After running Linux (plain, crappy boring Ubuntu) as my daily driver for the last few years, I'm convinced that we're at the point where the only real barrier to wider adoption is software, and this is less and less of an issue the more we work in the browser.
For your basic user, it's performant, simple, stable, and does everything a computer needs. Every time I boot up Windows it takes forever, I find that a new update that further fills my machine with crap requires a restart, I get super weird "news" and advertising thrown at me. I have no idea how normies put up with this.
Hardware support can be a problem as well. There are many combinations that "just work" - definitely more so than 20 or even 10 years ago - but you still need to be careful with network cards, for example. And graphics is still kind of a mess, enough so that all major browsers are still either using whitelists to enable hardware acceleration on supported hardware (like Firefox), or straight up disable it by default on Linux (like Chrome).
Which translates to the other problem that is battery life on laptops. I did a fairly simple test recently that basically opens Reddit main page in Firefox & Chrome and then scrolls it slowly until battery dies. Running on the same exact hardware - Thinkpad T14s AMD gen4 - the battery life was reduced by 30% on Linux with default settings (= no hardware acceleration in either browser). Manually enabling it means that test cannot complete at all because both browsers randomly crash.
And then you look at battery life vs an ARM MacBook, and it's not even funny.
> but you still need to be careful with network cards, for example.
Funny you say that. A while back I reinstalled Windows on a new laptop (get rid of all the default installed garbage) and I couldn't connect wirelessly. Had to connect via ethernet and install and update everything just to have wireless work. I haven't installed Linux on it, but considering its a Broadcom card I don't exactly have high hopes of it working with only upstream drivers.
> Running on the same exact hardware - Thinkpad T14s AMD gen4 - the battery life was reduced by 30% on Linux with default settings (= no hardware acceleration in either browser). Manually enabling it means that test cannot complete at all because both browsers randomly crash.
Were you comparing this to Windows 11?
> Linux
What DE was this done on? Were you using any power-saving daemons (PPD, TLP, Powerdevil)? If not, I strongly recommend installing something like PPD (power-profiles-daemon) which requires 0 configuration out of the box, and retesting.
The worst thing about windows booting up is being lied to that the system is ready to use, when in fact everything is still sluggish for another 2 minutes and default apps are starting up.
While on my Linux computer I consistently can immediately start using the system once I've logged in.
Can not agree more.
It finally struck a nice balance of simplicity for day to day usage and advanced features when needed.
I have been pleasantly surprised discovering recently that Gnome Disks lets you create image files of single partitions or disks with just a couple of clicks.
Yeah, I've got friends who are open to the idea (even though they still think the driver situation is the same as 20 years ago - I won't promise there aren't problems, but I think overall it's much better than it used to be).
The main complaint is:
I need my Adobe.
I need my Ableton.
I need my Office.
Some people actually need the official Office products, but I think for most users it's not necessary, though they get really uptight if you suggest it's not.
Adobe is honestly one of the biggest problems I think, and the most likely to continue to cause an issue with adoption.
Ableton can sorta work, but it's not perfect, but I can see them starting to pour resources into it to get it working better or even a proper port, but I could be wrong.
As far as Ableton goes, have you tried Reaper? Reaper has a native Linux version and generally works quite well IMO. One of the better DAWs and certainly one of the cheapest to purchase a license for.
I feel the author's grief over lack of time, but it has lead me to very different solutions. All around the idea of the OS should not interrupt, should not change rapidly, and my interaction with programs should not be much different from OS to OS.
At work, I opted for a mac due to how terrible the windows options were. But macos itself fought me all the way so the way to be happy at work was to replace finder, to replace the dock with a taskbar, and to rebind the keys, so that everything acted like linux/windows so that I can get my job done without falling in love with apple. To me that was simplicity - the simplicity of not having to relearn for no reason.
At home, I no longer dual-boot because I vm. Now Linux and Windows cooperate.
And the linux got less exotic. Debian: something I can trust, that gets out of my way, and changes slowly.
But I'm also loving the truenas system I set up because it and freebsd take that simplicity to the next level.
In both places, unix tools that go with me, so I am in my natural place everywhere. Basically, tmux, emacs, fzf, eza, and a bash/zsh config.
> Debian: something I can trust, that gets out of my way, and changes slowly.
Wholeheartedly agree. Debian has won the distro wars in my opinion. Their massive effort in safety and not breaking things means I can use stable as a "it just works" tool and focus on my actual work/fun.
Unfortunately, Debian is like Linux on desktop, always 80% there.
You just cannot trust that plain Debian will get it right, even if it works that one time you install it.
Two most recent issues that made me change to something else:
1) VLC in Debian is modified so it cannot play RTSP streams so you cannot watch video from your security camera. Windows VLC wroks. Flatpak VLC works.
2) Debian kernel update in point release broke NVIDIA driver so you cannot even see your desktop.
Debian STABLE is just Linux kernel with old software. If it doesn't work now then it will definitely not work for next 2 years and if it does work now it can break at any time.
All other Linux distros are not much better. Every update has 50% chance of breaking some software from distro repository but at least other distros fix their f-ups faster than Debian.
