I Miss BSD/Linux
brainbaking.com
brainbaking.com
For your basic user, it's performant, simple, stable, and does everything a computer needs. Every time I boot up Windows it takes forever, I find that a new update that further fills my machine with crap requires a restart, I get super weird "news" and advertising thrown at me. I have no idea how normies put up with this.
This really comes down to this.
If you can stabilize what you need, inevitably linux will catch up to where you are and you're set.
If it's an always moving goalpost, the year of Linux on the desktop will always be next year, eternally.
Which translates to the other problem that is battery life on laptops. I did a fairly simple test recently that basically opens Reddit main page in Firefox & Chrome and then scrolls it slowly until battery dies. Running on the same exact hardware - Thinkpad T14s AMD gen4 - the battery life was reduced by 30% on Linux with default settings (= no hardware acceleration in either browser). Manually enabling it means that test cannot complete at all because both browsers randomly crash.
And then you look at battery life vs an ARM MacBook, and it's not even funny.
With the default settings being the key there. I had the exact same laptop and was able to get idle power down under 3W.
But to your point, that's a fair amount of friction for someone that understands all the moving points. It's insurmountable for the average user.
I've also seen issues with wifi drivers, but those are usually fixed booting up wired with a widely supported USB to ethernet dongle, not too bad, but still annoying.
For me, that is about it for my biggest issues, aside from getting an RX 5700 at launch, where the drivers didn't stabilize until the next LTS releases (about 6 months later). I'd run alpha/beta kernels, which generally worked, and even tried Arch (btw) and both I got a black screen after updates. I went back to windows for a while, and then switched my main boot back to linux and haven't looked back after the Ads in start menu search results on my Windows Insiders install.
For the most part, I've had very few issues in general, and only on initial setup. I've mostly used PopOS, and been exceedingly happy with it.
I even use it on the Displaylink type USB-C dock that my current work laptop came with. Installing the Displaylink driver was a bit of "old school Linux" since the installer was Ubuntu only. But not too traumatic, and dock/undock also works perfectly.
My issue with battery life isn’t getting it to match what it is under Windows, but that x86 ultraportables tend to have disappointing battery life under either OS. Linux doesn’t make it worse but doesn’t fix it either.
It's been really annoying with my Intel wifi/bt CNVi card for years and there's a lot of people having similar problems...
OTOH I was pleasantly surprised that all hardware generally worked, including even stuff like the fingerprint reader (so now I can use that to sudo in the terminal!). Although that did require spending some time in the console to enable it in PAM. I'd say that Linux runs great on that laptop overall, aside from battery life, which is not a big deal if you mostly use your laptop plugged in.
Were you comparing this to Windows 11?
> Linux
What DE was this done on? Were you using any power-saving daemons (PPD, TLP, Powerdevil)? If not, I strongly recommend installing something like PPD (power-profiles-daemon) which requires 0 configuration out of the box, and retesting.
Funny you say that. A while back I reinstalled Windows on a new laptop (get rid of all the default installed garbage) and I couldn't connect wirelessly. Had to connect via ethernet and install and update everything just to have wireless work. I haven't installed Linux on it, but considering its a Broadcom card I don't exactly have high hopes of it working with only upstream drivers.
Which is useless besides browsing the internet.
[1] This phrase is a self-deprecating remark about my own joke making abilities, not a slight at parent.
There’s a general theme in Emacs users’ testimonials that you end up doing everything in Emacs. For many that includes web browsing. Hence the joke.
It doesn’t include web browsing for me but no condescension intended. If you don’t like my joke, that’s okay. I’m sorry.
Edit: Also not intended to be condescending towards your grandparent commenter. Apologies again.
My dad spent a couple years basically using it as his standard OS while consulting. Couldn't guarantee what software a company required, but if everything was done through emacs, he'd have no problem setting it up to his liking.
Emails, builds, etc. I think this was before the web browser was up to snuff though. I never quite got into it at that level, but the power users easily demonstrate the value of knowing a powerful system very well.
Yes it's not perfect. But it is a lot more than it was when it was released. I only replaced it with Fedora Kinoite when the outdated Chrome browser version started getting in my way.
What else do most people, outside of tech, use computers for? There are web apps for basically everything now. Chromebooks have replaced 'real' computers in most schools and I'm really surprised that they haven't in most Offices. A lot of the windows PCs in offices end up being used as dumb terminals to run citrix or access web apps anyway.
The main complaint is: I need my Adobe. I need my Ableton. I need my Office.
Some people actually need the official Office products, but I think for most users it's not necessary, though they get really uptight if you suggest it's not.
Adobe is honestly one of the biggest problems I think, and the most likely to continue to cause an issue with adoption.
Ableton can sorta work, but it's not perfect, but I can see them starting to pour resources into it to get it working better or even a proper port, but I could be wrong.
To me reaper is more like a superior version of audacity than a competitor to things like Logic Pro, FL Studio, etc.
