Some of y'all need to see this and drop the superiority complex...

13617@lemmy.world to Linux@lemmy.ml – 1164 points –

Image shows a tweet with the header "and people STILL try to convince me Linux and Windows are better when the DATA clearly shows otherwise. SMH" with an image attached showing the following:

"Operating systems by current version" Mac OS: 14 Windows: 11 Linux: 6

202

I use Mint 21. Checkmate.

Nixos is at 23.11 :) Also, rolling releases are kinda fun: the latest commit so far is 46ae0210ce163b3cba6c7da08840c1d63de9c701 which roughly translates to nixos-unstable 403509863565239228514588166489915404446713104129 :D

You could take the revision number. nixos-unstable has 567011 commits currently.

Laughs in Fedora 39

This is a rare case where it matters that Linux is not an operating system.

and to think windows had 2000 years ago...

Well, when you get from 3 to 2000 in only a few years, the vast majority of these versions will be unusable. No wonder they had to drop everything after 11...

This is why I avoid the numbered Windows releases. XP, Vista, ME, or NT for this guy. Accept no substitutes.

Windows CE sitting in the corner

Sorry to be the bearer of bad news but NT was usually called NT 4.0 by those of us who worked with it. You're probably better off skipping it anyways, it was terrible for anything other than file server...ing.

Some of us used Windows NT 3.1, celebrated when 3.5 came out and actually worked, and when 4.0 came out we cringed because Windows NT 3.51 had finally gotten it right and 4.0 looked like it was going to cause problems with its Windows 95 inspired UI.

Turns out Windows NT 4.0 was actually pretty good ( especially on DEC Alpha ).

There is absolutely no doubt though that Windows 2000 Professional is the best product Microsoft ever released. If it ran 64 bit apps, I might still be running it today.

By the way, did you know that the Windows NT Resource Kit shipped with the GNU C compiler?

I never worked with any versions of NT before 4, mainly because I was mainly doing desktop support stuff until I got my MCSE cert. But it did indeed work surprisingly well considering how janky it was.

Win2k was such an improvement it wasn't even funny.

By the way, did you know that the Windows NT Resource Kit shipped with the GNU C compiler?

If I did, I've forgotten it by now. lol

This, but unironically used as a marketing trick:

There was no v1 of Oracle Database, as co-founder Larry Ellison "knew no one would want to buy version 1"

That's why the first Oracle database is v2.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oracle_Database

this is what happened to windows 9, too.

No, the problem with Windows 9 is that a lot of things compared the version with 9* as a catch all for windows 95 and 98, so they were worried with backwards compatibility.

Whatā€™s wrong with 9 though ? Didnā€™t iPhone also skip 9 ?

After the X/XS/XR phones they went to the 11. If the XS was 10 then the X would be 9. It is a bit weird for them to do 8 and 9 at the same time, though.

but the X is a Roman numeral hence why Apple demands that OSX be pronounced as "OS ten"

(I have not heard anyone who is not an Apple employee call it that but it's the official stance, you can look it up)

1 more...

Slackware went from version 4 to 7 for a similar reason. But IIRC its reason was RedHat.

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well, 23 years ago this graph would have had windows 2000 WAY in the lead.

that's how far and fast microsoft has gone backwards since the release of the GOAT windows.

This is why Bioshock Infinite is the best game ever made.

My version is 20240107. Apple has some catching up to do.

Bro, is the apple os from the year 14 šŸ’€šŸ’€šŸ’€(THREE whole skull emojis for added emphasis)

Imagine someone thinking 07012024 would be a better scheme šŸ˜‚

Lowest version number, lowest need for radical change to keep up to date. Golf rules. Linux wins. Somebody get Tux a green jacket.

New versions of software are released because the older version was lacking in some way. Features, security, functionality.

Lowest number wins.

Version numbering scenes are also arbitrary. In the case of Linux, the scheme is ā€œBump up the minor version until itā€™s too big. In that case bump up the major version insteadā€.

Aren't there meme communities where you could put this instead?

It's also a reflection of how much money you will be spending on each ecosystem

The Linux Kernel version is at 6 point something, I think they're working on version 7. That's not the OS though, the current Ubuntu version under LTS is 22.04. That's more than twice as much as Windows.

Note I had to get this information from Wikipedia because Ubuntu's website is currently unusable corporate garbagepuke.

