
25 Years to Mac - How Ubuntu Pushed Me Away from the PC  - randomdrake
http://randomdrake.com/2013/02/23/25-years-to-mac-how-ubuntu-pushed-me-away-from-the-pc/
======
kimagure
"I bet this article about how awful Unity is"

Yep.

Does Unity make me want to buy hardware that's hard to upgrade (save for
buying a whole new machine) and make me want to abandon a host of software
that I use regularly?

Nope.

edit: I very much enjoy using some proprietary software though. Windows 8,
SublimeText, etc. If people want that kind of proprietary support for their
Linux-like environment, it certainly seems like OSX is the only real solution
atm, especially for people who can't be bothered to go do everything
themselves (like me).

I know some people might brand people who pay for software as "casual scum"
and whatnot, but I'm willing to trade my money for time and ease of use. I
didn't mean to be a dick to the OP and certainly can understand why he would
move away from a platform.

However, not going to Debian/Mint/any other alternative and just choosing to
dump thousands of dollars for a new environment is something I would not do
personally.

~~~
pbiggar
> "I bet this article about how awful Unity is"

I don't think it is. Its about the entire environment - note how he talked
about backups, printers, trying in Gnome, etc. I don't think he's saying
Ubuntu is bad, but its nothing like the polished experience of a Mac. (FYI: I
used debian from 2001, Ubuntu from 2005 after briefly trying Gentoo, and
switched to Mac in 2011).

> However, not going to Debian/Mint/any other alternative and just choosing to
> dump thousands of dollars for a new environment is something I would not do
> personally.

Here's the thing - that's what everybody said. You know all those Macbooks you
see developers with - they all dumped something to get there, mostly Ubuntu
and Windows. The entire developer ecosystem dumped thousands of dollars of
working hardware and poor OSes because Macs are really that much better.

Try it! Honestly - you will not look back.

~~~
glesica
I did. Work bought me a Mac. I also bought a personal machine for myself
because I liked the idea of being a single-OS kind of guy. A year later I
actually switched to using Windows 7 at work because I hated Mac OS so much
and I switched back to Linux at home after a couple months.

I use Mint these days. Linux lets me get shit done, that's why I use it. I
honestly don't know how people can stand using a Mac for "real work". I guess
I feel the same way about Linux that you feel about Mac OS, Different strokes
for different folks or something like that I suppose.

~~~
eropple
_> I honestly don't know how people can stand using a Mac for "real work"._

I live in a terminal (aside: iTerm2 is head and shoulders better than anything
I've found on Linux), Photoshop, Xcode and IntelliJ when working--and when not
working, literally-literally everything just works without me putting an ounce
of effort into making it work. So that's why.

I can be productive on Linux, but spending more than five minutes setting up
my environment just starts making me frustrated. (I have a four-monitor
desktop, two-GPU that choked on Ubuntu 12.04; I spent a week on trying to get
Ubuntu working, gave up, Hackintoshed the thing, and had it running perfectly
within two hours.)

------
manaskarekar
I admit there are kinks in various distros, but I have also found that once
you set it up, it's really hard to mess it up over time. Personal experience
of course.

I was a huge Ubuntu fan until 10.10. That's the last one without Unity. After
that, I started seeing all sorts of bugs especially display related. Unity
killed Ubuntu for me.

I tried out Mint and that did not go down too well with me either. I finally
tried out Lubuntu and that's what I use everywhere now.

\- Did not need to setup wireless, wired at all. It just worked.

\- For multi monitor support I had to install nvidia's drivers from the repo
and set up the dual monitor config from their utility. (This is a PITA utility
and I blame nvidia)

\- For the age-old 'setting up the printer' in linux meme, I went to Brother's
website, and followed 3-4 simple steps and I was set up and ready to go.

\- Installed Virtual Box, vim, Gnome-Do and that's it.

A lightweight box which does everything I want of it. Waiting for me to
customize it the way I want to.

I did this same thing on a $300 netbook (save for the VM, which I did not
try). I added 8Gig RAM stick to it and was planning on replacing the 500GB
7.2k HDD with an SSD. An awesome *nix machine for about 350-550 depending on
upgrades.

I do understand why people pay for Macs, the choice of spending money over
time. To me, the option to move around between distros, the freedom to upgrade
hardware and just the ridiculous value for money I get is why I choose
Lubuntu.

~~~
mineo
> \- For multi monitor support I had to install nvidia's drivers from the repo
> and set up the dual monitor config from their utility. (This is a PITA
> utility and I blame nvidia)

The proprietary driver has support for xrandr 1.2/1.3 since version 302.07
which has been released in last may, so you're no longer confined to using
nvidia-settings (in case of Lubuntu probably lxrandr). This also solves many
issues with let's-go-fullscreen-over-all-your-monitors applications.

------
smoyer
I agree that Ubuntu is pretty much ruined after version 10.10 or so, but I
just got a MBP Retina when I started a new job last July and wish I'd gone
with something that could run linux.

He describes a seamless, responsive experience but I feel neutered _AND_ I've
had numerous unexplained crashes, application incompatibility and (by far the
worst) ... I can't find substitutes for all the applications I rely on.

I'm not willing to call it bad, and certainly not unusable, but it's also not
the paradise he's describing.

Executive summary: If you're going to be a power user on a consumer OS, you're
going to have issues that require the brains that make you a power user.

~~~
shardling
What stops your MBP from running Linux?

~~~
gtaylor
Touchpad support is the big blocker for me. It does support some of the
gestures, but the whole experience is sub-par compared to what we were spoiled
with on Mac OS. Movement and acceleration is weird, the ignoring of
"accidental" contact doesn't always work well, and some gestures take a few
attempts to register.

If they could just nail this down, I'd never boot Mac OS again on my MBP.

~~~
Tmmrn
Are you talking about the default synaptics driver or have you tried
xf86-input-mtrack-git?

There's something in the wiki but I have no mac, so I don't know what I'm
talking about: <https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/MacBook#Touchpad>

~~~
gtaylor
I haven't tried that yet, but sounds like a good idea. I may have to give it a
shot again.

------
pilgrim689
Reading this from an Arch Linux machine with everything configured to my
liking from the system initialisation to package management to window
management to terminal emulators feels very strange. Why would I ever want to
give up knowing exactly what buttons to press to make my system behave the way
I want it to?

The problem is probably: "Googling for some obscure mail archive to find I
need to change “bop” to “boop” in /etc/something/config.ini. The amount of
time that I had to spend doing this crap was growing instead of shrinking."

If you take the time and patience to understand your system and sift through
man pages, configuration time will obviously shrink. If it's growing it's
because you've never sat down to truly understand the cogs and screws of your
system.