I can't tell about Ableton as i never used it, but Reaper is on a totally different planet compared to Audacity. I used Cakewalk Sonar (on Windows) for years until I discovered Reaper, and didn't look back. Then they made the Linux version which works like charm, although the Windows version runs extremely well with very low latency too using WINE. I'm all for using FOSS software, and it hurts me because Audacity is the "good guy" here, but it's really way way inferior compared to just everything else.
I did check (based on the comment above about Ableton not being the same as Reaper in terms of how it's used) - and see that Bitwig (which is more like Ableton) does support Linux (not sure how well, but it looks like it's officially supported). But people who have Ableton specific plugins may not be able to use it, IDK.
I do feel like Reaper was more for "live recording" sessions as opposed to Midi sequencing and electronic production, but that was just based on my small experience. I'm sure it's good for both, just a different work flow.
While on my Linux computer I consistently can immediately start using the system once I've logged in.
Thankfully I recently switched jobs to one where I'll be 100% linux.
Remove the pinned ads for apps once, never open the widgets, shut down every night so updates are transparent.
Sure Microsoft could make a nicer product. But it doesn't really affect users in their day-to-day.
At work, I opted for a mac due to how terrible the windows options were. But macos itself fought me all the way so the way to be happy at work was to replace finder, to replace the dock with a taskbar, and to rebind the keys, so that everything acted like linux/windows so that I can get my job done without falling in love with apple. To me that was simplicity - the simplicity of not having to relearn for no reason.
At home, I no longer dual-boot because I vm. Now Linux and Windows cooperate. And the linux got less exotic. Debian: something I can trust, that gets out of my way, and changes slowly.
But I'm also loving the truenas system I set up because it and freebsd take that simplicity to the next level.
In both places, unix tools that go with me, so I am in my natural place everywhere. Basically, tmux, emacs, fzf, eza, and a bash/zsh config.
Wholeheartedly agree. Debian has won the distro wars in my opinion. Their massive effort in safety and not breaking things means I can use stable as a "it just works" tool and focus on my actual work/fun.
If not, run apt-get build dep vlc, apt-src the package, make the changes and debuild it.
macOS is close too, but there’s a couple of painful points. Some basic windows management (solved by rectangle), iCloud doing too many things, and too much locking down for “security”.
• The tiling is clunky, and underneath it's still GNOME, my #1 most hated Linux desktop.
• systemd-boot is clunky, does not play well with others, does not dual boot well at all, and it needs a huge ESP yet does not supply tooling to resize the ESP -- and Gparted can't resize FAT32 partitions as small as the typical ESP.
• It replaces Snap with Flatpak, which is not an improvement in any meaningful way: the only advocates who bleat that it's more open don't understand what the word means, and architecturally, OStree is a Lovecraftian horror.
• The installer is poor and could not handle using an existing `/home` partition when I first tried it (although that did get fixed). It is co-developed with Elementary, which is remarkable because the Elementary one worked better. They'd be better off learning what openness really means and working with Calamares instead.
• In summary, it shows many of the defects you'd expect from a distro designed by a hardware manufacturer: poor installation, poor handling of dual boot, poor handling of existing partitions, and poor handling of being put on an existing machine, especially an older one.
I find its advocates don't dual boot, don't use older kit, don't do complex partitioning, and so don't notice its defects and are unmoved because the problems do not affect them.
Gracefully handling interop and existing tech is one of the things Linux does best, far better than the BSDs for instance, and it is exactly where Pop OS falls down.
What makes you say this?
Git is a Lovecraftian horror.
QED.
I mean, this is the stuff of jokes:
Or
https://x.com/agnoster/status/44636629423497217
"git gets easier once you get the basic idea that branches are homeomorphic endofunctors mapping submanifolds of a Hilbert space."
I rsync my home directory, at least the subdirectories that matter to me, to my NAS and have scripts to do the inverse on a new config. A lot of what is important to me is either in my Dropbox directory, or in git(hub|lab) repositories. I don't have much else that concerns me generally on my local system.
I appreciate what Pop has done above/beyond Gnome, and looking forward to Cosmos, even if it may be a while.
> I appreciate what Pop has done above/beyond Gnome
As it happens, as far as GNOME goes, I agree with you!
I like GUIs. I like WIMPs. I am adept at managing my own windows, apps, and files, thanks. I like a desktop that makes it easy for me to manage it as I wish.
GNOME is not. GNOME is a desktop inspired by smartphones and tablets, and it hides window management and app switching as much as possible. No buttons for minimise/maximise. No visual list of windows or apps, unless summoned with a keystroke or a mysterious ambiguous keyword ("Activities") now replaced with an inscrutable symbol.
GNOME is a desktop for people who don't manage windows and who live in a few maximised ones all the time. I do not, so I don't want that.
Pop tries to take that and turn it into a tiling environment, with smart automatic window placement. I don't want that -- I know where I want my windows, thanks -- but I appreciate that they tried and I think as a result it's better than GNOME which tries to make the whole issue go away.