In Mac vs Windows I'm Mac for $reasons. That said my personal daily driver is desktop (not laptop) Linux. I've used primarily Macs at work for several decades; that said, my work focuses on systems running primarily Linux these days, and occasionally BSD or in the distant past VMS (once in a while some embedded stuff). I run Linux in a VM on my personal laptop so that I can run KDE desktop apps in the native Mac windowing environment (X forwarding).
Working for a threat mitigation company, I built KDE actual with Brew on my company-issued Macbook. Admittedly that was masochism. We didn't use Brew for anything; we didn't do any development at all on our laptops. Fast forward. I transferred to the threat intel team; we did some work in VMs on our laptops, still no Brew. We got bought.
New overlords wanted to swap spit / infect themselves with that threaty DNA so loaned me to their prod team. They did all their development in Brew, and deployed to cloudy Linux. They said "use Brew, be like us" and I said no way I am doing that, because my laptop touches bad shit; everything needs to be isolated; loan me a different laptop. But no can do. So I used the devops runbook (and submitted edits!) to build the deployment environment in VMs on my laptop. Prod didn't take kindly to this and threw me back. Left shortly thereafter for $reasons.
But not before I made a runbook for the threat team. Some months later heard through the grapevine that the threat team had been tasked with red teaming the actual deployed system which prod was responsible for and that the pwnage was epic.
The moral is obvious: your security team shouldn't be the only team eating dog food.
Curious, do you have a Windows host and Linux guest(s)? Or the other way around?
I currently have Linux as my primary with a Windows guest OS for when I need it (e.g. Office - I actually think Excel is great - or if I'm doing any Win32/C++ dev). But, I'm thinking of doing it the other way around on my next PC.
The title for this blog post should be "I Miss BSD/Linux for Apple devices". Unsurprisingly, if you buy hardware from one of the most FLOSS hostile hardware manufacturers in existence, your BSD/Linux experience will not be great.
> Why doesn’t a great MacBook alternative exist?
I really don't understand this question. Is the author seriously suggesting that MacBooks are objectively the best laptops for any use case and using something else just isn't an option? Am I taking crazy pills?
The Apple Silicon MacBooks are very, very good. They're efficient, fast, well-built, have great peripherals, don't power themselves back on when you close the lid, and are generally the best laptops I have ever used.
The worst part of them is macOS, and I hope that either Asahi Linux can get all of the hardware working correctly or the other laptop manufacturers can get their act together. Unfortunately, I suspect the former is more likely than the latter...
> or the other laptop manufacturers can get their act together
Microsoft is willing to sell you an ARM-based PC if you like. Qualcomm's efforts aren't quite up to Apple Silicon's par, but they aren't terrible either.
Of course, if you are looking to put Linux on a PC I can definitely understand why Microsoft wouldn't be your first thought for your hardware vendor. It's a weird time we live in, if you remember (or are unfortunately stuck in) 90s Slashdot mindsets.
>don't power themselves back on when you close the lid
Huh? I wish. The thing is periodically blocked throughout the night on my pihole as it continues to send network requests even after I click the "sleep" button in the apple menu.
Everyone seems to prefer to slot into some different niche in the market and leave Apple to have the “actually kinda decent laptops, sort-of” segment all to themselves with no actual competition.
We need a lot of trust-busting in general, but including among computer vendors.
It's remarkable that Apple has maintained such a commanding lead for so long. The 2020 M1 MacBook Air raised the bar for performance and battery life in a fanless laptop, and the rest of the industry is largely still catching up.
The situation will likely continue until the availability of ARM-based ThinkPads, etc.
Main two things for me that (in my opinion) Apple does better than others are 1) excellent trackpad and 2) no air vents at the bottom of the laptop. With those two things I find MacBooks to be very usable on your lap, like for example in trains, airports, or even in an outdoor chair.
(The page isn’t accessible from Turkey. I had to enable VPN to read the article)
As I understand, the author’s main motive to try alternative operating systems is his frustration with mainstream operating systems, a lack of control and understanding so the speak.
The fallacy of that is that instead of encountering a few significant problems with a mainstream OS, now the author has to experience a death by thousand cuts: hundreds of small issues, a missing driver there, a DPI incompatibility here, and now they spend more time fixing these issues than they spend time charging their laptop two more minutes because a weather widget decided to make a web request. I’m not saying those issues are negligible, I already said “significant”, but our perception of an open and hackable OS saves us time might as well be a myth.
If you like hacking, more power to you. But, if you want to get things done, focus on those scenarios. See how well you can do your job and how much you are hindered on each OS.
Not a MacOS fan myself, but I find this kind of hiraeth (missing a place that doesn’t exist[1]) a sign of being distracted.
Each year I spend close to zero hours dealing with edge case bugs and incompatibilities in Linux and BSD despite all of my personal devices running one form of FOSS OS or another.
