Comment by foxandmouse 2 days ago
> Luckily for Apple, Windows 11 is not exactly in a position to attract switchers.
Yes, but Linux is finally in that position, not to mention we're seeing silicon from intel and amd that can compete with the M series on mobile devices.
> Linux isn't in position regarding display/UI. It doesn't handles HiDPI (e.g 4K) screen uniformly, leading to a lot of blurry apps depending on the display abstraction used (Wayland/X11) and compositor (GNOME, KDE, etc, all behave differently).
I have been using a 4K display for years on Linux without issues. The scaling issue with non-native apps is a problem that Windows also struggles with btw.
Windows struggles even with native apps, as soon as you have monitors using different scaling settings.
I'm currently using a laptop (1920x1200, 125%) + external monitor (1920x1080, 100%) at work. The task manager has blurry text when putting in the external monitor. It is so bad.
Yep, I've been running a Windows laptop plugged into a pair of monitors for the past ten years at work, and across multiple laptops and from Windows 10 to 11, this has always been a problem. If I undock to do some work elsewhere and come back, I either have to live with a bunch of stuff now being blurry, or I need to re-launch all the affected programs.
I also have programs that bleed from one monitor onto another when maximized. AutoCAD is one offender that reliably does this -- if it's maximized, several pixels of its window will overlap the edge of the window on the adjacent screen. The bar I set for windows is pretty low, so I'm generally accepting of the jank I encounter in it vs Linux where I know any problem is likely something I can fix. Still, that one feels especially egregious.
It's not, here is a good article about it: https://gist.github.com/valinet/d66733e5f1398856bb21bda466a2...
(And a workaround).
Unfortunately I cannot modify registry at work so I have to live with it.
When I still used windows (until windows 10) I always had to download some DPI fixer program to fix blurriness in many native windows programs.
Text rendering × DPI seems to be one of those difficult problems.
Since MacOS removed subpixel rendering a few years ago, regular resolution displays have terrible looking text in comparison to Windows or Linux.
Gnome in Linux works great for a decade+ with a single high resolution screen, but there are certainly apps that render too small (Steam was one of the problems).
Different scaling factors on several monitors are not perfect though, but I generally dislike how Mac handles that too as I mostly use big screen when docked (32"-43"-55"), or laptop screen when not, and it rearranges my windows with every switch.
I recently mentioned in another comment that Fedora 43 on my Ideapad is the first “just works” experience I’ve had with my multi monitor setup(s) on anything other than Windows 11 (including MacOS where I needed to pay for Better Display to reach the bar of “tolerable”).
Zero fiddling necessary other than picking my ideal scaling percentage on each display for perfect, crisp text with everything sanely sized across all my monitors/TVs.
I gave up on Linux Mint for that exact reason. I wasted so much time trying to fine tune fonts and stuff to emulate real fractional scaling. Whenever I thought I finally found a usable compromise some random app would look terrible on one of the monitors and I’d be back at square one.
Experimental Wayland on Linux Mint just wasn’t usable unfortunately and tbh wasn’t a big fan of Cinnamon in general (I just really hated dealing with snaps on Ubuntu). I did tweak Gnome to add minimize buttons/bottom dock again and with that it’s probably my favorite desktop across any version of Linux/MacOS/Windows I’ve ever used!
I kept reading endorsements of Fedora's level of polish/stability on HN but was kinda nervous having used Debian distros my entire life and I’m really happy I finally took the plunge. Wish I tried it years ago!
> I kept reading endorsements of Fedora's level of polish/stability on HN but was kinda nervous having used Debian distros my entire life and I’m really happy I finally took the plunge. Wish I tried it years ago!
This. I don't know why, but people forget about Fedora when considering distros. They rather fight Arch than try Fedora. So, did I. Maybe its Redhat. Wish I switched earlier, too. (Although I heard this level of polish wasn't always the case.)
I love Fedora so much. Everything just works, but that's not that special compared to Ubuntu. What is special is the fucking sanity throughout the whole system. Debian based distros always have some legacy shit going on. No bloat, no snap, nothing breaking convention and their upgrade model sits in the sweet spot between Ubuntu's 4 year LTS cycle and Arch's rolling release. Pacman can rot in hell, apt is okay, but oh boy, do I love dnf.
