I know the feeling. I'm forced to use a Mac laptop for work, and it's really made me appreciate Linux.
I’m proficient with more or less every modern desktop and can get by on any of any of them if I have to, but being happy doing so is another matter.
Have you seen https://hyprland.org?
Having used KDE plasma, I am convinced that there is no other DE that has more knobs to make things exactly how you want it. Though I never liked the global constantly changing bar on the top in Macs anyway so can't comment on whether KDE can be made to do that.
As mentioned elsewhere in the thread the issue with its global menu bar is the sheer number of apps that don’t populate it. Even the same exact Electron apps that populate the menubar on macOS don’t bother under Linux. Over half the time it sits up there empty.
Why is there no macOS clone for Linux? Since there is not, maybe now would be a good time for a project to start.
For me, Toshy's out of the box config make it pretty painless to switch between MacOS and Asahi on the same machine.
Probably better to select and contribute to one rather than starting your own
The global menubar is the biggest difference, but there’s also a pervasive difference in philosophy throughout the desktop; where macOS will have power user functionality tucked away in a menu or hidden behind a modifier key (progressive disclosure), GNOME will just remove the function altogether.
Pantheon is very similar, except dressed up in an (admittedly pretty) skeumorphic theme that reminds me of OS X 10.9 Mavericks.
That’s not to say it doesn’t have its charms, I use it after all, but it’s not a Mac OS analogue in any way.
I used Gnome daily for a really long time. Gnome 3 is actually pretty good these days but it took a while to get there.
Aqua is still pretty solid but some of the shine is starting to fade.
I have all the Apple Intelligence stuff turned off yet I got a pop up ad in the OS for “Image Playground”
Apple’s solution? Turn off Image Playground in Screen Time settings. Ridiculous.
Not really; I have it set up on my box so that I can press Alt + U as a shortcut for home and Alt + O as a shortcut for End (and many other such shortcuts; it's fully customizable), and this works system-wide in every application and even on the raw Linux console without X11/Wayland running.
1. I have the same desktop layout every time, from left to right: slack desktop app, a two column wide emacs window, a 90col wide terminal. I also have two chrome windows--1 which is the same width as the slack window and overlays it, and another the same width as the emacs window which overlays that one. The problem is every single time I wake my laptop from sleep the terminal window has shrunk to fewer columns and I have to drag it back to full width.
2. Sometimes the external monitor support bugs out. I don't know if that's my hub ("pluggable" something or other) or the OS or both.
Then of course there's all the warts of homebrew, and the fact that it's not easy to build some software..
However, the performance of the Apple silicon is nothing short of astonishing. I'm curious about the AMD chips that ship in the new Framework as I look towards an upgrade to my personal laptop, but it's basically between that and a new M4 Max Macbook. Never thought I'd see the day.. will probably wait a year or so before deciding but it's interesting that Apple is even a contender.
I run IntelliJ and a browser, and mostly call it a day.
Personal code: Vim (more recently, zed) and a browser.
Nix is also availible for Mac, but I'll warn you that it may ruin Macports and brew for you forever.
it’s not flawless, but its strengths outweigh the weaknesses.
i still need homebrew for casks, but that’s fine.
When you start wanting to replicate experiments, or run software you find on github, then you will learn the pain of ubuntu 20.04. or 22.04. Otherwise you can have the fun experience of most linuxes in the mid to late 90s where you are compiling arbitrary libraries to bootstrap some other library so you can find out where the package you actually want to compile's make file fails at.
Give me a rolling release distro or a source based distro any day.
ninja: all of this should be read as me saying:
"Why yes, i do in fact have several machines and VMs of ubuntu server installs, ranging all the way from 16.04 to 24.04; because that's the only way i can guarantee i can run any software posted on the internet."
Have not had that "problem" to this extent on any other generation of machine. Albeit, my current work is not particularly CPU limited.
Mine has 64GB. I usually max RAM, and get about double the SSD I think I need. Knowing that at a minimum, I will use my latest laptop, and 2-3 older models around the house and my quick-carry bag for convenience, at any given time.
Beyond convenience, the old laptops are continually synced, as multiple onsite backups. So I get great long term value from consistently choosing higher end RAM/SSD specs.
But in this case good specs for the M1 has saved me money via an unprecedentedly long upgrade schedule.
I am feeling more pressure to update two old x86 laptops to M1, than any pressure to upgrade my M1. Never had this upside-down problem before. Apple did just a great job with that M1.