On the other hand, not everyone wants to read man pages, they'd rather
something that "just works"... which Mac does way better than Ubuntu,
unsurprisingly.

~~~
lumberjack
Ubuntu Docs: <https://help.ubuntu.com/community/WifiDocs/WiFiHowTo>

Arch Wiki: <https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Wireless_Setup>

I don't know about others but for me one of the above is clearly superior and
really the biggest reason for it being my OS of choice.

~~~
bendmorris
Agreed. I had heard so many stories of Arch being only for experts, difficult
to figure out, having to do everything yourself, etc. Then I discovered the
Arch wiki and tried it out for myself. The documentation is incredible. Even
my specific brand of laptop has its own page with a few common hardware issues
and steps to resolve them.

Ubuntu's supposed to "just work," but when it doesn't, you're screwed. Arch
"just works" because a very knowledgeable community has probably been through
what you're going through and took the time to write down what worked.

~~~
celerity
Eh, it is so easy to forget to set something up on Arch and scratch your head
all the time to figure out what it was. Things that start working on Ubuntu
fail rarely.

------
randomdrake
After reading the discussion here, I feel like there's a few things I should
point out that I may have missed or not made clear in my blog post.

1) I live in a remote place. Getting stuff shipped here is very hard and
finding "Ubuntu-friendly hardware" is simply not an easy option, at all. I
find it odd that Ubuntu is purportedly an answer for those who live in rural
or remote areas, yet those are the areas where it can be extremely difficult,
or expensive, to get specialized Linux-friendly hardware.

2) I've spent lots of time digging through documentation, reading about
packages and messing with various pieces of Linux over the years. I am
constantly SSHing around to various boxes for development and administration.
I'm no stranger to config files, man pages, or Linux.

3) As I grow older, I'm finding that my time is definitely equatable to money.
This is especially true as a freelancer. There was absolutely a thorough
amount of "is this worth it" over the course of months, if not years, before
taking the plunge.

Ultimately: the time and frustration investment reached a threshold where
throwing money at the solution became a viable and intelligent alternative for
me. I'm not advocating that this decision is for everyone, only telling the
story about how it became the decision I made.

~~~
jebblue
>> yet those are the areas where it can be extremely difficult, or expensive,
to get specialized Linux-friendly hardware

? what specialized hardware? Buy a PC or laptop and install Ubuntu. Unity is
not configurable as old Gnome but it runs fine and actually is attractive .. I
still miss right clicking on a panel and adding my own stuff but in general it
works fine.

Specialized hardware? I call BS. I just bought a new PC with the release of
Steam on Linux. Guess what? Everything I connected works but the fancy new Gig
Ethernet for which the driver has already been checked in and will be
available in the kernel soon. My headphones for Google Voice, my USB drives,
printer, the fancy new high speed video card from nVidia, it all works great.
You decided to try Mac. Cool, enjoy, for me I enjoy computing on Ubuntu even
with Unity.

The builtin wireless works great too BTW, and web cam.

~~~
BEEdwards
I'm not even sure why there is this hatred of Unity, like its the only option.

I don't like Unity I think it sucks, I just use KDE, but you could also use
XFCE or Cinnomon or Awesome or any of billion other choices.

~~~
noisy_boy
This is probably why Linux has been and is such a draw for me. I've moved
between FVWM, Fluxbox, Gnome 2 and KDE before finally (& happily) settling for
KDE 4.9. I don't believe Windows or OS X would have give me this choice. This
is not a not a criticism on their desktop environments but that their desktop
environments may not be suited to my needs. Linux gives me this choice.

I would like to emphasize couple of points which have hit closer to home for
me:

\- Everything is not related to hardware compatibility; same hardware works
fine on some distros and doesn't on others. Trying various distros may be time
consuming and frustating for some.

\- Its the "tinkerability" of Linux that draws people for whom degree of
customization/control trumps most other factors. Ironically even when they
have spent weeks getting the setup perfect, the exact same mentality leads
them continuously trying new/latest things/"improving" et. all and that leads
to breakage. Sometimes telling them to stick with what works and not tinker is
a like asking a player to not play. Of course, this is not a generalization
and there are users across the spectrum ranging from out-of-the-boxt to
compulsive-tinkerer.

When Unity didn't leave me with any other choice to move from Ubuntu (and the
main reason I stuck around wasn't Gnome 2 as most would say; it was apt-get),
I tried XFCE/LXDE etc. For me, none of these provided the right mix of
customization, aesthetics, features and stability as much KDE did. Though its
eats up a bunch of RAM, it leaves plenty room in my almost 7 year old Compaq
nx6320 laptop with 3GB RAM. I use OpenSuse 12.2 and not withstanding Yast
etc., they sure know how to integrate KDE in a distro to provide a smooth &
seamless experience.

------
jayferd
Yeah, the whole X + Unity stack is mind-bogglingly complex, and nvidia is a
pain. Their driver is proprietary, so you have to use all of their custom
configuration tools to make everything work, and whoopdedoo, their
configuration tools are crap.

It took me about two hours to set up XMonad, and about an hour to tweak it to
my liking. I haven't touched it in a year. AND since its configuration is
stored in a _file_ in my _home directory_ like _everything else_ , and not
some random keys in gconf, I can link it into my Dropbox, and persist it
across reinstalls. I've switched computers twice - it takes me about an hour
to set up my whole environment.

~~~
jebblue
>> Yeah, the whole X + Unity stack is mind-bogglingly complex, and nvidia is a
pain. Their driver is proprietary, so you have to use all of their custom
configuration tools to make everything work, and whoopdedoo, their
configuration tools are crap.

I've used their proprietary driver now for years and on several different
cards including one of the newest top of the line cards right now. They work
great and deserve a lot of credit for their drivers, hardware and the
configuration utilities.

------
fein
So I guess Ubuntu is Unity and nothing more now?

This is insane.

Don't like Unity? Remove it. I'd like to see you pull the DE out of an OSX or
Windows box and lay down a new WM.

I run Ubuntu server on all of my boxes, and the development systems that
actually need a head get Fluxbox. I have never experienced anything like I see
so zealously maligned from articles like this.

I should add to confront the other seemingly pointless gripe from the article:
I'd rather have text configs over relying on a graphic config manager that I
have to just assume works. Staring at a checkbox/ button/ dropdown and
wondering why your config isn't sticking is just infuriating.

------
allerratio
I too switched to OS X after 10 years of linux, and I have to say although
there are some nice things I can't stand it anymore. For everything that sucks
in Linux there's something in OS X that sucks.

\- I needed to install Octave for university (No I won't get the 89$ student
version for one course). For this I needed macports or home-brew. I chose
macports. To get macports to run I needed some developer tools. Direct links
for the developer tools required an apple developer account but I also could
get XCode. For XCode I needed an apple account. I don't have a credit card, so
I needed the help of google for creating an account without one. Macports now
installed several additional versions of llvm and gcc. Under Linux this is
just a <package-manager> octave

\- I wanted to use Inkscape and Gimp (No I won't buy photoshop for the extreme
few occasions that I need to edit pictures). Inkscape doesn't find X11 when
starting and Gimp has the problem that the compress dialog for pngs spawns
under the main window.

\- Old versions of Software. No python3 ssh-copy-id or java7 by default.

\- Package management is really broken when something isn't in the app store.
You can't uninstall X11. You need to keep the virtualbox installer .dmg to be
able to uninstall it. Virtualbox in macports didn't work by the way.

\- I have to use the command line to mount a disk with ntfs-3g, because
writing to ntfs doesn't work out of the box.

\- Everybody wants my to pay for basic things that were solved decades ago. I
don't want to pay for your reinvention of the wheel.

The difference between Linux and OS X is that if I want can use something
different, write patches myself or talk with the developer directly. At apple
everything goes to /dev/ignore. With Linux on a macbook I have best of both
worlds as linux support for apple devices is actually quite good.

