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Comment by wintermutestwin | Hacker News Reader

Does anyone make a serious OS for people who need to get real work done on their computer anymore?

Some recent frustrations with the big 3 OSs:

1. MacOS: The File>Save dialog has a unchangeable 35 character limit for what can be viewed in the file name field. WTF?! It's like these jokers have never worked in a real office where people create documents with dictated naming conventions like [Customer Name]_[Project Name]_[Project subtask]-[Date]. Maybe they think it is a way to force businesses to use Tags? Dear Apple, your OS seems toy like.

2. Linux: There is an age old Ubuntu bug (which bleeds into many Ubuntu based Distributions) where the installer wipes out the bootloader of a drive that you aren't even installing the OS on. Dear open source community: your desktop OSs are still hobbyist tweaker mode. I

3. Windows: First data mining telemetry and now you are going to show me ads? Dear MS, you keep trying to be Google or Facebook and all it has done is undermine a once serious OS.

(note that this is just a "what pissed me off this week list" and not intended to be a comprehensive criticism)

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May I kindly ask what distro you last tried?

I ask mainly because I came to a realization not too long ago that I stopped using Windows back when 7 was released. It's been a bumpy road, but my last few installs in the past half-decade were more for fun (spring cleaning) or trying out a new distro, and not because I borked my system running errant commands.

Especially if you're not using bleeding edge hardware, almost all things just work.

I know you'll bring up the usual refrains of "hey how about that hibernate function in linux?" or "how are your video drivers lately?", and while they're all legitimate points, Windows has got its own fair share of "wtfs" that Windows users are all too quick to gloss over.

Maybe I'm being a bit of an old man here (mid-30s), but I remember booting into a fresh XP install and having nothing work properly. No video drivers, no ethernet, no wifi, no sound... it usually led to a full day of installing drivers. You'll probably say Windows is better now, and it probably is. Again, I just haven't used Windows in over a decade.

I don't remember the last time I logged into a fresh linux install and didn't have ethernet.

Linux Mint wiped out the boot loader on my Intel MacBook even though I was installing it on an external drive. I'm much older and agree that some modern Linux distributions are smoother than old-school Windows. I am just pointing out that Linux still requires a lot of unnecessary time suck due to it being in the "hobbyist tweaker" category.

On a macbook you're in hobbyist territory unfortunately, with Linux. It doesn't even work on various recent years of macbooks, due to various ways Apple locked things down.

Same goes for MS Surface hardware - you _can_ get it working, but there are more hoops to jump through.

Try it on less locked down and more open hardware and you'll have more reliable results.

On everything but the server, you're a hobbyist with Linux, unfortunately.

It's perfectly fine and hobbyists make *amazing* things; but it remains very niche and tinkerer/hobbyist level.

For everyone else, there's, Windows, Android, iOS, Chromebooks and Mac... I think in that order, even.

> On everything but the server, you're a hobbyist with Linux, unfortunately.

That's far from true. On reasonably non-esoteric desktop hardware it's robust. On most laptops (unless you're using an external 4K screen) it's also perfectly fine.

We're using multiple definitions of "hobbyist". The act of using Linux outside of the server context for a personal machine is hobbyist.

There are hobbyists within the hobby.

> The act of using Linux outside of the server context for a personal machine is hobbyist.

I don't know how you arrive at that, unless you're trolling or haven't gone that deep on Linux. Linux is a far better development environment for many languages and ecosystems than Windows, and Mac (granted of course that you'll have a much better time on Windows with .NET, etc). I've been forced to use both now and again in various jobs over the years and have always gone back to Linux.

Mac is better for non-programming office software, and Windows has better games support.

I've never met a person that thinks Numbers is better than Excel. Word, too. Keynote is popular, of course, for Mac OS X.

I made a poor definition of "personal machine". It did not include development. Developing software at home and for fun is, of course, a relatively niche hobby; but, I will grant you that Linux is a very, very good development environment.

Mac OS X is pretty great for photographers and cinematographers, etc.

