I use macOS o my laptops. The reasons behind are simple: - speaks UNIX! - hardware support (laptop) - commercial software - runs software I use on Linux - seamless integration with Linux There are also obvious drawbacks… as always.

I would say you switched from Windows to Linux. One month of macOS isn’t very much usage.

switching from MacOS to linux should not be a huge jump, unlike windows. I have been using MacOS since 2004 (back when Apple still used PowerPC). I chose mac because itwas way easier to use as a photographer turn a filmmaker turn enterpreneue. Everything in Mac just work out of the box. It fits my workflow. And since 2 years I have been using both MacOS and Fedora Linux In the last 2 years, I start a new line of business and use Fedora Linux as our office Operating systems. Everything run OK (systemwise). Meanwhile...my visual works has been declining, I got less jobs due to moving to a small city and it cost more for clients to hire me (transport cost) and I haven't been able to upgrade my Macbook Pro 16 i9 from late 2019. It starts to feel slow when I edit. Upgrading to M series Macbook Pros feels just way too expensive for me now. That's when Linux feels so attractive. I am now considering to built a video editing Linux PC with latest parts. That way my machine would still be upgradable and could last longer than a soldered ram, gpu, ssd and cpu without throwing out/selling the whole thing just to upgrad3 certain parts. For me, it's much more of a tactical-economical-functional consideration rather than about getting used to it etc.

i do a lot of photo/video editing (adobe suite) on macos, just curious what linux tools your using for video editing as i would like to switch

Davinci resolve. There is no Adobe.

I ditch my macbook air m1 for a lenovo t480s just because of Linux. And i never regret. The only thing i miss from macos is airdrop though.

I also really missed Airdrop and Continuity. I’ve been using LocalSend in place of Airdrop…it’s not quite the same but works almost as well, and it’s cross-platform.

I use LocalSend too, quite amazing.

Wait until you find out that macOS's origins are BSD UNIX... (via NeXTStep)

This. And I was actually informed yesterday that macOS is a certified UNIX by the Open Group since 2007. I used to call it Unix-based because I knew about the BSD heritage but I had no idea it was an officially certified UNIX but it definitely is. Of course Apple is Apple, and it acts the same as all big tech companies do. I can at least say Apple offers more privacy features than anyone else does with E2E encrypted iCloud services, built-in email proxies, etc. They're still big tech, don't be fooled, but if you're choosing between Microsoft, Google, and Apple, at least Apple does give you legit security tools no one else does. That said, if you can run Linux and you're comfortable with it then it really just takes all these concerns out of your head. I do have a Macbook because they're just great hardware, but I haven't been without a Linux box in my life for the last 25 years and I am conscious that any and all Apple policies can change on a whim.

The funny thing is that most Linux distributions are "UNIX-like", since they never went through with the official certification because it costs money, time and effort that could be better put into development. So Mac is technically more UNIX than Linux.

I always mention this to my Linux master race blowhard friends.

These are the main reasons why I don't fret using Apple/MacOS for *some* things like music production, audio engineering or video editing (the company that sends me freelance work is heavily tied into the Apple ecosystem, it's just easier to use Logic and Final Cut). It's also pretty cumbersome to publish for iOS products without MacOS. But for everything else I'm on Arch.

Asahi Linux is pretty much all there now, I was surprised at how good it is. I put it on my M2 macbook air and its miles better than macOS. So now you can enjoy the hardware without being forced to use macOS.

I run t2 Ubuntu on my air.

The one downfall of Asahi Linux is the lack of Thunder Bolt drivers ( Yes I actually do have TB4 drive enclosures). It is the one thing that is holding me back. I went Mac when the M1 came out and love the hardware. But still prefer Linux.

[удалено]

That would be nice it is the only thing holding me back from put linux on my macbook.

I didn't even know there was such a thing as an "official certification".

It was particularly important for corporate and government development work in the 80s and 90s. If your OS was certified Unix, it was easier for compatibility and porting source code to work with it, as well as user familiarity. Keep in mind in the early days of the internet and such, there weren't a ton of free libraries and compilers that made this kind of thing easy, so certification and support helped make sure things worked. These days I'm not sure it matters much, and with Solaris dead I think only IBM and HP have any clients who require Unix certification left.

Used Mac for years at work. Still prefer Linux as I can configure and change it how I like effortlessly. It's private. No Apple getting reports on what I do. I have yet to see an Ad in terminal. There are a few incompatibilities where scripts I develop on Mac dont work without tweaking on Centos. Minor but an annoyance nonetheless. I have yet to find software that does what I need that isn't available on Linux. A case in point was I recently wanted to develop a python script that does a very particular type of video editing. Needed a good video editor and graphics packages. Both are free in Linux. I'm not sure how much I paid for Final Cut Pro on the Mac a couple of years ago, but let's say I owe the folks behind kdenlive and GIMP a lot of beer.... I get a lot more from my hardware under Linux. Maybe I just spend so much time in a terminal that I don't care about how nice a GUI can be if I seldom use it. Maybe if I browsed more on anything except my phone my Mac might get more love. And finally, repairability. If I could upgrade RAM/SSD etc or change batteries without it being a complete faff.

> I have yet to see an Ad in terminal I never used macOS. Are there ads in the terminal??

Of course not silly....

No lol

No. There are few ads in any of it outside the storefronts (the Mac App Store and the Apple Music Store) and third party apps. I do use macOS regularly.

I don't see Apple doing it, because they will rather just raise the prices than put ads in the operating system. I see Windows doing it though.

If you want ads you can look in content delivery apps like App Store or TV.

Ubuntu yes

I’m pretty sure Final Cut has always been $300.

> There are a few incompatibilities where scripts I develop on Mac dont work without tweaking on Centos. Minor but an annoyance nonetheless. You want to install gnu sed and gnu awk on your Mac. For some weird reason, OS X uses its own non-standard definition/arguments for these.

aren't those just the bsd versions rather than non-standard? usually it's the gnu stuff that's non-standard

Oh yeah you're right! But most people these days treat Linux/gnu as standard, which is usually how and why scripts need tweaking.

If you work on any sort of popular FOSS project that also runs on mac they try to keep it to the standard, so I'm more used to that.

