When was the last time you felt excitement for a macOS release?
Me? Snow Leopard.
When I transitioned to Linux I rediscovered OS excitement. I'm on KDE Plasma now and every update has exciting features that serves my interests.
Me? Snow Leopard.
When I transitioned to Linux I rediscovered OS excitement. I'm on KDE Plasma now and every update has exciting features that serves my interests.
Every new version wrecks my workflow a little. macOS 28 will partially remove Rosetta 2, which means that I'll need to find replacements for some of the ancient Intel apps that never got updated to Apple Silicon.
Most applications now have native Apple Silicon binaries, although a handful still don't. You can check by navigating to the Apple icon > "About This Mac" > "More Info" > "System Report" > Software > Applications.
We had some printers with drivers who don't support Apple Silicon, thus they need Rosetta2, those filter files aren't displayed in the above menu, although you can run this script (papercut_rosetta_audit.sh) to audit your Drivers and their x86 dependence. [1].
[0] https://developer.apple.com/documentation/macos-release-note... [1] https://www.papercut.com/kb/Main/macos-rosetta-transition-en...
I think Apple realise this. There are no genuine new OS features to be added, so they just shuffle things around so that things are changing and thus seem fresh and hip. For anyone who cares about stability and doesn't want to relearn everything they shuffle around, this is nothing but a negative, but Apple et al. have no other levers to pull (well, there's the AI lever, but that's also generally not a positive in and of itself).
Maybe there are new OS features that could be useful, but creating and integrating them in a way that's actually helpful is just such an ordeal that nobody will do it.
Personally I do like the windows approach where there's a bar at the top with a few preselected zones you can use that shows up when dragging a window but the state of things on Mac os now is fine enough that things like that can reasonably be left up to extensions.
What exactly do you miss about the Mac desktops when using gnome's? For me the only thing I've noticed is lack of independent desktops per monitor though Windows also suffers that deficiency.
No independent desktops is indeed a big one and irks me just as much under Windows (which somehow in 2026 still can't even set per-monitor desktop pictures without glueing images together in Paint).
On a whole, GNOME is just too simplistic. Where the Mac Way™ (especially in the 2000s) is thoughtfully implemented progressive disclosure of advanced features, the GNOME Way™ is to check if they make the cut for the app's toolbar or "junk drawer" hamburger menu and if not, strip the feature entirely.
It almost feels like they took a tablet OS and then adapted it somewhat to desktop use. That's the vibe I get from the DE itself as well as from the barebones (if pretty) apps that its community tends to produce. It's not as locked down as a tablet OS obviously — there's full fat Linux sitting underneath after all — but I'm always fighting it trying to turn it into a proper desktop experience with GNOME Tweaks and extensions (which constantly break).
An easy way to see the difference in philosophies is to compare the number of settings surfaced in GNOME Settings to that of the settings app for any Mac OS made in the past 20 years. GNOME Settings offers relatively little to tweak where System (Preferences|Settings) has a list that's closer (though not as long) to that of the KDE Settings app.
And of course, no global menubar. KDE lets users enable this but unfortunately many apps do not populate it.
GNOME is designed to be touch-agnostic, which makes better use of padded UIs than macOS 11+ does. With a rumored touchscreen Macbook still coming down the line, I think GTK and the GNOME developers skated to where the puck was headed. macOS and iPadOS are both constrained for touchscreen users. GNOME is kinda the perfect UI for where Apple sees hardware converging.
I don't think GNOME can adopt any more macOS idiosyncrasies without being a worse holistic experience. The Overview/search accelerator on the Super key is faster than Spotlight search. The desktop switcher is a better-supported use of the menubar than forcing an unsupported global cluster. GNOME could try to cram these round pegs into their square hole, but they know it wouldn't improve things.
As an aside, I have yet to be convinced that touch on desktop operating systems makes any kind of sense and the MacBook Ultra or whatever it ends up being called is unlikely to change my opinion on that. I much prefer an old-style low-whitespace, data-dense, pointer-first UI like OS X used to have. I’m tired of the virtual real estate on my screens declining year after year for the sake of functionality I’ll never use.
