Leaving Linux
jackevans.bearblog.dev
jackevans.bearblog.dev
It's not mandatory to customise Linux and mess with it the moment you get your hands on it - you can also run a stock Ubuntu install which will be a great working & gaming workhorse that doesn't add hassle to your life.
People who complain about Linux usually either insist on customizing it (as you noted) or run it on hardware that it doesn't work well on. If you are willing to buy special hardware to run macOS, why not the same for Linux?
It starts with much worse quality (not Linux' fault), like worse displays, borderline unusable fingerprint scanners, etc.
But beyond that, I regularly get kernel panics recovering from sleep with a Thunderbolt display connected (last time I checked the exact DDC-related bug has been open for a while). With some displays the USB-C get misconfigured (another known bug), resulting in worse frame rates. Sometimes hardware doesn't come up after a resume.
Battery life is generally much worse. Even if you hyperoptimize it with powertop, etc. battery life is still much worse. Not only that, but it puts Bluetooth and USB in autosuspend, which often breaks waking by using an external mouse or keyboard. Even if your laptop still supports S3 sleep, the system often runs out of battery while suspended in 12-24 hours (yes, it's fully suspended and does not wake).
I could go on for a while, it's death by a thousand paper cuts.
We have a bunch of MacBooks in the family. They are insanely fast, batteries last forever, and I cannot remember the last time I had a panic. Displays always work between Apple Studio Display, Dell Thunderbolt, and a bunch of USB-C LG displays.
But yeah, I'm still keeping a Linux laptop around, just in case Apple restricts macOS more, extends their surveillance capitalism, and other contingencies.
Interesting; one of the primary reasons I bought my current machine (Thinkpad Gen 2 AMD P16s, rolls right off the tongue) was because it was one of the few laptops I could find that had a 4K screen. The screen on this computer looks pretty good. Everything looks sharp, relatively high-contrast, and it gets very bright.
Honestly this has been the least-headache-inducing Linux laptop I've ever had.
You're right about the battery life. Even with Sway, and even mucking with powertop, I still don't get nearly as good of a battery as I did with my Macbook. I haven't had the issue with suspending though; I've had the system suspended for multiple days and woken it up with plenty of battery.
Dunno, maybe I just got a lucky model.
Realtek network hardware (1Gbps and 2.5Gbps) — part of almost every dock I've seen — was very unstable for a long time, though it seems to work well today too.
Even today, my USB audio device connected through my TB3 dock (behringer UMC22) usually does not show up on my Mac. Sometimes it does, but I do not bother figuring out why that happens, and resort to built-in speakers and microphone instead of my nice desktop monitors and pencil microphone pointed at me :)
My point being that similar stuff happens with Macs, just depends on your "luck" — I am sure there is other hardware that still fails with the latest Macs.
Even compared to Windows (but with very limited anecdotal data), my Linux works much better with random hardware I pick up.
I've only used Macs for the last 5 years or so professionally, but hitting all the issues, I was mostly like: where is that supreme experience? Granted, I've been a Linux user since late 90s, so I can figure things out there easily, and I am certainly biased, but Macs had similar or worse problems just with stability of hardware.
Even as someone who has customized the hell out of my desktop, it does kind of annoy me that people act like you "just" need to customize it.
"Customizable" is (often) just a synonym for "incomplete". Instead of giving you a full operating system, you have to "customize" it. Or, realistically, finish it. For example, much as I love the Sway desktop, I really don't feel like the stock package is decidedly unfinished and you need to install/make plugins to make it actually usable.
> If you are willing to buy special hardware to run macOS, why not the same for Linux?
Agreed. I like macOS, but macOS is a very walled-garden, and for the most part you can only run it on very specific, curated Apple hardware. Of course it works properly...they have a very finite set of hardware to test, which is untrue with Linux.
If, when you buy a computer that you plan to run Linux on, you preemptively make sure that the hardware is compatible [1], then it usually works fine. When I bought my mother-in-law's Thinkbook, I made sure that the main hardware worked fine (e.g. graphics card, wifi, audio, etc.). It did, I installed Mint on there, and she seems to like it.
[1] https://github.com/NixOS/nixos-hardware Even if you don't run NixOS, this is useful; if the laptop you're buying has very few or zero hacks required, it will likely work out of the box.
Windows breaks because something Microsoft wanted for themselves is broken.
I love Linux (first used it when I was 12yo in 1994), but I also had a Mac since 2007 and macOS never broke for me?
