
Why I switched from OS X to Linux - jeena
https://jeena.net/why-i-switchedfrom-osx-to-linux
======
astrodust
I think it's important to note here that the reason a lot of people switch
from macOS/OS X to Linux is because they _can_.

There's been a tremendous amount of work over the last ten years to make the
Linux desktop environment habitable. At first it was usable for very narrow
use cases, like living within an Office-compatible application, but over time
that space has grown. What was once done out of spite can now be done for the
sake of convenience.

Instead of being all negative about Apple not living up to our expectations I
think we should appreciate how much Linux has exceeded them.

~~~
developer2
I don't intend to scoff at the work done on Linux distros; however, many of us
looking to make the switch are doing so _only_ because Apple has gone too far
with their latest pricing schemes, and/or due to hardware changes.

Personally, I don't care about USB-C replacing USB 3.0, or the introduction of
the new Touch Bar. The problem is the pricing (that Touch Bar is costing me
$700-800 on top of the equivalent 2013 MacBook Pro model). The removal of the
physical escape key and the inexplicable removal of the 3.5 mm jack on iPhones
does not help to relieve fears that Apple has completely lost control of basic
sense as to what their professional users want and need. The MacBook Pro line
has fallen into the same category as the MacBook Air. It's supposed to be a
professional machine, but it's now being specced to the lowest common
denominator, meant for any average consumer.

For some of us, Linux is not being transitioned to with enthusiasm. We do not
consider it a drop-in replacement for OS X, and already pre-emptively regret
the inferior keyboard and trackpad we'll get on the OEM PC laptop
manufacturers offer. Honestly, what the hell is with PC manufacturers that
still include the TrackPoint™ Style Point, Nub, Nipple Mouse, Clit Mouse[1]?!

tldr; Apple is alienating its professional users. Windows is flat out unusable
as a Linux-based developer platform for us. Linux is simply the only remaining
alternative. Frankly, it's not "good enough" \- it's simply the only remaining
alternative when you can't reason spending $4,000+ on a laptop you actually
_do still want_ to buy.

[1] [https://xkcd.com/243/](https://xkcd.com/243/)

~~~
soperj
They include it because people use it. I actually disable my trackpad on my
thinkpad, and only use the trackpoint. (So does Randall according to that
link). Thinkpad keyboard is in my opinion better than the apple keyboard.

~~~
wpietri
Agreed. I just joined a company where Macs are mandatory, and so I'm
reluctantly making the transition from Linux/Thinkpad to MacOS/Macbook.

I'm experiencing substantially more carpal tunnel issues because of the Mac's
trackpad-only setup. The trackpoint means I never have to take my hands off
the keyboard, which I love. Two months in I'm used to Apple's keyboard, but I
don't think it's as good; my error rate is still much better on Thinkpads
because the more sculpted keys make it easier for my fingers to know where
they are.

And I should say that here I mean the older Thinkpad keyboard, not the newer
one that looks much more Apple-ish.

------
joaodlf
I'm on the other end.

Early last year I switched to OSX. In the past I was heavily into various
Linux distros: From Ubuntu, to the more lightweight Xubuntu. Fedora.
Elementary. I've played with Gnome and Kde.

It is my opinion that the people who seem ecstatic about their switch to Linux
are still in their honeymoon period. I don't feel like any Linux distro out
there comes close to the stability and elegance of OSX.

I've had so many issues over the years, it's hard to even list them:

\- Ubuntu only used the dedicated gfx card on one of my laptops. Never would
it settle into integrated. This caused performance issues, overheating, and I
ultimately decided it was impossible to use.

\- Gnome had so many display, rendering, and performance issues... I still
don't know how people tolerate it. Even software listed in this blog post:
KeePassX copy/paste never worked for me. Random software that would just blank
out and require a full system restart.

\- Crashes... so many... crashes. Especially when using multiple monitors.

\- Some distros (Elementary, for example) seem to have quite a few hardware
limitations. Half the computers I tried to install these distros on would run
into errors, a lot of bios chasing, too much time spent on forums to find
help... Most of the times you just give up.

\- There just isn't enough software. And Wine isn't exactly the perfect
solution. Not ONE single good MySQL gui for Linux (just an example). Think
about that - and no, Workbench isn't good! It's extremely intensive on
resources and bloated.

I moved into OSX because I was fed up. I wanted to work and be productive and
not constantly look after hardware and software. At the end of the day I
wanted access to bash, pleasant to look at, with plenty of software options. I
didn't want to worry about performance, random crashes, and lack of support
for multiple displays. It's costly, but the solution for me was OSX.

~~~
loup-vaillant
My solution (not for everyone): Don't use what doesn't work. So…

\- No dedicated graphics card. Intel's work well enough.

\- I use Lxde with Xmonad. It's fast.

\- No crash since I bough my laptop 8 months ago. No multiple monitors either,
though.

\- Still need proprietary hardware, so I stick to distros that distribute
them. I blame the hardware vendors for their needless secrecy.

\- I don't miss anything but the latest Windows games.

------
tps5
Nice article.

I started using Linux (Ubuntu) last year. I was trying to get into open source
software and I had a choice between a Macbook or a Dell laptop with Ubuntu on
it.

I was aware that Linux had a reputation of being difficult to use but I was
planning on doing some learning anyway, so why not give it a try? Of course,
another factor was that I've never really cared for Macs much. I never
understood the appeal of Mac design and I always felt like Mac products, and
particularly one button mice, violate "form follows function." (note: I'm not
design-minded).

Anyway, I was really surprised that Ubuntu desktop (unity) was basically the
same thing as Windows, except the sidebar was on the left. That and I could
use the software manager (and later, apt-get) to install common programs
instead of googling "skype installer," which is what I would have done on
windows.

Later, I learned to appreciate how easy it is to edit config files in Linux.
Plain text files vs. regedit? Yeah, I'll take the English please.

~~~
herbst
You just got started :) many long time users would agree that unity is the
most terrible ux out there. Go and try gnome shell, mate, kde, i3, ... ;

~~~
CalRobert
I disliked Unity when I was new to it, but after learning the keyboard
shortcuts I really like it. I think that, and getting used to the idea of
searching for things rather than expecting a directory structure for
displaying programs/operations, is the main limitation.

