Where as I am fully migrated /to/ Mac OS on desktops and laptops, from Linux. I retired my last Linux laptop, an open suse one a couple of weeks ago when I got my new M5 15” Air (32GB, 2TB). Could...
Where as I am fully migrated /to/ Mac OS on desktops and laptops, from Linux. I retired my last Linux laptop, an open suse one a couple of weeks ago when I got my new M5 15” Air (32GB, 2TB). Could no longer put up with the bullshit and endless tinkering. I have an increasingly low tolerance for those kinds of shenanigans as I get older.
Still run Linux distros on the server side though.
This is not really a reply to your comment, but whenever Linux comes up in a conversation, there’s always a comment like this, and I wonder what the hell people are trying to do with it that they...
This is not really a reply to your comment, but whenever Linux comes up in a conversation, there’s always a comment like this, and I wonder what the hell people are trying to do with it that they need to tinker with it so much.
For me, Linux is the most hassle-free OS there is. I haven’t tinkered with it in six years because for me, it just works. I also use macOS, and one of the things I dislike about it is that there’s always more friction when setting up a development environment compared to Linux. I also worry more when upgrading macOS than Linux because I seem to always encounter some problem midway through the upgrade.
I see it as people getting used to the idiosyncrasies of each OS to the point where they stop seeing the problems. They learn where the problems are, accept them as unchangeable facts, and eventually get used to them. Maybe I’ve just learned to accept Linux’s shortcomings, while I haven’t accepted macOS’s because it’s a paid product.
I think it's just different peoples' use cases. I use Linux as my daily driver, gaming PC, living room PC, home server, laptop, and other tertiary boxes. The only non-Linux system I use is for...
I think it's just different peoples' use cases. I use Linux as my daily driver, gaming PC, living room PC, home server, laptop, and other tertiary boxes. The only non-Linux system I use is for music production and it can be done there too just more frustratingly (especially once you're invested into plugin ecosystems and whatnot).
For me, aside from some early adjustments I had to make, it is consistently hassle-free for me. I don't update my distros often. I still use X11 instead of Wayland. I use an Nvidia 4070 in my gaming/main PC and have no problems. I have an nvidia gpu in my server and an AMD APU on my living room PC. They all work for the most part without any hassles. I don't have to keep upgrading my nvidia driver to play games or change a bunch of stuff. I also, to be fair, don't buy a lot of new games anymore, but anything I have tried has been fairly problem-free. The occasional proton tweak might be necessary for a game here or there but that's about it. I run games from Epic, Steam, and GOG without a problem.
Any hassles I have run into were very small and easily solved within a very short time, not massive show-stopping situations.
I'm not saying there aren't any, only that for the way I use my particular machines, I don't run into problems often, and when I do, I don't mind handling them easy. Most things do just work. I have experienced macOS and Windows both in recent years and I can't say my experience on either of them was even remotely better than my experience on Linux. Both were markedly worse. Bad enough that I got rid of Windows on every machine except the one, and I got rid of all my mac hardware
As far as OP / using Linux on modern Macs go- I don't mean this in a mean way- but isn't that still pretty "alpha/beta/uncharted" territory? Linux on Apple Silicon I don't think has remotely come close to the maturity of Linux on other systems, so I think it's naive to go into such a dive without expecting a bunch of issues and then blaming Linux for them (?)
That said, I still don't recommend Linux to "normies" for the most part, as much as I love it. To people that aren't tech-inclined, what is a 60 second fix to us techies feels like moving mountains to them. So I get that a lot of it is all about perspective too.
I gave it a shot because it's the laptop I have, and despite not being fully functional yet, Asahi went great lengths to be daily drivable already. (Also, MacBook Air's hardware is so good, and...
As far as OP / using Linux on modern Macs go- I don't mean this in a mean way- but isn't that still pretty "alpha/beta/uncharted" territory? Linux on Apple Silicon I don't think has remotely come close to the maturity of Linux on other systems, so I think it's naive to go into such a dive without expecting a bunch of issues and then blaming Linux for them (?)
I gave it a shot because it's the laptop I have, and despite not being fully functional yet, Asahi went great lengths to be daily drivable already. (Also, MacBook Air's hardware is so good, and other brand's equivalent so more expensive where I live, which led me to try it out anyway.)
I mean, many of us that are tech inclined still aren't inclined to have to dick with it constantly. No shade, though it probably reads that way. I've been in IT Professionally for 15+ years now...
I mean, many of us that are tech inclined still aren't inclined to have to dick with it constantly. No shade, though it probably reads that way.
