I’m actually having the opposite experience (for the most part). All the little papercuts of yesteryear are almost completely gone, and it’s only looking better on the horizon. Of course your mileage may vary depending on use case and hardware…

Some things of the top of my head:

• Flatpak replacing 3rd party PPAs. Brand new software without dependency hell or breaking system packages? Yes please
• Snaps and AppImages too
• XDG Portals standards, making snaps and flatpaks play nice with confinement
• Audio and Bluetooth? It “just works” now
• Pipewire
• Even gaming works really well now, with Proton, DXVK etc
• AMD and Intel drivers baked in to the kernel
• Wayland finally being production ready for many use-cases, and being adopted as the default, fixing so many of the ancient X11 issues (screen tearing, multiple displays with different scaling, refresh rate, fractional scaling) ( cries in Nvidia )
• Nvidia finally changing their mind so Wayland on Nvidia can be a thing (I can’t wait 😊)
• KDE Connect / gsConnect phone integration
• Screensharing on Wayland even on legacy X11 apps becoming a thing through the new screensharing Portal

The only problem I’ve had recently is Ubuntu’s forced snapification, and snap being very rough around the edges for Desktop apps (ahem drag’drop)

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.

Yup Im like you, been using Linux since I was a kid basically. Probably for 20 years now I guess.

For me, its just screen sharing that is a major annoyance. This is something that is so annoying when it doesnt work, and quite embarrassing as well.

I have had periods when my Linux machine has been the most stable in the team. Mac users had constant problems with bluetooth issues and other bugs.

Currenly im the one having the most issues though, and my collegues with macs dont have any major issues.

So yep, its frustrating. But i really love linux and when I have used mac, I stopped being interested in open source and technology. I dont want to become that guy who just waits for the next Apple conference for exciting news. I enjoy new Gnome and KDE releases and reading about Linux features very, very much.

But yes, its not without its annoyances to run Linux.

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,

anything from Snap or Flatpak in there?

If you can afford it, or even give Mac a test run, it might be worth it for your mental health. Health trumps everything and if your are honestly burnt out and you feel like it could be linked to your operating system, it is worth trying a change.

I’ve been a Ubuntu user for 12 years. Got bored. Turned my hp laptop into a Hackintosh. Got hooked on macOS and all the convenience the Apple ecosystem has to offer (copy on iPhone, paste on macOS; AirPods automatically switching to whatever device started to play audio; drag&drop works everywhere in exactly the way you’d expect; etc. etc.) Also with brew.sh you can install some commandline tools and use the Terminal almost the same as with Linux. Python and bash scripts work, there’s FUSE available, etc.

And the best: it all “just works”. There’s the odd issue after a major macOS update, but nothing critical.

Always choose what’s right for your work. You can still keep your Linux distro for the less relevant tasks and skip to macOS for the main productivity job. It’s not a matter of religion

macOS is still Unix, so you’ll find yourself somewhat at home in the terminal.

Honestly, if you’re distro hopping a lot, find one that supports your hardware well out of the box with a desktop environment that suits you and works and stick with it. Futzing around with everything can definitely make it more frustrating.

I’ll echo others’ comments and say that operating systems are tools. Find the one that works for the job. If I’m doing audio production, macOS wins for me. If I’m gaming, I have a Windows install. If I’m doing anything else, Linux is my preferred environment. Don’t overthink it, go with what works for what you need!

MacOS is a good middleground and everything blends it smoothly.

But tbh Ubuntu has gone south lately and GNOME has always had troubles with apps interoperability.

I find it easier to use Plasma because I can actually drag and drop to another app. But it’s not perfect either.

Anyways, be it MacOS, Linux or windows the choice is yours. You should switch to something that feels good to you. Plus, on macOS you still have a decent terminal, zsh, etc.

Be free.

Do it.

I currently use all 3 (M1 MacBook Air for a laptop while I’m at work, and Ubuntu 23.04/Win10 dual boot desktop, and an old Dell Latitude core2duo running AntiX for just sorta messing around with)

All 3 of the systems have their ups and downs. I just recently tarted using Linux again after trying it off and on for several years. This time seems like it’s properly sticking for me though.

