Linux still barely works in 2022 (and if one distro will become really popular, with a big investment of money like Ubuntu did once, they will ad ads, like Ubuntu added Amazon), and MacOS works just on Apple HW (and has ads for Apple services baked-in too, just less obnoxious).
Honestly, I picked my poison in 2010 or so: MacOS. You're right that it does have Apple services baked in, and that it is limited to Apple's hardware.
To the former: I never use them and they literally never push themselves on me.
To the latter: Apple's hardware is far and away the most pleasant to use. Every windows machine I've used in the last decade (bought an XPS 13 in 2019 out of necessity) is just wonky. Feels less polished on the hardware side, and fighting with drivers and bloatware is not what I want to deal with. Like, does a laptop really need some stupid, custom audio interface to be able to control whether I'm using a headphone jack or built-in speakers? On the XPS, you do. It's absurd.
I mean Apple put a whole stupid ARM chip in my laptop to interface with the keyboard and trackpad (among other things). This has the "fun" benefit of essentially killing support for non-blessed OSs because who wants to use a laptop that doesn't have a functional built-in keyboard and mouse? Oh and I've even had Bridge OS crash a few times knocking out the keyboard and mouse in macOS forcing me to restart.
You're getting a lot of comments about "what do you mean linux barely works" but I switched to Linux full time in the middle of Windows 10 and know exactly what you mean. There's a lot of stuff in Linux that's simply _different_ than Windows, and general infamiliarity means that some things that you know how to do on Windows seems to be impossible on Linux, until you learn how Linux and your particular distro chooses to organize things
But then Windows has the same problems as compared to Linux. I switched to Linux for programming purposes, and there's a lot of things that Linux does that I don't know the easy way to do in Windows[0]. Ultimately both OSes are simply different, and once you get used to one the other starts to seem really weird
That being said, a lot of things in Linux do take a lot more effort than in Windows. Part of it's because Linux is made by programmers for programmers. In MacOS, it either works or it's not possible. In Windows, it might work out of the box, it might take tweaking some registry keys, or it might simply not be a thing you can do (the latter category is fairly rare). In Linux, it might work out of the box, or it might takes you a couple of weeks of chasing down weird issues and compiling random patches from GitHub gists to fix something that really shouldn't be a problem in the first place
[0] For example, "search all files in this directory and its subdirectories for this particular phrase" is `grep -nR phrase` in a Linux terminal. In Windows I think I'd probably open the folder in VS Code and use its search tool. In the Windows case I can then click around to look at the results, or in the Linux case I can pipe it into a file and open it in vim and be able to grep my grep. They might eventually accomplish the same thing, but there's just different ways to do it, and I think which one is better depends heavily on what you prefer and what kind of work you're doing
I have had zero problem running linux as my daily driver for the last 10 years, care to explain your comment? The only problem that I have is that video games don't always work because the developers don't care.
I see this argument in every thread about Linux. There's always this one magical user where everything "just works", has had 0 issues and everything's just dandy.
The funny thing is, it's not the year of the Linux desktop, but it's increasingly not the year of the Windows desktop anymore either. "Linux is shit, and Windows just works" is becoming less true as we go; so Linux being bad stops being as convincing an argument when Windows is frustrating in different ways.
I’m not going to lie and say Linux is problem free, but “barely works” is a massive exaggeration. Linux works just fine. Windows isn’t problem free. I use windows for work and it’s often a roll of the dice whether my monitors will got to sleep properly, or if windows will deign to recognize my keyboard on boot.
Linux is not a 0 issue OS, but I use roughly the same methods and reasoning to get it to workable state as I might on Windows 10 and I wouldn't say it even takes much longer. Linux is surely cheaper. The difference is, Linux can keep growing in the direction you want and choose.
What are some specific issues? Most of the stuff I hear is either hardware related or some software someone used on Windows doesn't exist on Linux. For hardware issues it depends on the hardware you're using. Since most drivers aren't open source, full Linux support often comes a while after it's released. I don't use the most recent hardware and haven't had a problem where something doesn't "just work" in years. I don't even remember the last time. Not being able to use cutting edge hardware is a price I'm willing to pay because it actually saves you money. This is also why there is a big push for open hardware.