I've been in IT Professionally for 15+ years now and messing with technology for twice as long. I have the skillset to get Linux working, it's just that it's constantly one things after another with it whenever I try it out on my machines. I'm at the point in life where I have lots of projects (last week I put a transmission in a car, then an alternator in another, this week I repaired/reinstalled some broken LED puck lights, am building a new PC for a customer, amongst all the other little daily tasks that need to be taken care of in my life.) and a family to attend to.
I like IT, but I also don't really care about it insofar as what it can do for me. That means, browsing Youtube, Slicing STLs, doing research for hobbies and projects, typing documents, talking to people online, games, etc, etc. Linux always ends-up being a thing that I have to futz with when I just want to use my PC for stuff I do care about.
Sure I can figure out this issue. But then there's another. And another. And another...and another. At some point, I'm tired and I just want to do what I sat down to do and not have to fix my tool first. Linux has always been like that for me and I'm a person that installs it on my main PC's at least twice a year, sometimes more. I have run it on my PiHole, I run it on an Arcade cabinet and in both those cases, where I'm not using them daily and don't have to ask much of either of them, Linux works great and I never have to screw with it. Even on my Steam Deck it works great and while I do use the desktop fairly frequently in it, I don't run into all the problems I do when I'm not using bespoke hardware.
So maybe the answer is to use bespoke hardware, but I also don't have the money or time for that. I want to use what I have and not have to make sure all my hardware is compatible, especially when Windows just works for me. My Desktop/Server is a great candidate for it, being that it's fully AMD, but at the same time, I do not want to have to reconfigure the server from scratch and in having done some research on getting stuff like Moonlight streaming to work, I don't want to have to configure a fake monitor and mess around with stuff just to get that function working, especially when Windows does all of that without my intervention. It's all been a basic setup, where I can setup the software, let it run and I'm off to the races. I do not have the time nor the inclination to sit at my PC and try to configure just one piece of software when I have so much else to do and that's just one piece of software and there's always going to the next piece of software that requires configuration.
Linux works for you and I think that's great. I really want Linux to work for me, that's why I try it multiple times a year. But by the time I'm the first hour deep into trying to get something to function correctly, I remember I have other things I'd rather be doing and other priorities and I go back to Windows so I can just use my PC without having to jump through hoops.
If you're interested, I've posted about the issues that I encounter several times: Here's a recent one Here's another This one kind of goes over what I've already said But I've also had problems...
If you're interested, I've posted about the issues that I encounter several times:
But I've also had problems with the Intel AX210 wifi, where it works great in Windows, but is janky and drops connection frequently under Linux.
With another machine I setup for my Kiddo, the Nvidia driver had to constantly be changed based on what game they wanted to play. Something I don't want to have to keep addressing when they want to switch games.
It just doesn't work for me when I want to run it on my daily PCs. Works pretty great on my PiHole, my Arcade machine I built and my Steam Deck.
Right? Maybe its because I came from Windows where you do have to tinker a bit still? Ive been using Linux Mint for a decade and the only hassle I ever had was trying to get a printer to work,...
Right? Maybe its because I came from Windows where you do have to tinker a bit still?
Ive been using Linux Mint for a decade and the only hassle I ever had was trying to get a printer to work, which is a hassle on every machine.
I use Windows, MacOS and Linux (Fedora). I know, I'm a weirdo. But if you humour me for a bit, here's my two cents: All of these OS's have their own issues and quirks, like you said. But I feel...
I use Windows, MacOS and Linux (Fedora). I know, I'm a weirdo. But if you humour me for a bit, here's my two cents:
All of these OS's have their own issues and quirks, like you said. But I feel that Linux is less forgiving - and that regardless of distro, there's always the expectation that you should be able to troubleshoot and fix issues yourself. And if you are your family's IT guy like me, then you would know that that's not a realistic expectation for the average person. (it was more than once that I had to explain to someone what a gmail account was and that they definitely had one logged in in their android phone, let me put it that way)
For example:
MacOS puts me in a neat little box. It takes away some control, but at the same time most things will just work™️. When I connect my macbook to an external display, it doesn't matter if it's 1080p or 4k, the image will appear and it will look right.
Windows, kind of the same thing, but a bit less consistent.
Linux (Fedora (KDE) and SteamOS (KDE)), are the opposite. Every single time, I have to adapt to whatever quirks the distro or the DE throws at me. The two more annoying recent examples were my gaming desktop and my Steam Deck.
My desktop, for whatever reason, had almost no issues with my TV while using Windows, but Fedora (and other distros before it) just didn't work and had terrible colours - like a photo taken with the first cell phones with cameras, among other issues. Turns out, the hdmi cable was connected to a 2.0 port on the TV instead of the 2.1 port, and swapping fixed it. But there's the point I made: Windows somehow managed to roll with it, Linux didn't. (more details about this experience here). After that, I had to do some tinkering to make sure it looks right in both my 1080p monitor and my TV whenever I swap between them, whereas on Windows that was never something I needed to do.
