Ask HN: Are Any of You Tired from macOS and Want to Go Back to Linux? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Are Any of You Tired from macOS and Want to Go Back to Linux?

46 pointsworldsavior124 comments

macOS is nice, but I always feel like everything is controlled by apple and I can't change it. Like using a window manager, which in Linux it helped a lot, but in macOS there is almost none good ones, they all feel like kind of sluggish.

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I know this is going to come off as snarky or dismissive, but please believe me that it's not intended that way. I just can't come up with a better way to say it:

No. I'm too focused on my work to care much.

I used to waffle back and forth, being a dwm super-nerd or hacking on my own tooling for whatever in macOS. Then I got a job where there was simply no time to spend on that it at all. At the end of the day I'm mentally exhausted and I don't look at a computer. Wake up excited to work on hard problems. I haven't thought about a window manager, editor, complex startup scripts, writing my own news aggregator, hacking on display drivers or whatever.

Too busy working, happily.

I've run a default Ubuntu since 2017 for exactly this reason: I got a life.

But late this year I started missing having a desktop environment that was good.

So I started customizing again. It's a rabbit hole, so I leave it at "somewhat working".

Makes sense. I also every day when I'm coming home barely have time or energy to code on my own projects.

This was my issue with running OpenWRT on my routers, and FreeNAS. It stopped being an investing hobby and became a part time network admin job. Do I have less control over my network? Sure, but also more time doing other things in my life.

The phrase "pathological tinkerer" stuck in my mind when someone was describing why they didn't want to use Emacs anymore and instead just focus on their work. That's sort of how I feel when I get the itch.

Funny enough, I use Emacs because it feels like I don't have to spend as much tinkering to make it do what I want.

I am a lisp dev though, so that factors in to the fluidity of the experience for me :)

Definitely agree here, but I do a similar thing with a boring Linux distro like Ubuntu where I don't change anything (except maybe the wallpaper, never liked theirs). MacOS is good as this too, especially because utility software that's GUI based is often much more prevalent (and better in general) on MacOS.

I get it. I'm the same way. my 14" mbp with 64gb/ram is the perfect size/performance for me. I run intellij, docker, iterm2, chrome, obsidian and vscode. If there's OSX under there well...I guess so, but fuck it. I can't remember the last time I opened up system prefs, or any config file on my laptop.

earlier this year I tried fedora 32 on my xps9500(a supposedly great linux laptop). After a freakin week random shit still wouldn't work right. And sleep/resume was like rolling a dice. No thanks.

Not snarky, I feel the same. My work laptop is a MacBook Pro, and I run a bunch of tools to be productive (Rectangle, Raycast, SoundSource).

My personal laptop is Ubuntu, and I have a stack of dotfiles to configure it the way I like.

My work laptop is the same, and I’ve never thought to look into productivity tools. Any other recommendations you find worth mentioning to those of us not in the know? Those three look excellent.

Automation, window management, scripting, text expansion:

- Alfred (must have in my opinion, have not tried raycast yet though so can’t compare)

- Hammerspoon

- BetterTouchTool

- Keyboard Maestro

- Espanso

Better Finder: Forklift

Screen Resolutions: DisplayMenu

Virtual Machines: UTM

Tidier menu bar: Bartender

Easier on the eyes: HazeOver

Unlock Mac with iPhone Touch ID when in clamshell mode: Unlox

See calendar events in menubar: MeetingBar

Remap keys on keyboard: karabiner

Dark mode for all websites: Noir

Command Palette in all apps: Paletro

View all app shortcuts easily: Cheatsheet

Remote Access: Jump Desktop

Better tab between applications: AltTab

Use old iPhone as webcam: elgato camera hub (Mac) and elgato EpocCam (iOS)

Create backlinks to any file on your computer: hookmark

Better file management, research and bookmarks: DevonThink

Audio Routing: loopback

Audio Recording: audio hijack

Internet usage monitor: tripmode

Enable Touch ID in terminal: Follow instructions here https://sixcolors.com/post/2020/11/quick-tip-enable-touch-id...

Quicker terminal: Alacritty

Don't take this as snarky or dismissive, but you sound like one of those people that willingly use some breaky distro and then complain that they spend too much time fixing stuff, hence the like for mac os.

I've run a plain/basic xubuntu desktop for years at work and was super productive. It just didn't get in the way of me working.

I didn't say I preferred macos or that things "being broken" was a problem.

I honestly have no clue how you came away with those ideas.

For me at least I felt like MacOS was actively getting in the way of my work. "Oh, you want to debug with GDB? Sorry I need you to waste 3 hours following tutorials to get it signed.". I never even got GDB successfully signed! Lots of little stupid shit like that. Every single MacOS update would bring some change that added some new security cockblock layer or random change keeping me from working.

You can certainly fiddle a lot with WM, complex startup scripts in Linux but you can also just not?

This, 100%.

I like closing my lid at the end of the day and knowing that when I open it again the following morning it'll resume without a hitch and i'm straight back to where I was.

Same. I pretty much have the following:

- Browser - with a window per topic and tabs

- Terminal - tabs + tmux

- IDE - tabs

Mostly full screen, sometimes on a second screen when in reference mode (i.e. needing to see two things at once).

Rectangle.app provides the keyboard shortcuts enough to move / split windows. What else do I need?

Contexts for app switching

https://contexts.co/

I generally am fine with using Alfred for this when I can't just Cmd+Tab. Cmd+Space, first letter or two of the app name works fine

No, I have Fedora install on my PC for some experiments (I've been a linux user for ~8 years before switch to macOS in 2014) and sadly linux experience is far behind from macOS from my user experience.

I don't need full customization or tens of forks of some window manager, or "ricing", or "independence".

All I need is a stable environment for work, media etc. It should be convenient without me spending hours configuring the OS. It should have pleasant UI\UX. It must have seemless integration with my mobile devices.