Of course, discovery is an issue with this method, and that just came with a
few weeks of using it.

~~~
herbst
Same for gnome shell. I also prefer this way a lot

------
Koshkin
I loved the design of the original Mac OS. It was a breath of fresh air in
comparison with the ascetic world of MS DOS. I loved Windows, too, both in its
16-bit incarnation and as the 32-bit NT. It gave you the power unseen before.
The design of Windows NT, as it was originally conceived, seemed amazing to
me. And I loved Linux, too - for being a UNIX, for its openness, and for its
virtually immediate availability at no charge...

As years passed, both Mac OS and Windows have been gradually losing their
appeal, getting more and more bloated, resource-hungry, sometimes plain crazy.
Finally, they deteriorated to the point of a marginal usefulness to me. Linux,
on the other hand, has been improving at an astounding pace. Today, it is
friendly. It is snappy. And it does not spy on you. There are many variants to
choose from. You can get it up and running in no time. It is there to suit
your computing needs.

Today, there is _nothing_ better.

~~~
dcdevito
How exactly has Linux been improving??

~~~
bb611
Two I've noticed in the past 3 years: \- Better compatibility with modern
hardware. In particular, working out of the box just the way you'd expect from
windows, without having to go find some drivers and build them yourself. Still
some ways to go here on some peripherals (wifi adapters in particular), but a
lot of progress. \- Much more emphasis on user experience. Ubuntu in
particular really has tried to create a non-power user friendly desktop
experience. If you need a program you can get it without having to compile
from source and decide where to put it yourself. Once again, this is much
longer term and also requires the people actually creating the software to
make changes, but it's definitely improving.

------
diegoperini
How one can switch from OS X to Linux and still feel comfortable without a
track pad with the same quality?

Everything Macbooks (and the OS) provide is replaceable with good alternatives
on a Linux environment and I personally had the satisfaction to do so. But
still, there existed no notebook with the same keyboard feeling, trackpad
(touchpad, whatever), weight and durability as a Macbook. What do I miss here?

Edit: Grammar fix. :)

~~~
krzyk
What's so nice about Mac trackpads? I've heard that argument frequently but
when I use my wifes Air and switch back to my laptop (either HP, Dell or
Lenovo - not the cheap ones) I don't see a difference, at least when I added
in synaptics driver the natural scrolling by swiping up and down.

Right now I think that Mac trackpad has three issues:

* it is freaking cold in the morning (metal case)

* you don't see the buttons (I still don't know if mac 1 one or 2 or 3 buttons :)

* click sound, when you have a child sleeping you don't want to have it so loud or at all (it should make same sound as pushing a keyboard button).

~~~
diegoperini
Yes it is cold in the morning, takes up to 10 minutes to heat up at the
office.

The advantages are:

* 3 finger, 4 finger gestures for desktop switching, window management etc. * You don't really need buttons. 1 finger tap/click is the left click, 2 finger tap/click is the right click. There are tools (i.e MagicPrefs) to make 3 finger tap/click the middle click. If you prefer clicks over taps, the sound can annoy you, that is a catch for sure. * Natural scroll is almost always pixel perfect instead of line snapping.

~~~
jeena
The desktop switching works in GNOME ith 4 fingers too, tap/click, 2 finger
for right works the same. The line snapping only is in the browser, GNOME apps
are pixel perfect, but I'd like to know why it doesn't work in the browsers.

~~~
diegoperini
Legacy GTK does not support pixel perfect scrolling if I remember correctly.
That may be the reason,

------
jondubois
I've been on Ubuntu for a couple of years now.

I would never go back to Windows or even OSX.

I love Gnome's workspace switcher. OSX's workspace switcher felt tedious and
slow by comparison.

With Ubuntu/Gnome, I just Ctrl+Alt+arrow-key to move between workspaces and
it's so smooth/quick. It's great for writing/debugging code; I have one
workspace with the app/site I'm building, one with my source code and one with
the terminal for launching/killing processes. Sometimes I use the fourth
workspace to do CPU profiling when doing performance testing.

It's nice that there are just four workspaces - One in each corner, then I can
switch to any one of them with a single hotkey without even having to think -
I can instantly bring up the one I want in a fraction of a second. It really
adds up.

Windows was terrible. I had to move the mouse and click several times every
time I wanted to test a change I made to the code. I can't believe I was doing
that just a few years ago.

~~~
fb03
Same here. Ubuntu with quick desktop switching is a breeze to develop, Windows
feels cumbersome compared to it, needs way more keystrokes and mouse
gymnastics to get the work done ;-)

My Windows usage is restricted to gaming and music production. Sadly, getting
low latency audio on Linux requires lots of fiddling, and even if I do get it
running, I'm still going to miss the tons of windows-only audio plugins.

------
peatmoss
At one point, I ran everything I needed to on free _nix, then got a Mac in the
early 2000s. Over the years, I enjoyed trying the shiny new things, and being
on a supported platform was a novelty. Plus, it was liberating to not futz
with XF86Config files and to have a mobile \_ nix workstation.

But there hit a point when learning the shiny just felt like a chore, and I
started gravitating back to tried and true software like emacs. And Linux
stopped requiring much futzing to work pretty well. And the need to exchange
Word docs evaporated due to Google Docs, LibreOffice, and life circumstances.
And somewhere I decided that workstations are a luxury.

And then MacOS started crapping up the UI with stuff I never asked for. It
became more of a hassle to strip the Mac than to build up a more comfortable
free \\*nix environment.

I'm unlikely to go back. I'll always be glad for the decade+ Apple gave me.
But I'm even more thankful for the luxury of not needing them.

------
im_down_w_otp
I'm mostly enjoying the KDE Neon distro. It's polished, built on a stable
newish base for the rest of the system.

But as I've said repeatedly in the past, the thing that still drives me
completely insane are the keyboard shortcuts, their general inconsistency
across DE, apps, etc., the layering interaction of how they're intercepted by
different parts of the system (so even when I can manually change them to be
consistent, I still can't guarantee they'll be interpreted correctly), and
their use of the Control key as the primary modifier in both GUI and Terminal
applications.

Linux mostly copied Windows in this regard, and it's just as painful as
Windows (and then some) for that reason. I would gladly pay $1,000 for a KDE
Neon or Fedora Gnome distro that went through the trouble of thoroughly
implementing and maintaining a version with fully Mac-like keyboard shortcuts
and keyboard shortcut customization facilities.

I'd pay that per user for my team too. We'd make the money back quickly on
savings in hardware purchases.

~~~
oelmekki
On the other hand, KDE is the most configurable DE I've ever seen. I've never
looked too much at its defaults because I usually switch to KDE in my "let's
customize everything" moments (and get back from it in my "let's learn to live
with defaults" ones).

Being able to bind almost everything (including running custom scripts) to a
keyboard shortcut, having tons of desktop options you can force by matching
window or app properties, using special attributes or regexps, all of that
screams "don't use default and customize me" to me, which is where KDE really
shines, IMO.

