Surprising to myself, I have been a Linux user for over 12 years…
Through the many years I have bounced between and tried Ubuntu, Debian, Fedora, openSUSE, Arch, Parrot OS, Linux Mint, Manjaro. I have tried Gnome, Cinnamon, XFCE, KDE, Mate, Deepin. And more. I have 3 computers, all using a Linux distro right now.
I love the idea of Linux - free, free as in freedom, free of telemetry. And well, I thought I would never entertain the idea of switching, here I am today, strongly considering Mac OS.
Lately, I have become extremely frustrated and tired of dealing with little bugs, crashes, versions, and dependencies. Not to mention notable UI issues. It is starting to hamper my productivity when working.
Right now I am using Ubuntu and I cannot drag and drop into VS Code from Nautilus, I can’t drag and drop from the default archive manager, I am experiencing screen tearing issues, one piece of software I use crashes often but not Debian and vice versa, I have to manually reset screen brightness when it dims after timeout, etc. I have experienced issues of similar nature across all distros I have used and I am becoming burnt out.
I think part of the issue is that there is a huge variety of Linux distros, different combinations of kernels, desktop environments, window managers, package managers, file managers, network managers, etc… Not to mention devices. There is too many variables, and too many projects to maintain.
Sorry for the rant, I have seen many similar posts, but I have been using Linux for over 12 years, powering through, ignoring and working around these issues and I am pretty fed up.
While I am conflicted, I am thinking Mac OS looks like a good middle ground.
Any suggestions? What has been the most stable distro and compatible for you?
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I’m actually having the opposite experience (for the most part). All the little papercuts of yesteryear are almost completely gone, and it’s only looking better on the horizon. Of course your mileage may vary depending on use case and hardware…
Some things of the top of my head:
- Flatpak replacing 3rd party PPAs. Brand new software without dependency hell or breaking system packages? Yes please
- Snaps and AppImages too
- XDG Portals standards, making snaps and flatpaks play nice with confinement
- Audio and Bluetooth? It “just works” now
- Pipewire
- Even gaming works really well now, with Proton, DXVK etc
- AMD and Intel drivers baked in to the kernel
- Wayland finally being production ready for many use-cases, and being adopted as the default, fixing so many of the ancient X11 issues (screen tearing, multiple displays with different scaling, refresh rate, fractional scaling) ( cries in Nvidia )
- Nvidia finally changing their mind so Wayland on Nvidia can be a thing (I can’t wait 😊)
- KDE Connect / gsConnect phone integration
- Screensharing on Wayland even on legacy X11 apps becoming a thing through the new screensharing Portal
The only problem I’ve had recently is Ubuntu’s forced snapification, and snap being very rough around the edges for Desktop apps (ahem drag’drop)
This has been/is my experience over the last 5-10+ years. When I think about how far we’ve come since the early to mid 2000s… Man. My mind boggles. I still run Ubuntu on my server, for simplicity sake, but have become a fan of tumbleweed for my personal machine.
I’m a long time Gnome user myself, and man has Wayland come a long ways. I can’t even imagine going back to X11. The last time I booted into a session to check if it would “fix” somet, I was immediately blown away by just how choppy and awful it is. Once you get used to Wayland X11 is just… Bad.
Yeah, i tried booting into X11 after using wayland for a while to compare them and i couldn’t bear the tearing, i guess this is alo the case with things like refresh rates
I use Linux, MacOS and Windows more or less parallel. Each has its quirks and benefits, but I would say Windows is the worst. MacOS looks very clean at forst glance, but has some weird things that appear randomly and seem to get worse with every update. On Linux it depends a lot on how you set up your system, my Fedora with mostly flatpaks works really well, but there are UI inconsistencies all over the place and maybe you need to look for a workaroubd from time to time.
+1 all my servers run Linux or FreeBSD, I use macOS as desktop (most of the stuff is neat and out of the box and it uses less resources) and I use Windows while working with my customers and some of their servers. I would definitely not choose Linux for desktop (I tried and gave up), but it is great for the servers.
