I am a pretty die-hard NixOS cultist, but I will admit that I actually like macOS. I used macOS almost exclusively from 2020-2024, until I bought my Thinkpad that I have now, and I never really disliked the operating system (though I did have issues with that particular laptop because of the i9 CPU's propensity to thermal-throttle).
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 relatively) 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...
I'm using Linux for exactly the opposite reason - it's less hassle than other OS's. And by that I mean every OS breaks, Linux is just simpler to fix when it does (and these days - Claude fix do it for me).
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.
> but I also had a Mac since 2007 and macOS never broke for me?
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" ®.
I had always used a mix of Windows and Linux until a few years ago. Someone gifted me a mac. All three seem like they have a similar number of issues, but I regularly run into issues with macOS that seem to be impossible to solve.
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?
I keep a Linux laptop on the side and usually buy what Linux fans recommend and is Linux certified, which is typically some kind of ThinkPad. It is certainly usable, but I wouldn't recommend it to most people.
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.
I use Claude and Gemini to customize things for me all the time. If something doesn't work the way that I want it, I let AI fix it (I do back up and maintain scripts to revert back to its current stage).
All my serious use notebooks run on Mac OS, my gaming PC on Windows, and my servers on Linux (I do keep an old-ish Thinkpad with Kali for tinkering).
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.
I don't see the reason in this, especially now of all times with the current situation with software vendors and geopolitics. It's sensible to have an Apple laptop like a Neo or Air around, but giving up Linux as the primary or entirely? I think this is allowing an imaginary convenience at great cost to seduce you into thinking this is the solution to impulsive or compulsive behavior in hopping around between too many programs and distributions.
> 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.
Same, installed Slackware Linux in 1994 when I was twelve, on our family 80386 SX-25 with a 40MB hard drive and 5MB RAM. I often had tugs of war with my 4 years younger brother over how to partition the 40MB, trying to convince him with pretty lame Linux games :).
(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.
My first Linux install, best I can recall, was from a Slackware CD circa 1995? So I guess, me too. I've not used Linux as my desktop since Mac OS X in maybe 2002 but I've always had a Linux box running somewhere or being responsible for Linux boxes since then. It's only in the last few years I've gotten fed up with RPM-based distros and preferred Debian or Ubuntu. My intro to Unix was probably SunOS though.
What machine you are running now. I was happy with thinkpad T series in the past, fully compatible with linux, but the recent lenovo Ts just suck, cheap builds. I wish a lightweight mac air or similar can run linux smoothly without using hacky asahi.
I'm only a couple years older than them, but I've been using Linux since only a couple years before them. It's kind of wild to me that I'm apparently already past the age where people will say things like "I'm too old to keep using Linux"
I somewhat sympathize with the poster here, I too am a chronic distrohopper and if you are just the type of person with shiny object syndrome it can be really exhausting constantly being yanked around by your interest in other distros. I've been on gentoo for a year now and that's the longest lasting install I've ever had. Planning on keeping it that way, but you never know.
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.
Looking through the replies, the theme seems pretty clear. Everyone has their favorite distro, which is great btw. But that is the issue imo.
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.
> If you just want something stable and boring, Linux is just not it.
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!").
> Today the various desktop environments seem to have largely converged, sharing the same flat design language and icon styles.
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
Of course you will get tired if you change your OS every three months. I have used roughly the same ArchLinux setup for years now, probably over a decade, and it is remarkably stable. Things break very occasionally but are easily fixed (and are usually a result of my own tinkering with experimental software).
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 really wanted to like using a Macbook. I've given it a go a few times, amazing battery life and great build quality.
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
Weird. I see a lot of my friends disenchanted like this, but a lot of the reason I'm not is Linux and more importantly, open source projects in general. The more of an effort I make to learn the open source alternative to whatever adobe or what have you I used to use, the more I enjoy computing.
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.
>I'm Tired Boss
>I'm 30 this year, and computers don't have the same level of whimsy and excitement as they once had. When I was young everything was new and interesting, it felt like there was so much experimentation and innovation. Today the various desktop environments seem to have largely converged, sharing the same flat design language and icon styles. Customisation seems to have completely fallen by the wayside in favour of a more curated experience controlled by the desktop environment.
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 am doing the opposite. I have been a Mac user since ~2005. My first Mac was actually a Quadra 610, but I was a wee little lad back then. I started my career on a G5 Power Mac with dual 23" cinema displays (studio displays? can't remember what they were called back then). Then the intel Macbook/MBP, etc. I think my favorite mac of all time, or the one I look back most fondly on, was my 2012 Macbook Air.
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.
The reason I left Linux was because I didn't want to be associated with the high-ranking developers that openly abuse and demean others with unprofessional attitudes for decades on end with impunity.
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?
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.
> For a good period of my life I don't think I had same Linux install on my personal machines for longer than three months.
...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.
The dance trying different distros and DEs is fun (and important) for a while. Eventually you learn to fix the problems yourself exactly to avoid having to reinstall. Eventuakky distro lines get blurred as it's the same software under it and jumping between them more easily. Once you find a distro with the right mix for your tastes you stick to it. My main server has some files as old as 1999, migrated hardware, filesystems, even migrated from 32bit to 64bit without having to reinstall. But I've spent 3 years doing the same dance before it.