Tho, Fedora has some minor quirks, which still make it hard to recommend for total beginners without personal instructions/guidance IMO. Like the need for RPMFusion repos and the bad handling/documentation of that. Not a problem if you know at all what a package manager, PKI and terminal is, but too much otherwise.
Every 4K external display I've connected to every M1- and M2-series Mac running macOS has a known flickering issue with Display Stream Compression that Apple knows about and has been unable or unwilling to fix.
The only reliable fixes are to either disable that DisplayPort feature if your monitor supports it, or to disable GPU Dithering using a paid third-party tool (BetterDisplay). Either that or switch to Asahi, which doesn't have that issue.
The issue is common enough that BENQ has a FAQ page about it, which includes steps like "disable dark mode" and "wait for 2 hours": https://www.benq.com/en-us/knowledge-center/knowledge/how-to...
I have been experiencing this on my 2k monitors as well (Also BENQ). I tried every "fix" under the sun, eventually it stops after enough voodoo (reboots, unplugs) and cursing.
One of the many random issues on the OS with the best UX in the world (lol). Like music sometimes stopping and sometimes switching to speakers when turning off Bluetooth headphones, mouse speed going bananas randomly requiring mouse off and on, terminal app (iterm2) reliably crashing when I dare to change any keybinding, and many other things that never happened in years of working on Linux.
If you're looking for high quality text at 4K, your options are more limited than if you're looking for gaming. This is a good roundup, and the leading Dell is superb:
https://www.rtings.com/monitor/reviews/best/by-usage/busines...
And as noted here on HN a couple days ago, avoid OLED. Coincidentally, the top office monitor per rtings is what that post compared OLED to:
https://nuxx.net/blog/2026/01/09/oled-not-for-me/
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46562583
We use pairs of these Dells per MacBook at our offices and provide them for WR as well. There've been no issues on this Dell or prior models on M1 through M4 (M5 iPad is fine too).
As for DSC, that's been a complaint for a minute… Example HN reader theory on DSC, from Aug 2023:
The best option was the LG UltraFine 24” 4K, which sadly was discontinued years ago.
In my opinion a QHD 23.8” panel is the next best option for developers (any M-series chip handles scaling without issues); I find the common 27” and 32” at 4K a weird spot - slightly too large, slightly too low resolution – and 5k+ options are still rare.
I use two 4k displays with an M1 Pro MBP. They work without any flickering. They’re using HDMI rather than DisplayPort.
I’m also, to get the two external displays without them being mirrored, using a docking station and a display driver from Silicon Motion called macOS InstantView.
This is of course not ideal if you need DP and DSC.
I recently bought a MacStudio with 512GB of RAM and connected it to a LG 5k2k monitor. For some reason there was no way to change the font size (they removed the text size "Larger Text ... More Space" continuum from the Display section of settings) so I ended up with either super small or super large fonts without anything in-between. In the end I had to install some 3rd party software and mix my own scaled resolution with acceptable font size. This has never been a problem on Linux in the past 10 years, all I needed to do at worst when it wasn't done out of the box was to set scale somewhere and that was it.
I bought a MacStudio 2 months ago, on Sequoia you go to "display" and should see the various resolutions. If not, "advanced">"show resolutions as a list">"show all resolutions".
Unfortunately, resolutions offered were weird. Native is 5120x2160 but that wasn't offered and scaled resolutions were weird. I guess macOS didn't read monitor's information properly or something. I wasted a few hours frantically trying to figure out how to connect a $12k computer to a 4-year old monitor which should have been a breeze but for some reason wasn't. The same monitor worked fine on Linux or Windows.
Curious what software; I've used "SwitchResX" in the past and it met all my needs...
BetterDisplay has solved a ton of problems like this for me; when MacOS gets confused about non apple monitors, BetterDisplay knows how to fix things.
it's not removed : you have to hold Option when choosing resolutions, and the panel changes to show myriad options.
i think that's what you're describing, anyway.
i think (no proof, just experimenting on my 5k2k LG) that the various resolutions imply differing scalings. my eyes are really fortunately good so i just run at 5k2k and it's sharp (because i use larger fonts, app by app, so somewhat manually set scalings).