Same! I use all 3, and Mac is my primary platform, I have a more powerful x86-based Fedora computer I use for gaming, and as a Visual Studio Code remote SSH machine and I have to sometimes boot into Windows for incompatible software/games.
Agree that Windows is the worst, and that Apple seems to be having macOS die by a thousand cuts (experienced many bugs, but they do tend to be fixed quickly with or without me reporting them, bigger issue is them removing options that were available via plists).
Fedora, however, seems to have a bright future, but there are still too many bugs/inconsistencies for me to use it on a daily basis.
Always choose what’s right for your work. You can still keep your Linux distro for the less relevant tasks and skip to macOS for the main productivity job. It’s not a matter of religion
Right now I am using Ubuntu and I cannot drag and drop into VS Code from Nautilus, I can’t drag and drop from the default archive manager,
anything from Snap or Flatpak in there?
If you can afford it, or even give Mac a test run, it might be worth it for your mental health. Health trumps everything and if your are honestly burnt out and you feel like it could be linked to your operating system, it is worth trying a change.
Yeah, sounds like they’re using the snap version of VS Code
MacOS is a good middleground and everything blends it smoothly.
But tbh Ubuntu has gone south lately and GNOME has always had troubles with apps interoperability.
I find it easier to use Plasma because I can actually drag and drop to another app. But it’s not perfect either.
Anyways, be it MacOS, Linux or windows the choice is yours. You should switch to something that feels good to you. Plus, on macOS you still have a decent terminal, zsh, etc.
Be free.
Yup Im like you, been using Linux since I was a kid basically. Probably for 20 years now I guess.
For me, its just screen sharing that is a major annoyance. This is something that is so annoying when it doesnt work, and quite embarrassing as well.
I have had periods when my Linux machine has been the most stable in the team. Mac users had constant problems with bluetooth issues and other bugs.
Currenly im the one having the most issues though, and my collegues with macs dont have any major issues.
So yep, its frustrating. But i really love linux and when I have used mac, I stopped being interested in open source and technology. I dont want to become that guy who just waits for the next Apple conference for exciting news. I enjoy new Gnome and KDE releases and reading about Linux features very, very much.
But yes, its not without its annoyances to run Linux.
I will never stop using Linux, special place in my heart. But for my primary work machine and daily driver, I need something that is just going to work.
I’ve been a Ubuntu user for 12 years. Got bored. Turned my hp laptop into a Hackintosh. Got hooked on macOS and all the convenience the Apple ecosystem has to offer (copy on iPhone, paste on macOS; AirPods automatically switching to whatever device started to play audio; drag&drop works everywhere in exactly the way you’d expect; etc. etc.) Also with brew.sh you can install some commandline tools and use the Terminal almost the same as with Linux. Python and bash scripts work, there’s FUSE available, etc.
And the best: it all “just works”. There’s the odd issue after a major macOS update, but nothing critical.
Sounds like this is the way I’m going to go. I’ll try the hackintosh route to test the waters before shelling out on a Mac if I decide so.
If you need a starting point: Here’s my config from back then.
I’m new to daily driving Linux. I’ve dabbled with Linux for years, but never used it that much until I installed it on a new m.2 drive on my main PC. Been using Arch for a little over 1 month now.
I can understand your tired of tinkering, I came from windows where I was tired of fighting the OS to do what I want. So in that regard I use the same “energy” but instead of fighting windows I’m learning and getting better and building and customizing my Linux install exactly how I like it.
As for other suggestions I don’t mind macOS, but their hardware screams planned obsolescence. they charge obscene amounts for a few gigabytes extra of SSD. I checked just now and they charge 259euro in my country to go from 256GB to 512GB. And I bought 2TB Samsung 980 pro NVME m.2 drive for 120euro a month ago.
Windows is probably the worst OS, but you can install software that rips out all the built in spyware. And you get keys around the web for cheap. This way you can keep your PC, and the next time you get a new PC you can buy one you are reasonably certain will work well on Linux.
Yeah the telemetry in M$ Windows is what is stopping me. I have no need for Windows, I don’t play many games. I do agree with the Apple hardware argument, I am thinking of doing a hackintosh to test the waters.