My personal laptop is ArchLinux and it definitely took longer to set up than macOS would have, but it’s been just as rock solid since. In fact, perhaps ironically, I’ve had more problems with my work MacBook Pro than I have with my personal laptop running Linux:
- various USB and Thunderbolt hubs not working correctly
- multiple monitors, and macOS forgetting which screen is which
- screen flicker of a older LCD (it’s the screen that’s shit, but still, it doesn’t flicker in Linux)
- literal kernel panics coming out of sleep. Turns out it didn’t like a USB DAC
I don’t think I’ve had a missing driver problem with Linux in something like 20 years.
Your mileage might vary but this old meme that “Linux is buggy and has missing drivers” hasn’t been true in two decades.
So why do people seem to spend more time hacking at Linux?
The answer is probably just selection bias: those who want to tinker will generally gravitate towards a platform that lets them tinker. But that doesn’t mean that you need to be a tinkerer to use Linux.
> My personal laptop is ArchLinux and it definitely took longer to set up
I think the honest way to calculate maintenance time is to amortise setup time over the years your laptop is in active duty.
That becomes like at least five hours per year for me. My Linux installations usually live for 2-3 years, and ArchLinux typically takes 1-2 evenings to set up:
Partly because I enjoy it and want to explore if I should switch file system, login manager, terminal emulator, window manager, etc.
Partly because I want to maintain my sysadmin katas.
Partly because this step isn’t automatic, so even if I want “same as before”, some hardware is different, and installing software is still manual (I’m choosing NixOS next time).
> those who want to tinker will generally gravitate towards a platform that lets them tinker
My Linux is always in some state of disassembly. My MacBook always has working audio and video.
20 years brings you to 2004. You’ve either being dishonestly hyperbolic, or your experience is so slim or insanely lucky that it’s not useful as a representative account. That’s TWENTY YEARS. Not a chance in hell.
Sometimes I think that desktop Linux users get so used the background noise of system maintenance that they forget that they’re even doing it.
I say this as an ex heavy Linux desktop user. Distributions I used for a considerable period of time include both Ubuntu and Gentoo. I’ve seen the spectrum. But this is just ludicrous.
I agree. I have a Windows 11 laptop for work. It's had a few issues, including wifi connection problems for a while, but the one that has been most horrible is that it may or may not detect an external display. It's infuriating to plug it in and nothing happens. A reboot always fixes it, but that's no fun.
Sorry, but this is still true IMO. For example no good driver is available for the GTX 1080 which will result in a buggy experience. Not even talking about software availability and functionalities. I have had other issues, but anyways I don't want to list them all.
I also find it misleading to claim that Arch Linux is "rock solid", just look at the news to see the amount of "manual intervention needed" listed. I love Linux and especially Fedora and OpenSUSE, but it still has its issue that make me sigh and say "ok... I'll just get windows".
There are frustrations on Linux, but there's also a lot of development where its Windows or macOS that gives "death by a thousand cuts" so there are definitely reasons for you to pick that over Windows or macOS - even with WSL2. Having to forward hardware over HyperV can give a lot of headaches.
Windows machines infected by corporate also have crippling I/O speeds. I have a fun example at a customer where even running a Linux VM on the same machine will give 10x compile speed, and something like 100x git operation speeds than the same operations on the host...
If you need it in a corporate setting, Lenovo ships both Fedora and Ubuntu on their thinkpads, with certified hardware support. Someone running Gentoo or Arch Linux are sure to burn many hours on the machine itself which they may or may not enjoy, but you don't have to go that route.
It's not too hard to be on well-supported hardware either - people pick from a handful of laptops to run macOS, so it doesn't seem to unreasonable to also pick the machine for Linux. Think of it as being somewhere in between macOS "runs here only" and Windows "well it came with it" when it comes to having to select your machine.
I'm not sure what you're saying, but if it's that if the author installed his BSD/Linux (or whatever variant) he would instead have to handle missing drivers and tons of other small problems.. that's really not true. Only if the hardware is kind of non-mainstream.
Take this Fujitsu laptop, provided by my employer.. it's just Intel inside for everything, and a Linux distro was installed without a hitch and has been working problem-free for years. And it's always like that unless the hw is unusual. After all I've been trying this since 1992, back then there was a bit of manual tinkering involved.
Or this NEC-branded super-light laptop I bought in Japan.. same story. Install and forget. Zero issues. Heck, every developer at work doing their job stuff and development on various Linux computers, except for a couple of guys using Linux under Windows.
I spent an actual month fixing the container story on MacOS where I work, as the first employee with an M1 (eventually wrote a facade for colima). Over the following 6 months I kept a tracker of time lost to MacOS nonsense in an effort to convince my employer to allow us to use Linux. I have objective data showing that MacOS wastes huge amounts of time.
MacOS is an objectively incompetent development OS, if you only count what is possible with what Apple provides. Even if you do consider 3rd party (brew, nixpkgs, colima) it remains a complete fucking mess. Even Windows supports native [Windows] containers. Linux containers in WSL were flawless last I used them (a few years back). And this isn't a critique of colima, that it is a tireless and thankless project that does what it can to pave over the utter incompetence of Apple. I have since been allowed to use Linux, as the sole person trusted to self-serve IT. I see people in Slack struggling with something new in MacOS weekly.
I refuse to do work under Windows due to the bugs, inconsistencies, driver problems and shitty default UI.
