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> I've been using Linux for 28 years now and for a while it improved beyond all recognition, but it's getting very clunky again with all the bloat now.

Oh my this rings so true.

While some don't like systemd (which is fine, everyone's entitled to their own choices) I do like the more cohesive and consistent approach a lot.

But then my two uphill battles are:

- Xorg is still my go-to in spite of limitations Wayland aims to solve (colour management, heterogeneous multihead) but I can't for the life of me seem to be able to make it stable/reliable/usable.

- Pulseaudio was a debacle, so I used ALSA since like forever and could do great things with it. Trouble is some modern things expected become hard to impossible with just ALSA. Enter Pipewire, which conceptually sounds like a great thing but it is so obscure and underdocumented that I just can't wrap my head around it.

> No. It's a better UI in every way

That's very subjective. I prefer KDE Plasma.

Subjective indeed. I like Gnome Desktop's simplicity and straightforwardness.

See my comment above.

Although colleagues have earnestly described why they like GNOME, and demonstrated it, all I see is people who don't know how to use the existing, 35+ year old keyboard UI of Windows, or the simpler and only a few years younger one of NeXTstep/macOS.

I can't stand GNOME myself. It doesn't get out of my way. It wastes a tonne of precious vertical space on its wasted panel. Its app-switcher is poor. Its window management is atrocious, but then, I've met with and interviewed the dev team, and they don't manage windows. They switch between full-screen sessions instead. I'm looking at twin 27" screens right now, and I want to see 5 or 6 apps at once. GNOME obstructs that massively.

But it's trivial to configure macOS to be as minimal as GNOME. Dock to autohide, cmd+space for the app launcher, trackpad gestures to hop between full-screen apps. It's not how I work or want to, but it's easily achieved.

I am honestly boggling here.

Yesterday I upgraded Fedora Asahi 40 to 41 on my M1 MBA, and KDE is so bad I was reduced to laughter at its pathetic clunkiness. But then I am a documented KDE-hater ever since the days of KDE 2.0.

And GNOME, too, but at least it has the mercy of being pretty. Horribly confining and with an appalling keyboard UI, but it's pretty.

> KDE is so bad I was reduced to laughter at its pathetic clunkiness

We can all have our particular taste. I don't think KDE Plasma is "bad". I personally prefer KDE Plasma.

Is there a typo on there or are you being very meta in some way I can't follow?

Interesting, I loved KDE 1 when it came out... that was a couple of years ago, 1998 I think. I ran it on Slackware.

I see now that my comment was ambiguous.

I liked KDE 1.x a lot. I didn't love it, but it was a perfectly serviceable desktop for Linux and it was FOSS. All the other usable Linux desktops I'd seen before then were paid for, such as IXI X.Desktop.

When I say I've been a KDE hater since KDE 2 I meant that I liked KDE 1, but KDE 2 was a bit of a bloated mess. KDE 3 was much much worse and it's continued to turn into a parody of a bad implementation of the Windows 98 desktop -- the bad version, with IE4 embedded in the shell -- ever since.

Yeah, desktop environments are pretty bad on Linux. Window managers are where it’s at of course. I guess it is sort of unfortunate for people if they get the impression that Linux has bad UI because somebody decided a desktop environments should be the out-of-the-box experience.

There have been good desktops. GNOME 2 was basic and clunky but usable. I actually liked and still use Unity, which is as good as it's got so far IMHO, but it's undergoing bitrot now.

Xfce is perfectly fine and I'm happy with it but it could do with some streamlining and simplification in places. The workspace switcher is a bit silly and so a good example: rows are set in one place, columns separately in a different screen. Junk the separate start menu and app finder, because the whisker menu does that. Dashboard on by default. Docklike-taskbar present by default and either set it up as a better Win10 or Win11 clone, which it can do better than the original now, or lean in to the areas where it can do things others can't and set it up as a Mac/Unity-like setup or something different that MATE, Cinnamon, etc. can't do. And slap some pretty themes on it, with visible, grabbable window margins.

But the big names are all basically in death spirals now. Aside from Elementary OS, which is very very pretty but about as flexible as an iPad (i.e. not very) the only people making real efforts at looking good and working well are in China. Deepin is gorgeous in its way, UKUI and Kylin is equally so.

> The right way to use a Mac is not to fight it.

I've found that to be true on every OS I use. Customize as little as possible and things tend to work better and you will have better luck finding answers when something does break.

>All the professionals evangelising Linux in the 20th century have moved to Macs now.