The other thing is that even basic stuff like calendars, address books, etc. work many times better on macOS than the Linux desktop. For instance, last time I set up calendar sync in KOrganizer (Evolution-based CalDAV never worked well for me) about a year ago, it started triggering sending invite mails for all historical and future work meetings, resulting in thousands of e-mails. Oops.
Beyond that, macOS has much better quality applications, from small indie stuff like Arq for backups to Affinity Suite, PDF Expert, etc.
That said, the part that I don't agree with is in the article is Android. Android is pretty much on par with iOS, though iOS has more high-quality third-party apps.
I guess if you use it for personal stuff it's as close as it gets to unbreakable. My father in law is also very happy with it.
I use it for work and I managed to have it panic multiple times over the last 8y besides the death by a thousand papercuts that the UI and *nix subsystem are. I can't wait for the day that proper Linux laptops get sanctioned in the company because I hate with passion to be locked in the MacOS "proper way of doing things" ®.
Mac definitely breaks.
Sure, if your job is writing backend server code. Many of us need other apps though. Things like [this](https://www.sidefx.com/forum/topic/90453) are showstopping enough for people who rely on Houdini. By the way, SideFX support told me Linux is their choice of OS and I should switch from Windows if I can.
Majority of the PC users these days use their PCs for boring stuff like filing taxes, document editing, file management and backups etc. Gaming is also pretty big and popular in the PC world. And Linux can handle these tasks very well these days - so much so that companies like Valve are investing heavily into Linux, attracting a lot of non-technical newbies, who in turn end up liking Linux.
So no, you don't need to be a "backend server code" writer to use Linux.
Bringing Houdini, an app whose main user base has Linux-based rendering clusters, to the discussion is unfairly favoring Linux side. I shouldn't have done that.
Not at all. First of all, the vast majority of people who use the Office suite use only basic features, for whom, LibreOffice or OnlyOffice are more than capable replacements. Second, classic versioned releases of MS Office (eg Office 2016, 2019 etc) also mostly work fine under stock Wine. Third, now even M365 versions of Office also have started to work via Bottles[1], so advanced users who need it can still install it on Linux if none of the alternatives suit them.
As for Photoshop, it's a similar situation to the above. Vast majority of the users don't even use all the fancy features of Photoshop, so GIMP (with optionally, the PhotoGIMP[2] mod), Krita and Photopea can already satisfy most needs. Advanced users can use alternatives like Affinity, which actually works really well under Linux[3]. Also keep in mind that Affinity is also becoming an increasingly de-facto option for even people on other platforms, as people are fed up with Adobe's shenanigans and are leaving in droves. Finally, if for some reason you still really need Photoshop, you can either run the classic versions just fine under stock Wine (up to CS6-ish, maybe newer) or even the latest CC versions via thirdparty script[4].
[1] https://itsfoss.com/news/bottles-microsoft-365-early-look/
[2] https://github.com/Diolinux/PhotoGIMP
I do agree that Affinity seems to get some traction, but they're practically funded by an AI company so you can expect more shenanigans, whatever it means, from them than Adobe.
It’s been a very long time since macOS broke for me. Sure, there are bugs (especially in the window manager), but they are consistent.
> I'm 30 this year, and computers don't have the same level of whimsy and excitement as they once had.
I'm 45 and computers are more exciting than ever. We choose what to get excited with, or oven nothing at all, which happens to most people at some point.
I've never been a die hard fan of Linux, but in the past decade and half found the trade-off for me to favor using Linux.
It's a device made by people like me (umm much better than me in some fields, but the mentality is similar), for people like me.
It does not disrespect me in design, functionality, in PR talk, and my relationship to the system is not adversarial.
For now, my incentives to use the system aligns with that of the system creators.
Heh fun to see I’ve literally been using Linux since before this person was born.
I’ve also seen/heard good things about frame.work for Linux.
(I had my first CD-ROM with Slackware from some magazine in 1993, but that was before we upgraded our machine for 2MB -> 5MB RAM, so I couldn't get it to run. Traded it with my uncle's Sherlock Holmes game CD-ROM.)
I used Linux, FreeBSD, NetBSD and OpenBSD. Was even paid as a developer on a commercial distribution for a while and contributed to two other non-profit Linux distributions.
I switched to OS X on the desktop in 2007.
Go to settings and select something other then the defaults.
>Customisation seems to have completely fallen by the wayside in favour of a more curated experience controlled by the desktop environment.