For years I've just pushed in Debian with the unfree packages and let it do its hardware sensing stuff and it works, except at one job, where they had a lot of security installation and configuration in pre-made bash scripts for initial setup that were tested on Ubuntu so I used that. It was worse, mainly due to snapd being an annoying turd, but not as bad as Windows.
Multimonitor just works, automatic fan control just works, Bluetooth just works. It's been Toshibas and Lenovos and Samsungs.
From my point of view mainstream Linux distros have been solid for fifteen years or so.
I’d been trying to install Ubuntu or Mint on my desktop and miserably failed. In my case, nothing worked properly: OS picked the wrong monitor as main display, secure boot issues with unhelpful messages, no default HiDPI configuration. Basically, nothing worked out of the box while everything had been working fine with Windows. Here are my adventures:
Around Windows 7 timeframe, I came to peace with FOSS UNIX clones never going to be as mature as proprietary OSes on laptops.
Sure, the situation has improved a lot, but they still require compromises of not having everything supported like on desktop PCs, even when buying from Linux OEMs, my experience hasn't been that great.
For a brief period, netbooks seemed to be on track, but then they suffered multiple attacks that wiped their market segment. First it was Microsoft with their price change for Windows XP, followed by tablets, hybrid laptops.
And now those same OEMs, would rather sell ChromeOS and Android devices, than a full blown GNU/Linux, **BSD experience.
With ARM revolution going on PC devices, something that many might not be yet aware, is that Pluton is also part of the story, adding to UEFI, TPM, and pleotora of other integration issues.
So I just run Linux on a VM, first it was Virtual Box, VMware, nowadays it is either WSL or Virtualization framework.
Missing them, not really, for me it was always more as a cheap way to have UNIX, my favourite one was Solaris, followed by UNIXes with a soul, like Irix, NeXTSTEP, ...
I think the situation is a whole lot different since the days of Windows 7.
The biggest change is that Windows just stopped caring. The UI is inconsistent and messy. It ceased to be an improvement over Linux a long time ago.
Crapware is also another problem. Windows had this problem since the 90s, but it's now worse with Microsoft itself pushing for them. It's the only major desktop operating system to have this problem.
Worst of all, it's a real pain to use. People avoiding it are no longer doing so out of abstract principles. It's just so bad that any person with self-respect wouldn't want to use it. From the constant resetting of user preferences to obnoxious banners and full screen nags, Microsoft is making it very clear that they have no respect at all for the users.
With modern Windows, users are expected to work for Windows and not the other way around. Any data it touches also becomes the property of Microsoft. Or at least they act as if that's the case.
Linux is slowly but steadily maturing. Also, end users are moving away from PCs, meaning those who still use one have a high likelihood of being a power user. I think FOSS desktops are more relevant than they were a decade ago.
Privacy is also becoming a major issue on Windows. Of course, that became some time ago with cloud login (which is becoming progressively harder to work around - it's basically impossible to do so in the most recent Windows installer without mucking around with the terminal; the old "disconnect from WiFi" trick doesn't work anymore!). But on top of that, now there are all those AI features that are shoved onto you that require your data to be sent to the servers. And not even just AI, too - the most recent insult was the retirement of the built-in Mail app and its replacement with the "new Outlook", which, when you try to configure an IMAP account, will tell you that your email "must be synchronized to the Microsoft cloud" in order for it to be able to work with it.
Tons of resources are poured into Linux development by private companies who effectively dictate what features get prioritized. These organizations aren't using Linux as a consumer desktop OS, they're using it for servers, supercomputers, embedded devices and other similar jobs. This is where all the investment goes, so features that support these use cases are by far the most polished.
It means that any normie can get a perfectly working GNU/Linux laptop from a random shopping mall and everything works out of the box without any constraints.
It depends. I would have had the same opinion as you until recently when I switched to an M2 for travel work, and it is completely adequete for getting work done.
There’s a handful of edge cases where I’ll fire up the real Linux laptop, but between UTM and Parallels I can get a lot of real work done on the MacBook.
I really don't get this either. Every laptop I've looked at has some wart somewhere - battery life, webcam, structural integrity, display, CPU, temperatures, speakers, IO, repairability (not that Macbooks are good here either).
Some of these things aren't even hard to get right. It's like laptop manufacturers just don't care.
Most laptops are bad intentionally. Less effort, more profit, and replaced sooner.
But that's not to say good non-mac laptops dont exist, nor that mac laptops are the best.
I currently have an m1 mbp and an asus zephyrus g14
They're the same size and weight, but
+ the macbook has longer battery life, though this varies. sometimes they are equal at 5 hours, and they both can go to 10, but it is easier for the mac.
+ the macbook has a webcam, but also a minus, because i prefer to unplug an external one when not in use, and there are really great portable external ones that have gyros to follow you around.
- the macbook's display is worse, because of apple's insistence on these terrible glossy finishes
- needlessly sharp edges. this could be user error, but if they didnt design it that way it wouldnt be.
- I/O? the thing does not have usb A ports. now I need adapters and hubs.
- no nvidia graphics card. part of the worse battery life of the g14 is controlling when that graphics card is in use, but at least it has it, so that i can do certain creative & ai workloads.