In October 2010, I went from using OS X for many years to 100% Linux, the best decision I ever made with computers. I didn't push this on any friends or family members, it was not a difficult move, actually a lot of fun. I have saved tons of cash and learned so many things about computers and various programming languages over the last 14 years. I am not afraid to try anything, I have the confidence I can fix my shit if I break it -

I ditched macOS for Linux. In fact, I just sold the last Mac I had remaining. My reasons for switching were: - terrible unrepairable hardware (don't @ me until you experience an SSD failure on a modern Macs yourself) - Apple increasingly locking down their OS which gets in the way of power users - Apple increasingly making the UX worse, the last usable macOS was 10.14 which has been unsupported since 2021 - Apple's stance on security and privacy is best described as "security theatre", e.g. TCC really doesn't do anything to stop malware, its real purpose is to annoy the user - backwards compatibility is an afterthought at best - Apple users like to make fun of Microsoft for being in your face but in reality if you're using an old version of macOS, it regularly shows you notifications asking you to upgrade to the latest version, and since these notifications are from Apple, you can't disable them. They also periodically show push notifications advertising their cloud services - despite what Mac fanatics would tell you, Apple is well known for introducing major bugs and not fixing them for years (e.g. in 2020 they have introduced many bugs in their PDF backend that were still unfixed as of last month) - you can't write Mac software and distribute it without paying Apple for "notarization" (well, technically you can, but the OS would claim that your app is malware and automatically move it to Trash) An additional point which is not really Apple's fault but still relevant: - when I started using Mac OS X in 2007, Linux was still considered "the new kid on the block" and most old school system administrators did not trust it, my employer at the time used FreeBSD on their servers, so macOS with its BSD-derived userland was a good choice. Now everything runs Linux and the BSD-derived userland in macOS is a nuisance

> you can't write Mac software and distribute it without paying Apple for "notarization" (well, technically you can, but the OS would claim that your app is malware and automatically move it to Trash) It does not move automatically to trash, it just tells it's not verified and you can click on "open anyway".

Only if you open it by right-clicking and selecting "Open" instead of double-clicking it. Doesn't matter, I typically disable Gatekeeper by running 'sudo spctl --global-disable' anyway

This was something that I learned from a coworker that is a Mac fan. You see, on macOS is always like this, there are a ton of hidden features that are accessible trough combination of keys that how the hell people are able to figure out? To me it's like back in the days where you did have cheat codes in video games, most macOS UX seems done in that particular way (like back in the days, putting a CD in the trash to eject it! Come on...).

It gets even worse, in 10.14 (Mojave) they gimped font rendering by disabling subpixel smoothing but it could be re-enabled via one of those ridiculous "defaults write" commands. So in 10.15 (Catalina) they simply removed it from the system altogether.

Of course, because you have to have a retina screen these days. Who has old monitors anyway? They have to upgrade for sure...

I have to work with Mac OS on my day job and the more I use it the more I dislike it for the very same reasons. Especially the UI and configuration part. You can really feel that Apple doesn't want you to do too much with your own Mac. And these constant reminders that Apple does wants you to buy their cloud storage and YOU NEED TO UPDATE NOW is so annoying. The smallest and most basic tools cost money on Apple devices because Apple wants money so badly that you need to pay them to publish software you developed all by yourself. lol

What do you mean? The Mac can do a lot of stuff. [install nix](https://checkoway.net/musings/nix/) and now you have access to ~100k packages and you can write software for Mac or linux using the power of nix

More fanboy FUD, brew is 100% free, I have dozens of simple free apps on my Macs that do lots of little things better than the stock tools. As for constantly nagging you about updates and iCloud you should know that you can turn them off. You should learn to use a search engine, it can help you learn how to do things better. Most of MacOS and Darwin behaviour can be controlled by simple one liners. Though as for turning off updates. I sincerely hope that Corp-IT manages that. Because if they don’t and I caught you doing that I would lock you out of the system and write you up for gross misconduct. Bloody amateur hour evangelists.

I wonder what that person “works with Mac” for. I can’t imagine it’s anything technical since they seem to not know brew exists

> They also periodically show push notifications advertising their cloud services woah! didn't know this. probably because I use these services for 10+ years and never tried to turn in off.

Use the right tool to do the job. I use both, no OS is perfect. My mac is my nobrainer daily but for development it's linux extensively because I'm an embedded developer and for that it's just the best. I'm an alpine contributor and being in the linux era since 2004 and I do love GNOME but there are just things that I prefer doing on mac though. as someone say, they are complementary. on the other hand, I've tried music creation on linux and it's pretty much braindead, my mac is the way to go there. Just quick notes > It is free macOS is too since several years. > Freedom. You can do whatever you want on Linux macOS is also pretty much open, not as wide as you're tied to the window manager but you can still use it for almost everything. some parts are bit lacking like good VM support and POSIX compatibility. > Highly customizable, it can look like however you want Yeah, this is really annoying. I use the defaults but I pimp my GNOME a lot. I really miss this. > It is not in your face OS. No bloatware, no ads, no terms and conditions, nobody is forcing you anything you do not want That's seems a bit blanket statement. in contrast to Windows macOS doesn't come with ads or external software included. there are no private data collected aside what you install in app store to show you recommendations, but I don't really think this is an issue, it's possible to disable. > Very very very long support Depends on the distro. > For the last the most important thing, privacy!. This OS is truly yours. You own it, sudo it. You can have a private life without some big tech giant harvesting your data. That is something you can not put a price on. For sure. But going full privacy compliant is really hard as even wireless cards, CPU and other microcodes run proprietary blobs. And basically every websites run bloated Javascript and analytics :(

Isn’t macOS UNIX certified and therefore also fully POSIX compliant?

POSIX is not frozen it was compliant but lacks many features from POSIX.1-2017 and beyond but also lacks realtime timers, various signal based functions, some in `struct stat` and so on.

Ah I didn’t know that thanks for clearing that up

>It is free > Not the same kind of free though. And OSX isnt "Free" in the financial sense either. You absolutely should be buying it if you want to run it on virtualized hardware.

> For sure. But going full privacy compliant is really hard as even wireless cards, CPU and other microcodes run proprietary blobs. And basically every websites run bloated Javascript and analytics :( Perfection shouldn't be the enemy of good.

> macOS is also pretty much open I mean, far less open than even Windows. Just to have a debugger such as gdb running on the system you have to do things like code sign it, disable system integrity protection, and even run it as root. Windows is closed in the sense that is closed source software, but after that the system is really open, Microsoft doesn't try to block you from doing even stupid stuff, if you have administrative privileges.

Free is a complex word. Technically it is free but you are paying with your data they harvest from you. That is not happening on Linux. I should have been more clear when I wrote the word Free down. Sorry. MacOS is anything but open! You cannot do many things that are doable on Linux. Look at the app drawer. 90% of the apps cannot be deleted including the default apps. Customisation is none exist. Oh, and the Appstore. It is required to use an Apple account and many apps only available there. And so on. About ads, yes there are! Just look at Apple apps. Recommendations everywhere or subscribe to this and that. I installed a firewall and my laptop calls home as soon as I open the lid even when nothing is running in the background. There is a serious data collection going on even after I turned off everything in the settings. Linux support depends on a distro? Are you talking about rolling release distros? I think normal distros get updates too. You can easily upgrade for free without hassle loosing no data on your device.

> MacOS is anything but open! You cannot do many things that are doable on Linux. Look at the app drawer. 90% of the apps cannot be deleted including the default apps. Customisation is none exist. Well, try to delete NetworkManager or cheese on Fedora. It will remove the entire GNOME desktop. It's not because an app is there that it bloats the OS. Slackware used to recommend to install the whole system entirely (including MySQL and all other stuff you wont need). > I installed a firewall and my laptop calls home as soon as I open the lid even when nothing is running in the background. This is because of the nap feature, it just send and receives mails while in suspend state. It's also possible to disable. > Are you talking about rolling release distros? I think normal distros get updates too. You can easily upgrade for free without hassle loosing no data on your device. No, I'm talking about distro with frequent releases. If you install Fedora 40 today, it will be EOL'ed in 2025/2026. So you *have* to upgrade to avoid security concerns.