~~~
Karunamon
To be fair, a couple of those problems have nothing to do with the OS.
Virtualbox, for instance, there is zero good reason they couldn't leave an
uninstall .mpkg laying around somewhere convenient instead of requiring you to
keep the original installer around (stupid stupid stupid).

The other issues are spot on.. I'll never understand what it is with everybody
and their dog on the mac ecosystem wanting money - it doesn't happen anywhere
near as much on any other platform's appstore.

~~~
stcredzero
The norm of getting paid is one of the best things about the ecosystem.

~~~
Karunamon
I've gotta disagree with you there. There are plenty of good, free software
packages on windows and linux to do whatever you want.

Meanwhile, it costs money over on Mac OS. It certainly does nothing to help
the perception of the mac ecosystem as one that's overpriced.

~~~
stcredzero
_> I've gotta disagree with you there._

I was talking from the POV of the developer.

In many cases, you get what you pay for. I've used many examples of open
source software. There are times and places where it's the best thing. There
are areas where there is too little incentive for commercial companies. There
are also times when you want ultimate freedom to do what you want. There are
also times when you want to pay for a level of polish and know things just
work. There are also times when you want to be the one doing the polishing and
get paid for your work.

 _> Meanwhile, it costs money over on Mac OS. It certainly does nothing to
help the perception of the mac ecosystem as one that's overpriced._

I don't see the logic in having a price above free being "overpriced." Free as
in beer is not a right, nor is it some sort of ultimate good. Sometimes, it's
also a sign of a broken market.

------
glfomfn
And that's why i love Debian, the interface might look old and it doesn't have
that eye candy look Ubuntu does, however i had zero issues with stability &
bugs for the past 3-4 years. Its being said again and again but people still
do the same fault, being on Ubuntu is being on the bleeding edge, and although
its appealing and 'looks good, feels good, you got the latest version in
programs and what not' it gonna bite you in the ass sooner or later.

They are some valid points on the article, for example i also used to face
some trouble on my old computer when it came to wireless connectivity, or my
old Lexmark printer wouldn't work with Debian or any Linux brand no matter
what. HOWEVER those issues can't really be blamed on Linux (as the author
tries to) but on the hardware vendors. That's why the next time i got a
printer i choose a vendor who did support Linux, same goes for the wifi card
of my new laptop which worked just fine also.

~~~
edwintorok
Debian is a good choice (I use it as my main OS), but I think the key is to
choose _one_ Linux distribution - preferably one run by an open-source
community and not by a company - and spend some time using it as your only OS
and learn how to fix the most common issues.

It helps if you know other people that use that distribution: that way you can
ask each-other for advice when something doesn't work as you'd like it.
Alternatively one can join a user's mailing list / IRC chat room, most
distributions have one.

But even if your choice turns out to be wrong (i.e. Ubuntu) the solution is
not to abandon Linux completely.

In fact I couldn't imagine being able to work on anything else than Linux
these days, I just depend too much on it: from a working valgrind tool, to
having the source code for the entire OS.

------
ninetax
May I humbly suggest Linux Mint? I had all the same problems as you and I made
the switch a couple months ago and could not be happier. It's been more
stable, the monitor config is better, the UI is way better than unity IMHO.
Also my laptop is running way faster, I'm pretty sure the switch freed up
250mb of ram.

Anyway I've also been eying a Mac, but running Mint has been making it really
hard to justify buying one.

------
mehrzad
I feel like Mountain Lion will push devs away from Apple. At least, that's
what's happening to me.

~~~
pi18n
Cheers, me too. Any ideas on what to switch to?

~~~
mehrzad
Lenovo Thinkpads or Ideapads.

Thinkpads have better battery life/build quality, but Ideapads have better
specs for the price.

------
shadowfiend
> When I’m at a computer, its because I want to get things > done. Gone are
> the days where I have time to tinker around > and spend countless hours
> Googling for some obscure mail > archive to find I need to change “bop” to
> “boop” in > /etc/something/config.ini.

This was what moved me to the Mac too, and it's important to note that it's
something that doesn't negate the years spent doing that investigative work of
finding what to change to what. Those were extremely valuable, and they're the
reason I can find my way around a Linux server faster than a lot of people.
But, the day came when I was less interested in tinkering with the OS and more
interested in tinkering with other stuff. It was probably around a point in
the learning curve where learning wasn't happening as quickly, so it wasn't as
interesting when something went wrong because I was less likely to learn
something new and just as likely to be frustrated. So, I switched.

------
graue
Whenever someone complains of poor hardware support on Linux, it's worth
remembering that this is not just because Linux sucks or Linux developers
can't code. It's about money. Hardware manufacturers don't write drivers for
Linux; the market share is small, so the ROI is low. And they refuse to
release documentation from which others can write drivers, because the default
in business is to keep as much information secret as possible (sometimes due
to fears of patent lawsuits, or NDAs with upstream suppliers).

Thus, there are powerful institutional and economic forces at work _against_
the success of a free-as-in-freedom consumer OS, and it pains me to see fellow
hackers piling on.

Disclosure: I'm a Xubuntu user, and I have to borrow someone's Mac when I want
to use the printer at my co-working space. So yup, the problem is real. But
more people switching, just to earn a little convenience, doesn't help.