Last week I spent a whole day trying to resurrect a Windows 10 IoT LTSC because of a corrupt WMI repository. It crashed out software and to the client it looks like our software is bad where it is the OS that is bad. Client's automation was down until a replacement was sent out and installed.
I've had to implement number of software changes because of buggy Windows drivers. From Intel NICs to touch screen HID messaging. Microsoft talks about backwards capability but it is subjective and only truly bound to the most used applications. Enabling tablet mode on Windows will break their API.
There has never been a Linux system I couldn't resurrect and keep working. With Windows, it is always re-install the OS and all applications. Even the laptop I'm writing this on is the same OS installation that has passed between 4 different computers. You cannot get that quality of OS installation from Microsoft.
Took me a month to convince IT to reinstall Windows on my work laptop. Microsoft's update broke the QA VM environment and would freeze with an infinite loop. Uninstalling the update nor repairing the OS did anything to fix their issues.
Even today I experienced Ctrl+X is broken and does not work in Visual Studio for the git comment text box entry.
If we were talking about a networked DOS machine, Windows XP, or even classic MacOS this lack of updates would be more serious… but niche UNIX workstations? Not as certain they’re still targets.
That said, my favorite Unix.
even windows is better due to wsl.
Additionally, in certain industries Linux support is non-existent, with many applications developed exclusively for Windows and no viable alternatives available. Running a VM is another PITA due to driver issues. Wine ditto.
In the end, I found that running WSL2 provided a more manageable experience. I feel that Microsoft really hit the nail with WSL for productivity. Apparently, you can even run graphical applications from WSL although I don't have a lot of experience with that.
I still prefer it to Windows but (at least for me) it is inferior to a properly setup Linux box with stuff like a titling WM. But if I would to recommend someone a computer just for browsing, email, etc. then a Mac would be my top choice.
1. I can manage them in Git 2. GUIs change all the time. With configs you have a much higher probability that some solution you googled will still work even when it is a couple of years old.
They have just invested too much of their ego into knowing the arcane commands (and typing them well and fast) when it doesn't have much value, so they try to get dividends on that poor investment any way they can.
There is no reason to not make a proper GUI for pretty much everything, unless the devs are lazy or trying to save time/money.
Until you realize there are like 10 competing "standards" for settings, from config files in various incompatible formats in random places (not even obeying the XDG standard paths), to GSettings which is a Windows registry knockoff (and I bet KDE has its own - incompatible - equivalent), etc.
And don't you dare try to centralize all that into a common system - last time someone tried something similar by centralizing system service management with systemd, people lost their shit. Orders of magnitude more effort has been wasted ranting and arguing about it than fixing its issues (if they were real in the first place, and not just theoretical or outright made up).
But that's basically giving up because things look too hard. And this is why, even when there is a GUI, it tends to be pretty bad on Linux. There is an incentive problem.
As for the various competing standard and other nonsense (how many goddam distros are there in the first place?) its just inherent to the Marxist type of organisation, where there is no process to decide who has power and everyone is given equal weight in decision power regardless of their qualities (or lack thereof).
Linux as a thing just works because there is a benevolent dictator for the core part (paid by the "nasty" corporation the Linux zealots keep complaining about) and they get a lots or "second-hand" use of tools that were developed for other reasons.
The GUI problems just highlight the inherent weakness of this type of organisation/way of working, and makes you appreciate capitalism/meritocracy and commercial OS a lot more.
To be fair, the situation has improved for some specific distros but the only way to significantly change things would be to make it a commercial operation. This is what was tried with Ubuntu, and all the zealots are fighting everything tooth and nail; complaining about any meaningful improvement (recently, "snaps").
So, yes, I realize, but in my opinion it's still not a valid reason to not make a GUI. There are options. Or you can just forget Linux and make the tool with a GUI for an OS where it will be appreciated.
And it's not just discoverability. A well-designed GUI is impossible to get into an invalid state. A CLI, on the other hand, offers infinite possibilities for invalid commands.
But since it's obtuse and need a large investment (memory for command retention, typing proficiency and other tricks), people who had to suffer through that associate their ego with it and declare it superior so they can shame other people into compliance (even though they would be wasting time).
As you said, a command interface allows you to shoot yourself in the foot in about a million ways, therefor it is a terrible tool.
It is like having to handle a knife that is extremely to avoid cutting yourself with because it has no handle and has an edge on both sides. Makes absolutely no sense, someone who doesn't complain about such a "tool", is an idiot.
I mean, you can probably find _a_ Linux that's like what you say, but top Linux distros are nowhere like that.