I recommend running Linux (any stable distro) with Xfce. It's worked/looked exactly the same for years[0], and there won't be any sudden/unpleasant changes in the future either.

0: http://xfce.org/about/screenshots

While I'm (we're) critical of the regressions when it comes to UI performance, switching to linux means giving up an entire ecosystem of apps, completely changing workflows, and in some cases depending on the kind of development that one does, making our jobs impossible.

That's why for me Linux is the only sensible choice of platforms. All the other platforms means giving complete control over my tools to a single company.

You're about to give it up to Red Hat, with systemd taking over everything, whether that's your cup of tea or not, that's what's going to happen.

Yeah, soon Vim and Emacs and even GCC will be integrated with systemd!! Resistance is futile.

So much this. I've settled on elementaryOS 0.2 (based off Ubuntu 12.04 LTS) for all my development, staging, and production environments, being netbook, notebook, All-in-One desktop, Mac mini and all my VPS servers. Software package consistency is a invaluable, and you don't even have to give up on the looks:

https://github.com/vivaserver/MoonLion

to me, Ubuntu 14.10 is still very rough. there are so many inconsistency everywhere: shortcuts, software's ui, etc...

take a simple example: usually Ctrl Q (cmd q on os x) means quit. try doing on os x will quit the app 9 out of 10 times. on ubuntu? not really.

Wait... You are not running Elementary on production servers are you???

That's ironic, considering the major wave of OSX adoption was due to linux-oriented developers who found it easier to keep working with their linux ecosystem on OSX than on Windows.

Not major, just vocal in these circles.

On a laptop, the regression in battery life switching to Linux or Windows is just a no-go. Also, it's not like Linux is famous for "just working" when it comes to suspend/resume.

Ubuntu 9.04 onwards no big issues with suspend to ram. Hibernate to disk can be problematic if someone uses 'guided partitioning' as the swap space is sometimes a little small.

Hardware: Thinkpads (T41, X60, X200) and Dell Latitude (E5420), currently Debian Sid.

I've also had no trouble with this, lately, though I have no idea how well that generalizes to others' experiences.

An alternative upgrade path would be (any distro) + Pantheon DE (from Elementary OS). Very Mac-like, it helped me with my imaginary transition pains.

Soon thereafter, I did a tour of the usual window manager suspects and ended up with i3 <3

Arch Linux + Pantheon DE was very buggy the last I checked. I ended up just installing ElementaryOS and regretting/missing having pacman. After a while I just gave up on eOS Luna and switched back to Arch Linux with a very minimally themed Cinnamon DE.

So I agree that any distro + pantheon would be great for those looking for an OSX-like experience in Linux, but it seems the reality is not as straightforward. PantheonDE doesn't seem to be developed like KDE/Gnome/XFCE are -- i.e. with a distro-agnostic approach. Hence you're sort of tied to eOS if you want to keep any level of sanity while getting it to "just work". That was counterproductive in my experience.

I second this, I just switched my MBA to Xubuntu and I'm loving it.

Yosemite was just the push I needed to switch to Linux. I shoved Ubuntu server on my MBP with the i3 windows manager and have never been happier.

Same here. I installed Fedora 21 and dwm as the window manager. I didn't know this computer could be this fast (2010 MacBook Air). The bad thing is the battery duration, which is significantly worse than Mavericks (but approximately the same as Yosemite... I got around 5-6 hours of battery life with Mavericks, 3-4 hours with Yosemite and Linux).

I still remember when people were impressed by the speed and smoothness of the UI with Tiger or Snow Leopard on my first Mac, a white MacBook. Good times. Now we have faster computers, SSDs instead of hard disks, but slower interfaces.

My (March 2011) MBP with an SSD booted Snow Leopard in about 7-8 seconds from the bong sound to the complete desktop... My current (September 2014) MBP takes so much longer (just under Mavericks, haven't gone to Yosemite yet)... I find this disappointing.. not being able to upgrade the ram doubly so.

This will probably be my last mac hardware purchase... I like the screen and the touchpad so much better than any other laptop, but don't really use it that much, and even then I could have gotten something with similar hardware for half the price... I've thought about installing Ubuntu on it, but haven't taken the plunge just yet... I spend almost 2/3 of my time on my laptop in either a windows or linux vm, so it's kind of a wash.

I imagine Powertop is installed and that you have the cpufrequtils installed and set up. What areas does powertop highlight as taking a lot of power/triggering cpu higher states?

I didn't even know about Powertop! I was a GNU/Linux user before switching to the Mac but a lot has changed since then... I'll investigate, thanks!

Yosemite must be bad if you found Ubuntu good. I constantly get "a problem has been detected" messages whenever I boot. Got Manjaro (a user friendly Arch spin off) on my other laptop. Way less problematic and XFCE behaves predictably.

Same with me. Before upgrading I always used to close the lid to make my macbook to sleep. The wake-up experience was good. But after upgrading, after waking up the system becomes too slow to use. I have to restart. So stopped putting my mac book pro to sleep. Now I always have to shut down when not using. Apart from sleep-wakeup problem, in general this has become much slower compared to mavericks

Probably this could be related to hardware config. I have a mac book pro at work with 8GB ram and it works fine. My personal mac book pro has 4GB ram and it has problem.

That's no problem, just upgrade your ram!

Oh wait...