------
tirant
A guy with some hardware with closed source drivers complains that it doesn't
work in Ubuntu. Instead of learning the lesson and checking for compatibility
or just replacing his $10 USB WiFi stick, goes and spends ›$1000 in a Macbook
and hails the nice experience of having everything working.

~~~
jebblue
>> goes and spends ›$1000 in a Macbook and hails the nice experience of having
everything working.

Or do like I do and have done for several years, buy any new PC you want or
laptop and install Ubuntu and it just works.

------
olenhad
Though I understand the frustration that linux can provide at times, its a
direct consequence of the freedom it gives you. Don't like unity. Sure, use
xfce, or xmonad if that's your thing.

------
dhughes
Each OS has its own quirks.

I bought a Mac in 2011 my first ever after about 18 years of Windows PCs which
included about 17 years of Linux. I still use both, I even have Windows 8 and
Ubuntu 12.10 with Unity.

Macs can be infuriating with some quirks such as no true delete key only
backspace which for ex-PC users is labeled "delete". (Yes I know fn+delete=PC
style delete).

On a Mac you click a file to highlight it then press delete key gets? Nothing.
The intuitive reaction would be it deletes the highlighted file, nope. Sure
command+delete but a mouse click and then two keys really? Very inefficient.

Transferring files to a USB stick such as an mkv refuses to move. Lots of
space HFS, FAT32 or NTFS formatted? Nope, won't move.

~~~
AlexeyBrin
"The OS X way" is to drag the file in the Trash icon.

------
shizcakes
Though there is usually a counterpoint to most individual points, I found that
my perception changed much in the same way. Like the author, I couldn't even
grasp the idea of how people were giving up so much control of their devices /
computers.

The irony is that given the amount of spyware/crapware on Windows and foisted
upon you when using Android, I actually feel more 'in control' of my computing
experience than I ever did before.

The major thing that helped me take the jump was the presence of macports or
homebrew - I love having a ton of open source software available on my Mac
within essentially one command.

~~~
skc
If you're posting on HN, then how is it that you were in a position to be be
affected by Windows/Android spyware/crapware ? Doesn't add up.

------
meaty
I'm actually pretty much in the same place. I spend most of my time in front
of windows and all I can say is that it is the spawn of hell. When it works,
it works pretty well but if something goes wrong you're going to lose half a
day to it easily. For example recently we had a client who couldn't download a
document in their IE8 on Windows XP due to a cache control bug. It took
literally hours to find the issue and get a resolution (which involved setting
an undocumented registry flag to an undocumented hex value) and having to
issue a group policy update to about 5000 people.

Same with Ubuntu although to be honest it just doesn't work properly, ever.
Nothing whatsoever ever does what you tell it and it's a shit to maintain. I'm
stuck with two LTS 10.04 machines and there is no long term support - they've
shipped a broken MySQL version for 2 years. It's so reliable they turned off
hibernate! Launchpad is like an arid desert when it comes to support. We even
had paid support from Canonical and it was shit. All out Linux stuff is on
debian now.

I've owned a few Macs as well and they've been the most hassle free devices so
far although I've had some serious hardware problems such as a 2010 MBP catch
fire on me. Before it caught fire, it was the only machine I didn't have to
wait for all the time or argue with.

I now reside on a windows 7 x64 on a ThinkPad t61 with virtualbox running
debian for dev work.

Persuade me to buy another Mac! What has changed in the last 2 years?

~~~
elliottkember
The rise of the SSD should convince you. What was a good system is now an
excellent system - OSX benefits hugely from the extra speed. Fusion drive is
that much better - it really is the size of a spindle with the speed of a
solid-state drive.

I've used both Windows and Linux for work before, and Mac is the only setup
that's saved me time instead of wasting it. I found it worth getting used to.

------
lifeisstillgood
This resonated with me - when I am at the computer I just want to get things
done - not spend billable time working out why xrandr is not giving the output
I need.

I have worked on a FreeBSD machine for years and am now heading to a Debian
box - I have been down this route before sadly - but I jus can no longer
afford the time to setup and run a box that takes real effort to setup.

I may give virtualised machines one more shot but really I do just want it to
work.

------
ncphillips
I'm using Ubuntu, and I have to say Mac's are very alluring. It's a *NIX
operating system that's actually smooth and works without constant bugs.

I love Ubuntu but it can be incredibly frustrating. Every day single time I
connect to wifi or ethernet I get system errors. Slowdowns, especially with
the unity dash, are so frequent that I simply don't use it. I know where all
my files are so I usually just open a Terminal and run nautilus to the
directory I want. If I can get away with it I run software from the terminal,
or else I have it on the dock and remember the keyboard shortcut.

When I think about it, I never use any of the fancy gui. I don't use the open
window viewer, or the worspace switcher, and, as I said, I try my best to just
hide the dock and remember the keyboard shortcuts.

Still, it's free and so much better than Windows

------
keithpeter
_"This is representative of the constant, buggy struggle that Ubuntu became
for me. All I had was a dual monitor setup on an NVIDIA card with an Intel
chipset. Nothing particularly special or weird, it was a rig I had built to
play Battlefield 3 back when I used to still be a gamer."_

Seems odd to change the whole OS Universe for a driver issue like this, but
good luck to the original author on MacOS.

I changed _from_ MacOS to GNU/Linux about 7 years ago and I miss exactly two
programs; Preview and Eastgate Systems' Tinderbox. Oddly enough, I use two
cheap no-name 1080p monitors hung from an Nvidia GT520 card with the Nvidia
drivers installed by Jockey.

I suspect Bob Pike has the answer

<http://rob.pike.usesthis.com/>

------
glesica
It sounds like a lot of these problems could have been mitigated in two ways:

First, buying compatible hardware (nobody complains that they can't run Mac OS
on a Dell, so why do they complain about incompatible hardware on Linux when
the Ubuntu has a certification program and there are tons of lists of
compatible hardware around).

Second, understanding what's going on. AFAIK the "Gnome" listing in newer
Ubuntu versions is really a compatibility mode of some sort, not the Gnome we
all knew (and some of us loved). If you don't like Unity, use a different
distro (like Mint, which is based on Ubuntu and thus is compatible with
"Ubuntu" packages).

Use what you like, and if he likes Mac OS then wonderful, but don't complain
about things that are your own fault.

~~~
schraeds
User error is designer error.

------
rm999
I've heard this mentality from a lot of people recently. Part of it is my
friends and I have gotten older and we no longer consider spending hours
tinkering with OS settings a good use of our time.

But the real shift is cloud computing - our computers have become thin
clients. I realized recently that I no longer even care what kind of computer
I'm using because I can spend almost 100% of my computer-time through the
cloud, including work (ssh + web outlook + google docs), e-mail (gmail), and
music (spotify).

Apple is perfect for me: their laptops have brilliant form-factors (especially
the air), OS X has built-in ssh, and navigating around the OS feels very
natural.

------
pi18n
The only problem I have with this is that (and I say this as an Apple user) it
is becoming clearer and clearer that Apple is pushing their desktops to be a
good experience for people that don't know how to use computers, which (so far
and IMO) caused a poor experience for people that do know how to use their
computers.

The experience on Mountain Lion is irritating enough for me that I am
considering switching back to Linux (it works fine on my old laptop, even
wireless). My current laptop is still running Snow Leopard and I think their
next update will determine if I ever purchase another Apple computer again.

------
oellegaard
I had the exact same experience. One thing not mentioned are the Mac
applications you can get, such as 1password, SizeUp, Sparrow etc. - those Apps
are 50% of the pleasure of owning a Mac, in my opinion.

The other day I wanted to make some professional voice-over tutorials and I
went to our local music store and bought a 400$ microphone and I was surprised
when the guy in the store recommended Garageband for recording. But he was
right. It is indeed a excellent piece of software.