The second example was my Steam Deck while in desktop mode. I connected it to my 4k TV and had to change the scaling. After I was done using it with the TV, I disconnected it, and promptly changed the scaling back to 100% to make the UI elements back to normal. Except the mouse pointer didn't get the memo, and keeps not getting it. Today, I still have a large mouse pointer that won't go back to normal, no matter what I do. There should be a fix, but I gave up and just left it be.
If from my examples you're getting the impression that it's a KDE problem: sure, maybe it is. But in my over 10 years using and experimenting with distros with different DE's, that's just par for the course to me. I didn't expect it to be different. Linux requires a bit of tinkering from the user. It will improve in the future (we came a long way didn't we?), but for now it's not as tinkering or hassle free as the other two - in my experience.
That said, I do want to point out that my Fedora desktop has been stable for months now and the experience has been very smooth.
I use Windows, Mac, and Linux daily. I primarily use Linux via virtual machines. I just switched to 4k monitors - getting the display scaling "right" on Linux is kind of painful. I have the...
I use Windows, Mac, and Linux daily. I primarily use Linux via virtual machines. I just switched to 4k monitors - getting the display scaling "right" on Linux is kind of painful. I have the options between either 100% scale or 200% scale - which is too much.
My mouse scroll wheel behaves differently in Chromium browsers versus Firefox based browsers on Linux. I have no idea why. It behaves the same in every other OS.
Occasionally I end up with a weird rendering issue where I have to reboot to fix it. It's almost like certain areas of the screen aren't "refreshing"? Dragging another window over the area seems to fix it temporarily.
I once tried to print on a networked printer. I failed. Granted Windows 11 has also had issue with this. Mac works seamlessly.
It's a little confusing figuring out the "right" way to install a lot of software. Sometimes I install it via the provided "store" from the OS, but then the application itself prompts for an update that doesn't seem to work because the "store" doesn't contain the latest version? I don't know. So I uninstall that and end up trying to figure out how to install it other ways. I have to add a source to apt and trust it (okay I guess?) and there are snaps, debs, whatever. I figured it out, but it's a time sink that doesn't provide obvious value to me.
When I run Linux as a sort of "headless" server? Zero issues. Very stable. Easy to update. Running it as a desktop/laptop OS? There's always something I have to fiddle with.
I think you're on an outdated distro perhaps? Or maybe something is breaking in the VM? We've had fractional scaling in Linux for a while, it works perfectly with Wayland for me, I have options of...
I think you're on an outdated distro perhaps? Or maybe something is breaking in the VM?
We've had fractional scaling in Linux for a while, it works perfectly with Wayland for me, I have options of [100,125,133,166,200,250,266].
Sick. MacOS is a piece of trash, incomplete operating system that requires many additional apps -- many of which are paid, despite being quite trivial, and the OS being overpriced -- to barely...
Sick. MacOS is a piece of trash, incomplete operating system that requires many additional apps -- many of which are paid, despite being quite trivial, and the OS being overpriced -- to barely limp along. The OS maintainers routinely avoid working on performance in preference to shipping terrible redesigns and features no one wants, and the few times they release something decent, it's because they Sherlock'd it from the community.
I have increasingly low tolerance for unopposed glazing of that company's garbage as I get older. Apple is an atrocious, soulless company that abuses its dev community, locks in its nontechnical customers, and parades around wearing the skin of its early era, counterculture self.
This is the first and last time I'll make a comment on this, since I have macOS and Apple blocked both in my tag list and physically in my mind.
Who's sick? Me? Not sure I appreciate that much. I don't find Mac OS trash or incomplete or requiring many additional apps. Nor do I find the OS overpriced, in fact I don't think I've ever bought...
Who's sick? Me? Not sure I appreciate that much. I don't find Mac OS trash or incomplete or requiring many additional apps. Nor do I find the OS overpriced, in fact I don't think I've ever bought it unless you count the fact that it comes with the hardware, which some people might think overpriced (I don't). Isn't all hardware overpriced anyway?
At least I get to use a real UNIX again, and that's quite a lovely thing.
Re. Sick, my apologies. That was not intended as a jab towards you -- it's an older/slightly out of touch way of saying "Cool". I'm glad things are working well for you on a personal level, and...
Re. Sick, my apologies. That was not intended as a jab towards you -- it's an older/slightly out of touch way of saying "Cool". I'm glad things are working well for you on a personal level, and have no misgivings towards you in the slightest. Again, sorry for implications of that; this topic riles me up and I didn't do an editing pass of that comment to try to catch miscommunications on my part.
