I'm using Linux for exactly the opposite reason - it's less hassle than other OS's. And by that I mean every OS breaks, Linux is just simpler to fix when it does (and these days - Claude fix do it for me).
It's not mandatory to customise Linux and mess with it the moment you get your hands on it - you can also run a stock Ubuntu install which will be a great working & gaming workhorse that doesn't add hassle to your life.
I love Linux (first used it when I was 12yo in 1994), but I also had a Mac since 2007 and macOS never broke for me?
The other thing is that even basic stuff like calendars, address books, etc. work many times better on macOS than the Linux desktop. For instance, last time I set up calendar sync in KOrganizer (Evolution-based CalDAV never worked well for me) about a year ago, it started triggering sending invite mails for all historical and future work meetings, resulting in thousands of e-mails. Oops.
Beyond that, macOS has much better quality applications, from small indie stuff like Arq for backups to Affinity Suite, PDF Expert, etc.
That said, the part that I don't agree with is in the article is Android. Android is pretty much on par with iOS, though iOS has more high-quality third-party apps.
> but I also had a Mac since 2007 and macOS never broke for me?
I guess if you use it for personal stuff it's as close as it gets to unbreakable. My father in law is also very happy with it.
I use it for work and I managed to have it panic multiple times over the last 8y besides the death by a thousand papercuts that the UI and *nix subsystem are. I can't wait for the day that proper Linux laptops get sanctioned in the company because I hate with passion to be locked in the MacOS "proper way of doing things" ®.
> you can also run a stock Ubuntu install which will be a great working & gaming workhorse that doesn't add hassle to your life.
Sure, if your job is writing backend server code. Many of us need other apps though. Things like [this](https://www.sidefx.com/forum/topic/90453) are showstopping enough for people who rely on Houdini. By the way, SideFX support told me Linux is their choice of OS and I should switch from Windows if I can.
Houdini is a very specialist app that, considering the overall PC userbase, could be considered a niche app. So I'm sorry, but that's a pretty poor example. Especially considering that I, who grew up using MSDOS, never even heard of it until you mentioned it.
Majority of the PC users these days use their PCs for boring stuff like filing taxes, document editing, file management and backups etc. Gaming is also pretty big and popular in the PC world. And Linux can handle these tasks very well these days - so much so that companies like Valve are investing heavily into Linux, attracting a lot of non-technical newbies, who in turn end up liking Linux.
So no, you don't need to be a "backend server code" writer to use Linux.
I had always used a mix of Windows and Linux until a few years ago. Someone gifted me a mac. All three seem like they have a similar number of issues, but I regularly run into issues with macOS that seem to be impossible to solve.
People who complain about Linux usually either insist on customizing it (as you noted) or run it on hardware that it doesn't work well on. If you are willing to buy special hardware to run macOS, why not the same for Linux?
> People who complain about Linux usually either insist on customizing it (as you noted) or run it on hardware that it doesn't work well on.
Even as someone who has customized the hell out of my desktop, it does kind of annoy me that people act like you "just" need to customize it.
"Customizable" is (often) just a synonym for "incomplete". Instead of giving you a full operating system, you have to "customize" it. Or, realistically, finish it. For example, much as I love the Sway desktop, I really don't feel like the stock package is decidedly unfinished and you need to install/make plugins to make it actually usable.
> If you are willing to buy special hardware to run macOS, why not the same for Linux?
Agreed. I like macOS, but macOS is a very walled-garden, and for the most part you can only run it on very specific, curated Apple hardware. Of course it works properly...they have a very finite set of hardware to test, which is untrue with Linux.
If, when you buy a computer that you plan to run Linux on, you preemptively make sure that the hardware is compatible [1], then it usually works fine. When I bought my mother-in-law's Thinkbook, I made sure that the main hardware worked fine (e.g. graphics card, wifi, audio, etc.). It did, I installed Mint on there, and she seems to like it.
[1] https://github.com/NixOS/nixos-hardware Even if you don't run NixOS, this is useful; if the laptop you're buying has very few or zero hacks required, it will likely work out of the box.
I keep a Linux laptop on the side and usually buy what Linux fans recommend and is Linux certified, which is typically some kind of ThinkPad. It is certainly usable, but I wouldn't recommend it to most people.
It starts with much worse quality (not Linux' fault), like worse displays, borderline unusable fingerprint scanners, etc.
But beyond that, I regularly get kernel panics recovering from sleep with a Thunderbolt display connected (last time I checked the exact DDC-related bug has been open for a while). With some displays the USB-C get misconfigured (another known bug), resulting in worse frame rates. Sometimes hardware doesn't come up after a resume.
Battery life is generally much worse. Even if you hyperoptimize it with powertop, etc. battery life is still much worse. Not only that, but it puts Bluetooth and USB in autosuspend, which often breaks waking by using an external mouse or keyboard. Even if your laptop still supports S3 sleep, the system often runs out of battery while suspended in 12-24 hours (yes, it's fully suspended and does not wake).
I could go on for a while, it's death by a thousand paper cuts.
We have a bunch of MacBooks in the family. They are insanely fast, batteries last forever, and I cannot remember the last time I had a panic. Displays always work between Apple Studio Display, Dell Thunderbolt, and a bunch of USB-C LG displays.
But yeah, I'm still keeping a Linux laptop around, just in case Apple restricts macOS more, extends their surveillance capitalism, and other contingencies.
> It starts with much worse quality (not Linux' fault), like worse displays, borderline unusable fingerprint scanners, etc.
Interesting; one of the primary reasons I bought my current machine (Thinkpad Gen 2 AMD P16s, rolls right off the tongue) was because it was one of the few laptops I could find that had a 4K screen. The screen on this computer looks pretty good. Everything looks sharp, relatively high-contrast, and it gets very bright.
Honestly this has been the least-headache-inducing Linux laptop I've ever had.
You're right about the battery life. Even with Sway, and even mucking with powertop, I still don't get nearly as good of a battery as I did with my Macbook. I haven't had the issue with suspending though; I've had the system suspended for multiple days and woken it up with plenty of battery.
I use Claude and Gemini to customize things for me all the time. If something doesn't work the way that I want it, I let AI fix it (I do back up and maintain scripts to revert back to its current stage).
> I'm 30 this year, and computers don't have the same level of whimsy and excitement as they once had.
I'm 45 and computers are more exciting than ever. We choose what to get excited with, or oven nothing at all, which happens to most people at some point.
I've never been a die hard fan of Linux, but in the past decade and half found the trade-off for me to favor using Linux.
It's a device made by people like me (umm much better than me in some fields, but the mentality is similar), for people like me.
It does not disrespect me in design, functionality, in PR talk, and my relationship to the system is not adversarial.
For now, my incentives to use the system aligns with that of the system creators.
I don't see the reason in this, especially now of all times with the current situation with software vendors and geopolitics. It's sensible to have an Apple laptop like a Neo or Air around, but giving up Linux as the primary or entirely? I think this is allowing an imaginary convenience at great cost to seduce you into thinking this is the solution to impulsive or compulsive behavior in hopping around between too many programs and distributions.
