  - the choice of different desktops (warts and all!)
  - zero friction software development (all the open source tools just work)
  - privacy and open source

What I like about MacOS:

  - as you'd expect, the OS and hardware are really integrated (suspend/resume butter smooth and faster than my Debian/Thinkpad experience)
  - integration with my iPhone (sharing passwords, iMessaging on my laptop)

After 6 months on MacOS, I'm still in two minds as to whether my move was a good one. Time will tell, but the pull of Linux lingers.

Edit: formatting

apatheticonion2• 5 years ago

I try desktop Linux every year and honestly, Gnome 40 is getting close, but Linux has a long way to go on the desktop before it rivals MacOS or Windows in terms of cohesive user experience.

This is an unpopular opinion in the FOS world but; I know I can donate, but I would love for there to be a high end desktop linux project that had a paid license.

It was actively maintained, adequately staffed and produced a user-centric distribution that could rival the high quality user experience you see in MacOS.

I tried to learn how to write a desktop environment a while ago and I am nowhere near smart enough for that.

I just want there to be an alternative to Windows and MacOS that is actually nice to live in on a daily basis.

Popegaf• 5 years ago

https://zorin.com/os/pro/ is basically what you're looking for

mackrevinack4• 5 years ago

zorin is looking nice these days. ive been using pop os for maybe 2 years now but i think i might switch.

im not quite sure zorin counts as being "adequately staffed" though. as far as i know its just 2 brothers from Ireland working in it all this time, but maybe they have more staff these days. i can't imagine how they could pull off zorin os and also zorin grid with only two of them

approxim8ion3• 5 years ago

I don't know about MacOS, but I do feel Windows is far from cohesive. The jump from GTK to Qt is no more than the jump from an older native Windows application to something in UWP for example.

apatheticonion2• 5 years ago

You're actually right about that.

Windows has been on the user experience decline for some time now. Rather than looking for ways to improve the user experience, they are looking for creative ways to introduce Microsoft Teams. Windows 7, while aged (and possibly viewed through nostalgia), was a pretty amazing cohesive experience.

There is literally nothing I do now that Windows 10 does better than Windows 7 (other than the actual requirement for software support). Not only does 10 take longer to start-up, but the start menu was destroyed and the new Microsoft Store app design (UWP?) is hideous and unintuitive.

I tolerate Windows now because of software support. I have nowhere else to play my games and don't even think about VR on a non-windows platform.

MacOS is certainly a better example of cohesive design (with some caveats, like their Window management is from the 90s).

I would love to see a Linux desktop environment take the best things from MacOS and the best things from Windows. Gnome 40 is _really_ close and that makes me very happy

neop1x2• 5 years ago

I for one use KDE and it suits me perfectly. I think it is matter of preference only. For example I don't like MacOS UI that much. Some ideas are awesome there others not that much. Life is not black and white, nothing can be 100% perfect.

globular-toast3• 5 years ago

I've been using GNU/Linux on desktop for over 15 years at this point. So glad that I don't have to use the latest versions of Windows which just keep looking worse and worse every year, to almost unbelievable extents. Mac OS I've always considered a kind of toy, akin to Android or tablet OSes. Cute, but there are far more important things.

I just couldn't imagine running a non-free OS on my own computers. Linux happens to be the one that I'm familiar with and I trust but that could change (although as the years go by, I doubt it will). But running a proprietary thing? There's just no way. I won't do it. Imagine installing wheels on your car that belong to someone else and having to ask permission whenever you want to drive. It's the same thing.

comprev• 5 years ago

My latest MacBook was four years old and was starting to feel a bit bloated and slow. It felt like a time to get a new one.

#FirstWorldProblems right here!

Seriously, a few hours doing a data backup and clean OS install would make the laptop feel snappy again...

bluenose69• 5 years ago

I made the reverse switch, many years ago. I made the switch because macOS lets me use the commercial products I need to deal with administrators (MS word, excel, mainly), while also letting me use unix.

As I understand it, modern windows environments provide a linux layer, and so they would be a viable choice now, except if you want your desktop to integrate easily with other apple products.

One thing I don't miss about linux is the level of fiddling that it required. At one point linux was the only alternative to expensive workstations (betraying my age here) and so it was worth the pain of rebuilding the kernel, messing with code to get sound cards to work, etc. But the 1990s are over: you can get good power on a desktop without much expense, and if you know unix, you can hook up to large clusters in any academic environment, for computations that take days or weeks to complete.

Although I respect those who use linux desktop environments, I have stopped recommending it, at least to those more interested in getting work done than in exploring operating system mechanics.