At least as of 2020 (https://www.netmarketshare.com/operating-system-market-share...), Windows had 87% market share, Mac OS had about 10.7, and Linux had 1.7. IT looks like it was based around UserAgent checking? Which means it would include software developer's worker machines when they log into random websites, as well.

You're using the words "better experience", etc; but, perhaps the problem here is that we're not using the same definition of "hobbyist". Product quality had nothing to do with hobbyist in my definition. It was more "support expectations".

Excel ships on mac too, you know.

> Developing software at home and for fun is, of course, a relatively niche hobby

My multiple decade tech career is not exactly a hobby. Developing software, perhaps relatively niche among white collar workers.

> perhaps the problem here is that we're not using the same definition of "hobbyist"

I don't know what you're trying to prove, but smaller market share does not equate to hobby status. That's like saying that driving a Volvo is a hobby. Anyway, it's been a discussion but not particularly profitable, so have fun in another thread :)

Excel for macOS is filled with awful bugs and limitations. I'm sorry I don't have a list at the top of my mind. The same goes for Word and PowerPoint.

> On reasonably non-esoteric desktop hardware it's robust. On most laptops (unless you're using an external 4K screen) it's also perfectly fine.

I hate when people trying to defend Linux prepend their "defenses" with "most X", "reasonably Y". Because once the the counterexamples of stuff not working in Linux show up, they just shield on "well, I didn't say all of them", "well, it works for me".

Look, I've been a Linux developer and power user for 20 years, I've compiled Linux Kernels several time, I've tinkered with OSS, ALSA, Pulse, WinModem firmwares, USRobotic modems, SSD/Trim params, Bluetooth, printers, games, graphic cards, countless Linux versions and whatnot.

My current PC is Linux Mint exclusively (I even play on it using steam ), but being realistic, it is NOT the case that Desktop Linux is "robust" on PCs or Laptops. There is always something, there will always going to be an issue that will make you have to tinker with it one way or another always.

You wouldn't buy a computer that doesn't run Windows to try to duct tape Windows to it. I've been buying laptops with Linux supported from the manufacturer for 5 years now and I have fewer of the problems I do on my work Windows machine.

Just to give you an idea of the problems on my P15s running Windows:

* I have to run ThrottleStop to stop the built-in thermal limits from limiting my computer's performance to 500 MHz.

* I have to run TpFanControl so my laptop doesn't sound like it's initiating a jet engine test at my desk (this is with or without ThrottleStop so don't blame it)

* The Xbox app frequently freezes my entire machine (I wanted to try out Xbox Game Pass on a work machine, I know sorry)

* My little nipple trackpoint will sometimes stop working, requiring a full system reboot

* The Task Scheduler often freezes up

* There's a printer driver that errors when updated by Windows Update. It prevents other system updates from being installed. I had to hide the driver, which requires a PowerShell script

On my macOS work machine at my job previous to this one:

* full system freezes when waking while docked to my Samsung ultrawide

On my current Linux laptop, a XPS 13 that shipped with Ubuntu:

* very rarely doesn't wake if it screen blanks without me closing the lid

* I've had audio issues in Zoom a few times

If you want to use Windows, that's fine but maybe just point out that you prefer using Windows and not subject the rest of us to your tirades against why Linux users are suffering under their own illusions. Those illusions are well-shared by our Windows-using counterparts.

I want to apologize for my last comment where I say you shouldn't subject to rest of us to your tirades. That's not in the spirit of HN.

Kindly put, I really think it's important to cultivate a diversity of people using OSes. If someone enjoys macOS or Windows more, more power to them. My only regret would be to see a mono-culture of OSes at work develop.

And there's always something on Windows laptops/PCs too.

I use Debian (current stable and Sid) and Arch Linux on my workstation (12000 series Alder Lake i7), laptop (X1 Carbon Gen 9), desktop pc at my birth home (Ryzen 3000 series + AMD GPU) and desktop pc in my flat (haswell i7 + NVIDIA 1080), and while I'm pretty good with Linux I'm also having a very low tolerance for basic things (audio, wifi, bluetooth noise-cancelling headset for travel, graphics) not working.

