Ask HN: Are Any of You Tired from macOS and Want to Go Back to Linux?

well yeah, a while ago... it bothered me that i couldn't even have my home directory they way i wanted so after having loved the graphical interface and other tools (keynote <3) for a few years, i went back to debian, this time with i3 and... what was i thinking before? i got tricked by comfort and pretty stuff after buying my first mac.

Yes. I am still not productive with macOS's window management, after 10 years of use. Linux distributions always have better package management than Homebrew and run Docker containers I am developing without virtualisation. Also, I consider free software to be less of a risk. If Apple decides to neuter macOS in any way, eventually I would have to change my ways, while in Linux I could change to a forked version.

At work I'll have to use macOS anyway, but I could migrate away from Windows on my desktop, had Linux desktop distributions a better HiDPI support with my hardware.

Last job I used a Mac for the first time. It was... OK. But I could really never get comfortable. Current job I'm back on Linux - switched to PopOS from i3 and things are good again :) (and Docker runs sooooo much faster)

Not a big fan of MacOS. I could get my work done with it if I had to but I would take Windows any day.

The first thing I do on any Linux machine is turn off X windows, Wayland, whatever it is these days. I love logging in through ssh and using bash, but the UI is a dumpster fire. Granted Windows is always trying to spam me with spamifications about spam software and when I plug in a monitor the layouts blow up for a moment but in Linux they don’t care if font metrics match the space text is in, so the normal condition on Linux is like Windows when it is settling down after changing the video.

I know this is going to come off as snarky or dismissive, but please believe me that it's not intended that way. I just can't come up with a better way to say it:

No. I'm too focused on my work to care much.

I used to waffle back and forth, being a dwm super-nerd or hacking on my own tooling for whatever in macOS. Then I got a job where there was simply no time to spend on that it at all. At the end of the day I'm mentally exhausted and I don't look at a computer. Wake up excited to work on hard problems. I haven't thought about a window manager, editor, complex startup scripts, writing my own news aggregator, hacking on display drivers or whatever.

Too busy working, happily.

I had this feeling some time ago, after having been a Mac user for decades, and found myself gradually switching by default. I just found myself gravitating toward the Ubuntu-running ThinkPad more and more, which did whatever I wanted it to do without trying to shoehorn me into some giant corporation's vision of profitable computing. It was comfortable, it worked just fine, and the hardware was cheaper. I never found a reason to buy a new Mac, and after a move several years ago I never got around to unpacking the old one.

Come on in! The water's fine.

I use both a Linux laptop and a MacBook every day.

I installed Ubuntu Server (which is halfway between Debian and Ubuntu Desktop) with i3 and spent a number of hours customizing it. I don't enjoy the time spent to get a custom setup (e.g. figuring out how to make the system not hang on boot because of wifi, and what packages to download so that the terminal will display emojis), but I do enjoy how fast the UI is, how all unimportant elements are removed.

But I'll play my music from either my iPhone or my MacBook.

If I'm charging my car, I'll work from the MacBook, because it doesn't use much battery when idle, its battery lasts a long time, and it is actually comfortable to have in your lap.

If I'm playing games, I'll use the MacBook.

If I'm doing accounting, I'll use the MacBook.

If I'm stitching together PDF documents, I'll use the MacBook.

Linux is only best for software development. But that's a pretty big part of every day for me.

Can't say that I am. There's too many niceties about using macOS that I would gravely miss in Linux.

- My family all use iMessage so I'd immensely miss Messages.app.

- I'm a photographer (hobbyist), and rely on Adobe Lightroom and Premiere Pro

- Having several other Apple products, the horizontal integration is just /too nice and convenient/ to give up. I spend at least 8 hours a day writing/looking at code and the rest of my day is being a dad. I don't have the time nor the energy to always be tinkering with my devices to get them exactly how I want them to look/feel/behave.

- As a developer, I have no major issues with my workflow using macOS. Also, the M1 is excellent. Show me another laptop that's as light and can literally go a full work day on battery.

You’ve got much free time to fight against numerous Linux bugs, especially after OS upgrade?

I right now wait for Asahi Linux to be ready for production, since MacBooks hardware is very good.

I actively use windows, macos and linux. They all suck and they're all great. You just have to know what you want in different contexts and use the best tool for the task.

You can control linux more but you also have to babysit it more as it is so sensitive and fragile.