But I tried it, and I wouldn't use it from choice.
It also doesn't have a reliable backup system included (rsync is not reliable; backups should use snapshots) and you can't roll back system updates if something breaks (which will happen). Bluetooth, audio and suspend/resume still don't work consistently.
Linux isn't all bad but if you expect things to Just Work you'll be sorely disappointed.
You can create a distro that do all these things well. But that would require coordination across the board and result in something close to Android or Chromebooks.
> Bluetooth, audio and suspend/resume still don't work consistently.
That's a hardware problem. Most manufactures don't bother building drivers for linux or releasing the specifications for their devices.
You can't do rally without knowledge in cars. Linux for the most part is raw computing so having some computer knowledge is a necessity.
Been playing around with Fedora Silverblue/Kinoite though, and watching bugs get fixed instead of working around them is surprisingly refreshing.
Curious, do you have a Windows host and Linux guest(s)? Or the other way around?
I currently have Linux as my primary with a Windows guest OS for when I need it (e.g. Office - I actually think Excel is great - or if I'm doing any Win32/C++ dev). But, I'm thinking of doing it the other way around on my next PC.
I just fullscreen the linux VM and it feels native for all the non-3D tasks I do with it. Even media viewing is a breeze.
That is what I have been doing since hardware virtualization became mainstream.
When I made my linux vm, I actually just took a real linux system's drive and told vmware to just use the drive as-is.
So, it was really convenient to no longer have to deal with driver nonsense, while retaining the original disk.
What's the current best virtualisation software on Windows in your opinion?
I tried searching online for this. And quickly realised that highly ranked sites targeting Windows users are quite low quality.
My personal rank is
vmware
virtualbox
qemu
I never tried hyper-v by itself. vmware actually can use hyper-v as a hypervisor if its enabled (as you need it when using WSL), but its inferior to using vmware's own solution, as I end up with weird networking behavior. it does work though.
I think on linux qemu may be the best, but on windows it is rough. I think vmware just has better video technology and better integration technology, such that its easy to copy-paste files, share clipboards, full screen etc.
Working for a threat mitigation company, I built KDE actual with Brew on my company-issued Macbook. Admittedly that was masochism. We didn't use Brew for anything; we didn't do any development at all on our laptops. Fast forward. I transferred to the threat intel team; we did some work in VMs on our laptops, still no Brew. We got bought.
New overlords wanted to swap spit / infect themselves with that threaty DNA so loaned me to their prod team. They did all their development in Brew, and deployed to cloudy Linux. They said "use Brew, be like us" and I said no way I am doing that, because my laptop touches bad shit; everything needs to be isolated; loan me a different laptop. But no can do. So I used the devops runbook (and submitted edits!) to build the deployment environment in VMs on my laptop. Prod didn't take kindly to this and threw me back. Left shortly thereafter for $reasons.
But not before I made a runbook for the threat team. Some months later heard through the grapevine that the threat team had been tasked with red teaming the actual deployed system which prod was responsible for and that the pwnage was epic.
The moral is obvious: your security team shouldn't be the only team eating dog food.
What apps did you use to accomplish this?
> Why doesn’t a great MacBook alternative exist?
I really don't understand this question. Is the author seriously suggesting that MacBooks are objectively the best laptops for any use case and using something else just isn't an option? Am I taking crazy pills?
The worst part of them is macOS, and I hope that either Asahi Linux can get all of the hardware working correctly or the other laptop manufacturers can get their act together. Unfortunately, I suspect the former is more likely than the latter...
There is a decent minority of people for whom USB-A eventually stops working and requires a reboot to restore.
The dongle doesn't matter. The dock doesn't matter. The device doesn't matter. Software updates do not fix it. The thread on it is 40+ pages when Apple closes it and then another 40+ page thread on it reappaears.
The problem is an OS problem. I can pinpoint precisely the OS update that caused it. Apple does not care and will not fix it.
Fine, I get it. So I left for Linux and never looked back.
My company’s mostly Windows and the peripherals issued are all brand new and are all usb-a. We Mac weirdos have to dongle constantly or not use them. Even the non-Apple major brand Bluetooth wireless earbuds they issue have a usb-a plug on the end of the charging cable for the case.
Logitech recently released an updated version of my mouse, the G Pro Superlight 2, and the damn thing still ships with a USB-A dongle.
With how many ports modern motherboards often ship with, I would think they could at least split the difference and give me 1/2 USB-C and 1/2 USB-A. but nope, my 2 year old motherboard only has 1 USB-C port on the back and a dozen USB-A. Then at least we would have a path forward.
Huh? I wish. The thing is periodically blocked throughout the night on my pihole as it continues to send network requests even after I click the "sleep" button in the apple menu.
Microsoft is willing to sell you an ARM-based PC if you like. Qualcomm's efforts aren't quite up to Apple Silicon's par, but they aren't terrible either.