~~~
ciupicri
Isn't Sparrow dead?

------
bobcattr
For me as a heavy linux user. I went to the store and Tried OS X for around 20
minutes. At the time I really wanted a macbook. I actually hated the OS
experience. While the hardware is really nice, the software really wasn't up
my alley.

I never have the same issues as this guy in Linux. I have been using Ubuntu
100% of the time for years.

Setting up dual monitors in Ubuntu is easy and has been for years. All you
need is the drivers from the repo and use nvidia-settings

------
cnlwsu
Grass is always greener. I ended up installing Linux on my MBP after getting
really frustrated how anti-developer it is
(<https://gist.github.com/erikh/2260182> helps). Everything has its uses
though I run osx, windows and linux daily... disclaimer: I dont use Unity.

------
Spittie
This is probably the opposite of my experience.

I don't own any machine running OSX, so I can't comment on this, even if
almost every experience I had with it has been quite bad.

I never saw any of those problems running Linux (KDE on Chakra - and even
running it on Nouveau). Yes, not everything is perfect yet, but it doesn't
have anything wrong. I'm probably lucky to have only supported hardware on my
PC.

You should try a different distribution OP, or even only a different DE. I
don't dislike Unity like the web seems to do, but I think they did some very
wrong decision in the technical side of it. Like implementing it as a Compiz
plugin (not exactly famous for stability and performance, and also it's tied
to a single WM) and giving the user few options (Unity has been out since 3
versions now, so i don't think they're going to implement them soon).

------
codygman
You should give debian stable a try, I never get any errors... ever. Of course
I've already decided on what window manager, browser/etc/customizations I
want.

Of course, xmonad+dmenu+debian stable is quite a bit different from Mac OSX.
If you are only worried about productivity though, it's hard to beat.

------
stcredzero
The same thing I wen through in 2003. I was playing around a lot with video
codecs, and both Windows and Linux would lock up on me and require lots of
tweaking and repair. Finally fed up, I just decided to pony up and let Apple
take care of things. It's true that things just work. There was a recent
glitch when I decided to tweak Time Machine and add an encrypted disk image to
my Time Capsule and found the rough edges of Core Storage. That was painful.
But so long as you stay near the common case, Apple has you covered. Stay
within those bounds and you get things done.

------
tosseraccount
That's funny. Ubuntu pushed me to Mint.

~~~
kintamanimatt
Yeah, me too. In a sense, I miss running stock Ubuntu, but it stopped making
me happy and Cinnamon was my fix. Unfortunately, last time I checked several
months ago, Cinnamon only reliably works as packaged with Mint, and becomes
bugtastic when installed on Ubuntu, Fedora, etc.

I don't have major issues with Linux. I've had a few teething problems with
new hardware and occasionally there's a surprise, but nothing like the author
described. In fact, for me, GNU/Linux is more of a pleasure to run than any
other operating system I've used, including OS X. Having said that, I had
major issues with Linux when I tried to make it my primary OS for the first
time in 2006 and can empathize with the author of this article. I had such a
bad experience that I went back to Windows XP and didn't make the full switch
until early 2010; I haven't looked back since.

If anything, this article is a call to action to improve desktop Linux. We're
all aware of the second class nature of consumer vendor support, and there are
a lot of native apps that don't compare to their OS X or Windows counterparts,
both in functionality and aesthetics. (GIMP comes to mind. It's ok, but it's
nowhere near as capable as the current version of Photoshop.)

~~~
tuneit
Have you tried xubuntu? I went all kind of mint installs for some time. But
when I went back to Xubuntu it all fell in place.

~~~
kintamanimatt
Indeed I have and used it pretty much from the time Unity became mandatory up
until Cinnamon became stable enough to use day-to-day. I do like Xfce more
than Unity, but not enough to keep using it. I actually really quite love
Cinnamon and Mint in general, although it could do with a lot of polish,
especially the default login manager which isn't the best. mint-update is very
buggy too and half the time just doesn't work. Overall though, it's a happy
experience and it looks better to me too.

------
amurmann
I recently updated my PC that I only use for gaming. Since my MacBook Air that
I work on is getting a little slow I thought it would be time to give Ubuntu
another shot on my PC. Well, installing Ubuntu from a USB stick didn't only
give mr a black screen, no it also broke my screen's firmware! How is that
even possible? I got it fixed from OS X, tried installing Ubuntu again and it
has the same result. Ubuntu wasn't even installed yet an already broke
everything!

------
Create
_In short: I was tired of spending time on my computer working on my operating
system instead of working on my projects._

here is the rub: you are not working on your projects, you are working on AAPL
shareholders' projects -- AAPL is a platform company with which they do as
they please. Therefore with you also.

Need an OS update? If your machine is new enough (AAPL gets to decide if it
still suits your needs or not), then consider yourself lucky if you didn't
physically switch regions.

------
rschmitty
I'm sure I'll get downvoted to hell for admitting to this but...

I have gone full circle from Windows to OSX to Ubuntu to Debian and now back
to Windows, and to be honest, I've never been happier or more productive.

Frustrated with cygwin and practically nothing open source that compiles for
windows with any ease or reliability I switched to OSX

I never really liked OSX for how they handle multiple monitors and 1 single
menu bar for all open apps and always in the middle monitor. However for the
most part, shit just worked. Until I needed to customize things, there would
be random gotchas and dead ends with brew. I'd switch to ports and ran into
similar issues. Frustrated with those random occurrences I thought why do I
need OSX, just go straight to the source where everyone is using apt-get or
yum

So off to Ubuntu land I went. It sure wasnt as polished as OSX is, really
Apple knows how to polish things to a shine (at least in appearance) however
packages always compiled for my programming needs, not a single issue. But
then as I was trying to recreate functionality I enjoyed in Win7/OSX I kept
running into weird errors with various desktop packages/enhancements. 3+
monitor support is just crappy. Why do I need some other program to slow down
my mouse (which was already at the lowest possible setting and still humanly
unusable). Ran into similar issues as OP. It's just a really subpar UX
experience in Ubuntu. I realize it's free, but people need to be honest and
admit it is not as polished as it could be.

I tried Debian and Centos, but same issues, theres always SOMETHING that
annoys me.

I don't trust any distro anymore. Claims of "trust me, it 'just works'" always
fall flat when you realize thats only for their approved packages which may or
may not include what you want to use or use the latest version.

In addition, the programs available just aren't as polished. Everything just
felt crappy to use, like a slightly more polished Mac OS9 program.

Then I discovered Unity, and not Ubuntu Unity, but VMWare Workstation Unity. I
can run any OSX/Ubuntu/Centos program as if it was a normal windows app. I
have access to a shell as can bash to my hearts desire. IntelliJ or Eclipse
can remote debug against my VM. If I need to load up XCode I no longer have to
dual boot, just launch it from windows via my hackintosh VM. Feel like using
VIM, np!

I can simulate my own network. A VM for database, a VM for memcache, a VM for
my app server, just like in production. I don't typically do this, but it's
possible.

On top of all that, I can snapshot my various VMs so easily. I no longer have
to worry about really messing something up with a custom build. If somehow I
just destroy something, restore is a click away and takes seconds.

Additionally, with web work, while services like BrowserStack are very good to
have I can do this natively in Windows w/o viewing pages through flash. I have
an XP, OSX, Ubuntu, and CentOS VM (I've never noticed any FF/Chrome
differences between Ubuntu/Centos, I just have CentOS b/c it closely mimic's
Amazon Linux)

Now there can be times I'm sure where a specific browser on specific OS
version will still need BrowserStack (b/c who wants to manage all those VM
combinations) but this covers 99% of my local testing.

Shit just works, for everything, b/c I have a VM I can use for anything
specific. Plus there are just more native windows programs that plain work
better.

The cherry on top, if you ever want to play some crazy game resolution in
eyefinity, I can suspend all VMs and my PC has all the cpu/ram it needs for
games.

Virtual machines are just a godsend to me. I get the best of all worlds and
the pain of none (well except making sure java/flash is up to date so I don't
get a virus)