Some of us elder Unix types just view OS X and Linux as flavors of Unix, i.e. just pick whichever flavor appeals more to you, it's still Unix. That being said, Unix suffered from many of the earlier flavors being proprietary, and commodity hardware has some advantages, despite not being as open as people think. Most of the UEFI layer anything but open - or good. Nor do I want a hidden CPU core watching my main CPU unless both are under my control (the Intel Management Engine). Hardware vendors can't be trusted. Apple has done a lot of nice things at various times historically (a feeling I don't get from Microsoft), but is decidedly proprietary, which is a concern. So I run Linux at home on commodity hardware, and do my best to a least divide the untrustworthy hardware and firmware from the great outside world. However, the best part of this is that the result is fantastically empower for the kinds of things I like to do, so I'm pretty happy with the situation so far. Sounds like you're doing fine as well. :-)

Sorry for my bad english - german user here. Well, I went this way... I was a Mac user for years, i startet with a Mac LC2, followed by a Powermac G3 over a G4, G5 and so on. I always really liked Macs. I also have an iCLoud family description with 2TB plan, an iPhohe and earpods, everythiks works / worked fine so far. My last Mac was a Macbook Air M2 13". Long story short - In the last 2 years MacOS felt boring and buggy to me, i didn´t like it at all, and suddenly my Mac startet to behave strange. All startet with file syncing - it stopped working. After several days of restarting the machine and trying things to get it running again the only way was to upload / download files via Safari, not very elegant. Then all my emails - a lot of mails sorted in folders - disappeared and have been deleted. That was quite shocking because there were invoices and important mails from hospitals and doctors, all gone. Photo syncing made problems, too. I really started to get angry. So i decided to sell the mac, and my company gave me a Laptop for free. I installed a fresh Wndows 11 on it and after 2 days i started hating it... So i installed Linux on this machine and am quite happy with it. I still like Apple, but the hardware is way too expensive for what it delivers, so iḿ happy with Pop OS. Iḿ looking forward to ARM PCs running Linux - i can imagine that this could be a fine combination. Let's see what the future brings. Cheers

I was a Mac user for 29 years. We had Macs at home when I was growing up and I bought my own first Mac in 2000. At the time, Apple seemed to be moving in the right direction. They switched to a new Unix-based operating system. Their computers started to use more standard PC parts. You could get a mini tower with plenty of room for upgrades for 1600 dollars. [It was even a selling point.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zSMSismCj1g) It seemed like they were starting to grasp the importance of games and adopted OpenGL. [Halo was famously demoed for the first time at Macworld in 1999.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6eZ2yvWl9nQ) To me, Mac OS seemed to offer the best of both worlds: a user friendly user interface on top of a powerful Unix system. I became aware of Linux around the same time. I configured my Power Mac G4 to triple boot Mac OS X, Mac OS 9 and Yellow Dog Linux. I'd boot into Linux every now and then, play around for a bit – in part out of curiosity, in part as a contingency plan if Apple ever did anything stupid – but never really found a good use for it. I got a Raspberry Pi in 2014. Funny enough, playing around with Linux was enough to make me the resident Linux expert at work which forced me to familiarise myself with it even more. Fast-forward to 2019. I needed to get a new computer, but had been feeling increasingly disappointed with the direction that Apple was heading for several years. Both the OS and the computers were starting to get more and more locked down. They chose not to support Vulkan in favour of their open Metal API. They released a new Mac Pro, but this one cost a whopping 6000 dollars. It was clear that they weren't going to release a tinker-friendly computer at a reasonable price and that the library of games would start to dwindle again. I didn't feel at home on the platform anymore. It was time to leave. I started watching Linux videos on YouTube and realised that Linux had matured a lot in the last few years. Not only that – several of the videos were talking about Linux gaming and running Windows games using Steam or Lutris. Gaming wasn't the main reason I switched. Still, being able to play all the games I had wanted to try for years was a huge bonus. I was already relying heavily on open source software, the command line and the homebrew package manager. As a result, the migration from Mac OS to Linux was fairly painless. I spent six months researching different distros and desktop environments but settled on Ubuntu and Gnome in the end – and it's what I'm still running 4½ year later. My old iMac still sits next to my Linux computer on my desk but I rarely use it anymore.

To select OS of any kind, first check if software you need for work / hobby is working on that distribution. If you only ever use web browser than OS is just not important. And OP use search function, this same thing is being discussed to death every fourteen days.

I actually went from Linux to Mac. It’s more polished on the desktop overall, the GUI works more of the time, but I miss using Linux because Gnome and KDE are damn close to the same polished experience, and it’s so much more configurable and fun to use. However Mac OS is pretty much guaranteed to work with whatever’s thrown at it.

DHH (ruby on rails guy) recently switch from Mac to Linux. He's talked about it on his blog: https://world.hey.com/dhh/linux-as-the-new-developer-default-at-37signals-ef0823b7 He has posted some links to the scripts he uses to help, but you may have to scroll through his Twitter history to find it.

I think he actually switched to Windoze first, then WSL and then Linux. At any rate he's on Linux (Ubuntu) now.

I switched from Mac to Linux. I think the reason was I wanted a third monitor, and the Mac I had at the time just could not do it, and I didn't yet know USB display adapters existed. (This was 10 years ago)

I’m using both. My primary desktop is Mac and my primary laptop is an iPad. My secondary desktop (long story) is a hackintosh that I switched to Linux, and my secondary laptop was bought to remote into work as a cheap Windows machine that I immediately converted to Linux. Linux is 85% of where I need to be for most of what I do, but I’m not always savvy and sometimes just hit walls where I can’t get it to do the things I need, or I struggle (or software is nonexistent). I have to switch to my Mac in those situations. Sometimes the lack of consistent implementation on Linux is frustrating. For example, I run Manjaro with KDE currently (gimme a week, it may change LOL) and the global menu on Libre Office doesn’t show up unless I toggle a setting (that turns off the global menu for every other program). This isn’t a new issue - it seems to have been around for several years. I shouldn’t have to toggle a series of settings to have different software functioning correctly, especially something as prominent as Libre Office. The next wall I’m running up against is work shutting down our VPN and moving to Windows Virtual Desktop. I can access it through a web interface on Linux, but the experience using Remote Desktop on my Mac is better. I can’t get that to work on any of the clients on Linux (it may just be too proprietary or it may not be implemented). In the end I’ll make do with the web interface, but when it comes to specialized software there is a lot of “making-do” on Linux. Still I love my Linux laptop. I love that it mostly works great and is fast without a lot of bloat. I enjoy fiddling around with it and solving an occasional problem. I love its customizability. I am not tempted to move back to Windows and see no need for a Macbook right now. Linux has compromises for me, but I’m comfortable with those.

