[swiley]

> Linux desktop is still a buggy affair.

Even gnome isn’t as bad as OS X IMO. If you use a decent DE like fvwm or xfce it’s much better.

The problem everyone has is that their favorite mac software doesn’t have a Linux port and a lot of the alternatives are less sexy (and sometimes way worse.)

[microtonal]

Even gnome isn’t as bad as OS X IMO.

It's many times worse, and I say this as a daily GNOME user. Well, perhaps not in terms of bugs ;). Qualms compared to macOS:

- They removed menus (with discoverable shortcuts) and replaced them by stupid hamburger menus that miss a lot of the prior functionality. (If menus bother you, just move them into the system tray.)

- They removed system tray icons. There are extensions, but they only work for a subset of the applications that I use and quite badly.

- Keyboard shortcuts are inconsistent between applications.

- Inconsistent ways to make applications full-screen.

- Removed desktop icons (I use the desktop as a short-term cache of stuff that I want to be able to open quickly).

- A lot of things are not configure through the settings applications. Some additional things can be configured through gnome-tweaks.

- Much worse noise cancellation than macOS.

- Video playback is not hardware accelerated in web browsers (not GNOME's fault).

- The GNOME applications are much less usable. E.g. most (all?) types of remote calendars can not be added to Gnome Calendar. You have to go through some archaic (compared to macOS) setup in Evolution (in my case I had to add multiple calendars from one account one by one). Evince misses a lot of basic operations that Preview support (such as reordering pages in a PDF.

I use GNOME because it is the only traditional desktop environment that has great Wayland and HiDPI support. Linux is great, but the Linux desktop is a tire fire compared to macOS.

[tannhaeuser]

Fully agree. I was running Ubuntu 16.10 until the weekend and am in the progress of transitioning over to 20.04 LTS when it's coming out. I could live with gnome quite well so far, but now I think gnome-shell (already in 18.04 I believe) is such a regression compared to Unity, I seriously think about using a lightweight DE instead. Gnome settings and gnome-tweak are jokes, can only tune the limited and old-school libinput trackpad settings and it's driving me mad, pompous and heavyweight animations, slow response from wakeup, no menu, search is useless, pointless display of time in the middle of the menu, etc. May I ask what you're using as lightweight "DE" (I just need a Unity-style launcher I guess) on top of gnome, and that preferably is available via apt and widely used on Ubuntu?

Edit: I want to add that the freelance gigs I'm doing are mostly using Ubuntu desktops, and it's been working great in recent years, so for me, 2018 was the year of the Linux desktop. At a FinTech I worked last year, the employer gave the staff the choice of using Mac OS or Ubuntu, and most (myself included) opted for Ubuntu; performed very well as a working horse

[harry8]

Strong disagree there. When forced to use Apple or Microsoft desktop environments i find they are a "tire fire" compared to stock gnome. Really. Not in the same ballpark of usability, polish, aesthetics, quality control.

Does it work the way you're used to? For me, yes. I'm used to it and used to a workflow using it. If you're used to something else, then no, you're not. The end.

[microtonal]

Not in the same ballpark of usability, polish, aesthetics, quality control.

We must be living in different universes ;). I cannot comment on Microsoft Windows, since I have never really used it.

I'm used to it and used to a workflow using it. If you're used to something else, then no, you're not.

For reference: I have used macOS since 2007 and GNOME since before 1.0.0. Mid 2000s GNOME 2 was really awesome. Sure, it had its problems, but from the perspective of usability and completeness it was awesome. For years Sun Microsystems poured money into GNOME 2 usability studies and improvements, because it was supposed to replace CDE on Solaris.

Edit: should add that I am waiting until KDE on Wayland is well supported on NixOS. I have recently tried KDE on X.org a bit and it seems like it would be a leap forward for me.

[harry8]

If you use gnome3, learn how. Learn the workflows. Find some youtube demos or something. It is different to what you are used to. I find it very much faster and more efficient to the point that I don't think about it. You basically never touch the mouse, so yeah, it's different.

I used gnome 2 for many years. It's great. Loved it. No desire to go back at all. Did not find Sun moving the main menu item to the bottom left and calling it start a breakthrough in usability at all. I use osx semi-regularly. Not a pleasant change when I do. I use windows almost never and when I do my god the awful.

Try and use any desktop the same way you would use something different and it will be inferior to something different. Good luck.

[Tsiklon]

The latest version of Oracle Solaris now uses Gnome 3, deprecating the excellent but old Gnome 2 implementation they had (that ZFS Directory history integration in Nautilus was very cool).

[steeleduncan]

Catalina's slew of bugs broke me, and I swapped my 2014 11 inch macbook air to Ubuntu 19.10 in November. Its not perfect, but I wouldn't go back.

- It is very quick in comparison to macOS, it makes the 6 year old feel hardware new

- Your experience of bugs depends on what you do of course, but from my personal experience it is much stabler than macOS

- A lot of what I use is terminal based, or electron based, so I really don't have an issue with not finding software

- The install process was seamless. I realise this is truer for old hardware than it is for new hardware, but given that my 2014 air was getting unuseably laggy with macOS, the choice was between buying a new, extremely expensive macbook to get acceptable performance, or using my old hardware with linux. If I were to replace it, I would do so by buying a cheaper, linux supporting laptop rather than paying for a macbook

Despite the great work done on the linux desktop, Ubuntu 19.10 doesn't quite measure up to the 10.5-10.7 "golden era" of stable, elegant, developer friendly macOS for me, but it comes a lot closer than the last few macOS versions have.

[tonyedgecombe]

I persisted with Linux for a year but eventually gave up because of the poor high-dpi support, mostly with applications. In some ways I wish I had never seen a retina screen, then I wouldn't know what I'm missing.

[pimeys]

I'm using a 4k screen with my sway tiling desktop. Enlarge the fonts from alacritty and emacs, set fractional scaling to 1.5 from Firefox and you're done.

[microtonal]

Except that Xwayland applications are either tiny or scaled up and blurry. I guess it's acceptable if you have a large (e.g. 30") screen. But on a 24" 4k screen both options are very unpleasant.

Also, I don't think Sway is an alternative for most macOS desktop users.

[pimeys]

I'm an old macOS user. I downsized what I need from a desktop and I'm very happy with my minimal setup.

I'm not using scaling from sway/wayland, but I basically just use emacs, firefox and alacritty, so changing those apps is all I need to do to get scaling done.

[nizmow]

I've actually switched back to using exclusively "low" DPI screens because I feel like it's just not worth the hassle. They're high enough resolution for me, maybe if I was a photographer or into video I'd care more about hidpi, but I just don't see the point.

[christophilus]

The reason I’m still on Mac is 5k monitor support. If not for that, I’d be running Solus.