~~~
im_down_w_otp
I agree. It's almost customizable to the extent I'd want. Except that several
things don't work because they're either not under KDE's control (shortcuts
for Firefox, Chrome, Gtk apps, etc.) or its flexibility is subverted by the
layering of its concept of Global Shortcuts, Application Shortcuts, and where
both of those things slot into event handling along side Xorg.

------
gwern
This could use some copyediting, OP. You make a _lot_ of typos, like
'controll' or 'powerfull' or 'simmular'. Have you tried adding Flyspell to
your markdown-mode Emacs hooks?

~~~
jeena
Hm no I didn't, but I should!

~~~
slitaz
Also your comments on Ubuntu looked too emotional.

There are Linux users that love to hate something, but we those at a distance.

------
netgusto
I felt that need to change from mac to linux very recently also; it turns out,
I lost plenty of time just to get the desktop environment "to work".

Used ubuntu + Unity, then switched to i3 on Ubuntu. After lots of tweaking, I
found out how to get nice font rendering on i3 (default rendering is not so
good when you're used to osx).

Then I went on the hunt for replacement apps for my office work : email +
calendar + contacts; oh my, spent hours trying Thunderbird, Evolution, Geary
(and it's new fork also), also Gnome Calendar, Thunderbird lightning and
California for calendar.

In the end, I settled on Thunderbird + Gnome cal, but it felt like a
compromise rather than a happy choice.

After some weeks of working with that setup, not finding emails when needed,
forgetting about calendar appointments because of sync issues, I just gave up
and when back to The Path Of Least Resistance for me : macos.

~~~
tyfon
The whole email/calendar/contacts thing works so much better in KDE I think,
however personally I have had all that stuff on google apps for business for
many years now.

~~~
pmlnr
The sole problem with KDE PIM apps is it's using MySQL underneath and it can
get dreadfully slow. Otherwise it's quite neat, though I'm fine with Evolution
for now.

By the way, so many are using gapps and gsuite these days that this may not
matter at all.

------
blakesterz
His "Usecase OS X Linux Comment" table is interesting. My main workstation is
a desktop machine I built that's running Ubuntu 14. I've been slowly
stockpiling parts to build a new/bigger/better/faster desktop, and I'm going
to run Ubuntu 16 on that. 90% of my work is done in the terminal, so I'd be
just fine on OSX, but I can't justify paying so much for the hardware when the
OS is just not that much better. My good ol' reliable 2009 PowerBook finally
died and I'm not traveling with a ThinkPad Yoga 11e thing. Windows 10 has been
acceptable, though the updates are just damn painful sometimes. I found
MobaXterm works well for me in the way that I work. I keep thinking I really
_want_ a new PowerBook, but I just don't know _why_. I know it's just not
worth it. The only time I use the laptop extensively is when I travel, and the
ThinkPad/Windows gets the job done just fine.

So, yeah, switching from OSX to Linux now isn't so bad. Isn't 2017 the year of
"Linux On The Desktop", or was that 2016, or 2015, or 14...

~~~
ticoombs
FYI ThinkPads have great Linux support. Tested my X1carbon with Ubuntu
16.04LTS.

[http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/ThinkWiki](http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/ThinkWiki)

~~~
fattire
They also have great spy support..

[https://thehackernews.com/2015/09/lenovo-laptop-
virus.html](https://thehackernews.com/2015/09/lenovo-laptop-virus.html)

------
milankragujevic
Just wanted to share my personal experience with Linux. I recently got a new
laptop and was very salty about it because it came with SecureBoot on and
Windows 10. However, with the help of some people on the Internet, I managed
to figure out how to turn off SecureBoot and install Ubuntu on it. I tried
various Linuxes and always keep going back to Ubuntu, might be the familiarity
of it. I like Mint as well, but I miss the Unity desktop, heh. Anyways, I'm
currently on Windows 10 again, but I keep switching to Linux and back to
Windows because Windows bothers me, and I think soon enough I will permanently
break free from the shackles of Microsoft and use Linux full time. Currently
what bothers me most is that the mouse pointer is fiddly and requires some
terminal commands to fix but it never "just works" as on Windows. I have a
weird USB Wireless mouse, and it's old and becoming broken slowly, so I think
I might fix it with a new mouse. On Linux, my most used feature is SSH,
because being able to remotely control a computer with text (on a 1Mbps upload
connection, RDP is too slow to use), from a phone or a laptop over 3G or
something, it's amazing. And I often forget a file on my computer when I'm
working on a laptop, and I can just SSH into it and transfer it with FileZilla
or HTTP or whatever. It's nice. I have become much more grateful for open
source and Linux in general, and much less angry and entitled. Bit rambly but
it's 5AM I don't even know what I wrote...

~~~
rocky1138
Welcome to the Linux family!

------
colordrops
What finally got me to switch was a tiling window manager. I hated all
graphical desktops on Linux, and finally bit the bullet and installed XMonad.
My productivity has increased measurably. Its the only graphical environment I
can tolerate besides OS X's window manager, and I actually prefer it.

~~~
jhasse
"OS X's window manager" wait what? IIRC it doesn't have any tiling support at
all.

~~~
Filligree
XMonad's killer feature isn't tiling, which you can even disable.

It's the multi-workspace support, that completely decouples workspaces from
screens. (So you can swap them around arbitrarily.)

~~~
jhasse
Ah didn't know that, thanks :)

------
elzi
I can't tell if there's legitimately more of these articles going around, or
if I'm just noticing them more because they reflect my personal desires. Like
the Baader-Meinhof Phenomenon when you get a new car.

~~~
ekianjo
Seems like there are more of them than before because of the recent
disappointing Mac updates.

------
muro
Why I switched from OS-X to Linux: 1. tensorflow with GPU acceleration only
works on Linux. 2\. Mac Pro is silly expensive and old, HP z440 with Haswell
8core xeon + much better GPU cost me much less than the entry level Mac Pro
3\. I can reboot into Windows and play games (on a good GPU)

I realised I liked consistency of keyboard shortcuts and replaced my work
MBP15 with a X1 carbo nand realised how crazy heavy the MBP is.

Still miss Lightroom and Preview on Mac OS.

------
thebouv
I love Linux. I use it every day and have since around '98.

Recently I decided to get my teen brother, who's going into CS soon, a Linux
laptop for development and a Raspberry Pi for a project we're doing together
(a "magic mirror").

Instantly found desktop Linux to still be a giant pain in the ass. Ubuntu on
the Pi defaulted wifi to only manual addressing, not DHCP. On top of that, set
to IPv6 only as well. After digging through SO and other forums for a while we
finally figured it out.

I've never had a desktop Linux experience work "out of the box". It still
takes a power user to make it even half-way tolerable, and as a power user, I
found it intolerable. I could see how overwhelming it was just writ plain on
his face. Then realized I was making the same expressions.

Apple is definitely irritating me lately with their hardware decisions, but at
the end of the day OSX is just better with desktop tasks. Hell, I'd choose
Windows desktop experience over Linux, even with MS's privacy issues with
Win10. Because I don't want to spend 3 hours figuring out how to turn on wifi.

