This used to be the difference.
But between Preview.app bugs (crashes all the time when previewing beamer slides, slow rendering, jumping through slides in non-linear order), sticky or stuck keys on the butterfly keyboard, ancient UNIX userland (yes, you can install newer versions with Homebrew or Nix), weird bugs when running XQuartz, etc. The gap is narrowing pretty quickly.
Also, I have been using NixOS on my Linux workstation at home. I like it so much that I want fully declarative system configurations everywhere ;).
I would like to elaborate, but I think it is pretty futile to do so online, which is pretty telling in itself. One example that should challenge people view would be the ssh default story that is on the front page right now. Everything in Linux is pretty much like that if you dig deep enough. And while its competitors aren't perfect either, they are just far more consistent. Because that is a major selling point for them.
I don't see how you could even compare enterprise linux to home linux. Enterprise linux not only has a different userland (i.e. it's designed for LTS setups -- stability, not usability), but almost all enterprise places run 20 versions behind anyway. Not only that, but you're facing peculiarities of your setup that no sane home user is going to face in a billion years. The entire experience is different.
Go pick up Linux Mint's Cinnamon distribution, then see if you have the same complaints.
Quality isn't an absolute measure. If you were to plot the security holes in the Linux kernel on a timeline you will most likely find that there is at least one the majority of the time. Security is essentially a percentage of how hard something is to discover and exploit. And you don't know what that percentage is until someone go looking.
The same is essentially true for the rest of the the operating system. Your average user can be perfectly happy e.g. clicking on random links and executing random code without apparent consequences. They will rave about Linux until reality catches up with them. Whether that is software conflicts, (lack of) backups, security or just maintenance in general. Usually at that point they get disillusioned and switch to something else. That is why we have the perpetual "year of the Linux desktop". Because people leave at a similar rate that they join.
By working in enterprise Linux I, involuntarily, get to see all this at different points in time. Not just from my own perspective as someone who has largely accepted these problems, or from the perspective of a user that is excited about Linux until they aren't. It is from this perspective, and because I know how hard it can be to do things that are outside of the default, that I say that the other big operating systems are better overall.
Lack of either a near complete monopoly or a track record with dedicated, quality hardware. Throw in some questionable leadership decisions.
I don't think there's anything inherent to Linux that's unable to level up on the desktop, but the people best placed to shake things up are probably manufacturers who'd rather take a cut of a Windows license.
Windows has certainly been consistent in not offering an SSH client at all for a very long time.
On MacOS there is one way to do everything. Want to make a desktop GUI app? XCode has a project template for you. If you deviate from the APIs it suggests, you’ll get nothing but pain. On Linux, there is no default window API. You have to choose between Qt and GTK and <a billion other things>. That leads to fragmentation at the windowing system level. And just think, that fragmentation happens at all the other levels too.
Ubuntu has removed some of the fragmentation, since it’s so popular that you can just target Ubuntu and let your application fail on different configurations (or worse than failure - technically work, but require tons of tweaking in config files. Ugh).
However, Ubuntu has reached the point, IMO, where to provide better UX, they would need to start making Ubuntu actually incompatible with other Linux distros, or push the Linux community to adopt new standards that are better for desktop linux. A perfect example is Wayland: supposedly Wayland is a lot better than X11 for desktop purposes. It’s just too bad that Ubuntu can’t just break compat and blaze their own path here, or we would probably have a great Linux UX story already.
What you should do is the opposite. They should start with the toolkit, the network infrastructure, the management utilities or something else that would be the use-case. Once you have e.g. a solid toolkit that is attractive to developers and people start making good applications the rest is a matter of time. There is of course a reason why people don't do this, which is because it is hard. But hard is good, it is complexity that will kill you.
This is of course essentially why Android and Chrome OS is successful in their own right.
I'm a Java dev mostly, so perhaps I'm insulated from such things by the JVM. So long as I can run Chrom[e|ium], Eclipse, Docker and a terminal with a bash shell I'm pretty content. Even with that small list I've got issues with keyboard input lagging in Chrome on MacOS and Docker performance is poor relative to Linux. iTerm is a thing of beauty though.
I've got a box running Wayland on Arch. Can't say I've noticed any differences as a user from X11, I'll have to look them up and see what I'd missed.
That has changed. One of the Windows10 previews offers a client and server (Ed25519 only). I`ve been experimenting with it on WSL and it seems functional... time will tell whether or not it is secure.
Back to the point of the original discussion: having worked using OSX/MacOS, Windows10 and GNU/Linux in various combinations for the last couple of decades I honestly prefer the desktop experience of GNU/Linux. As long as you avoid the dodgy hardware (Nvidia cards, an ever decreasing number of wireless chips) then everything is painless.
At this point really the only thing distinguishing these operating systems as general desktops (as opposed to gaming systems) is whether or not they are Free Software or not. That is something that is becoming more and more important to me in order to avoid being compromised by criminals (governmental or not).
On Mac OS, I'm also pretty happy with the stock interface, but I spend quite a bit more time downloading and installing dev tools. Then I end up running out of memory because Docker for Mac and Minikube both end up running Linux virtual machines in the background.
With a Mac I set it up as much as I can in little more than an hour, with no hope to achieve what I really want. Under Linux (and to a lesser extent Windows) it's a multi day project but I can get whatever I want.
