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After ongoing problems and repairs with my gen 2 butterfly, I switched to Linux (Ubuntu). After many months, I'm still a little shocked at how much worse the desktop experience is. 11 year old OS X Leopard is more consistent, intuitive and usable.

Hardware is slightly less polished, but no major complaints there (except for how poor the buying experience was).

Still, keyboard works. It would take something amazing to win me back (like a custom CPU that just completely redefines what we expect from battery life and performance)

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It is all what you're used to. I switched from a Linux KDE desktop to a Mac 11 years ago. I ended up switching back to Linux & KDE after about 6 months of use, and giving the Mac to my inlaws.

What it came down to for me is that I've been using the same window manager shortcuts since the late 80s, and I can't make them work with OSX. Eg, I use focus-follows mouse, and some strange mouse-button + ALT key combos to move/raise/iconify windows. The loss of focus follows mouse is what really drove me nuts. I was forever deleting emails because I'd move my mouse to a terminal or emacs window and start typing, like I'd done for the last 20+ years, but without a click "random stuff" was happening in Mail, which was still getting the keystrokes.

thats a huge part of it for sure. certainly thats why windows remains so dominant. its just hard to switch.

Yep, I'm a long term Windows user and developing on a mac for the last 6 months, and I find it pretty terrible, I'd rather be using Ubuntu. But I'm happy to admit it's because of what I'm used to.

"It is all what you're used to"

I don't think this is true.

Ubuntu is far less consistent with keyboard shortcuts and menu bars from app to app (OSX has this nailed). This is overwhelming my biggest problem. cmd+c, cmd+v for copy and paste across all apps. Not all apps minus terminal. Double click URL portion in firefox, entire url is highlighted, double click url part in other places, only that word/segment is highlight (I guess it's this 8 year old bug? https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=611162)

Sublime sometimes opens with the menu shown, sometimes with it hidden (I've tried to script this, doesn't always work). Sometimes the window shows up minimized (scripting this catch 90% of the cases)

On quit, Firefox always restores the DDG and Amazon search options, but not the other ones. Why can't it remember this? (there are other cases of partial configuration amnesia for various apps)

"Ubuntu Software" doesn't list available updates for installed "Add-ons", you have to remove and and re-add when you know one exists. It also doesn't let you "search" installed even if you're on the installed tab.

When my I wake my screen up, there's a brief flash of my unlocked screen (someone could theoretically take a picture) before the lock screen comes up.

In OSX and android I just enter my carriers free wifi settings and it works. In Ubuntu, I'm given a bunch of detailed options, and I've yet to find the magical combination that works.

While on battery, the time remaining can be comically off when waking from sleep (23 hours, really?!). I've also had it say 10 minutes left when it shut down.

There are plenty of apps on extensions.gnome.org (available in "Ubuntu Software") that constantly crash gnome. Go through systemd logs, find which ones are causing the problem, try to fix or uninstall.

The list goes on and on. Correct battery time, configurations that stick, consistency from app to app are polish, not preferences.

> This is overwhelming my biggest problem. cmd+c, cmd+v for copy and paste across all apps. Not all apps minus terminal.

I really wish one of the major *ix toolkits/desktops would make some effort to attract or accommodate Mac refugees or dual OS users. I just wanna type Ctrl-W to erase a word and GUI-W to close a window — consistently.

> Sublime sometimes opens with the menu shown, sometimes with it hidden

After a year of using Sublime on Ubuntu for work, I have yet to have this issue happen. Even if it does happen, it seems like an application issue not an OS issue.

> On quit, Firefox always restores the DDG and Amazon search options, but not the other ones.

Same case, Firefox on Ubuntu for years and never had any kind of application amnesia.

> When my I wake my screen up, there's a brief flash of my unlocked screen (someone could theoretically take a picture) before the lock screen comes up.

What DE were you using, and what screensaver application? The only time I've had that happen was on old hardware without much support, and I'm still not sure what the entire cause of the issue was.

> While on battery, the time remaining can be comically off when waking from sleep (23 hours, really?!). I've also had it say 10 minutes left when it shut down.