- keyboard is just worse. and that's before getting into that macos has forced the keyboard to be worse by having 'option' and 'command' keys to be an obstacle for anyone who uses every other OS that isn't macos. With enough key interception and remapping I got it to act like linux but the keys are still named wrong
macbook like touchpads is what amazed me most, Apple showed their great touchpads around 2006 with the Macbooks (not pro), and to this date no one seems to be able to clone them and deliver the same quality and smoothness.
But yes, it's hit or miss. My Dell M6800 'portable workstation' has an abysmal touchpad (really, what were they thinking?), but then, since it is way too heavy to actually reside on the lap, I use a mouse (which in any case is more precise) there. So the proper question is then, why did they bother with one at all?
Otoh, the cheap lenovo ThinkPad 11e has a surprisingly good one.
I've seen some close ones on higher end chromebooks. The Razor laptops are also close. The clicking motion is a bit off/different on many, but there are some that are very close generally speaking. I get what you mean. Currently using an M1 air for personal laptop, work issued is an M3 pro. My next personal laptop will likely be a Framework AMD 13" running PopOS.
Does any other manufacturer produce their own? I think the major issue is that other companies are integrators of cheapest bids for components, not computer companies.
The build quality is pretty good - particularly given I can tear it apart. The speakers are okay. The webcam and microphone are poor. The battery life is acceptable, but I trust that's at least in part Linux' fault. The fans ramp up more often than I'd like... it's certainly good for a Windows laptop, and I like the ethos, but it's not at all MacBook territory.
For context, the last MacBook I owned was a 2017 model, the one with the awful keyboard. Ironic, I know.
I understand why people like the Framework laptop, but this is like comparing the space shuttle to the pickup truck Lamont used to drive in Sanford and Sons. It doesn't compare favorably to a Macbook.
I am not sure what people do with their laptops but I am perfectly happy with a refurbished 5th gen X1, replacement for my t480s, that replaced my t440, after t420s.
I never paid more than $500 for a refurbished model. I can choose which kind of screen I am going for never had any heating issues or driver issues with Linux.
I've had a MacBook at work, I could afford a framework or whatever when I wanted. But except gaming (don't care and better devices available) and AI/rendering (cloud cheaper in most cases) I don't see why the majority of people seems to think they need $2000 machines.
* /home on it's own partition (having it as a subvolume of btrfs did not work out well with reinstalls) -- saves me a lot of time with reinstalls
* docker works better (no need for an internal Linux VM, that is needed on macOS/windows)
* installing tools that i used sparingly is so much easier: Inkscape/ GIMP/ LibreOffice/ Audacity/ cloc/ ripgrep/ tig/ iotop/ htop/ DbBeaver
* i dont truly trust any big corp's binaries
* Firefox and Chromium/Thorium are solid browser options
* easy to install dev tool chains: package management and opensource secured supply chains are not an afterthought
* I feel since PipeWire and Wayland we come to a point were A/V "just works" for all my usecases
* being on a rolling distro now for some years, and it does sometimes mess up, but rarely (resinstalls are quick) -- i prefer it over OS version upgrades on macOS/windows
* i dont need an Apple ID, or hotmail account for ANYTHING and that keeps my blood from cooking
Readit News
For your basic user, it's performant, simple, stable, and does everything a computer needs. Every time I boot up Windows it takes forever, I find that a new update that further fills my machine with crap requires a restart, I get super weird "news" and advertising thrown at me. I have no idea how normies put up with this.
Which translates to the other problem that is battery life on laptops. I did a fairly simple test recently that basically opens Reddit main page in Firefox & Chrome and then scrolls it slowly until battery dies. Running on the same exact hardware - Thinkpad T14s AMD gen4 - the battery life was reduced by 30% on Linux with default settings (= no hardware acceleration in either browser). Manually enabling it means that test cannot complete at all because both browsers randomly crash.
And then you look at battery life vs an ARM MacBook, and it's not even funny.
With the default settings being the key there. I had the exact same laptop and was able to get idle power down under 3W.
But to your point, that's a fair amount of friction for someone that understands all the moving points. It's insurmountable for the average user.
Funny you say that. A while back I reinstalled Windows on a new laptop (get rid of all the default installed garbage) and I couldn't connect wirelessly. Had to connect via ethernet and install and update everything just to have wireless work. I haven't installed Linux on it, but considering its a Broadcom card I don't exactly have high hopes of it working with only upstream drivers.
Were you comparing this to Windows 11?
> Linux
What DE was this done on? Were you using any power-saving daemons (PPD, TLP, Powerdevil)? If not, I strongly recommend installing something like PPD (power-profiles-daemon) which requires 0 configuration out of the box, and retesting.
While on my Linux computer I consistently can immediately start using the system once I've logged in.
Remove the pinned ads for apps once, never open the widgets, shut down every night so updates are transparent.
Sure Microsoft could make a nicer product. But it doesn't really affect users in their day-to-day.
This really comes down to this.
If you can stabilize what you need, inevitably linux will catch up to where you are and you're set.