Same, installed Slackware Linux in 1994 when I was twelve, on our family 80386 SX-25 with a 40MB hard drive and 5MB RAM. I often had tugs of war with my 4 years younger brother over how to partition the 40MB, trying to convince him with pretty lame Linux games :).
(I had my first CD-ROM with Slackware from some magazine in 1993, but that was before we upgraded our machine for 2MB -> 5MB RAM, so I couldn't get it to run. Traded it with my uncle's Sherlock Holmes game CD-ROM.)
I used Linux, FreeBSD, NetBSD and OpenBSD. Was even paid as a developer on a commercial distribution for a while and contributed to two other non-profit Linux distributions.
My first Linux install, best I can recall, was from a Slackware CD circa 1995? So I guess, me too. I've not used Linux as my desktop since Mac OS X in maybe 2002 but I've always had a Linux box running somewhere or being responsible for Linux boxes since then. It's only in the last few years I've gotten fed up with RPM-based distros and preferred Debian or Ubuntu. My intro to Unix was probably SunOS though.
I'm only a couple years older than them, but I've been using Linux since only a couple years before them. It's kind of wild to me that I'm apparently already past the age where people will say things like "I'm too old to keep using Linux"
What machine you are running now. I was happy with thinkpad T series in the past, fully compatible with linux, but the recent lenovo Ts just suck, cheap builds. I wish a lightweight mac air or similar can run linux smoothly without using hacky asahi.
Dell XPS13 developer edition, comes preinstalled with Ubuntu. This one is 2023 but I’ve been running XPS13 dev edition since 2014 and have been pretty happy with them.
I’ve also seen/heard good things about frame.work for Linux.
Looking through the replies, the theme seems pretty clear. Everyone has their favorite distro, which is great btw. But that is the issue imo.
If you just want something stable and boring, Linux is just not it. Every distro has its own goals and target users, so a lot of the effort gets spread across the ecosystem.
With macOS or Windows, for better or worse, everyone is working on the same platform. So more people are working on the same problems. With Linux, everyone is kind of doing their own thing.
It is basically the same Android versus iPhone argument. More choice and freedom on one side, more consistency on the other.
There's plenty of "stable and boring" distros: Debian, Alma Linux, Aurora, take your pick.
As for effort getting spread across the ecosystem, how does that matter, as long as everything works? Is there anything specific that's below par that you think that needs that concentrated group effort? If so, what is it?
> With macOS or Windows, for better or worse, everyone is working on the same platform. So more people are working on the same problems
No one's working on the same problem on these platforms, as they are proprietary closed-source platforms, so you can't really contribute to them. Unless by "working on problems" you meant making apps, in which case, people are making apps for Linux too. And guess what, you can run most Linux apps on most distros. Like say, LibreOffice or VLC or Firefox etc all work on every single distro out there. So I'm curious which problem(s) do you think Linux people need to work together on.
Linux is just a kernel. It is so stable and boring that you can oftentimes update the kernel in-place, without rebooting, and nothing will break.
> It is basically the same Android versus iPhone argument.
Maybe, if you've never used desktop Linux? Android and iOS are both advertisement-ridden locked-down hellscapes. The false dichotomy of openness and polish is exactly why Linux is attractive to people; you can absolutely have both. Obviously Google and Apple don't want you to think that, but it's not any more wrong today than it was in 1995.
> If you just want something stable and boring, Linux is just not it.
What? I get the other arguments but I use Linux because it's stable and boring. I don't want the hassle of updates to Windows 8, 9, 10, 11 (or whatever is current now) or OS X updates breaking things ("Yay, they've removed another feature!").
Yeah, when CentOS got eaten, moved to AlmaLinux. No complaints. It works. I also use Slackware. Nice and boring. Compared to macOS on my MacStudio… exceedingly boring and stable.
I somewhat sympathize with the poster here, I too am a chronic distrohopper and if you are just the type of person with shiny object syndrome it can be really exhausting constantly being yanked around by your interest in other distros. I've been on gentoo for a year now and that's the longest lasting install I've ever had. Planning on keeping it that way, but you never know.
I also have a macbook that I use for certain proprietary apps that don't have Linux clients and it can be a weirdly peaceful experience just knowing you're locked into macOS's stack and there aren't a myriad of options you could install at any moment should you get bored.
I feel exactly the same, recently decided to stick to macOS for this exact reason. So tired of constantly tuning and shiny object syndrome. Power to you for staying on Gentoo so long.
All my serious use notebooks run on Mac OS, my gaming PC on Windows, and my servers on Linux (I do keep an old-ish Thinkpad with Kali for tinkering).
The hardware+software combination of MacOS is unbeatable in terms of things like battery life and overall reliability, and it's a Unix, so the command line is almost the same. The M-series are a beast.
Linux has always been messy for desktop use for me (I've been using it since 1994). Sound always gives me trouble, and getting the power profiles right takes way too much work.
It tends to get in the way whenever I want to get something done, which happens a lot less often for Macs. A large part of it is the hardware, I'm sure, but still. I value my time.
Servers are fine, fewer hardware quirks to deal with.
> Sound always gives me trouble, and getting the power profiles right takes way too much work.
Sounds like you've been using a distro with bad defaults and/or poorly supported hardware. I challenge you to use a decent distro like Fedora, on a well-supported hardware like a ThinkPad, and see if you have the same issues.
Speaking as a ThinkPad Z13 + Fedora user who literally never had any audio or power profile issues... or any issue for that matter.
The author is going to have massive remorse if they think moving to macOS will let them customize things.
Using macOS (especially Apple Silicon era macOS) feels like being in maximum security prison. If you thought Windows Vista UAC was bad, macOS is doing it worse right now.
The reasoning is all wrong.
> I'm 30 this year, and computers don't have the same level of whimsy and excitement as they once had.
Also wtf. I'm far older than this author, and this statement they made is just complete and total schlock. They don't have enough experience to say what they're saying.
GUI Desktop = MacOS
Gaming desktop = Windows
All the servers are a mix of linux and windows
I wouldnt wish Linux desktop on anyone whos not willing to learn at least some troubleshooting, with is 99.9999999% of people. I lament the community missed the prime shot in the early 2ks, but it's just not there for the "home user". As an appliance for gaming (stem deck) its fine, and probably for web-only work as reinstalling is not a big deal, as the only caveat to the above.
Vanilla Arch definitely isn't, sure. But there are distros with immutable root and Flatpak-focused package management that work fine for the ordinary home user. SteamOS isn't the only distro doing that, and the architecture isn't limited to gaming-only appliances.
> Today the various desktop environments seem to have largely converged, sharing the same flat design language and icon styles.
Go to settings and select something other then the defaults.
>Customisation seems to have completely fallen by the wayside in favour of a more curated experience controlled by the desktop environment.
Maybe true of Gnome. Not true of KDE or XFCE.
Its also an odd reason to switch to Apple.