How much of that is due to being accostumed to using Mac's defaults? I nean, Debian's default setup is pretty much my ideal setup, but that's because throughout the years I've got accostumed to it, not because Debian's UI guidelines are awesome.
I have had Mac users use my laptop for a little while and love the usability. Everything simply works. I use Skype Web and Zoom to do videoconferencing ...and obviously all the Slack-like tools work great.
And you have the choice to buy spectacular developer focused hardware like XPS or ThinkPad laptops.
The usual suspects: fonts, video drivers, sounds drivers, various USB devices supports, sleep/wake issues.
And lack of basic apps, like a good multitabbed SSH/RDP terminal.
Fedora is spectacular and has been spectacular for many years now. The driver support is brilliant. It was one of the first distros to have absolutely seamless integration with RAID mode NVME (which was something the XPS set it to).
I will be very surprised if you have to "tweak" your laptop. Everything that you have in OSX is already there - including nightmode, etc... the works.
And here's the cool part - customizing Fedora is a browser extension away! http://extensions.gnome.org/
It usually breaks for users, who do not respect package manager and what it does, break their installation with misc convenience scripts and tweaks run as root, and then wonder, what went wrong.
This comes up somewhat regularly, and probably always will - it’s the nature of the beast.
I’ve found myself very happy using a Mac as my main desktop. It’s not perfect either, but good enough.
It's tempting to compare Linux with MacOS, but also (in my opinion) unfair. Apple appears to be making conscious decisions about what goes in their machines and not simply picking the cheapest components. I think Windows is closer to a fair comparison (they have to try and support everything out there) I have had no more hassle under Linux than I've had with Windows.
EDIT: Rather than downvoting, perhaps those who disagree with me could tell me why other companies aren't capable of "making conscious decisions about what goes in their machines"?
Apple is, after all, far from the only Unix vendor to do so. Whether it's HP-UX or Solaris, it's fairly common for Unix vendors to tightly couple their software to supported hardware. What is preventing Red Hat from offering a fully Red Hat compatible laptop that works near-perfectly out of the box?
If you do your purchase outside this list and something doesn't work, it was your decision and now your problem. It is not Redhat's or Canonical problem. They are not in hardware business, their partners are, and the information which models were tested and what was the result is publicly available.
Everyone has their own stories and use cases, why are people so hell-bent on convincing their use case and solution is The One True Way and-I-can't-understand-why-you-re-using-anything-else?
So yes it's silly, but it's fairly strongly motivated silliness.
Skype and Whatsapp video are the only two ones that work reasonably well in India with shaky mobile bandwidth. I mentioned Zoom as well.
But here's the thing - have you used Skype Web ? There's no installation needed.
Regarding the rest of the world, WhatsApp definitely comes to mind. For chat, video, and audio.
I'm using an XPS 15. A recent purchase - I'm an OS X user by choice, but Apple currently makes no laptop hardware I'm interested in buying.
Here's the relevant archwiki page: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Dell_XPS_15_9560
It would take me days to work through that horror. I'd still end up with an only partially-working machine. Yes, it's the fault of Dell & chipset manufacturers for not supporting Linux, but if I'm going to spend effort apportioning blame for the world's ills, I'll do that on things that matter more (torture, ecosystem collapse, social isolation).
In practical terms, I can spend time setting up & configuring Linux, or I can use Windows today and plant some vegetables, or walk up a hill, read a new volume of history or philosophy, talk to a friend. Windows is kind of nasty, but all the applications I need are available for it, it can launch them, it can give me access to files, and I don't spend any time messing with it. Good enough for me.
By "user-oriented", do you mean kitsunesoba-oriented? Or do you think all users have the same preferences?
> With a Mac I can have it set up to my liking and be working in little more than an hour.
macOS doesn't even include tiling window management out of the box. Apple clearly optimizes macOS for the average user. If you're an average user, that's cool. But for people with sophisticated workflows who aren't average users, the out-of-the-box experience provided by macOS (and Windows, GNOME, etc.) may be grossly inadequate.
In general, the existence of a bias is insufficient proof that you should reverse your conclusion.
Sure it’s a convenience, but so is basically everything we do to alter a computer after unboxing it.
I agreed it's nice - but essential enough to merit the time sink of running linux? Not for me.
Maybe I’m just a Luddite that doesn’t know any better, but I’ve been quite happy without tiling windows for many years. Then again, I spend most of my time in a terminal in a tmux session. Maybe that counts.
A common thread here is - your use case is not my use case. Many people are assuming that their workflow is the ‘one true way’. That not a healthy way to have a discussion.
I was more like pointing out that macOS does allow for the following in some way out of the box:
> Every OS should let you line up two windows side-by-side out of the box
Personally I feel like I’m using a toy when I have to use a non-tiling window manager. It may not be for everyone, but the display server or desktop environment should at least provide an interface to allow someone else to implement it.
A one time xmonad + arch setup that I did a couple of years ago has lasted me across 3 machines with only minor tweaking.
I try to make few customizations to the default macOS install, and just roll with the changes coming from Apple. I do have some dotfiles, containing mostly just SSH and ViM configs. But I've already had to fight ViM several times because of it.
With a Mac I can have it set up to my liking and be working in little more than an hour. Under Linux (and to a lesser extent Windows) it’s a multi day project.