~~~
bb611
I totally disagree. I've installed Ubuntu on 4-5 systems over the last 3
years, I find it exceptionally quick and easy compared to installing Windows.
Obviously, I can't compare it to OS X for install because it's not possible to
buy it standalone.

Additionally, if you're installing on a raspberry pi you're fundamentally at a
power user level - my non-techie friends and family are nowhere near that
level. If you actually install it on a desktop it's a breeze, I think your
frustration stems from engaging in an activity that's fairly challenging no
matter what you do. There are plenty of alternatives for your pi, but neither
OS X nor Windows are among them.

I'd be more interested to hear how the linux laptop went. Did that come
preinstalled? Did your brother like it?

~~~
thebouv
Bad on me for mixing my frustrations with the Pi and the laptops together. I
suppose just having frustrations with both in just the past few weeks added
up, ha!

The laptop for him seems to be going okay as a development machine. He's
definitely not using it as a daily desktop. And editor and console open is
mostly what he's using it for.

It wasn't pre-installed, it was a laptop donated from my work without a hard
drive. I gave it to him with a new in box HD and a bootable USB stick for his
birthday in November and told him to roll with it. Eventually I had to step in
and help because the install just wasn't working, we switched to a DVD install
disc instead. The USB just wouldn't work.

I did the same for my daughter for Christmas, except with me doing the
installation. This was going to be a desktop experience for her to use for
homework and the like. Google Docs, watching YouTube videos, etc.

Sound card issues. Browsing issues. Bluetooth headphone issues. Blue or black
screens with no response. Eventually I just bought her a Windows laptop and
she's been productive ever since. I'm sure given time I could have corrected
every issue by delving through documentation and forums, and in fact she was
willing to over look all the issues and power through. But at end of the day I
wanted to give her something that worked.

I love Linux for servers. But Linux for desktops still seems like a tinkerer's
passion to make it work. In my own experiences it seems not that more advanced
than it was a decade ago. I'm glad it works for some though.

------
bebort45
For any Android devs out there. I built a linux beast workstation just for
running Android Studio/Gradle et al. Then used NoMachine to headless into it.
Kept my 2013 MBP and got a 4-5x improvement in build/deploy cycles without
leaving OSX completely behind. Highly recommended.

~~~
boondaburrah
You wouldn't happen to know where to get a decent NoMachine 3 replacement
would you? I'm completely sold on the compressed/cached X forwarding that 3
offered, even if the server can only be an X11/*nix based machine. It was so
fast it beat my school's on-LAN citrix server when I was remoting home through
my house's DSL! I'm sad they abandoned it for more server compatibility in 4
and won't provide old 3 downloads that I could find...

~~~
simplyred
NoMachine, in the Workstation version uses the exact X protocol compression of
the version 3, even improved, with the same brilliant performance. Anyway the
Workstation is a commercial product, so I understand some may dislike it or
prefer completely “free” stuff.

------
autocorr
That "usecase" table is pretty handy! I must admit that I'm enjoying all this
recent spate of articles on the front-page about Linux compatible laptops and
similar programs, even if they cause a bit of an adversarial comment section.
:)

As [astrodust] points out, there's been great strides in making the Linux
ecosystem "habitable." With more people thinking about putting in the effort
to switch, I think it would be useful if we focused on the positive aspects of
a free operating system and not just that you can run them on systems without
a touchbar. The article mentions configurability and being able to run it on
anything. I'd add zero cost and privacy. If you value those things then
switching could still be worth it in the end even with other pain points.

------
criddell
I'm always surprised when these discussions happen how few people are using
macOS because of Mac-only software. I'm thinking of things like BBEdit or
TextMate, Messages, any of the Omni Group's titles, Automator, Final Cut,
Scrivener, GarageBand, etc...

~~~
rhodysurf
A text editor shouldnt tie someone to a platform in 2017

~~~
criddell
Why not? The text editor by itself might not be what ties you, but how that
application integrates itself into the operating system might. For example,
you can do some pretty cool things with Automator and BBEdit.

~~~
rhodysurf
Im curious, like what?

------
eeeeeeeeeeeee
Uhhh this person re-wrote a text editor because TextEdit now defaults to
iCloud save? Something that non-developers probably appreciate, but we may
not.

Is it not known that this behavior can be disabled back to the old way with a
single line command? You simply run this from Terminal:

defaults write NSGlobalDomain NSDocumentSaveNewDocumentsToCloud -bool false

~~~
grzm
Actually, probably not. I'd say a majority of macOS users are unaware of that
particular setting, much less that settings can updated via the command line.
Thanks for posting this!

------
shmerl
I know various MacOS refugees who switched to Linux because of gaming and
Apple abandoning their OS. With OpenGL stuck on 4.1 for years, and no Vulkan
support in sight, they for example can't use many latest features in Wine that
depend on recent OpenGL and Vulkan, while Linux has no such problems.

~~~
andai
Wait a minute, switched to Linux because of gaming? I'm considering switching
to macOS so I can play StarCraft. (That's not the only reason haha)

~~~
mastazi
I have used Steam on Linux for some time, of course many games are Win only
but the choice on Linux is not bad, I guess the situation has improved thanks
to the introduction of SteamOS.

In addition, often you can play Win games using Wine, while on a Mac [EDIT:
the following is true only if the game needs Vulkan or OpenGL > 4.1] the only
way would be using bootcamp (which means you have to reboot every time you
want to play).

Disclaimer: I haven't used Mac OS in recent times so I may be unaware of other
solutions.