Youā€™re not wrong about their website, but it still only took 2 clicks to get that information. For reference, I canā€™t find it at all on Debianā€™s website without clicking download and looking at the version number in the filename. But you can get that in one click so I suppose theyā€™re doing better.

Edit: Sorry, I was wrong, you can see it under the Microsoft Azure section after one click:

If my guesses are correct, the major version number of Ubuntu marks the release year

Correct; the minor number is also the month. Which is why they're almost always .04 or .10; the LTS version is always released in April, with non-LTS releases that serve a similar purpose to Debian Unstable (newer package base at the possible expense of more bugs) are released in October. They also have a convoluted codename system, as many point release distros do.

Isn't it Mac OS X 14? I.e., Mac OS 10.14?

No they ditched OSX and yearly point updates in 2020 and went from Mac OSX 10.15.7 to MacOS 11.0

The next yearly release was MacOS 12.

It's now up to 14.2.1

Ah thanks for that! You can tell how long it's been since I've used Mac OS.

Do you know why?

Probably just wanted a higher number than windows or didnā€™t want to get leapfrogged. Also makes more sense with iOS having a similar schedule.

Actually yeah

In 2000, Steve Jobs announced Mac OS X as the operating system for the next 20 years. So they kept the version for 20 years and wellā€¦ in 2020 they started to make the yearly updates be major version number updates again (instead of minor version numbers).

Also @dizzy@lemmy.ml

but wouldnt lower numbers mean no one needed to fix & revamp a working OS?

higher numbers mean more fuckups than needed to be fixed until it was so broken there was no longer a way to code you way out, had to start right from the start!

no it just means the OS is abandoned obviously, don't you know that any library with no commits in the last 20 minutes is not worth using /s

It really depends on what versioning means for the project. If we are talking about semantic versioning then a lower number only means there haven't been many breaking changes over time. Or that a lot of broken stuff has been kept that way because it would break compatibility.

Gentoo. I'd tell you the version number, but I'm still compiling.

My phone is on 23. Nextcloud is on 27.

I'm Arch and so is my wife (actually) and it doesn't have a version. We just roll ... and today my dongled, wireless mouse has stopped moving. The buttons still work and my laptop touchpad works fine.

wtf!

They make a pill for that...

non ironically, firefox did a jump in version numbers after firefox 4 because people were seeing the low number compared to other browsers, and would think they were behind technically.

While true & I remember folks actually using this in arguments for ā€˜slow developmentā€™, there is some merit to versioning differently for something expected to get minor updates to perpetually follow latest specs such. I canā€™t imagine trying to discern what a ā€œbreaking changeā€ would be in this context. Or would you make a new version for every visual redesign? Dates might have just made more sense, but maybe ESR is easier to follow with the current scheme.

One of those bigger numbers is better herd instincts

I'm going to invoke Poe's Law and not assume this is sarcasm.

Is that that thing where someone says something wrong to get the right answer explained to them?

No, that's the thing where somebody Googles the result and gets the right answer.

I recall at one point Windows 10 was going to be the last version of the OS and they would just maintain that. I'm wondering if they said that to get the last of the Windows 7 and XP users to finally move to 10?

Windows 11 is kind of technically still just Windows 10 under the hood.

Windows was still DOS under the hood for a long time. Win 98 was Win 95. Win 8 was Win 7. This is nothing new for MS.

That was never the company's official stance. One (non-spokesperson) employee said it once, and people ran with it.

macOS still trying to figure it out with attempt #14

It took Microsoft 98 attempts the first time! Then it took them an entire Millennium. Then 2000 attempts after that. And then after 12 more attempts, they've decided they need to change the keyboard... I'd say #14 ain't too bad.

We don't have a consistent convention as to what changes qualify for a version increment rather than update increment. A new kernel? A new interface convention? New icons for the mini-apps?

Windows 10 has more plug-and-play drivers than Win7 and Win8. It can recognize newer hardware and it can be installed natively from thumb drives. So a lot of features that were third party are now offical... long after I had access to the third-party libraries.

But then it combines the metro and the start menu. I never found a use for the metro.

Win11 is less operability and more DRM and more spyware.

For Apple and Microsoft, a new version is a new marketing season. It's the same as the new iPhone, the new Subaru.

I assume Linux builds increment with significant operability additions, especially if they're not fully backwards compatible. Since they're released without charge the capacity to do more stuff is the only reason to upgrade to a new increment rather than preserving a stable version.