I never used macOS, only Linux and the BSDs (windows decades ago). But in the past I have recommend macOS to people rather than Windows due to its UN*X roots.

I do not know far it has strayed from UN*X in recent years, but from what I have read, macOS is getting more and more locked down.

Also, seems many Linux distros is slowly straying away. The rare few that stays close to the UN*X roots are having a tough time staying that way.

I wonder how hard it is these days to install free third party software on macOS. Or do you need to go through the "MAC Store" to install anything ? If so, that is reason enough for me not to use macOS.

"Go back to"??

I've tried. Doesn't last long.

I did, for my personal laptop and desktop, after 18 years on macOS.

But I am not a developer, I used creative tools from Adobe (Macromedia even) for almost 20 years.

Pop_OS! (on Wayland) helped a lot, and it has been a worthy transition. The replacements have been long and somewhat painful to find, but it all worked out.

I was simply too tired of the increased babysitting by macOS and the opaque telemetry and limitations.

I built a fanless AMD desktop loosely inspired by Joshua Stein's (here is a pic of my setup, but I now use 3 displays: https://mobile.twitter.com/Salis/status/1490739423981486082)

It made using my own devices fun again, even though I miss some of the convenience :)

No, I have Fedora install on my PC for some experiments (I've been a linux user for ~8 years before switch to macOS in 2014) and sadly linux experience is far behind from macOS from my user experience.

I don't need full customization or tens of forks of some window manager, or "ricing", or "independence".

All I need is a stable environment for work, media etc. It should be convenient without me spending hours configuring the OS. It should have pleasant UI\UX. It must have seemless integration with my mobile devices.

In my experince linux distros are good in case you only need it for one task and you are okay with constant changes (that will take your time). I'm not okay with this anymore. I want to spent my free time with my family or my hobby. Not trying to investigate why app X stopped working and how should I configure a new fork of this app created due to some drama.

Sorry if this is too emotional.

PS: do we have fractional scaling for Gnome under wayland yet?

  >That and the inability to stretch a desktop across two monitors.

  > I'd be better off with a Chromebook.

I am now a year into using Mac OS thanks to the m1 Air, which had such a list of benefits that I was willing to overlook my dislike of the os. It was worth doing is my conclusion. It's a fantastic laptop, I still don't really love the OS but it's a minor price to pay, it's fine enough and it's not serving ad recommendations or deciding when I should restart my computer like a certain other commercial OS.

I went back to Windows. Does everything I want and doesn't have the Apple walled garden approach. I have m1 envy but its worth it.

Nope. Things work out of the box. I have terminal and homebrew and pip and npm if needed.

Fiddle with hacky drivers and graphics systems like fglrx and qt? No thanks.

Background: I've been a *nix user since 1989, and have used focus-follows-mouse and a few window-management hot key combos for the last 33 years. I've managed to use those keys in every *nix WM / DE that I've used (twm, ctwm, kde, lxde).

I tried to use a mac as a desktop about 15 years ago. I was burned out from working 12-14 hours a day, had a new baby, and didn't want to deal with managing a FreeBSD or Linux desktop. I managed to find 3rd party hacks for most of my hot-key WM things, but I was never able to make focus follows mouse work in any sane way. My strategy at the time was to ignore mac apps as much as possible, and run XDarwin with traditional *nix apps and a WM that supported FFM. But using a web browser that was native and not Xdarwin based meant that focus didn't always follow the mouse, and that was enough to cause me inordinate amounts of frustration. I finally gave the machine to my inlaws at the time, and built a new white-box *nix machine.

Oddly, I don't have much of a problem with non-ffm on laptops, just because the experience is so vastly different. So I have a macbook, but I use it mostly for meetings / web browsing and as a terminal onto my FreeBSD desktop when traveling.*

Not really. Desktop GNU/Linux is a horrible experience that you always need to debug.

I sometimes miss Windows, not due to Windows itself (Windows 11 looks like a horror show), but because of all the apps, especially games.

I want to go back to windows, mostly because I miss explorer.exe. Mac’s finder and window management is a mess.

I have tried to use uBar but it’s buggy. Does anyone know of good alternatives?

I have macOS on my laptop and Fedora on my desktop. Both are fine, and, I think, they converged somewhat (Gnome3 is increasingly macOS-like, macOS started to take some UI decisions from Gnome as well).