It’s easy to say so now that I’ve gotten it to work, but the whole process isn’t documented at all on any website.

I daily drive macOS, Debian, and Windows (for personal & work purposes) - the same can be said for Linux (auto mounting a WebDAV share on boot), but at least:

- Linux’s documentation is much more comprehensive than Apple

- whatever you do on Linux some guy from 2003 would have already done so, whereas going from Catalina to Big Sur would’ve seen some big process changes and deprecations

- Intel vs M1 compatibility concerns galore, the only times I need to worry about that on Linux is when I run VMs and LXCs on Proxmox.

>whatever you do on Linux some guy from 2003 would have already done so

Ah, sure, but that was pre-systemd. Or maybe the solution was for XFree86 and now I'm on Wayland... Or an interesting incantation of ifconfig, which might not even be installed by default?

> It's installing a pkg file, takes about a minute and it is a one time operation you will never really need to do again.

Typically I have to do it once a year, because the kernel extension seems to break with every new macOS version.

> Have you ever daily driven a linux box? Times have changed but you will jump through hoops far more often than on macOS.

> - written from my frankenstein arch linux macbook pro

That depends entirely on what you're doing, what software and hardware you're using.

Any Linux distro on a MacBook (unless it's an old model)? Yeah, lots of hoops.

I am installing Garuda Linux on a MacBook Pro later today. I have never installed Garuda before. I will let you know how it goes. After a good experience installing Manjaro on an iMac, I am expecting it to go well.

Use a properly supported hardware and the amount of hoops to jump through goes down to negligible.

> written from my frankenstein arch linux macbook pro

oh... oh you poor soul :P

I used to use Arch on a high end gaming laptop when I was younger and had time to waste on things like dotfiles and perfecting my vim config and jumping through hoops like Bonus level Sonic.

Now I opt for lovely simple boring functional Dell laptops from my employer and install Fedora on everything.

Out of Windows OSX and Ubuntu/Arch/Fedora/Sabayon (Gentoo variant), Fedora wins the "everything just works" thing by miles on the supported Dell HW and _still_ supports stuff better out of the box with my home desktop.

Yeah yeah I know everyone's experience is different, but...... Out of using all of the operating systems on the daily for 15 years, linux is the one I consistently begrudge the least.

The main reason I switched over to a windows box (after WSL2 was released) was because I hate dealing with obtuse hardware and driver issues.

I am a software engineer, but I work in user space and have zero interest in managing hardware issues. When I plug in a device to a Mac or Windows box it just works 95% of the time or more. I never have to touch textual config files, I never have to adjust DNS settings and routing settings to work with the VPN, when I plug in my headphones it plays audio through them, and my webcam works nicely. I don’t have to use the terminal to get my GPU to kick in at appropriate times.

I have tried to make the switch to Linux so many times, I love the computational model, but I’m too busy to spend my time working out the user experience, and too cheap to use a Mac now that WSL2 gives me a real Unix environment on Windows.

“Cheap, User Friendly, or Dev friendly, pick two” Was my mantra before WSL2 made windows dev friendly too… I’m not a fan boy for Windows, just too lazy to care anymore. I’d be happy to try Fedora…but I have my doubts…

> When I plug in a device to a Mac or Windows box it just works 95% of the time or more.

I quit using Macs a long time ago because I find I have to spend way too much time configuring them and adapting to the workflow, but between Windows and Linux I find devices work pretty much the same. If anything Linux has a better success rate, things "just work." On Windows it seems like every single time I plug in a mouse Windows starts "installing drivers." Even though it has the drivers. Usually "installing drivers" seems like it's a nothing but sometimes it actually seems to be downloading things and installing them while the PnP mouse already should work.

Definitely, as a rule plugging things into Windows it can take 10-15 seconds to pick up while Linux works much faster on average.

I think that rings true to my experience. It does _not_ ring true to my experience with audio peripherals in particular or with networking concerns.

Don’t want to jinx it but the process has been painless. Technically I’m using EndeavourOS. Had to install with a USB wireless adapter but after the driver, it’s great. Everything “just works” including suspend/wake with lid, keyboard backlighting, brightness/volume fn keys etc.

Printing on HP deskjet? What about scanning? Can you share your files on a local network with samba? (painlessly I mean)

Printing to my laser jet wirelessly works. Accessing remote SMB shares works.

> Have you ever daily driven a linux box? Times have changed but you will jump through hoops far more often than on macOS.

For about 25 years. Hard to agree.

I’ve used Ubuntu for a few years. The hoops are pretty uncommon and usually involve a 2 minute search for syntax to fix