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.
Yeah, I distro-hopped for a few years during the tail end of my college days and the first year or two after, but at this point I've been running the same Arch installation for close to a decade (literally migrating it to new hardware by setting up the same partition structure and rsyncing everything over). It hasn't felt like work to use Linux pretty much since I stopped reinstalling, while Windows and MacOS feel like they get harder to use every time I have to.
That does seem strange. So he has been experimenting seeking something. I have kept the same LTS installations sometimes until the bitter end of the support cycle.
When I first started using Linux decades ago, I had the same experience. At some point I realized that's because I didn't really understand what I was doing. I was trying to use it like Windows without understanding that it is its own thing and needs me to 'unlearn' bad habits and actually only do things I understand and if I need to do something more, learn about it instead of blindly copy pasting.
If one never gets past that stage, I can see how it can be frustrating. But at some point it's up to the user and how serious they are. Things are simple enough now that it really doesn't take much.
I have been on the same Arch installation for 10+ years and the previous install on a different device was also ~8 years old. Could have just transferred files over and be done about it but I wanted to refresh my knowledge. :)
While I used to.distrohop a bit at the beginning of the century, my current Fedora 44 install dates back from Fedora 25 or 26 which I believe was released somewhere around 2017. It has moved from one laptop to another as I couldn't be bothered to reinstall.
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.
I switched from Linux to Mac around the same age I think, I know Linux works much better now but Mac just works. I remember trying to connect a ThinkPad with an AMD/ATI graphic card I had paid extra to an external monitor on my ex-wife laptop, what a massive PITA and it never worked, it would just work with the Intel builtin GPU.
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 know Linux works much better now but Mac just works. I remember trying to connect a ThinkPad[...]
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.
tl;dr: The desktop environment the author is using is adopting mac OS unusability features, but doing so slowly, so jumping to mac OS will allow full unusability without the wait.
I am a pretty die-hard NixOS cultist, but I will admit that I actually like macOS. I used macOS almost exclusively from 2020-2024, until I bought my Thinkpad that I have now, and I never really disliked the operating system (though I did have issues with that particular laptop because of the i9 CPU's propensity to thermal-throttle).
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 relatively) 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...
I'm using Linux for exactly the opposite reason - it's less hassle than other OS's. And by that I mean every OS breaks, Linux is just simpler to fix when it does (and these days - Claude fix do it for me).
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 mean every OS breaks
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.
> but I also had a Mac since 2007 and macOS never broke for me?
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" ®.
I had always used a mix of Windows and Linux until a few years ago. Someone gifted me a mac. All three seem like they have a similar number of issues, but I regularly run into issues with macOS that seem to be impossible to solve.
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?
I keep a Linux laptop on the side and usually buy what Linux fans recommend and is Linux certified, which is typically some kind of ThinkPad. It is certainly usable, but I wouldn't recommend it to most people.
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.
I use Claude and Gemini to customize things for me all the time. If something doesn't work the way that I want it, I let AI fix it (I do back up and maintain scripts to revert back to its current stage).
I feel better about investing time when Linux breaks because it's for a reason that isn't rooted in user hostility.
Windows breaks because something Microsoft wanted for themselves is broken.
All my serious use notebooks run on Mac OS, my gaming PC on Windows, and my servers on Linux (I do keep an old-ish Thinkpad with Kali for tinkering).
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.
I don't see the reason in this, especially now of all times with the current situation with software vendors and geopolitics. It's sensible to have an Apple laptop like a Neo or Air around, but giving up Linux as the primary or entirely? I think this is allowing an imaginary convenience at great cost to seduce you into thinking this is the solution to impulsive or compulsive behavior in hopping around between too many programs and distributions.
> I'm Tired Boss
> 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.
> I'm 30 this year,
Heh fun to see I’ve literally been using Linux since before this person was born.
Same, installed Slackware Linux in 1994 when I was twelve, on our family 80386 SX-25 with a 40MB hard drive and 5MB RAM. I often had tugs of war with my 4 years younger brother over how to partition the 40MB, trying to convince him with pretty lame Linux games :).
(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.
My first Linux install, best I can recall, was from a Slackware CD circa 1995? So I guess, me too. I've not used Linux as my desktop since Mac OS X in maybe 2002 but I've always had a Linux box running somewhere or being responsible for Linux boxes since then. It's only in the last few years I've gotten fed up with RPM-based distros and preferred Debian or Ubuntu. My intro to Unix was probably SunOS though.
What machine you are running now. I was happy with thinkpad T series in the past, fully compatible with linux, but the recent lenovo Ts just suck, cheap builds. I wish a lightweight mac air or similar can run linux smoothly without using hacky asahi.
I'm only a couple years older than them, but I've been using Linux since only a couple years before them. It's kind of wild to me that I'm apparently already past the age where people will say things like "I'm too old to keep using Linux"
I somewhat sympathize with the poster here, I too am a chronic distrohopper and if you are just the type of person with shiny object syndrome it can be really exhausting constantly being yanked around by your interest in other distros. I've been on gentoo for a year now and that's the longest lasting install I've ever had. Planning on keeping it that way, but you never know.
