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Discussion (11 Comments)Read Original on HackerNews
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" ®.
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.
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.
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.
Windows breaks because something Microsoft wanted for themselves is broken.
Heh fun to see I’ve literally been using Linux since before this person was born.
(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.
I’ve also seen/heard good things about frame.work for Linux.
...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.
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.
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.