~~~
0942v8653
You can use Wine perfectly well on Mac, as far as I'm aware. I have used
PlayOnMac (a wrapper of Wine) for Artemis Bridge Simulator and it works great.
Though Wine is used more often on Linux, I think, so it may be more stable.

~~~
yosyp
Wine on Mac does not support 64 bit, because OS X overwrites a CPU register
that Wine requires.

~~~
mastazi
I was curious about this topic so I googled a bit and it seems it's being
addressed by the community, there is experimental support for some x64
applications: [http://www.wine-reviews.net/2016/04/run-64bit-wine-197-on-
yo...](http://www.wine-reviews.net/2016/04/run-64bit-wine-197-on-your-mac-
osx.html)

------
kriro
Sounds very similar to my story with some minor differences. I never had an
Amiga/Atari ST/C64 as I simply had...nothing (friends had ST and Amigas so I
got some exposure). Later on my family got a super expensive PC (first
generation with CD rom, 486 DX2/66Mhz) but we had no internet access for a
quite some time. Did some programming on it, learned from books I picked up in
a local store because they looked exciting (that big TurboPascal book). Linux
from magazine CD...completely butchered the first attempt at a multiboot
install, said screw this and just installed Linux (it was a Suse). Then also
had a Gentoo phase which was great for learning. Bought a G4 Powerbook
eventually (don't even remember why I did that), thought the OS was horrible.
Installed different Linux distributions on it (Yellow Dog, Debian) and
eventually went with OpenBSD.

After that pretty much a desktop PC with different Linux distributions, have
since standardized on Xubuntu. Got a MBP for my current job. Not exactly
loving it but it's ok. Next laptop will very likely not be an Apple laptop.
Maybe I'll just stop the little iOS stuff I'm doing completely (as it's my
experience that it's fairly horrible on non-Apple products). I'll gladly take
recommendations (I was thinking about maybe buying a Mac Mini the next time I
get some iOS request) but that's pretty much the only reason why I'd buy Apple
hardware now.

------
microcolonel
I recommend Geary if you wan an experience like Mail.app. The keybindings are
a lot more ergonomic than Mail.app's (C-M-a is finger-gymnastic, especially on
Mac keyboards).

~~~
grinich
If you're looking for a great mail experience on Linux, I definitely recommend
checking out Nylas N1. It's open source and built on ElectronJS with a
beautiful UI and modern features.

[https://github.com/nylas/n1](https://github.com/nylas/n1)

[https://nylas.com/download](https://nylas.com/download)

PS: I work at Nylas. :)

~~~
BuuQu9hu
What is the Nylas business model?

~~~
infinii
[https://nylas.com/pricing/](https://nylas.com/pricing/)

------
jmcdiesel
Aside from the Terminator being better than iTerm2, he's pretty spot on :)

~~~
terrywang
Same, I was surprise to see this bit ;-)

Konsole has been my daily terminal emulator since the move from GNOME {2,3}
(since the removal of fallback mode which subsequently disabled compiz fusion,
also breaking a lot of my long term formed habits) to KDE 4.10 (now latest
plasma 5). Cannot complain.

However, there is a new GPU accelerated terminal emulator emerging - alacritty
which claims to be the fastest in the business. Looks promising (I've tried
it) ->
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13338592](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13338592)

~~~
pyre
My issue with Alacritty is that it is attempting to be a GPU-accelerated
terminal in the space that urxvt operates in (bare-bones, few configuration
options, etc). One of the things I _like_ about iTerm 2 is the ability to
configure so much of it (even just small things like having multiple cursor
styles to choose from, and configuring cursor blinking).

------
throw2016
Windows and OSX are pushed to consumers. Untill someone starts bundling Linux
with matched hardware and markets it widely to endusers Linux will always
remain a pull model. End users come to it, out of curiosity, ideology and the
things it's good at - programming and systems related needs.

Its only because a lot of general use case computing is becoming browser
specific and Linux desktops have made massive strides in usability that the
general use case even becomes a possibility but the push factor still remains.

Poeple who are not computer centric will use what comes to them and nearly
impossible to imagine a scenario where they reach to install another OS. Even
developers are often not systems folks, they know how to get their programming
environment going and little beyond that.

The kind of knowledge you need to really manage an OS from installing,
hardware, networking, storage is specialized and unless is designed in by
hardware and software vendors with support and training be it Linux, Windows
or OSX becomes an uphill battle. Possible but time consuming. This knowledge
is held by people who are paid to know it or are in technology software
industry and unlikely to interest people who just want to use stuff and not
gain an indepth knowledge of it.

------
ndesaulniers
I just sold my 2011 13" Macbook Air and bought a Razer Blade Stealth to run
Linux. Will have to write up my thoughts soon (I don't have the replacement
yet)!

~~~
ahassan
I'm in a similar boat. I'm replacing my 2013 13" Pro with a new XPS 13. It
just came yesterday so I can't really review it at this point, but I'm
impressed so far.

------
mancerayder
I'm a long-time Linux user, I've used Linux on a desktop for years and I
started that with Slackware when I was about 15 or so.

But now I'm my late 30's, I work as a Linux Admin/DevOps/automation engineer
for a living and I have more money than I have time. So time has become very
important to me. Even in 2016, running Linux in a desktop is a time sink,
since researching hardware and troubleshooting X, etc. other issues, selecting
which variant of some basic killer app with strange names to use, all that
other stuff I ENJOYED doing I now don't enjoy, because I have hobbies.

HOWEVER, I would be willing to forgo all of that, and suffer the miserable
time sink of running Linux on a desktop again for one thing: Adobe support.
Lightroom and sometimes Photoshop are 'killer apps' for me for photography as
a hobby, and no, I'm not moving to Gimp or something else that's open source.
Again, my wallet has more power than my free time is vast.

I had a Mac Pro tower years ago, the big heavy one, before the newer revisions
turned it into a tiny garbage-can-shaped appliance that you can't upgrade
(soldered graphics, clever). Then I've Macbook Airs, and once that new Pro
came out, needless to say I had to pick other alternatives.

At the end of the day I chose a Microsoft Surface Book, because a) Microsoft
is now the underdog (and this is coming from an open source, Linux guy by
trade) b) the hardware is sexy, with a screen that comes off a real base with
a discrete GPU and decent keyboard, turning itself into a tablet c) It runs
Lightroom and Photoshop! And the pen is a nice touch.

So that's my story. I'd have a story more closely aligned to moving to Linux
if I weren't hobbled by Adobe dependence. But I do say, I don't regret the
(very expensive, but time-saving) Surface Book.