>Your questions seem to me to be motivated by bias and conviction of faith, and it is misplaced, as any such fervent belief is.

Weird to accuse someone of conviction of faith while confidently claiming that all linux users switched to Mac and how Mac is the be-all end-all of computers. You're in a bubble if you think so, I can definitely tell you that.

You're arguing with one of the better writers for The Register, there.

I'm not much of a Linux person, but I have been using Macs since 1986 (as a developer), so I can attest to most of Mr. Proven's statements, irt to the MacOS.

>You're arguing with one of the better writers for The Register, there.

You're saying that like it should mean something. It's still the subjective opinion of a person. It holds no more or less value than the subjective opinion of another person. Being a journalist doesn't automatically make you the supreme authority on something, you're still just a professional opinionator (no offence), but that opinion can be different than other users.

>I have been using Macs since 1986 (as a developer)

That's an issue IMHO. Long term MacOS nerds are the ones who got used to all the quirks and can't see anything at fault as they molded themselves into he platform with age, developing muscle memory workarounds without realizing, so to them that status is perfection.

Meanwhile, new users to the platform will see things differently.

> It's still the subjective opinion of a person.

It depends on who "the person" is. In this case, it's a seasoned professional, who uses both operating systems regularly, at a fairly advanced level, and also explains this stuff to others, while being held to journalistic standards.

Also, The Register tends to hire pretty sharp folks.

> Meanwhile, new users to the platform will see things differently

That's always the case. Unless you are an invested user of a platform, it's likely to be uncomfortable. When folks ask me if they should get an Apple device, as opposed to an Android/Windows PC, they are often surprised, when I say they should probably get what they are already used to.

Truth be told, there's plenty of good in all UI (including CLI), and people get very efficient, using their UI of choice. I find that it's usually best, if they stay on it.

Having been an Apple developer for decades, I have been absolutely slathered in bile from Apple-haters. It seems to be pathological. I assume that's because of the "snottiness" of Apple's approach. It's actually deliberate, and part of their branding. It can get annoying, but I know why they do it. Personally, I don't feel that way, despite being invested in the Apple ecosystem, and I don't hate other approaches, either. I managed a multi-platform development team for a couple of decades. It was not conducive to effectiveness, for me (or any of my employees) to be jingoistic about platform choices.

>it's a seasoned professional

Professional in what? I'm also a professional. Is my opinion not just as valid? Is MKBHD also a professional in this sense?

>who uses both operating systems regularly

I think many people on the planet, including children, can use two or more operating systems regularly and provide opinions on them, it's not a rare skill or something that requires academic degrees. Is their opinion not just as valid?

>while being held to journalistic standards

A lot of events proved that "journalistic standards" mean very little, especially in the modern era of online publications being dependent on click ad-revenue. For example look at the disconnect between critics ratings of movies and audience ratings, or between car reviewers and car owners. Similarly, Microsoft and Apple make OSs for users, not for professional critics or journalists.

It's still just someone's subjective opinion on an OS, not something numerically and logically quantifiable as being the right opinion. It's not like it's a debate with Linus Torvalds on the correct implementation of mutexes.

> I have been absolutely slathered in bile from Apple-haters.

What does this have to do with me? What's with this victimization attitude on people lately? Should I feel guilty or sorry about something some other random people said something mean to you in connection to this topic? It's a conversation between you and me, I don't care about what others did.

> Long term MacOS nerds are the ones who got used to all the quirks and can't see anything at fault as they molded themselves into he platform with age, so to them everything is perfect. Meanwhile, new users to the platform will see things differently.

An easier way to phrase that is "people have confirmation bias." You clearly exhibit this in your post. New users depends on if they've used other desktop environments or not. I'm confident that someone who has never used a desktop computer before would be more productive on a Mac. Had they used Windows, they may be confused.

I could not agree with you more.

I am replying to you from my third mac. I got it less than a year ago and it is the first Mac I have used since 2010 or so. Sure I am getting used to it but it does surprise me how different some things are from my typical XFCE/Win10 environments. I know unintuitive is the wrong word but at least for my own intuition, it is unintuitive.

Thank you very much! :-)

It is very much a thing of modern times to be lectured on, for instance, desktop design, when I am fairly confident I've used more different desktop environments than the person accusing me is even aware exists.