All of aforementioned works everywhere, graphics work even fine for the quite new Alder Lake iGPU, and I use Windows quite a bit for testing as customers still use it, it's just bad how much broken stuff there is on Windows that needs magnitudes of more hacks than I had ever to do on Linux, or how (relatively) often a machine just stops booting at all without any HW fault (I've got 0% tolerance for that one).

But apparently the bar is set low for Windows while being very high on Linux. All needs to work out of the box 110% perfectly like everybody's subjective use case expects on Linux.

But the thing is, there _isn't_ always something. Again, this is anecdata, but I am running Pop!_OS on a XPS 13 9370, and exactly zero things have gone wrong. Everything worked out of the box.

Suspend is a battery sucker, but surprise surprise, this also happens on Windows because of s2idle shenanigans.

> There is always something, there will always going to be an issue that will make you have to tinker with it one way or another always.

That's just not true. To give you additional anecdata: my (non technical, fairly old) father was constantly struggling with his Windows install and I was having to help out every few months. I put him on Ubuntu and showed him how to accept patches. It's been rock solid since. This was back in 2010.

How is hibernation working for his computer?

I buy laptops with Linux pre-installed. Works fine without tinkering. And vastly more performance on a given set of hardware than Windows (by observation of my kids that insisted on Windows).

One time Windows 10 wiped the boot loader on my desktop and threw a fit until I formatted the whole disk so it could place itself first unlike the partition I thought I had assigned it.

Then I reinstalled windows 10 on the same computer a couple of years later and the installer couldn't even format my drive to install it, just threw bland "not working" errors until I manually formatted and installed the windows bootloader from a rescue drive.

What's your point?

Kind of like a vendetta. There's plenty of old stories of dumb Windows blowing up multi OS installs etc.

Did you set it to install the bootloader on the external drive? I'm not so sure it's a bug as preference to put the bootloader on sda or whatever the first drive is. You can definitely change it.

I've had MacOS kill a day trying to get gdb working but I could never get it properly working with codesign despite following multiple tutorials to do exactly that. I've also had Windows decide to do things like sliently update my tablet rotation driver to one that actually doesn't work with the hardware. They can all be unnecessary time sucks.

This sounds like a user error. Every Linux installer I've seen will ask which device you want the bootloader files on. Most will even warn of an unbootable install if you don't specify a valid EFI partition if you're installing to GPT disks. Making the EFI partition is also extremely easy. You just need to use a tool like GParted to make a 500MB FAT32 partition at the start of a drive somewhere.

Apple Macs also have notoriously difficult firmware (only made to boot macOS or Windows via Bootcamp with special drivers). You should try something designed to cope with its pure awfulness like the rEFInd bootloader instead of GRUB or whatever systemd uses.

Im trying to switch and my Ubuntu install on a 8 series Intel laptop keeps the cpu freq stuck at 800mhz. If I manually change the governor’s min freq it goes up, but it’s not dynamic. Sadness. Updated to the latest mainline kernel and no luck. These are basic things that should work by now. But hey, I’m not contributing to the project and I’m not paying for it so I can’t complain much. Just unfortunate that I can’t start using the system without having to spend hours figuring this out

This reminds me... I've experienced a fresh install of Windows not having Ethernet more times than on Linux....

Most truly serious professionals I know are either using macOS with Homebrew or Arch Linux. They’ve accepted they need to take managing their OS into their own hands because anyone else will bungle the job. They spend a few weeks to learn their OS’ internals in depth and then rarely lose significant time troubleshooting issues in the future.

Ah I knew that there would be an Arch user somewhere around here. Meanwhile I've used Ubuntu for over a decade with virtually zero issues and during that decade Arch users both newb and old have continued to declare there is only one true OS and that I'm doing it wrong while I tell them "I'm glad you enjoy your OS"

Seems like you’ve switched the positions :)

Most truly serious professionals I know are using Windows 10 or 11 on a work provided Lenovo/HP or Dell laptop.