------
chj
I may be switching to Linux sooner than I expected, just because the latest
Emacs for MacOSX is so broken regarding input issues.

~~~
stinkytaco
Which version are you using? I've never found emacs in OSX to be great. When
homebrew came along, it greatly simplified and improved my experience because
they maintained a better version of emacs. And when I'm feeling particularly
lazy, I use Aquamacs.

------
pokpokpok
now that so many applications (slack/atom/spotify/signal) are built with
Electron, there's tons of first class software in linux, plus with tiling
window managers that are better than anything on macOS

~~~
pyre
Signal is built with Electron? I thought it was a Chrome App, not a standalone
app.

------
vonklaus
A few people have made the point that the ability to switch is much easier--
both because linux has become more user friendly & their skills have evolved
as well.

Linux is great. I have been coding/learning/programming for almost 3 years and
there is a lot of knowledge neccessary to be productive-- in any environment.
There have been a large amount of these "os x alternative posts"; and I agree
with them.

Apple is alienating people like me-- not just the archetypal guru ninjas who
contribute to the kernal or live in vim. I just bought a used 2011 15" macbook
pro. The 2012 mbp are really the _last_ year that could be hardware updated. I
have a flashdrive with bootable yosemite and a carbon copy of one of my hard
drives that run Yosemite. This is because if you upgrade you can't revert to
previous gens. Sometimes even when testing a beta.

I am ALL for progression, it would be AWESOME if people updated their browsers
and the web could push forward-- but os x has gotten worse. El capitan &
sierra are pretty bad imo and many others.

Also, the hardware is leaving a lot to be desired. Also, linux is rising, shit
even Microsoft is making software for linux. Apple is barely competing in the
"pro" space.

I am sure people will still decelop plenty of hq apps for iphone and macos but
with Linux, Android and Microsoft making such obvious pains to win devs, this
could be a mistake.

I am running 2 OS back on a 5 year old hardware and the experience is only
alightly worse than when I had a 2015 maxed MBP. Also web platforms are
allowing tons of greatvsoftware to be env agnostic.

I am semi sick of these posts, but there is a reason they keep topping HN. A
few years ago I remeber PG even calling Apple out. He said something like, he
had just unconsciously subscribed to Apples next computer, but it wasnt
obvious he would anymore. They weren't keeping up.

OS X was-- and still is, pretty great. Cook is likely making the right
business decision in the hub progression:

laptop is hub > cloud is hub > phone is hub

But a little more effort to ship better software and reasonable hardware would
go so far. No ports, non-upgradeable, limited memory and SSD storage for f __
__ing 1600.

I can punt on a decision for 1-2 more years with current configuration but
without marked improvement and inprovement v alternatives i will leave amd so
will many other like me-- avg & beginner developers, designers and
media(photo/video/music) pros.

Bummed.

------
lindgrenj6
Good writeup. I made a similar switch after the new MBP announcement this
year. I used windows through college (muh games), switched to linux in the 3rd
year, used it for about 2 years, then bought a mac which was nice at first
because of the nice unix tools while having supported software and a decent
gui. 10.11/12 did me in, the OS is so much worse than it used to be, and that
brought me back to linux and it has honestly been a breath of fresh air.
Everything is so nice!

------
swozey
The OSX third party app eco system is leaps and bounds what's available on
Linux and that's unfortunate and really the only thing that keeps me on OSX. I
switch back and forth every few years. I need 32GB of ram so I may switch
again.

There of course are far more apps available in apt/yum, but the quality of
them typically doesn't compare at all to what you get on OSX. What's a super
simple app in nix nearly always tends to have a far higher quality OSX version
that has a nice menu bar with actions available, status changes, integrations
with other apps, etc.

A lot of simple third party apps that I use daily, like popclip which saves me
a ton of clicks when copy/pasting, 1passwords browser extensions (you can run
it in Wine but the extensions can't connect to the app), bartender,
fantastical, some pomodoro app I always forget to use tend to not have nix
versions or alternatives that are anywhere near the same quality and once
you've gotten accustomed to using these your workflow when dumped into a raw
nix desktop just plummets.

Not to mention when any new hip thing is released on github I can almost
guarantee that there's going to be an OSX release readily available.

It's a chicken egg situation which sucks. There's less users so there's less
incentive to port the apps.. and there we stand.

------
zelos
Strange that iTunes was one of the reasons I switched from Linux to OSX a
decade ago and now it's first on the list of applications I'd like a decent
alternative to.

------
wineisfine
The replacement apps list does not look very appetising though :)

------
rurban
I'd love to switch back also. But 3 counter arguments:

1\. dtrace (I don't see systemtap improving that, and there's the unhealthy
NIH syndrom)

2\. wifi reconnnection time (10x slower)

3\. power (always behind, always have to patch or recompile kernels or kernel
modules. this actually broke my last linux laptop)

OS X is getting worse and worse, almost to the state of systemd. But do I want
to switch over to systemd? No, hell no.