No comment on anything macOS related, since I genuinely never want to discuss it again. I didn't realize the article was Apple related otherwise I wouldn't be here in the first place.
(edit) just checked my tag filters and it looks like macOS wasn't in the list. That's fixed now.
Here's the thing: macOS is fine. I'm a fairly average users that browse the web, do email, write a lot of txts in default Text Editor; some light image editing (in Pixelmator Pro). Things work,...
Here's the thing: macOS is fine. I'm a fairly average users that browse the web, do email, write a lot of txts in default Text Editor; some light image editing (in Pixelmator Pro). Things work, and I love all the keyboard shortcuts it offers for writing. They're very useful and no Linux DE comes close to them.
I have the same philosophy. Linux is on a server or two in my home, but I have next to zero desire to run it on my primary gaming PCs, because it's always one issue after another. Last I got that...
I have the same philosophy. Linux is on a server or two in my home, but I have next to zero desire to run it on my primary gaming PCs, because it's always one issue after another.
Last I got that big up my butt about a month ago, after installing Fedora, I spent an hour trying to get the Nvidia kernel to load, never succeeding, remembering that I have plenty of other projects I need to be doing and using my computer is my relax time. So I swapped my Windows drive back in and had that relax time.
I like Linux a lot and I want to run it, but I have two kids that need stuff all the time, I have three cars that often need to be worked on and endless projects around the house, I just do not need to be futzing around in the little time I have to use my PC as well.
I remember futzing with modelines for X11R6 , dealing with root and boot floppies, around 1995, and had a linux desktop alongside windows full time until about the arrival of Windows 8 in 2012 or...
I remember futzing with modelines for X11R6 , dealing with root and boot floppies, around 1995, and had a linux desktop alongside windows full time until about the arrival of Windows 8 in 2012 or so. When I dropped windows entirely. Recently though, I found that things were just squirrely on Linux desktops and they were taking an increasing amount of time to work through.
Distros ditching X11 for Wayland broke my desktop workflow entirely, as the Wayland team didn't seem to think that things that worked on X11 were important enough for them. USB MIDI was a complete pain, I really don't like systemd - if it would just have been an init replacement then sure, but it's basically the whole bloody system now.
Passkeys were another big reason. I saw the rise in adoption and I actually find them quite useful. I keep them in an external vault, but Passkey support on Linux was woeful. With the passkey 'powers that be' threatening to block the one piece of software that provided working passkey functionality for my use cases.
Eventually the lure of Apple Silicone with it's high performance, low power, long battery life, "just works" reputation, and deep integration was just too compelling to leave on the table. So hear I am. Tits deep in the Apple eco system, which I guess is funny as it's the kind of thing that Linux die hards usually want to escape /from/ not escape /to/.
But I just had too much supply of CBA to do anything else really. Give me an easy life and get off my lawns.
Absolutely. As I've gotten older and life more busy, I just want to do what I want to do and not have to fix my tools before I even get to start on the work I want to do or play the games I want...
But I just had too much supply of CBA to do anything else really. Give me an easy life and get off my lawns.
Absolutely. As I've gotten older and life more busy, I just want to do what I want to do and not have to fix my tools before I even get to start on the work I want to do or play the games I want to play.
A bit ironic then that most of the problems you run into are specifically because your apple hardware doesn't play nice with open standards and only works because some people took the time to...
I found myself installing a Linux distro with the intent of freeing myself from macOS, the first step out of Apple’s walled garden
A bit ironic then that most of the problems you run into are specifically because your apple hardware doesn't play nice with open standards and only works because some people took the time to crack into it to try and make it work at all.
I'm so glad Valve has had such success with steam deck and steam machine which--at least for gaming--proves you can have a solid Linux experience without any hassle using the right hardware.
Yeah, this. To get out of the walled garden, it's honestly better to first get hardware that isn't actively hostile to the OS you're trying to install, otherwise you're going to have a bad time...
Yeah, this. To get out of the walled garden, it's honestly better to first get hardware that isn't actively hostile to the OS you're trying to install, otherwise you're going to have a bad time (until such a time that the work in that area, like Asahi (which don't get me wrong, I support the efforts!), gets really mature)
Once again, I found myself installing a Linux distro with the intent of freeing myself from macOS, the first step out of Apple’s walled garden; I thought I was standing at the door of a digital...
Once again, I found myself installing a Linux distro with the intent of freeing myself from macOS, the first step out of Apple’s walled garden; I thought I was standing at the door of a digital utopia, something like the modern-day dream of dropping everything to go live off the land.
I do appreciate people trying Linux, especially when they do so more than once as the ecosystem continues to mature. I admit to being a little disappointed that many such people seem unwilling to...
