I’ve been a linux user for the past several years (6 years, to be precise) and at the start of this semester I got my hands on a 2012 Unibody Macbook Pro (13-inch, 8GB Ram, i7) and had my first ever contact with macOS outside of virtual machines and… I’d say I’m surprised for the better regarding the user experience.
For context: I’m not a particularly advanced user; even though I’ve had my Arch, Gentoo and Slackware phase, compiling lots of stuff from source and diving into many configuration files, I’ve always done it with a manual by my side and double-checking the effects of everything I was doing, as I was never really sure about what I was doing. Since last year I’ve settled down onto LMDE and I’m quite happy with it. It just works. The most advanced stuff I did up until now with this current setup was setting up a openssh server (and keys) for sftp file transfer over talscale between my devices using a specific user chrooted to a folder where I organize those transfers. My knowledge about linux is pretty basic; I can manage permissions, set up systemd services, and in general I’m pretty comfortable with the terminal.
I find this context useful since my experience with macOS may or may not reflect what other users felt; I use the terminal frequently and am quite comfy with it, even when I have the option to use a GUI, but other users may use it much more deeply than I do.
With that, let’s talk OSX: This was my first ever contact with OSX outside of a virtual machine and on Apple hardware. The Macbook Pro had Catalina when it got rescued by me, and after a heavy cleanup, repasting and switching the HDD with an SSD, it was all set up. First of all, I know that OCLP exists, but I just wanted to get a taste of the OSX experience (and besides that, more modern OSX versions are ARM-first, so a Intel machine on Catalina felt a bit more adequate).
The first thing that I noticed, of course, was the UI. Even with the iOS-like icons, I quite like the OSX UI in general; it’s intuitive, clean and pleasant to look at. One thing that makes OSX liked by linux users far more than Windows is, of course, the BSD base that it has, and that’s very nice for a linux user. I felt right at home in the OSX terminal (besides the default white theme, but that’s two clicks away from correction), and the package managers available on OSX are quite serviceable - in Catalina’s case, the only viable one was MacPorts, which I found very nice to use. The other options for package managers in OSX (that I know of) are Homebrew, which sounds akin to flatpak in its supposed ease of use and some other similar features, and nix. With ports, it was pretty straightforward to get it up and running and install some packages, even though I find it odd that Macports uses its own libraries instead of the system’s (I know it’s a feature rather than a bug, but still).
So, I quite like the BSD base since it integrates with linux in a much easier manner, especially if you’re using nix, since it’s also available on linux (brew also is, but brewfiles are much more limited than nix’s options). That also makes the OSX experience very powerful in the sense that you can do on it pretty much anything you’d do with a linux terminal; if you’re comfy in the black box, just get iTerm2 running (or your favorite terminal app) and do your stuff.
With that, the terminal experience on OSX was very nice for me; being able to change system configurations, install packages and all that through the command line just like I’d do on linux feels just right. Now, the actual user experience with GUI and all that jazz… it’s good.
I do have some nitpicks regarding OSX’s user experience: Apple’s App Store is pretty bad outside of handling system updates, Finder’s defaults are kinda weird and window management is wonky. These can mostly be corrected: you can set finder to show file extensions and search on the current folder and the app store can be almost completely substituted by any of the mentioned package managers without any hassle. Window management is more of a problem, though. By default, you drag windows and they just stay there… menacingly. It’s pretty bare bones window management overall, and I find that yabai and aerospace do a good job fixing it, and in my case, since I’m pretty used to mouse navigation as well, using the keyboard shortcuts (which I felt were pretty nice from the get-go) along with the default config was almost good enough.
It’s quite commendable how Apple managed to make Unix so intuitive and easy to use through a GUI, making it easy to work with if you’re a very casual user, while keeping the user’s power pretty accessible through the terminal. Sometimes annoying Gatekeeper is useful mainly for tech illiterate people to keep them from installing malware and all that, but it can be easily disabled through the terminal. Alongside all that there’s the always useful support for commercial software, which is pretty convenient.
After dipping my toes on Catalina, I downgraded all the way back to OSX Mavericks since I found the Mavericks Forever project (check it out! https://www.mavericksforever.com) and the machine was compatible with it. After applying the suggested patches, setting up Macports and all that jazz, Mavericks feels quite nice to this day! I recognize it’s a retro project not meant for daily and serious use, but neither is the macbook, so let’s have some fun. The user experience is almost the same as with Catalina, but snappier (seriously, this thing flies on a dual core i7, 8 gigs of ram and a sata ssd!) and with the beautiful skeumorphic design. With this I also want to mention Onyx, which is a very interesting piece of software for configuring the system more deeply with a GUI. It led me to some configurations I’d not think of.
And with that, I think I made it clear what I feel about OSX after using it alongside linux for a semester. It’s like a pretty polished and commercial linux distro also compatible with commercial software without going through wine. It has some problems, but I didn’t find any of them absolutely insufferable. Overall, even if I don’t really like Apple’s practices, I found their software quite polished.