I am a full time KDE/Arch user and since Plasma 6 haven't had any HiDPI issues including monitors with different DPI or X11 apps - of which there are very few nowadays.
Fedora 43 with KDE - have been using 140% scaling with my Dell Ultrasharp 32" 4k monitor - no issues whatsoever. I've noticed that the Dells do a pretty good job with Linux - I have used monitors of various sizes ranging from 27" to 43" and never had any issues on Linux.
> Linux isn't in position regarding display/UI.
I’m glad everyone is dogpiling on this statement cause man people seriously have to stop parroting this years out of date claim at this point. Any big well supported distro using Wayland should be fine, at the very least KDE and GNOME are guaranteed work perfectly with HiDPI.
Daily Fedora KDE user here on 4K HiDPI monitor plus another of a different lower resolution, flawless experience using both together in a setup. Fractional scaling also there working perfectly as well and you choose how you want KDE to scale the apps if you want (forcefully or let the app decide).
Why don't you just set the resolution manually temporarily for the installer to say 1920x1080 at boot time?
“Why don’t you just” is precisely the Linux thing that irks me the most.
Why don’t they just make it obvious? Why doesn’t the installer just figure it out or ask me when it launches?
I agree that that would help, but it was easier to just install another distro.
I use linux at home (with a HiDPI screen) and MacOS for work. The screen works well with both computers. I mostly just use a text editor, a browser, and a terminal though.
Linux has bugs, bug MacOS does too. I feel like for a dev like me, the linux setup is more comfortable.
Same here. I stick to 100% scaling and side step the whole hi dpi issue. I even have a single USB type c cable that connects my laptop to the laptop stand and that laptop stand is what connects to the monitor, keyboard, and mouse.
I know people will say meh but coming from the world of hurt with drivers and windows based soft modems — I was on dial up even as late as 2005! — I think the idea that everything works plug and play is amazing.
Compare with my experience on Windows — maybe I did something wrong, I don't know but the external monitor didn't work over HDMI when I installed windows without s network connection and maybe it was a coincidence but it didn't work until I connected to the Internet.
> Linux isn't in position regarding display/UI. It doesn't handles HiDPI (e.g 4K) screen uniformly, leading to a lot of blurry apps depending on the display abstraction used (Wayland/X11) and compositor (GNOME, KDE, etc, all behave differently).
Meanwhile on MacOS my displays may work. Or they might not work. Or they might work but randomly locked to 30hz. It depends on what order they wake up in or get plugged in.
I suspect the root of the problem is one of them is a very high refresh rate monitor (1440p360hz) and probably related to the display bandwidth limitations that provide a relatively low monitor limit for such a high cost machine.
I have similar issues without the high refresh rate. It's a MacOS bug related to sleep/wake corrupting internal display settings.
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/255860955?sortBy=upvote...
After 344 "me too"s and 180+ replies they silently locked the thread to save themselves from more embarassment.
I finally got fed up with my two external monitors (one of which I rotate to portrait) getting mixed up by MacOS every time my MacBook would go to sleep or I unplugged it, so I bought a thunderbolt docking station which has basically solved all my issues. Worth every penny to be able to swap my personal laptop and work laptop with a single cable.
Macs don't support the USBC / displayport daisy chaining support that my monitors should be able to handle. Very frustrating that this stuff is still so nonstandard. If you have all Apple it all works perfectly, of course.
I've got a Dell dock that worked OK after I borrowed a windows laptop to update the firmware; but it only works with my M3 and M4 macbooks, but not my M2 Mac Mini.
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/255860955?sortBy=upvote...
MacOS isn't in any kind of position regarding displays. 180+ replies and 300+ upvotes by the 0.1% of sufferers who bother to find these threads, log in, and comment of them. Exteemely widespread, going on for years, thread silently locked.
No, it has not. Scaling is better on Linux and Windows.
I'm not going to claim that every compositor/WM handles high DPI well on Linux, however both KDE and Gnome on Wayland are fine in my experience. I actually find that KDE on Wayland handles mixed DPI better than Windows, macOS doesn't really give you enough control to try.
