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Comment by throwaway7645 | Hacker News Reader

I'm curious, most of the people with the skills to build a hackintosh could easily build a Linux box as well and some probably do. However, is there any reason they just don't go to Linux? Is it hardware support or Adobe?

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There are a lot of creative apps out there that tie you to macOS, as well as a bunch of software workflow issues—drag & drop, copy & paste, etc. work really well on macOS. Even for really boring workflows like sorting through media files I find that the stock macOS file browser is superior to specialized media management apps on Linux. Some obvious apps are Mac-only like Final Cut and Logic, and if those are the apps which you use for your creative workflow, you don't want to switch. Telling me to switch from Logic to Reaper is like telling me that I should switch from Gibson to Ibanez or something like that—it's not just an issue of features + stability + price, it's an issue of personal preference. To give you an idea of the kind of issues we're talking about here, I can't stand the piano roll editor in Reason, which is a perfectly fine DAW and lovely to use otherwise, but I adore the piano roll editor in Logic. I couldn't articulate what makes one UX better than the other, and it seems like they both have feature parity, but the differences are important to me. In other cases it is actually an issue of feature parity, like Final Cut's amazing proxy capabilities (unless I'm wrong).

Don't get me started on the poor state of creative apps for Linux in general. GIMP is literally incapable of performing half the steps in my favorite photo editing workflows (features missing which were present in Photoshop 5.0 from 1998), and Audacity makes me angry more than any other piece of software I have ever used. Inkscape and Krita are decent, though.

The poor piano roll is the main thing that keeps me from committing to Reason too. There are so many things I really love about Reason but the piano roll seems to have been frozen in time a decade ago.

Thanks for the informative reply!

Two deal breakers:

1. None of the Ui packages out there in Linux is as good as macOS.

1.5. Gestures. Though I can live without one, I've grown accustomed to the slick motions.

2. Chinese input on Linux is unusable. It was so confusing I gave up setting it up on my (was) Ubuntu installation.

You can get really close on point #1 with some work. I've never looked into gestures, and I don't write Chinese, so I can't speak to those.

Re #1: Yes, maybe I could get the main use cases to approximate OS X well. But (a) I don't want to learn how multiple windowing systems work and how to script them, and (b) then to fine tune them so corner cases are covered: how to integrate Gnome and KDE applications so their menu bars have the same shortcuts for the same operations, use the same font, have the same DPI scaling, etc... It's a never-ending set of options to fiddle with, little cohesive documentation, and no objective criteria to decide when they've been fiddled enough. Not saying it's a fault of Linux, but that's what we get in a open source ecosystem where the kernel team doesn't dictate how the desktop works.

I wasn't responding to "approximating OS X," I was saying you can get the UI to be "as good as" OS X, with some work.

I think the problems I gave examples of do relate to the UI. If not, then what we define as "UI" seems pretty trivial.

I use gnome3 and think it's great.

拼音键盘也可以用。

Try Fedora.

I've tried Vietnamese on Elementary OS and have to scratch my head just to find how to get and make ibus works. I don't think all other people want to deal with things like this.

Gestures are easy. Just install libinput-gestures, make it launch on startup, and you're good to go.

Linux isn't nearly as fluid/polished/nice as macOS tends to be, and has a severe lack of good apps.

I can't even find a good calendar app for Linux.

There is the calendar command, I think that will tell you about stuff coming up in the day/week if I remember correctly.

It's amazing just how lousy calendaring on Linux has been.

What about the Lightning add-on for Thunderbird? Has that been of any use?

Anecdote: I've been running Linux at home for 10 years, but I can see myself switching to OSX because the input methods for Chinese characters are so much better. Even googles ones are top notch.

Xcode and Safari are dealbreakers if you're a mobile developer or developing for the modern web. (Sorry guys, Safari is the mobile web, and it's mac-only.)

Other than that, I would be happy (likely happier) on linux vs. OSX or MacOS or whatever. I do not game, and living on the same basic bones as my servers is a win.

For me it's mainly because even the smoothest Linux experience isn't as smooth as macOS for various reasons. Smoothness in Linux setups is frustratingly spotty sometimes, and while it can often be fixed with some time tinkering, more often than not I just don't have patience for that these days.

Of course, this may relate to how I compute and the software I use, but it doesn't quite line up with me. Nevertheless, I keep a fedora partition around for tinkering when the mood strikes.

Recently tried out Elementary and Ubuntu before going with a Hackintosh. I would have considered keeping Linux if support for high DPI screens wasn't so bad.

> However, is there any reason they just don't go to Linux?

One of the many reasons is desktop Linux has a terrible and well deserved reputation. Most people don't have any great yearning in their loins to switch operating systems so they would prefer to keep using what works for them. Desktop Linux would have to be a lot better than macOS to get people to even consider trying it out.

I use desktop Linux and Mac OS. The latter Just Works and most proprietary software has a version that works with it.

Lately, however, I've had to janitor my Mac more than my Linux system. Experienced more kernel panics with it as well.

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