Maybe true of Gnome. Not true of KDE or XFCE.
Its also an odd reason to switch to Apple.
> These days everyone is just using the same five electron apps installed via flatpack anyway
I am not
What isbhappenning here seems to be someone who has tired of tinkering but cannot resist tinkering with Linux so has chosen to switch to an OS that does not allow tinkering rather than use a Linux distro with its defaultsm
But I can't get over how it locks you down completely software wise. I wanted a sane WM and tried skhd and yabai. They are a collection of hacks on the accessibility API, and they will break whenever Apple decides to. To me that's unacceptable as a daily driver
If you just want something stable and boring, Linux is just not it. Every distro has its own goals and target users, so a lot of the effort gets spread across the ecosystem.
With macOS or Windows, for better or worse, everyone is working on the same platform. So more people are working on the same problems. With Linux, everyone is kind of doing their own thing.
It is basically the same Android versus iPhone argument. More choice and freedom on one side, more consistency on the other.
What? I get the other arguments but I use Linux because it's stable and boring. I don't want the hassle of updates to Windows 8, 9, 10, 11 (or whatever is current now) or OS X updates breaking things ("Yay, they've removed another feature!").
As for effort getting spread across the ecosystem, how does that matter, as long as everything works? Is there anything specific that's below par that you think that needs that concentrated group effort? If so, what is it?
> With macOS or Windows, for better or worse, everyone is working on the same platform. So more people are working on the same problems
No one's working on the same problem on these platforms, as they are proprietary closed-source platforms, so you can't really contribute to them. Unless by "working on problems" you meant making apps, in which case, people are making apps for Linux too. And guess what, you can run most Linux apps on most distros. Like say, LibreOffice or VLC or Firefox etc all work on every single distro out there. So I'm curious which problem(s) do you think Linux people need to work together on.
> It is basically the same Android versus iPhone argument.
Maybe, if you've never used desktop Linux? Android and iOS are both advertisement-ridden locked-down hellscapes. The false dichotomy of openness and polish is exactly why Linux is attractive to people; you can absolutely have both. Obviously Google and Apple don't want you to think that, but it's not any more wrong today than it was in 1995.
> So a desktop environment with an bespoke suite of apps (text editor, video player, file manager etc), seem less and less important anyway.
Can't say I've seen this, my main daily apps are all native and installed with a package manager.
Even if we were all using the same apps why would that mean we'd all jump onto a Mac?
The hardware+software combination of MacOS is unbeatable in terms of things like battery life and overall reliability, and it's a Unix, so the command line is almost the same. The M-series are a beast.
Linux has always been messy for desktop use for me (I've been using it since 1994). Sound always gives me trouble, and getting the power profiles right takes way too much work.
It tends to get in the way whenever I want to get something done, which happens a lot less often for Macs. A large part of it is the hardware, I'm sure, but still. I value my time.
Servers are fine, fewer hardware quirks to deal with.
Sounds like you've been using a distro with bad defaults and/or poorly supported hardware. I challenge you to use a decent distro like Fedora, on a well-supported hardware like a ThinkPad, and see if you have the same issues.
Speaking as a ThinkPad Z13 + Fedora user who literally never had any audio or power profile issues... or any issue for that matter.
I also have a macbook that I use for certain proprietary apps that don't have Linux clients and it can be a weirdly peaceful experience just knowing you're locked into macOS's stack and there aren't a myriad of options you could install at any moment should you get bored.
That being said, macOS sucks.
Using macOS (especially Apple Silicon era macOS) feels like being in maximum security prison. If you thought Windows Vista UAC was bad, macOS is doing it worse right now.
The reasoning is all wrong.
> I'm 30 this year, and computers don't have the same level of whimsy and excitement as they once had.
Also wtf. I'm far older than this author, and this statement they made is just complete and total schlock. They don't have enough experience to say what they're saying.
It's funny. I share the same thoughts but it sent me from Windows to Linux.
And I'm very, very tired as well. I wouldn't recommend you to install Windows, because Windows is spyware. But I wouldn't recommend you to install Linux, because Linux is crap.
You know what I would recommend instead?
Not use computers.
If there is a way to avoid them your whole life... just do that. Otherwise you'll spend the rest of your life having to deal with... you know... all of this.
I know this is an extremely unpopular position that many people will disagree with, but it's my decision and I made it. I'm not asking you to follow. Feel free to tell me how much of a misguided/stupid decision it is. I think if everyone were able to "separate the art from the artist", then boycotts wouldn't even exist.