~~~
scholia
Great post!

> I have an XP, OSX, Ubuntu, and CentOS VM

If you don't mind me asking, how much RAM per VM?

~~~
rschmitty
My machine has 16GB total. I give XP 512mb and 1 processor/core. Ubuntu/CentOS
2GB with 2 processors and 2 cores, OSX has 4GB also with 2 processors and 2
cores per processor. I actually have 2 XPs, 1 with IE6 and another with IE7.
I've noticed a bug or two that IE9's developer tools didn't mimic exactly,
that or it was a combination of XP+IE6/7. Either way we had a bug once that
couldn't be reproduced in IE developer tools but we could see it in
BrowserStack.

I've not tried a beefy 8 core OSX to try Final Cut Pro on yet, that would be
interesting to see performance output.

All VMs run in bridge mode, connected directly to network so they have their
own static IPs, makes it nice if I want to connect to a database on a VM

I also bought a separate SSD to run all these VMs off of

Note, that if you prefer OSX to Windows from a UX perspective, you can do the
same thing with VMware and run Win7 in a VM. Really we all want linux for
coding but a better desktop of our personal choice without having to read a
ton of docs and deal with random bugs/gotchas for specific this or that's.

~~~
scholia
Many thanks, much appreciated!

------
stefantalpalaru
Mac switched to the PC standard in 2005:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple%27s_transition_to_Intel_p...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple%27s_transition_to_Intel_processors)

> When I purchased a printer for my computer? Of course Ubuntu had no idea
> what to do with it.

In 25 years you haven't figured it out that you need to check for
compatibility/support before buying hardware?

------
celerity
Am I the only one that loves Unity?

I took some care when getting hardware to have it work with my Ubuntu
computer, and I don't have any major problems with it.

Now, 12.04 used to be buggy at first, but now I can even play intense 3D games
without problems on it!

In any case, it's so much easier to code on than on a mac, I really hope that
_good_ laptops that work well with it start costing less than $1500.

------
rasengan
It's open source. You can fix it. :-)

~~~
widdershins
Problem is, I dont want to fix my operating system. I want it to... operate,
so I can get on with work.

~~~
dhughes
I think the ability to fix it is key, yes it should "just work" but what about
when it "just doesn't"? Being able to modify the OS, GUI or any part of __my
__system is useful.

I'm more impressed by an OS that can run on any hardware than an OS that needs
specific hardware.

I use Mac, Linux and Windows but to me lack of choice in OS or ability to
modify anything isn't a good feature or one to boast about.

------
pbiggar
Very similar experience here. Got a MBP for work in 2011 - never looked back,
it just works and lets me get to work. The amount of time I need to spend
tinkering with this is just tiny!

Also, it really feels like Homebrew is a better apt than apt ever was!

------
ybaumes
<blockquote>I actually moved my PC onto my desk instead of on the floor
because I got sick of bending over to take care of this. </blockquote> That
reminds me something for sure... :-)

------
tbatterii
DUH... if you are interested in IOS development, then you pretty much are
going to have to buy a mac.

other than that, there's nothing in this post worth discussing. it's just
internet filler.

------
benologist
Macs are so incredibly far from perfect it's not funny.

All software is shit and operating systems are big software.

------
minhajuddin
I have moved from a Windows only machine to a linux only machine about 3 years
ago (I had two machines for a while: one running windows and the other Ubuntu
10.04 with common input using Synergy, those were the weird days). I did this
mainly because linux gave a better environment for RoR development. I did not
upgrade from 10.04 till 12.04 was out, and by that time I had discovered
Xmonad, vim and a bunch of great linux tools (I had always loved the terminal
even on windows). Even after upgrading to 12.04 I have been using Xmonad so I
don't run into the problems with Unity (I do login into Unity at times and it
almost always shows a popup with some error). Well, long winded reply but I
think if you spend enough time learning/configuring your tools you don't run
into many problems and if you do run into problems you will be able to fix
them. I have three computers with the same setup now (My office computer, home
computer and my laptop). I have a setup script
(<https://github.com/minhajuddin/setup/blob/master/setup.sh>), a huge number
of finely tuned dotfiles (<https://github.com/minhajuddin/dotfiles/>) and I
love my setup. I love the time I spend working on my computers. I rarely touch
the mouse. I have two monitors which act as three virtual monitors (one for
vim, the second split into 1224x1080 for the browser and 696x1080 for the
terminals
([https://github.com/minhajuddin/dotfiles/blob/master/.xmonad/...](https://github.com/minhajuddin/dotfiles/blob/master/.xmonad/xmonad.hs#L111\))).
I cannot imagine giving up the amount of control I have on machines for
anything.