Agreed, seem like a very pretentious comment from OP that doesn't seem related to the real world.

Indeed. As a professional freelance consultant, I use the laptop provided by the customer. Guess what? They're always running Windows.

I can learn MacOS or Arch "internals in depth" -- even the proprietary stuff in MacOS -- in "a few weeks?"

I'm glad I use an OS where I don't have to know the internals.

> Arch Linux

Seriously?

1. Paid apps normally support Ubuntu out of box, but it's rarely a case for Arch. AUR is not a "professional" place at any senses.

2. Arch is a rolling distro that breaks completely randomly. Major breakages are introduced by both the distro and upstreams.

We don't have the same "serious professional" bubble.

I've never seen any colleague, customer, or supplier get provided anything other than a Windows laptop.

Engineering is the art of solving problem within constraints ;)

Jokes aside, every O/S essentially needs periodic maintenance, in the form of workarounds, that needs to be applied on every major update. That's just how it works - O/Ss and hardware became too complex to get a handle.

I've found that Linux distros require a lot of work upfront, and relatively little every couple of years (assuming a distro with an LTS release schedule).

I think Mac is similar, except that the work upfront is considerably less.

I'm also familiar with Windows, but I frankly find new developments very offensive, in particular, those on Windows 11, so I ended up sticking with a relatively untweaked Window 10 (used only for specific use cases, thankfully).

The only solution in order to have a very stable system, is to choose a platform and stick with it. Given the ease of switch, I do see engineers switching machine and O/S, illuding themselves of finding a more stable experience, and ending up instead with a lot "upfront" work each time, without managing to stabilize the system.

Been using Linux Mint as primary driver for over a year now. It works flawlessly. I have _zero_ patience for debugging and tweaking my OS. I want to work, not tweak Linux. I used to love tweaking back in Ubuntu 7 Feisty Fawn. Now that I'm in my 30s I don't give a shit.

Take this as a glowing endorsement of Linux Mint. Try it. You won't waste time with bullshit.

I agree that Mint is pretty good. I use it on a few older laptops with decent results, but Mint also wiped out the Boot loader on my Intel MacbookPro :(

I love Linux Mint. The only bullshit I had was having to recompile the kernal for my gpu

> There is an age old Ubuntu bug (which bleeds into many Ubuntu based Distributions) where the installer wipes out the bootloader of a drive that you aren't even installing the OS on

Can you link bug report? Personally I never encountered it (and while I had some corruptions over time I would say that Windows is even worse here and I would not call it to be in hobbyist tweaker mode)

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/ubiquity/+bug/1229...

This link talks in detail about the problem and its solutions (all of which were more time suck than I was willing to commit): https://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?f=42&t=287353

Reported in 2013, still unassigned. I guess we should be thankful it hasn't been autoclosed by a stalebot or marked WONTFIX yet.

I've encountered a couple of times. In my case it screwed up the bootloader of a hackintosh macOS install on a drive the installer gave no indication it was going to do anything to.

Thankfully fixing it wasn't too bad, but it shouldn't have happened in the first place. No other distro I've installed shares this problem.

> Linux: There is an age old Ubuntu bug (which bleeds into many Ubuntu based Distributions) where the installer wipes out the bootloader of a drive that you aren't even installing the OS on. Dear open source community: your desktop OSs are still hobbyist tweaker mode. I

Never saw that happen on any Linux installation (mostly using Debian, with one Arch Linux instance to avoid getting to accustomed to the Debian Way, though).

What I often saw once I still dual-booted Windows 7 and (IIRC) OpenSUSE ~11-14 years ago was that Windows destroyed the Linux bootloader entry, while on Linux GRUB + os-detect automatically setup one for Linux and Windows, so I always had to install Windows first and then Linux as else stuff was broken due to Windows not caring about existing user data at all.