Of course, if you are looking to put Linux on a PC I can definitely understand why Microsoft wouldn't be your first thought for your hardware vendor. It's a weird time we live in, if you remember (or are unfortunately stuck in) 90s Slashdot mindsets.
The RMA experience in other countries may differ to Australia, but it meant my team were without a dev spec'd laptop in total of close to a month across the whole team. They had to use off the shelf laptops and use a VDI for computational taxing workloads while waiting for a replacement device.
Throw in how ordinary the support process was with Microsoft, e.g., no phone contact number, only email, correspondance takes 1-2 days to start and the back and forth taking another few hours each way. We wasted a lot of time on these devices and the bullshit Microsoft support process.
Devs are now split between Lenovo ThinkPads and MacBooks now depending on their wants and needs. I've never seen a failure record like what we had with the Surfaces as we have with any other hardware provider.
Yet it's still fast enough to do development on it, never mind more mundane stuff like web browsing or watching movies. I'm not at all an Apple fan, but when people say that M* silicon is almost magic, they're not wrong.
So, why doesn’t a great MacBook alternative exist? It’s a valid question.
We need a lot of trust-busting in general, but including among computer vendors.
The situation will likely continue until the availability of ARM-based ThinkPads, etc.
I think Dell has would have a chance to be great but they do lots of plasticky and heavy stuff.
As I understand, the author’s main motive to try alternative operating systems is his frustration with mainstream operating systems, a lack of control and understanding so the speak.
The fallacy of that is that instead of encountering a few significant problems with a mainstream OS, now the author has to experience a death by thousand cuts: hundreds of small issues, a missing driver there, a DPI incompatibility here, and now they spend more time fixing these issues than they spend time charging their laptop two more minutes because a weather widget decided to make a web request. I’m not saying those issues are negligible, I already said “significant”, but our perception of an open and hackable OS saves us time might as well be a myth.
If you like hacking, more power to you. But, if you want to get things done, focus on those scenarios. See how well you can do your job and how much you are hindered on each OS.
Not a MacOS fan myself, but I find this kind of hiraeth (missing a place that doesn’t exist[1]) a sign of being distracted.
Windows machines infected by corporate also have crippling I/O speeds. I have a fun example at a customer where even running a Linux VM on the same machine will give 10x compile speed, and something like 100x git operation speeds than the same operations on the host...
If you need it in a corporate setting, Lenovo ships both Fedora and Ubuntu on their thinkpads, with certified hardware support. Someone running Gentoo or Arch Linux are sure to burn many hours on the machine itself which they may or may not enjoy, but you don't have to go that route.
It's not too hard to be on well-supported hardware either - people pick from a handful of laptops to run macOS, so it doesn't seem to unreasonable to also pick the machine for Linux. Think of it as being somewhere in between macOS "runs here only" and Windows "well it came with it" when it comes to having to select your machine.
It's weird that they're mixing ReFS into it, as NTFS is not at all the problem. It feels like they're either using this as a random opportunity to air ReFS again, or as a decoy to make it sound like the dev partition is a fancy special filesystem optimization, rather than the more likely reality of it being duct tape on their weird VFS layer, likely doing away with stuff like in-line Windows Defender I/O interception as all the usage warnings and corp group policy references would suggest to be the case...
It does seem like this is some sort of "trojan horse" (but not in a bad way) play for ReFS. But I'm not sure it is for sinister reasons: Encouraging Developers to use ReFS for their main development partition is a good way to encourage lots of free app compatibility testing on top of ReFS and suss out the minor bugs in applications that assume all Windows runs solely on NTFS. It seems like a play to increase reliance on the VFS layer and its abstractions and further get away from code assuming NTFS specifics.
My personal laptop is ArchLinux and it definitely took longer to set up than macOS would have, but it’s been just as rock solid since. In fact, perhaps ironically, I’ve had more problems with my work MacBook Pro than I have with my personal laptop running Linux:
- various USB and Thunderbolt hubs not working correctly
- multiple monitors, and macOS forgetting which screen is which
- screen flicker of a older LCD (it’s the screen that’s shit, but still, it doesn’t flicker in Linux)
- literal kernel panics coming out of sleep. Turns out it didn’t like a USB DAC
I don’t think I’ve had a missing driver problem with Linux in something like 20 years.
Your mileage might vary but this old meme that “Linux is buggy and has missing drivers” hasn’t been true in two decades.
So why do people seem to spend more time hacking at Linux?
The answer is probably just selection bias: those who want to tinker will generally gravitate towards a platform that lets them tinker. But that doesn’t mean that you need to be a tinkerer to use Linux.
I also find it misleading to claim that Arch Linux is "rock solid", just look at the news to see the amount of "manual intervention needed" listed. I love Linux and especially Fedora and OpenSUSE, but it still has its issue that make me sigh and say "ok... I'll just get windows".