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.
Looking through the replies, the theme seems pretty clear. Everyone has their favorite distro, which is great btw. But that is the issue imo.
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.
> If you just want something stable and boring, Linux is just not it.
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!").
> These days everyone is just using the same five electron apps installed via flatpack anyway.
> 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?
Same here. I don't use flatpaks, only a single electron app (Obsidian) and can't even name 5.
> Today the various desktop environments seem to have largely converged, sharing the same flat design language and icon styles.
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
Of course you will get tired if you change your OS every three months. I have used roughly the same ArchLinux setup for years now, probably over a decade, and it is remarkably stable. Things break very occasionally but are easily fixed (and are usually a result of my own tinkering with experimental software).
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 really wanted to like using a Macbook. I've given it a go a few times, amazing battery life and great build quality.
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
Oh no! Anyway...
Weird. I see a lot of my friends disenchanted like this, but a lot of the reason I'm not is Linux and more importantly, open source projects in general. The more of an effort I make to learn the open source alternative to whatever adobe or what have you I used to use, the more I enjoy computing.
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.
>I'm Tired Boss >I'm 30 this year, and computers don't have the same level of whimsy and excitement as they once had. When I was young everything was new and interesting, it felt like there was so much experimentation and innovation. Today the various desktop environments seem to have largely converged, sharing the same flat design language and icon styles. Customisation seems to have completely fallen by the wayside in favour of a more curated experience controlled by the desktop environment.
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 am doing the opposite. I have been a Mac user since ~2005. My first Mac was actually a Quadra 610, but I was a wee little lad back then. I started my career on a G5 Power Mac with dual 23" cinema displays (studio displays? can't remember what they were called back then). Then the intel Macbook/MBP, etc. I think my favorite mac of all time, or the one I look back most fondly on, was my 2012 Macbook Air.
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.
The reason I left Linux was because I didn't want to be associated with the high-ranking developers that openly abuse and demean others with unprofessional attitudes for decades on end with impunity.
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?
Another shout-out for MacVim.
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.
Basic take
> For a good period of my life I don't think I had same Linux install on my personal machines for longer than three months.
...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.
The dance trying different distros and DEs is fun (and important) for a while. Eventually you learn to fix the problems yourself exactly to avoid having to reinstall. Eventuakky distro lines get blurred as it's the same software under it and jumping between them more easily. Once you find a distro with the right mix for your tastes you stick to it. My main server has some files as old as 1999, migrated hardware, filesystems, even migrated from 32bit to 64bit without having to reinstall. But I've spent 3 years doing the same dance before it.
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.
Yeah, I distro-hopped for a few years during the tail end of my college days and the first year or two after, but at this point I've been running the same Arch installation for close to a decade (literally migrating it to new hardware by setting up the same partition structure and rsyncing everything over). It hasn't felt like work to use Linux pretty much since I stopped reinstalling, while Windows and MacOS feel like they get harder to use every time I have to.
I think Windows and macOS have both changed more radically than my 10 year old Gentoo installation has in that period of time, heh.
That does seem strange. So he has been experimenting seeking something. I have kept the same LTS installations sometimes until the bitter end of the support cycle.
When I first started using Linux decades ago, I had the same experience. At some point I realized that's because I didn't really understand what I was doing. I was trying to use it like Windows without understanding that it is its own thing and needs me to 'unlearn' bad habits and actually only do things I understand and if I need to do something more, learn about it instead of blindly copy pasting.
If one never gets past that stage, I can see how it can be frustrating. But at some point it's up to the user and how serious they are. Things are simple enough now that it really doesn't take much.
I have been on the same Arch installation for 10+ years and the previous install on a different device was also ~8 years old. Could have just transferred files over and be done about it but I wanted to refresh my knowledge. :)
Yeah, weird. I've run Fedora and OpenSUSE Tumbleweed (rolling distro) for two and a half years each.
Yup. I think my xubuntu install dates back to early 2010s. I upgrade to 04s, it works.
I agree, Kubuntu here last 4 years, Ubuntu before that starting 2006.
While I used to.distrohop a bit at the beginning of the century, my current Fedora 44 install dates back from Fedora 25 or 26 which I believe was released somewhere around 2017. It has moved from one laptop to another as I couldn't be bothered to reinstall.
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.
I switched from Linux to Mac around the same age I think, I know Linux works much better now but Mac just works. I remember trying to connect a ThinkPad with an AMD/ATI graphic card I had paid extra to an external monitor on my ex-wife laptop, what a massive PITA and it never worked, it would just work with the Intel builtin GPU.
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 know Linux works much better now but Mac just works. I remember trying to connect a ThinkPad[...]
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.
https://linuxpreloaded.com/
tl;dr: The desktop environment the author is using is adopting mac OS unusability features, but doing so slowly, so jumping to mac OS will allow full unusability without the wait.
tl;dr: Bored Linux user who tolerates electron apps switched to macOS for excitement.
how intellectually stimulating. did the box it came in also feel premium?