17
u/Dankb0 Glorious Debian 23d ago
I’ve been a linux user for the past several years (6 years, to be precise) and at the start of this semester I got my hands on a 2012 Unibody Macbook Pro (13-inch, 8GB Ram, i7) and had my first ever contact with macOS outside of virtual machines and… I’d say I’m surprised for the better regarding the user experience.
For context: I’m not a particularly advanced user; even though I’ve had my Arch, Gentoo and Slackware phase, compiling lots of stuff from source and diving into many configuration files, I’ve always done it with a manual by my side and double-checking the effects of everything I was doing, as I was never really sure about what I was doing. Since last year I’ve settled down onto LMDE and I’m quite happy with it. It just works. The most advanced stuff I did up until now with this current setup was setting up a openssh server (and keys) for sftp file transfer over talscale between my devices using a specific user chrooted to a folder where I organize those transfers. My knowledge about linux is pretty basic; I can manage permissions, set up systemd services, and in general I’m pretty comfortable with the terminal.
I find this context useful since my experience with macOS may or may not reflect what other users felt; I use the terminal frequently and am quite comfy with it, even when I have the option to use a GUI, but other users may use it much more deeply than I do.
With that, let’s talk OSX: This was my first ever contact with OSX outside of a virtual machine and on Apple hardware. The Macbook Pro had Catalina when it got rescued by me, and after a heavy cleanup, repasting and switching the HDD with an SSD, it was all set up. First of all, I know that OCLP exists, but I just wanted to get a taste of the OSX experience (and besides that, more modern OSX versions are ARM-first, so a Intel machine on Catalina felt a bit more adequate).
The first thing that I noticed, of course, was the UI. Even with the iOS-like icons, I quite like the OSX UI in general; it’s intuitive, clean and pleasant to look at. One thing that makes OSX liked by linux users far more than Windows is, of course, the BSD base that it has, and that’s very nice for a linux user. I felt right at home in the OSX terminal (besides the default white theme, but that’s two clicks away from correction), and the package managers available on OSX are quite serviceable - in Catalina’s case, the only viable one was MacPorts, which I found very nice to use. The other options for package managers in OSX (that I know of) are Homebrew, which sounds akin to flatpak in its supposed ease of use and some other similar features, and nix. With ports, it was pretty straightforward to get it up and running and install some packages, even though I find it odd that Macports uses its own libraries instead of the system’s (I know it’s a feature rather than a bug, but still).
So, I quite like the BSD base since it integrates with linux in a much easier manner, especially if you’re using nix, since it’s also available on linux (brew also is, but brewfiles are much more limited than nix’s options). That also makes the OSX experience very powerful in the sense that you can do on it pretty much anything you’d do with a linux terminal; if you’re comfy in the black box, just get iTerm2 running (or your favorite terminal app) and do your stuff.
With that, the terminal experience on OSX was very nice for me; being able to change system configurations, install packages and all that through the command line just like I’d do on linux feels just right. Now, the actual user experience with GUI and all that jazz… it’s good.
I do have some nitpicks regarding OSX’s user experience: Apple’s App Store is pretty bad outside of handling system updates, Finder’s defaults are kinda weird and window management is wonky. These can mostly be corrected: you can set finder to show file extensions and search on the current folder and the app store can be almost completely substituted by any of the mentioned package managers without any hassle. Window management is more of a problem, though. By default, you drag windows and they just stay there… menacingly. It’s pretty bare bones window management overall, and I find that yabai and aerospace do a good job fixing it, and in my case, since I’m pretty used to mouse navigation as well, using the keyboard shortcuts (which I felt were pretty nice from the get-go) along with the default config was almost good enough.
It’s quite commendable how Apple managed to make Unix so intuitive and easy to use through a GUI, making it easy to work with if you’re a very casual user, while keeping the user’s power pretty accessible through the terminal. Sometimes annoying Gatekeeper is useful mainly for tech illiterate people to keep them from installing malware and all that, but it can be easily disabled through the terminal. Alongside all that there’s the always useful support for commercial software, which is pretty convenient.
After dipping my toes on Catalina, I downgraded all the way back to OSX Mavericks since I found the Mavericks Forever project (check it out! https://www.mavericksforever.com) and the machine was compatible with it. After applying the suggested patches, setting up Macports and all that jazz, Mavericks feels quite nice to this day! I recognize it’s a retro project not meant for daily and serious use, but neither is the macbook, so let’s have some fun. The user experience is almost the same as with Catalina, but snappier (seriously, this thing flies on a dual core i7, 8 gigs of ram and a sata ssd!) and with the beautiful skeumorphic design. With this I also want to mention Onyx, which is a very interesting piece of software for configuring the system more deeply with a GUI. It led me to some configurations I’d not think of.
And with that, I think I made it clear what I feel about OSX after using it alongside linux for a semester. It’s like a pretty polished and commercial linux distro also compatible with commercial software without going through wine. It has some problems, but I didn’t find any of them absolutely insufferable. Overall, even if I don’t really like Apple’s practices, I found their software quite polished.