In my experince linux distros are good in case you only need it for one task and you are okay with constant changes (that will take your time). I'm not okay with this anymore. I want to spent my free time with my family or my hobby. Not trying to investigate why app X stopped working and how should I configure a new fork of this app created due to some drama.

Sorry if this is too emotional.

PS: do we have fractional scaling for Gnome under wayland yet?

I'm in the same boat. I learned long ago the following maxim:

"Linux is free if you don't value your time."

I value my time more than my money now.

I don't know. That may be true if you want to be on Arch, with something super custom, but on a long term distro, you make your choices, you customize and then don't touch for years.

I agree with you mostly that I'm not interested in tweaking bells and whistles endlessly but you don't really have to do that in KDE or gnome.

>I don't know. That may be true if you want to be on Arch, with something super custom, but on a long term distro, you make your choices, you customize and then don't touch for years.

I've been on Red Hat (my first distro in school), Ubuntu, Arch and then Fedora for quite some time. Ironically Arch was the most stable one for them despite being almost bleeding edge.

It took me jsut a few seconds to visit Fedora's subreddit, search for "after" keywork and as expected I got a list of issues people are faceing after a simple upgrade, like this one: https://www.reddit.com/r/Fedora/comments/zkqhhg/cant_find_wi...

Not saying macOS has not issues with this, but in my experince they much less common.

>I agree with you mostly that I'm not interested in tweaking bells and whistles endlessly but you don't really have to do that in KDE or gnome.

Well this is a matter of taste too. I can't stand modern KDE (but like modern Gnome quite a lot even though I find its "overgrown" mobile-like controls a bit strange).

> Arch was the most stable one

On rolling release, it changes all the time, you risk new bugs, but old bugs get fixed.

On an LTS distro, it never changes. That also means you're stuck with whatever bugs are there until the next release.

Fedora is somewhere in the middle, and I've had some pretty bad luck with updates there, over the years.

Like with most things, there are tradeoffs to every decision.

I've found using Debian on desktop more fragile because I'm often trying get newer software installed that isn't in the stable repo. Rolling release and the AUR means I don't need to do that with Arch. Flatpaks have also come a long way.

Kubuntu may looks like it meets your expectations.

No, it does not. Not only (*)ubuntu is not quite stable (at least when I was an active user) - KDE is just a nightmare from UI\UX point of view. I'm more of a Gnome 4\Cinnamon guy.

But anyhow - regarldess of distro you have 3rd party apps. It's not like switching distro can solve the problem that stems from the very nature of linux distros - no (or almost) standards. Everyone is doing whatever they feel is better at the moment. Hence all thouse forks, different UX approaches etc.

Going back to MacOS for my new job gave me RSI. The touchpad centric UI is painful as a power user, and the haptics somehow don't work for me.

That and the inability to stretch a desktop across two monitors. I have a T-mux hack and basically live inside vim and chrome (unfortunately can't use Firefox). I'd be better off with a Chromebook.

Different people - different things.

As a fellow (neo)vim user - I've tried tilling managers (both on macOS and linux) and figured out I don't neen them. I love vim-like navigation in web browser but for everything else I'd rather use mouse (I barely use macbook without an external monitor)

MacOS supports mice, trackballs, tablets, and has good keyboard shortcut and focus traversal. The trackpad ballistics are industry leading too. What happened that you didn't like?

not sure what you mean by stretching a desktop across multiple monitors, but i’m pretty sure this is a pref you can set in macOS. Also, no need to use a touchpad if you don’t want.

  >That and the inability to stretch a desktop across two monitors.

macOS does this. ChromeOS doesn't really do it.

  > I'd be better off with a Chromebook.

Since you don't like centric trackpads and tiny keyboards, and apparently aren't open to external keyboards and mice, I have some bad news for you about Chromebooks.

Yes. I am still not productive with macOS's window management, after 10 years of use. Linux distributions always have better package management than Homebrew and run Docker containers I am developing without virtualisation. Also, I consider free software to be less of a risk. If Apple decides to neuter macOS in any way, eventually I would have to change my ways, while in Linux I could change to a forked version.

At work I'll have to use macOS anyway, but I could migrate away from Windows on my desktop, had Linux desktop distributions a better HiDPI support with my hardware.

Two apps that remove a lot of my frustration working with macOS' window management:

- Contexts app, which makes Cmd-tab work like on Windows/Linux: https://contexts.co/

- Rectangle (the successor to Spectacle), which has a shortcut for maximizing windows: https://rectangleapp.com/

I was on a macbook pro from ~2017 to ~2020, Mostly 10.14. It worked well, but nothing specifically great that I can't do on Linux or Windows. I don't like the walled garden that macOS seems to become too much, I love free (as in freedom) software.

I've been running on Void Linux for about 2 years now, on desktop and laptop. These days I really can do everything I used to need Windows and sometimes macOS for. Some great stuff I use regularly on Linux:

Firefox, Thunderbird, Proton Bridge (a protonmail.com bridge), Signal Desktop, IRCCloud Desktop, ARES Commander (a cad program), Blender, Calibre, Discord, Dolphin (the emulator), DOSBox-X, dotnet, elixir, erlang, Ghidra, Godot Engine, ImHex, JetBrains Toolbox (I use a lot of JetBrains IDEs), MatterMost Desktop, Moonlight Streaming Client (and Sunshine Streaming Host, think hardware accelerated remote desktop ala Parsec, but for almost any kind of host instead of Windows/macOS host-only), Postman, PowerShell Core, Retroarch, ScummVM, SoapUI, Softimage XSI, Microsoft Teams, TVPaint, VSCode, Mathematica and Zoom!