Same story with USB pen drives, once I used a FAT formatted one on Linux and then plugged it into Windows it always had "format drive" selected by default, mounting was a slightly hidden menu entry (so it could read it just fine, it rather was a bad UX pattern)

I mean, you can do an OS yourself, or you can learn how to use an existing OS, I use Gentoo GNU/Linux and do things manually, never got the boot driver wiped as I do the partitioning myself, and also do the partitioning when I use some more userfriendly distros (on my work laptop because compiling on laptops is not nice so I won't use gentoo there). But yeah I mean you complain a lot, but for OSX and Windows you have no chance of resolving your issues, on linux you just need to be capable and willing to understand and read some documentation and you're good to go, but it seems that in your situation you're the main problem, because unwilling to be restricted by proprietary systems but also unwilling to learn, so it seems like we need to make an OS built on your preference while you just "want to get work done", why should we do that? Be restricted or learn to learn

The issue on linux is that the software you need for your business doesnt run on it. This one you cannot fix yourself.

That means Microsoft Office, specifically. Right?

Office yes. Xilinx FPGA Toolchain, CAD, Visual Studio (ok, ok forget the last one)

Yeah that is fair, there is a lot of people who need certain software which is not available on linux, but I was wondering what can the linux community do? I mean the guy at the parent comment described a problem which was easily solvable, and other people instead decsribed problems on which linux has no control over, if the vendor of the software you need for you business doesn't bother to create a software you need for your business for linux, bring it to the vendor of the software you need for you business, not to linux

I don't call this convolution to deal with a blatantly unnecessary problem "easily solvable."

https://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?f=42&t=287353

I could be a problem the linux community could do nothing about (and still be a problem). But lets see:

- maybe a lot of companies dont do it because there is no awareness that customers want it? - maybe companies do not know how to develop cross platform

So ppl shd tell manufactures that they would be willing to pay money for linux applications.

Also the cross platform development should be smoothed and well documented. Like write a document (and give some talks) how to easily migrate a win32 programm to. Linux and a dot net program. If it is not easy, make it easier.

Also do the same for licensing/copyprotection on linux.

Xilinx Vivado runs on Linux

Nice.

And Aspel, or Contpaq for accountants in Mexico. Among countless of real software used for real productive things.

Fair enough, but I think that there are either alternatives, but also this was no the issue listed, the issue listed is like very easily solvable, I think the solution might even be on the getting started / installation guide of most distributions

Show me a high quality cad software for Linux.

Absolute bugger no. Freecad is the best, and it's pretty bad.

And this is a issue with linux or solvable by linux because..? I mean if vendors didn't do CAD for windows, windows wouldn't have a quality CAD software either, ask your vendor to make the quality CAD for linux

Yes, yes, and yes. How long will I be willing to suffer for something I love.

BricsCAD? The company i work for uses the Windows version. It has a Linux version too.

I'll check it out.

Since most "software" is now a web page, that problem is slowly getting solved by the industry.

>on linux you just need to be capable and willing to understand and read some documentation

If it were really as simple as reading the official documentation, then yeah, I'd concede this point. The reality is that finding the correct solution to a (non-corner case) problem is a spaghetti splat mess of links all over the internet with no guarantee that they are the answer you need.

I have been doing this stuff for more decades than many on this site have been alive so I am capable of dealing with some arcane shit. BUT I know all too well the value of time and Linux is still in the "hobbyist tweaker" category. I'll use it for some things, but I am looking for a Desktop OS that I can actually do work on, not kill time tweaking.

If the worst thing about macOS is that there's a text field you have to scroll to see all of its contents, I'd say the OS is pretty serious.

For some reason padding has been growing over the last few releases of macOS, and font sizes too, which means that things with long titles are now truncated everywhere ...

I remember when we Mac users made fun of DOS with their 8 char file names (HFS supported 32).

Now we can have even longer filenames, but macOS only shows them truncated...