If you have a GTX 1080. For everyone else that has moved on from an 8 year old graphics card, they won't run into that particular issue. Hence some people reporting a rock solid experience with Arch Linux.
Arch is stable. But I agree that its UX isn’t aimed at non-technical people.
Windows, for example, is a much easier user experience but it’s not any more stable for it.
Generally when one says “rock solid” they mean “stable”
There are trade offs you have to make regardless of what OS you’re running.
https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/all/nvidia...
https://forums.tomshardware.com/threads/gtx-1080-no-display-...
https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/geforce/forums/geforce-graphics...
Yeah homebrew exists on macOSbut it’s not part of the base install, let alone official Apple product. The App Store on both Mac and Windows sucks. Not just in the availability of software but also even just raw install performance (they’re slower than pacman + Arch mirrors). Worse still, Windows and macOS still normalise googling for software and then manually downloading and installing it.
So if Arch isn’t “rock solid” because every 6 months or so (though, honestly, it's been more like once every 3 years for me) you need to be slightly more careful doing a full system update, then Windows and macOS are positively primitive by your same benchmark.
To be clear, I’m not a Linux fanboy by any measure, but it’s literally the concept of package management that pushed me towards modern distributions like SuSE and Arch and one of the biggest annoyances I have with Windows and macOS.
Sometimes I think that desktop Linux users get so used the background noise of system maintenance that they forget that they’re even doing it.
I say this as an ex heavy Linux desktop user. Distributions I used for a considerable period of time include both Ubuntu and Gentoo. I’ve seen the spectrum. But this is just ludicrous.
Bluetooth never worked until recently either but I’ve never wanted to use Bluetooth on a laptop until wireless earphones were the norm so never missed BT functionality.
I rarely game on Linux but never had an issue with graphics card drivers. I will admit that I’ve been exceptionally lucky in that regard though, because radios and graphics do seem to be the rough edges.
These days with everything going USB, support in Linux has become child’s play. If a device presents itself as a USB standard rather than a proprietary protocol operating over USB, then Linux will handle it with ease.
So basically 2004 isnt unrealistic. I’m sure if I were to buy hardware that was tested to run on Linux (much like macOS users have to) then I’d not have had even the WiFi and BT issues.
edit:
just to add, I'd been running Linux since the 90s. I remember having to recompile the kernel if you wanted a new driver. I remember the migration to ELF. I used to love Windows 2000 and that was my daily driver but XP pre-service pack 2 sucked bad. It had double the memory and CPU footprint of 2000, and (in my opinion at least) had worse defaults. So it was XP that pushed me to run Linux as my primary daily driver. First with Slackware on a PC. But then when I got a laptop at around 2004 -- bought because I started getting DJ bookings with Ableton Live -- I tried various Linux distros before landing on SuSE (a vastly underrated platform!) and SuSE was rock solid for me for years.
ndiswrapper
For my use, sure I break it. But I broke Macs too and never had a stable environment there either.
This was me for a decade. Since I left, any time I check in on Linux it’s like “how did I live like this?!” I was absolutely blind to how many little things I had to do to keep it happy, or how often I was avoiding using my computer ways that should have been fine but that bugs had trained me not to. I still have to force myself to remember drag-n-drop for anything other than moving files around is an option, and will probably work fine and do something reasonable on the platform I use now—though to be fair Windows also helped train me to avoid that particular thing, not just Linux. Took me more than a year to stop feeling anxious when I just closed my laptop without first doing some manual dance to be sure it went to sleep.
That's probably true, but it's true of everything; the stupid papercuts that Linux users are used to are different from the stupid papercuts that Windows users are used to, but it is not clear to me that they're worse.
The first Ubuntu lts was 2006.
This timeframe sounds about right to me - that's when things started to get better than windows hw support in some sense.
In 2003 I was using a Pentium III Dell laptop with Linux (2.4) on it. Everything worked, including wifi.
> My personal laptop is ArchLinux and it definitely took longer to set up
I think the honest way to calculate maintenance time is to amortise setup time over the years your laptop is in active duty.
That becomes like at least five hours per year for me. My Linux installations usually live for 2-3 years, and ArchLinux typically takes 1-2 evenings to set up:
Partly because I enjoy it and want to explore if I should switch file system, login manager, terminal emulator, window manager, etc.
Partly because I want to maintain my sysadmin katas.
Partly because this step isn’t automatic, so even if I want “same as before”, some hardware is different, and installing software is still manual (I’m choosing NixOS next time).
> those who want to tinker will generally gravitate towards a platform that lets them tinker
My Linux is always in some state of disassembly. My MacBook always has working audio and video.
My secret? I only buy hardware that's known to work well with Linux, mostly thinkpads, and I really don't do anything on the machine beyond coding and web browsing + some light CAD, so I never get anything with GPUs.
I think setup can be automated further.
My latest thinkpad had a GPU.
