My reason is that I spent about a decade using Linux as my main OS, only to
finally try macOS/OSX (a workplace gave me a Macbook) and, after a couple months of adjustment, realize what a colossal amount of time & attention I'd been wasting with Linux, working around things that didn't function reliably or fussing here and there with things to make them work. I'd been
totally blind to it until I saw how the other half lived. Now when I try to go back it's
all I can see. Such experiments rarely last a week these days, though in some sense I still know Linux much better than I know MacOS, so it
should have an advantage.
> No screen edge tiling, spend more time managing application windows
> Maximizing an app takes you to a totally new desktop
Spectacle or any of several other programs solves these. It's the only major piece of customization I do on any new Mac. First thing I install after Homebrew. I almost never manage windows with the mouse. One might object, "but that's not default!" but then Mac also catches shit for not being customizable, yet here I am, customizing it, so IDK, doesn't seem like a real objection if the proposed alternative is Linux where customization tends to be even more fiddly than that. FWIW Spectacle's not given me one single problem or glitch in something like eight or nine years of use. Install, grant accessibility permissions to it, use its menu to set it to start at launch, never think about it again until I set up a new Mac. I think there are, separately, also ways to change the behavior of the maximize button (in fact I think I used to use such a customization, before I discovered Spectacle)
> Hidden dock doesn't appear unless I smash my cursor on the bottom edge. Dock Autohide is very finicky, ZorinOS' way is much more graceful and natural.
As a hidden dock/taskbar lover since Win95 I'm not sure what you mean. I've not noticed a difference between its behavior and every other I've set to hidden, which includes most consumer versions of Windows, a couple server versions of same, plus XFCE, Gnome (1+), and KDE (2+) on Linux. But I've also never heard of ZorinOS so maybe it's doing something unique (and maybe really nice!)
> No window closing animations, but has window opening animations. Feels really unpolished
I just tried "new window" in a couple programs to see if I could figure out what you mean—maybe there's an animation and I'd just become blind to it. Still don't see it, steps to reproduce?
> Single click on dock to maximize the app but clicking maximized app doesn't minimize it. Why?
You don't minimize or maximize apps, but windows. Clicking an app in the dock focuses it, un-minimizing (not sure what you mean by "maximizing", here?) its active window if necessary. Doesn't seem inconsistent to me, and is probably a lot less surprising/annoying than if clicking an app that had all its windows minimized didn't restore any of them, or if clicking an app (interpreted by the OS as "foreground this thing", basically) instead minimized its windows (which one? All of them? If some are minimized already, then WTF? Swap them?). I mean, if you click on a pinned app that's not running, it launches the app—would you expect that clicking the dock icon a second time terminate the app?
> Ctrl + Alt +T doesn't open terminal, it's like oxygen to me.
> Can't set VSCode to open with Ctrl + Alt + C.
I don't fiddle with more advanced ways to map shortcuts in macOS (I've done less customization of everything in general, as I get older) but I'm like 99% sure these are easy fixes. Maybe not something exposed in settings, but still, easy to fix. And it's so workflow- or preference-specific that I don't think making it a default would be reasonable. I just launch everything with search on every platform these days, personally, but that's a matter of taste.
> The shell startup time is too much on MacOS. I have to wait for a second for the shell to load before I start typing my commands. On Linux, pressing Ctrl+Alt+T and writing commands right away feels so good!
Default Terminal app's pretty damn fast. I only find this to be the case if I've got a really heavy zsh config or something like that.
> No package manager by default, brew is honestly very slow compared to Linux solutions.
Brew's my overall favorite package manager I've ever used, and I've used a ton. Admittedly, though, a lot of that is because I really like having a strict separation between what's necessary for my desktop to basically function, and what my package manager is allowed to monkey with. Tastes vary, I suppose. And it does have a package manager by default, you just don't like it (and neither do I)—it's the App Store.
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Anyway, the real killer feature of Mac devices is this:
When, in a professional setting, your Mac doesn't work, Tim Cook's an asshole.
When your Linux workstation doesn't work, you're an asshole.
That's not my judgement—it's what I've observed about how the two situations are perceived. If the Mac "doesn't work" less often (very much the case for me, but YMMV) that's just a bonus.