It also doesn't offer a Mac-style desktop environment, which is one of the things keeping me away. KDE/Cinnamon/XFCE lean more Windows-style, GNOME/Pantheon (Elementary) is more like iPadOS/Android in desktop mode. My productivity takes a big hit in Windows-style environments and I just don't enjoy using them.
I hope to put my money where my mouth is and contribute to one of the tiny handful of nascent Mac-like environment projects out there once some spare time opens up, but until then…
So apparently when Canonical was the gorilla in desktop Linux, they had a push to have apps make their menus accessible via API. KDE supports that protocol. There are KDE widgets that will draw a Mac-style menu bar from it.
That means you can take the standard KDE "panel" and split it in two halves: a dock for the bottom edge, and a menus/wifi settings/clock bar for the top edge.
There are some things I don't know how to work around - like Chrome defaulting to Windows-style close buttons and keybindings, but if the Start menu copy is the thing keeping you off Linux, you can mod it more than you think you can.
I believe menus were available "via API" since an a11y push in GNOME before 2.0 release (atk library and friends).
What was impossible was to stop apps from showing the usual menu bar inside the window.
Obviously, with something so core to the system, plenty of devils in the details.
Yep, I've played with it. Things might've changed but I couldn't get KDE's global menubar to work at all under Wayland, and under X11 a lot of apps don't populate it.
Gnome with a persistent app drawer is relatively Mac-like. With a couple settings tweaks and possibly extensions, it can get pretty close. Even out of the box it feels a lot more mac-like than windows-like to me, but of course everybody is a bit different.
Some of the broad strokes are there, but the details are what matters. Gnome extensions also come with the problem of breaking every other update which quickly becomes irritating.
Yeah quite fair, and also gnome extensions breaking every other update does indeed quickly become irritating. It's hard to believe it's now 2026 and that is still an issue
There are major differences in the design between Windows and Mac desktops, and generally speaking, Linux desktop environments function more like Windows than they do macOS.
The biggest difference is probably that under Windows-style environments, applications/processes and windows are mostly synonymous — each window represents an independent process in the task manager. In a Mac-style environment, applications can host multiple windows each, so for example even if you've got 7 Firefox windows open, there's only one host Firefox process. This is reflected in the UI, with macOS grouping windows by application in several difference places (as opposed to Windows, where that only happens in the taskbar if the user has it enabled).
"Windows style" also comes a number of other patterns, such as a taskbar instead and menubars attached to windows (as opposed to a dock and a single global, system-owned menubar under macOS).
"Mac style" comes with several subtleties that separate it from e.g. GNOME. Progressive disclosure is a big one. Where macOS will keep power user features slightly off to the side where they're accessible but unlikely to confuse non-technical users, GNOME just omits the functionality altogether. It also generally implies a greater level of system-level integration and cross-functionality from apps (including third party), lending to a more cohesive feel.
Windows is more window centered. And macOS is more application centered. But many Windows and Linux applications use 1 process or 1 host process for all windows. This includes Firefox.
GNOME still has some problems with fractional scaling, but KDE works perfectly. I'm using two displays, one with 150% and one with 100%. No blurry apps and absolutely no issues. Have you tried it recently?
Can you independently set desktop wallpapers on the two screens? I know this seems nitpicky but it's literally impossible with Ubuntu/Gnome as far as I know; I have one vertical and one horizontal and have to just go with a solid color background to make that work.
KDE is in better shape than GNOME, but there are still some nits. Nearly all the available third party themes for example are blurry or otherwise render incorrectly with fractional scaling on.
I've been using fractional scaling on Gnome for years (including on the laptop I'm typing this on) and haven't had any issues. I haven't tried it with two displays that are set differently though. Is that a common thing?
I went from Linux (10 years) to Mac (4 years) to Windows (8 months) to back to Mac. (I have not upgraded to Tahoe, and didn't even realize it was so different until recently)
IMO, there's basically no problem Linux has that isn't worse in Windows (at the OS level). Especially once you get into laptops.
My final conclusion was that I hate computers.
I've not had any issues with 4k display. Mac does handle monitors with different DPIs well, but not really a issue for me. Most hardware I use also just works great. Gaming is great now as well.