If it's an always moving goalpost, the year of Linux on the desktop will always be next year, eternally.
Which is useless besides browsing the internet.
The main complaint is: I need my Adobe. I need my Ableton. I need my Office.
Some people actually need the official Office products, but I think for most users it's not necessary, though they get really uptight if you suggest it's not.
Adobe is honestly one of the biggest problems I think, and the most likely to continue to cause an issue with adoption.
Ableton can sorta work, but it's not perfect, but I can see them starting to pour resources into it to get it working better or even a proper port, but I could be wrong.
At work, I opted for a mac due to how terrible the windows options were. But macos itself fought me all the way so the way to be happy at work was to replace finder, to replace the dock with a taskbar, and to rebind the keys, so that everything acted like linux/windows so that I can get my job done without falling in love with apple. To me that was simplicity - the simplicity of not having to relearn for no reason.
At home, I no longer dual-boot because I vm. Now Linux and Windows cooperate. And the linux got less exotic. Debian: something I can trust, that gets out of my way, and changes slowly.
But I'm also loving the truenas system I set up because it and freebsd take that simplicity to the next level.
In both places, unix tools that go with me, so I am in my natural place everywhere. Basically, tmux, emacs, fzf, eza, and a bash/zsh config.
Wholeheartedly agree. Debian has won the distro wars in my opinion. Their massive effort in safety and not breaking things means I can use stable as a "it just works" tool and focus on my actual work/fun.
Working for a threat mitigation company, I built KDE actual with Brew on my company-issued Macbook. Admittedly that was masochism. We didn't use Brew for anything; we didn't do any development at all on our laptops. Fast forward. I transferred to the threat intel team; we did some work in VMs on our laptops, still no Brew. We got bought.
New overlords wanted to swap spit / infect themselves with that threaty DNA so loaned me to their prod team. They did all their development in Brew, and deployed to cloudy Linux. They said "use Brew, be like us" and I said no way I am doing that, because my laptop touches bad shit; everything needs to be isolated; loan me a different laptop. But no can do. So I used the devops runbook (and submitted edits!) to build the deployment environment in VMs on my laptop. Prod didn't take kindly to this and threw me back. Left shortly thereafter for $reasons.
But not before I made a runbook for the threat team. Some months later heard through the grapevine that the threat team had been tasked with red teaming the actual deployed system which prod was responsible for and that the pwnage was epic.
The moral is obvious: your security team shouldn't be the only team eating dog food.
Curious, do you have a Windows host and Linux guest(s)? Or the other way around?
I currently have Linux as my primary with a Windows guest OS for when I need it (e.g. Office - I actually think Excel is great - or if I'm doing any Win32/C++ dev). But, I'm thinking of doing it the other way around on my next PC.
I just fullscreen the linux VM and it feels native for all the non-3D tasks I do with it. Even media viewing is a breeze.
What apps did you use to accomplish this?
> Why doesn’t a great MacBook alternative exist?
I really don't understand this question. Is the author seriously suggesting that MacBooks are objectively the best laptops for any use case and using something else just isn't an option? Am I taking crazy pills?
The worst part of them is macOS, and I hope that either Asahi Linux can get all of the hardware working correctly or the other laptop manufacturers can get their act together. Unfortunately, I suspect the former is more likely than the latter...
Microsoft is willing to sell you an ARM-based PC if you like. Qualcomm's efforts aren't quite up to Apple Silicon's par, but they aren't terrible either.
Of course, if you are looking to put Linux on a PC I can definitely understand why Microsoft wouldn't be your first thought for your hardware vendor. It's a weird time we live in, if you remember (or are unfortunately stuck in) 90s Slashdot mindsets.
Huh? I wish. The thing is periodically blocked throughout the night on my pihole as it continues to send network requests even after I click the "sleep" button in the apple menu.
So, why doesn’t a great MacBook alternative exist? It’s a valid question.
We need a lot of trust-busting in general, but including among computer vendors.
The situation will likely continue until the availability of ARM-based ThinkPads, etc.
I think Dell has would have a chance to be great but they do lots of plasticky and heavy stuff.
As I understand, the author’s main motive to try alternative operating systems is his frustration with mainstream operating systems, a lack of control and understanding so the speak.
The fallacy of that is that instead of encountering a few significant problems with a mainstream OS, now the author has to experience a death by thousand cuts: hundreds of small issues, a missing driver there, a DPI incompatibility here, and now they spend more time fixing these issues than they spend time charging their laptop two more minutes because a weather widget decided to make a web request. I’m not saying those issues are negligible, I already said “significant”, but our perception of an open and hackable OS saves us time might as well be a myth.
If you like hacking, more power to you. But, if you want to get things done, focus on those scenarios. See how well you can do your job and how much you are hindered on each OS.
Not a MacOS fan myself, but I find this kind of hiraeth (missing a place that doesn’t exist[1]) a sign of being distracted.