(I would estimate I've used 35-40 different desktops across over a dozen or more GUI OSes. The first I owned myself was an Acorn Archimedes with RISC OS 2, an environment far weirder than any hardcore Linux advocate could even imagine… a default editor with two separate independently-navigable cursors (source and destination), three mouse buttons all heavily used, and no permanently on-screen menus of any kind (only context menus).

Ah well. So it goes.

>It is very much a thing of modern times to be lectured on for instance, desktop design

Where did I lecture you on that?

> when I am fairly confident I've used more different desktop environments

Does using more desktop environments makes one's opinion on a specific desktop design more valuable than everyone else's? It's not like you're designing them, you're just using them, just like me and millions of other people.

>than the person accusing me is even aware exists.

Care to point out what exactly did I accuse you of?

I didn't. Turn your paranoia down. I never mentioned you once and none of this is specific or particular to you.

But, to answer one point: yes, I do think that broad experience of lots of different desktop GUIs does qualify someone for comparing them, and for identifying particular strengths or weaknesses of particular ones.

>I never mentioned you once and none of this is specific or particular to you.

Who were you referring to in this statement?

>than the person accusing me is even aware exists

> confidently claiming that all linux users switched to Mac

I did not say that. I did not say anything resembling that. It's an absurd claim.

What I said was:

«All the professionals evangelising Linux in the 20th century have moved to Macs now»

Which followed, and was in the context of, the sentence:

«reading other people's writing about it and where possible talking to them.»

In other words: the professional Linux advocates -- that means, the people who were advocating and recommending Linux to non-Linux users –- that I read and knew and sometimes have talked to -- switched.

Not people in the Linux biz talking to other people in the biz.

People like author Charlie Stross, who is occasionally cstross on here, who for years wrote the Linux column in the UK edition of Computer Shopper and was as such perhaps the most visible UK tech journalist writing about and recommending Linux.

Or Neal Stephenson, author of the seminal "In the Beginning was the Command Line", which if you have not read recently you need to.

Here's a free copy.

https://web.stanford.edu/class/cs81n/command.txt

Mac users now.

Context is important and must be considered. You apparently did not.

> and how Mac is the be-all end-all of computers.

I didn't say that either.

It's got a damned good case to be the most sophisticated general-purpose desktop/laptop there's ever been, though, and it's held that place pretty much the entire century so far.

Tastes differ. Not everyone likes it. That's fine. I am not saying everyone should.

But I'm saying that if you read the widest possible range of OS and UI discussion and debate, there is a fairly clear consensus that what was Mac OS X and is now macOS is, while flawed, about the best there is.

>«All the professionals evangelising Linux in the 20th century have moved to Macs now»

In other words: the professional Linux advocates -- that means, the people who were advocating and recommending Linux to non-Linux users –- that I read and knew and sometimes have talked to -- switched.

I'm sorry, but as a professional journalist surely you must know the contradiction you've introduced here with the difference between "all Linux evangelists moved to Macs now" and "all those I know and read of switched" because those two statements are not the same thing.

One statement deals in absolutes("all Linux evangelists switched to Mac") and can be supported by sources if so, the other is a opinion based on your bubble ("all that I know switched to Mac") which is just your opinion that's different than the situation in my bubble and holds just as much weight.

You are still misinterpreting my words.

I said, and spelled out and clarified:

All *I KNOW*.

If you can falsify my argument by producing examples of people who recommended Linux as a general-purpose end-user OS before Mac OS X existed and did so publicly, in published or recorded work, and who have not switched to macOS since and persist in recommending Linux in preference to it, then I will concede your point.

I am not being confrontational for the sake of it. I think you are misinterpreting me and arguing with something I didn't say.

>container and macos

docker assumes there is a linux kernel underneath, not a mac 'unix' kernel... so you end up having to have, just like on Windows, a vm running a linux kernel to run a docker container

Yes, I am fully aware of that.

But I am told -- I do not work with this stuff myself -- that if you simply install Docker Desktop, or something equivalent, it just happens, invisibly and out of sight, zero intervention and zero maintenance.

Which is the general Mac story, even now.

Yes and for reasons I was running an x86 SQL Server Docker image on my ARM Mac and that just works

Wow! :-)

Although if you can find ARM images, make the effort. I stay away from anything x86 via Rosetta as I don't want the slowdown.

It didn’t need to be performant. I was in between jobs for 3 weeks and I reviewing C#/EF Core. I hadn’t programmed in C# in over four years

Luckily quite a lot of .NET teams are using Postgres or MySQL nowadays but yeah.

It’s a different environment compared to what it was 5 years ago.