- Hardware support - if you don't have any special needs, it tends to work well, but as soon as you go into exotic stuff like digitizers or DP daisy chaining, GPU switching, or you are just plain unlucky, expect a world of hurt
- UI Papercuts: There's a ton of these - like extracting files in GUI is by far the least intuitive under GNOME compared to other OS's, no thumbnails, pdf reader can't be set to exactly how I like it, and made to remember it, etc. - every DE has its own niggles. The fact that every DE has its own set of apps - if using GNOME it comes with its own pdf reader, god forbid you use a third-party one, creates a strange culty feeling among app devs. Also, closed source, monetized apps are reviled, even if they solve a problem better than anything open source.
- Development experience: Ironically terrible. Binary compatibility is nonexistent, compiling stuff generally involves apt-geting (or equivalent) packages and hoping you have the right versions in the repos. Some of the stuff in the repos doesn't even work (insta-crashes), due to being built wrong.
4k + 1080 monitor on nvidia gpu is very difficult to use (wayland doesn’t support nvidia until very recently, I’m not even sure if it is merged yet). X doesn’t support per monitor dpi, and fractional scaling per monitor is buggy on most distros.
Ubuntu keeps forgetting the sound devices output I set, and I have to config it every single time the machine comes back from sleep (I’m using sound via hdmi on my monitor, I’m guessing it has something to do with the monitor sleeping in different way).
And the usual, sleep/ suspend doesn’t work. There are 50% chance of my 4k monitor doesn’t come back up after sleeping, and I have to unplug and replug it in for it to work.
Last time I tried updating Ubuntu on my parents' PC, it completely fell over because it tried to throw up a dialog on a console in the middle of the update, even though I was doing a GUI update. When I killed that (uninteractible, permanently froze the update) process, the system autorebooted in a desktopless state. Now, I knew to use `dpkg --reconfigure` from a root shell to fix this, but a layman would have been stumped and had to reinstall. 2021 at least was not the year of the Linux desktop in our household.
(Let alone the dozen of small KDE issues we've had over the years. It's really easy to get that desktop in an uninteractible state if you click the wrong things.)
Cognitive overload. Thousands of distros with tens of desktop environments using different toolkits. Each desktop environment has its own suite of software. So instead of having a solid set of great working apps there are tons of poorly made apps.
If you need to use Visual Studio, Photoshop, Lightroom, 3d max, Autocad, Premiere Pro, Ableton Live, Mathcad etc., you are out of luck.
I wouldn't say I've had zero issues or that everything just works, but things tend to fail less often or in less inscrutable ways than Windows or MacOS.
I have concluded that these are the same kind of people who say that they completely disable javascript in the web browser and are better off for it. A decade and a half ago, they'd tell you that they browsed with Lynx and were able to do everything without issue. It's self-delusional autistic commitment to a bad take.
I'm sure if you pressed on them on the specifics of various things, they'd explain their convoluted process of setting up various bits of hardware, that they only buy peripherals known to be compatible, their herculean efforts in making essential proprietary software work (Zoom, Teams, etc.), how they really don't need Microsoft Office (hope you never have to exchange documents with them), that they don't care for the fingerprint reader anyway, that they disabled sleep mode, etc.
Most newer fingerprint reader models work well on Linux. I have a Mac and a Windows laptop for the few times something doesn't work on Linux. which is vanishingly rare these days.
> "I don't have a variable refresh monitor, I don't have an HDMI surround sound setup, I don't own any game pads, the only game I play is Doom 1 from 1993."
It really depends on what your GPU manufacturer is. You can't blame Linux for the shit show that nvidia releases as drivers nowadays. Game pads works fine. You are being disingenuous.
Issues on Linux exists. But, ironically, in 2022, simple things like sound, bluetooth, or even memory management works better on Linux than on my Windows laptop where I'm never sure my headset will be detected when I plug in on a daily basis.
I play the latest games on my high-end GPU I sold a kidney for, watch 4K movies, use a Sony DS4 gamepad via Bluetooth, with two 4K monitors at 200% scaling and an external USB audio interface with standalone microphone and automated compression, equalization and noise cancellation setup.
Not the parent comment but I'm getting random freezes on two different machines with different guts; sometimes system resumes and sometimes it requires a hard reset. Doesn't matter if its Manjaro or Linux Mint or Fedora, or which kernel I'm using.