That seems like an issue with hardware as much as with the OS. The only time my battery has reported inaccurate information was when the BIOS was also having trouble detecting battery stats.

Everything you've mentioned has been pretty anecdotal, as has everything I've mentioned. The biggest advantage of OS X is that you have guaranteed hardware support so you don't have to worry about half of the issues you've mentioned. I admit that it does take some tweaking occasionally, but for the most part Linux just works now.

Yes the issue with Linux terminals using different shortcuts than the rest of the system drives me absolutely bonkers, probably more than any of the hundreds of small cuts found in the desktop Linux experience.

> Not all apps minus terminal.

Note that you can change terminal to use ctrl-c and ctrl-v for copy/paste. Then if you want to interrupt a running program, use ctrl-shift-c (which as far as the shell is concerned is the same as ctrl-c).

"The loss of focus follows mouse is what really drove me nuts."

This is a killer for me and I am trying to solve it currently ...

I ran Snow Leopard from 2009-2018 and had FFM due to "mondomouse" but that is no longer published or supported.

Now that I have upgraded (my 2009 mac pro) to Yosemite, I sort of have a FFM solution with a tool called dwellclick and one modification[1] but it's not perfect.

HOWEVER, it appears that there is a new accessibility option in High Sierra that allows you to turn on FFM without third party software. Not helpful for me because I can't install High Sierra on a 2009 mac pro ...

[1] defaults write com.pilotmoon.DwellClick MoveDistancePixels -float 600

https://ianyh.com/amethyst/ may actually do more than you want, but FFM is among its abilities.

(Free, OSS)

Do you have more details about the new accessibility option in High Sierra that allows you to turn on FFM? I can't seem to find it, both by looking at the Accessibility menu on my laptop or by googling. Thanks!

I recently switched from macOS High Sierra to Fedora.

I felt that Fedora was smoother, way more responsive on the same hardware (and yes, comparing fresh macOS to fresh Linux install), more consistent and more intuitive, and more usable. The only thing I can think of that's better on macOS is the touchpad, which to the best of my knowledge is a gift given to us mortals by the gods.

Oh, and the macOS default wallpaper is better.

> The only thing I can think of that's better on macOS is the touchpad, which to the best of my knowledge is a gift given to us mortals by the gods.

I'm absolutely unwilling to give up the Mac trackpad. When I see people who aren't artists using mice I have to question their value system, or assume they haven't discovered the absolute joy that is "tap to click".

Obviously the configuration matters a great deal.

nailed it. the trackpad is THE killer feature of the macbook. everything else has a comparable in other products.

On my Thinkpad the whole touchpad depresses like a giant keyboard button. Yes, there is slightly more force than on an apple Touchpad, but you don't accidentally click by tapping, which is nice.

To my recollection, after discovering tap to click, I've not once accidentally clicked. That would be, hm, maybe 15 years now?

The extra effort required/friction added to click really annoys me now.

I remember experiencing some issues around that, but it's been years and I was not used to the device it happened on. It might not have been a MacBook, but the alternative then would have been a dedicated area or physical button in the corner of the touchpad, so then it was preferable. I don't remember why, but I think the issue with palm rejection being necessary on some of the laptops I used (not owned) was the lack of sufficient space to rest the hands on that would neither result in them being on the edge of the case nor on the edge of the touchpad. This Thinkpad (T540p) does not have that issue, as the size seems to allow the keyboard to be far enough away from the front edge of the base.

To be fair, the noise of clicking the touchpad is annoying some times, but mostly due to the mushy bottoming of the keyboard, which results in low noise despite a clear actuation point.

My aversion to a MacBook is mostly coming from the repair-unfriendlyness, combined with the high prices on the secondary market compared to T/X series Thinkpads. As long as I can hold it for at least one hour on one hand, while walking, in a position that I can keep an eye on the screen and use the other hand for hitting keys if needed, I don't consider it to heavy. And screen size is only really restricted by needing to fit inside commonly available backpacks, and not hindering maneuverability which happens if it is too wide in the middle dimension (approximating as a cuboid) to fit within the width of the chest. Being able to fit with it on my lap in a row on e.g. public transit/long distance trains/ (airplanes) also sets a limit to the width in the maximum dimension of the cuboid approximation. As this limit is lower than that imposed by fitting within the flat space on my back, that restriction dosn't really apply for the laptop.