The future of desktop computing is probably going to be weird. I don't know how companies like Microsoft will manage to curb-cut their OS while also expanding to new UI/UX paradigms. Simplicity feels like a safe bet, and there's a lot of runway left to build the plane before the wheels go up.
GTK/Adwaita themselves aren’t terrible (particularly with CSS to tone down the acres of padding) but I still take issue with the quasi-mobile app direction in GNOME-oriented apps.
It feels haunted or possessed by demons. Like it's a middle school bully trying be as frustrating as humanly possible.
Some of it is also on app devs, who are responsible for implementing functions like saving/restoring window positions and sometimes misuse or overuse window/app activation.
There are also a couple of bugs I’ve observed that I wish they’d fix but those are sporadic and not at all consistent.
On some level, this is probably something your terminal emulator should handle, just as your web browser should handle a mess of 22 tabs, but I don't think we've really come up with good solutions there either. It's hard to implement features nobody's though of.
I know expecting UX innovation from Apple is laughable, but there was a time…
They have many quality of life improvements over the basic terminal.
I think we can do better. It’s a hard problem, admittedly. But important.
So if you are happy on Cinnamon stay there (and it's Wayland support has caught up a lot).
They both do an excellent job of not causing me pain, working the way I want and respecting me as a user, that's what a DE should be, if I have to consider the DE more than in passing it's failing at been a DE.
I would love a review of the new developer and OS level features for macOS releases. The WWDC content is close to unwatchable, it never goes into enough depth and the video only delivery is not the primary way I want to consume technical content. Give me the cool highlights of the virtualisation framework, what still works with Dtrace , explain the infernal code signing permissions system, etc.
So far I've kept to Sequoia as the least annoying version, and avoided the Liquid Glass rounded corners mess.
But honestly, I don't think the average person should feel excitement for an OS release; boring means it just works and they don't have to learn a bunch of new features and different ways of doing things.
It's far more consistent than Windows 11, but you have to pick Qt/KDE software, not GTK/GNOME for that to be true. I always choose the more KDE native option.
People hate on GNOME for its rigidity but it’s the one desktop actually trying somewhat to provide Linux with an environment that the average person (not an HN user) won’t immediately turn their nose up in disgust at.
Gaming "just works" on Linux with one AAA exception that needs a tweak to its Steam Proton settings. The UI to me is as polished and functional as MacOS and Windows - besides a few minor things like taskbar shadows or rounded edges, a non-techie wouldn't notice the difference IMO unless they already knew it.
I've been running Linux on and off for 20 years, and KDE 6 is the most happy I've been with a user interface, with Unity being second. Everything you can possibly tweak seems to be discoverable in the UI just like Windows or Mac.
Thanks to the OpenCore Legacy Patcher who show that not supporting old devices is a choice made by Apple.
My ideal would probably be Mavericks 10.9.5 with the Leopard/Snow Leopard 2D grid virtual desktop model hacked back in. The linear version of Spaces that's been in place since 10.7 is needlessly simplistic.
Interesting observation, that is.
File renaming. What Forklift or other dedicated file renamer comes as a standard with both Dolphin and KRename. Latter can drive circles around what's available in macOS, in any form.
AudioCD ripping: kio:// protocol has a native ripper. Just drag and drop. Settings are integrated to system settings directly. Which format do you want? Yes.
Remote connections: While finder can connect to servers, but FTP read access and SFTP requires external apps. IOW, what Cyberduck provides is already available in Dolphin, again.
KDE's standard window management capabilities need Magnet or something more advanced in macOS.
Git/SVN/CVS needs external tools in macOS. Dolphin can detect these repositories and let you work on them on the spot.
KRunner is arguably more Capable than spotlight in some cases. Needs another fair shake though.
