[alphabettsy]

> every few months I'd encounter some speed bump caused by Apple and I'd have to find a workaround > switched to an older thinkpad that runs Linux natively

The idea of using an older Thinkpad with Linux having fewer “speed bumps” than any Mac seems hard to imagine based on my own experience. Guess it depends on what you use a computer for.

[marssaxman]

That was my experience. I never consciously switched; I just realized, one day, that I had stopped bothering to use my Mac in favor of my Linux-based, second-hand Thinkpad. MacOS used to be my home, but over time it steadily felt more like Apple's home, in which I was only welcome if I did things their way. Linux offers its own frustrations, but at least it's my machine.

[alphabettsy]

Sure but that’s a completely different argument.

I don’t think anyone would argue that Linux is not more customizable or does not give you more options.

[goosedragons]

It really isn't. Most of my work is done in R and I need to be able to compile packages for both my own work and sometimes to use the latest features of other packages. Pretty much every big R and macOS release has resulted in SOMETHING breaking. It was Apple's choice to disable openMP in clang on macOS, Apple's choice to to enable hardened runtime forcing me to manually install R binaries that aren't notarized so I can actually debug my crap, Apple's choice to move the C++ headers again, etc. Apple's choice to require GDB to be signed to do anything with it. It just ate up tremendous amounts of my time for Apple's reasons.

Then you have other poor choices to deal with like being the only OS with no support for MTP out of the box, and most mind bogglingly can't even adjust volume of HDMI/DP devices.

[LeFantome]

I do not believe they meant only that it was more customizable. I understand the feeling that your computer works for Apple instead of working for you. I think that is what he meant by Linux feeling like “my machine” and the Mac feeling like “Apple’s home”. I feel the same.

[marssaxman]

I don't mean customization - I prefer to leave things as they are, for the most part, since all that work gets lost whenever you switch to your next machine.

I mean that Apple has grown steadily more opinionated about how "their" machines ought to be used, and not in ways that suit me. Every new version of MacOS requires me to struggle through a bunch of new stuff I don't need or want before I can get back to using the machine the way I'm used to. I don't want to create an Apple account, I don't want iCloud backup, I don't want to use an app store, and I can't stand the constant barrage of notifications blinking away in the corner of the screen. I don't want Apple to protect me from running the application I just downloaded a minute ago, and I really don't want Apple to protect me from using applications they haven't approved and cryptographically signed... On it goes. I understand why they think all this stuff matters, but I have different priorities. I don't need Apple to manage my digital life, and I wish they'd stop trying to force me into their groove.

[LeFantome]

My house has two iMacs in it. One is running the latest Mac OS on it because it can. The other has Manjaro Linux on it because it is too old to run the latest OS and I kept running little roadblocks because of that ( or big ones like current apps not being compatible ).

I can use either one but I find the older hardware with Manjaro on it more productive for me. I do a bit of .NET dev and Docker / Distrobox stuff but honestly it is mostly office work ( Zoom, MS Teams, presentations, spreadsheets, email, Slack, and the web / cloud ). All the software I use is totally up to date though and, as above, I just run into fewer “speed bumps” on Linux.

To be fair, that suits my wife just fine. She is in Marketing and teaches as a prof. She definitely prefers the Mac experience the newer iMac brings. Then again, she asks me to help her with stuff quite often. So she is certainly running into her share of “speed bumps” too.

[spacexsucks]

I can attest to this, no one would believe me. But i drive old Lenovos compared to the new fangled M1. Macs definitely get in the way of a variety of work

[renewiltord]

Bizarrely there was a time when I had the perfect Gnome 2 installation on Ubuntu (16? 14?) and it was better at working like a computer than anything else I’ve had.

But as soon as I upgraded, everything went away. I remember something weird like I could “pick up” a window and swap workspaces and drop it and it was perfect.

I can only guess that that feature was some emergent property of the implementation and not a design goal because I never really got it back.

[tshaddox]

I think there was one point in like 2005-2006 where I had Linux running with multiple monitors and I had found one winmodem that I magically was able to get working. I want to say I was using openSUSE. I had no idea what I was doing but I sure worked hard at experimenting and trying random things!

[dTal]

> remember something weird like I could “pick up” a window and swap workspaces and drop it and it was perfect.

Just tried that on Plasma, works perfectly. The ̶f̶u̶t̶u̶r̶e̶ past is now!

[renewiltord]

I recall KDE being a mess but that was during the switch to KDE4. This is something I really need to be better about: losing my memories of trouble with things from decades ago. I have the same hesitancy with FUSE.

[dTal]

Oh, KDE Plasma is a completely different animal now. Lightweight (really!) and a pleasure to use as a power user. I also remember the KDE4 days and had firmly placed KDE in the "unusably bloated garbage" bucket, but when I tentatively tried Plasma 5 on my laptop a few years back I said "holy crap" and immediately installed it on everything. Plasma is a gem.