In 2016, I bought my first Mac. At that time, it was getting the best of both worlds: a UNIX-like development environment and a big selection of paid, but well designed software. Despite high price and butterfly keyboard issues, hardware was miles better than whatever was in the market as well. Combine that with the iPhone and iCloud services, and you get a comfortable, seamless experience.
This year, I decided to move back to Linux, almost exclusively. There are multiple reasons why: worsening quality of Apple software, hostile actions of Apple towards the developers and consumers, but, most importantly, huge improvements in Linux and its ecosystem.
Mac OS was known for a long time to be a super-stable, everything-works-out-of-the-box type of operating system. It had a great balance of having a beautiful UI without sacrificing usability. The developer ergonomics were pretty good for people that are more familiar with UNIX instead of Windows, which made Mac a great choice for a lot of programmers.
Something’s changed over the years. System updates were constantly breaking something for me, which forced me to ignore any major OS releases. The file system became slow, which you could notice not only by using Docker, but simply using the Finder. For example, I tried to transfer 3GB worth of files into USB storage, which Mac estimated to complete in 50(!) minutes. Cancelling operation and ejecting the drive would freeze the Finder, and eventually, show an error message. And it wasn’t USB’s fault - I tried the same thing on Linux and had no problems.
Apple Music is another example. iTunes wasn’t perfect, though it worked most of the time. Today, 9 years after its release, Apple Music is still having trouble recognizing already downloaded purchases and re-downloads them again, resulting in duplicate files. Not to mention general sluggishness when navigating an app or music that just appears in my library and the only way to get rid of it is to contact Apple support.
Apple as a company changed a lot as well. From being a champion of people’s right to privacy, it:
- Became hostile to developers for attempts to provide alternative options to pay for their services, evading outrageous 30% tax from all sales (including outside the App Store!)
- Released products that are difficult to repair, and in some cases, plainly impossible.
- Asked ridiculous premiums on any spec bumps on their hardware (like $800 for 2TB storage, or $400 for 32GB memory).
- Prevented customers from installing any apps they want into their phones, which they already paid for.
- Used malicious compliance to EU regulations, like slapping huge fees for 3rd party app stores or attempting to completely remove PWA’s in Europe to force internet-based apps to go through the App Store.
- Forced developers to play app store review roulette where survival of your business could literally depend on the mood of the reviewer that day.
I could go on, but you get the idea. Apple has become a huge behemoth that focuses purely on profits rather than providing best customer experience, including doing everything to stop healthy competition from emerging. These actions make you think “why am I supporting this type of behavior?”. For most people, convenience is just more important, even though a lot recognize the dark side of it. Apple made a beautiful walled garden, if you can live with them dictating what you can and cannot do. But there’s more to the world if you’re ready to peek over the wall.
What about Windows?
Windows, while it’s been making notable progress from the Windows 8 era, still has a lot of problems. Microsoft just can’t resist putting garbage software, ads, stupid pay-to-win and attention grabbing games, Bing, AI integrations, telemetry and mandatory online sign-in into Windows. There are ways to get around that of course, but it will always be an uphill battle. Microsoft treats their customers in a way that they don’t know what they want, and decisions need to be forced upon them.
This is what really bugs me about companies like Microsoft - treating their customers as idiots. That means not allowing (or making it super hard) to do things they think are too difficult for average Joe to do or understand. The fact that everything needs soft cushy walls and rounded corners is becoming a problem in itself, but that’s a topic for another post.
Going back to Linux
Linux is not a new thing to me. Before moving to the Mac, I used different flavours of Linux, starting from Ubuntu to Arch. It was a fun experience, though I always faced some problems, either with hardware not working correctly, or some software I needed not being available (and the alternatives were seriously lacking). But it’s kind of incredible how things have changed since then.
I went with Linux Mint, because since the last time I used Linux, this distribution was the most stable and my experience with it was really positive. Oh man, Mint is just amazing. The whole thing is rock solid, everything works, everything is customizable, no drivers to install. And while UI is not as pretty as Apple’s, it’s still pretty good!
Gaming is now a real thing in Linux as well, thanks to the hard work of all the people working on Wine and Proton. Valve’s investment in the Linux gaming ecosystem had a tremendous effect, not only by the sheer number of games that are supported, but the performance in a lot of cases is better too. I remember we used to wait for Linux ports of new games for months, while now often you can play games on day 1 without any issues (I just played a beta version of an unreleased Windows-only game, the experience was flawless).
And it’s not just games, more software is becoming available on Linux as well. I was surprised that Epic now regularly releases Linux binaries for Unreal Engine 5, and it works out of the box!
5 years ago it was unthinkable that you’d be able to develop games in Unreal on Linux.
On the hardware front, Framework came out of nowhere and proved to everyone that you can build a fast, light, good looking, relatively cheap and fully repairable laptop with first-class Linux support. The FW13 I’ve been using is a delight: compared with a Mac, it’s much lighter, has a more comfortable keyboard, high resolution 3:2 matte screen, webcam/mic hardware privacy switches, customizable I/O, and is easily upgradable and repairable. It’s kind of incredible to know that this could be literally the last laptop I own, since every part of it can be upgraded or replaced with ease.
I’m struggling to think of where Linux is seriously lacking at this point. Of course, supporting all the hardware of vendors that have no interest in Linux is the work of Sisyphus, but on other fronts? This is the first time I’m thinking that Linux is not only a good desktop operating system, but… BETTER than the alternatives!
Escaping the walled garden of Apple has its challenges, but not impossible. I replaced Apple Music with plain old MP3s, bought straight from Bandcamp (it’s also nice to know artists are getting paid a fair share). For backups, a 1TB storage box from Hetzner and rclone allows quick and painless encryption and uploading for just a few euros per month.
Linux has also made me excited about the platform itself, something that Apple has never done. Every day I have the opportunity to learn something about the system I use, like a configuration change, a shortcut, a terminal command, an optimization technique, you name it. What’s even better is that I can apply this knowledge of Linux on my production servers, since they run the exact same thing.
Because I moved to Linux, I knew I’ll probably spend a bit more time in the terminal than I was on a Mac (though contrary to popular belief, using a terminal is not a hard requirement on Linux anymore, since most of the stuff has graphical user interfaces now). This was a good opportunity to reevaluate the software that I used for work, and try a more TUI-based approach: I replaced Sublime with Neovim and lazygit, regular terminal tabs with zellij, lazydocker for Docker management and so on. It takes time to get used to, but when you do, doing things not just becomes faster, but also becomes more fun. Now the day is always better when I boot up my computer and punch in some vim motions on my HHKB.
2025 is the year when “The year of Linux desktop” transformed from a meme into reality, at least for me. Apple, it was a good 9 year run, but I’m not going back.
