this post was submitted on 04 Mar 2024
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Will probably get flamed to death for this, but... a few months ago I've decided to try Ubuntu on an older Intel MacBook Pro, just to try it out after many attempts in the past. (Mac user here)
Then I tried to use the trackpad. After 30 minutes of fiddling I gave up. Say what you want about Apple's UX choices, esthetics and business practices. But boy do they know how to produce a computer and UX combo that fits like a glove.
In comparison, the Ubuntu experience was like eating nails.
And before y'all go off; I would like to switch. I'm getting tired of Apple's business practices.
I had to use Apple MacOS for a year. It was horrible, I hated every second of it.
Apple isn't better. You are just used to it, and anything else feels awkward. I had the opposite experience.
Same. I hate the unintuitive keyboard shortcuts, the nonsensical drag and drop everything UI, and their ridiculously over complicated development system.
Yeah, I have a similar experience. I used a bunch of operating systems in my years. From C64 GEOS over Atari TOS Amiga OS, DOS, Windows (pretty much all of them since 3.1, except Vista and 8), Android, MacOS and iOS to Linux (several distros)
I don't know why, but MacOS and iOS are for me just the worst user experiences. I feel completly trapped and helpless when using either one. Guess they are just not for me.
I used to greatly prefer MacOS until I switched my desktop from Windows to Linux and got comfortable there troubleshooting and installing things. Now I feel exactly the same as you with MacOS. Trapped.
No flaming here, but your first mistake was trying Ububtu - it's not the best in terms of hardware compatibility, and they (Canonical) often make controversial software/development decisions, which makes it one of the most hated distributions in the Linux community.
Your second mistake was trying it on a Mac. Now don't get me wrong, many people do run Linux on a Mac, but it's not quite plug-and-play (compared to PC), and not everything may work as intended. Since you're new to Linux, I wouldn't recommend your first experience of it to be on a Mac. And to be clear, this isn't Linux's fault - since Apple (or whichever chipset maker) doesn't provide Linux with any official drivers/code, the devs have to figure stuff out themselves by reverse-engineering stuff, and as expected not everything may work.
If you've only got Macs around and you don't have the patience to troubleshoot Linux issues / read manuals etc, then the easiest way to try it out is in a virtual machine like Parallels or VirtualBox. The performance might not be the best, but at least everything should work out-of-the-box. As for the distro, since you're a Mac user, you'd probably feel more at home with elementary OS. Other options you could try include Pop!_OS, and Zorin (the Pro edition even has a macOS-like layout).
Once you've tried Linux in a VM and decide you'd like to use it full-time, the best way to experience it is on native Linux-first hardware - basically PCs which come with Linux out-of-the-box, such as those made by System76, Slimbook, Star Labs, Tuxedo etc.
In case nobody has mentioned Asahi Linux yet, I'll bring it up. I haven't used it, but I have a friend who does.
I believe they have a Fedora-based distro that should be solid for daily use, but again I haven't used this myself.
After years of using linux distros and settling on an arch based distro for my daily use, I switched jobs and they allowed me to have "linux" as my laptop OS.
They put Ubuntu 22.04 LTS on the laptop. Admittedly I hadn't used it for a few years, maybe 18.04 outside of server use cases maybe.
The experience is horrible. It throws errors about Ubuntu, about Visual Studio Code or any program every hour, without those programs having any trouble whatsoever to function.
It reminds me so much of Windows, and even though I prefer it over that system, I can't shake the feeling I'm serving the OS, rather than the other way around, just like in Windows.
And don't even get me started on Snaps over DEB packages. Had never tried them before and I can say with confidence the hatred is deserved. Code didn't even start up in the snap version and Firefox was so slow and laggy I was thinking the laptop was broken somehow.