I do appreciate people trying Linux, especially when they do so more than once as the ecosystem continues to mature. I admit to being a little disappointed that many such people seem unwilling to deal with the compromises that they may have to make- if you really want out of a walled garden, you sort of have to make it happen.
On the other hand, I also note that you have run into more issues than most, coming from Apple hardware. I have not used Asahi myself, but I do have an ARM laptop which has similar issues, and I'm no stranger to the #aarch64-laptops IRC channel.
The RAM one is an interesting issue, though. I see no reason why swap might be impossible on Apple hardware- perhaps you just missed it during the installation? It's easy to hit the wrong confirmation when you're greeted by a string of decisions. You might also have a look into zram, which implements in-RAM compression- a similar solution to Apple's. I'm not sure if it's configured by default on Asahi systems, but in theory it could be on Ubuntu.
My primary system is from roughly six years ago, and has a measly 8GB of RAM, which I have only ever had issues with when running multiple complex programs at the same time (Firefox, Discord, Blender, Prusa Slicer, a literal tonne of GPU accelerated terminal contexts). In day-to-day operation I only run a small subset of these (Firefox with approx. 70 tabs, Discord, Alacritty) and rarely hit more than 6GB of usage.
With an os it is neccessary to choose what problems the user wants to have. And while MacOS and Windows get an autopass for any problem they choose to introduce, Linux is expected to work with...
With an os it is neccessary to choose what problems the user wants to have. And while MacOS and Windows get an autopass for any problem they choose to introduce, Linux is expected to work with everything.
From hardware that does not have support for it and definitely does not release documentation to make that support easy. To software that was never compiled for it but a lot of the time works anyways due to the compatibility layer.
It will not change without more people choosing to accept the temporary and usually small inconvenience. And it will be more temporary the more people choose it. If the marketshare magically jumped to 20% most of the problems would magically disappear inside a year or two.
Where as I am fully migrated /to/ Mac OS on desktops and laptops, from Linux. I retired my last Linux laptop, an open suse one a couple of weeks ago when I got my new M5 15” Air (32GB, 2TB). Could no longer put up with the bullshit and endless tinkering. I have an increasingly low tolerance for those kinds of shenanigans as I get older.
Still run Linux distros on the server side though.
This is not really a reply to your comment, but whenever Linux comes up in a conversation, there’s always a comment like this, and I wonder what the hell people are trying to do with it that they need to tinker with it so much.
For me, Linux is the most hassle-free OS there is. I haven’t tinkered with it in six years because for me, it just works. I also use macOS, and one of the things I dislike about it is that there’s always more friction when setting up a development environment compared to Linux. I also worry more when upgrading macOS than Linux because I seem to always encounter some problem midway through the upgrade.
I see it as people getting used to the idiosyncrasies of each OS to the point where they stop seeing the problems. They learn where the problems are, accept them as unchangeable facts, and eventually get used to them. Maybe I’ve just learned to accept Linux’s shortcomings, while I haven’t accepted macOS’s because it’s a paid product.
I think it's just different peoples' use cases. I use Linux as my daily driver, gaming PC, living room PC, home server, laptop, and other tertiary boxes. The only non-Linux system I use is for music production and it can be done there too just more frustratingly (especially once you're invested into plugin ecosystems and whatnot).
For me, aside from some early adjustments I had to make, it is consistently hassle-free for me. I don't update my distros often. I still use X11 instead of Wayland. I use an Nvidia 4070 in my gaming/main PC and have no problems. I have an nvidia gpu in my server and an AMD APU on my living room PC. They all work for the most part without any hassles. I don't have to keep upgrading my nvidia driver to play games or change a bunch of stuff. I also, to be fair, don't buy a lot of new games anymore, but anything I have tried has been fairly problem-free. The occasional proton tweak might be necessary for a game here or there but that's about it. I run games from Epic, Steam, and GOG without a problem.
Any hassles I have run into were very small and easily solved within a very short time, not massive show-stopping situations.
I'm not saying there aren't any, only that for the way I use my particular machines, I don't run into problems often, and when I do, I don't mind handling them easy. Most things do just work. I have experienced macOS and Windows both in recent years and I can't say my experience on either of them was even remotely better than my experience on Linux. Both were markedly worse. Bad enough that I got rid of Windows on every machine except the one, and I got rid of all my mac hardware
As far as OP / using Linux on modern Macs go- I don't mean this in a mean way- but isn't that still pretty "alpha/beta/uncharted" territory? Linux on Apple Silicon I don't think has remotely come close to the maturity of Linux on other systems, so I think it's naive to go into such a dive without expecting a bunch of issues and then blaming Linux for them (?)
That said, I still don't recommend Linux to "normies" for the most part, as much as I love it. To people that aren't tech-inclined, what is a 60 second fix to us techies feels like moving mountains to them. So I get that a lot of it is all about perspective too.