I prefer the trackpad on my (personal) X1 carbon to the trackpad on my (work) Macbook Air

Configuration matters, but so does size. My built-in trackpad is fine, but the larger external one is the real joy.

> I'm absolutely unwilling to give up the Mac trackpad.

Too bad they already ruined it when they switched from the 2014 to 2015 models.

Haven't had a complaint with my 2015, but as I indicated elsewhere, the external Bluetooth trackpad is the real winner.

I was just looking into external trackpads yesterday because I'm about to switch to thinkpads. There's nothing! Even Logitech discontinued their version of Magic Trackpad. How is this possible?

when I see people who don't use a mouse with additional buttons for things like navigate forward and backward in terminal and IDES, I also question them.

Because during the work day if I have to touch the mouse to do anything that isn't web browsing then I and my operating system have failed.

An aspect that is often left out of the discussion: language support is way better on osx/windows. In particular japanese IME was still very primitive in comparison on linux (tried last year).

That's the same situation as for ios/android really, it's not a deal breaker, but the quality of life difference is clear.

Hmm, I have used both Linux and Mac Japanese IME's, and I didn't feel that big a difference. I may remember wrong, though.

A cool but probably useless feature in the Chinese IME for Mac is the ability to draw Hanzi on the trackpad as a giant digitizer.

Internationalization wise, I could never dream of using a computer in any language other than English, despite it not being my mother tongue.

Second comment about buying experience. I got a Dell XPS which is great, though I would never buy anything again from Dell due to their horrible customer service. By which I mean pathetically rude and unprofessional (German store).

Desktop experience of clean uninterrupted GNOME is great for me. Move from Ubuntu to fedora. Ubuntu really messes up GNOME with their BS ideas of usability. I.e horrible terrible ugly Unity, RIP.

Recent releases of Ubuntu use regular GNOME 3 with the Dash to Dock extension installed by default.

As far as I remember (before I switched) they’re messing up nautilus and keeping older versions. Also installation, software management and other little things. This mishmash of ideas and concepts of two separate projects is bad.

Ubuntu does not understand usability and they should really allow GNOME’s vision to come through. GNOME is probably not perfect, but it is consistent.

Yeah, the whole Unity look and feel was always terrible for me. My first experience with Linux was the last version of Ubuntu with Gnome2, then I did a system update and everything changed and back then I didn't know about changing DEs. Now I avoid Unity whenever possible, as even the Gnome lookalike Ubuntu has now seems so much slower than XFCE or i3.

I think the Unity dock concept is a lot more approachable for naive computer users: commonly used applications are always availabe, it’s clear which applications are open, and it’s clear which windows are open within those applications.

Older relatives of mine have taken to it immediately, Gnome’s equivalent has an appreciable learning curve. Also, I recently installed 18.04 on a relative’s three year old laptop, and it was really really fast, faster than my vanilla Gnome installation, although that could be because I’m using more applications at once.

Ubuntu’s ideas of usability are valid for some use cases, even if they’re not mine.

It is well known that Ubuntu is going through a phase of rapid change at the moment. I understand how you feel but I'm pretty sure the quality and consistency will only increase from here on. Otherwise, try a Plasma desktop or Mate (if you feel like a minimalist).

> It is well known that Ubuntu is going through a phase of rapid change at the moment. I understand how you feel but I'm pretty sure the quality and consistency will only increase from here on.

People have been saying things like that about various Linuxes for over 20 years, and it still isn't close.

Well I think that from about April 2012 (first generally positive feel about Unity) until about April 2021 (yes I know, this is the end of 16.04 support) you could have had (and can have) a fairly consistent experience. Now, with the introduction of Gnome into Ubuntu there is some (avoidable) flux. If you don't like it, go for a more conservative distro like CentOS, or pick Ubuntu Mate.

Linux is always rapidly developing but there are always distros which suit the more conservative users who hate change. I agree that this is a difficult concept when first entering the Linux world but it is how it is.