> These days everyone is just using the same five electron apps installed via flatpack anyway
I am not
What isbhappenning here seems to be someone who has tired of tinkering but cannot resist tinkering with Linux so has chosen to switch to an OS that does not allow tinkering rather than use a Linux distro with its defaultsm
Of course you will get tired if you change your OS every three months. I have used roughly the same ArchLinux setup for years now, probably over a decade, and it is remarkably stable. Things break very occasionally but are easily fixed (and are usually a result of my own tinkering with experimental software).
Also regarding everything convergence of desktop environments, there are plenty of more interesting options out there, but they don't call themselves "desktop environments" - tiling or scrolling window managers, for example, which are often infinitely configurable though scripts.
I've been running CachyOS for a while now and I love it. And if an update breaks it (which does happen - it's a small team pushing bleeding edge patches), then limine bootloader just lets you boot to the last working snapshot. Easy.
I really wanted to like using a Macbook. I've given it a go a few times, amazing battery life and great build quality.
But I can't get over how it locks you down completely software wise. I wanted a sane WM and tried skhd and yabai. They are a collection of hacks on the accessibility API, and they will break whenever Apple decides to. To me that's unacceptable as a daily driver
I am a pretty die-hard NixOS cultist, but I will admit that I actually like macOS. I used macOS almost exclusively from 2020-2024, until I bought my Thinkpad that I have now, and I never really disliked the operating system (though I did have issues with that particular laptop because of the i9 CPU's propensity to thermal-throttle).
Despite me preferring it, it is hard for me to say that desktop Linux is "better" in any kind of objective sense than macOS. I do think that desktop Linux is significantly better in most senses than Windows, but macOS is a stable, easy-to-use distro that performs fine. While I kind of hate the "Just Works" slogan it has, I will admit that that's significantly truer than Linux. It's 2026, and I still have issues having Linux properly work when I plug in an external monitor into a laptop.
All that being said, what I like about Linux is that it can run on basically anything, including existing computers that you (or your relatives) likely already have, and it will likely perform better than Windows if for no other reason than it won't be filled with as much bloatware bullshit that most OEM Windows' has.
A good Macbook is pretty pricey. A Macbook Neo is cheaper, but you know what's even cheaper than that? Extending the life of the computer you already have!
I'm fairly happy with my obscenely over-customized NixOS Sway desktop, and I probably don't really understand the sunk-cost fallacy so I'm unlikely to ever leave, but I don't blame people for doing so. As long as they don't defect to Windows...
Weird. I see a lot of my friends disenchanted like this, but a lot of the reason I'm not is Linux and more importantly, open source projects in general. The more of an effort I make to learn the open source alternative to whatever adobe or what have you I used to use, the more I enjoy computing.
Are they quirky? As hell. But by and large, are they enshittifying like the big box software? No, most of them are getting better, and rapidly.
Personally, I find there's nothing like actually looking forward to a software update like I did in 2005 and expecting new, useful, features and then actually getting them in an update to restore my sense of computing whimsy.
Obviously do what works for you. This is just not my experience.
I am doing the opposite. I have been a Mac user since ~2005. My first Mac was actually a Quadra 610, but I was a wee little lad back then. I started my career on a G5 Power Mac with dual 23" cinema displays (studio displays? can't remember what they were called back then). Then the intel Macbook/MBP, etc. I think my favorite mac of all time, or the one I look back most fondly on, was my 2012 Macbook Air.
In 2022 my M1 mini started to die due to what I would call SSD abuse. I absolutely punished that box - rode hard, put away wet. The SSD began to show signs of failing. I was doing way too much with it - so I took a spare R720 2U server I had and turned it into my remote dev box. Thanks to VSCode's SSH remote feature - you can hack on a project like it is on your box. My workflow is usually my IDE for coding and then a separate terminal running tmux for interacting with the box. I did this locally at home, with the R720 down in my basement. The cool thing about developing like this is that if you are traveling, the dev-ex is no different. Tailscale or some other VPN and boom your workflow continues to work, albeit with varying amounts of latency. Mosh helps here. 2x CPU's (albeit old Haswell gen), 256GB of ram, 2x NVME mirror with pci-e add-in ... it performed really well as an always-on remote dev machine.
Quickly I realized I was kinda outgrowing the R720, though, and so in 2023, I built a beast Linux workstation (Debian 12) with 128GB of memory, 13900k, nvme mirrors, etc and after fine tuning KDE and getting it all dialed in, I started to really enjoy it from a hacker standpoint. Everything for the most part "just worked" including my new Apple Studio Display that I am typing this message on right now. Took a little while for the kernel to catch up but at this point it is working over Thunderbolt, the camera works, speakers work, built-in hub works, etc. I can even do brightness control from my kb.
Meanwhile, my mobile dev box has been an M2 air. With the 'all compute is happening on a remote node' the M architecture Air devices are really quite incredible. I am just running an IDE and an iTerm window (with all compute happening on the main host), so battery life is measured in days. I will work at my desk in my office for a while, then pivot to the deck or the couch or a coffee shop and thanks again to ide-over-ssh (I am on Zed now, no more VSCode) and tmux ... everything feels exactly like it does at my desk with zero interruption. It also means I can slam my laptop shut at any given moment to do other things, while software and agents continue in the background. Combine with a 1500VA ups under my desk to mitigate power blips and this is a dream setup.
But the more I used KDE and Linux ... the more I started to ask myself if it was time to pivot to a Linux notebook too. The only qualms I had was knowing that no PC will ever beat 1) the battery life and 2) the touchpad performance of a Macbook.
Then the Framework 13 Pro was announced. I watched the release announcement and immediately preordered one. I went back and forth about cancelling the preorder many times, thinking to myself that my trusty M2 air was just fine for a 'dumb terminal' type of laptop. But the 120hz display and the desire to dogfood a modern Linux notebook, combined with the fact that the market/prices for RAM etc were skyrocketing and I was locked-in to a good batch 1 price kept me on the preorder. Also ... I have 2 german shepherds and they shed a lot. Hair gets into my macbook keyboard which is very difficult to get out. Removing and cleaning key caps is tedious. The fact that I can replace the entire KB on the Framework (or entire top cover) for like $100 is hugely compelling for me. Combined with their track record to continue supporting and offering upgrades for older gear - it was a no brainer really. Modern Mac notebooks are unfortunately wear items (like brake pads) - at some point you throw them out. The tide might be shifting with the new Neo and its' repair-ability, though.
Glad I did. The framework has been really really good. Not gonna lie, Apple still wins on battery life. But I enjoy having a freeipa-domain-joined box that is 100% open source, running all my familiar KDE tweaks, 120hz, etc. The keyboard and trackpad are actually incredible. Keyboard surely beats any notebook I have ever had.
So now I am sort of spiraling on Linux toys. I just got a Chuwi Minibook X (https://taoofmac.com/space/reviews/2025/05/15/2230) and its running Fedora, like my Framework Pro, and it's quite fun as well. For less than $300 it has 16GB of memory, 512gb nvme, 4 cores, and a touchscreen display that is quite decent (still fine-tuning the auto rotate stuff, which is fun in and of itself). I can't believe Fedora 44 'just works', with suspend, and wifi, and speakers, and bluetooth, and full disk encryption, .... less than $300!