Take this Fujitsu laptop, provided by my employer.. it's just Intel inside for everything, and a Linux distro was installed without a hitch and has been working problem-free for years. And it's always like that unless the hw is unusual. After all I've been trying this since 1992, back then there was a bit of manual tinkering involved.
Or this NEC-branded super-light laptop I bought in Japan.. same story. Install and forget. Zero issues. Heck, every developer at work doing their job stuff and development on various Linux computers, except for a couple of guys using Linux under Windows.
I can access it just fine, no VPN, no DPI-prevention tools.
For years I've just pushed in Debian with the unfree packages and let it do its hardware sensing stuff and it works, except at one job, where they had a lot of security installation and configuration in pre-made bash scripts for initial setup that were tested on Ubuntu so I used that. It was worse, mainly due to snapd being an annoying turd, but not as bad as Windows.
Multimonitor just works, automatic fan control just works, Bluetooth just works. It's been Toshibas and Lenovos and Samsungs.
From my point of view mainstream Linux distros have been solid for fifteen years or so.
Either way, my recommendation is that you prepare for an exit out of the abyssal misery that is Windows and then make the jump.
MacOS is an objectively incompetent development OS, if you only count what is possible with what Apple provides. Even if you do consider 3rd party (brew, nixpkgs, colima) it remains a complete fucking mess. Even Windows supports native [Windows] containers. Linux containers in WSL were flawless last I used them (a few years back). And this isn't a critique of colima, that it is a tireless and thankless project that does what it can to pave over the utter incompetence of Apple. I have since been allowed to use Linux, as the sole person trusted to self-serve IT. I see people in Slack struggling with something new in MacOS weekly.
Sure, the situation has improved a lot, but they still require compromises of not having everything supported like on desktop PCs, even when buying from Linux OEMs, my experience hasn't been that great.
For a brief period, netbooks seemed to be on track, but then they suffered multiple attacks that wiped their market segment. First it was Microsoft with their price change for Windows XP, followed by tablets, hybrid laptops.
And now those same OEMs, would rather sell ChromeOS and Android devices, than a full blown GNU/Linux, **BSD experience.
With ARM revolution going on PC devices, something that many might not be yet aware, is that Pluton is also part of the story, adding to UEFI, TPM, and pleotora of other integration issues.
So I just run Linux on a VM, first it was Virtual Box, VMware, nowadays it is either WSL or Virtualization framework.
Missing them, not really, for me it was always more as a cheap way to have UNIX, my favourite one was Solaris, followed by UNIXes with a soul, like Irix, NeXTSTEP, ...
The biggest change is that Windows just stopped caring. The UI is inconsistent and messy. It ceased to be an improvement over Linux a long time ago.
Crapware is also another problem. Windows had this problem since the 90s, but it's now worse with Microsoft itself pushing for them. It's the only major desktop operating system to have this problem.
Worst of all, it's a real pain to use. People avoiding it are no longer doing so out of abstract principles. It's just so bad that any person with self-respect wouldn't want to use it. From the constant resetting of user preferences to obnoxious banners and full screen nags, Microsoft is making it very clear that they have no respect at all for the users.
With modern Windows, users are expected to work for Windows and not the other way around. Any data it touches also becomes the property of Microsoft. Or at least they act as if that's the case.
Linux is slowly but steadily maturing. Also, end users are moving away from PCs, meaning those who still use one have a high likelihood of being a power user. I think FOSS desktops are more relevant than they were a decade ago.
What does mature mean ? Unless you mean an entertainment or gaming device, I find for real computing, Linux/BSD is 100x better than Windows or MACs.
For entertainment a TV, Cell Phone, tablet is a better choice.
I know a lot of poeple that don't own a computer nor feel a need to own one. They just use their phones for everything.
There’s a handful of edge cases where I’ll fire up the real Linux laptop, but between UTM and Parallels I can get a lot of real work done on the MacBook.
Tons of resources are poured into Linux development by private companies who effectively dictate what features get prioritized. These organizations aren't using Linux as a consumer desktop OS, they're using it for servers, supercomputers, embedded devices and other similar jobs. This is where all the investment goes, so features that support these use cases are by far the most polished.
I really don't get this either. Every laptop I've looked at has some wart somewhere - battery life, webcam, structural integrity, display, CPU, temperatures, speakers, IO, repairability (not that Macbooks are good here either).
Some of these things aren't even hard to get right. It's like laptop manufacturers just don't care.
But yes, it's hit or miss. My Dell M6800 'portable workstation' has an abysmal touchpad (really, what were they thinking?), but then, since it is way too heavy to actually reside on the lap, I use a mouse (which in any case is more precise) there. So the proper question is then, why did they bother with one at all?
Otoh, the cheap lenovo ThinkPad 11e has a surprisingly good one.
But that's not to say good non-mac laptops dont exist, nor that mac laptops are the best. I currently have an m1 mbp and an asus zephyrus g14 They're the same size and weight, but
+ the macbook has longer battery life, though this varies. sometimes they are equal at 5 hours, and they both can go to 10, but it is easier for the mac.