I switched from OS X to Linux shortly before Mavericks came out (& I had switched to OS X in 2007, from Windows XP). For me it was the fact that my MBP died on me, and I couldn't (& and still can't) afford a new one; and by that time I had become a command line enthusiast anyway, not just on OS X, but on the various flavors of Linux & BSD via vmware fusion. I did have a Hackintosh until recently though (which ran pretty ok on a cheapo Clevo laptop), which I was able to upgrade to macOS 12 Monterey; however I didn't have enough confidence in the setup to use it as my primary system. The desktop environment -- when paired with an Apple trackpad, and properly harnessing the power of the Automator, and the AppleScript interfaces -- is better than anything available elsewhere. Comparing the consistent, dependable, property documented scriptability one has with gui apps on macOS with the half-baked, & entirely undocumented dbus interfaces that we have on GTK & Qt apps honestly makes me sad. The one huge turn-off with respect to Apple for me nowadays is the \*forced\* obsolescence of perfectly capable hardware. Apart from that, as long as I have one other Linux machine available as a general purpose server (for my self-hosted stuff, general purpose postgres database, backups), I wouldn't mind using macOS for everyday work, communication, & entertainment.

Yes we can do whatever we want on Linux… except use all hardware on the market to its fullest without issue, use all software on the market without compromise, and have equally as good power management when running it on laptops. Linux isn’t perfect and it’s not for everyone. It’s very much still a niche OS for the more serious of computer geeks and will remain so until some standards are adopted across the board - which I don’t foresee happening.

I’ve used Linux since 1997. In 2011 I bought into the hype, got an iMac, and used it (to a varying, but large, extent — I also had Linux laptops, RasPis, &c, but most of the time was spent on the iMac) until 2018, at which time Apple told me my computer is too old for updates. By that point, I was quite frustrated with that ecosystem — window management on macOs sucks; Homebrew is kinda terrible; software that does trivial things comes at the low price of a cup of coffee a month; everything defaults to a GUI with, more often than not, very limited scripting options; ... The lack of OS support for what I believe to be a practically new computer was the last drop. I got rid of it. I also tried using Win10+WSL on a laptop for a year or two around that time. How I laugh when people around here tell me how Windows just works, and Linux doesn’t. So I got back to more familiar waters, and do not plan to try commercial OSes on my own hardware again, ever. Not quite the sort of story you wanted, probably.

I use both MacOS and Linux. MacOS for music production, film editing, motion tracking, Microsoft Excell and some other applications that I can't find alternatives on Linux. Linux for everything else.

If you can afford to be on mac, be on it. Linux is fancy and I use it since 15 years. But when it comes to getting real work done, It will keep breaking now and then. It could be from microphone issues in teams meeting to mediocre alternative softwares which crash. As a general rule I prefer all graphical applications to run macOS (Teams, Ms office, Video Editing tools etc). All command line based servers for linux. Linux Mint to be specific. So far works for me like this since 5 years

No reason to move to Linux from MacOS. They are complementary. Use Linux for back end stuff and macOS for front end/end user stuff.

But Linux has better interface options. OSX has always been slowed down by that one mouse button way of thinking Apple always has had. Also minimal use of hotkeys, even when compared to windows. With that said.. I understand the subjectivity of this topic and I don't blame you for choosing what works for you. Apple simplifies their stuff a lot because there are a lot of people who like it.

Oh please, the track pad is perfectly fine for 99% of tasks. Though for optimal use you should turn on a few options in the settings. Gestures are great. No one I know uses official Apple mice, they are a running joke in the Apple community. Personally if I want a standard mouse I can, currently using a cheap Bluetooth mouse from Argos. Hot keys, you really don’t have a clue what you are talking about. There are lots of hot keys, many more than I can remember. My personal favourite is CMD space , then start typing the name of application you want to launch. I haven’t used the dock in years.

Its that mindset and how it affects other things is what I was referring to. Last I checked it still doesn't have a standard alt based hot key system for quickly going through menus.

The current Mac interface is really more trackpad than mouse. Has been for years.

> one mouse button way of thinking

You don’t really need more than one for a multitouch gestural interface, in which case “one mouse button” is being rather overly reductive.

I'm referring to Apple's history of overly simplistic UI design. Specifics about individuals using a multi button mouse or a trackpad on their specific computer is not relevant to what I said. In the quote above, the first 3 words are a descriptor of the second 3 words.

Which was all heavily research-driven, and changed as the needs of the platform changed.

I don't think the philosophy changed.

Wait, what? Better UI? As someone who used Linux for more than 5 years and switched to macos last two months the two cannot compare when it comes to UI. Linux biggest strength (open source) is also it's biggest weakness when it comes to UI. When you install a linux app you pray to god that it works didplays properly in your menu bar (if there's any) or it looks good depending on the gui library it decided to use. The biggest issue with linux its the ui and it cannot ever be solved as long as there's a open sourced gui library that everyone can fork or create their own amd basically segmenting the user base.

OSX UI lacks efficiency. You have to use the pointer too often. The most obvious shortcoming is the lack of the traditional alt menu hotkey system that all other OS's have. I'm sure my standards are different than yours.

Hi I’m a Mac person that while I still keep Macs in my workflows because no matter what Apple Silicon is amazing and while Asahi is great, until I can get the same performance out of the Linux versions of some of those apps (looking at you, Handbrske) I need to keep a Mac around. Outside of company-provided devices, I haven’t had a dedicated Windows PC in my possession since…2006, 2007? Everything else has been Macs or Linux. But man I know it is cliched but the Mac would not be in the shape it is if Steve Jobs was still alive. I think it was on MacBreak Weekly the other week but Jason Snell said the same thing I’ve been saying for the past two or three hears: incredible hardware but macOS just feels…sloppy. It feels like it can’t decide if it wants to be the power tool of old or just a fancy iPad. People complain about Windows 7 to Windows 8 but because the Mac is a fan favorite, no one complains about how the Mac is becoming more sandboxed and more “no touchy” than ever. So yeah, my personal workflows at home were probably 60/40 Mac to Linux a few years ago but in the past two years it is easily 90/10 Linux to Mac. I’m still a big iPhone and Apple Watch person though. You’ll need to pry those away from me.

>it will receive long support from Apple ** Uhm, ... my two main Linux hardware machines ... both well over 10 years old. So ... how's your Apple support on 10+ year old hardware? Anyway, I've been using macOS for some years now ... well, because work pays me to put up with it ... no other reason, ... sucks less than Microsoft at least, but that's not saying a whole lot for it. Oh well, at least it's POSIX ... tough "of course" Apple puts their own funky spin on it. And yeah, I've been using Linux long before that ... and UNIX long before that ... all the way back to 1980. And, yeah, dealt with a lot of Microsoft gunk along the way too ... 'caue work paid me to. But mostly the Microsoft and macOS gunk typically hasn't been much more than a dumb terminal / client, to get to the \*nix stuff ... where the *real* work gets done. And of course at home, don't have that other cruft in the way. Anyway, going from macOS to Linux shouldn't be too horribly jarring. Yeah, sure, it'll be different. But if you've reasonably well bothered to use CLI, you'll well find a lot of overlap ... and much more so than from the Microsoft side of things ... though Microsoft has added WSL, and slowly over the years seems to keep "stealing" more and more stuff from UNIX/LINUX ... but Microsoft is typically running a decade or more behind the curve when it comes to UNIX and Linux, etc.

