While I have most of the annoyances for potentially switching from MacOS to Linux as a daily driver, the inconsistent system shortcuts are the big killer. Even with emacs-style shortcuts enabled at the system level, there are no guarantees. ctrl-n may go down one line, or it may open a new window. It's even inconsistent within a single app: ctrl-w will close your browser tab unless you're in a text field, in which case it will delete backwards one word... maybe (in firefox, even some text fields fail to intercept ctrl-w, and you still end up closing the tab).

macOS does a great job of supporting Emacs navigation keys at the system level, while using the super key for things like copy/paste, close tab, quit application, etc. This leaves the ctrl key free for those system-level emacs bindings.

I started down the path of attempting to customize my Linux machine to use super like in MacOS, but gave up due to inconsistencies in whether or not an app recognizes the super key or if it even allows you to customize your bindings (e.g. make super-w close a tab).

Coming from Linux to macOs (macOs user for 2 years), I have the very opposite feeling : why does the cmd key is used instead of Ctrl for copy ? why can't I set up cmd+E to open a finder window ? Why € sign not under the E key with a modifier ? At least in Linux, I was able to remap the things the way I like it : 'windows' key is used for windows interaction (move, resize, close) and global desktop interaction (lock, sleep, shortcut for standard apps like mail, web browser, file explorer), Ctrl is mostly used within apps for common functions, Alt is used within app for app specific functions

I think it comes down to what you're used to in the end. But Linux is the only system where I was able to tell the machine to behave the way I want and not to fight against counter intuitive shortcuts (for me) ...

I use system-wide shortcuts >recognised in the OS and all apps and Time Machine being able to backup instantly to another Mac. If I told someone to do the same from Ubuntu to another distro, you're just 20-30 Duckduckgo searches away to type the solution in the terminal.

Hmmm I'm not sure about this statement, you can...:

- Use Timeshift to the same on Linux. - Install Linux on a separate partition - Use third party tools, like AOMEI or Acronis

And the last one, that I use is, Deja-dup with an installation script, and it works great. I'm new, but I see potential to install my OS and software unattended.

There are several ways to accomplish this.

*With Linux I mean Ubuntu, Fedora, Arch and the rest.

This is my first post, I mark it for myself.

For those that care about graphics programming and hardware video acceleration, it is the same hit-and-miss as always, it hardly changed other than drivers crash less, specially on laptops.

So while the 2D accelerated Ubuntu desktop might work quite well, if one starts pushing it on GL/Vulkan, intends to watch hardware accelerated video on the browser, actually switch between their multiple laptop GPUs, the experience is less than stellar.

Isn't this something where X11 can shine:

An X11 shortcut application could intercept all keystrokes and map shortcuts to the expected keystrokes from the application that has the focus.

Ubuntu is a server OS.

It only has a limited set of old software. To get new software, you have to mess with weird (possible expired) PPAs sourced from StackOverflow posts. Eventually, you have to reinstall the OS to get new software packages or DE features.

This is fine for servers which need super-stable, tested packages.

But does that sound like a typical end-user OS, like Windows? No. That's why a better candidate are nerfed rolling releases like Manjaro. c: New stuff all the time, indefinitely. Nerfed rolling, so less bleeding edge breakage risk. No reinstalls. No PPAs; the AUR has everything. Great forum to boot. Also Arch Wiki compatible.

It's this really something "general users" want? Outside of tech enthusiasts, people have allergic reaction to upgrades. Not changing software is great for them. They're already clicking "update later" / "try tomorrow" on windows/macos. Even developers in established companies are worried about upgrades. There's lots of documentation to update, standard processes and scripts may stop working. (How many docs and scripts have been invalidated recently by awscli 2.0 dropping "ecr get-login"? That's likely weeks of global productivity lost.)

Even if I'm in a tech enthusiast group, I moved away from rolling distros to fedora - still getting fairly fresh things, but don't have to deal with lots of unnecessary updates installing every day. On work laptop I'm a major update of the system behind and every time I actually go for it, it means a few hours to a day of making the environment work again.

> To get new software, you have to mess with weird (possible expired) PPAs sourced from StackOverflow posts.

Somehow I magically am typing this on an LTS system with the latest usptream versions of Firefox, slack, discord, blender, vscode, libreoffice, OBS, spotify, golang, and node, all without PPAs or stackoverflow.

I get it you use Arch, but you should perhaps educate yourself on how other distros work before throwing shade?

Between snap, flatpak, and appimage, a lot of those issues really go away. Regardless of distribution or version.

> Ubuntu is a server OS.

...and a desktop OS, and a mobile OS. I don't see where it's optimized for one over the other.

> No PPAs; the AUR has everything.

I'm not fond of PPAs, but are they really that much worse than the AUR, which works by manually compiling software using unvetted scripts from strangers?

This is why I like KDE neon: solid Ubuntu LTS base (still a bit newer than Debian usually) with the latest KDE apps on top. There's not too many open source apps that aren't covered by KDE, with the exception of GIMP. Then I just install proprietary stuff as needed (Skype, InteliJ, etc).

Yep. Bafflingly, you'd think an older version of the DE would be more stable and bug-free than newer versions, but this wasn't my anecdotal experience: on Kubuntu, I had to reset KDE all the time. And Baloo segfaulted all the time. Two years on Manjaro, and I've never either problem once. Have you had the same experience on Neon?

You still have the problem of being stuck with an LTS package list (and dealing with PPAs) though.

Also, out of scope of this convo, but this is about what is

>a standard ... desktop for general users

but what a modern desktop should look like for general users is a subjective or moving target. If it's something like Windows 10X[0] (sandbox containerize all the things), which I think it should be, then no Linux distro currently suffices at all. :D

0: https://www.howtogeek.com/442767/what-is-windows-10x-and-how...

Project Silverblue (Fedora + Project Atomic) is trying to move in that direction, I believe.