If you add your mail accounts and calendars to KDE via KMail or something else, they become available system-wide. macOS is good in that regard, but KDE is betterer. If you use KMail, your mail will sync at the background even though your mail client is not running.
You need to buy another application to be able to edit id3 tags of audio files, but KDE has kid3. I even use its macOS version because it's that good.
I'll not get into customization capabilities, because they are fundamentally different and worlds apart, but this is due to their philosophy.
Keyboard shortcut management are equally powerful in both, AFAICS. macOS used to lag there.
K3b is infinitely more capable than macOS optical media authoring tools.
These are what I can remember with my tired brain, away from my KDE system for the day. The thing is, both side by side, I mostly prefer KDE because I can work way faster on that one, and it's not I'm hating macOS or anything, and as I said, using both for a very long time.
The apps I have given as examples are KDE's default apps and maintained by KDE project themselves. They are part of the default installation.
For a regular user, macOS can be very practical and non-obtrusive OS, yet for me, it's not as useful as a Linux system with KDE installed.
Currently I'm writing this comment from my KDE system, and I see more clearly why I prefer to use it much more. Because it allows me to have much more screen real estate with much faster multi-desktop management capabilities to begin with. However, my point still stands. In short, KDE provides the features I use daily (esp. in the file management department) in a much more capable and integrated manner than macOS out of the box. I have to think about which tools I need to get to handle something on macOS, and on KDE, the tools are always integrated to the tool I already holding. My work just flows on KDE, yet on macOS I need to setup something before being able to flow.
Ripping audio CDs without even thinking is a bonus.
Middle Click: This is a galling one.
Rectangle: Far better than the MacOS's native snapping, which is half-assed.
AltTab: MacOS's keyboard driven app and window switching are terrible. It feels like they don't test for use that's not entirely mouse-based.
Mac Mouse Fix/LinearMouse: Real mouse support on MacOS sucks, and the unified settings between mouse and trackpad really sucks when you have to occasionally use both and don't want them to behave identically.
Karabiner: MacOS's keyboard mapping is incredibly underpowered.
AeroSpace/yabai: I don't use these anymore, because these also were pretty buggy for my use case; instead, I just use MacOS without Spaces. I hate MacOS window management, but find it less painful if I just lean heavily on tmux. MacOS Spaces are completely broken, especially on multi-monitor. They never do what you expect. I could write a screed on exactly how broken they are, but I won't in this post.
Ice (might be sketchy now; had an ownership change): Lack of menu bar overflow on MacOS is awful. I have icons that just disappear into the notch and can not be clicked, and there's not space for much, especially if you use something like Stats to see resource use.
BetterDisplay+MonitorControl: Non-retina monitor management on MacOS is bad.
SoundSource: Per-app audio control just doesn't exist otherwise.
These are all things that work fine out of the box on KDE and even Gnome. MacOS, for a very UI-focused OS, is simply terrible to use graphically if you're not baby-ducked into it from a young age. I've been using it for years at work (because my options are MacOS and Windows, and MacOS for all its flaws is still less painful than Windows), and I still can't get used to all the bad decisions. Spaces are the most shocking example of something that should work that doesn't, and they still don't fix it year after year.
I also appreciate that it comes with dynamic wallpaper of the lake where I got the worst sunburn of my life.
Debian+KDE here. It's what I use to get away from OS excitement. I miss the 90's when nobody ever updated anything, and if they did it was on purpose and not something that happened behind your back.
For example, the other day Google "updated" the clock/alarm/timer app on Android with pointless and annoying changes. A clock app does not need an update, ever.
"But..." No! /usr/share/zoneinfo handles that. Stop it.
Major version upgrades every couple of years will usually bring a new wallpaper and make a few tweaks to the default apps. Annual Firefox ESR updates will bring a handful of improvements to the browser. And, of course, security and critical bugfixes chug away in the background without making any fuss.
Nothing breaks unexpectedly. Behaviour never changes without your knowledge and permission. Bliss.
I dread updating Macs.
For Linux I've been kinda indifferent for 15 years. Maybe it's me.