Every year I try a switch to Linux desktop. This year I made it as far as trying to get multiple monitors working well. I also dabbed in gaming. In the end I went back to my work=Mac game=Windows duopoly.
A GNU userland. A plethora of tiling window managers. A selection of clean terminals. Every single thing Debian's or Arch's repos offer which one must turn to brew for.
And of course there's freedom too, which is nice.
> Every year I try a switch to Linux desktop. This year I made it as far as trying to get multiple monitors working well.
I've got multiple monitors running on Linux, over HDMI, at home & at work, at differing resolutions & orientations. I use arandr-configured xrandr scripts which set my desired orientation with a quick keystroke in my window manager. What more does one need?
Freedom, a full GNU userland, proper package management of the entire system, plethora of CLI programs which can fulfil your every need and only really work on GNU/Linux, configurable, etc.
> Every year I try a switch to Linux desktop. This year I made it as far as trying to get multiple monitors working well. I also dabbed in gaming. In the end I went back to my work=Mac game=Windows duopoly.
I use multiple monitors every day for my work under OpenSUSE and Arch. They both worked with either minimal (Arch) or no (SUSE) configuration. I use DisplayPort which works pretty well.
Better Desktop environment Better Package Management More Up to date packages
Some of my knowledge of OS X is likely outdated I haven't used it since 2011
I started using Linux when I was at University late 90's early 00's (Mandrake was my first distro). I switched to OS X around 2005 and used it as my primary operating system for about 5 years.
I used OS X because I'd purchased a MacBook Pro (mostly for the hardware) I still think Macbooks are the nicest laptops I've used to this day I went through 3 iterations of Macbooks before I stopped using OS X. I used OS X because it was good enough but I never fell in love with it.
I absolutely hated the desktop environment, silly things like no ability to customise anything, lack of workspaces, having to hit command q to kill application (because the 'x' button wouldn't close them properly) stuff like that. Workspaces came in a later OS X update which addressed some of my gripes.
It was never easy to install third party packages and libraries in OS X. I think this has improved now, when I used OS X it it was a mess (especially compared to the ease of something like apt). The native system packages were always really ancient - old version of GCC, old version of emacs, python etc. Trying to install newer version of these 'default' packages was not straightforward at all I remember having huge issues getting python 3 working.
Nowadays I run Fedora very happy with it. Not compelled at all to switch back. Linux support for modern laptops is a lot better than it was when I first started using Macs.
My current job is in an 'enterprisey' environment I'm forced to use a locked down version of windows here. Almost anything would be better.
The whole python ecosystem is also better on Linux overall.
Anything strictly desktop-oriented is better on OSX of course.
I use Mac OS X and this is what I miss about Linux:
- Clean package/software management and updates.
- Basic customizability without having to install 3rd party binaries from untrusted sources
- Multiple filesystem support (NTFS write not supported out of the box... needing 3rd party software... ext support has to be compiled, breaks with updates... generally PITA)
- Easy installation of software/libraries from source (generally PITA to set up toolchain to compile general cross platform open source software)
- Proper desktop environment (the one that OS X has is shit compared to Gnome)
- Proper file manager (the one that OS X has is shit compared to Nautilus)
- Up to date and standard command-line tools (The ones in OS X are old... for example check the version of unzip... they can't unpack zip files created by new zip tool)
- Better command line system wide file search (I love mlocate, the one in OS X is shit)
- Ability to run docker natively