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Comment by coldpie | Hacker News Reader

If you go from using Linux for years to having to use an OS like macOS or especially Windows, it really does feel like using a computer with padded walls and safety scissors so you don't hurt yourself. You do get used to the limitations eventually, but for technical users it's a pretty noticeable step down in terms of how you may use and configure your own system. Calling them "not real operating systems" is definitely a little cheeky, but it resonates, and isn't out of character for a blog post about configuring your browser with JSON overrides.

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I've been daily-driving desktop Linux for close to 15 years, hadn't touched Windows in about 10 years, and then got a job a few months back that requires Microsoft-everything.

"Primitive" is the word that comes to mind every day. There's a steady drum-beat of aggravation and missing features and bad design decisions. I lose probably close to thirty minutes of daily productivity to the Microsoft tax.

I've been sincerely surprised at how bad it is.

It's funny, I use OSX as my daily driver, and going over to Windows is painful - probably as painful as it is for OP to go from whatever they're using to OSX.

> … for technical users it's a pretty noticeable step down in terms of how you may use and configure your own system

It’s such a frustrating experience on both ends—I use macOS for most of my work because I like the hardware it ships on, but it is so annoying to not be able to, like, use a different window manager (hacky accessibility API systems notwithstanding).

On the other hand I’ve probably burnt weeks troubleshooting and configuring different compositors/window managers on Arch (and STILL don’t have the setup of my dreams), so it’s frustrating on that end too.

I have to use macOS for work. The window manager is so bad it makes me feel like a crazy person. They actually ship it like this on purpose?

It’s, I think my main Apple pet peeve. Multi desktop on macOS is completely broken, and even worse, it gets worse at every major release. It has been like so since at the very least 5 years. I reported the bugs every time. They are just ignored. I think nobody at Apple uses a multi Desktop setup…

I imagine you're trying to use it in ways that it's just not designed for. Cmd-`, Cmd-Tab, and Mission Control (Ctrl/Cmd-F3 or three-finger swipe up/down) are powerful enough to do most tasks, especially combined with automatic window tiling.

Nah, the super long delays and animations are by design and make a lot of features like mission control & workspaces unusable. But, if you can tell me a way to switch between only the two most recent windows (note: I said "windows", not "applications") with a single keyboard shortcut and no animation delays, I'll love you forever.

I don't think that's possible but there is a by default unset shortcut to switch between windows of the same application. I set it to command tilde. And there are configs to make animations instant.

> there is a by default unset shortcut to switch between windows of the same application. I set it to command tilde.

It's set to that by default.

Not on mine it wasn't, I assure you. I just set up a new Mac earlier this week.

Natively I don’t think so. macOS thinks in terms of apps, not windows. Personally I prefer that way but I understand how it can be annoying. There’s AltTab to fix that (freemium but open-source).

I have an Asahi Linux M2 macbook that I use for work, tried MacOS for a day and just couldn't stand it compared to the flexibility of Arch + KDE plasma.

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