I've been using Linux on servers and for software dev since ~2005 but never felt like "the year of the linux desktop" was really here. That totally changed a few years back and now I am all-in. Still love the Apple ecosystem (and use an iPhone) but very very happy to be driving Linux on all my computers. I even updated my gaming rig (7900XTX) to run CachyOS. With the exception of anti-cheat games like COD or BF6 I have zero qualms. It runs everything else really well. And it doubles as a local AI inference machine thanks again to the beauty of open source and Linux.
My favorite editor for years, I use it in conjunction with Vim in the terminal. I’ve been trying to move to NeoVim but can never find the time. And regular MacVim/Vim is already awesome.
>I'm Tired Boss
>I'm 30 this year, and computers don't have the same level of whimsy and excitement as they once had. When I was young everything was new and interesting, it felt like there was so much experimentation and innovation. Today the various desktop environments seem to have largely converged, sharing the same flat design language and icon styles. Customisation seems to have completely fallen by the wayside in favour of a more curated experience controlled by the desktop environment.
It's funny. I share the same thoughts but it sent me from Windows to Linux.
And I'm very, very tired as well. I wouldn't recommend you to install Windows, because Windows is spyware. But I wouldn't recommend you to install Linux, because Linux is crap.
You know what I would recommend instead?
Not use computers.
If there is a way to avoid them your whole life... just do that. Otherwise you'll spend the rest of your life having to deal with... you know... all of this.
The reason I left Linux was because I didn't want to be associated with the high-ranking developers that openly abuse and demean others with unprofessional attitudes for decades on end with impunity.
I know this is an extremely unpopular position that many people will disagree with, but it's my decision and I made it. I'm not asking you to follow. Feel free to tell me how much of a misguided/stupid decision it is. I think if everyone were able to "separate the art from the artist", then boycotts wouldn't even exist.
Same goes for OpenBSD, GNOME, GrapheneOS, Kitty/Calibre and many other applications... I have been personally attacked by several people from all of these projects just for asking simple questions, and I know many others that have gotten it much worse.
What's wrong with going where you're treated best?
Could you paraphrase any of those simple questions? It seems like a weird thing to omit.
If your "simple question" is something that violates the CoC then I can understand why they'd push you out. I personally don't agree with (most) FOSS CoCs, but I can grok why they exist for modern projects. There are so many counterproductive "contributors" that refuse to read the code and find answers for themselves, escalating things into egotistical pissing contests that wastes everyone's time. It's effective (albeit not ideal) to just kick these people out from square 1, keeping things more Cathedral-like as opposed to a Bazaar project.
In an age of AI, you can hard-fork any of these projects and ask an agent any technical question that you could possibly have. It's a golden age for FOSS if you're self-motivated and have thick skin.
> For a good period of my life I don't think I had same Linux install on my personal machines for longer than three months.
...this seems like the obvious problem? Both of my NixOS installs are ~4 and 1/2 years old now. If you're using distros that break more frequently than Windows does, I can see how you'd get tuckered out.
Yeah, I distro-hopped for a few years during the tail end of my college days and the first year or two after, but at this point I've been running the same Arch installation for close to a decade (literally migrating it to new hardware by setting up the same partition structure and rsyncing everything over). It hasn't felt like work to use Linux pretty much since I stopped reinstalling, while Windows and MacOS feel like they get harder to use every time I have to.
That does seem strange. So he has been experimenting seeking something. I have kept the same LTS installations sometimes until the bitter end of the support cycle.
The dance trying different distros and DEs is fun (and important) for a while. Eventually you learn to fix the problems yourself exactly to avoid having to reinstall. Eventuakky distro lines get blurred as it's the same software under it and jumping between them more easily. Once you find a distro with the right mix for your tastes you stick to it. My main server has some files as old as 1999, migrated hardware, filesystems, even migrated from 32bit to 64bit without having to reinstall. But I've spent 3 years doing the same dance before it.
It might be that OP never wanted to actually do the next step, which is OK. Hopefully MacOS works for them and they can keep affording their machines.
I have been on the same Arch installation for 10+ years and the previous install on a different device was also ~8 years old. Could have just transferred files over and be done about it but I wanted to refresh my knowledge. :)
While I used to.distrohop a bit at the beginning of the century, my current Fedora 44 install dates back from Fedora 25 or 26 which I believe was released somewhere around 2017. It has moved from one laptop to another as I couldn't be bothered to reinstall.
I don't define myself as a linux user either. Using some kind of Linux or BSD has simply been the pragmatic choice for around 3 decades compared to what always looked like opaque and user hostile proprietary operating systems.
I switched from Linux to Mac around the same age I think, I know Linux works much better now but Mac just works. I remember trying to connect a ThinkPad with an AMD/ATI graphic card I had paid extra to an external monitor on my ex-wife laptop, what a massive PITA and it never worked, it would just work with the Intel builtin GPU.
I'm glad I suffered a bit with Linux it taught me vim and resilience and using the command line / shell, but for my day to day I'm happy with Mac.
Ironically I just bought a Neo for my home laptop, I'm a bit annoyed by the keyboard because at work I have a 15/16 inches Macbook Pro but I don't do much on it so it's ok.
> [...]I know Linux works much better now but Mac just works. I remember trying to connect a ThinkPad[...]
I am not denying Apple is producing some really nice hardware but we wouldn't have these kind of conversations if people stopped comparing apples(pun intended) to oranges and cared to buy fully supported and linux preinstalled computers. I know it might have been complicated back in the days when people weren't used to order online but nowadays it is quite easy to find one.
tl;dr: The desktop environment the author is using is adopting mac OS unusability features, but doing so slowly, so jumping to mac OS will allow full unusability without the wait.
I'm using Linux for exactly the opposite reason - it's less hassle than other OS's. And by that I mean every OS breaks, Linux is just simpler to fix when it does (and these days - Claude fix do it for me).
It's not mandatory to customise Linux and mess with it the moment you get your hands on it - you can also run a stock Ubuntu install which will be a great working & gaming workhorse that doesn't add hassle to your life.
I mean every OS breaks
I love Linux (first used it when I was 12yo in 1994), but I also had a Mac since 2007 and macOS never broke for me?
The other thing is that even basic stuff like calendars, address books, etc. work many times better on macOS than the Linux desktop. For instance, last time I set up calendar sync in KOrganizer (Evolution-based CalDAV never worked well for me) about a year ago, it started triggering sending invite mails for all historical and future work meetings, resulting in thousands of e-mails. Oops.
Beyond that, macOS has much better quality applications, from small indie stuff like Arq for backups to Affinity Suite, PDF Expert, etc.
That said, the part that I don't agree with is in the article is Android. Android is pretty much on par with iOS, though iOS has more high-quality third-party apps.