+ the macbook has a webcam, but also a minus, because i prefer to unplug an external one when not in use, and there are really great portable external ones that have gyros to follow you around.
- the macbook's display is worse, because of apple's insistence on these terrible glossy finishes
- needlessly sharp edges. this could be user error, but if they didnt design it that way it wouldnt be.
- I/O? the thing does not have usb A ports. now I need adapters and hubs.
- no nvidia graphics card. part of the worse battery life of the g14 is controlling when that graphics card is in use, but at least it has it, so that i can do certain creative & ai workloads.
- keyboard is just worse. and that's before getting into that macos has forced the keyboard to be worse by having 'option' and 'command' keys to be an obstacle for anyone who uses every other OS that isn't macos. With enough key interception and remapping I got it to act like linux but the keys are still named wrong
I never paid more than $500 for a refurbished model. I can choose which kind of screen I am going for never had any heating issues or driver issues with Linux.
I've had a MacBook at work, I could afford a framework or whatever when I wanted. But except gaming (don't care and better devices available) and AI/rendering (cloud cheaper in most cases) I don't see why the majority of people seems to think they need $2000 machines.
Seriously though, how much do you move with your development computer? I can't imagine being productive without at least two large screens and a fullsize keyboard and trackball anyways..
For some kind of work, I find the extra screen space very useful, but for other tasks it ends up being distracting.
Having a light, quiet laptop that keeps itself cool and has a long battery life is what makes it possible.
And when it's not enough, I can plug a single usb-c cable and have it charging, and connected to a keyboard, mouse, two screens, gigabit ethernet and speakers/headphones.
Most of the tools I use in Mac are cross platform and otherwise available in Linux. Many aren't completely UI/UX integrated even (VS Code, Brave Browser, etc). Many others are command line tools that are the same or easier with Linux.
What is it that you think a Macbook has that would be effectively lacking?
I bought a Framework laptop and a Macbook Air M2 at roughly the same time a couple of years ago. The difference in hardware quality is night and day. I think even if I used free cross platform software tools like the ones you mention, that would matter a lot to me.
It was an experience that taught me how little repairability means to me at this stage in life, which I guess is a little sad...
Sure, macbooks look good, but it's not the looks that make them great laptops.
The build quality is pretty good - particularly given I can tear it apart. The speakers are okay. The webcam and microphone are poor. The battery life is acceptable, but I trust that's at least in part Linux' fault. The fans ramp up more often than I'd like... it's certainly good for a Windows laptop, and I like the ethos, but it's not at all MacBook territory.
For context, the last MacBook I owned was a 2017 model, the one with the awful keyboard. Ironic, I know.
* /home on it's own partition (having it as a subvolume of btrfs did not work out well with reinstalls) -- saves me a lot of time with reinstalls
* docker works better (no need for an internal Linux VM, that is needed on macOS/windows)
* installing tools that i used sparingly is so much easier: Inkscape/ GIMP/ LibreOffice/ Audacity/ cloc/ ripgrep/ tig/ iotop/ htop/ DbBeaver
* i dont truly trust any big corp's binaries
* Firefox and Chromium/Thorium are solid browser options
* easy to install dev tool chains: package management and opensource secured supply chains are not an afterthought
* I feel since PipeWire and Wayland we come to a point were A/V "just works" for all my usecases
* being on a rolling distro now for some years, and it does sometimes mess up, but rarely (resinstalls are quick) -- i prefer it over OS version upgrades on macOS/windows
* i dont need an Apple ID, or hotmail account for ANYTHING and that keeps my blood from cooking
Sometimes you do need that app and I'd rather use AUR vs writing Nix.
Eventough I had issues with Windows not finding any drivers on my Lenovo. While OpenSuse had no problems at all ... which was a nice surprise for a change.
Open source software has to be installed with separate package managers like homebrew that don't properly integrate into the overall system like a distro package manager does. (it also requires the xcode toolchain which is a >1GB update every month or so)
Unfortunately, having a tiling WM when most apps don't expect it mean you run into all sorts of corner cases that the app developer didn't think of. No hope of resolution either.
macOS is fine, I use it for 10 years, know it well enough and have no windows/linux muscle memory anymore anyway. And if I would switch back, I would still stare at the same Alacritty with tmux and neovim.
In the past I was a full time user of KDE3/4 but I've used plenty of OpenBox, i3, sway et similia. In the last 8 years I ended up mostly on Mac, albeit I've installed Arch Linux on a 2015 Macbook Pro (and it was glorious).
Funnily enough, I realised I'm at that age where I'm working only on my desk, so I don't really need to waste lithium batteries for a device that's always plugged in. And I'm tired of the Macbook wasting CPU cycles and getting as hot as a volcano on proprietary crappy software I can't change.
