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Comment by emerongi | Hacker News Reader

I have now used a Mac for a little while as my main machine. The Apple ecosystem is amazing, but macOS from a UX perspective leaves a lot to be desired. I'd take Gnome or i3 over it any day. The Mac saves me time in my current stage of life though, so it wins out for now.

I recently had to install Windows on a machine and the installation process drove me insane. There's tens of things you need to disable to avoid being tracked on a machine _you own_.

Linux is the only OS that leaves the user in the position of power. Treasure your i3 setup. I really hope it lasts for more decades to come.

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> I really hope it lasts for more decades to come.

What I love most about Linux is you can keep the same workflow for as long as you like. Of course, in practice you always end up tweaking and improving, but it's not on the whim of the decisions of some corporation.

I was also in love with i3 when i was using Linux most of the time. My first Linux machine was around 2002. Back when Ubuntu just started shipping CD’s around the globe to spread the word (“love”) of open source. So I also jumped on the tiling wm wagon quite early on. With i3 being my favorite for its simplicity.

Due to the nature of my work and clients, using Mac or MS Windows as primary OS has been too prevalent. It’s easier to go with the flow than fight it.

So over the years i’ve learned to let go of the highly optimized desktop workflow and started to simplify it instead. Think of keeping less windows around to create better focus. Or use tabs more as a way to group related work.

I see a similar behavior with my vim usage. I used to have very heavily customized vim config. Nowadays i just stick with stock config. I guess over the years i started to embrace defaults more. It’s easier for me to learn defaults than to fight the “system”.

Pretty sure i would still be using i3 if my professional environment was more flexible (less enterprise).

I agree, it’s easier to ride the waves than to fight the ocean.

Scripts like https://github.com/Raphire/Win11Debloat help, but should not be needed in the first place.

Note that modern Linux is also leaning towards the same trend. But i admit it is still much easier to avoid those for power users. Snap, i'm looking at you also...

A small note, you (formally) own the hw, but commercial OSes are just licensed: you do not own them, their vendor own them an allow you limited rights on them... Yes, it's absurd, but that's is...

Very much this. I really want Linux to prevail but Apple is just too hard to beat at this point with so I just cave in. Don't get me wrong, I use Linux on a X1 Carbon Lenovo and I love it, I think it's the only OS I feel fast and have total control and but unfortunately Apple hardware and software has come a long way because of its totalitarian regime and it shows. It just works.

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