Same goes for OpenBSD, GNOME, GrapheneOS, Kitty/Calibre and many other applications... I have been personally attacked by several people from all of these projects just for asking simple questions, and I know many others that have gotten it much worse.
What's wrong with going where you're treated best?
And where is this magical place exactly?
Could you paraphrase any of those simple questions? It seems like a weird thing to omit.
If your "simple question" is something that violates the CoC then I can understand why they'd push you out. I personally don't agree with (most) FOSS CoCs, but I can grok why they exist for modern projects. There are so many counterproductive "contributors" that refuse to read the code and find answers for themselves, escalating things into egotistical pissing contests that wastes everyone's time. It's effective (albeit not ideal) to just kick these people out from square 1, keeping things more Cathedral-like as opposed to a Bazaar project.
In an age of AI, you can hard-fork any of these projects and ask an agent any technical question that you could possibly have. It's a golden age for FOSS if you're self-motivated and have thick skin.
Fair enough. Since that obviously rules out anything touched by Apple or Microsoft, what did you end up on? I guess the Haiku folks are pretty nice...
Also regarding everything convergence of desktop environments, there are plenty of more interesting options out there, but they don't call themselves "desktop environments" - tiling or scrolling window managers, for example, which are often infinitely configurable though scripts.
I wouldnt wish Linux desktop on anyone whos not willing to learn at least some troubleshooting, with is 99.9999999% of people. I lament the community missed the prime shot in the early 2ks, but it's just not there for the "home user". As an appliance for gaming (stem deck) its fine, and probably for web-only work as reinstalling is not a big deal, as the only caveat to the above.
Vanilla Arch definitely isn't, sure. But there are distros with immutable root and Flatpak-focused package management that work fine for the ordinary home user. SteamOS isn't the only distro doing that, and the architecture isn't limited to gaming-only appliances.
...this seems like the obvious problem? Both of my NixOS installs are ~4 and 1/2 years old now. If you're using distros that break more frequently than Windows does, I can see how you'd get tuckered out.
I don't define myself as a linux user either. Using some kind of Linux or BSD has simply been the pragmatic choice for around 3 decades compared to what always looked like opaque and user hostile proprietary operating systems.
It might be that OP never wanted to actually do the next step, which is OK. Hopefully MacOS works for them and they can keep affording their machines.
Are they quirky? As hell. But by and large, are they enshittifying like the big box software? No, most of them are getting better, and rapidly.
Personally, I find there's nothing like actually looking forward to a software update like I did in 2005 and expecting new, useful, features and then actually getting them in an update to restore my sense of computing whimsy.
Obviously do what works for you. This is just not my experience.
Despite me preferring it, it is hard for me to say that desktop Linux is "better" in any kind of objective sense than macOS. I do think that desktop Linux is significantly better in most senses than Windows, but macOS is a stable, easy-to-use distro that performs fine. While I kind of hate the "Just Works" slogan it has, I will admit that that's significantly truer than Linux. It's 2026, and I still have issues having Linux properly work when I plug in an external monitor into a laptop.
All that being said, what I like about Linux is that it can run on basically anything, including existing computers that you (or your relatives) likely already have, and it will likely perform better than Windows if for no other reason than it won't be filled with as much bloatware bullshit that most OEM Windows' has.
A good Macbook is pretty pricey. A Macbook Neo is cheaper, but you know what's even cheaper than that? Extending the life of the computer you already have!
I'm fairly happy with my obscenely over-customized NixOS Sway desktop, and I probably don't really understand the sunk-cost fallacy so I'm unlikely to ever leave, but I don't blame people for doing so. As long as they don't defect to Windows...
In 2022 my M1 mini started to die due to what I would call SSD abuse. I absolutely punished that box - rode hard, put away wet. The SSD began to show signs of failing. I was doing way too much with it - so I took a spare R720 2U server I had and turned it into my remote dev box. Thanks to VSCode's SSH remote feature - you can hack on a project like it is on your box. My workflow is usually my IDE for coding and then a separate terminal running tmux for interacting with the box. I did this locally at home, with the R720 down in my basement. The cool thing about developing like this is that if you are traveling, the dev-ex is no different. Tailscale or some other VPN and boom your workflow continues to work, albeit with varying amounts of latency. Mosh helps here. 2x CPU's (albeit old Haswell gen), 256GB of ram, 2x NVME mirror with pci-e add-in ... it performed really well as an always-on remote dev machine.
