Surprising to myself, I have been a Linux user for over 12 years…
Through the many years I have bounced between and tried Ubuntu, Debian, Fedora, openSUSE, Arch, Parrot OS, Linux Mint, Manjaro. I have tried Gnome, Cinnamon, XFCE, KDE, Mate, Deepin. And more. I have 3 computers, all using a Linux distro right now.
I love the idea of Linux - free, free as in freedom, free of telemetry. And well, I thought I would never entertain the idea of switching, here I am today, strongly considering Mac OS.
Lately, I have become extremely frustrated and tired of dealing with little bugs, crashes, versions, and dependencies. Not to mention notable UI issues. It is starting to hamper my productivity when working.
Right now I am using Ubuntu and I cannot drag and drop into VS Code from Nautilus, I can’t drag and drop from the default archive manager, I am experiencing screen tearing issues, one piece of software I use crashes often but not Debian and vice versa, I have to manually reset screen brightness when it dims after timeout, etc. I have experienced issues of similar nature across all distros I have used and I am becoming burnt out.
I think part of the issue is that there is a huge variety of Linux distros, different combinations of kernels, desktop environments, window managers, package managers, file managers, network managers, etc… Not to mention devices. There is too many variables, and too many projects to maintain.
Sorry for the rant, I have seen many similar posts, but I have been using Linux for over 12 years, powering through, ignoring and working around these issues and I am pretty fed up.
While I am conflicted, I am thinking Mac OS looks like a good middle ground.
Any suggestions? What has been the most stable distro and compatible for you?
Firstly, I think if you want to try switching to macOS, do, it might suite you better. You could always switch back to Linux if you change your mind, but be aware linux typically runs worse on apple hardware. I would say I’ve read and heard people have plenty of problems on macOS too, so the grass might not be as green as it first appears. MacOS does have one thing going for it, which is integration between hardware and software, apple make both. You can get a similar effect by picking specific hardware in linux, it’s less important, linux runs well on most hardware, but if you for example pick a thinkpad, you’ll probably have a better experience on the whole as lots of linux kernel developers use them.
It could be worth trying to ask in a community forum or IRC about each bug specifically and try to fix them, or you could switch distributions and see if a different distribution runs better for you, although Ubuntu is pretty well used and I think I’ve heard they tend to ship recent kernels.
I don’t think the variety is effecting this too much, generally someone working on some tiling window manager isn’t impacting a user who’s using a vanilla-ish ubuntu install, it only really impacts the folk using it and if you’re using Ubuntu you’re using a well defined, well tested set of software. Yes maybe the variety of package management might be effecting you if you’re using some esoteric package management system, but ubuntu uses apt and to an increasing degree snap, so I suspect that isn’t playing a big role in your problems.