Apple really needs to start hiring some software engineers; the hardware is pretty good but the OS is terribly bloated.
It's a shame we still don't have non-Apple decent laptops, I hope things will change thanks to the shift to Arm and cellphone makers (who did a pretty good job with the quality of some Android devices).
I have been tempted by the MacBooks, especially when on sale, but the closed nature and lack of repairability keeps me in check each time.
Framework + FreeBSD user here. It works great, although I had to replace the network card I originally bought with it for an older one.
Someone wrote a blog post about it too. Maybe I should also edit the Framework entry in the FreeBSD Wiki.
The trackpad is awful compared to the Macbook's. I keep zooming things that I'm trying to scroll. And the click is the kind where it's hinged at the top so you have to click at the bottom rather than anywhere. I tried switching to taps but those are far too sensitive and have no tactile feedback. And when I boot into Linux it's even worse, failing to interpret two finger scroll actions at all unless my fingers are perfectly aligned.
The screen is also... off. I was able to calibrate it with a colorimeter to look close to my Macbook, but it's still not quite right. It seems like the bright parts are a bit too bright for some reason which ends up being distracting.
Similar for the screen(s)... I mean, I have calibrated displays on my work and personal desks, and usually work docked, so my laptop use is generally casual content, email, forums, etc when traveling a few times a year.
The touchpad and screen has pretty much been the main two reasons I have been on mac laptops since 2010 or so. I'm just tired of the Windows and Apple games regarding locking things down, and would just prefer to have a Linux environment everywhere. The few key binding differences on Mac throw me off to this day, and I'm kind of over it all.
More here with details:
Zero issues so far and I have all the benefits of Apple hardware
The original free software concept: that _users_ of s/w can develop and maintain s/w for their use (and all other user's use), thus implementing what users want/need, instead of what will makes the most money; has largely been displaced by the "open" model of getting other people to do part of your s/w dev/debug to reduce costs and increase profits.
Like all powerful technologies, in the long run it's "success" is determined primarily by how much money it can make for the already outrageously wealthy...
daily driver has been a T, P or X series thinkpad running linux since ~2005/6.
although, fair notice, kde 6 is hot off the presses and it will take some time to reach kde 5 levels of stability.
Despite what Michal Sapka says, it was just the thing for me. In fact most of the drawbacks he mentions are advantages to me. Which is probably the point behind his article. I really like that my OS is not changing stuff with every update as even Linux vendors do now.
On the other side is the MacOS that has Preview which gives extensive possibilities to annotate and highlight PDF documents even if they are scans containing only jpgs inside.
https://apps.gnome.org/en-GB/Evince/
I realise it probably doesn't support some 'fancy' PDF stuff like signatures, but I don't use them.
I'm eagerly awaiting the day I can buy a high performance arm or riscv laptop and run Linux on it...
I totally agree with not trying UTM, it really isn't ready yet - I made the mistake of trying to use it on a work laptop for work, and ate a lot of time with various freezes... maybe in a few years it will be fine - dual boot is probably a better option, even more so once USBC display and intermal mics work.
Yes, those are the few things left that still don't work. I bet they will in another year.
So now, instead, I just type my password to begin with, and it's all gravy. I'd have to type it anyway.
There's also specific issues unrelated to Thinkpads, like bluetooth headphones microphones, Bose QC 35 II can't be used with mic over bluetooth, maybe Pipewire will improve this, maybe not, IDK.
Apart from Thinkpads, I also have a gaming desktop PC with an Nvidia RTX, I don't use Windows anymore, Steam, Proton, WINE, third-party launchers like Heroic work wonders for gaming, but I can't use Wayland at all, it's Xorg only (probably because of Nvidia drivers), otherwise it's flickering and crashes. And you can't screenshare whole screen easily in Wayland yet.
We're getting there and right now, I think I'm better off on GNU/Linux even with all these issues than with the enshittified Windows, but there's still a long way to go, things are moving slowly, and somethings the whole Linux community relies on unpaid work from one dude that delayed good bluetooth audio support by years because someone insulted him in a PR comment.
Gaming I don't even attempt on Linux, though I've met two or three people now who are convinced you can 100% do it these days with Wine-based platforms and the right drivers.
Docks, in my limited experience, are a shit show on any system. I use Lenovo's thunderbolt dock (the expensive one) with my X1 Carbon Gen 6. It mostly works. I've been having problems with HDMI lately, no idea why.
FWIW, I used to have a super duper high end MacBook from work. It had similar problems. :shrug:
Computers are hard. Could be worse, though, in alternate universes, major OSes never agreed on USB and other standards.
My ideal device would be a MacBook Air with a 100% functioning Linux - as in, audio, external displays, usb hubs, chargers etc just work. macOS is crapware and borderline a disgrace for the excellent hardware of the MacBook.
When freedom is at stake, some may sacrifice their lives on its altar, but worker bees will never sacrifice USB-C displays.
Yes, I am a zealot.