Happy (Enough) With Mac
When I was younger I used multiple operating systems. DOS, Windows 3.1, GEM OS (Atari ST), Amiga... but as I got older, people started moving more towards fewer and fewer operating systems. At work, it was always Windows. I wasn't really interested in the classic Mac, but when Steve Jobs returned to Apple and reworked NEXT into Mac OS X, I was interested. In 2006, when they released OS X "Tiger", I got a Mac computer, followed a few months later by a Mac laptop.
What attracted me to Mac? There were four reasons: easier security, the option to learn or ignore the OS, less bloat, and finally less DRM. Let's go through all 4.
The default security settings for Mac OS X was more intelligent than Windows. Sure, if you knew what you are doing, you can harden Windows well. For the average user it was just easier to run Windows as an administrator and forget about it.
Running a Mac gave me the option to learn about BSD or just ignore it and just run my programs without worry. With everything going on in my life, for the most part I just ran my programs and "things just worked". Being a techie, I did most of my investigation at work and for work. I enjoyed the browsers and the web. That was a big focus for my early career.
There were less unwanted programs installed. At the time, vendors were bundling a lot of crappy programs with Windows. Now Microsoft does the same thing itself, and you have to pay Microsoft for a "Pro" license for them to reduce it!
I don't know how many people remember Steve Jobs taking a stand against DRM with iTunes. I am not a Steve Jobs fanboy. He's a flawed human being, like we all are. However, to this day I can still run the music I bought on iTunes on my Linux machine. I appreciate that. I know many people are now into streaming, but that isn't me.
For many years, I was content with this choice. The switch from PowerPC to Intel chips made it so that I had to leave some games behind, but I got better virtualization - the ability to run other OSes inside the Mac at faster speeds. Not a bad tradeoff. I started with Parallels, and then switched to VMWare.
I played with Linux inside virtual machines for a long time, but I never got to the point where I felt I needed to switch. I bought a few small computers, and tried Linux on them. That worked out well, but there was typically always a catch, and I never got to the point where I felt I had to switch any time soon.
The Big No-No
Contrary to what fanboys will tell you, all operating systems have problems. I appreciated the information he shared. for the record, none of Windows nor Mac machines were ever hacked. That comes down to me being relatively cautious and aware when installing things, and also because I was not an important enough person to be targeted! So, I wasn't hacked, even though I was most definitely hackable.
Since I was on Mac, I started to follow Michael Tsai. As he is a Mac developer, he is familiar with the real pain points in Mac, both in the development realm and in the security realm. In 2020, in Mac OS "Catalina", Michael Tsai reported that Apple did something that was a bridge to far for me... they exempted their own apps from network monitoring!
What does that mean? It means those apps are able to phone home to Apple without you knowing that they are doing it. If you truly want to know what is going on in your network, you have to put the network monitor OUTSIDE your Apple computer to see this traffic. While you may debate how much you trust Apple, my bigger concern was if hackers were able to use similar techniques as Apple and hide THEIR traffic. Here is the link .
Getting Serious About Linux
I tried Linux on my old Mac laptop, but the experience wasn't so good. Eventually, I switched it back to Mac OS X, but I decided to keep track of what applications I used so that when I did migrate, I knew what to look for. I had backed up all my documents to multiple hard drives and locations, so the Mac was mostly empty.
I also tried getting some small servers for home, and while the experience was better than the laptop, it still wasn't enough. Plus, I wasn't giving it enough priority in order to make the switch. If I was going to make the switch to Linux, I would have to get a laptop as my main machine.
When Framework announced their repairable laptops I decided to get one. I am more of a coder than a gamer, otherwise I would have gone for a computer with a separate graphics card, like those from System 76. In early 2022, I got to work.
I had downloaded a bunch of Linux ISOs to try. Linux Mint (Debian Edition), Elementary OS, Manjaro, Fedora, and Ubuntu, Kubuntu, and OpenSUSE. I tried them all, first as a thumb drive, then installed. Which one to choose? Why?
The most MacOS like one was Elementary, but for some reason it felt too restrictive. OpenSUSE felt weird to me. While Ubuntu and Kubuntu were okay, something didn't click with me. That left Fedora and Manjaro.
Gnome Desktop Environment
Now, here's the thing: the Fedora and Manjaro I chose both were using Gnome 42 - I hadn't go for Manjaro KDE. While some people didn't like Gnome's focus on trackpad gestures, I liked them on my laptop! Gnome had decided to pull a "Firefox" strategy and simplify things and move extra functionality to extensions. It was using Fedora that I felt, okay, this is usable, I can go for this.
Manjaro with Gnome comes with a Layouts application - do you want your layout to be set up as Manjaro likes, "Classic" layout (closer to Windows), Tiled, or "Gnome" like? Manjaro's App Store was easy to extend: go into the preferences and turn on AUR support, Flatpak, and Snap. These two applications made Manjaro feel better to me. I went with Manjaro.
I kept track of the applications I used, and Manjaro came with many of them out of the box. Browser, Calendar, Contacts, Email. I had started taking notes, and Joplin was available. Before committing to a system, I used took advantage that both Google and Apple will let you use your browser to access your data on their systems.
Surprisingly Good!
Linux Mint had one thing that was missing on both Manjaro and Fedora: folder colors. I wanted to see if I could get that feature inside Manjaro. I dove into the web and using the terminal, I pulled down the packages from their git repositories, got them to compile, and success! Okay, it was a bit more of a struggle than that, but it WAS successful!
As I was using the OS, I discovered Gnome Extensions application. So the Manjaro Layouts application is really just turning on and off Gnome Extensions? I wonder what other extensions are out there? A quick look at https://extensions.gnome.org and - I like this one. "BaBar Bar"... cool!
Pain Points
The biggest pain point for me has been email. Geary, the default email client for Gnome, is missing the ability to add and remove folders. It also doesn't have filtering yet. Those should be coming as extensions, but for now I have both Geary and Evolution installed.
I Am Not Done Learning!
One of the default applications installed on Manjaro and Fedora is Gnome Boxes, which let's you run virtual machines. Since I wanted to keep exploring my Linux options, I have installed most of the other Linuxes (and my licensed Windows 10) as VMs. I want to try KDE, so I have Debian with KDE installed. Fedora was quite clean, let's get that installed too. There is so much to learn!
A Journey From Mac to Linux
I haven’t made the leap yet but I share your frustrations with Windows and MacOS. The convenience has kept me with those two but windows in particular is getting less tolerable version by version