My main workstation is a Lenovo Thinkpad with dual 1440p external monitors, and haven't run into issues losing heads, however, I wrote my own auto-detect and screen layout wrapper for xrandr so that it would consistently do what I wanted. Basically, my window manager makes calls like: `xrandr --output DP-2-1 --left-of eDP-1 --auto --primary --output DP-2-2 --left-of DP-2-1 --auto --output eDP-1 --auto` when I connect to my docking station and `xrandr --output eDP-1 --auto --primary --output DP-2-1 --off --output DP-2-2 --off --output HDMI-2 --off --output HDMI-1 --off` when I disconnect. MacOS's screen arrangement consistency was pretty great, though - on par with the consistency of my own script.
I think the improvement of moving from MacOS to Linux for me has been that I don't have to try to figure out how the OS "magic" works to make it do what I want, because there is no magic, it's just scripts I've written myself and I understand them because I wrote them.
For me, there came a point when making Free nixen do what I want became easier than making macOS not do what I didn't want. Returning to Linux/*BSD from my decade long sabbatical to macOS, I've been delighted by the things that have changed, but even more delighted by some of the things that haven't.
Did you ever try using the built-in Terminal.app? I've never had any speed issues with it.
I also spent my high school years working on a roadster in the garage with my father, and once I had money I thought I'd like to do that again, but it turns out that knee room, heated seats, airbags, side impact safety, a DSG and not having to fuck around with my car all goddamned weekend trumped my need to tinker, and so it sat in the garage.
Instead I tinker with other things, like frameworks, databases, video games, and plants. And my computer Just Works.
And yes, that's exactly what I meant by "qualitative experience." I was actively calling out that the opinion voiced in my comment was, like, my opinion man.
People are entitled to their preferences, and you clearly have yours neither is "silly" but we can still politely disagree.
If you wanted to move to macOS/Windows you couldn't, because you wouldn't bear their inferiority when it comes to hacker things, so aren't you also captive?
But, if I wanted to buy the latest Adobe Creative Suite and run it in Linux, I have no real recourse.
So I guess in that sense, my statement could be made more precisely as: Obligate users of such commercial software suites as Adobe Creative Suite are captive users of either Windows or macOS.
But they don't, for the same reason you stay on Linux. The fact that you can run bash on Windows is not such a huge difference if for other reasons you don't.
They don't want an inferior experience, even if they could tolerate it if strictly necessary.
Perhaps—and I've certainly met professionals that claim to use those tools. However, I've met others who claim (rightly or wrongly) that Gimp and Audacity are not perfect substitutes for other commercial packages.
Have you tried elementary OS? If you are looking for a comparable polished experience I think you will be surprised (in a good way).
Casting your own preferences as implicitly "hacker" and pulling out some "qualitative experience" (which among nerds is best read as "subjective preferences") stuff is pretty silly.