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Comment by nine_k | Hacker News Reader

I use desktop Linux for last ~20 years. I don't use Gnome; my choice is simpler things like Xfce, and Window Maker before that.

I find the fact that I can configure it my way utterly important, and performance-increasing, for me. This is exactly what I dislike about MacOS: it is very opnionated and rather inflexible. (I also see zero vsync tearing, and I'm fine with GTK2, GTK3, and Qt all look reasonably consistent under the theme I can and did customize myself.)

You are correct, MacOS and desktop Linux have different target audiences, with distinctly different preferences, neither of which is "more correct". This is not Linux "20 years behind" MacOS; it's often away in a completely different direction. (Though yes, Gnome folks try to imitate MacOS, and they are forever behind by construction, because they are chasing, not blazing new trails.)

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This. I couldn’t figure out how to do multiple workspaces and switching between two full screened apps took ~500ms. Virtually all Linux DEs did that seamlessly.

That is, except that trash fire that was the Ubuntu default up until ~19.x

use mission control to create "spaces" (workspace)

see

   System Preferences -> Mission Control

to make sure you have a key or mouse button mapped to invoke mission control.

invoke mission control and press the (+) sign in the upper right hand corner to get the number of spaces you'd like

You can switch between spaces using keys defined in

  System Preferences -> Keyboard -> [Shortcuts]

choose mission control on the left and map they keys you like. I use option-1 .. option-8 (aka alt-1 .. alt-8) to switch to specific spaces.

(I'm not using catalina, for all I know apple has removed spaces because it's not something an appliance should have)

I think the issue with this is that there’s still the delay due to the animation. Even with the reduce motion setting (which turns it from a slide animation to a fade), there is still a noticeable delay.

AFAIK there is no way to disable the animation in Catalina without disabling SIP.

This is totally fair and I don't think we are in disagreement.

I should word it differently: Don't expect regular people with previous mac/windows experience (which I myself find very intuitive) to be happy with linux. I've yet not found a single distro which would be on par or better. Every distro I've tried (many of them over the years), I was always dissapointed, just like the guy in the original article.

And it's partly so because people like to say that "you can replace your mac/winpc with raspi4" which you can't (without being seriously limited)

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