------
chenster
Interesting.. my path is Windows -> Linux -> Mac = Happy ever after.

~~~
pyre
Interesting. My path has been Windows -> Linux -> Windows -> Mac -> Linux ->
Mac -> ?

------
chmaynard
This is so illuminating. I think I'll write a blog post on why I switched from
Wheaties to Corn Flakes.

------
somecallitblues
I got to the part where the Op says "we are creating custom Linux
distributions for car manufacturers, we do UI work, we write Linux drivers,
Linux middleware and so on" and thought of course you'll be running Linux.
With that kind of work what else would you be using mate?

------
bigpeopleareold
I was alienated by Apple before it was cool. :P

Seriously though, it was only until last year that I decided I want to only
use Ubuntu (specifically) because I did not want to switch between keybindings
between my work Mac and my home PC. My work MacBook is actually much more
capable than my home PC, with the retina screen/better processor/etc. However,
it now sits collecting dust, only opened to watch movies and will be used as
such if and when my employment terminates. I regret asking for a MacBook,
thinking I was going to be doing more work within OS X.

However, my mind changed when the little things about OS X started to get to
me. I work on two screens mostly (unless it is just my laptop at home.) All
windows are usually full-screened. They usually consist of Emacs, Chrome and a
terminal, with some side applications like Skype. I don't use any special
Unity features, like the Dock, etc. and only use the graphical file browser
occasionally. In this setup, OS X seemed to conflict with my desires towards
this use-case. I was also getting scared that Apple's use-cases would override
mine in the future, conflicting with my rather simple and stable usage
requirements. Ubuntu, through the years, has been incredibly stable for me; I
rarely have issues with it. When there are issues, they are usually just dumb
ones. However, it was 16.04 that solidified the case for me, because it turned
out to be more solid than previous versions.

A long time ago, the cracks were starting to show when I threw up my arms over
OS X over compiling ruby gems. At the time, I had to always fight with it to
compile ruby gems. In Ubuntu, things just worked.

My wife still wants to use OS X/macOS, running a 2010 macbook pro (that is in
an advanced state of decay :)) but that's her. I wish I can just by a
cheap+powerful PC laptop and stick ubuntu on it, but that's not going to
happen.

To sum, to me this is about taste and tolerance. I am glad people are
interested in using GNU/Linux-based distributions more. With the audience
growing, I am glad to see that this can lead to more investments in the
desktop Linux space.

------
kozikow
I have been Linux for a few years, OSX for a few years and now back to Linux

\- i3 is great, better than tiling WMs for OS X, including amethyst.

\- I didn't notice lack of Microsoft Office - Import to google docs and
LibreOffice have been more than sufficient.

\- Gimp and inkspace are the biggest difference. Photoshop and Illustrator are
much better. On the other hand, I disliked spammy "Adobe creative cloud" on
Mac.

\- Installing many dev tools is easier. brew was much worse than pacman/yaourt
in Arch Linux.

\- For many tools mentioned in article (mail, music, calendar) web interface
have been better for me, even on Mac

\- If you want to use nice new things happening in 2016, like train deep
learning models or play VR you need a PC.

------
jeromenerf
Procrastination isn't it? mac, linux, bsd, windows, even android or ios seem
to work for some people. I have this feeling that if the trackpad quality and
other osx niceties are a must have for some, they should just stick to it and
move on.

\- everything sucks at some point \- it has never been easier to test before
making a decision \- it is possible not to switch but to adapt and use
different devices and systems \- "switching' is not an life commitment; if it
sucks for you, switch back; it is not an insult to the system you chose \-
when encountering issues, spend some time contributing to reports or wiki. Not
a user but archlinux wiki is great.

~~~
restalis
_« "switching' is not an life commitment; if it sucks for you, switch back;»_

Switching back and forth assumes investment of time and effort, which are
tradable things. We trade our time and effort for money, we are willing to pay
money for things that saves us time and effort. It's kind of a big deal for
some of us.

------
mcintyre1994
> Then they introduced iCloud into TextEditor and instead of starting it and
> you could instantly write, which I used often to take notes, you had to
> create a file first, so every time this one extra step which I hated.

What is it with MacOS and this workflow? It's annoying enough to make me want
to buy Office just so I can open an app and fiddle before I decide if and
where I want to save things. Why does everything have to be in a concrete
location in the filesystem before I can do anything in the office apps? I do
think they fixed this for textedit though so that's nice, that'd have been
annoying.

------
h1d
As a web/app developer there's nowhere to go unless third party apps mature.
The OS itself really doesn't matter.

What I feel unreplaceable, (I don't mind free or paid)

\- Sequel Pro (Windows may have HeidiSQL)

\- Source Tree (Windows one exist but not Linux.)

\- Better Touch Tools

\- Forklift / Transmit (That does dual pane file browser / sftp remote
browser)

\- QR clipboard (To pass URL to phone)

\- Xcode

Web browser, email and Jetbrains stuff are available all over, so those are
fine though.

It's sad and ironic that I can't recommend a good git gui client to a friend
who uses Linux daily.

~~~
digi_owl
> Xcode

That one's going to be a hard nut to crack...

> Forklift / Transmit (That does dual pane file browser / sftp remote browser)

MC anyone? /semi-s

------
sergiolp
For Mail/Calendar/Contacts/Tasks you should really consider Evolution. I've
switched ~2 years ago, and it's amazing. Stable, sleek, and with tons of
options.

It has a bad reputation because, back in the day, it was buggy and bloated.
But I haven't hit a single bug over these years, and while it eats a
significant amount of memory, it's on par with other options (and these days
everyone has plenty of RAM).

I'd love to see more people giving it a second chance.

------
oelmekki
I've never switched to apple hardware when it was the trend, in late 2000' and
stayed on pc/linux, so my apologies if this comment is naive.

I see a lot of "leaving apple" articles and comments lately. From what I
gather, this is because their latest macbook is disappointing. But from what I
remember, the initial reason for switching to apple was because of the
incredible UX of macOSX.

Did I miss something and there also are software problems in apple world?

~~~
krylon
It's not just the MacBook, I think.

The fact that Apple machines built in the last ~4 years do not allow to
upgrade RAM, for example, is a problem to me. I own a MacMini, the last
version that allowed upgrading RAM, and I just went from 4GB to 16GB, and the
difference in performance is significant. Next, I will replace the hard disk
with an SSD. Both are impossible on more recent Macs.

Also, it appears many people feel the quality of OS X (pardon me: macOS)) is
not what it used to be; Apple, I heard, is also rather slow to deliver patches
for security issues other bugs.

The feeling I get, while not following Apple-related news that closely, is
that they focus most of their resources on the iPhone/iOS, and OS X and Mac
hardware is not really that much of a priority any more.

The UX of macOS is very nice in some points, but personally, I find it about
as nice as Gnome2/Mate - some things I like better on macOS, some things I
like better on Mate. And of course, this is highly subjective, and may be
largely due to force of habit. (In all fairness, Gnome2/Mate seems to have
taken a lot of, uh, inspiration from OS X, but still.)

~~~
oelmekki
Thanks krylon.

Now that you mention it, I think I've heard something in the stance of "they
focus on mobile and leave desktop behind" before.

Thanks for feedback!

------
tcbawo
I'm loving Win10 with WSL and Mintty on my Lenovo X1 Carbon. A few glitches
here and there, but the touch interface is intuitive, battery life is good,
and reasonable driver support. I've also been quite happy with Linux VMs
managed through Vagrant, regardless of host OS.

------
JacksonGariety
I'm bored so here's a revision of that table:

listening to music = cmus

cutting pictures = darktable can stay

text editor = emacs or vim

audio processing = idk about this one

writing iso = nope dd is perfect

irc = erc or weechat

email = mutt or gmail website

calendar = org agenda mode (emacs)

address book = org mode table

terminal = urxvt or st

rss = idk i don't read rss

tweeting = don't

passwords = paper

don't have your don't read articles to you, either.

bonus:

browser: vimb or chromium i guess

terminal: alacritty (fewer kinks every day)

clock: xclock

~~~
Fnoord
Music - Spotify

Text Editor - Sublime (nothing comes close, sorry)

Illustrator - Krita

Terminal - Alacritty

Passwords - LastPass

Browser - Firefox

All of these are available for Mac _and_ Linux. A good and simple image editor
for Windows is paint.net

------
DeepYogurt
I moved from fedora linux to OSX in the last few months (free macbook). I miss
fedora a lot.

