I'm experiencing similar frustrations after having returned to using Linux (Ubuntu) at work recently. I've spent a fair bit of time having to customise a window manager (awesomewm), just to get a somewhat usable desktop environment. I work at a university with centralised mail handled by Exchange and struggle every day with flaky, buggy mail clients Evolution/DavMail+Thunderbird. Under linux my macbook air only sleeps reliably half the time, and occasionally I find that unbeknownst to me some process has woken the laptop (with lid closed) in my bag, with the battery near critical. The latest apt-get update broke my sound. Empathy hangs for a good 2-3 minutes on load, but eventually recovers. Something mysteriously reverts my xmodmap keybinds mid-session. Other little things such as LightDM not starting until I hit enter at a black screen post boot contribute to an overall experience that feels frustratingly incomplete.

I know that many of these are trivial complaints and that all of these things can be fixed. I no longer want to have to do this however. In my teens I loved tinkering with the linux desktop, designing 'awesome' Enlightenment themes and enjoyed tracking down and fixing these little problems. Now in my 30s I really just want the OS to get out of the way and let me code. OSX does this well, linux really does not. I say this with a fair bit of sadness as there are many things that I like about linux a great deal - the cli, the excellent package management, the ethos behind the OS and the open source community.