The only reason I can't completely switch to Linux is because there are no great options for anything non-programming related stuff I love to do ... such as photography, music (guitar amplifier sims).
My dude, It's been more than capable for years. I have an ultrawide OLED monitor (3440x1440@165hz) paired with a 4K@144hz monitor. Both HDR, different capabilities. Both have different DPIs set, 125% for one, 200% for the other. My setup required less configuration than Windows does. Right click -> Display Configuration -> Set Alignment (monitor position) -> Set refresh rate -> Set HDR -> Set DPI -> Apply. Done.
Don't knock it unless you've tried it.
This was CachyOS btw. Windows actually required MORE work because I had to install drivers, connect to the internet during setup, get nagged about using a Microsoft account, etc.
CachyOS was basically boot -> verify partitions are correct -> decide on defaults -> create account/password -> wait for files to copy -> done. Drivers, including the latest NVIDIA drivers, auto installed/working.
Tried 3 months ago with Gnome (PopOS) and a 4k screen at 125% scaling, apps were blurry, especially Brave, which was a big disappointment.
I give Linux a try each time I need to set up a new computer, and each time run into new issues. Last time (2 years ago) the hdmi connection with the screen would drop randomly twice a day. Same for the keyboard, and the wifi card didn't have drivers available. It became quite annoying, reducing my productivity as I had to reboot and pray. I then installed Windows, which solved all of the issues (unfortunately?)
Maybe I'm just unlucky.
PopOS was very behind other distros in adopting new versions of software until recently due to their epic diversion of building a brand new DE, letting the then existing release bitrot. This created all sorts of issues and incompatibilities that had already been solved for one or even two years in other distros.
Things are changing and improving VERY fast in linux land lately, so being behind by that much is gonna pretty much set you up for disappointment, along all the usual reasons why you ideally want to be on the just dull enough part of the bleeding edge for linux desktop, where you are only getting a few small shallow cuts and hopefully no deep cuts...
Anyway, popular acclaim for popos reached it's peak just when those problems started to show up. It used to be better in years prior, but the reputation tends to lag the actual reality, so sentiment at that point was to recommend it even though it wasn't actually a good choice.
Honestly, give Linux another try four or so months from now. You will get to start fresh on a brand new Ubuntu LTS or the usual new Fedora release. Try Gnome or KDE, see which ones sticks the best with you. Just don't try anything else if you want maximum features, commodity and stability.
Yes, you were unlucky :(
If you’re unlucky in the same way I was, it could actually be a GNOME/GTK issue. Some questionable (?) font rendering decisions were made that for me caused all text in GNOME to be blurry. I hated it so much I switched to KDE but soon realized GTK apps had the same issue.
Eventually I found a fix that worked and now I’m happy. So, next time you can try this. In the file:
~/.config/gtk-4.0/settings.ini
You can add:
[Settings]
gtk-hint-font-metrics=1
Here’s the Arch wiki page that explains it:
https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/GTK#Text_in_GTK_4_applicati...
If your settings.ini is in a different spot see:
I recently installed CachyOS and the text was crisp and accurate out of the box on my hidpi screen. So whatever settings and software combinations are required, cachyos got it right, with KDE and wayland at least. All apps I use have been rendered perfectly clear.
Not a problem on my Fedora Silverblue 43 machine with dual 4K 27" screens at 125% scaling. Zero blurry apps, including XWayland ones.
MacOS doesn't handle HiDPI screens that well either. The most common and affordable high res monitors are 27" 4K monitors and those don't mesh well with the way macOS does HiDPI. You either have a perfect 2x but giant 1080p like display or a blurryish non-integer scale that's more usable.
And god forbid you still have low DPI monitor still!
At some point additional resolution is a dimishing return. The human eye has limits.
In my experience it's a little hit and miss with macOS. You need a monitor that is specifically listed as being supported by macOS. If not you get rather strange results. I had a Dell monitor that, under macOS only, would sometimes freak out and flicker if you had to many electron apps open.
In some sense it's reasonable that you need a supported monitor, it's just strange that Linux can support all these monitors, but macOS can't?