Heh, my last 5 ex gfs have all used Mac and I've had to fix everyone of their systems, some multiple times.
Mac definitely breaks.
Or PEBKaC?
> but I also had a Mac since 2007 and macOS never broke for me?
I guess if you use it for personal stuff it's as close as it gets to unbreakable. My father in law is also very happy with it.
I use it for work and I managed to have it panic multiple times over the last 8y besides the death by a thousand papercuts that the UI and *nix subsystem are. I can't wait for the day that proper Linux laptops get sanctioned in the company because I hate with passion to be locked in the MacOS "proper way of doing things" ®.
> you can also run a stock Ubuntu install which will be a great working & gaming workhorse that doesn't add hassle to your life.
Sure, if your job is writing backend server code. Many of us need other apps though. Things like [this](https://www.sidefx.com/forum/topic/90453) are showstopping enough for people who rely on Houdini. By the way, SideFX support told me Linux is their choice of OS and I should switch from Windows if I can.
Houdini is a very specialist app that, considering the overall PC userbase, could be considered a niche app. So I'm sorry, but that's a pretty poor example. Especially considering that I, who grew up using MSDOS, never even heard of it until you mentioned it.
Majority of the PC users these days use their PCs for boring stuff like filing taxes, document editing, file management and backups etc. Gaming is also pretty big and popular in the PC world. And Linux can handle these tasks very well these days - so much so that companies like Valve are investing heavily into Linux, attracting a lot of non-technical newbies, who in turn end up liking Linux.
So no, you don't need to be a "backend server code" writer to use Linux.
I had always used a mix of Windows and Linux until a few years ago. Someone gifted me a mac. All three seem like they have a similar number of issues, but I regularly run into issues with macOS that seem to be impossible to solve.
People who complain about Linux usually either insist on customizing it (as you noted) or run it on hardware that it doesn't work well on. If you are willing to buy special hardware to run macOS, why not the same for Linux?
> People who complain about Linux usually either insist on customizing it (as you noted) or run it on hardware that it doesn't work well on.
Even as someone who has customized the hell out of my desktop, it does kind of annoy me that people act like you "just" need to customize it.
"Customizable" is (often) just a synonym for "incomplete". Instead of giving you a full operating system, you have to "customize" it. Or, realistically, finish it. For example, much as I love the Sway desktop, I really don't feel like the stock package is decidedly unfinished and you need to install/make plugins to make it actually usable.
> If you are willing to buy special hardware to run macOS, why not the same for Linux?
Agreed. I like macOS, but macOS is a very walled-garden, and for the most part you can only run it on very specific, curated Apple hardware. Of course it works properly...they have a very finite set of hardware to test, which is untrue with Linux.
If, when you buy a computer that you plan to run Linux on, you preemptively make sure that the hardware is compatible [1], then it usually works fine. When I bought my mother-in-law's Thinkbook, I made sure that the main hardware worked fine (e.g. graphics card, wifi, audio, etc.). It did, I installed Mint on there, and she seems to like it.
[1] https://github.com/NixOS/nixos-hardware Even if you don't run NixOS, this is useful; if the laptop you're buying has very few or zero hacks required, it will likely work out of the box.
I keep a Linux laptop on the side and usually buy what Linux fans recommend and is Linux certified, which is typically some kind of ThinkPad. It is certainly usable, but I wouldn't recommend it to most people.
It starts with much worse quality (not Linux' fault), like worse displays, borderline unusable fingerprint scanners, etc.
But beyond that, I regularly get kernel panics recovering from sleep with a Thunderbolt display connected (last time I checked the exact DDC-related bug has been open for a while). With some displays the USB-C get misconfigured (another known bug), resulting in worse frame rates. Sometimes hardware doesn't come up after a resume.
Battery life is generally much worse. Even if you hyperoptimize it with powertop, etc. battery life is still much worse. Not only that, but it puts Bluetooth and USB in autosuspend, which often breaks waking by using an external mouse or keyboard. Even if your laptop still supports S3 sleep, the system often runs out of battery while suspended in 12-24 hours (yes, it's fully suspended and does not wake).
I could go on for a while, it's death by a thousand paper cuts.
We have a bunch of MacBooks in the family. They are insanely fast, batteries last forever, and I cannot remember the last time I had a panic. Displays always work between Apple Studio Display, Dell Thunderbolt, and a bunch of USB-C LG displays.
But yeah, I'm still keeping a Linux laptop around, just in case Apple restricts macOS more, extends their surveillance capitalism, and other contingencies.
> It starts with much worse quality (not Linux' fault), like worse displays, borderline unusable fingerprint scanners, etc.
Interesting; one of the primary reasons I bought my current machine (Thinkpad Gen 2 AMD P16s, rolls right off the tongue) was because it was one of the few laptops I could find that had a 4K screen. The screen on this computer looks pretty good. Everything looks sharp, relatively high-contrast, and it gets very bright.
Honestly this has been the least-headache-inducing Linux laptop I've ever had.
You're right about the battery life. Even with Sway, and even mucking with powertop, I still don't get nearly as good of a battery as I did with my Macbook. I haven't had the issue with suspending though; I've had the system suspended for multiple days and woken it up with plenty of battery.
Dunno, maybe I just got a lucky model.
> Every OS breaks
It’s been a very long time since macOS broke for me. Sure, there are bugs (especially in the window manager), but they are consistent.
I use Claude and Gemini to customize things for me all the time. If something doesn't work the way that I want it, I let AI fix it (I do back up and maintain scripts to revert back to its current stage).
I feel better about investing time when Linux breaks because it's for a reason that isn't rooted in user hostility.
Windows breaks because something Microsoft wanted for themselves is broken.
> I'm Tired Boss
> I'm 30 this year, and computers don't have the same level of whimsy and excitement as they once had.
I'm 45 and computers are more exciting than ever. We choose what to get excited with, or oven nothing at all, which happens to most people at some point.
I've never been a die hard fan of Linux, but in the past decade and half found the trade-off for me to favor using Linux.
It's a device made by people like me (umm much better than me in some fields, but the mentality is similar), for people like me.
It does not disrespect me in design, functionality, in PR talk, and my relationship to the system is not adversarial.
For now, my incentives to use the system aligns with that of the system creators.
I don't see the reason in this, especially now of all times with the current situation with software vendors and geopolitics. It's sensible to have an Apple laptop like a Neo or Air around, but giving up Linux as the primary or entirely? I think this is allowing an imaginary convenience at great cost to seduce you into thinking this is the solution to impulsive or compulsive behavior in hopping around between too many programs and distributions.
> I'm 30 this year,
Heh fun to see I’ve literally been using Linux since before this person was born.
Same, installed Slackware Linux in 1994 when I was twelve, on our family 80386 SX-25 with a 40MB hard drive and 5MB RAM. I often had tugs of war with my 4 years younger brother over how to partition the 40MB, trying to convince him with pretty lame Linux games :).