My next big project is obsoleting my Windows box (used mostly for gaming). About 75% of my rather huge gaming collection will already work on linux thanks to Steam's Photon efforts (wine-like compat on steroids for windows games on linux).

I think that most negative linux responses here are from people that haven't used linux on desktop seriously for a significant amount of time.

Btw, my fave distros are: Void Linux, Gentoo and recently Chimera Linux (FreeBSD userland on Linux kernel, amazing project). Huge respect for Pop!_OS too, my goto recommendation for Linux-newbies.

What is it you like about Void?

It's a very modular setup, very simple in the basics, minimal but very extendible. It approaches the BSD philosophy a bit more than other distros. It's init system is very nice and conceptually simple. It's rolling release but a little bit more conservative than say Arch which is a bit more bleeding edge. The community is nice, good responses on #voidlinux when stuff is broken, in general, professional approach on problems with packages on github issues.

Another distro that I'm very curious about is Chimera Linux, a distro with a FreeBSD-based user-land and a Linux kernel + a bunch of sane+modern design choices (by q66, one of the people behind Void Linux PPC). It's still a work in progress and not completely stable yet (I'm testing it on KVM), but definitely a candidate for an upcoming daily-driver!

I've been using Macs since before OSX was a thing and have zero desire to switch to Linux as a desktop/laptop. I use Linux on servers without reservation and have since the late 90s.

While I can recognize the improvements Linux on the desktop has made over the decades it's still not in a place where I'd want to use it every day in that role.

1. I can't actually get keyboard shortcuts to act consistently on Linux between different applications and the desktop. Windows has developed a similar problem over the years. I have work to get done (or want to relax after working), the extra cognitive load of remembering if copy in the current application is Ctrl+C or Ctrl+Shift+C is maddening to me.

2. The same issue exists with gestures. Even if I somehow get a trackpad working sanely in Linux I can't get gestures to be consistent between apps. Between keyboard shortcuts and gestures I can do a significant amount of navigation of the system with one hand without thinking too hard about it.

3. Neither the macOS nor Finder's UX is perfect but it's largely self consistent. Third party applications almost always have a base level of consistency. I don't have to go hunt for application menus and I can use the window title at to drag windows around. It's the rare app that shits on those conventions on macOS where it seems every graphical app on Linux has wildly different UX. Looks are not the end-all of UX, too many apps/DEs on Linux focus on looking friendly without the underlying consistency to make for a good feel.

4. I've never had a laptop running Linux where I felt I could trust sleep. I'm sure I could buy the perfect system that had great Linux support. I don't even have to think about sleeping a Mac (desktop or laptop). It's been truly exceptional times where sleep hasn't worked correctly.

While I definitely have a bias towards macOS from using it so long, my main issue is I don't want to have to think about using my computer. It's a tool I use to do things. Linux as a desktop requires too high a cognitive load for me to be comfortable. I can use it and mostly configure it how I want but I don't want to do any of that.

Can't say that I am. There's too many niceties about using macOS that I would gravely miss in Linux.

- My family all use iMessage so I'd immensely miss Messages.app.

- I'm a photographer (hobbyist), and rely on Adobe Lightroom and Premiere Pro

- Having several other Apple products, the horizontal integration is just /too nice and convenient/ to give up. I spend at least 8 hours a day writing/looking at code and the rest of my day is being a dad. I don't have the time nor the energy to always be tinkering with my devices to get them exactly how I want them to look/feel/behave.

- As a developer, I have no major issues with my workflow using macOS. Also, the M1 is excellent. Show me another laptop that's as light and can literally go a full work day on battery.

For the last sentence, that's why Asahi Linux exists :).

I just recently learned of Asahi. Glad there's a viable alternative for those that want to use Linux while also maintaining Mac hardware.

Yup. I've used Linux for a couple decades of writing python and Java. I've gone from dwm to wmii to i3. Latest gig gave me an M1 macbook, and I tried to use it... 6mo later I ask for and received a replacement linux box. Reasons?

* keybinds - why is it impossible to remap anything with their special meta key? * task switching - alt-tab/cmd-tab/whatever treats full-screen apps different than non-fs apps, unless you find and install an app to fix just this one thing * WM - I'm a tiling wm fan, and nothing came close to the usability of i3 * docker - x86 docker hosts are defacto standard and it's a pain to double/multi build every container for M1 as well as x86

I'd complain about the keyboard but I mostly use an external one so no big deal.

Linux support on the latest Dell hasn't been all roses; the wifi is still only about 80-90% stable after long (12+) hours of inactivity, and the touchpad driver spammed interrupts or something enough to crash the kernel (but the touchscreen driver is pretty stable, so I just disabled the touchpad).

Still, I can get a lot more done when I'm in control.

I actively use windows, macos and linux. They all suck and they're all great. You just have to know what you want in different contexts and use the best tool for the task.

You can control linux more but you also have to babysit it more as it is so sensitive and fragile.

Exactly. Use the OS that will run the software you need to run in the context you are working in. This is why I use all three on a daily basis, and have never been religious about either OS.

What is fragile about Linux? Is it your package manager, distro, desktop choice?

It's a deep architectural issue resulting from who the primary audience of Linux is and lack of things like UAT and market research/targeting and a holistic UI design which macos and windows have because they have armies of people to do that stuff.

Explaining a developer or someone who can even just install Linux how fragile it is is difficult and that's why such people don't make UI decisions usually in commercial products. The very user friendly DEs do a good job at wrapping around the ugly underlying UI... except when they don't. The expectation I suppose is you open bug reports and issues or contribute.

Regardless of what type of user you are, on Linux you are always a product tester alongside an admin alongside what you normally do. And as a Linux user I accept that fact.

Background: I've been a *nix user since 1989, and have used focus-follows-mouse and a few window-management hot key combos for the last 33 years. I've managed to use those keys in every *nix WM / DE that I've used (twm, ctwm, kde, lxde).