I also like to do audio production, and no matter how much people like to yell about how you can do music production on Linux, it’s a right pain in the ass to deal with Jack and finding a DAW that doesn’t have that classic FOSS learning curve.

So, I use Windows for music production because FL Studio works great, ASIO is surprisingly just fine and it supports all the plugins I use.

I like MacOS on laptops because of the fantastic touch pad, pretty insane battery life, good screens and good speakers. Not to mention that the Apple Silicon has been WAAY more than powerful enough for anything I throw at it.

I use Ubuntu as just a basic daily driver. Discord, Telegram, Firefox, a file browser. I don’t really need to do much more than that on a daily basis. I enjoy that Linux provides me the ability to reduce big companies spying on me, but otherwise… It’s fine. Gaming through steam proton is fine, chatting with friends is fine. It all just feels very middle of the road. I do appreciate the fast boot times I get, and the immediately usable desktop. The styling of Gnome 44 is also nice, but I just love “dock + top bar” setups personally.

As someone who uses all three, if I was forced to use any one of them for the rest of my life… It’d probably be MacOS. You get the flexibility of an underlying unix system, and support for pretty much everything Windows has these days.

Mac OS is honestly pretty good, it’s just that Apple enforces such a walled garden with their products and when you hit that wall you really hit that wall.

And while Windows works great 99% of the time, that other 1% is such a pain to debug that it’s hardly worth it to me.

You should really try a distro that’s actually up to date instead of ubuntu or debian, things are changing rapidly because of wayland, and you might not have a good experience on stable distros until the big transition is done.

This year it will be 20 years since I switched to Linux. I also have tried many different distros and finally landed with Arch/Manjaro. From what I’ve seen, to me, Mac OS seems as “locked in plastic” as Windows and Ubuntu. Last time I checked, running Linux on a newer Macintosh is a hard route with a lot of hoops to jump.

But in the end this is just a tool. There is no point in using screwdriver if hammer works better for your use-case.

I understand you. I reckon distro hopping burns people out in itself. I personally recommend using EndeavourOS if you’re minimum tech savy and ZorinOS if not. OpenSUSE is not a bad option if you worry about dependencies because it installs all of them and their relatives and the relatives’ relatives… XFCE is by far the best DE imo. Gnome and KDE are a recipe for burnout. In spite of the amount of users they have the most issues. XFCE just works and you can get a skin to make it look more mac like.

Generally I’d recommend avoiding Ubuntu and its forks (so ZorinOS) too if you’re somewhat tech savy. Avoid Fedora if you’re short tempered. It has a big community but things tend not to work OOTB hence why the need for the community. I find EndeavourOS by far the best. Rolling so no reinstalls. I just yay --noconfirm to update.

I also recommend to install Steam as a flatpak so you don’t deal with 32bit libs and flatpak handles them for you to limit issues. My only issue rn is my PC is so ancient the last released bios update was in 2015. 😅

Much love to all my fellow tuxes. 🥰

I felt the same after using Arch for 2 years. I switched to Fedora now and It’s pretty stable. Drag and drop with VSCode is generally broken, not an issue with your system

I’ve been using various Linux distros since Ubuntu 8.10 came out, when I was back in high school.

Ever since I got my iPad mini though, my computer usage has honestly kind of dropped off. I have a ThinkPad X13s, and I’m waiting on it to get better Linux support (since is has a Snapdragon ARM processor). Until then, it’s currently running Windows 11, and it’s fine. Not the greatest thing in the world, but it works for the things I need it to do, and that’s what’s important to me as I get older.

Once it gets better Linux kernel support, I may install a Linux distro, but at the end of the day 90% of what I do on my personal machines is just browsing the web and content consumption. I’m a Windows SysAdmin at work and tinker plenty. When I make it home, I end up just chilling and reading or watching something interesting.