Octabrain• 5 years ago

My story:

I did exactly the opposite From Linux to MacOS. And this after more than a decade of using Linux for my work and my desktop. Everything began because I started to have battery and dock station issues with Fedora running on the Dell laptop that my previous employer provided me with. Then I asked IT and they suggested and somehow convinced me to try a Macbook pro and after debating with myself I finally did it. I struggled for a bit because of the brain muscle and all the habits in terms of configuration but I eventually adapted to it. At home, I happily continued using Linux. Even I bought a new Thinkpad not so long ago (p14s Gen1 with Ryzen 7 pro) and installed Linux right away as always. The performance was decent but I had many issues with my dock station (in my setup at home), suspend and some system crashes due to the GPU driver (Over Ubuntu and Fedora). I finally got tired and bought a MacBook pro for personal usage too.

I would like to summarize a few points that pushed me on my decision apart from the issue I mentioned: - At this point of my life, I only want technical challenges on my work (DevOps Engineer), not in my personal computer. I got sick of upgrading the kernel and having to spent a couple of hours every now and then fixing something. I just want to turn on a button and type. That's it.

- Also tired of the elitism of the Linux community in general. That feeling of superiority I've detected in many forums from people that presumes of using that twisted distro or Windows Manager.

- Also tired of the huge amount of toxicity and fanaticism (systemd rants, Canonical/Ubuntu sucks, this and that).

- The quality of the laptop (material and display). Mac devices are expensive. I spent on mine 2800£ but I think it worths the investment comparing it with any of the numerous Dell/Acer/Thinkpads I've owned before.

- Lack of software. Apart from computers, I like to make music. Options like Cubase are not available for Linux.

- From a users perspective, the philosophy of 'everything has to be free' (free in terms of price).

Note: Any of the previous points are just *personal* appreciations and conclusions and just have changed things in terms of personal tooling. For infrastructure I managed, Linux forever. Maybe (and probably) I am not right or being unfair but ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.

PeterWhittaker• 5 years ago

Our stories are similar. +1000.

_aavaa_• 5 years ago

No mention of Albert[1] anywhere in the article. It's the real replacement for spotlight.

--- [1] https://albertlauncher.github.io/installing/

gravstar• 5 years ago

Linux lost when it decided users didnt need to know

1. What a computer is.

2. How a computer works.

From the article: "This means that the most important choice you have at the start of your Linux journey is to determine the desktop environment you want to try..."

You are the reason the world is breaking.

taylodl• 5 years ago

I won't switch from Mac OS to Linux because of Logic Pro. Are there DAWs available for Linux? Yes, and I don't like them. Are there DAWs I'd be willing to use other than Logic Pro? Absolutely! But that doesn't help my situation:

1.) They only run on Windows or Mac OS

2.) They're considerably more expensive

Having said that, there are some people who really like Reaper. I keep trying it and I keep going back to Logic Pro - and that's what keeps me on Mac OS.

Bottom line? It's the application software that will determine which OS you run.

cj76• 5 years ago

I switched to Linux after 20 years of Windows! Linux is just fine, I don't want it to become the best OS (already is)

Black101• 5 years ago

Some distros are far less buggy then others... IE: I don't have any issues in Arch, but I did with Manjaro (often there was bugs that prevented updates to complete successfully).

midrus2• 5 years ago

You'll be back sooner than you think.

Linux on the desktop has tons of problems, some of itself, some of the hardware you have to use with it, specially if we're talking about laptops.

Using Linux on the desktop is like trying to use Mac OS for your servers. Just don't. Save yourself a lot of pain. I also dislike many things about Mac os and apple in general, but the alternatives aren't any better.

bishop77• 5 years ago

Around 2015 I did the exact opposite. I still manage linux servers but gave up the desktop experience in favour of macOS. The main reasons were: 1. Inconsistent UI experience (GTK/QT). For me screen aesthetics is important, I spent countless hours configuring my desktop (theming, matching icons, recompiling the FreeType package just to enable the then-patented font hinting, etc). But even then some applications were somehow different: OpenOffice/Firefox for example brought their own rendering engine. While this issue has been solved to a certain degree, I still don't see that level of polishing as in macOS. Certain niche distros (e.g. ElementaryOS) try to lure users with carefully selected (otherwise very fine!) screenshots but it takes just a few clicks to see that the whole thing is utterly broken. 2. Related to the previous point: handling HIDPI monitors. Again, GTK/QT/slightly exotic applications have to be configured separately and even then it is a hit-and-miss. 3. The messy state of sleep/hibernation. When I raise this issue, I'm always told that this is not a Linux issue but the buggy implementation of the ACPI specs by the hardware vendors. Well, as the WINE team managed to reimplement WIN32 bug-by-bug, I think it's not far fetched to ask the kernel driver guys to circumvent these incomplete/buggy firmwares.

I switched from macOS to Linux after 15 years of Apple

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