I do wonder what makes you say it isn't close though... I feel it is more than that and would really love to replace my companies Windows 10 environment with Kubuntu 18.04. Still, I think even Ubuntu's standard desktop is pretty nice and very usable.

> I feel it is more than that and would really love to replace my companies Windows 10 environment with Kubuntu 18.04.

Get all their .net apps and office/excel stuff to work, and get whatever integrations with office365 are required to work actually working and get it all to sync with their mobile devices... I'm sure you can have them switched in no time...

> Linux is always rapidly developing but there are always distros which suit the more conservative users who hate change. I agree that this is a difficult concept when first entering the Linux world but it is how it is.

I first entered the 'Linux world' in 1994, when I downloaded SLS onto floppies and installed it on my 486/33. I consider myself less of a 'conservative user who hates change' and more of a person with better things to do with my time than fight with my computer to make it perform basic functionality.

I'm also a person with better things to do with my time than fight with my computer to make it perform basic functionality, this has made me pretty conservative in my Linux Distro picks ;)

> People have been saying things like that about various Linuxes for over 20 years, and it still isn't close.

That was part of my reason for going full mac 10 years ago. Had one in the house, but my main laptops were linux. And it was always such a pain, wireless networking in particular. And ever few months I'd hear/read "oh, but ubuntu's great - everything just works". And then I'd try it on a new laptop, and things wouldn't work, and there'd be no answers, or the answers would be things like "dude, you have to research all your parts before you 'just buy something' - linux isn't like that!" And then I'd read more about "hey, everything now 'just works'!" I came to realize it was mostly people who'd didn't have moderately complex needs (like wanting to use 2 monitors without rebooting an X session), or needing to vpn easily, or... whatever. None of this was simple then. I'm going to guess it probably still isn't now for many 'edge cases' (most of my tech life apparently was an 'edge case' when I was a linux/desktop users). It was tiresome. After 10 years of "year of linux on the desktop" I got too tired of wrestling with all that crap and switched to a macbook.

> I got too tired of wrestling with all that crap and switched to a macbook.

This is pretty much exactly my experience. There were usually ways to make things work on Linux, but it always required more effort than it was worth. Back in school, spending that effort made sense because it was a learning experience and at the time that was my primary goal. These days, there are enough competing priorities in my life that spending hours wrestling with my computer to make it perform basic functionality just isn't worth the opportunity cost. (I could be learning something people value or doing paid work or spending time with my family or exercising....)

One of the things I did love about Linux was the ability to switch to a tiling window manager. That said, as nice as it was, customizations required modifying C source code and writing scripts and never did work nearly as well as anything else. (In particular, I never figured out the right NetworkManager incantations to connect to a new WiFi network.)

https://github.com/mschaef/dwm-tools

To put this in perspective, my experience with Linux dates back to 1994, installing SLS from floppies on a 486/33. There has always been this belief that 'the community' will solve the problems and turn Linux into a fully competitive desktop platform. While there's definitely been progress, the reality is that the community has neither the time nor the attention to achieve near the level of polish that the vast majority of people expect these days. (Note that I don't view this as necessarily a problem, just an artifact of people making the same sorts of resource allocations choices for themselves that I described myself making back in the first paragraph.)

Similar view on 'young and learning' and 'older with other priorities'. Started using linux on servers in 99 (slackware, mostly), and desktop/laptop (mostly redhat, and some debian and gentoo for a while) in 2000.

I do miss the fish protocol in konqueror/kde. I will say that with... KDE4(?) I just gave up caring about moving back to desktop Linux. Never cared much for gnome experience - had really liked KDE3.

As recently as a month ago, a colleague was writing to our local Linux list about laptop sleeping vs suspending, and how to get those working, and there was some discussion about why you'd want to do that, hardware support, BIOS issues, etc. Life is just way too damn short for me to care about any of that stuff. Yeah, I may be giving up some 'freedom' in an abstract sense (or perhaps even, maybe, a real sense) but... really, I just want to close the lid and not think about it.

An all too familiar story. At some point you just need to get work done without worrying about every last detail of CUPS printing a document out using Liberation Serif, and whether it looks close enough to your colleagues' printouts, etc.