I beg you to create a bunch of files with >35 char names and then try to work with them. I bet you'll be looking at all that wasted blank space before and after the text box and wanting to scream WTF at the dev team that lets this obnoxious user experience stand.

Sure they do. You can get a long term Windows version which receives only critical updates. Or you can get one of the multitudes of Linux distros.

LTSC is almost impossible to buy legitimately for individuals

Just download an iso online and use a KMS activator server. Takes 5 minutes and Microsoft is a 2 trillion dollar company.

Sure, assuming you're morally ok with this form of piracy, but parent did say legitimately and this is blatantly illegitimate.

Tell me about it. I tried to source LTSC with an MS partner for a while, you basically need a volume licensing setup to get anywhere. It was hinted you could get away with 1 LTSC license and 4 cheap CALS to fill in the volume requirement but then I questioned why I was jumping through Microsofts arbitrary licensing hoops just to run a less horrible version of the OS.

For years I've been customising Windows installs towards that state with hacky scripts and PE environments. It's the near perfect distribution of windows for me, kept just tantalisingly out of reach.

> 2. Linux: There is an age old Ubuntu bug (which bleeds into many Ubuntu based Distributions) where the installer wipes out the bootloader of a drive that you aren't even installing the OS on. Dear open source community: your desktop OSs are still hobbyist tweaker mode.

Maybe that's true, but ...

I had a very similar thing happen on Windows 10. I set up a new SSD in order to install a new version of Windows with the idea that I would switch out the old SSD to an external drive.

No big deal. So, I installed Windows on the new drive. Set everything up. Life looked good. I removed the old SSD.

And the system wouldn't boot. WTF?!?!

Turns out that if there is already a Windows bootloader then the Windows installer will put your boot information on it even if you tell it otherwise. You can't force an install and bootloader onto a new drive if it detects an existing install anywhere.

I had to remove the old drive, remformat the new drive, and completely reinstall so Windows would install the boot partition and boot loader properly.

I was "rather cross" to quote my UK brethren.

Most enterprises are using AD domain or Azure AD joined Windows 10 or 11 PCs. With an IT admin that tries to turn off as much that crap as possible. + Office 365 for email, Teams, Office apps etc.

Linux on the desktop is not really doable. Why? GPO/Intune polices. Interoperability with other companies/customers.

Same for Mac. JAMF or Intune MDM would need to be added.

Linux Mint. Sure, you will have some quirks with any Linux distro if you install on a Macbook (blame Apple), but it is by far the easiest to use, most well supported "productivity" distro I have ever used.

Then stop using Ubuntu. But, to be fair, the whole Ubuntu/Debian installation scene is quite a facepalm. The installer is overly complicated and completely undocumented. Also, they didn't really account for any serious customization.

>But, to be fair, the whole Ubuntu/Debian installation scene is quite a facepalm.

Compared to what? Arch?

Yes, the 3 "real OS"es are: Gentoo (high skill cap, high payoff), Arch (medium skill cap, high payoff), and Void (arch minus systemd plus a nicer package manager). Everything else is opinionated / dumbed down enough to be in the same quality bucket as windows, I usually think of Canonical and Microsoft as the same company these days.

One issue I have with macOS is their dialog navigation. Whenever I get the dialog like saving change dialog in Preview when using Command + Q combo, I cannot use my arrow keys to move to the lower/next button in the dialog. I have to use my mice like a peasant! It is not an issue in Linux and Windows, just curious why Apple can't add that?

You need to enable it: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204434 > ‘Use your keyboard like a mouse’.

The last tike I installed an OS myself, before Ubuntu and a new, clean Windows on my laptops, was Windows 2000. Ubuntu was actually easier to get running on the daily driver then a clean, local account only Windows 10 on the back up. No problems with Ubuntu whatsoever, not sure how much of that is due to Ubuntu or Lenovo so.

To be realistic: Windows and MacOS are both great for getting "real work done".

I've never had an issue with this "35 character file save prompt" limit, and I cannot imagine it would be a dealbreaker even if I did.