[1] https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/hiraeth
My personal laptop is ArchLinux and it definitely took longer to set up than macOS would have, but it’s been just as rock solid since. In fact, perhaps ironically, I’ve had more problems with my work MacBook Pro than I have with my personal laptop running Linux:
- various USB and Thunderbolt hubs not working correctly
- multiple monitors, and macOS forgetting which screen is which
- screen flicker of a older LCD (it’s the screen that’s shit, but still, it doesn’t flicker in Linux)
- literal kernel panics coming out of sleep. Turns out it didn’t like a USB DAC
I don’t think I’ve had a missing driver problem with Linux in something like 20 years.
Your mileage might vary but this old meme that “Linux is buggy and has missing drivers” hasn’t been true in two decades.
So why do people seem to spend more time hacking at Linux?
The answer is probably just selection bias: those who want to tinker will generally gravitate towards a platform that lets them tinker. But that doesn’t mean that you need to be a tinkerer to use Linux.
> My personal laptop is ArchLinux and it definitely took longer to set up
I think the honest way to calculate maintenance time is to amortise setup time over the years your laptop is in active duty.
That becomes like at least five hours per year for me. My Linux installations usually live for 2-3 years, and ArchLinux typically takes 1-2 evenings to set up:
Partly because I enjoy it and want to explore if I should switch file system, login manager, terminal emulator, window manager, etc.
Partly because I want to maintain my sysadmin katas.
Partly because this step isn’t automatic, so even if I want “same as before”, some hardware is different, and installing software is still manual (I’m choosing NixOS next time).
> those who want to tinker will generally gravitate towards a platform that lets them tinker
My Linux is always in some state of disassembly. My MacBook always has working audio and video.
Sometimes I think that desktop Linux users get so used the background noise of system maintenance that they forget that they’re even doing it.
I say this as an ex heavy Linux desktop user. Distributions I used for a considerable period of time include both Ubuntu and Gentoo. I’ve seen the spectrum. But this is just ludicrous.
I also find it misleading to claim that Arch Linux is "rock solid", just look at the news to see the amount of "manual intervention needed" listed. I love Linux and especially Fedora and OpenSUSE, but it still has its issue that make me sigh and say "ok... I'll just get windows".
Windows machines infected by corporate also have crippling I/O speeds. I have a fun example at a customer where even running a Linux VM on the same machine will give 10x compile speed, and something like 100x git operation speeds than the same operations on the host...
If you need it in a corporate setting, Lenovo ships both Fedora and Ubuntu on their thinkpads, with certified hardware support. Someone running Gentoo or Arch Linux are sure to burn many hours on the machine itself which they may or may not enjoy, but you don't have to go that route.
It's not too hard to be on well-supported hardware either - people pick from a handful of laptops to run macOS, so it doesn't seem to unreasonable to also pick the machine for Linux. Think of it as being somewhere in between macOS "runs here only" and Windows "well it came with it" when it comes to having to select your machine.
Take this Fujitsu laptop, provided by my employer.. it's just Intel inside for everything, and a Linux distro was installed without a hitch and has been working problem-free for years. And it's always like that unless the hw is unusual. After all I've been trying this since 1992, back then there was a bit of manual tinkering involved.
Or this NEC-branded super-light laptop I bought in Japan.. same story. Install and forget. Zero issues. Heck, every developer at work doing their job stuff and development on various Linux computers, except for a couple of guys using Linux under Windows.
MacOS is an objectively incompetent development OS, if you only count what is possible with what Apple provides. Even if you do consider 3rd party (brew, nixpkgs, colima) it remains a complete fucking mess. Even Windows supports native [Windows] containers. Linux containers in WSL were flawless last I used them (a few years back). And this isn't a critique of colima, that it is a tireless and thankless project that does what it can to pave over the utter incompetence of Apple. I have since been allowed to use Linux, as the sole person trusted to self-serve IT. I see people in Slack struggling with something new in MacOS weekly.
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For years I've just pushed in Debian with the unfree packages and let it do its hardware sensing stuff and it works, except at one job, where they had a lot of security installation and configuration in pre-made bash scripts for initial setup that were tested on Ubuntu so I used that. It was worse, mainly due to snapd being an annoying turd, but not as bad as Windows.
Multimonitor just works, automatic fan control just works, Bluetooth just works. It's been Toshibas and Lenovos and Samsungs.
From my point of view mainstream Linux distros have been solid for fifteen years or so.
Ubuntu: https://bsky.app/profile/ssg.dev/post/3knjwn2bsls2u
Mint: https://bsky.app/profile/ssg.dev/post/3knp2yv3tqc22
I can access it just fine, no VPN, no DPI-prevention tools.
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Sure, the situation has improved a lot, but they still require compromises of not having everything supported like on desktop PCs, even when buying from Linux OEMs, my experience hasn't been that great.
For a brief period, netbooks seemed to be on track, but then they suffered multiple attacks that wiped their market segment. First it was Microsoft with their price change for Windows XP, followed by tablets, hybrid laptops.
And now those same OEMs, would rather sell ChromeOS and Android devices, than a full blown GNU/Linux, **BSD experience.
With ARM revolution going on PC devices, something that many might not be yet aware, is that Pluton is also part of the story, adding to UEFI, TPM, and pleotora of other integration issues.
So I just run Linux on a VM, first it was Virtual Box, VMware, nowadays it is either WSL or Virtualization framework.
