> I got too tired of wrestling with all that crap and switched to a macbook.
This is pretty much exactly my experience. There were usually ways to make things work on Linux, but it always required more effort than it was worth. Back in school, spending that effort made sense because it was a learning experience and at the time that was my primary goal. These days, there are enough competing priorities in my life that spending hours wrestling with my computer to make it perform basic functionality just isn't worth the opportunity cost. (I could be learning something people value or doing paid work or spending time with my family or exercising....)
One of the things I did love about Linux was the ability to switch to a tiling window manager. That said, as nice as it was, customizations required modifying C source code and writing scripts and never did work nearly as well as anything else. (In particular, I never figured out the right NetworkManager incantations to connect to a new WiFi network.)
To put this in perspective, my experience with Linux dates back to 1994, installing SLS from floppies on a 486/33. There has always been this belief that 'the community' will solve the problems and turn Linux into a fully competitive desktop platform. While there's definitely been progress, the reality is that the community has neither the time nor the attention to achieve near the level of polish that the vast majority of people expect these days. (Note that I don't view this as necessarily a problem, just an artifact of people making the same sorts of resource allocations choices for themselves that I described myself making back in the first paragraph.)
Similar view on 'young and learning' and 'older with other priorities'. Started using linux on servers in 99 (slackware, mostly), and desktop/laptop (mostly redhat, and some debian and gentoo for a while) in 2000.
I do miss the fish protocol in konqueror/kde. I will say that with... KDE4(?) I just gave up caring about moving back to desktop Linux. Never cared much for gnome experience - had really liked KDE3.
As recently as a month ago, a colleague was writing to our local Linux list about laptop sleeping vs suspending, and how to get those working, and there was some discussion about why you'd want to do that, hardware support, BIOS issues, etc. Life is just way too damn short for me to care about any of that stuff. Yeah, I may be giving up some 'freedom' in an abstract sense (or perhaps even, maybe, a real sense) but... really, I just want to close the lid and not think about it.
An all too familiar story. At some point you just need to get work done without worrying about every last detail of CUPS printing a document out using Liberation Serif, and whether it looks close enough to your colleagues' printouts, etc.
I wanted a Unix machine I could use to hack together bash scripts, play flash video without jitters, and use Photoshop and Word... without constant emotional labor coercing the system to do what I needed. Apple provided the best technical solution to my problem set.
(By the way, not really a tiling window manager, but have you checked out Magnet? It's one of my favorite Mac utilities.)
> I wanted a Unix machine I could use to hack together bash scripts, play flash video without jitters, and use Photoshop and Word... without constant emotional labor coercing the system to do what I needed. Apple provided the best technical solution to my problem set.
Pretty much my reasoning too. I was also surprised that, once I factored in build quality, etc., the Apple was price-competitive as well.
> (By the way, not really a tiling window manager, but have you checked out Magnet? It's one of my favorite Mac utilities.)
No, but I'll check it out. I like it by the sound of it's name already. Thanks!
This is pretty much exactly my experience. There were usually ways to make things work on Linux, but it always required more effort than it was worth. Back in school, spending that effort made sense because it was a learning experience and at the time that was my primary goal. These days, there are enough competing priorities in my life that spending hours wrestling with my computer to make it perform basic functionality just isn't worth the opportunity cost. (I could be learning something people value or doing paid work or spending time with my family or exercising....)
One of the things I did love about Linux was the ability to switch to a tiling window manager. That said, as nice as it was, customizations required modifying C source code and writing scripts and never did work nearly as well as anything else. (In particular, I never figured out the right NetworkManager incantations to connect to a new WiFi network.)
https://github.com/mschaef/dwm-tools
To put this in perspective, my experience with Linux dates back to 1994, installing SLS from floppies on a 486/33. There has always been this belief that 'the community' will solve the problems and turn Linux into a fully competitive desktop platform. While there's definitely been progress, the reality is that the community has neither the time nor the attention to achieve near the level of polish that the vast majority of people expect these days. (Note that I don't view this as necessarily a problem, just an artifact of people making the same sorts of resource allocations choices for themselves that I described myself making back in the first paragraph.)