My GPU is no longer supported and I couldn't revert to last working Nvidia drivers in Manjaro because things were changed. Not sure how the open source version is capable of rendering 3D or compatible with Lutris/Wine.
It's not the "barely works" in my case but there are issues around that are giving me a feeling I'm using Windows 98 and ME again.
I can see 3 possible things there
1) Nvidia being Nvidia
If both PCs have Nvidia...
Back when I had Nvidia, I had exactly same problem. Random freezes, no matter which distro/kernel, sometimes needed reset.
2) RAM issue
As much as its unlikely on both machines, testing RAM doesn't hurt
3) Hard drive degradation
Similar results as in 1), but buying new disk solved the issue.
One machines has mentioned Nvidia GPU, the second is ATI, RAM is also different on both machines and tested already. The issue occurs on both SSDs and HDDs.
Last time I tried Ubuntu it exclaimed I'm not "the owner" of my external hard drive and wouldn't let me access my files. Very fundamental basics completely broken somehow.
I have been ArchLinux desktop and laptop daily user for 10+ years. I used Gentoo for a year before and still use Gentoo on the server until today.
Yes, occassionally there is a problem. HW incompatinility (new laptops), missing drivers (rarely as I am explicitly trying to buy well-supported HW), won't boot after a bad update (messed up ramdisk or config file) but easily fixable. You have to get used to couple of annoyances. But KDE DE is awesome, KDE Connect for Android too and lots of software works perfectly and let me do jobs I daily do. I have zero need to switch to Mac or Windows (used both before as well) and I enjoy having more control over my computing, updates, configuration. I can pick almost any HW I want on the desktop. I am not limited by a single range of badly-built, heavy and easy to dent macbooks, etc.
But people are different with different needs. It is not for everyone. Though I am really a happy linux user and do not plan to change that and I don't care about any M1 marketing bullshit, truetone or windows defender, cortana or whatever. Those may be nice-to-have, provide couple of fancy slight conviniences but in the end the actual hard work is done by all your skills, not the machine or OS.
I run Linux mint as my daily machine. It just works? I have yet to find a substantive issue with it (other than video gaming, but that doesn't really count for most people's use).
I've been running Linux ever since Windows 11 was announced, even though I was relatively happy with W10 + WSL. I had tried it quite a few times over the years but had never stuck with it until now, because it all just works... All my games have worked mostly flawlessly. I'm a developer, so all my tools were already available. I'm in love with KDE's design and customizability and relatively happy with its performance. The AUR is a godsend.
I actually have to use office quite a bit and settled on freeoffice (which is freeware and not open source). It works perfectly for my needs. The Teams client is crap but I've always dodged it.
Evolution suits my needs (O365 connectivity + a host of other personal email accounts). We still need a better Linux email client, I'm seriously considering it making it my lifetime hobby project (I'm imagining a server + client implementation to make it easier to decouple the UI as I'd really like both a TUI and GUI).
The only thing for which I spin up a VM every now and then is for graphics editing (I use the affinity suite which is amazing for its price but just doesn't work with Wine).
Really the only people who can't use reliably use Linux are those who use proprietary apps that don't work on Wine (which there aren't that many) and designers. If you're a power user I'd definitely recommend you give a spin. You might like what you find.
Well, around 2% of PC users use Linux. It might be a small percentage but in absolute terms it's still a big number of users. And about 25% of developers use Linux.
And about 90% of phone users use Android, which is (distantly) based on Linux. That's a lot of users!
I find it hilarious that people even entertain the idea that the only roadblock for MacOS is that it only works on Apple hardware. Gamers would NOT want an OS run by those psychopaths. MacOS is junk.
And Valve/Steamdeck is really just creating even more Windows dependence. Because of Proton everyone just assumes you don't need to make cross platform games anymore, so game devs are just happy making Windows only games.
Linux still barely works in 2022 (and if one distro will become really popular, with a big investment of money like Ubuntu did once, they will ad ads, like Ubuntu added Amazon), and MacOS works just on Apple HW (and has ads for Apple services baked-in too, just less obnoxious).
You can use ChromeOS! Which is literally ad tech.
Pick your poison.