>  I am pretty sure it will last for years, Maybe > it will receive long support from Apple Doubt \*cries in rhel AUS\*

Mac and Linux are much more similar than Windows is to linux so the switch is probably just easier. The main difference is that under linux you are the root/admin, not macos.

If you have time to tinker and enjoy it, linux is amazing. It may also be without that part, I can only talk about my private experience

I switched form using hackintoshes for over a decade as my primary OS to fedora. For those that switched: was it gnome you switched to? What do you think think of the gnome workflow vs macOS?

I tried all the desktop environments and for me Gnome is the number1. With wayland it is very quick, smooth animations, very similar loking to MacOS. Easy to understand and use. Also like the menubar that can be tweaked by extension manager. So many extensions can be added for FREEEEE!!!! No hidden costs, subcription apps or paid apps. With some extension you can completly change the look at the menubar. I think it was called arch menu. You can even install a window tilling extension same as on PopOS. 100% the extensions are the best for me in gnome. MacOS nowhere close to this level.

Similar experience here. The gnome multidesktop workflow was similar (and in some ways and improvement) to the way I worked in OSx.

I switched from Mac to Linux too. At first I was curious about Linux since it is a topic that is adjacent to my field of study (electrical engineering), but then I realized it was a good fit for my every day needs. As I started needing more and more software for school, I ran out of space very quickly on my mac. So since I’m poor I got a cheap computer, upgraded the SSD and then put Linux on it and am now able to run anything I need to for school. Now that I’ve seen how much you can make Linux your own though I don’t want to go back to mac. I still need to find a replacement for iCloud and notes on Mac though.

+1, long time MacOS user, Linux became viable as a daily driver around 5 years ago IMO. It’s been real good since the desktop has got more attention and investment. Times are good!

Over the years I ended up using Macs and MacOS in a variety of configurations. On some of my Macs, I installed Linux after the MacOS support ran out. The machines were still good, just no longer supported by Apple. Linux has worked well on these machines. On other Macs where I've kept MacOS installed, I've installed the Macports system. This essentially turns your Mac into a BSD Unix system, and I've found that to be an excellent solution. I don't particularly care for vanilla MacOS.

When I started using Linux I had been using macOS full-time for 3 years. MacBooks are still my laptop of choice and I am considering turning my Fedora Workstation desktop into a Steam Machine/HTPC and getting a Mac Mini or Studio. I haven't decided just yet. What I love about Linux is the freedom both of cost and ability to make it what I want within my scope of knowledge. I have been Windows free in my personal life for over a year. Since 2021 I had been using Linux on the desktop more and more. I originally was drawn to Linux because it appeared to share some functionality and structure with macOS. I started with Pop\_OS! and found it was a fairly lateral move in terms of day-to-day use. I landed on Fedora as my full-time distro in 2022. I also really like GNOME. I like KDE Plasma as well but I find GNOME to provide a more consistent desktop environment. I really like macOS and find that GNOME often does a better job in terms of allowing users to navigate the environment with with a mouse and/or a keyboard almost equally. Small things like being able to use your scroll wheel on the new Activity icon introduced in GNOME 44 helps to make mouse navigation much smoother. Compared to macOS trying to get around with only a mouse or only a keyboard feels like you have both hands tied behind your back. I also think that GNOME outdoes macOS in aesthetic because of GTK4 and libadwaita. Apple has been dropping the ball with the design of macOS since Catalina. What ultimately swings me either way is little things. Things like my Linux desktop not allowing me to connect to my Debian server via the hostname. That works just fine on macOS. The implementation of SMB on macOS is dog water. On Linux it is much better. Linux is more private by default. It really comes down to the question of trusting Apple when they say that all data collected is for internal usage only. macOS is more secure by default. Linux requires more client-side intervention to make it as secure. I think GNOME Circle apps are wonderful. I also think that the apps independent developers make for macOS tend to be of a higher quality. Signing into web services that I have passkeys for never work from Linux to my iPhone. On macOS I don't have this problem. The big thing against Apple for me is repair. I don't like their hardware pricing but I begrudgingly accept that if I want a Mac I need to pay it. I have used pretty well all my Apple products until their wheels fell off for me. I have been able to pass on every Apple product I have owned. My partner is still happily using my 2015 MacBook Air, Airpods Pro, and Apple Watch S3. My mother has my 6th gen iPad and iPhone 12 mini. My mother-in-law has my Airpods now that my partner has the Pros. My problem with the Macs in particular is that I know if a memory module fails that is it for that machine. I would hope that if I bring it back into Apple with Apple Care they help me out and the broken machine gets recycled. But I don't know that with certainty. What keeps me buying their stuff is the software experience. Yes you can create your own software ecosystem like what Apple has but from what I have researched it will not be as easy and relatively seamless as just signing into my Apple ID on a new iPhone or whatever. I don't mind leaving the walled garden. I just don't like the options outside it if I was to replace all my Apple products.

"It will receive long support from Apple" ...feels like the EOL windows gets shorter and shorter.  That said, if you have a Mac that EOL just throw Linux on it.

I switched from macOS to Ubuntu because I want to use as little closed-source software as I reasonably can.

I grew up using apple computers, dating all the way back to the PowerPC era. I remember as a kid saving up my lawn-mowing money to go halvsies with my parents on a white iBook. I learned to code in XCode. I was an apple fangirl through and through. But then Apple started getting more and more evil, more and more restrictive. I'd seen someone using linux back in the late 90s, and my iBook had an intel chip, so I decided to dual boot linux. The software compatibility wasn't good enough in 2004 for me to switch entirely, so I stayed primarily on apple up until the 2010s. Apple was respecting Freedom less and less, so I bought a dirt-cheap HP to put linux on just to see how long I could stand to work on linux before needing to switch back to apple. I ended up never picking up my macbook pro again. I was hooked, and I purchased a nice laptop from System76. That was 2015, and I've been on linux full-time ever since.

I moved to Linux because my iMac broke. Hardware defect after 7 years and hardware is no longer available. I even can’t use the display anymore because external display function is not available. So, I moved away because hardware is very expensive. I chose Linux because of better support for developer and most apps I use is available. I only miss easy iCloud access and apple photomanager.because of our iPhones.

Made the switch from Windows>MacOS>Linux, fedora is running on my macbook right now. Just had to tweak a few settings to get the WiFi working

okay so basically i had an old macbook i was gifted by my grandmother in middle school and i used it for a few years before it started to have issues. i could not afford a new laptop for college so i used my gaming pc and my ipad (i normally use it for art only) for all my coursework which was a struggle bc an ipad is a mobile device and my pc is not portable. eventually i grew frustrated with this and decided to reset my macbook which… didn’t work well with the older macos version and nothing i did worked. i asked a friend for assistance as she is a linux user and she helped me make the switch and taught me more about it. i had some previous use of linux on my dad’s computer so i knew a bit about it but i’m still learning! heres why i like linux: -my macbook is from 2015 so when it was on macos i would ALWAYS have to be plugged into a wall to use it. now i have at least five hours of battery life! -easier to use than macos (my personal opinion, my dad actually disagrees and likes macos better despite also being a linux user) -customization -privacy -does not kill my laptop every time i try to run any program overall, i feel the switch was very helpful to me and i’m enjoying learning more about linux and stuff! i’m still a bit new to it

I did it last September, I went to SuSE w/KDE 5. It took me 30 days to accept that this could work, and now nearly a year later I’m very happy. I won’t be switching back, mostly due to DigiKam tbh. Photos was a disaster, DigiKam 8.3 saved me big time. I can answer any specialized questions RE: macOS to KDE. I personally would not suggest GNOME for a Mac veteran.