I tried to use a mac as a desktop about 15 years ago. I was burned out from working 12-14 hours a day, had a new baby, and didn't want to deal with managing a FreeBSD or Linux desktop. I managed to find 3rd party hacks for most of my hot-key WM things, but I was never able to make focus follows mouse work in any sane way. My strategy at the time was to ignore mac apps as much as possible, and run XDarwin with traditional *nix apps and a WM that supported FFM. But using a web browser that was native and not Xdarwin based meant that focus didn't always follow the mouse, and that was enough to cause me inordinate amounts of frustration. I finally gave the machine to my inlaws at the time, and built a new white-box *nix machine.

Oddly, I don't have much of a problem with non-ffm on laptops, just because the experience is so vastly different. So I have a macbook, but I use it mostly for meetings / web browsing and as a terminal onto my FreeBSD desktop when traveling.*

Quite a few people posting about the Windows experience as well in here although you only mentioned macOS and Linux, so I figured I'd chime in as well.

I posted a day or so ago about wanting to migrate from Windows to Linux[1] after the incredibly positive experience I've had using NixOS on WSL2.

I've spent the last week or so exploring both X11 and Wayland options for DEs and WMs to hold me over until I can port my tiling window manager[2] to work with either X11 or Wayland, however, there is just so much table-stakes-level stuff missing, like setting per-monitor scaling, rotations and positioning in a way that doesn't require cracking open a dotfile.

I keep oscillating between wanting to port my twm to Linux so I can just go full NixOS and developing an idea I have[3] for Windows to be able to quickly and reliably configure settings for a new Windows machine.

Honestly, if NixOS supports Windows in the future (and the ability to configure it in a similar way to nix-darwin's ability to configure macOS), that would be perfect.

Who knows, maybe SerenityOS will be running rings around all other OS-es on hardware by then and have a "nix-serenity" module set to allow for sane declarative configuration management.

[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33946559

[2]: https://github.com/LGUG2Z/komorebi

[3]: https://github.com/LGUG2Z/Nazm

IMO NixOS is useful if you're a distrohopper / need to deploy a similar system. Otherwise Debian + XFCE is a very stable system that has all the features you're missing.

Currently on XFCE and still can't find a simple way to have two monitors with different scaling. Any pointers would be appreciated!

Settings > Display, you'll find a scaling dropdown there.

This changes the scale for all monitors for me, it doesn't handle per-monitor scaling.

That is not how it works for me. I select a screen, set the scaling, and it just works.

Yes. MacOs is opaque. Who knows why it is doing x? Is it spotlight? Some update, some out of date thing? Who knows if it will be supported and for how long. Then there is my 2012 Macbook running Ubuntu (not even the best Linux just the one I know the best). Linux provides better support for my Macbook than Apple. It is at least twice as fast as the last time I ran a Mac OS.

And did I mention it is fun?

Do you dual boot? Are you able to return to MacOS easily if you want to? I've been thinking about trying to run Linux on my 2015 MBP but I haven't done anything with it yet.

I do not dual boot. I have a second old Mac which runs MacOs, mostly for games and every now and then IOS development. That one does dual boot Windoze, so that I can test the few things I do for windows. Dual boot is nice but at least for me not a great solution because of the shut-everything-down->reboot->start-everything-up time.

There are a few things about Linux that I miss, most notably decent tiling window managers with multiple display support. XMonad was a dream to use, allowing me to throw windows or entire workspaces around the place with a couple of key presses.

I don't miss them enough to move off macOS though. I'm deep in the Apple ecosystem largely because the integration is miles better than any of the alternatives, I can bounce audio around the house with Airplay, I can start watching some TV on an iPad in the kitchen, then when I've finished cooking throw it over to the TV. If my phone rings I can pick it up on whatever device is closest to me. Apple's integration between devices is about as close to the sci-fi future we were promised as you can get at the moment, and there's no way I want to go and try to replicate a half-arsed alternative on Linux.

Absolutely not. I gave up on Linux UI/UX after I became an adult. I don't have time to go through the nightmare amount of tweaks needed to make anything look good or work the way I want. MacOS might not be perfect but it lets me focus on my work instead of someone else's work.

I did, for my personal laptop and desktop, after 18 years on macOS.

But I am not a developer, I used creative tools from Adobe (Macromedia even) for almost 20 years.

Pop_OS! (on Wayland) helped a lot, and it has been a worthy transition. The replacements have been long and somewhat painful to find, but it all worked out.

I was simply too tired of the increased babysitting by macOS and the opaque telemetry and limitations.

I built a fanless AMD desktop loosely inspired by Joshua Stein's (here is a pic of my setup, but I now use 3 displays: https://mobile.twitter.com/Salis/status/1490739423981486082)

It made using my own devices fun again, even though I miss some of the convenience :)

> I built a fanless AMD desktop loosely inspired by Joshua Stein's (here is a pic of my setup, but I now use 3 displays: https://mobile.twitter.com/Salis/status/1490739423981486082)

Three stacked dialogs to dismiss (Sign in with Google, authorize notifications, and download the app), and then:

>You’re unable to view this Tweet because this account owner limits who can view their Tweets.

I am just about _this_ close to null-routing all of Twitter on my network. What fucking cancer.

You should do. Use a nitter instance to view anything public. No javascript required, except I think videos. Granted that wouldn't help with GP sending a private link.

Wow, speak of toxic and abrasive. Apologies for the missed etiquette, I will likely never do that again—I recently switched the account to private and simply did not realize it. Just wanted to share a workstation picture, but never mind: "toxic fucking cancer" seems the kind of attitude that drove me to limiting Twitter usage, but it's here.

People are furiously hunting for reasons to hate Twitter over the past few months, I wouldn't take it personally.