Adjust it to what? Making a 4K monitor look like 1440p (or a non-1080p or 4K desktop) ends up with a non-integer scale on macOS AFAIK. They also completely tore out subpixel font rendering for low DPI displays.
lmao not even osx handles this problem properly...
lmfao
You're supposed to use KDE with Xorg if you want things to just work. KDE with Wayland if you're adventurous.
Therefore newcomers should use Kubuntu or the likes of it
KWin/Xorg AFAIK has been on maintanence duty (i.e. fixes mostly come from XWayland) for >5 years now. KDE has expulsed the Xorg codebase of KWin into a seperate repo in preparation of a Wayland only future.
Even if KDE/Xorg is a stable experience is true now, it will not be true in the medium to short term. And a distro like Kubuntu might be 2 years out from merging a "perfect" KDE Plasma experience if it arrived right now.
Tahoe is uniquely bad in so many ways, so I tried the Asahi Fedora Remix with Gnome on my M2 Mac Mini. Aesthetically I was more attracted to Gnome, it feels like what we lost with Tahoe. Tahoe to me feels like a really chopped Android skin or something. I made it a few weeks on the Fedora Remix but ended up having to switch back to Mac over missing webcam drivers and other random hardware issues. Plus there’s little OS things that Mac does that make it really hard to go elsewhere.
iMessage, Apple Pay (w/Touch ID), native Apple Music client, iCloud (if you're invested in the iCloud ecosystem) along with its seamless integrations with photo apps like Photomator (among others), shared music and movie library across my Mac, iPhone, and Apple TV.
There's probably a lot more I'm not thinking of right now. Point is, if you're an iOS, macOS, and iCloud user you give up a lot of quality of life bits going to another platform. There are times I want to go back to Linux, but when I think about the stuff I'm going to loose I talk myself out of it. macOS isn't the greatest, but it's not the worst either and Apple's products and services just tie in very well with each other. I get annoyed by things like the shitty support for non-apple peripherals, needing 3rd party apps to make them work decent, crappy scaling except on the most expensive monitors and no decent font smoothing when running at native resolutions. But... I stick with it because I either like or love the tight integration and added quality of life that comes with it.
Ah, I get it. I don't like integration of this sort, because it quietly screams "lock in", but do I see how it can be very convenient. So I make do with my own, likely inferior, using Syncthing, and Google Photos for browsing. My music is mostly CD rips, Bandcamp, and some YouTube, and I don't do TV, so it's just easier for me than for normal folks. I can listen to my collection anywhere over a Wireguard connection on my laptop or my phone.
It's a different set of trade-offs; less polish, more control.
Syncthing is great. I'm closer to the poster you're responding to -- I tried Asahi Linux and liked it, at least when I ignored the "Mac users will probably like GNOME more" and switched to KDE Plasma (this Mac user, at least, thinks it's way better), but still ended up back on macOS Tahoe despite having a myriad of nits to pick with it. But when I was playing around with it, I set up Syncthing so I would be able to keep working on documents on the Linux laptop, other Macs, and the iPad, and Syncthing worked fast and basically flawlessly, better than either iCloud or Dropbox in my experience. I may eventually set it up as a local sync solution between the Macbook Pro I'm using for everything and a Mac Studio that's become my home server.
For me it's the keyboard and hotkeys.
I use macs at work and Linux at home. There's no uniform way to make a Linux machine accept things like cmd right arrow to jump to the end of the line, etc.
This is the closest attempt, but it has many gaps: https://github.com/rbreaves/kinto
Most of my gripes are probably Gnome specific in this case - When you screenshot something it pins the image temporarily on the screen. If I drag into any open app it avoids saving it to disk. - Pressing CMD W or Q consistently closes any app (works on some gnome apps) - Mac keychain passkeys (I don’t own a usb stick) - Third party window management (through accessibility privileges only) - Apps respecting dark mode settings - The app menu (file, edit, window, etc) being in the same spot every time
Definitely not exhaustive since I only spent a few weeks with it. There were also plenty of things I liked about Gnome more but not enough to tip the scale for me
>ended up having to switch back to Mac over missing webcam drivers and other random hardware issues
This has been my experience every time I try Linux. If I had to guess, tracing down all these little things is just that last mile that is so hard and isn't the fun stuff to do in making an OS, which is why it is always ignored. If Linux ever did it, it would keep me.
