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?

  • @[email protected]
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    91 year ago

    I use Linux, MacOS and Windows more or less parallel. Each has its quirks and benefits, but I would say Windows is the worst. MacOS looks very clean at forst glance, but has some weird things that appear randomly and seem to get worse with every update. On Linux it depends a lot on how you set up your system, my Fedora with mostly flatpaks works really well, but there are UI inconsistencies all over the place and maybe you need to look for a workaroubd from time to time.

    • @octalfudge
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      21 year ago

      Same! I use all 3, and Mac is my primary platform, I have a more powerful x86-based Fedora computer I use for gaming, and as a Visual Studio Code remote SSH machine and I have to sometimes boot into Windows for incompatible software/games.

      Agree that Windows is the worst, and that Apple seems to be having macOS die by a thousand cuts (experienced many bugs, but they do tend to be fixed quickly with or without me reporting them, bigger issue is them removing options that were available via plists).

      Fedora, however, seems to have a bright future, but there are still too many bugs/inconsistencies for me to use it on a daily basis.

    • @[email protected]
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      21 year ago

      +1 all my servers run Linux or FreeBSD, I use macOS as desktop (most of the stuff is neat and out of the box and it uses less resources) and I use Windows while working with my customers and some of their servers. I would definitely not choose Linux for desktop (I tried and gave up), but it is great for the servers.