The version number will be incremented when Linus says so. He might even increment it to 7.x tomorrow if he feels like it.

Which only adds bas relief to the point. Linus has no personal or commercial motivation to get people to get the hot new trendy thing. Linux isn't motivated by built-in obsolescence the way Windows and iOS are.

In fact, their higher iteration indicators are a symptom of a disadvantage of the operating system, not an advantage.

If people really get triggered by this bullshit graph, let's add Arch Linux which is on what? >200? >300?

Arch doesnā€™t have a global version

I know but if I remember correctly there is a version tag at boot, 230 or something was the last I've seen.

I think that is the version for the archiso build, and I donā€™t think it should be used as a version for the OS

Wait until they discover that Windows Server 2022 exists. Also, Windows 2000.

who the fuck made this horrible graphic? when will people realize that grossly redundant features that also complicate interpretation (such as trying to make a bar plot 3d) is absolutely one of the worst things you can do.

Isn't this kind of the point of the graph?

When used correctly the point of the graph is to make use of the fact that humans are super fast at visual convolution tasks but not so great at doing mental statistics. If your graph makes the interpretation of complicated statistical facts immediate for the viewer (and as faithful to the facts as possible, whatever that means) then it has achieved its purpose.

I get that, I know what a graph is, but this is clearly meant as a meme, hence the lacking axis descriptions and scale, and the 3d rendering. It's literally just a meme

hmm I thought it was a meme built on top of a real graph

ChromeOS hit version 119 in December. That one is obviously the best.

This community has such a bias against web apps.

I'd say this community has a much larger bias against Google, but that one is pretty justifiable.

Linux just moved out of 5.x.x hell. Well catch up soon

Browsers compared themselves with this metric for a while, but they had to stop before they reached an integer overflow.

14 versions and they still haven't got it right? SMH.

Yeah all I see is 14 huge failures. :)

Linux version 6 is a bit of a stretch though since it's just the kernel. I guess they could have put Ubuntu 23 up there to make it "win"...

Fedora 39 is clearly superior to Ubuntu 23

I guess. I had lots of issues with Fedora in the past so can't recommend it personally but some people like it.

FACTS don't care about your feelings! Study reveals Macos is 2 1/3 times better than Linux, massive 27% improvement over Windows!

Pfff my systemd is version 255.2-2, I am lightyears ahead.

Mac OS is actually at version 23 (they restarted the count at 10).

technically, Darwin, the microkernel, is at 23.2.0, but it was based on the Mach microkernel from NeXTSTEP/OPENSTEP (which is part of why it stared at 10)

the latest release of macOS is 14.2.1

I wasn't trying to get into the weeds about actual kernel version numbers; I was just saying they made classic Mac OS from versions 1-9 and OS X from versions 1-14, and 9 + 14 = 23.

right, but the OS version number is 14.2.1. itā€™s the microkernel thatā€™s 23.2.0

The OS version number is really 10.14.2.1, though.

wrong. Mac OS X ended with Mac OS 10.15 (Catalina) in 2018. macOS Big Sur, macOS 11, was the first in a new generation of macOS that succeeded macOS X and included significant architectural changes to the platform.

the current version is macOS 14.2.1 (Sonoma)

I stand corrected. I gotta be honest: I used to daily-drive OS X up until about a decade ago, but I haven't paid much attention to it since then.

You people be bringing Linux distro versions, which are indeed double digits, but the graph really be showing the Linux kernel version, not the distros. And Linux kernel version is indeed 6.7 at the time of writing this

Lunix sucks so much that it got stuck into the version 2 for years.

This plot is so stupid it's like comparing oranges to chairs. If they wanted to compare Kernels then compare Linux with XNU and Windows NT.

Didn't know XNU and Windows NT are hybrid kernels, interesting.

Popularity =/= quality tho. See: Windows. :^)

Don't worry, the joke is that the graph doesn't have anything to do with popularity, it compares the OSes' respective current versioning numbers šŸ˜‰

I mean current version really doesn't mean anything because people aren't going to upgrade if the version they're using is fine. I submit that this is a perfect example of correlation != causation. I may have gotten the order wrong on the not equal symbology since I haven't used it in a while.

Also, are we talking Linux kernal versions? There are so many problems with this comparison.

Are those just made up numbers by some apple fanboy? How does an OS that's in pretty much everything not have a larger stake?