You can upgrade the RAM on the MacBook Pro

Source: using 16GB here

Many recent models are non-upgradeable

None of the rMBPs, nor the minis have upgradeable ram. If I had to put money on it I'd bet a dollar the next-gen iMacs will be in the same boat. Just too hard to pass up that 400% markup.

Yeah, this is ridiculous.

Especially when the default RAM they sell with is usually too small.

Go to "System Preferences - Accessibility" and enable "Differentiate without Color" and "Reduce Transparency". Made a world of a difference to me, and I no longer think about Mountain Lion.

Even "Reduce Transparency" has a nice big graphical glitch:

https://twitter.com/Doomlaser/status/538539277978972160

Yosemite breaks rounded rect corners in UI overlays, like the ones triggered by volume and brightness changes. The masking is broken when the translucent blur shaders aren't applied.

You'd think that'd something they would easily catch in QA before 10.10 shipped, but it's still broken even in 10.10.1.

In OS X 10.10.2 (14C81h), this does not seem to be a problem anymore.

Finally! I was sure they would never fix it. I'm actually considering downloading the beta now. Any other improvements?

Linux is unlikely to be better at power management than OSX, sad as that is.

not only it's unlikely, it's true. I've changed distro many times over the years and always noticed the poor power management

I had this issue too with non-waking up from sleep. Somehow the problem dissapeared after I upgraded the HDD to SSD. Now everything is working fine. Nonetheless, I'm still on Mavericks, no Yosemite upgrade yet. Just a potential solution to your sleep problem.

Please do try Gnome 3.14 - Right now, it is only part of Fedora 21. But I think you will love it. Do give it a shot.

Gnome software has switched to an infuriating naming scheme.

The file manager (gnautilus) is now called "files". The video player (totem) is now called "videos". This is so obviously broken for people who are trying to web-search for answers to problems that they're having.

Whats worse os that the renaming is inconsistent - software will get one name in the menu, another name in the help > about, and another name on the Internet.

Gnome - and I say this as politely as I can - makes me fucking hate using a computer.

Arch Linux too.

it's a desktop environment, it can be part of any distro you want, especially when an upgrade hits the decimals

Sure. But for now only Fedora 21 and ArchLinux actually release this in their official package repository because they're both very upstreamy Linux distros. You won't be able to install this without fiddling with PPAs in Debian or Ubuntu.

Gnome 3.14 appears to be the default desktop environment in Debian Unstable. Unstable is subject to change and occasionally things stop working for a bit but many people find it acceptable for non-critical use.

Had this happen once, apparently fixed with zapping NVRAM/PRAM. Never happened again...

Did you try a PROM reset? (I think that's how it's called)

Isn't it PRAM? Or is that a different thing?

Ah that's it

http://support.apple.com/kb/PH14222?viewlocale=en_US

I tried it on a Mac Mini. It didn't help. Yosemite performance is abysmal. I really regret upgrading.

Why not downgrade to Mountain Lion? Security updates?

My office recently started using Keynote for a lot of our presentations. Keynote presentations created on the version that is compatible with Yosemite (and nothing prior) cannot be opened on earlier versions.

Even if security updates still come for what...usually 20-30 months with Apple...they still don't care about any other kind of backward compatibility and happily break their own file formats at will.

Just to check, do Apple only provide security updates to the newest OS X?

No. Apple provides security updates for several versions. They most recently patched NTP for Mountain Lion, Mavericks and Yosemite at the same time.

http://support.apple.com/en-us/HT1222

Apple provides security updates back somewhere between 36 and 44 months for the OS. Unfortunately, you won't know until they announce some exploit and don't patch your OS if you've been left behind or not.

Remember iOS 7?

Same thing.

Who was the joker who kept insisting that iOS 7 was really better and very few complained? I warned about this, post-Jobs Apple design and attention to detail.

>Who was the joker who kept insisting that iOS 7 was really better and very few complained?

The majority of the population?

Obviously any one person's experience is only anecdotal, but I'm still waiting to discover that anyone I know in real life actually likes iOS since v7. However, I seem to know plenty of people who wish they hadn't upgraded, or even who returned a new iPad with a recent iOS because they thought they were getting what they'd seen before (iOS 5/6 generation tablets that friends/family had) and hated the new one so much.

Personally, we're still pre-v7 on our iPad here, after reading way too many reviews about severe performance drops on this device after the "upgrade" and learning that there is no way to go back once you've done it. We literally ignore any updates for the system from Apple and just carry on happily enjoying the product as we bought it, making us almost uniquely satisfied among iPad purchasers we know.

Just like you'll deny that people are complaining about Yosemite

Just some very vocal individuals on a niche website, and some trolls.

My own experience of Yosemite has been the polar opposite of many here; better stability, faster, longer battery life etc. All on a 2011 MacBook Air. I never had any kind of issue with iOS 7 either. The odd reset over the last year on my iPhone 5, but the significant majority of the time (99% at least) it worked and it worked well. Sorry to rock your world view, but have you at least posited that these people vociferously complaining are not representative of the whole? Ditto iOS? I know you will chalk me up as another "fanboy"...

It has nothing to do with Jobs, there were plenty of bugs and other problems during his reign, too. So much that, in fact, it was an axiom for tech minded people not to install any new versions of the OS until at least 10.X.1 version.