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.
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.
Mac definitely breaks.
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" ®.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Windows breaks because something Microsoft wanted for themselves is broken.
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.