I wanted a Unix machine I could use to hack together bash scripts, play flash video without jitters, and use Photoshop and Word... without constant emotional labor coercing the system to do what I needed. Apple provided the best technical solution to my problem set.

(By the way, not really a tiling window manager, but have you checked out Magnet? It's one of my favorite Mac utilities.)

> I wanted a Unix machine I could use to hack together bash scripts, play flash video without jitters, and use Photoshop and Word... without constant emotional labor coercing the system to do what I needed. Apple provided the best technical solution to my problem set.

Pretty much my reasoning too. I was also surprised that, once I factored in build quality, etc., the Apple was price-competitive as well.

> (By the way, not really a tiling window manager, but have you checked out Magnet? It's one of my favorite Mac utilities.)

No, but I'll check it out. I like it by the sound of it's name already. Thanks!

So you are surprised that a randomly chosen hardware has problems with a GNU/Linux while the hardware specifically designed for MacOS works flawlessly with the latter?

Of course one has to choose the hardware to be sure the drivers are compatible... You are asking something impossible from GNU/Linux developers.

Sure... and there are other reasons too, but knowing them doesn't really help solve the problems.

Just go for vanilla Gnome, the UI is solid.

Well if you're comparing it to Leopard / Snow Leopard no wonder. That's probably the most neat and polished a desktop operating system has ever been.

edit: To clarify, I think current macOS is a better OS, its features are worth less neatness, but Snow Leopard did a smaller amount of things in a neater and more polished way.

Ahh yes, who can forget the extremely polished Snow Leopard bug that just flat out deleted people's user accounts https://gizmodo.com/5379817/reports-snow-leopard-bug-eats-us...

OS X was once great and now it is shit. Please stop ruining the narrative!

Never used a Macbook before; always been a Windows user until my switch a few years ago to Ubuntu Gnome. Gotta say Gnome was the most counter-intuitive DE coming from a Windows background, making the switch brutal.

Several years later, loving and still using the Gnome look. Wouldn't trade it for anything.

i know. dammit. i think the part of the brain that allows one to use linux in the first place (ie bash) is at odds with the aesthetic and visual centers of the brain. seriously.

that said, with a non-trivial amount of time and work, you can get your desktop experience to be pretty slick. but it requires knowing your desktop environments, window managers, compositors, default apps, etc...

You can change desktops very easily on the popular linux distros. Try r/linux and ask about what you want specifically. It's very likely there is a desktop out there for you. If you just want a macOS copy, most of that can be done by configuration. The development environment is really good on arch linux bdw.

Unity is very commonly despised in the Linux community. Some do like it, but to form your opinion of Linux DE usability based on that one experience isn't fair. Try Linux Mint for all the ease of Ubuntu in terms of setup and bundled software, but for the best DE out there.

What hardware did you settle on?

The new XPS 13. It's fine. My disappointment is 98% software. The XPS has poor camera placement (but you know that going in), the buying experience is awful (here in Asia anyways). I see myself sticking with Linux, but no loyalty to hardware vendors. I'm hoping the MateBook or Chromebook become [relatively] cheap and powerful first class linux options.

Install Xubuntu on XPS, and set up i3 as your window manager - this is my current setup and I love it. Takes a bit to get used to a tiling window manager, but once you get it it's amazing - I never understood why people value overlapping windows anyway.

I like UIs that feel premium. Needless to say, Xubuntu and i3 do not make the cut. Left with Gnome 3 (ugh) or KDE (options galore). All other DEs feel clunky (graphical glitches, sub-par design) and are also usually buggy (which is normal for an open source project with such a big scope).

XFCE looks a lot better with a different window theme installed, the defaults are absolutely terrible. There's as many options for XFCE as KDE, but it definitely takes tweaking before it looks good.

i3 is generally used for its productivity benefits, not for appearance. You can still spruce it up with a new bar (see Lemonbar or Polybar), but overall people choose it because it feels nice to use. The people on /r/unixporn have done a pretty good job of making it look good though.

Try Budgie. It's the DE developed for Solus and it's great.

I have an older XPS 13, the touchpad is bad on Linux only. Have you noticed that issue?

I recommend Lenovo T480 for Linux. Supports 32GB ram as well.

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