My understanding is that the asahi team have been doing incredible work exactly with doing the non-fun bits. They just chose to do it on the hardware of a company that's extremely hostile to this kind of effort.
I have to say that almost everything worked out of the box. The webcam is known to not mesh great with Asahi quite yet. Otherwise:
- Machine failed to wake from suspend almost 50% of the time (with both wired and BT peripherals) - WiFi speed was SIGNIFICANTLY slower. Easily a fraction of what it was on Mac - USB C display was no-op - Magic trackpad velocity is wild across apps - Window management shortcuts varied across apps (seems Gnome changes a lot, frequently) - Machine did not feel quicker, in fact generally felt slower than Tahoe but granted I did not benchmark anything
I would happily try it again when the project is further along
Shortcuts are (probably) never going to be consistent across Linux apps; that's something Mac, and to some degree Windows, developers just historically care about more. I've also never found a better hardware trackpad than Apple's, nor found better OS-level drivers for trackpads than Apple's. (I'm sure somebody out there is ready to tell me their experience is different, but I've used many Linux distributions, many PC laptops with trackpads and at least two different PC desktop trackpads, and many Macs over the past quarter century and at least for me I'm going to stand by that.)
Apple is on the record as being neutral at worst on the matter and at best weakly supportive. I think there was an article when the M1 came out where it was reported that the Asahi Linux folks met with some Apple developers where they were encouraged to explore the system and report bugs, but that Apple was not going to offer any support.
Apple has also done things such as adding a raw image mode to prevent macOS updates from breaking the boot process for third-party operating systems. Which is only useful for 3rd party operating system development.
I think this is true with an arm mac (and would be tricky to fix that, props to the Asahi folks for doing so much) but for a lot of other hardware (recent dell/asus/lenovo, framework, byo desktops) I find Linux complete. I'm sure there is hardware out there that with struggles but I've not had to deal with any issues for a few years now myself.
As a long-term Linux user, and a regular macOS user, I must say that the motion is mutual. Linux has become way better, and macOS, somehow worse. But resizing and moving windows nearly , and switching between windows (not whole apps) has always been problematic in plain macOS, for reasons mysterious to me.
i agree on the software level, but then we have hardware. M cpus, touchpads, battery life. it's hard to justify using PC hardware.
This year will be the year of the linux desktop for real, I swear!
I fell down the Nix hole this weekend, getting my corp Mac and my SteamOS Legion Go sharing a config. My corp device is a 5k iMac Pro that is going to be kicked off of the network when ARM-only Tahoe becomes mandatory later this year.
I work at Google, which issued a Gubuntu workstation by default when I joined. I exchanged it for a Mac, which I've spent a literal lifetime using, because I didn't wanna fall down a Linux tinkering hole trying to make Gubuntu feel like home. Every corp device I've had has been a Mac.
I'm reading this from a coffee shop. On my walk here, I was idly wondering if I should give Glinux (as its now called) a try when I'm forced to replace the iMac. SteamOS is making Linux my default environment in the same way Mac was for decades prior.
Well I guess the iMac Pro isn't on the lucky list then. I know it's losing updates (and therefore support) this year.
Unfortunately, I looked into it, and my other options are an Asus CX54 Chromebook or a Lenovo X1. There simply aren't competitive alternatives to Mac hardware, at least not at modern Google.
In the Hacker News bubble, maybe. In the real world, not even close. The reasons why many a person chooses to use macOS, outside of the "YoU bUy It FoR ThE lOgO" that many hard-core technologists seem to believe, don't exist in any desktop environment.
Sometimes, people think "it can be made to look similar, therefore it's the same" (especially with regard to KDE), and no, just no.
It's a mountain of little things that add up rather than a few killer features.
It's the way drag and drop is a fundamental interaction in text boxes, the proxy icons in title bars, how dragging a file to an open/save panel changes that panel's current folder rather than actually move a file.
