Surprising to myself, I have been a Linux user for over 12 years…

Through the many years I have bounced between and tried Ubuntu, Debian, Fedora, openSUSE, Arch, Parrot OS, Linux Mint, Manjaro. I have tried Gnome, Cinnamon, XFCE, KDE, Mate, Deepin. And more. I have 3 computers, all using a Linux distro right now.

I love the idea of Linux - free, free as in freedom, free of telemetry. And well, I thought I would never entertain the idea of switching, here I am today, strongly considering Mac OS.

Lately, I have become extremely frustrated and tired of dealing with little bugs, crashes, versions, and dependencies. Not to mention notable UI issues. It is starting to hamper my productivity when working.

Right now I am using Ubuntu and I cannot drag and drop into VS Code from Nautilus, I can’t drag and drop from the default archive manager, I am experiencing screen tearing issues, one piece of software I use crashes often but not Debian and vice versa, I have to manually reset screen brightness when it dims after timeout, etc. I have experienced issues of similar nature across all distros I have used and I am becoming burnt out.

I think part of the issue is that there is a huge variety of Linux distros, different combinations of kernels, desktop environments, window managers, package managers, file managers, network managers, etc… Not to mention devices. There is too many variables, and too many projects to maintain.

Sorry for the rant, I have seen many similar posts, but I have been using Linux for over 12 years, powering through, ignoring and working around these issues and I am pretty fed up.

While I am conflicted, I am thinking Mac OS looks like a good middle ground.

Any suggestions? What has been the most stable distro and compatible for you?

  • @eyolfEnglish
    3•1 year ago

    I have to say, as several others have said as well, that these days, I don’t recognize your tribulations at all. I can think of three possible reasons:

    • I’m staying faithful to Arch, which is a much more robust system now than in the early 2000s
    • thanks to Arch, I know my system quite well by now
    • I’ve settled on Lenovos, so no Nvidia trouble or any of the other stuff that seems to plague others. I don’t know if the machines I’ve had have been particularly well suited, but at least they have worked without any problems.

    I would have liked to add “I’ve been faithful to DM x” as my fourth point, but that’s not true: I abandoned KDE after 3.5, used Cinnamon for a while, and was happy with it, mostly, but when KDE became good again recently, I’ve switched – and must admit I have occasional problems with bluetooth and dual monitors, but nothing I can’t fix.