I don't think we were directing that ire at you, although sharing a private link is not great, but at twitter. It is a site that shows you nothing if you don't have javascript allowed and when you do you can't scroll for more than a few replies before you get a "log in, now!" pop-up. That predates Musk's takeover BTW.

Therefore I suggest people wanting to read what's on the site use a better frontend to do so.

Got it, I use Nitter/Fritter extensively myself—I should have thought more about the way I wanted to share an image (still fairly new to being active on HN.)

Paradoxically, I thought it would have been better this way rather than sharing a personal website link, or an imgur upload.

I will be more mindful about what I am also annoyed by in the future :)

Call me old fashioned but a direct link to a jpeg file somewhere is always best.

For windows management:

Install this https://www.hammerspoon.org/

brew install —cask hammerspoon

Then follow the instructions here to install this:

https://github.com/miromannino/miro-windows-manager

Absolutely awesome. I’ve been using BetterTouchTool for windows management for years but I just started using Jump Desktop on my iPad for remote connection to my Mac and it wouldn’t work at all. Decided to try out hammerspoon today after hearing good things and it is amazing. Works with Jump perfectly. Never going back to BTT for windows management.

Does it do anything more than what Rectangle covers? For instance, can it switch focus between screens or applications within a screen with a keyboard shortcut?

So hammerspoon expands way past windows management to all kinds of automation and interaction with the operating system. See a list of plugins here:

https://www.hammerspoon.org/Spoons/

The window management plugin I just linked you doesn’t really have any additional functionality over rectangles but the implementation is better. My BTT set up was similar to Rectangles in that there was basically a different keyboard shortcut for each position on the screen. With hammerspoon you just use your modifier key and the arrows. So say your app was full screen if you do hyper + left arrow it will take up half the screen on the left hand side. Press hyper + left arrow again and it will now take up 1/3. Press hyper + right arrow and it will expand back out to 1/2 again. Press hyper + left + right and it will fill the entire width of the screen. Same rules apply for up and down. It’s really intuitive and you don’t have to bother remembering what all the keyboard shortcuts were to get things where you want them.

As for the switch focus between screens I believe there is a shortcut for this but I haven’t used it yet. There are native macOS shortcuts though, cmd + ~ will navigate between different screens of the same application, cmd + tab for navigating between applications and cmd + shift + [ for navigating between tabs.

The cmd + ` is limited to switching with the same application. However, another command, "Move focus to active or next window", by default bound to `Ctrl + F4`, cycles through all applications on the active workspace, which I have started to use extensively. Took me some time to find it out.

I went back to Windows. Does everything I want and doesn't have the Apple walled garden approach. I have m1 envy but its worth it.

well yeah, a while ago... it bothered me that i couldn't even have my home directory they way i wanted so after having loved the graphical interface and other tools (keynote <3) for a few years, i went back to debian, this time with i3 and... what was i thinking before? i got tricked by comfort and pretty stuff after buying my first mac.

Not really. Desktop GNU/Linux is a horrible experience that you always need to debug.

I sometimes miss Windows, not due to Windows itself (Windows 11 looks like a horror show), but because of all the apps, especially games.

I had this feeling some time ago, after having been a Mac user for decades, and found myself gradually switching by default. I just found myself gravitating toward the Ubuntu-running ThinkPad more and more, which did whatever I wanted it to do without trying to shoehorn me into some giant corporation's vision of profitable computing. It was comfortable, it worked just fine, and the hardware was cheaper. I never found a reason to buy a new Mac, and after a move several years ago I never got around to unpacking the old one.

Come on in! The water's fine.

Nope, not at all. My main machine is now this MacMini M1, and it's not perfect, but MOSTLY gets the job done. I have a nice Linux box here that I built myself running Ubuntu. There's a few Docker things and a couple other little things that I still can't get working on my Mac, so I still need Linux, but I'm not tired of MacOS at all. I especially like having iMessage on here. I haven't had to touch Windows in... I'm not sure how long now, maybe 2 years?

I switched to Linux when Windows 95 self-destructed because I needed a OS that would show up for work every day. It hasn't been all smooth-sailing, but, tbh, I caused most of the issues I've had.

A few years ago, I took a job in an all-mac shop and I figured it out. It never stopped feeling clunky, but that was certainly a matter of personal preference. Eventually, I got all the docker things working well enough in linux that I installed ubuntu on the mac and it was a really nice experience. I dig their hardware.

I think it comes down to what you're good at and used to.

With that said, as a python developer and system maintainer, I found the whole brew thing in macos awkward and extremely finicky, though I was always able to get things working eventually. I did drop macos within a few months, but I am sometimes made aware of the polished software and device integrations that just aren't available to me on the platform.

I think my few months of experience with the mac echoes what others have said about Linux. I might have enjoyed all the work to figure out how to make it usable when I was younger and had more time, but, at the end of the day, I just needed it to work and it only sort of did. I much prefer linux (ubuntu, gnomeshell, x11).

Nope. Things work out of the box. I have terminal and homebrew and pip and npm if needed.

Fiddle with hacky drivers and graphics systems like fglrx and qt? No thanks.

Yes, I'm tired of it. However, I love the hardware.

I feel like I'm right on some edge with MacOS. I go about my daily work and don't think about it too much but it comes up from time to time.

For example, I very recently bought a macbook, and it drove me nuts that there's things like stock and chess apps that are hard-coded into a separate read-only partition, as if they're essential to the OS, that requires layers of steps to get to. I appreciate the security but I feel like stuff like that is really testing some limits of control or something. I could change all of it but it's not worth the trouble.

On the other hand, one of the reasons I appreciate Asahi linux is that I know at some level there's some safety valve, that if I really got upset, I could install an alternative. It might not work quite as well in terms of energy efficiency and so forth right now, but it's something and they're improving things at such a quick pace it might not matter by the time it became an issue, if ever.