It's how applications are just special folders that are treated like files, how they can update themselves independently of each other or any system packages, how you conventionally put them in the /Applications folder so you can put that folder on the Dock to use directly as a launcher.
It's how all text fields consistently support emacs-style keyboard shortcuts, respond appropriately to the system-provided text editing features such as the built-in Edit menu, text substitutions, and writing features.
It's how you can automate most Mac-assed apps; how you can extend the operating system through app-provided and user-created services to every other application that handles text, files, images, PDFs, through the built-in APIs using AppleScript, Automator, and Shortcuts.
It's how the whole program rather than its last window is the fundamental unit of an application such that document-based applications can exist without a window without also polluting some system tray with an unnecessary icon, how that means workflows expect more than one window open.
It's how there's a universal menu that works for every app, not just conforming ones (i.e. KDE's global menu only shows KDE apps' menus; other apps need a plugin or just don't show at all), how the help menu has a search field to look for menu items, how keyboard shortcuts are bound to the menu items are bound arbitrarily within the program's settings window and can thus be assigned globally in System Settings, how this means all of an application's main features are therefore accessible via the menu bar, how that creates consistency in the menus.
Those are just some things off the top of my head but there are plenty of others, some a bit more user facing, some less. Just examples, a non-exhaustive list.
I'm sure those who don't care about these things will dismiss it but if you've been using a Mac since before macOS, before OS X, or even before Mac OS X, these are things you won't drop for Linux just because the design is a bit uglier.
Of course, if none of these things matter, then the swap is easier. It doesn't mean any DE is a drop-in replacement by any means. Many of the things that make some DEs "Mac-like" are skin deep.
Linux doesn't have much in the way of quality apps for people who aren't programmers, server administrators, or gamers.
Most people want to get productive work done with their computer, and OS X has top tier apps for every need possible.
No good e-mail app, no good office apps, no good calendar app, no good invoicing app, no good photo editing app, no good designer app, etc
> people who aren't programmers
> No good e-mail app, no good office apps, no good calendar app, no good invoicing app ...
People who aren't programmers use Gmail, Google Docs, Google Calendar, Stripe Invoicing, etc for those various use-cases.
Firefox and Chrome work just fine on Linux, so Linux has all the apps people actually use these days on computers.
The only people I meet who voluntarily use web apps in their day to day are Linux users who have convinced themselves that it is good enough because there aren't any good native apps on Linux.
And then you of course have corporate, who will not switch from Windows.
Nobody will voluntarily spend all day working within Gmail or Google docs.
You also conveniently cut out photo editing and design in your quote.
Edit: Also I wonder if all you server-admins, programmers and gamers would have switched to Linux if your only option was to do your work or gaming within a laggy and inadequate web-app? But you want other people to suffer that.
> The only people I meet who voluntarily use web apps in their day to day are Linux users who have convinced themselves that it is good enough because there aren't any good native apps on Linux.
Funny, there are whole companies, pretty big ones at that, that run entirely on the G Suite. Regardless of OS.
Yes, exactly. Note my word "voluntarily". When people have the option to decide for themselves which tools to use, very few actually want to work with corporate software like the G Suite, OneDrive, MS Office and such. I'll give an exception for Excel. I'm not a spread sheeter, but I've heard it's best in class.
And OS X has top tier native apps for any use case imaginable. With a very healthy ecosystem of boutique developers and indie developers.
If the idea is moving from Windows to something better, then Mac is usually the answer. Unless you're a server admin, programmer, or gamer. Then Linux is probably great. Everybody wants to have tools that work well for the task.
Linux isn't in position regarding display/UI. It doesn't handles HiDPI (e.g 4K) screen uniformly, leading to a lot of blurry apps depending on the display abstraction used (Wayland/X11) and compositor (GNOME, KDE, etc, all behave differently).
Let's not even talk about the case when you have monitors that have different DPI, something that is handled seamlessly by MacOS, unlike Linux where it feels like a d20 roll depending on your distro.
I expect most desktop MacOS users to have a HiDPI screen in 2026 (it's just...better), so going to Linux may feel like a serious downgrade, or at least a waste of time if you want to get every config "right". I wish it was differently, honestly - the rest of the OS is great, and the diversity between distros is refreshing.