Missing them, not really, for me it was always more as a cheap way to have UNIX, my favourite one was Solaris, followed by UNIXes with a soul, like Irix, NeXTSTEP, ...
The biggest change is that Windows just stopped caring. The UI is inconsistent and messy. It ceased to be an improvement over Linux a long time ago.
Crapware is also another problem. Windows had this problem since the 90s, but it's now worse with Microsoft itself pushing for them. It's the only major desktop operating system to have this problem.
Worst of all, it's a real pain to use. People avoiding it are no longer doing so out of abstract principles. It's just so bad that any person with self-respect wouldn't want to use it. From the constant resetting of user preferences to obnoxious banners and full screen nags, Microsoft is making it very clear that they have no respect at all for the users.
With modern Windows, users are expected to work for Windows and not the other way around. Any data it touches also becomes the property of Microsoft. Or at least they act as if that's the case.
Linux is slowly but steadily maturing. Also, end users are moving away from PCs, meaning those who still use one have a high likelihood of being a power user. I think FOSS desktops are more relevant than they were a decade ago.
Tons of resources are poured into Linux development by private companies who effectively dictate what features get prioritized. These organizations aren't using Linux as a consumer desktop OS, they're using it for servers, supercomputers, embedded devices and other similar jobs. This is where all the investment goes, so features that support these use cases are by far the most polished.
What does mature mean ? Unless you mean an entertainment or gaming device, I find for real computing, Linux/BSD is 100x better than Windows or MACs.
For entertainment a TV, Cell Phone, tablet is a better choice.
There’s a handful of edge cases where I’ll fire up the real Linux laptop, but between UTM and Parallels I can get a lot of real work done on the MacBook.
I really don't get this either. Every laptop I've looked at has some wart somewhere - battery life, webcam, structural integrity, display, CPU, temperatures, speakers, IO, repairability (not that Macbooks are good here either).
Some of these things aren't even hard to get right. It's like laptop manufacturers just don't care.
But that's not to say good non-mac laptops dont exist, nor that mac laptops are the best. I currently have an m1 mbp and an asus zephyrus g14 They're the same size and weight, but
+ the macbook has longer battery life, though this varies. sometimes they are equal at 5 hours, and they both can go to 10, but it is easier for the mac.
+ the macbook has a webcam, but also a minus, because i prefer to unplug an external one when not in use, and there are really great portable external ones that have gyros to follow you around.
- the macbook's display is worse, because of apple's insistence on these terrible glossy finishes
- needlessly sharp edges. this could be user error, but if they didnt design it that way it wouldnt be.
- I/O? the thing does not have usb A ports. now I need adapters and hubs.
- no nvidia graphics card. part of the worse battery life of the g14 is controlling when that graphics card is in use, but at least it has it, so that i can do certain creative & ai workloads.
- keyboard is just worse. and that's before getting into that macos has forced the keyboard to be worse by having 'option' and 'command' keys to be an obstacle for anyone who uses every other OS that isn't macos. With enough key interception and remapping I got it to act like linux but the keys are still named wrong
But yes, it's hit or miss. My Dell M6800 'portable workstation' has an abysmal touchpad (really, what were they thinking?), but then, since it is way too heavy to actually reside on the lap, I use a mouse (which in any case is more precise) there. So the proper question is then, why did they bother with one at all?
Otoh, the cheap lenovo ThinkPad 11e has a surprisingly good one.
The build quality is pretty good - particularly given I can tear it apart. The speakers are okay. The webcam and microphone are poor. The battery life is acceptable, but I trust that's at least in part Linux' fault. The fans ramp up more often than I'd like... it's certainly good for a Windows laptop, and I like the ethos, but it's not at all MacBook territory.
For context, the last MacBook I owned was a 2017 model, the one with the awful keyboard. Ironic, I know.
Sure, macbooks look good, but it's not the looks that make them great laptops.
I never paid more than $500 for a refurbished model. I can choose which kind of screen I am going for never had any heating issues or driver issues with Linux.
I've had a MacBook at work, I could afford a framework or whatever when I wanted. But except gaming (don't care and better devices available) and AI/rendering (cloud cheaper in most cases) I don't see why the majority of people seems to think they need $2000 machines.
* /home on it's own partition (having it as a subvolume of btrfs did not work out well with reinstalls) -- saves me a lot of time with reinstalls
* docker works better (no need for an internal Linux VM, that is needed on macOS/windows)
* installing tools that i used sparingly is so much easier: Inkscape/ GIMP/ LibreOffice/ Audacity/ cloc/ ripgrep/ tig/ iotop/ htop/ DbBeaver
* i dont truly trust any big corp's binaries
* Firefox and Chromium/Thorium are solid browser options
* easy to install dev tool chains: package management and opensource secured supply chains are not an afterthought
* I feel since PipeWire and Wayland we come to a point were A/V "just works" for all my usecases
* being on a rolling distro now for some years, and it does sometimes mess up, but rarely (resinstalls are quick) -- i prefer it over OS version upgrades on macOS/windows
* i dont need an Apple ID, or hotmail account for ANYTHING and that keeps my blood from cooking