I looked hard at linux laptops and although there were some really nice options I vacillated about, none of them had quite the combination of hardware features as a macbook. If there had been something closer I probably would have gone that route.

My favorite GUI/OS setup is Kubuntu, by far. If I could put any OS on any hardware it would probably be something with KDE+deb. I think it's too easy to lose track of windows and other things in MacOS, and I don't like the sense that Apple is flirting with who's in control of the OS. On the other hand, I'd probably prefer linux or MacOS to Windows at this point, only because it's what I'm most used to. This happened organically over time due to work-related systems, and wasn't a big conscious choice or something.

I'd go back to Linux if the community managed to solve problems with graphics and monitor support. Having read the thread from the other day about desktop environments, it definitely doesn't sound like Linux has made any meaningful progress in the last 10 years. Apparently supporting HDPI is still problematic, only some monitors and resolutions work properly, and horizontal tearing is still a thing. I couldn't tell you how Wayland has made anything better, because people seem to be reporting the same annoying problems that made me leave Linux behind a decade ago.

This isn't to say that Linux can't work for some people. I'm at a point where I find life to be way too short to configure a Linux setup to temporarily work the way I want before an update inevitably breaks things or features are removed because someone didn't feel like supporting them. So far, my Mac has managed to do everything I've wanted without any deal breakers, and I have no reason to move away from it yet.

I am long time (15+ years) FreeBSD user and sysadmin.

My employer used to use RHEL Linux on ThinkPad T14 which worked for me. I configured GNOME with keyboard shortcuts I use daily on my FreeBSD ThinkPad W520 and was quite happy with it - especially with several additional GNOME extensions.

Unfortunately my employer decided that it will ditch Linux from admins laptops and forces migration to Windows ... but its also possible to get Apple Macbook.

I am sick an tired of being sick and tired by Winblows bullshit so I decided to get Apple Macbook straight away.

I got the M1 version of Macbook Air. Its nice light device ... but the keyboard is TERRIBLE to say the least - when you are used to the AWESOME W520 keyboard.

But that is just the 'tip of the iceberg' of problems.

The keyboards shortcuts are quite limited. You can use some external apps for that. Same for windows tiling. I wrote my own window tiler for X11/openbox. I needed to install Rectangle for that - and it works really well for that.

... but ZERO luck with free apps/solutions for MIDDLE CLICK copy/paste. I have tried free MiddleClick ... but seems it does not support Ventura yet.

Generally after two decades with computers I fell like with two left hands at macOS. Both on software and hardware (keyboard) side.

The interface is looking nice ... but you are also VERY limited to how small the interface or fonts can be. I prefer to have rather small fonts and/or interface as large fonts/interface takes too much screen space.

Here is what I use daily:

- https://vermaden.files.wordpress.com/2019/04/freebsd-desktop...

Not sure how that helps - but that are my $0.02 on that topic.

Regards.

I use both a Linux laptop and a MacBook every day.

I installed Ubuntu Server (which is halfway between Debian and Ubuntu Desktop) with i3 and spent a number of hours customizing it. I don't enjoy the time spent to get a custom setup (e.g. figuring out how to make the system not hang on boot because of wifi, and what packages to download so that the terminal will display emojis), but I do enjoy how fast the UI is, how all unimportant elements are removed.

But I'll play my music from either my iPhone or my MacBook.

If I'm charging my car, I'll work from the MacBook, because it doesn't use much battery when idle, its battery lasts a long time, and it is actually comfortable to have in your lap.

If I'm playing games, I'll use the MacBook.

If I'm doing accounting, I'll use the MacBook.

If I'm stitching together PDF documents, I'll use the MacBook.

Linux is only best for software development. But that's a pretty big part of every day for me.

In Linux you can customize it to act like a MacBook, that's why arch Linux exists for example. I believe that in Linux the battery should last most longer than an M1. MacBooks hardware is very good, that's why I wait for Asahi Linux to be ready.

Edit: typo

I recently had to start using MacOS for work after never using an Apple product ever.

Between MacPorts packages, Yabai[1], and skhd [2] I've found myself able to achieve a close enough setup in terms of tiling WM + system keybindings to make the desktop experience close enough to what I have using i3 or whatever else on Linux.

I still don't love using MacOS and would probably never buy a Macbook for personal use, but it's not really that bad and sure beats using Windows + WSL for development since at least MacOS is a UNIX

[1] https://github.com/koekeishiya/yabai [2] https://github.com/koekeishiya/skhd

I still encountered many frustrations when using macOS since late August, which would be trivial on Linux. Like yesterday I had to return to edit my keymap with third-party software so that I could do programming and write text in the local language without changing layouts. In GNOME, I would do that within very polished system settings, which also offered sane options in the first place.

Switching focus between multiple windows with keyboard shortcuts is painful, but GNOME is also bad on this front. Now I use Amethyst without tiling, which makes things better but is sometimes buggy :( Nevertheless, I like that it is possible to split the screen in fullscreen so I can have a fullscreen emacs frame on one monitor and another shared with a terminal on the other.

I miss the simplicity I had on the Linux installing applications with simple `apt-get` commands. On macOS, it feels like Ubuntu, where snaps have taken over all applications, and you can't figure out how things are organised and struggle to add a text editor to the path.

The default terminal experience was also painful. moving from zsh to bash was more difficult than anticipated as the bash is outdated on macOS (is it really so difficult to update it, apple?). Not being able to use tab completion in my git commands is also something I miss, and adding it again puts me into hours of searching in google for how it can be done for this macOS version.