------
Auzy
Instead of Ableton, you could use Bitwig which was developed my ex Ableton
employees..

------
aaronky
I really don't understand why these posts keep making it to the front page.

------
AstralStorm
The real time audio situation can be vastly improved using a nice kxStudio
tool called Cadence. It starts up Jack, session handling and bridges
PulseAudio and alsa properly for most use cases.

~~~
jeena
My use case is: I have a Bluetooth headset which works great with PulseAudio,
if I'm on the train I use it because it has noise cancelation and I can listen
to music or YouTube with it. I'd like to use it to work on my podcasts too
which I do in Ardour, but once I start Ardour it wants to start jack and I
haven't been able to get the Bluetooth headset to work with jack, I don't know
where to start looking.

------
clishem
> GNOME Calendar (...) It's getting better but still lacks the day and week
> view, which is really bad.

Consider using Lightning, it's a plugin for Thunderbird and it's really
excellent.

------
WhiteSource1
What office software do you need to use? I still find LibreOffice is not
compatible with Microsoft Office for complex formatting. Or are you only using
Latex?

~~~
NuDinNou
Have you tried the latest version, LibreOffice 5.2.4 ?

~~~
WhiteSource1
They keep on improving, but it's not enough

------
calinet6
Yet another piece of proof that Linux remains a great operating system for
programmers and techies.

For the rest of the world... sadly, just look at it.

------
YPCrumble
Is it yet possible to build an iPhone app using something like React Native on
Linux? This is the only reason I'm still on a mac.

~~~
__erik
Kind of but not really: [http://www.proreactnative.com/How-to-Develop-iOS-
Apps-on-Lin...](http://www.proreactnative.com/How-to-Develop-iOS-Apps-on-
Linux-Using-React-Native/)) I see no reason why Apple would make it easy to
develop iPhone apps on anything but MacOS.

------
utkarshsinha
Might as well switch to Windows now. They've got a bash shell (thx Ubuntu) and
have a much more polished UI.

~~~
slitaz
You do not get the full Linux, just the Ubuntu user-space packages.

But once you need something advanced, you can install Ubuntu as dual-boot and
you will be at home.

------
self_awareness
@jeena, have you considered applying infinality patches for your freetype
package, or using freetype v2.7?

------
snambi
Great post. I'm working on migrating from OSX to Linux.

------
sngz
hexchat isnt a good replacement for textual. There's a lot of features that
textual has that hexchat is missing, even comparing to limechat

------
dcdevito
I was a Windows user from 1993-1998, then when Win98 was released my new
custom PC would lock up every 90 seconds, so I bought a 6" Linux bible and
learned enough to get a Linux machine up and running.

Then XP came out, it was better, but still much of the same, I wanted Linux.
Went back to Red Hat. Then Ubuntu came out a few years later, stuck with that,
but overall Linux didn't progress much.

In 2007 I switched to Mac and stayed with the platform until summer 2015, when
I sold my Macbook Pro and switched to a Lenovo Thinkpad running Win10.

Windows 10 is solid, stable and fast, but it just isn't - and will never be -
a developer's OS (unless you're a .NET dev). This past summer I built a rig
and was running Win10 for a while but couldn't stand it. I installed Linux
Mint with Cinnamon. But Cinnamon crashed every time I logged in, no idea why,
even on fresh builds (as I kept a separate /home partition).

So a week ago I ventured into the mysterious world of Hackintosh, and I am
kicking myself for not doing this sooner. It's the best of both worlds,
assuming you don't mind maintaining the system before/after updates to keep it
running. I don't have a WiFi card/adapter nor a bluetooth one, so I obviously
don't have all the functionality the platform offers but I don't care, it's
plenty good enough otherwise. I even have iMessage working with no issues at
all.

OS X is the only platform for me, plain and simple.

~~~
cdegroot
Windows 10 is solid, stable and fast. And runs my games, and Lightroom, and...
And now, with Linux Subsystem for Windows, also runs the Ubuntu 14.04
userspace quite well. I've setup the dressed-down version of mintty with
VcXsrv for the occasional X11 app, and to my surprise it does what it wants.
Now, for most of my day-to-day development I either use Tmux or iTerm2 with
tiled terminals or IntelliJ, so YMMV, but I'm actually seriously considering
to have my next workstation be on Win10.

~~~
dcdevito
I was excited when MSFT announced WSL, I immediately started digging into it
when I received the AU last summer. What killed it for me was being unable to
edit the same files between WSL and Windows - I'm a CLI guy but I do like the
occasional text editor to write in. So I gave up a couple months ago. I also
found no way of storing ssh/ppk/pem keys anywhere for WSL.

I know it's in beta and I know many changes are coming, but I needed to start
working on a real side project and needed a reliable and dependable dev
environment. maybe one day we can replace CMD with bash entirely, that would
be nice.

But I also need to target and test Ionic apps on iOS, so I need OS X in some
capacity. I've used Phonegap Build but it's a hassle and not free, I'm just
more comfy in OS X

------
bitmapbrother
Linux has all of the foundation in place to be a great desktop OS, but the
various user interfaces for it have all been inferior in my opinion. I've
tried all of the major distro's and I've always come away thinking that the
desktop UI was no where near as polished as OSX and the gap never seemed to
shrink. There was this one distro I thought might have a chance, but Papyros
never amount to much and seems to be in perpetual alpha. Linux has always been
a function over form OS and that will probably never change, but it sure would
be nice if form and function had equal billing one day.

~~~
mcintyre1994
Have you tried elementaryOS? It's very inspired by macOS and us basically a
design first distro with Ubuntu upstream. I had betas on an old rubbish laptop
and it was never as stable or fast as Ubuntu, but I always saw praise about it
and the design is nice.

------
EJTH
My biggest peeve with OS X is HFS+ and the defaults regarding case sensitivity
and folder names (They are insensitive). Having OSX for developers and Linux
in prod can be a bad combo as you are sometimes led to believe that the
systems are very similar... Well they are, but then at the same time they
arent.

------
simooooo
Linux is fine until you need to install a graphics driver. Then you can expect
a black screen and failure to boot.

~~~
slitaz
Indeed. But mainstream distros won't let you go there, so it's not an issue
anymore.