Quickly I realized I was kinda outgrowing the R720, though, and so in 2023, I built a beast Linux workstation (Debian 12) with 128GB of memory, 13900k, nvme mirrors, etc and after fine tuning KDE and getting it all dialed in, I started to really enjoy it from a hacker standpoint. Everything for the most part "just worked" including my new Apple Studio Display that I am typing this message on right now. Took a little while for the kernel to catch up but at this point it is working over Thunderbolt, the camera works, speakers work, built-in hub works, etc. I can even do brightness control from my kb.
Meanwhile, my mobile dev box has been an M2 air. With the 'all compute is happening on a remote node' the M architecture Air devices are really quite incredible. I am just running an IDE and an iTerm window (with all compute happening on the main host), so battery life is measured in days. I will work at my desk in my office for a while, then pivot to the deck or the couch or a coffee shop and thanks again to ide-over-ssh (I am on Zed now, no more VSCode) and tmux ... everything feels exactly like it does at my desk with zero interruption. It also means I can slam my laptop shut at any given moment to do other things, while software and agents continue in the background. Combine with a 1500VA ups under my desk to mitigate power blips and this is a dream setup.
But the more I used KDE and Linux ... the more I started to ask myself if it was time to pivot to a Linux notebook too. The only qualms I had was knowing that no PC will ever beat 1) the battery life and 2) the touchpad performance of a Macbook.
Then the Framework 13 Pro was announced. I watched the release announcement and immediately preordered one. I went back and forth about cancelling the preorder many times, thinking to myself that my trusty M2 air was just fine for a 'dumb terminal' type of laptop. But the 120hz display and the desire to dogfood a modern Linux notebook, combined with the fact that the market/prices for RAM etc were skyrocketing and I was locked-in to a good batch 1 price kept me on the preorder. Also ... I have 2 german shepherds and they shed a lot. Hair gets into my macbook keyboard which is very difficult to get out. Removing and cleaning key caps is tedious. The fact that I can replace the entire KB on the Framework (or entire top cover) for like $100 is hugely compelling for me. Combined with their track record to continue supporting and offering upgrades for older gear - it was a no brainer really. Modern Mac notebooks are unfortunately wear items (like brake pads) - at some point you throw them out. The tide might be shifting with the new Neo and its' repair-ability, though.
Glad I did. The framework has been really really good. Not gonna lie, Apple still wins on battery life. But I enjoy having a freeipa-domain-joined box that is 100% open source, running all my familiar KDE tweaks, 120hz, etc. The keyboard and trackpad are actually incredible. Keyboard surely beats any notebook I have ever had.
So now I am sort of spiraling on Linux toys. I just got a Chuwi Minibook X (https://taoofmac.com/space/reviews/2025/05/15/2230) and its running Fedora, like my Framework Pro, and it's quite fun as well. For less than $300 it has 16GB of memory, 512gb nvme, 4 cores, and a touchscreen display that is quite decent (still fine-tuning the auto rotate stuff, which is fun in and of itself). I can't believe Fedora 44 'just works', with suspend, and wifi, and speakers, and bluetooth, and full disk encryption, .... less than $300!
I've been using Linux on servers and for software dev since ~2005 but never felt like "the year of the linux desktop" was really here. That totally changed a few years back and now I am all-in. Still love the Apple ecosystem (and use an iPhone) but very very happy to be driving Linux on all my computers. I even updated my gaming rig (7900XTX) to run CachyOS. With the exception of anti-cheat games like COD or BF6 I have zero qualms. It runs everything else really well. And it doubles as a local AI inference machine thanks again to the beauty of open source and Linux.
My favorite editor for years, I use it in conjunction with Vim in the terminal. I’ve been trying to move to NeoVim but can never find the time. And regular MacVim/Vim is already awesome.
I'm glad I suffered a bit with Linux it taught me vim and resilience and using the command line / shell, but for my day to day I'm happy with Mac.
Ironically I just bought a Neo for my home laptop, I'm a bit annoyed by the keyboard because at work I have a 15/16 inches Macbook Pro but I don't do much on it so it's ok.
I am not denying Apple is producing some really nice hardware but we wouldn't have these kind of conversations if people stopped comparing apples(pun intended) to oranges and cared to buy fully supported and linux preinstalled computers. I know it might have been complicated back in the days when people weren't used to order online but nowadays it is quite easy to find one.