Nevertheless, there are big benefits which come with using macOS. The ability to authenticate through webpages by scanning your fingerprint is a godsend. Grouping tabs by categories in safari also makes my browsing more organised. The ability to use Grammarly system-wide is a game-changing experience (although it does not work within emacs :( ), and the app ecosystem overall is much better and more polished. Email client, which does not need to be reauthenticated now and then with google, is one of the things I really appreciate (which was the only gripe about Geary).

In the end, the benefits outweight the shortcomings of macOS. It is at least a Unix in the end.

No. It does what I need and everything except any “cloud” services work perfectly. Linux did not have good drivers 20 years ago, did not have good drivers 10 years ago, did not have good drivers 5 years ago and I bet it does not have good drivers now. It never will.

I right now wait for Asahi Linux to be ready for production, since MacBooks hardware is very good.

No. macOS is a tool. It might not be the best, but I get my work done with it. Linux (first question: what flavour?) would be a tool as well. Maybe more flexible - but it would need a lot of time and commitment to customise und familiarise with. I'm not paid for this time. And it is very questionable that a change would lead to much better productivity. So: no.

It's the same as a hammer in my shop: Of course there might be a better hammer out there for the current job. But I would have to browse catalogs, pay money, familiarise with the new toy. Lots of time and effort without gained productivity. No, that 10+ year old set of hammers I own does the job fairly well, thank you very much.

Is the linux printing experience still miserable these days? I've wasted whole days fussing with CUPS as recently as a decade ago, I think. Younger me found this fun, current me finds that a rather aggravating and unfilfilling exercise.

It's been plug and play both at home and at work for me since a few years (sorry, can't be more specific...). And it was really far from it years ago for sure!

In both cases the printers support IPP (the Internet Printing Protocol) and are advertised on the LAN, either natively at home or through a print server at work.

I've never digged much into this, but I believe the combination of zeroconf (for the printers discovery) and IPP are the key elements for CUPS to provide this seamless support. The printers just show up in the my KDE settings, and their settings are exposed in a reasonable way through configuration dialogs. The ink or toner levels are even visible.

This is on Debian stable, so I would assume most distros are at this level now.

Last job I used a Mac for the first time. It was... OK. But I could really never get comfortable. Current job I'm back on Linux - switched to PopOS from i3 and things are good again :) (and Docker runs sooooo much faster)

I never used macOS, only Linux and the BSDs (windows decades ago). But in the past I have recommend macOS to people rather than Windows due to its UN*X roots.

I do not know far it has strayed from UN*X in recent years, but from what I have read, macOS is getting more and more locked down.

Also, seems many Linux distros is slowly straying away. The rare few that stays close to the UN*X roots are having a tough time staying that way.

I wonder how hard it is these days to install free third party software on macOS. Or do you need to go through the "MAC Store" to install anything ? If so, that is reason enough for me not to use macOS.

Google is your friend.

> macOS is getting more and more locked down.

Yes... and no. It's exaggerated. Apps must have a certificate (a "notarization") before they will run. However, "notarization" does not entitle Apple to any profit cuts or require using the App Store, and it can be disabled for technical users. You can install basically whatever you want, and using apps without the App Store is normal. As for tampering with the OS, it's now inside a Signed System Volume with System Integrity Protection which does make it more malware-resistant, but this can also be disabled for technical users. So... More locked-down out of the box than previously, perhaps, but for 90% of normal users I don't have a problem with that. They both do have functions for making the system more resistant to viruses without needing the bolted-on virus scanner Windows-style.

Seriously? Its brew install <name of package> for 99% of the software I use on MacOS.

> do not know far it has strayed from UNX in recent years

MacOS is still a certified UNIX (no needed), so not at all.

Not a big fan of MacOS. I could get my work done with it if I had to but I would take Windows any day.

The first thing I do on any Linux machine is turn off X windows, Wayland, whatever it is these days. I love logging in through ssh and using bash, but the UI is a dumpster fire. Granted Windows is always trying to spam me with spamifications about spam software and when I plug in a monitor the layouts blow up for a moment but in Linux they don’t care if font metrics match the space text is in, so the normal condition on Linux is like Windows when it is settling down after changing the video.

I use both. I have my Macbook and I have my PC with Linux and I just bounce between them as desired. It solves that struggle for me.

Stuff like Syncthing for files and Obsidian for notes, help ease moving between them.

Not really, it helps me get the job done. It's far from perfect but there is no way I have time to mess with a Linux Desktop machines.

Mac has its own quirks however I find that it is a decent middle ground right now for the intersection of entertainment and work. As for gaming, I have a PS5 which is more than enough so I have no need for a PC.

The reality is that I just prefer to complete my tasks and log off at 5PM with no hassle and willing to pay premium for the hardware and ecosystem.

It was a coin-toss for me personally between Linux/macOS. Now with the quiet + battery life of M1/M2 Macs I'm on macOS laptops for the foreseeable future.

IMO Mac OS is better for people who just want to get work done and Linux is better for people who want customization and don’t mind some occasional roadblocks.

Personally I don’t care much about that kind of customization and I’m happy to just learn to use the tools that are available in the most effective way. So Mac OS works better for me.

But if you are someone who needs everything to be just so, and who doesn’t mind putting the work in to maintain it, Linux is the clear winner.

I am now a year into using Mac OS thanks to the m1 Air, which had such a list of benefits that I was willing to overlook my dislike of the os. It was worth doing is my conclusion. It's a fantastic laptop, I still don't really love the OS but it's a minor price to pay, it's fine enough and it's not serving ad recommendations or deciding when I should restart my computer like a certain other commercial OS.

I have a mac and a Linux box. I tend to always use the Linux box for dev these days because I can't get around the Docker-for-mac performance issues.

We run a stack with a bunch of microservices, and there is just no graceful way to develop it on the mac. Everything on Linux is an order of magnitude faster.

I still like the mac for some things, but I would only ever use it as a secondary box in its current state.

macOS on my MacBook is nice enough (it has stupid annoyances like moving windows around on my screens coming out of sleep and not triggering one monitor to come on by itself) but with brew and friends it works.