I gave it a shot because it's the laptop I have, and despite not being fully functional yet, Asahi went great lengths to be daily drivable already. (Also, MacBook Air's hardware is so good, and other brand's equivalent so more expensive where I live, which led me to try it out anyway.)
I mean, many of us that are tech inclined still aren't inclined to have to dick with it constantly. No shade, though it probably reads that way.
I've been in IT Professionally for 15+ years now and messing with technology for twice as long. I have the skillset to get Linux working, it's just that it's constantly one things after another with it whenever I try it out on my machines. I'm at the point in life where I have lots of projects (last week I put a transmission in a car, then an alternator in another, this week I repaired/reinstalled some broken LED puck lights, am building a new PC for a customer, amongst all the other little daily tasks that need to be taken care of in my life.) and a family to attend to.
I like IT, but I also don't really care about it insofar as what it can do for me. That means, browsing Youtube, Slicing STLs, doing research for hobbies and projects, typing documents, talking to people online, games, etc, etc. Linux always ends-up being a thing that I have to futz with when I just want to use my PC for stuff I do care about.
Sure I can figure out this issue. But then there's another. And another. And another...and another. At some point, I'm tired and I just want to do what I sat down to do and not have to fix my tool first. Linux has always been like that for me and I'm a person that installs it on my main PC's at least twice a year, sometimes more. I have run it on my PiHole, I run it on an Arcade cabinet and in both those cases, where I'm not using them daily and don't have to ask much of either of them, Linux works great and I never have to screw with it. Even on my Steam Deck it works great and while I do use the desktop fairly frequently in it, I don't run into all the problems I do when I'm not using bespoke hardware.
So maybe the answer is to use bespoke hardware, but I also don't have the money or time for that. I want to use what I have and not have to make sure all my hardware is compatible, especially when Windows just works for me. My Desktop/Server is a great candidate for it, being that it's fully AMD, but at the same time, I do not want to have to reconfigure the server from scratch and in having done some research on getting stuff like Moonlight streaming to work, I don't want to have to configure a fake monitor and mess around with stuff just to get that function working, especially when Windows does all of that without my intervention. It's all been a basic setup, where I can setup the software, let it run and I'm off to the races. I do not have the time nor the inclination to sit at my PC and try to configure just one piece of software when I have so much else to do and that's just one piece of software and there's always going to the next piece of software that requires configuration.
Linux works for you and I think that's great. I really want Linux to work for me, that's why I try it multiple times a year. But by the time I'm the first hour deep into trying to get something to function correctly, I remember I have other things I'd rather be doing and other priorities and I go back to Windows so I can just use my PC without having to jump through hoops.
I just posted about some of my frustrations here
If you're interested, I've posted about the issues that I encounter several times:
Here's a recent one
Here's another
This one kind of goes over what I've already said
But I've also had problems with the Intel AX210 wifi, where it works great in Windows, but is janky and drops connection frequently under Linux.
With another machine I setup for my Kiddo, the Nvidia driver had to constantly be changed based on what game they wanted to play. Something I don't want to have to keep addressing when they want to switch games.
It just doesn't work for me when I want to run it on my daily PCs. Works pretty great on my PiHole, my Arcade machine I built and my Steam Deck.
Right? Maybe its because I came from Windows where you do have to tinker a bit still?
Ive been using Linux Mint for a decade and the only hassle I ever had was trying to get a printer to work, which is a hassle on every machine.
I use Windows, MacOS and Linux (Fedora). I know, I'm a weirdo. But if you humour me for a bit, here's my two cents:
All of these OS's have their own issues and quirks, like you said. But I feel that Linux is less forgiving - and that regardless of distro, there's always the expectation that you should be able to troubleshoot and fix issues yourself. And if you are your family's IT guy like me, then you would know that that's not a realistic expectation for the average person. (it was more than once that I had to explain to someone what a gmail account was and that they definitely had one logged in in their android phone, let me put it that way)
For example:
MacOS puts me in a neat little box. It takes away some control, but at the same time most things will just work™️. When I connect my macbook to an external display, it doesn't matter if it's 1080p or 4k, the image will appear and it will look right.
Windows, kind of the same thing, but a bit less consistent.
Linux (Fedora (KDE) and SteamOS (KDE)), are the opposite. Every single time, I have to adapt to whatever quirks the distro or the DE throws at me. The two more annoying recent examples were my gaming desktop and my Steam Deck.
