[crispinb]

> I need a stable OS that allows me to be productive without having to waste hours looking for workarounds and setup and doesn’t break my config every upgrade.

You won't get that in my experience. I've used MacOS, Windows 10, and various Linuxes over the last few years. Every Linux I've used swallows literally 10x the amount of fiddling / searching / configuration time compared to the mainstream alternatives (I log all my sysadmin time, so this is an objective measure for my own case). Linux is currently my main OS (indeed the only one on my daily work laptop), because I find the trade-offs for development work worth it. But only just. It is a total pain in the arse.

You will of course get people informing you that distro X just works, but invariably they either have minimal requirements that a default installation meets, or they have accumulated thousands of hours worth of expertise that naturally makes it seem to them that everything is simple and transparent. Which it really isn't.

[PKop]

Recently switched from MacOS to Pop OS on Thinkpad X1 exreme gen2, very satisfied with the high level of immediate productivity and minimal required fiddling. For a Linux distro, "it just works" rather well.

Add to that an appreciation for better keyboard and non-shiny screen... overall I feel better developing on this than Macbook pro surprisingly.

[crispinb]

Contrary to my comments about wasting time distro-hopping, I was tempted enough by some of pop_os's claims (good hdpi support etc) to give it a try on a spare partition. Probably my worst Linux installer experience yet - it was a mess on my machine (Dell XPS 15). Didn't boot in UEFI mode, then when I got past that it didn't allow me to assign partitions as I wished. I got past that with an installer-bug bypass kludge, and then .. the install itself failed.

When I'm in the programming flow, I kind of love Linux. Everything's super-fast, the UI is unfussy and keeps out of my way, and it mostly kind of leaves me alone.

But when it comes to actually configuring or changing anything, the irritation mounts and I wish we had a real 21st century desktop OS. By the 22nd century, maybe.

[crispinb]

You've probably made a smart choice with the Thinkpad, as by all accounts it has good Linux h/w compatibility. I'd consider something similar next time I'm up for a replacement. Others have recommended pop_os to me, and from all accounts it's great, but distro-hopping isn't a productive use of time.

> overall I feel better developing on this than Macbook pro surprisingly

Me too with my current setup despite some configuration frustrations. I do actually prefer it (which is why it's stuck around), but that's after having spent far more hours fiddling around than I ever wanted to, and with a bunch of things still not set up because I've spent my sysadmin time budget.