(I had my first CD-ROM with Slackware from some magazine in 1993, but that was before we upgraded our machine for 2MB -> 5MB RAM, so I couldn't get it to run. Traded it with my uncle's Sherlock Holmes game CD-ROM.)
I used Linux, FreeBSD, NetBSD and OpenBSD. Was even paid as a developer on a commercial distribution for a while and contributed to two other non-profit Linux distributions.
I switched to OS X on the desktop in 2007.
My first Linux install, best I can recall, was from a Slackware CD circa 1995? So I guess, me too. I've not used Linux as my desktop since Mac OS X in maybe 2002 but I've always had a Linux box running somewhere or being responsible for Linux boxes since then. It's only in the last few years I've gotten fed up with RPM-based distros and preferred Debian or Ubuntu. My intro to Unix was probably SunOS though.
I'm only a couple years older than them, but I've been using Linux since only a couple years before them. It's kind of wild to me that I'm apparently already past the age where people will say things like "I'm too old to keep using Linux"
What do old people use then? And - does it mean that I’m not old as long as I keep using Linux? Cuz I’m not planning to stop any time soon hahah.
What machine you are running now. I was happy with thinkpad T series in the past, fully compatible with linux, but the recent lenovo Ts just suck, cheap builds. I wish a lightweight mac air or similar can run linux smoothly without using hacky asahi.
Dell XPS13 developer edition, comes preinstalled with Ubuntu. This one is 2023 but I’ve been running XPS13 dev edition since 2014 and have been pretty happy with them.
I’ve also seen/heard good things about frame.work for Linux.
Looking through the replies, the theme seems pretty clear. Everyone has their favorite distro, which is great btw. But that is the issue imo.
If you just want something stable and boring, Linux is just not it. Every distro has its own goals and target users, so a lot of the effort gets spread across the ecosystem.
With macOS or Windows, for better or worse, everyone is working on the same platform. So more people are working on the same problems. With Linux, everyone is kind of doing their own thing.
It is basically the same Android versus iPhone argument. More choice and freedom on one side, more consistency on the other.
There's plenty of "stable and boring" distros: Debian, Alma Linux, Aurora, take your pick.
As for effort getting spread across the ecosystem, how does that matter, as long as everything works? Is there anything specific that's below par that you think that needs that concentrated group effort? If so, what is it?
> With macOS or Windows, for better or worse, everyone is working on the same platform. So more people are working on the same problems
No one's working on the same problem on these platforms, as they are proprietary closed-source platforms, so you can't really contribute to them. Unless by "working on problems" you meant making apps, in which case, people are making apps for Linux too. And guess what, you can run most Linux apps on most distros. Like say, LibreOffice or VLC or Firefox etc all work on every single distro out there. So I'm curious which problem(s) do you think Linux people need to work together on.
Linux is just a kernel. It is so stable and boring that you can oftentimes update the kernel in-place, without rebooting, and nothing will break.
> It is basically the same Android versus iPhone argument.
Maybe, if you've never used desktop Linux? Android and iOS are both advertisement-ridden locked-down hellscapes. The false dichotomy of openness and polish is exactly why Linux is attractive to people; you can absolutely have both. Obviously Google and Apple don't want you to think that, but it's not any more wrong today than it was in 1995.
> If you just want something stable and boring, Linux is just not it.
What? I get the other arguments but I use Linux because it's stable and boring. I don't want the hassle of updates to Windows 8, 9, 10, 11 (or whatever is current now) or OS X updates breaking things ("Yay, they've removed another feature!").
Yeah, when CentOS got eaten, moved to AlmaLinux. No complaints. It works. I also use Slackware. Nice and boring. Compared to macOS on my MacStudio… exceedingly boring and stable.
> These days everyone is just using the same five electron apps installed via flatpack anyway.
> So a desktop environment with an bespoke suite of apps (text editor, video player, file manager etc), seem less and less important anyway.
Can't say I've seen this, my main daily apps are all native and installed with a package manager.
Even if we were all using the same apps why would that mean we'd all jump onto a Mac?
Same here. I don't use flatpaks, only a single electron app (Obsidian) and can't even name 5.
I somewhat sympathize with the poster here, I too am a chronic distrohopper and if you are just the type of person with shiny object syndrome it can be really exhausting constantly being yanked around by your interest in other distros. I've been on gentoo for a year now and that's the longest lasting install I've ever had. Planning on keeping it that way, but you never know.
I also have a macbook that I use for certain proprietary apps that don't have Linux clients and it can be a weirdly peaceful experience just knowing you're locked into macOS's stack and there aren't a myriad of options you could install at any moment should you get bored.
That being said, macOS sucks.
I feel exactly the same, recently decided to stick to macOS for this exact reason. So tired of constantly tuning and shiny object syndrome. Power to you for staying on Gentoo so long.
All my serious use notebooks run on Mac OS, my gaming PC on Windows, and my servers on Linux (I do keep an old-ish Thinkpad with Kali for tinkering).
The hardware+software combination of MacOS is unbeatable in terms of things like battery life and overall reliability, and it's a Unix, so the command line is almost the same. The M-series are a beast.
Linux has always been messy for desktop use for me (I've been using it since 1994). Sound always gives me trouble, and getting the power profiles right takes way too much work.
It tends to get in the way whenever I want to get something done, which happens a lot less often for Macs. A large part of it is the hardware, I'm sure, but still. I value my time.
Servers are fine, fewer hardware quirks to deal with.
> Sound always gives me trouble, and getting the power profiles right takes way too much work.
Sounds like you've been using a distro with bad defaults and/or poorly supported hardware. I challenge you to use a decent distro like Fedora, on a well-supported hardware like a ThinkPad, and see if you have the same issues.
Speaking as a ThinkPad Z13 + Fedora user who literally never had any audio or power profile issues... or any issue for that matter.
The author is going to have massive remorse if they think moving to macOS will let them customize things.
Using macOS (especially Apple Silicon era macOS) feels like being in maximum security prison. If you thought Windows Vista UAC was bad, macOS is doing it worse right now.
The reasoning is all wrong.
> I'm 30 this year, and computers don't have the same level of whimsy and excitement as they once had.
Also wtf. I'm far older than this author, and this statement they made is just complete and total schlock. They don't have enough experience to say what they're saying.
GUI Desktop = MacOS Gaming desktop = Windows All the servers are a mix of linux and windows
I wouldnt wish Linux desktop on anyone whos not willing to learn at least some troubleshooting, with is 99.9999999% of people. I lament the community missed the prime shot in the early 2ks, but it's just not there for the "home user". As an appliance for gaming (stem deck) its fine, and probably for web-only work as reinstalling is not a big deal, as the only caveat to the above.
> but it's just not there for the "home user"
Vanilla Arch definitely isn't, sure. But there are distros with immutable root and Flatpak-focused package management that work fine for the ordinary home user. SteamOS isn't the only distro doing that, and the architecture isn't limited to gaming-only appliances.
> Today the various desktop environments seem to have largely converged, sharing the same flat design language and icon styles.
Go to settings and select something other then the defaults.