My desktop, for whatever reason, had almost no issues with my TV while using Windows, but Fedora (and other distros before it) just didn't work and had terrible colours - like a photo taken with the first cell phones with cameras, among other issues. Turns out, the hdmi cable was connected to a 2.0 port on the TV instead of the 2.1 port, and swapping fixed it. But there's the point I made: Windows somehow managed to roll with it, Linux didn't. (more details about this experience here). After that, I had to do some tinkering to make sure it looks right in both my 1080p monitor and my TV whenever I swap between them, whereas on Windows that was never something I needed to do.
The second example was my Steam Deck while in desktop mode. I connected it to my 4k TV and had to change the scaling. After I was done using it with the TV, I disconnected it, and promptly changed the scaling back to 100% to make the UI elements back to normal. Except the mouse pointer didn't get the memo, and keeps not getting it. Today, I still have a large mouse pointer that won't go back to normal, no matter what I do. There should be a fix, but I gave up and just left it be.
If from my examples you're getting the impression that it's a KDE problem: sure, maybe it is. But in my over 10 years using and experimenting with distros with different DE's, that's just par for the course to me. I didn't expect it to be different. Linux requires a bit of tinkering from the user. It will improve in the future (we came a long way didn't we?), but for now it's not as tinkering or hassle free as the other two - in my experience.
That said, I do want to point out that my Fedora desktop has been stable for months now and the experience has been very smooth.
I use Windows, Mac, and Linux daily. I primarily use Linux via virtual machines. I just switched to 4k monitors - getting the display scaling "right" on Linux is kind of painful. I have the options between either 100% scale or 200% scale - which is too much.
My mouse scroll wheel behaves differently in Chromium browsers versus Firefox based browsers on Linux. I have no idea why. It behaves the same in every other OS.
Occasionally I end up with a weird rendering issue where I have to reboot to fix it. It's almost like certain areas of the screen aren't "refreshing"? Dragging another window over the area seems to fix it temporarily.
I once tried to print on a networked printer. I failed. Granted Windows 11 has also had issue with this. Mac works seamlessly.
It's a little confusing figuring out the "right" way to install a lot of software. Sometimes I install it via the provided "store" from the OS, but then the application itself prompts for an update that doesn't seem to work because the "store" doesn't contain the latest version? I don't know. So I uninstall that and end up trying to figure out how to install it other ways. I have to add a source to apt and trust it (okay I guess?) and there are snaps, debs, whatever. I figured it out, but it's a time sink that doesn't provide obvious value to me.
When I run Linux as a sort of "headless" server? Zero issues. Very stable. Easy to update. Running it as a desktop/laptop OS? There's always something I have to fiddle with.
I think you're on an outdated distro perhaps? Or maybe something is breaking in the VM?
We've had fractional scaling in Linux for a while, it works perfectly with Wayland for me, I have options of [100,125,133,166,200,250,266].
I'm on Ubuntu 24 LTS
Bare metal or VM? In my (admittedly limited) experience, VMs have all kinds of quirks compared to bare metal.
VM, and yeah some of the quirks might be related to the VM. The rendering issue is probably the VM.
Sick. MacOS is a piece of trash, incomplete operating system that requires many additional apps -- many of which are paid, despite being quite trivial, and the OS being overpriced -- to barely limp along. The OS maintainers routinely avoid working on performance in preference to shipping terrible redesigns and features no one wants, and the few times they release something decent, it's because they Sherlock'd it from the community.
I have increasingly low tolerance for unopposed glazing of that company's garbage as I get older. Apple is an atrocious, soulless company that abuses its dev community, locks in its nontechnical customers, and parades around wearing the skin of its early era, counterculture self.
This is the first and last time I'll make a comment on this, since I have macOS and Apple blocked both in my tag list and physically in my mind.
Who's sick? Me? Not sure I appreciate that much. I don't find Mac OS trash or incomplete or requiring many additional apps. Nor do I find the OS overpriced, in fact I don't think I've ever bought it unless you count the fact that it comes with the hardware, which some people might think overpriced (I don't). Isn't all hardware overpriced anyway?
At least I get to use a real UNIX again, and that's quite a lovely thing.
Re. Sick, my apologies. That was not intended as a jab towards you -- it's an older/slightly out of touch way of saying "Cool". I'm glad things are working well for you on a personal level, and have no misgivings towards you in the slightest. Again, sorry for implications of that; this topic riles me up and I didn't do an editing pass of that comment to try to catch miscommunications on my part.
No comment on anything macOS related, since I genuinely never want to discuss it again. I didn't realize the article was Apple related otherwise I wouldn't be here in the first place.
(edit) just checked my tag filters and it looks like macOS wasn't in the list. That's fixed now.
Im actually laughing that you went “sick!” And they were like “am not!” Thats peak internet for me today not gonna top that one
Here's the thing: macOS is fine. I'm a fairly average users that browse the web, do email, write a lot of txts in default Text Editor; some light image editing (in Pixelmator Pro). Things work, and I love all the keyboard shortcuts it offers for writing. They're very useful and no Linux DE comes close to them.