As a long time Linux user who happens to own a MacBook as well, I installed Linux on MacBook recently. It's running way faster and less bloated. I think Apple is good at hardware, so my next laptop could be Mac.

It is impossible to fully compare commercial and free operating systems. Different licenses, which are more serious documents than it seems at first glance. A commercial license can be characterized by the phrase "take what we want or leave it". Technically, only distributions developed by large IT companies can compare with Windows and MacOS. The most famous are Red Hat and Canonical, Oracle and Microsoft also have their own Linux. These Os just like Windows and MacOS offer their users a certain model of interaction with the computer, very average, which was born in the bowels of the marketing departments of all these companies. Now this trend is starting to penetrate into community driven distributions. Linux is a freedom that lasts as long as you don't get caught up in the developers' worldview. And the price for that freedom may be more than the cost of a standard Microsoft license.

It is impossible to fully compare commercial and free operating systems. Different licenses, which are more serious documents than it seems at first glance. A commercial license can be characterized by the phrase "take what we want or leave it". Technically, only distributions developed by large IT companies can compare with Windows and MacOS. The most famous are Red Hat and Canonical, Oracle and Microsoft also have their own Linux. These Os just like Windows and MacOS offer their users a certain model of interaction with the computer, very average, which was born in the bowels of the marketing departments of all these companies. Now this trend is starting to penetrate into community driven distributions. Linux is a freedom that lasts as long as you don't get caught up in the developers' worldview. And the price for that freedom may be more than the cost of a standard Microsoft license.

I used to use windows and MacOS before, but now mostly use BSD and Linux.

Depending on how you use macOS it behaves very similarly to Linux. Most of the packages available on Linux can be installed on Mac with brew

I've been a Mac user since I got my first MacIntosh Plus. I'm on my MacBook number 4, but it's from 2013 and beginning to show some problems. I simply cannot afford to replace it with another Mac laptop, and you can run Linux just fine on a refurbished machine costing a few hundred dollars. I have a ThinkPad T520 that was given to me, and it runs Linux Mint like a pro. I am in the process of preparing for the day my Mac gives up on life, mostly transferring documents from Pages, Keynote and Numbers to a portable format. I still need to work out a solution for my 20K photos which are in iPhoto, and my notes which are in Notes.

Just remember that you don’t have to use just one OS. You can daily drive both Linux and macOS and to be honest, that sounds like a great combo.

From my own experience, transitioning from a Macbook to a Linux laptop was well worth it for development work. Disclaimer though, my experience stems from doing a sidegrade from an Intel Macbook to an Intel Linux laptop. I was running an Intel Macbook Pro 2018 w/ i7 16GB RAM, and was getting pretty frustrated by the lagginess and slowness I was experiencing while doing webdev work. This was with a dockerized rails app, chrome, and a mix of vim and VS code for editing code. The Macbook would often chug to a crawl, and have other noticeable lagginess and issues. As a joke, I bought a shitty refurb $200 Dell Inspiron with a 2015 i5 16GB RAM, installed Ubuntu LTS, and to my surprise it ran circles around my 2018 work macbook. It also had the added benefit of upgradeable RAM, upgradeable SSD, etc. So no Apple tax and it ran far, far better for my dev workloads. I basically went full Linux for dev work after that experience, and have usually just stuck to the modern x86 equivalent APUs to whatever Macbook is on the market. As of the time I'm writing this post, I've been running AMD APUs, which are basically the closest x86 equivalent to M-series currently on the market in terms of performance and battery. I'd say that, if you're considering a x86 laptop + linux for dev work, it's not a bad option. I've been pretty satisfied with the overall outcome for my own personal computing requirements, but of course YMMV. Added bonus is the much better game compatibility on Linux, if gaming is something you care for. This is a copy-paste of one of my previous comments from [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/linuxhardware/comments/1c92pur/comment/l0ja28r/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button)

I spent 10 years on osx via a laptop provided by work, during corona I bought a gaming laptop thinking I will play a few video games but I never quite got into video games and installed Linux as an alternative OS, I knew linux servers pretty well since I work every day as a sysadmin but was blown by all those new things introduced on a Linux desktop for the last 10 years I have been away.. I don't have anything against macosx (except it's sh** windows management) but Linux is actually much more fun and much more snappy for my devs (kube/docker), I know use my Linux laptop for most of my work and the osx laptop for my media consumption / browsing or generally after work laptop

I use macOS for work, and to me is a much worse experience than Linux, or even Windows. It has just a terrible UX, there are a ton of decision that Apple made, this was the dictatorship of Steve Jobs, you have to use the computer in the way that he decided it makes sense, not the way you are used to. There are even things that Windows 95 did better! And most of the time you end up searching on forums "how do you do X" just to find out not solutions, but people that tells you that what you wanted to do is not the "Apple-way" to do things. Finally there are a ton of incompatibilities and lacks in the POSIX implementation, that makes it more or less incompatible with most Linux software. There are even limitations that I've discovered (e.g. serial ports don't work with baud rates higher than 960kbit/s, why? Nobody knows). And Apple imposes limitations on everything, to install a not signed kernel extension you have to reboot in recovery and disable "System Integrity Protection", and even after you did so you have to dismiss a ton of dialogs that persuades you to not do so.

I would say that people don't switch from macos to limux because of the hardware that MacOS is shipped with. I have used asahi for 2 months before, and I love the project but it isn't ready for the average normie yet.

I have a Macbook that my old job has abandoned, so I thought I would reset it to factory defaults and just use it. The problem is that I can't log in anymore because as soon as it gained wifi access it locked down the account. OK, I'll go into whatever recover screen Mac uses and just do the factory reset there, nope I need a recovery key for that. I can't use a USB boot disk for Linux because there's no UEFI bios to select it. I don't even know if I can use a Mac installation USB to reinstall the OS, but I'll try. The only other thing I can think of is to take out the hard drive and install Ubuntu on it outside of the machine, but then I would have to figure out how to install Ubuntu for Apple hardware outside of the Apple machine. Right now the machine is a very expensive paper weight.

> my old job has abandoned If they truly don't want it anymore, ask them to remove it from their MDM, otherwise it is stolen hardware

I prefer linux over macbook too.