I have one apple product a 2GB shuffle, I love the hardware but it's an awful
thing to force your users to sync their music only using iTunes. When I first
purchased it I could get it to sync only with iTunes from a windows machine,
however now that it is a bit old I can use Rhythmbox from ubuntu to do the
same. While hunting for tutorials on how to sync my ipod I ran into this from
the ubuntu site:

>Apple closely guards and purposely obscures the workings of iPods even going
so far as to alter it from time to time to intentionally make it difficult for
non-Apple software and hardware to interoperate with iPods. Nevertheless
Ubuntu works very well with iPods, except for the newest generation iPod
Touch, iPhone, 5th generation Nano iPod and any other future generation Apple
portable devices where Apple changed their systems so that they no longer show
up as generic storage devices. To work with these new-generation devices, look
at this article on using Ubuntu to sync with your iPhone/iPod touch. Most
firmwares are supported with the installation of Ubuntu software to get them
to work. (<https://help.ubuntu.com/community/PortableDevices/iPod>)

I cannot in good conscience buy anymore Apple products. The idea of changing
your software just to break the syncing of existing tools made by people other
than you (who made it without your help) is just unfamothable to me.

------
Tmmrn
Ok, let's see.

> NDISwrapper. Unfortunately, I had to end up Googling around for hours to
> find a solution consisting of modifying the driver itself before the USB
> adapter would work. Once it was actually working, it would just randomly
> stop every once in a while.

No, you didn't "have to do that". You could have invested $10 and get an usb
wifi adapter from a company that doesn't produce highly proprietary windows-
only hardware. With buying the original usb adapter you were giving a company
money that contributed to the vendor lockin for windows. You personally
contributed to the problem.

> Next, came the display. Ubuntu, for some reason, labeled my two monitors as
> “Laptop” and treated it as a single screen.

No, ubuntu didn't do that. The nvidia driver did that.

> I was forced to use the NVIDIA display configuration utility.

Yes, because nvidia did not implement the randr freedesktop.org standard.
Recently they implemented it I think but for a long time the proprietary
nvidia driver was stuck with buggy and nonstandard configuration.

>Onto the windows manager.

window manager

I have used ubuntu 12.04 and 12.10 for a few days so I don't have any long
term data.

> Beyond the frequent crashing for no particular reason, #

I don't think I have seen a crash. How frequent exactly?

> there were constant glitches. Leave the computer for a while and come back?
> Title bars for windows would become glitchy and unreadable. Restoring a
> window from being minimized? Sometimes it’ll just be white. Go ahead and
> minimize and restore it again to fix.

Sounds like bugs in the nvidia driver.

> Icons randomly disappearing from the dock, requiring a restart of Unity?
> Yup, pretty consistent there too.

I haven't seen this but at least it sounds like the first actual problem in
ubuntu's unity.

> Not only this, but the experience felt laggy. On the beefy machine it was
> running on, I expected the performance to be smooth and responsive but it
> was quite the opposite.

Do you have a video from the laggyness? I have used 12.04's and 12.10's unity
on a nvs 300 which is a really slow card and it felt fine.

>At the login screen, it’s possible to select GNOME instead of Unity so I gave
that a shot, assuming going back to GNOME would work. As soon as it booted in
I was greeted by a monitor that didn’t work and a window full of error
messages.

"booted in"?

Any screenshot?

> After Googling around for a while, I found some configuration changes to
> make in my xorg.conf file and was able to actually get it working.

Which were? No seriously, what could you possibly change in xorg.conf that
would make gnome go from only displaying error messages to work?

> I was met with even more errors and problems

Like what?

> so I decided it wasn’t going to work for me. I decided to switch back into
> Unity.

Fair enough. But if before you change to completely new hardware with a
completely different operating system and gui, there are still other
alternatives to consider like KDE.

>When I came back? All of my settings were gone. All of my changes to use a
sane Alt-Tab in the CompizConfig Settings Manager, my keyboard shortcuts,
everything.

That's interesting. I just deleted my compiz config and started ccsm and by
default it used the flat file backend for the configuration and it stored its
setting in ~/.config/compiz/compizconfig/Default.ini

Perhaps ubuntu had set the gconf backend by default... But unless you deleted
either ~/.config/compiz/ or ~/.gconf I don't see how that could have happened.

> Extremely frustrated, I decided to give the Mint side of things a try and
> give Cinnamon a shot. Again, a few weird problems

Like what?

> Cinnamon didn’t quite fit the bill either. I ran into a display issue or two
> and found myself actually missing a few things from Unity

Basically half of what you write is absolutely worthless and can be loslessly
summarized with "I had some problems".

> When I purchased a printer for my computer? Of course Ubuntu had no idea
> what to do with it.

But you still gave a company (again, you don't say which one) money for highly
proprietary windows-only hardware and then complained about it?

Here is the thing: Companies develop new hardware. Then they sell that
hardware and they give you some windows specific software with it to make it
work. How do you imagine it starts working in linux? The driver doesn't simply
spawn out of thin air, someone has to write it. And if the company producing
that hardware doesn't do it, then someone else has to do it. The problem is
that there is too much different hardware and not enough people to support
every single existing piece of hardware. What you are expecting is magic. Keep
that paragraph in mind, I will come back to it later.

> Of course there was a run around necessary to get it working.

 _Sigh_ which was?

Also, workaround.

> Even the mouse had problems. My old Logitech MX500, for one reason or
> another, would spam the logs in dmesg whenever I was using the scroll
> buttons on it

With what messages? I'm getting a bit tired of asking the same question over
and over again... (I'm using a similar logitech mouse right now and it has
worked fine for 5+ years now I think)

> Sound would skip while listening to music using anything Flash or HTML 5
> related like Grooveshark or Pandora.

Almost surely a bug in the alsa driver. Unfortunate for you, but at least it's
a real problem.

> The whole system would lock up occasionally pegging a quad core CPU for no
> reason at all.

Interesting. Which process would use all the cpu time?

> Sometimes, it would just crash entirely.

Yes, but that happens on all operating systems with buggy drivers. I still
sometimes get bluescreens on a windows boot from the amd graphics driver.

> When I’m at a computer, its because I want to get things done. Gone are the
> days where I have time to tinker around and spend countless hours Googling
> for some obscure mail archive to find I need to change “bop” to “boop” in
> /etc/something/config.ini. The amount of time that I had to spend doing this
> crap was growing instead of shrinking. This is not a good direction for an
> operating system to go.

Sadly you have not given a single real example of you doing this, only a very
unclear anecdote about the xorg.conf that doesn't sound right from the
beginning.

The bad thing is that I would agree with the sentiment that recently the linux
experience became quite buggy. But not really for any reason you described.

