[davehtaylor]

I love macOS. It's a Unix system, with a fantastic GUI, well-integrated applications, an ecosystem that is rich and vibrant, and a command-line system the is extremely usable, also with a rich ecosystem (homebrew, macports, etc)

For me, after 10 years of trying to make desktop Linux work the way i wanted it to, macOS is everything I was looking for.

Gnome decided that they had no desire to make a usable DE. They took everything that made it good, threw it out the window, and went as far as they could to make it unusable.

KDE is just a clusterfuck. 2-3 system preferences panels, confusing options, and way too much gloss (glow, transparency, etc).

I spent a long time with tiling window managers, trying to roll a system that felt comfortable and usable to me. And for the most part I succeeded. But the lack of integration with applications is really what ruined it for me. I want a good email client, an address book that can have arbitrary amounts of phone numbers and email addresses per entry, and the ability to give those arbitrary names. I also want my email, address book, and calendar to be aware of each other and play well together. I want a nice way to sync all of that to my mobile devices. I want an experience that feels coherent, instead of something hacked together with bailing twine.

Don't get me wrong. I love Linux. For servers, I would never choose anything else (well, maybe FreeBSD). But it seems like over the last decade, distro developers and desktop environment developers have gone out of their way to sabotage their own efforts and make their software as unappealing as possible.

[msla]

macOS is not configurable in key ways, so it isn't very usable unless you happen to find the one, unchangable macOS way to be the best. One Apple Way indeed.

It's also, fundamentally, closed. In this era of NSA wiretaps and everything else, that's just not acceptable. I have no idea what's in macOS, and I have no confidence Apple will do anything except give the NSA what it wants. With Linux, the attacks are much less obvious.

[cjsuk]

Fair points and I agree with all of them.

One killer for me is entirely disparate from yours and that it is pretty damn difficult to drive macOS from the keyboard.

[ksk]

In your opinion, why do you think so many people continue to use Desktop Linux?

[davehtaylor]

Perhaps it's hope that things will eventually get better. That's one thing that kept me hanging on for a long time. The problem is that so many project seem to be asymptotic. The developers get to a point where the software is almost ready for prime time, or is getting really good, and then trash it, start over, or decide to switch direction. Or the dev team falls apart, and you get 3 forks out of the project that never go anywhere. It seems like no one ever wants to actually finish anything. And it gets tiresome.

Also ideological reasons, which I totally understand. I prefer FLOSS options when possible, but I'm not dogmatic about it. I understand a lot of people want to make sure every bit of software they are using is open, and I totally get that.

I mean, I still love Linux a great deal, and if DEs were less shit, and applications were more integrated, I would still be running Linux, or would return to it. But I suppose it's simply a matter of what people are comfortable with.

[dman]

Use dwm. Alternatively "emacs -fs".

[wbl]

There is a system for you: Emacs.