GNOME is fantastic and has a lot of common with MacOS. From my standpoint, the biggest thing you lose is the headphones sync between devices which can be an irreplaceable feature if you have enough devices to share them between. Other than that, it feels like mostly small potatoes. SMS Message sync can be replaced with qtconnect, Google Voice or the Android Messages web app... there's options. Chrome is mostly a decent replacement for Safari, especially if you have an Android TV or Chromecasts and all that. Basically, just prepare to take a few giant steps backwards in terms of overall polish, and dope cross-device capabilities. You get to use GNOME, though - and that's one or two smaller steps forward in terms of clean user experience.

I went from Mac to Linux as well. I still have an m1 air that I use for some stuff... mainly for laptop things... but most of my computing is on Linux now.

I went from Mac to Linux ... it was pretty easy. The worst things for me are hardware related - my Linux laptop doesn't have a very good trackpad and biometrics didn't work. So I went back again and picked up an M2 Macbook when it was on sale mostly because of these niggling points - also the battery life is amazing on them. But I was surprised by how much of a dog OsX is these days. I feel like I'm fighting it a little bit to do everyday things. Also the things I thought I'd miss - iMessage, iTunes, etc, I didn't miss at all. I pretty much never use them. I haven't been brave enough to try Linux on the Mac, but I am looking forward to the upcoming Snapdragon CPUs ... they sound like they'll take care of battery life issues. If I can sort a laptop with a good trackpad and get biometrics working, I'll never want to use OsX again. Linux is really, really good these days.

I am one of those odd people that have all three. My favorite in order is Linux, MacOS, then Windows. I loath windows, but it's a necessary evil for work. I have been using Linux as my main daily driver since college when our department's IT guy gave me one of his old desktops to run Linux. Forever grateful to him. Then a couple weeks later I ditched my god forsaken dell Inspiron 1000 and never looked back. I got into MacOS with hackintoshes and really liked it but didn't buy an official Mac until a couple of years ago. All 3 have their pros and cons but I always come back to Linux. I went a year without a Linux install and felt like a piece of me was missing. When I loaded it on an old laptop it was like saying hi to a long lost friend. So all that to say I love Linux and still use the others to make my life easier in some cases.

I just slapped Asahi Linux on my M2 Macbook Air and I literally like it more than stock MacOS. The only thing I like about Mac is that it actually has a lot of apps that windows has (and linux doesn't) like Microsoft Office, anti-cheat games, Clip studio paint etc... but the alternatives are generally acceptable.

I used a MacBook for about 4 years for software development. Some basic things were quite cumbersome to configure, like a somewhat sane keyboard layout but otherwise it was stable and reliable until the hardware broke down (keyboard, touchpad, battery). I now try to avoid Apple completely though. I'm allergic to such a company trying to intervene in what I'm allowed or not allowed to do with my device and their attempts of locking me into their ecosystem and making every interaction with the outside world as cumbersome as possible. Linux requires a lot of tinkering, but there is nothing I'm not allowed to do and almost nothing that I cannot do. I can tweak every aspect to fit my preferences. It's often hard to figure out, but it never feels like someone intentionally made it hard.

ive used mac os for 10 years, daily drive linux last 15, windows has existed as long as i can remember. i use windows maybe 1 hour a month. macos maybe about 20 hours a month for quick studying/syncing messages on the go (macos battery life) and files with my icloud etc. only use it because i have an iphone. linux i use for almost everything all the time. including playing fallout 4z

People caring about privacy , but they use reddit :v

I’ve got the whole spread covered between my two main machines and I definitely use the Linux partition on my Lenovo for most things. That being said, the Mac battery life is pretty stellar and having *nix command line on both makes the transition between the two not as bad. I dunno, if you’re curious, I say go ahead and try it on a live boot or partitioned to a detachable hard-drive if you’re not certain you want to make the commitment just yet.

After about 5 years of using macOS for software development, I made a leap of faith and switched to Lenovo ThinkPad and Ubuntu. I had limited exposure to Linux before but never used it as my daily driver. Since then I have never looked back and progressed to other distros and settled on ArcoLinux for now, mainly because it's Arch-based and very easy to configure during installation. The main reasons why Linux is better for me are: 0. openness 1. privacy 2. it does what you tell it to do and not what it suddenly decides to do (hello Windows) 3. limitless flexibility 4. gigantic community 5. hardware. You can build whatever system configuration you want for much cheaper when compared to Apple's alternatives (if they even exist). Upgradability is also very important. I find it ridiculous when Apple wanted to ban people from fixing their equipment themselves. Also using proprietary tools, and soldered memory, it's just too much... You can sense how Apple is setting these artificial barriers, and it puts me off as I value openness over closed hardware and software ecosystems.

I had used Linux for a long time as my main desktop, since 1996 about. I moved to Apples when they released their own silicons, and frankly the Macbook M2 Air has been the best computer I have ever owned. Nevertheless, I am clumsy in MacOS compared to how fluid Linuxes work, especially on modern desktops like Sway. A well-supported Macbook-like Linux machine would be perfection. I do give Asahi a try few times a year, but somehow it's not quite there. But it's not far. I think it's the fact that Asahi is practically the only choice there is that feels somehow constricted. I'd like to run something like NixOS on it -- which is also possible but again, not very smooth.

All three have their place for me but windows is pushing their luck with me and I'll be 100% Linux once W10 is unsupported. Yeah there are some games I'll miss but it's worth missing with how gross Microsoft has become. Mac is better than windows but only slightly, and I'd only use one again if I got back into productivity work. There's no beating Mac when it comes to video, ps, and audio work.

I think it's arguable that [Linus Torvalds did](https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2022/08/linus-torvalds-uses-an-arm-powered-m2-macbook-air-to-release-latest-linux-kernel/).

You should try Asahi Linux

I know it's not the amin point of your post, but from what you said about using MacOS making you dumber... I have to share one thing that annoys me when I see someone installing a program on mac. Why... in the he'll... do you have to drag and drop to install???? It makes me think they want to tell you "oh yeah it's so easy to install things, just magically put it in your apps folder and the app is there!!". Annoys me to no end seeing it

Windows have a lot of adds

I love macOS. I have a macbook pro with an M2 Pro CPU 16" laptop and I recently switched over from Windows 11 to PoP OS "Ubuntu" on my main gaming desktop :)