I have Linux servers available to me that provides the Linux I need and macOS works out of the box with Photoshop and Office and some games, so it's good enough.

I’ve been unable to fully control my external monitor configurations. The OS makes some assumptions about the physical monitor dimensions, such that when my mouse moves between monitors, at certain Y-height, the transition is smooth, but at another Y-height, there is a jump. It’s a bit frustrating, but not something to move to Linux over.

I've tried. Doesn't last long.

I find MacOS to have the worst UX of all the major OSes.

It requires about a half-dozen third party apps to be usable. And there is a culture around MacOS where this appears to just be accepted. There are hundreds of YouTube videos on using this app or that app to "boost your productivity". And no one ever seems to question why any of this is necessary.

The Finder is the worst file explorer application that I've ever used. I will die on this hill. When you have a file or folder selected then pressing Enter should open it. IMO, Enter should always be mapped to the most common action in a given context so having the enter key mapped to rename just feel incredibly stupid. It is not initiative at all and AFAIK there is so way to change its behavior at all. There is probably is some third party app that will fix it though but for now I just avoid it completely and use the terminal.

The app based window management is just completely unintuitive to my brain. Closing an app (like actually closing it) is just a chore and so my desktop always has a gazillion apps open. Their "task bar" for minimized windows uses a screenshot thumbnail of the open window which makes it impossible to distinguish between minimized windows of the same app without hovering over it to see the window title. That creates enough friction for me that I avoid minimizing windows so more desktop clutter.

I basically run all of my main windows at full screen and ctrl-arrow through workspaces to multi-task because doing it any other way makes me want to go full office space on this macbook. BTW, would it be so hard to let me to jump to a workspace with a keyboard shortcut like every reasonable window manager does? No? Okay, guess I'll try to cobble some hack together with Keyboard Maestro.

So yes, dreaming of the day that I can use a linux desktop for work is what keeps me going.

You’ve got much free time to fight against numerous Linux bugs, especially after OS upgrade?

That happens mostly for beginners. Once you know how to get around Linux and debug, it's pretty straightforward.

I've been using Debian for 20-25 years and it never gets straightforward.

Except its not. I still have Linux issues I have not been able to resolve that "just work" on both Windows and MacOS.

Sometimes you get tired of googling for solutions for random problems.

I installed ubuntu 22 yesterday on a brand new SSD and after a stock install and a couple of basic downloads (Intellij etc), the Settings app stopped launching and disappeared from the power menu after a reboot- as if something had removed it. No, I didn't remove anything.

I had to re-install the package ubuntu-desktop to get it back after googling.

I can't imagine mac or Windows ever having that sort of problem.

I've had more issues with OSX upgrades than linux upgrades.

Have never had bugs. Debian Stable.

Never had bugs with desktop linux? Even with ACPI? How long do you run Linux?

*Major bugs. Most were PEBKAC because I was a noob. About 8 years.

You are really lucky man. Google says there are “About 529,000 results” for “linux acpi bugs”.

¯\_ (ツ)_/¯

Yes. Got tired of the many updates which forced me to continuously change my configurations and app versions. After some distro hopping and wm hopping I landed at NixOS with Gnome. Very happy I made the switch.

I have macOS on my laptop and Fedora on my desktop. Both are fine, and, I think, they converged somewhat (Gnome3 is increasingly macOS-like, macOS started to take some UI decisions from Gnome as well).

I wish but can't.

Unfortunately, to develop for the iOS and macOS I need a macOS.

I want to go back to windows, mostly because I miss explorer.exe. Mac’s finder and window management is a mess.

I have tried to use uBar but it’s buggy. Does anyone know of good alternatives?

I love Linux, but IT can't control it so I can't use it.

I wish a BYOD policy for workplaces was more acceptable.

I don't understand why so many people complain about linux in this thread. Probably because the linux people don't care enough to comment here.

Linux works just fine for me, on a lot of different devices. Use KDE and be happy forever with your setup. No issue no nothing, just works.

Feels like Linux is in a bit of a weird spot right now. It's "just worked" for me for a long time, but HighDPI really threw a spanner in the works. There are various ways to "support" it, but none of them work well, and they're sort of semi-incompatible with each other and introduce all sorts of weird jank.

Some distros try to fix it and mange... sorta. Yet if you enable fractional scaling on for example Pop! OS, that makes it so that full-screening a video changes the screen resolution to the video's resolution. ... for some reason nobody seems to be able to explain.

Then there's Wayland which breaks a fair share of applications on its own.

I've used Linux for a long time, must be over 15 years, and never seen it flounder like this.

"Go back to"??

Absolutely miss linux every day that I'm macOS, the cost of customizing the conveniences of macOS are too much though.

Linux just feels different to be able to get any software easily. The fact that I can change anything, makes me feel safe to test anything. And on mac, there just feels like it's more work.

I miss it, but I'm so much more productive when it comes to handling the business side of the business on mac, and the M series is the only cpu I will accept after it's release. Power and battery life unmatched.

#Asahi on it's way!

I used to be a full-time Linux user, then switched to macOS. I bought into the Apple ecosystem for over a decade. My last Apple device: I paid for a high end macbook pro ($4k) and got burned by that. As soon as my apple care coverage was over, the battery swelled. I couldn't afford to replace or fix it. I ended up building a high end PC with 4x the cores, 2x the ram, and 6x the storage for half that. I initially installed Windows10 then upgraded to 11. It's been 3 years and I'm still running it, now under Linux.

It's a relief.

I control my own OS, my own data, and don't have to worry about making compromises that I'm forced to make because there are no alternatives.

I still use an iPhone but I rarely use it. I'm probably switching to a libre phone as soon as it's feasible.

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