>Customisation seems to have completely fallen by the wayside in favour of a more curated experience controlled by the desktop environment.
Maybe true of Gnome. Not true of KDE or XFCE.
Its also an odd reason to switch to Apple.
> These days everyone is just using the same five electron apps installed via flatpack anyway
I am not
What isbhappenning here seems to be someone who has tired of tinkering but cannot resist tinkering with Linux so has chosen to switch to an OS that does not allow tinkering rather than use a Linux distro with its defaultsm
Of course you will get tired if you change your OS every three months. I have used roughly the same ArchLinux setup for years now, probably over a decade, and it is remarkably stable. Things break very occasionally but are easily fixed (and are usually a result of my own tinkering with experimental software).
Also regarding everything convergence of desktop environments, there are plenty of more interesting options out there, but they don't call themselves "desktop environments" - tiling or scrolling window managers, for example, which are often infinitely configurable though scripts.
I've been running CachyOS for a while now and I love it. And if an update breaks it (which does happen - it's a small team pushing bleeding edge patches), then limine bootloader just lets you boot to the last working snapshot. Easy.
Oh no! Anyway...
I really wanted to like using a Macbook. I've given it a go a few times, amazing battery life and great build quality.
But I can't get over how it locks you down completely software wise. I wanted a sane WM and tried skhd and yabai. They are a collection of hacks on the accessibility API, and they will break whenever Apple decides to. To me that's unacceptable as a daily driver
Linux is pure and clean just the way anyone likes, not bloated. On a latest gen. amd64 it literally gives SuperComputer vibes!
I am a pretty die-hard NixOS cultist, but I will admit that I actually like macOS. I used macOS almost exclusively from 2020-2024, until I bought my Thinkpad that I have now, and I never really disliked the operating system (though I did have issues with that particular laptop because of the i9 CPU's propensity to thermal-throttle).
Despite me preferring it, it is hard for me to say that desktop Linux is "better" in any kind of objective sense than macOS. I do think that desktop Linux is significantly better in most senses than Windows, but macOS is a stable, easy-to-use distro that performs fine. While I kind of hate the "Just Works" slogan it has, I will admit that that's significantly truer than Linux. It's 2026, and I still have issues having Linux properly work when I plug in an external monitor into a laptop.
All that being said, what I like about Linux is that it can run on basically anything, including existing computers that you (or your relatives) likely already have, and it will likely perform better than Windows if for no other reason than it won't be filled with as much bloatware bullshit that most OEM Windows' has.
A good Macbook is pretty pricey. A Macbook Neo is cheaper, but you know what's even cheaper than that? Extending the life of the computer you already have!
I'm fairly happy with my obscenely over-customized NixOS Sway desktop, and I probably don't really understand the sunk-cost fallacy so I'm unlikely to ever leave, but I don't blame people for doing so. As long as they don't defect to Windows...
Weird. I see a lot of my friends disenchanted like this, but a lot of the reason I'm not is Linux and more importantly, open source projects in general. The more of an effort I make to learn the open source alternative to whatever adobe or what have you I used to use, the more I enjoy computing.
Are they quirky? As hell. But by and large, are they enshittifying like the big box software? No, most of them are getting better, and rapidly.
Personally, I find there's nothing like actually looking forward to a software update like I did in 2005 and expecting new, useful, features and then actually getting them in an update to restore my sense of computing whimsy.
Obviously do what works for you. This is just not my experience.
I am doing the opposite. I have been a Mac user since ~2005. My first Mac was actually a Quadra 610, but I was a wee little lad back then. I started my career on a G5 Power Mac with dual 23" cinema displays (studio displays? can't remember what they were called back then). Then the intel Macbook/MBP, etc. I think my favorite mac of all time, or the one I look back most fondly on, was my 2012 Macbook Air.
In 2022 my M1 mini started to die due to what I would call SSD abuse. I absolutely punished that box - rode hard, put away wet. The SSD began to show signs of failing. I was doing way too much with it - so I took a spare R720 2U server I had and turned it into my remote dev box. Thanks to VSCode's SSH remote feature - you can hack on a project like it is on your box. My workflow is usually my IDE for coding and then a separate terminal running tmux for interacting with the box. I did this locally at home, with the R720 down in my basement. The cool thing about developing like this is that if you are traveling, the dev-ex is no different. Tailscale or some other VPN and boom your workflow continues to work, albeit with varying amounts of latency. Mosh helps here. 2x CPU's (albeit old Haswell gen), 256GB of ram, 2x NVME mirror with pci-e add-in ... it performed really well as an always-on remote dev machine.
Quickly I realized I was kinda outgrowing the R720, though, and so in 2023, I built a beast Linux workstation (Debian 12) with 128GB of memory, 13900k, nvme mirrors, etc and after fine tuning KDE and getting it all dialed in, I started to really enjoy it from a hacker standpoint. Everything for the most part "just worked" including my new Apple Studio Display that I am typing this message on right now. Took a little while for the kernel to catch up but at this point it is working over Thunderbolt, the camera works, speakers work, built-in hub works, etc. I can even do brightness control from my kb.
Meanwhile, my mobile dev box has been an M2 air. With the 'all compute is happening on a remote node' the M architecture Air devices are really quite incredible. I am just running an IDE and an iTerm window (with all compute happening on the main host), so battery life is measured in days. I will work at my desk in my office for a while, then pivot to the deck or the couch or a coffee shop and thanks again to ide-over-ssh (I am on Zed now, no more VSCode) and tmux ... everything feels exactly like it does at my desk with zero interruption. It also means I can slam my laptop shut at any given moment to do other things, while software and agents continue in the background. Combine with a 1500VA ups under my desk to mitigate power blips and this is a dream setup.
But the more I used KDE and Linux ... the more I started to ask myself if it was time to pivot to a Linux notebook too. The only qualms I had was knowing that no PC will ever beat 1) the battery life and 2) the touchpad performance of a Macbook.
Then the Framework 13 Pro was announced. I watched the release announcement and immediately preordered one. I went back and forth about cancelling the preorder many times, thinking to myself that my trusty M2 air was just fine for a 'dumb terminal' type of laptop. But the 120hz display and the desire to dogfood a modern Linux notebook, combined with the fact that the market/prices for RAM etc were skyrocketing and I was locked-in to a good batch 1 price kept me on the preorder. Also ... I have 2 german shepherds and they shed a lot. Hair gets into my macbook keyboard which is very difficult to get out. Removing and cleaning key caps is tedious. The fact that I can replace the entire KB on the Framework (or entire top cover) for like $100 is hugely compelling for me. Combined with their track record to continue supporting and offering upgrades for older gear - it was a no brainer really. Modern Mac notebooks are unfortunately wear items (like brake pads) - at some point you throw them out. The tide might be shifting with the new Neo and its' repair-ability, though.
Glad I did. The framework has been really really good. Not gonna lie, Apple still wins on battery life. But I enjoy having a freeipa-domain-joined box that is 100% open source, running all my familiar KDE tweaks, 120hz, etc. The keyboard and trackpad are actually incredible. Keyboard surely beats any notebook I have ever had.
