I swear, every problem I've Googled, then subsequently ended up on SO or a github issues thread, someone has suggested "raise the open file count limit"; its like the the default "try this and then come back" answer.

So much this. I used windows for a lot longer than i've used linux. Maybe 10 years using linux exclusively now and 15 years or so with windows before that.

Even now when I fix problems on windows I feel like a wizard tinkering with vaguely mysterious arcane things i'm only mostly sure of the purpose behind.

When I fix things on linux I feel like a mechanic working with a detailed manual and diagram of my system isolating known things and fixing that one a few things I know for sure could be the problem.

For me though, it was when windows corrupted the master boot record on my hard drive. I ended up running linux partitioned across 4 16GB USB sticks I had lying around my house until I bought a new hard drive(I tried for a while to fix my hard drive, nothing I did worked. I'm not actually too sure what was wrong with it in the end.). The fact that not only could I do that, but it was easy and I could see and access everything on my hard drive still. It also ran faster than my windows install had. It was a revelation.

Ever since then i've kind of pictured windows as a massive parasite feeding off your computer, controlling it from within, while you're kinda there from the outside.

This is definitely true, and even Apple support can't really help you. It seems like they're only trained to troubleshoot the most basic stuff, and won't even do that if you have any "third party software" installed that they can blame.

However, if you try really hard and are lucky, you can sometimes downgrade. I recently had an awful freezing issue with a 2018 MBP that shipped with Sierra and persisted past a logic board replacement. I was eventually able to solve the issue by downgrading to High Sierra, but wasted a huge amount of time blindly troubleshooting and trying to figure out a downgrade procedure that worked.

Apple really needs to invest more in rigorous QA if it wants to continue down the path it's seems to want to follow.

Say what you will about Microsoft--the MSDN forums and technical articles have some meat on the bone. People who actually understand, and are paid to understand at a deep level, DCOM, the registry, or whatever, they are out there. You've got the MVP program, super built-out partner channels, etc.

With Apple, my distinct impression is that there do exist people who understand MacOS deeply, but they have zero interest in participating in the support communities, due to the way those communities appear to be built and (not) prioritized by Apple Inc. If there's anything even a little bit like the MS partner network, well, I'll be... really surprised. So all you get is duffers and superstitious folk, and the feedback loop intensifies the problem.

Problems with your mouse not working? No doubt somebody will suggest adding a random PPA, purging your kernel, and installing one from two years ago.

Your webserver can't write to htdocs/temp? No problem "chmod -R 777" will fix that.

It doesn't help that if you post any kind of technical instruction or information to the Apple site that doesn't involve a "Go to system preferences and uncheck this box", Apple will delete under the reason "this coiuld amage another users Mac"

Those usually have useful information, even if that information is simply that it's a hardware issue that cannot be resolved by you.

It's a simple checkbox if that checkbox exists. But that's true on Linux as well.

If it doesn't exist, with macOS at best there is an obscure plist file you can edit and at worst it's hard-coded in some binary you don't have the source for. With Windows it will almost always have some registry setting controlling it, but you can't plausibly claim that to be the user-friendly option.

Moreover, "install a different desktop environment" sounds like a big deal until you realize that is just a checkbox in the package manager.

Now, random, "Why did my mac start/stop doing x", I'll give you that. Especially on a site like Macrumors forums or Apple's useless support site.

Nice April fools.

To be fair it could be due to the general buggy-ness of the TB16 Thunderbolt dock.

There are notable fit and finish issues with other distros, but from what I've seen the Debian package maintainers consistently make decisions to protect the package archive from breakage, whether that be holding back a FreeCiv point release over a buggy UI element, or stripping out non-free parts of Chromium that upstream bundles.

Yes, there's still the 1-2% of roughness around the edges, but as OP pointed out, on linux you can actually fix stuff. It is definitely not an "april fools" worthy statement. Linux is really stable these days.