Tahoe is uniquely bad in so many ways, so I tried the Asahi Fedora Remix with Gnome on my M2 Mac Mini. Aesthetically I was more attracted to Gnome, it feels like what we lost with Tahoe. Tahoe to me feels like a really chopped Android skin or something. I made it a few weeks on the Fedora Remix but ended up having to switch back to Mac over missing webcam drivers and other random hardware issues. Plus there’s little OS things that Mac does that make it really hard to go elsewhere.

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nine_k 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Could you list some of these little things that macOS does and that you miss?

(I usually miss the little Linux-specific things that macOS does not.)

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jdejean an hour ago | parent | next [-]

Most of my gripes are probably Gnome specific in this case - When you screenshot something it pins the image temporarily on the screen. If I drag into any open app it avoids saving it to disk. - Pressing CMD W or Q consistently closes any app (works on some gnome apps) - Mac keychain passkeys (I don’t own a usb stick) - Third party window management (through accessibility privileges only) - Apps respecting dark mode settings - The app menu (file, edit, window, etc) being in the same spot every time

Definitely not exhaustive since I only spent a few weeks with it. There were also plenty of things I liked about Gnome more but not enough to tip the scale for me

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jonquest 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

iMessage, Apple Pay (w/Touch ID), native Apple Music client, iCloud (if you're invested in the iCloud ecosystem) along with its seamless integrations with photo apps like Photomator (among others), shared music and movie library across my Mac, iPhone, and Apple TV.

There's probably a lot more I'm not thinking of right now. Point is, if you're an iOS, macOS, and iCloud user you give up a lot of quality of life bits going to another platform. There are times I want to go back to Linux, but when I think about the stuff I'm going to loose I talk myself out of it. macOS isn't the greatest, but it's not the worst either and Apple's products and services just tie in very well with each other. I get annoyed by things like the shitty support for non-apple peripherals, needing 3rd party apps to make them work decent, crappy scaling except on the most expensive monitors and no decent font smoothing when running at native resolutions. But... I stick with it because I either like or love the tight integration and added quality of life that comes with it.

	▲	nine_k 12 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		Ah, I get it. I don't like integration of this sort, because it quietly screams "lock in", but do I see how it can be very convenient. So I make do with my own, likely inferior, using Syncthing, and Google Photos for browsing. My music is mostly CD rips, Bandcamp, and some YouTube, and I don't do TV, so it's just easier for me than for normal folks. I can listen to my collection anywhere over a Wireguard connection on my laptop or my phone. It's a different set of trade-offs; less polish, more control.

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Mistletoe 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

>ended up having to switch back to Mac over missing webcam drivers and other random hardware issues

This has been my experience every time I try Linux. If I had to guess, tracing down all these little things is just that last mile that is so hard and isn't the fun stuff to do in making an OS, which is why it is always ignored. If Linux ever did it, it would keep me.

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wtetzner 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

One solution to this problem is to buy from a vendor that installs Linux for you (e.g. System76). Much like with Apple, they can sell you a fully functional computer that way.

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black_puppydog 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

My understanding is that the asahi team have been doing incredible work exactly with doing the non-fun bits. They just chose to do it on the hardware of a company that's extremely hostile to this kind of effort.

	▲	Kina 11 minutes ago \| parent \| next [-]
		Apple is on the record as being neutral at worst on the matter and at best weakly supportive. I think there was an article when the M1 came out where it was reported that the Asahi Linux folks met with some Apple developers where they were encouraged to explore the system and report bugs, but that Apple was not going to offer any support. Apple has also done things such as adding a raw image mode to prevent macOS updates from breaking the boot process for third-party operating systems. Which is only useful for 3rd party operating system development.
	▲	jdejean 3 hours ago \| parent \| prev \| next [-]
		I have to say that almost everything worked out of the box. The webcam is known to not mesh great with Asahi quite yet. Otherwise: - Machine failed to wake from suspend almost 50% of the time (with both wired and BT peripherals) - WiFi speed was SIGNIFICANTLY slower. Easily a fraction of what it was on Mac - USB C display was no-op - Magic trackpad velocity is wild across apps - Window management shortcuts varied across apps (seems Gnome changes a lot, frequently) - Machine did not feel quicker, in fact generally felt slower than Tahoe but granted I did not benchmark anything I would happily try it again when the project is further along
	▲	exidy 39 minutes ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		Apple are not hostile, they are indifferent. If they were hostile, it would have been shot down both technically and legally long ago.

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tuckerman 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I think this is true with an arm mac (and would be tricky to fix that, props to the Asahi folks for doing so much) but for a lot of other hardware (recent dell/asus/lenovo, framework, byo desktops) I find Linux complete. I'm sure there is hardware out there that with struggles but I've not had to deal with any issues for a few years now myself.

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pxc 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Bringing random hardware from vendors who never intended to support an OS is a weird criterion to judge an OS' "readiness" by— and one no one seems to apply to macOS or Windows.

	▲	Mistletoe 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		I have never had an issue making whatever Frankenstein monster PC I create eventually work in Windows.

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ryang2718 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

It can be very device specific unfortunately. Thinkpad tend to work quote well. I had a Framework that my wife took from me and it's truly fantastic, works out of the box.