So now I am sort of spiraling on Linux toys. I just got a Chuwi Minibook X (https://taoofmac.com/space/reviews/2025/05/15/2230) and its running Fedora, like my Framework Pro, and it's quite fun as well. For less than $300 it has 16GB of memory, 512gb nvme, 4 cores, and a touchscreen display that is quite decent (still fine-tuning the auto rotate stuff, which is fun in and of itself). I can't believe Fedora 44 'just works', with suspend, and wifi, and speakers, and bluetooth, and full disk encryption, .... less than $300!
I've been using Linux on servers and for software dev since ~2005 but never felt like "the year of the linux desktop" was really here. That totally changed a few years back and now I am all-in. Still love the Apple ecosystem (and use an iPhone) but very very happy to be driving Linux on all my computers. I even updated my gaming rig (7900XTX) to run CachyOS. With the exception of anti-cheat games like COD or BF6 I have zero qualms. It runs everything else really well. And it doubles as a local AI inference machine thanks again to the beauty of open source and Linux.
Another shout-out for MacVim.
My favorite editor for years, I use it in conjunction with Vim in the terminal. I’ve been trying to move to NeoVim but can never find the time. And regular MacVim/Vim is already awesome.
>I'm Tired Boss >I'm 30 this year, and computers don't have the same level of whimsy and excitement as they once had. When I was young everything was new and interesting, it felt like there was so much experimentation and innovation. Today the various desktop environments seem to have largely converged, sharing the same flat design language and icon styles. Customisation seems to have completely fallen by the wayside in favour of a more curated experience controlled by the desktop environment.
It's funny. I share the same thoughts but it sent me from Windows to Linux.
And I'm very, very tired as well. I wouldn't recommend you to install Windows, because Windows is spyware. But I wouldn't recommend you to install Linux, because Linux is crap.
You know what I would recommend instead?
Not use computers.
If there is a way to avoid them your whole life... just do that. Otherwise you'll spend the rest of your life having to deal with... you know... all of this.
The reason I left Linux was because I didn't want to be associated with the high-ranking developers that openly abuse and demean others with unprofessional attitudes for decades on end with impunity.
I know this is an extremely unpopular position that many people will disagree with, but it's my decision and I made it. I'm not asking you to follow. Feel free to tell me how much of a misguided/stupid decision it is. I think if everyone were able to "separate the art from the artist", then boycotts wouldn't even exist.
Same goes for OpenBSD, GNOME, GrapheneOS, Kitty/Calibre and many other applications... I have been personally attacked by several people from all of these projects just for asking simple questions, and I know many others that have gotten it much worse.
What's wrong with going where you're treated best?
> What's wrong with going where you're treated best?
And where is this magical place exactly?
> just for asking simple questions
Could you paraphrase any of those simple questions? It seems like a weird thing to omit.
If your "simple question" is something that violates the CoC then I can understand why they'd push you out. I personally don't agree with (most) FOSS CoCs, but I can grok why they exist for modern projects. There are so many counterproductive "contributors" that refuse to read the code and find answers for themselves, escalating things into egotistical pissing contests that wastes everyone's time. It's effective (albeit not ideal) to just kick these people out from square 1, keeping things more Cathedral-like as opposed to a Bazaar project.
In an age of AI, you can hard-fork any of these projects and ask an agent any technical question that you could possibly have. It's a golden age for FOSS if you're self-motivated and have thick skin.
Basic take
> For a good period of my life I don't think I had same Linux install on my personal machines for longer than three months.
...this seems like the obvious problem? Both of my NixOS installs are ~4 and 1/2 years old now. If you're using distros that break more frequently than Windows does, I can see how you'd get tuckered out.
I think Windows and macOS have both changed more radically than my 10 year old Gentoo installation has in that period of time, heh.
Yeah, I distro-hopped for a few years during the tail end of my college days and the first year or two after, but at this point I've been running the same Arch installation for close to a decade (literally migrating it to new hardware by setting up the same partition structure and rsyncing everything over). It hasn't felt like work to use Linux pretty much since I stopped reinstalling, while Windows and MacOS feel like they get harder to use every time I have to.
That does seem strange. So he has been experimenting seeking something. I have kept the same LTS installations sometimes until the bitter end of the support cycle.
The dance trying different distros and DEs is fun (and important) for a while. Eventually you learn to fix the problems yourself exactly to avoid having to reinstall. Eventuakky distro lines get blurred as it's the same software under it and jumping between them more easily. Once you find a distro with the right mix for your tastes you stick to it. My main server has some files as old as 1999, migrated hardware, filesystems, even migrated from 32bit to 64bit without having to reinstall. But I've spent 3 years doing the same dance before it.
It might be that OP never wanted to actually do the next step, which is OK. Hopefully MacOS works for them and they can keep affording their machines.
I have been on the same Arch installation for 10+ years and the previous install on a different device was also ~8 years old. Could have just transferred files over and be done about it but I wanted to refresh my knowledge. :)
Yeah, weird. I've run Fedora and OpenSUSE Tumbleweed (rolling distro) for two and a half years each.
I agree, Kubuntu here last 4 years, Ubuntu before that starting 2006.
While I used to.distrohop a bit at the beginning of the century, my current Fedora 44 install dates back from Fedora 25 or 26 which I believe was released somewhere around 2017. It has moved from one laptop to another as I couldn't be bothered to reinstall.
I don't define myself as a linux user either. Using some kind of Linux or BSD has simply been the pragmatic choice for around 3 decades compared to what always looked like opaque and user hostile proprietary operating systems.
Yup. I think my xubuntu install dates back to early 2010s. I upgrade to 04s, it works.
I switched from Linux to Mac around the same age I think, I know Linux works much better now but Mac just works. I remember trying to connect a ThinkPad with an AMD/ATI graphic card I had paid extra to an external monitor on my ex-wife laptop, what a massive PITA and it never worked, it would just work with the Intel builtin GPU.
I'm glad I suffered a bit with Linux it taught me vim and resilience and using the command line / shell, but for my day to day I'm happy with Mac.
Ironically I just bought a Neo for my home laptop, I'm a bit annoyed by the keyboard because at work I have a 15/16 inches Macbook Pro but I don't do much on it so it's ok.
> [...]I know Linux works much better now but Mac just works. I remember trying to connect a ThinkPad[...]
I am not denying Apple is producing some really nice hardware but we wouldn't have these kind of conversations if people stopped comparing apples(pun intended) to oranges and cared to buy fully supported and linux preinstalled computers. I know it might have been complicated back in the days when people weren't used to order online but nowadays it is quite easy to find one.
https://linuxpreloaded.com/
tl;dr: The desktop environment the author is using is adopting mac OS unusability features, but doing so slowly, so jumping to mac OS will allow full unusability without the wait.
tl;dr: Bored Linux user who tolerates electron apps switched to macOS for excitement.
how intellectually stimulating. did the box it came in also feel premium?