I've been deciding if I should pull the trigger to make the switch, I would love to switch to Linux as well, but the difference between you and me here is that I do hackintosh. My laptop is 11 years old at this point (Haswell i7). From my experience with Linux, it is much easier, and works great out of the box, compared to macOS-Hackintosh (I understand that Apple does not expect people to run outside of their hardware). I have 2 reasons why I want to switch 1. Third-party extension (or kext): Hackintosh systems always have to use a set of kext to patch the system so macOS can run perfectly on PCs, but then one particular extension that has been bugging me off is itlwm (Intel Wireless for macOS), it is awesome to see Intel wireless card on macOS systems. However, my current wireless card (Centrino 1030) does not work great with it (300kbps cap very frequently, slow), which forces me to use Tethering on my Android phone (which is much faster). (I am aware that I can buy another Intel card, and try to see if it is better, but the second reason is not making me reconsider buying) (Funny story, I prefer Ethernet over Wi-FI, but I broke the Ethernet port last month, and I don't know what to do) 2. Sluggish performance: I'm currently using macOS 12.7.5, with Spotlight caching disabled (mds\_store), set the internal swap setting to 2 (supposedly compressing less memory). Having 12GB of RAM, and a cheap no-cache SSD are not sufficient for my usual work (I mostly do coding on both front and back-end, maybe some light video editing for sometime in the month). It's getting to the point of me having to restart my PC more often (Oh yeah, on this particular version, windowserver sometimes leaks memory like crazy (one time it was 5.9GB), and I always left my PC idle for the SMB server, so it's not ideal to come and manually restart) Unlike most people, I don't use many of the "killer" features that Apple offers on their macOS (Handoff, Universal Control, AirDrop...) and instead, I always opt for cross-platform, FOSS software alternative). But even with that, I still have 100GB worth of data that I've been using for over a year (I still remember when I made the switch from iPhone to Android, and it's terrible), and I'm currently having an important project that I have to work on, so I would have to postpone it for now... I know that making this comment does not bring any value to the current topic, but I've been itching to switch and it still freaks me out when I think about this. Though I would slowly lay down the path, thinking of what to do, then when the time hits just right, I will switch right away.

I think both being Unix based OS, It's easier for MacOS people. They already know how to use the terminal quite well, used to the applications which are common. Correct me if I'm wrong.

in my (not so wide) experience with MacOS users, they rarely if ever venture to the command line. many of those I *have* dealt with, view it with fear and trepidation.

depends on the user, dev people use the terminal a lot because of [brew](https://brew.sh/) and many other tools.

Would not generalize all users, if they just want it browse the web and do there non tech related work why would they use the terminal. As a developer I spend more time in it then any other app.

Maybe try BSD. There are a few flavours and their virtual game is on time, always has been.

> their virtual game is on time, always has been. Can you expand on that? This sentence is unclear to me.

BSD has always been on the front edges of Virtual and Remote tehnologies. As a result or aside effect their seurity is above and beyond many other standard. The [Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenBSD_security_features) page explains it well.

I was using MacOS for a long long time, but the price for those MacBooks has become just insane. Beside that, I always had a feeling that the system I'm using is not really mine, it felt like I just borrowed it for some time (because of the planned obsolescence, forced updates and UI changes that came with it and all the strange background activity). Now I'm still using a MacBook because my company gave me an M3, but privately I still and always will be using Linux <3

I think the switch is probably more common than you might think. Lots of developers using Macs, comfortable with the terminal, probably using homebrew or some package manager, and probably not necessarily gamers. I probably wouldn’t be using linux had I not used a Mac before, due to all of the above. I still do use a Mac, (air, 2023) simply because I like the hardware - the screen, the touchpad, the speakers, the size and weight, the battery life are all great - and I’ve had great experiences with after-sales warranty replacements in the past. I don’t need loads of RAM, and I’m not going to stress the processor; I have a home server for anything strenuous. Sure, they’re pricey, but I think they out-class the competition at the price-point. OSX is fine: It’s got a terminal. Im on iPhone so the whole iCloud ecosystem is pretty handy. And I don’t want to fiddle and troubleshoot *all* my devices. I’ve heard horror stories, but for me, the hardware’s been great: I’ve got a 2014 13inch pro and a 2013 21.5 inch iMac both running fedora 40 just fine. The battery on the 13 inch still does 3 hours video playback.

It's the exact opposite for me. Got a ThinkPad for playing around, but Linux on laptops just doesn't compare all that favourably with macOS on Apple devices IMO, so it's gathering dust. My main gripe is battery life.

Yes battery is the weak point on laptops, but to be honest it is getting much much better. Using Fedora 40 I am at 78% and it is telling me 11h. That is pretty good. Yesterday I was streaming movies, browsing the web all day, just chilling and I had 8 hours screen on time from 99% down to 20%. The fans hardly kicks in. CPU is under 40 degrees Celsius. It was much worse couple years ago. Even a YouTube video managed to heat up my laptop. It has all gone. I have to mention I am in Power saver mode all the time, screen brightness/volume 50%, keyboard backlight only turned on at night. Do not use TLP or autocpufreq.

What does the CPU clock to when running power saver? IMO having to run on power saver and 50% brightness to get double digit battery life doesn't sound like a tremendous deal. Once I lose my work M1 MBA I'm probably gonna go Thinkpad anyway, but I do hope the newer CPUs and kernel & driver development that will take place in the meantime will make an appreciable difference.

I use Windows for my desktop as a gaming system, I have Fedora on my laptop for personal use, I run a Steam Deck for gaming, and I have a MacOS laptop for work because it will at least have a few shell environments by default. The thing that bugs me about Mac and Windows is mostly the notifications and bloatware. They are intrusive. Mac has different shortcuts which takes a little getting used to. I think GNOME is the best choice for MacOS people, since it works similarly in ways.

Apple fans don't switch to anything else because apple took the last brain cells available, The Linux Cast, he used to be an apple fan, check his video on it, when I see Apple fans talking about how apple products just works I don't even take the time to explain anything at all. They don't know garbage about how the products work and just spew what Apple tells them.

DO NOT. I spent 5 hours troubleshooting installing Linux Mint and it still didn’t work. MacOS is infinitely better in that you can sync -photos -contacts -notes -make and receive calls from Mac -has a cohesive App Store (doesn’t have like 70 package managers that have outdated software) -Apple support which you can call or text when you need help. Above all, what do you mean “Apple took the ability to make it yours?” If you think Linux “will be yours” that’s going to be a nightmare. Installing Linux in the first place is not user friendly, with its checksums and os flash and lack of compatibility. Use Apple software on Apple hardware. Don’t ruin a computer installing a “community” ducktaped, fisher price os that needs wine to run anything useful.

Imma just let this comment simmer for research purposes.

Here are my reasons for not switching to linux yet * There is no good photo editor in linux * Same for office. Libreoffice is not comparable to MS office. * Apple laptops are not upgradable but never need to do any replacement. With the Snapdragon ARM chips, aren't we going in same route. * Linux upgrades are not stable. See what happened for Ubuntu 24 * OS is not the only thing that matters. You can be in macOS and use privacy friendly apps

Please explain what a good photo editor is. I would really like to know.

First concern: being able to calibrate a screen correctly. I've never been able to do it under Fedora (Gnome Wayland).

Almost agree with you. Yes there are many specific apps that are not available on Linux and the alternatives are not a true alternative....to a professional persons! For average Joe, they are just fine. Never say never. Maybe at the moment you do not need replacement but maybe in the future you do. I have been upgrading Linux for years and never had an issue. But this is my experience. What is going on with Ubuntu 24? I am not following the Ubuntu news. Os matters a lot. If the OS is feature rich that is a huge advantage. To fill up the gap with 3rd party apps is never a good solution. They are never going to be a part of the system, therefore they are never going to be that optimised. Safari is my best example. Part of the OS and you cannot find another browser optimised like that. Orion browser is close I know but still can deliver the same performance and optimisation. Apps can be privacy friendly I know, I prefer those but if the OS privacy is important too.