Reasons were the excellent jails system, the ports collection, the ZFS on root (though Ubuntu is starting to offer that) and the great documentation. I also don't like the scale of corporate involvement in Linux development. In the end that leads to companies trying to insert their own IP with a view to monetisation (like Ubuntu with Mir, Upstart, now snaps). It's also the most suitable for a desktop system of all the BSDs I think.
But it's not for everyone. For one the hardware support is limited. I didn't even bother trying to get the WiFi or bluetooth going (I run this on a pure desktop). For laptop use I'd use a flavour of Linux, though I'm not entirely sure which I'd use :) It also doesn't hold your hand as much as most Linux distros, though it's not nearly as barebones as arch either! I'd consider it something a bit in the middle like Manjaro. Overall I'm really happy with it though.
I still use Macs for work though and I administered them for a long time. It's always a struggle if you need to do something that Apple doesn't really want you to do. You may get it working, but there's a good chance it'll get broken in whatever minor patch that's coming along without warning :) Unfortunately in a business with less than 1% Macs you can't always do things the Apple way.
As a 20+ year Linux user and 10+ year paid Linux admin, BSD has really connected with me as a sysadmin. Besides the clean filesystem structure and updated docs, there's generally "one way to do something" (looking at you, Red Hat...) and surprisingly, the packages are more up to date than I'm used to in CentOS / Ubuntu Server, usually tracking the latest stable releases. For the core system, there appears to be no update churn as with Linux distros.
After I discovered the FreeBSD images for the Raspberry Pi, it scratched my tinkerer itch and now... yeah.
People joke about The Year of Linux on the Desktop, but I believe we've been there since ~2014, when Chromebooks started to really get good. Goes to show a full "desktop environment," as we know it, isn't always needed for a great experience.
Edit: To those downvoting. If you genueinly think running linux isn't a UIUX downgrade on macOS you are totally deluded. Its more open. Cool. It's also a UX nightmare.
"keyboard shortcut": Command-Shift-period
"terminal command": defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles yes
I would argue it's actually worse with the keyboard shortcut on OS X because it's completely possible for someone to trigger Cmd+Shift+. accidentally whereas in other OSs it's a clear toggled option in the GUI.
If you want something more Mac-like, Gnome is a thing of course but it's too opinionated like Mac for me.
It wasn't ten minutes, and there were way too many configuration options that I couldn't fix (like the terrible trackpad scrolling) despite best efforts that it wasn't worth it, and too many that I didn't want to bother. The point is that out of the box, the UX of the Linux UIs has historically and still does suck compared to tools that have a UX focus, and that's a deal breaker for a lot of people that I know.
Here's my opinion: i3 is vastly superior to anything macos is offering in the desktop space in terms of usability. Sure, wrestling with minutae like proper font rendering and DPI settings is a huge pain, but a) some distros do those things for you and b) if you're not a serial distro hopper / manic reinstaller, those things don't have to be done too often.
I genuinely think it's an UX upgrade. And I've been using macs almost exclusively for 5 years now.
The bad things of Linux are still bad: subsystems get replaced all the time (often with just minimal technical justification), and the replacements are usually (if you compare them to Macs) alpha quality for a long time. And the integration is lacking. Notable contemporary examples: oss/alsa/pulseaudio/jack/pipewire and x11/wayland. This is something I truly don't miss when using macs. Almost everything else I do miss.
I have many gripes with Linux, but not about UX. I use preemptive kernels on the desktop for example, because the vanilla kernel is geared towards more general usage, which practically speaking means servers. Sometimes I need to spend more time when installing some new piece of hardware (and sometimes I don't, it works automatically).
One of the biggest advantages for me personally is that I can diagnose occasional problem myself, down to a single character in the source code if I want/need. I know what is running on my system and why, and if I want, I can remove it. (Or, I can make it very hard to remove.) I know what is getting in and out, and I can block it if I want, without any built-in exceptions for the vendor. When you come to think of it, this should be the default for all systems, but we're heading in the opposite direction.
What's still missing with this setup is a shortcut for easily moving a window to another desktop. Any clues how to achieve that?
And finally there's the irritating MacOS UX "feature", that selecting an application with cmd-tab doesn't switch to the desktop where it is, or doesn't unminimize it if it's minimized.
You've betrayed yourself with this statement. There isn't one Linux. I know this might just seem like more of the complexity non-Linux users want to avoid, however users are free to install whatever desktop environment or window manager they like. You could even opt for a desktop environment that resembles MacOS in most ways.
I use MacOS in my professional life, and Linux in my personal. My Linux PC has my own personalised setup built around the i3 window manager. I can say without question that I'm much faster and more productive on Linux than MacOS.
Even tiling window managers don't really have any problems. They provide a very niche UX, which is almost entirely keyboard driven. There's not a single general application I can think of designed for use with this kind of window manager. Still, you get a pretty consistent user experience for the most part.
My point was generalised, and I think generally the average computer user is going to have a better UX on macOS than linux. If they can figure out how to even set up Linux of course.
The state of Linux Desktop has actually being getting worse, not better.
From a top with Ubuntu in the first 5 years, to the sad state we see now.
If there is any criticism that can be made, it’s that the amount of choice can be overwhelming - there are dozens of highly polished, functional distributions - but once you get past that there is no practical limit except the way that Microsoft products like Office are locked away (even this is improving, since you can use Office online).
1. Security. On Linux you can setup mandatory access control - i.e. AppArmor, SeLinux, and even if you don't want to fiddle with that, you can create mutliple users for multiple purposes to sandbox your data from untrusted apps. Running a program as another user is no problem on Linux - try it on Mac OS... (I did try it and it almost worked but things like select file dialog won't work, which makes it useless). By the way, Apple introduced some sandboxing capabilities in Catalina, but it's almost insulting because it only allows to restrict Desktop, Downloads and Trash directories, and not allowing the user to restrict other custom directories to certain apps only. And even for Desktop/Downloads it does not work reliably - i.e. I could not isolate a web browser from accessing desktop.
2. Privacy. I accidentally came upon article from a few years ago where it was revealed that Mac OS sends usage data to Apple or a third party on an unencrypted channel. Then there's the recent issue with client side scanning.
3. Desktop experience. This may be cosmetic but I don't like that Mac OS forces a slow 200ms fade animation when switching between desktops. You can't even switch back and forth too fast because the switching mechanism won't catch the hotkey if the slow fade animation is in progress.
The hardware is good though. Really hoping M1 on Linux will become a thing.
https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/54in5s/the_nsa_has_t...
A while ago I tried to track the start of a single application, a new install of Firefox. IIRC the first start generated traffic to about a dozen endpoints.
Also, macOS and Windows generate enormous amounts of traffic (others here have noted that).
The amount of background traffic is simply overwhelming. Perhaps security companies can make sense of it all, but it's far too much for most technical people.
I run my own OpenBSD firewall and I've long since given up trying to understand what my Macbooks are doing.
The beauty of OpenBSD itself is that it starts very few daemons, and all source code is available. So it's easy for me to understand what my firewall is doing.
user@catalina ~ % ps aux |wc -l
542
openbsd_user$ ps aux |wc -l
42OpenSSL vs LibreSSL, Glibc vs Musl, X11 vs Arcan (or just the framebuffer/KMS), and so on.
Also, on exploits realize Linux and BSD run in devices very different from X86 right? NetBSD today runs even on Alpha, and 0days won't work with ease there.
Even more with the new RISC-V arches here.