Telemetry is irrelevant to getting "real work" done, assuming its implemented in a way which doesn't impact performance, and I've never had an issue on Windows. What you're talking about is privacy concerns, which are very, very legitimate; and have nothing to do with "real work".

Some things are more productive in Mac, others are more productive in Windows. I'll die on this hill: Microsoft Paint is a top 5 productivity application for me. If I need to quickly take an image, layer a second image on top of it, resize, and add some text; there's nothing more productive than Paint for that. The result looks like shit, but its productive. The ability to hit Win+Shift+S, screenshot a part of the screen, then immediately paste it somewhere? Huge. MacOS has nothing like this; it has all the same basic tools, but they don't tie together to enable the same velocity; even the screen clipping tool takes like 5 seconds for the image to leave the screen corner and hit the filesystem. Notepad is another example; I open notepad and can immediately start typing. On MacOS, I can open Notes, CMD+N to get a new note, it defaults to formatting for the title but at least that works; or you can do TextEdit, and you're presented with a "create a new document" dialog; no thanks. Little moments which add up.

But where does MacOS pull ahead? If I need to edit a video? Windows has nothing for me; maybe DaVinci, but its hyper-pro level tooling. iMovie is great, and years ago I splurged on the buy-once-and-done FCPX subscription: its fantastic. Photo editing beyond what Paint can do? No, I'm not paying $200/month for Photoshop; maybe you can try GIMP, but I'm using my $20 og Pixelmator purchase from a decade ago, it works great (ugh I guess I should support them and buy the new one). All the UNIX tooling of course. Need some light CAD? I love Shapr3D; and I'm super happy to see its coming to Windows soon, but traditionally its been an Apple-only thing. In short: MacOS owns Prosumer-tier software; Pro-Pro tier stuff tends to be on Windows+Mac (like, Adobe), but there's a ton of cool software right below that which is Mac-only.

Linux is the one OS where I have broad issues getting work done. If I'm developing a website or a web app? Sure, it works as good as anything else (better than Windows to be fair). But go beyond that and there are dragons. A juxtoposition of trying to make mediocre web apps or libre software work for workloads which should be native. CAD? No Fusion360, no Shapr3D... Tinkercad I guess? Vectary, kinda ok. LibreCAD, I'm sure was productive in 1997. Spreadsheet guru? Calc & Google Sheets have come a long way, but they're still in another realm compared to Excel; but I'm a big personal fan of Numbers, as it doesn't try to be Excel and instead serves a slightly different kind of user.

>I've never had an issue with this "35 character file save prompt" limit, and I cannot imagine it would be a dealbreaker even if I did.

I have worked at or consulted for hundreds of clients from SMB to the world's largest enterprises and the majority would have a major worker uprising on their hands if they had to deal with a 35 character limit to easily working with document names. Please try to work with a handful documents with names that exceed 35 characters and you will get it.

> The ability to hit Win+Shift+S, screenshot a part of the screen, then immediately paste it somewhere? Huge. MacOS has nothing like this

Ctrl+Shift+Cmd+4 (default shortcut, you can change it to Cmd+Shift+S, if you wish)

There are multiple ways to solve the bootloader issue, but the easiest is putting your Linux drive ahead of your Windows drive in firmware settings, during installation.

What I found was that you could remove the other drive. That won't work on an Intel MacBook though...

Windows will absolutely blast your boot sector/UEFI partition with no concern for other OSes (it won't chain load). Mac avoids this with Bootcamp, which is more similar to firmware than an OS.

I'm surprised the parent comment has this issue. They are either using BIOS, or the automatic disk mode (and just complained about the installer doing things automatically on their disk). Avoiding this scenario is UEFI is as simple as creating a exFAT partition and mounting it to /boot. Any calamares-based installer will let you do that.

Shhhhhh let's ignore basic facts and define our experience with an OS as the only valid take on the OS :)

> Avoiding this scenario is UEFI is as simple as creating a exFAT partition and mounting it to /boot. Any calamares-based installer will let you do that.