I have the same philosophy. Linux is on a server or two in my home, but I have next to zero desire to run it on my primary gaming PCs, because it's always one issue after another.
Last I got that big up my butt about a month ago, after installing Fedora, I spent an hour trying to get the Nvidia kernel to load, never succeeding, remembering that I have plenty of other projects I need to be doing and using my computer is my relax time. So I swapped my Windows drive back in and had that relax time.
I like Linux a lot and I want to run it, but I have two kids that need stuff all the time, I have three cars that often need to be worked on and endless projects around the house, I just do not need to be futzing around in the little time I have to use my PC as well.
I remember futzing with modelines for X11R6 , dealing with root and boot floppies, around 1995, and had a linux desktop alongside windows full time until about the arrival of Windows 8 in 2012 or so. When I dropped windows entirely. Recently though, I found that things were just squirrely on Linux desktops and they were taking an increasing amount of time to work through.
Distros ditching X11 for Wayland broke my desktop workflow entirely, as the Wayland team didn't seem to think that things that worked on X11 were important enough for them. USB MIDI was a complete pain, I really don't like systemd - if it would just have been an init replacement then sure, but it's basically the whole bloody system now.
Passkeys were another big reason. I saw the rise in adoption and I actually find them quite useful. I keep them in an external vault, but Passkey support on Linux was woeful. With the passkey 'powers that be' threatening to block the one piece of software that provided working passkey functionality for my use cases.
Eventually the lure of Apple Silicone with it's high performance, low power, long battery life, "just works" reputation, and deep integration was just too compelling to leave on the table. So hear I am. Tits deep in the Apple eco system, which I guess is funny as it's the kind of thing that Linux die hards usually want to escape /from/ not escape /to/.
But I just had too much supply of CBA to do anything else really. Give me an easy life and get off my lawns.
Absolutely. As I've gotten older and life more busy, I just want to do what I want to do and not have to fix my tools before I even get to start on the work I want to do or play the games I want to play.
A bit ironic then that most of the problems you run into are specifically because your apple hardware doesn't play nice with open standards and only works because some people took the time to crack into it to try and make it work at all.
I'm so glad Valve has had such success with steam deck and steam machine which--at least for gaming--proves you can have a solid Linux experience without any hassle using the right hardware.
Yeah, this. To get out of the walled garden, it's honestly better to first get hardware that isn't actively hostile to the OS you're trying to install, otherwise you're going to have a bad time (until such a time that the work in that area, like Asahi (which don't get me wrong, I support the efforts!), gets really mature)
I'm fully aware. I was trying to use what I already have, since there's no way I'm buying a new (or used, for that matter) computer right now.
Once again, I found myself installing a Linux distro with the intent of freeing myself from macOS, the first step out of Apple’s walled garden; I thought I was standing at the door of a digital utopia, something like the modern-day dream of dropping everything to go live off the land.
(Spoiler: it was a short, but enriching journey.)
I do appreciate people trying Linux, especially when they do so more than once as the ecosystem continues to mature. I admit to being a little disappointed that many such people seem unwilling to deal with the compromises that they may have to make- if you really want out of a walled garden, you sort of have to make it happen.
On the other hand, I also note that you have run into more issues than most, coming from Apple hardware. I have not used Asahi myself, but I do have an ARM laptop which has similar issues, and I'm no stranger to the #aarch64-laptops IRC channel.
The RAM one is an interesting issue, though. I see no reason why swap might be impossible on Apple hardware- perhaps you just missed it during the installation? It's easy to hit the wrong confirmation when you're greeted by a string of decisions. You might also have a look into zram, which implements in-RAM compression- a similar solution to Apple's. I'm not sure if it's configured by default on Asahi systems, but in theory it could be on Ubuntu.
My primary system is from roughly six years ago, and has a measly 8GB of RAM, which I have only ever had issues with when running multiple complex programs at the same time (Firefox, Discord, Blender, Prusa Slicer, a literal tonne of GPU accelerated terminal contexts). In day-to-day operation I only run a small subset of these (Firefox with approx. 70 tabs, Discord, Alacritty) and rarely hit more than 6GB of usage.
With an os it is neccessary to choose what problems the user wants to have. And while MacOS and Windows get an autopass for any problem they choose to introduce, Linux is expected to work with everything.
From hardware that does not have support for it and definitely does not release documentation to make that support easy. To software that was never compiled for it but a lot of the time works anyways due to the compatibility layer.
It will not change without more people choosing to accept the temporary and usually small inconvenience. And it will be more temporary the more people choose it. If the marketshare magically jumped to 20% most of the problems would magically disappear inside a year or two.