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.
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.