You should really try a distro that’s actually up to date instead of ubuntu or debian, things are changing rapidly because of wayland, and you might not have a good experience on stable distros until the big transition is done.
What would you recommend here instead? Or rather what are you using for your daily driver?
Personally I’m using Fedora and it’s as painless for me as it gets. I don’t think Linux desktop can get any smoother than that.
As far as I know the Fedora Workstation (with Gnome) is really polished. I’m personally using KDE, which - being KDE - has a rough edge here and there, but it’s getting so much better with each upgrade that I’m really impressed now.
I’m not the person you commented to but just this month I switched to KDE neon, because I believe I was having issues with some games and Mint’s Cinammon WM with constant crashes and freezes. So far everything on Neon has been running great. I like having a bleeding edge GUI on a rock solid, widely compatible base. Neon is basically Ubuntu but tweaked and molded by the KDE people to run KDE to its fullest potential.
macOS is still Unix, so you’ll find yourself somewhat at home in the terminal.
Honestly, if you’re distro hopping a lot, find one that supports your hardware well out of the box with a desktop environment that suits you and works and stick with it. Futzing around with everything can definitely make it more frustrating.
I’ll echo others’ comments and say that operating systems are tools. Find the one that works for the job. If I’m doing audio production, macOS wins for me. If I’m gaming, I have a Windows install. If I’m doing anything else, Linux is my preferred environment. Don’t overthink it, go with what works for what you need!
macOS is still Unix
It’s UNIX based, sure. But it’s still not fully POSIX compliant.
When did it stop being POSIX compliant? I remember Apple advertising their POSIX certification back in the day but didn’t know they stepped away from that.
I’m not sure, but it’s missing a number of API functions like
clock_nanosleep.I think it’s UNIX 3 certified, but that’s ancient.
Weird. I can drag and drop just fine. Are you using VScode from a snap or the DEB straight from https://code.visualstudio.com/
If it is frome the Software store then it is a SNAP and the application is now allowed to work that way. Perhaps the SNAP can see your Documents folder, but not your Downloads folder as an example. While annoying this is a security feature of SNAPS.
It’s called F R A G M E N T A T I O N. Wasted thousands of hours despite having weaker manpower…
Do it.
I currently use all 3 (M1 MacBook Air for a laptop while I’m at work, and Ubuntu 23.04/Win10 dual boot desktop, and an old Dell Latitude core2duo running AntiX for just sorta messing around with)
All 3 of the systems have their ups and downs. I just recently tarted using Linux again after trying it off and on for several years. This time seems like it’s properly sticking for me though.
I also like to do audio production, and no matter how much people like to yell about how you can do music production on Linux, it’s a right pain in the ass to deal with Jack and finding a DAW that doesn’t have that classic FOSS learning curve.
So, I use Windows for music production because FL Studio works great, ASIO is surprisingly just fine and it supports all the plugins I use.
I like MacOS on laptops because of the fantastic touch pad, pretty insane battery life, good screens and good speakers. Not to mention that the Apple Silicon has been WAAY more than powerful enough for anything I throw at it.
I use Ubuntu as just a basic daily driver. Discord, Telegram, Firefox, a file browser. I don’t really need to do much more than that on a daily basis. I enjoy that Linux provides me the ability to reduce big companies spying on me, but otherwise… It’s fine. Gaming through steam proton is fine, chatting with friends is fine. It all just feels very middle of the road. I do appreciate the fast boot times I get, and the immediately usable desktop. The styling of Gnome 44 is also nice, but I just love “dock + top bar” setups personally.
As someone who uses all three, if I was forced to use any one of them for the rest of my life… It’d probably be MacOS. You get the flexibility of an underlying unix system, and support for pretty much everything Windows has these days.
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You may find that making your own desktop environment more your style, as opposed to relying on larger mainstream ones like KDE. For example, I was a GNOME guy until I dabbled with window managers like qtile, finally settling down with DWM currently with my own custom bar using slstatus.
If you are willing to try another distro, Void has been fantastic. My two main machines run Void very nicely for my needs, and it is very lightweight at barebones.