> iPad. It was incredibly powerful,

"powerful"?

> had a beautiful screen,

Yes, probably.

> and was light years beyond any tablet experience in terms of responsiveness,

Well, android tablets are often a little bit laggy, but not to the point were
it actually annoys me. Light years, really?

> design

Maybe it's because I don't really give much on design, but I have a hard time
taking this seriously. "The iPad is so good, it is light years beyond any
tablet experience in terms of design!". Doesn't really work for me.

> and construction.

This may be an actual advantage. A Nexus 7 for example bends and breaks the
display quite easily so I would appreciate a better constructed tablet.

> “I’m not building anything in iOS, yet. Maybe I’ll hate the OS and be stuck
> with a $2,500 bad decision. Walled garden. Non-customizable.” Those were the
> thoughts that were keeping me from taking the plunge.

Why? You could have still always installed linux on it and would have kept
your status quo with just an expensive computer.

> The unboxing was, of course, elegant and easy as my previous Apple products
> had been. The physicality of the product was awesome.

What the fuck did I just read

> What I found was absolutely shocking: it was far more customizable than I
> had ever dreamed. Want to move the dock around? Sure, go ahead. In Ubuntu?
> Nope.

Wrong.

A little bit more correct: In Ubuntu's Unity without changing to one of the
numerous alternatives? Nope.

Correct: In Ubuntu's Unity without altering the source code they provide you?
Nope.

> Ubuntu had introduced the ability to launch a program or find something from
> the dash and I had started to like it, even though it was buggy and
> extremely slow in a lot of cases. Spotlight? Completely blows it away. It’s
> fast, responsive, and gets me to the program or thing I’m looking for every
> time.

I don't have a direct comparison but so far I am satisfied with quicksand from
kde. Remember: The article supposedly describes how ubuntu pushed you away
"from the pc", not just from Ubuntu, or even just Unity.

When comparing the performance, have you also considered that you are
comparing a not so new computer with a brand new machine?

> Every device I hooked up to the machine worked flawlessly. Printer? Plug it
> in, it finds what you need, and you’re good to go.

So you can buy literally any printer and mac os will make it work? I mean,
that's what you expected Ubuntu to do, do you still have that expectation?

> Monitor? Plug it in and it recognizes it correctly and makes it available to
> start working right away.

Just a quick reminder that your problem was never with ubuntu but with
software developed and supplied by nvidia.

> OSX was everything I wanted Linux to be and more.

I think it is quite important to say that you don't care about the free
software stuff. I think it is one of the biggest reasons to use linux.

~~~
autotravis
>> Beyond the frequent crashing for no particular reason, # >I don't think I
have seen a crash. How frequent exactly?

I'd say 1 to 2 crashes per day. These are application crashes, mind you, but
when 12.10 has been out for ~4 months, an updated system should not be
crashing that often.

Just a limited research of recent crashes reveals more than 6 in as many days
(_usr_lib_upower_upowerd.0.crash contains multiple crashes):

treddell@aspire1:~$ ls -lh /var/crash/*.crash -rw-r----- 1 root whoopsie 1.6M
Feb 24 10:13 /var/crash/susres.2013-02-24_10:12:33.916825.crash -rw-r----- 1
treddell whoopsie 1.6M Feb 26 20:22 /var/crash/_usr_bin_gnome-
terminal.1000.crash -rw-r----- 1 treddell whoopsie 3.7M Feb 27 10:13
/var/crash/_usr_bin_nautilus.1000.crash -rw-r----- 1 treddell whoopsie 2.5M
Feb 22 17:25 /var/crash/_usr_bin_pcmanfm.1000.crash -rw-r----- 1 treddell
whoopsie 4.8M Feb 21 20:43 /var/crash/_usr_lib_sublime-
text-2_sublime_text.1000.crash -rw-r----- 1 root whoopsie 401K Feb 26 14:10
/var/crash/_usr_lib_upower_upowerd.0.crash

What I am saying is that Ubuntu specifically has become so much less stable
since 11.10. It's unacceptable for a desktop OS to have multiple program
crashes every day.

------
rob-alarcon
Ubuntu was great, I'm moving to mac too and linux mint in the pc.

------
cbeach
"OSX was everything I wanted Linux to be and more." Amen to that.

------
HunOL
No one suggested KDE?

------
felipelalli
Terrible...

------
fakeer
Though I recently bought a MacBook Air I still cannot say I am as enthusiastic
about the OSX as OP is. Having said that I could immediately identify with the
story, just from the title actually. After years of struggle with Windows I
finally thought Linux is the answer and Ubuntu leads the pack. But after years
of frustration and struggle - I gave up on the idea of Linux as my personal
compute OS.

Initially I thought it's just me trying to resit the changes Ubuntu is brining
to my computing experience and others are coping just fine with it. But then I
realised it's just probably Shuttle who is designing Ubuntu for his personal
needs, I decided to leave it to him :-).

As of now it seems okay to use OSX. Certainly better than Win and a lot better
than those Linux distros in GUI/UX context but incompatibility(or every other
day moving mountains to make it work with other ecosystems) with non-iHardware
might just be the one single reason(there are lots) that should have stopped
me from buying that Mac but I bought it anywa. Quality apps were a reason and
of course I wanted a taste of it.

Purchasing the Mac has actually been of benefit to me. Now, I know that it's
not going to be another Mac when I upgrade(considering Apple is not opening up
it's orchard, though I am not sure on it) and no I'll never buy an iPhone or
an iPad(I am sure about it, if 'innovation' and prices of these iDevices are
on the current tracks) because I don't need them or even if I need such a
device then there are better and more powerful devices out there in less than
half the price.

------
berntb
I am still primarily on Ubuntu. My differences are:

\- KDE. There are probably better solutions, but it works.

\- I bought my computer after reading up on supported hardware.

\- My Mac has had more problems with latest printer installs than my Ubuntu
installations. (Samsung and Xerox both stopped publishing drivers for their
old printers for new Mac OS versions?!)

\- The (simple) killer features to support, to get my money: apt, high-
resolution displays and Emacs. [Edit: To be clear re apt-get -- macports,
homebrew, cygwin etc are just not apt enough.]

\- I still hope Unity gets better than Gnome 2 and will e.g. run the devices
that replaces my iPhone/iPad. (The answer to the next question: "No, I don't
also believe in Santa..." :-( )

\- Right now I have no idea if I'll go Ubuntu, Debian or Mac next. (Comments
advertising Arch Linux made me curious.)

------
gph
You get what you pay for.

I don't see why everyone feels the need to constantly throw their own opinions
and use cases in for why one OS is better than another. If Ubuntu doesn't fit
your needs and Mac does... good. Don't see why stuff like this gets so many
upvotes though.