It's kind of baffling to me how so many people on here don't get the most obvious of joke / satireā€¦

  • Linux desktop provides entertainment, countless hours of trying to get things running properly / a bearably usable operating system to end up with something that may work fine for your workflows unless you've to collaborate with others.

  • Windows provides ROI, get a cheap license and be up and running with all the professional software properly supported, easy to install and seamless collaboration with other professionals. Required daily use to work properly.

  • macOS is a "toaster OS", perfect for your weekend internet surfing activities, all polished, won't nag you much about anything and ready to work even if you don't use the computer for months.

Both macOS and Linux suffer from the same issue when it comes to software, people end up having to virtualize something they require but at least in macOS that's more rare and there's professional software like MS Office and Adobe apps for it :)

"Professional software" yuck. More like proprietary garbage. Also, my grandma uses Linux. It is not hard.

I think what this person is trying to say is that because of the endless customisation options and the not-too-rare lack of support for random things (Gaming Anti-cheat, Support from "industry standard" (vendor lock-in) software that dominates the market because everyone in industry uses them, Nvidia especially on Wayland, etc.). It is true, that with Linux you can end up spending hours on end finding the perfect setup, solving weird little bugs and issues, and distrohopping.

Windows provides ROI

See the free-of-charge Linux distros above. By definition, INFINITE ROI

All the professional software properly supported

I disagree with the wording here. All the "professional" software works because it's made for that system. Blaming Linux for lack of Adobe support is like blaming Windows for not supporting valgrind or zsh. It's up to the program's developers to support it.

Easy to install

True, but in my experience, the Windows installer can be more difficult to use and makes things very unfriendly for people who want to dual boot, when compared to Ubuntu and distros that use the Calamares installer. With these, I get a visual overview of my partitions, making it far easier to visualise my drive and remember what partition to wipe. So the Windows installer is very unfriendly in that regard.

Required daily use to work properly

If you mean updates, that is kinda true. Only kinda because you can use, say CTT's winutil to switch to security updates only, with feature updates delayed by a few months.

MacOS is a "toaster" OS

If you mean the lack of features and the level of lockdown by Apple, then yes, I'd probably agree.

perfect for your weekend surfing activities

And nothing else.

The other stuff below that are pretty much correct.

In short, Linux is a tinkerer's paradise trying to become more easy to use in hopes of gaining marketshare and software support. The issue is that it's a cycle of no support because low marketshare, low marketshare because no users, no users because no software support. Things will get there, to the point where I can see Linux being better than Windows 11 by the time Windows 10 goes EOL (2025). The issue is that Windows 12 is coming with all sorts of AI marketing gimmicks. It's yet unclear how Linux will respond to that.

Windows is the business system. It is a system built from a corporation that bought it off someone else, with that someone else having created a clone of another system (look up Gary Kildall if you don't know what I'm talking about). Over the years, Microsoft has used ruthless business practices (United States vs Microsoft Corp., the Halloween documents, EEE) to build up and maintain expansive market dominance. Then they used that dominance to actively make their product more profitable to them and thus worse for the consumer (ads, forced updates, terrible optimisation, terrible security, terrible system requirements, vendor lock-in, a distinct lack of customisation (they even removed the ability to have the bar at the top!), telemetry that you can't even fully disable, etc.) and it keeps on getting worse with all the AI and cloud PC stuff that's just some bullshit marketing gimmicks used to siphon off more money and data from a consumer that has no choice.

Or do they? Let's look at the last choice, MacOS. What does MacOS have to offer? Nothing really. I mean, it's kind of a middle ground between the two. It's a Unix system meaning the terminal experience is similar to Linux (aka it's actually good) and it has the "professional" apps the OP was talking about, while also having some of the customisability of Linux (from what I've heard, it has a pretty decent tiling window manager called yabai), but also suffering from a distinct lack of power user features or even decent window management features in the default desktop experience that it comes with, which I find quite ironic. It also SUCKS when it comes to Gaming.

And that's without mentioning the vendor lock in where the meh OS is tied to terrible hardware, so to me, it's not even worth it.

There was a very good video on MacOS that I'd recommend:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-KYbHJulEo8

I'll even upvote your comment because you make some good points, but there are other things I must elaborate on. Just for context I use Windows, macOS and Linux in different occasions and I like them all in some way shape or form but I also know that none is perfect.

I disagree with the wording here. All the ā€œprofessionalā€ software works because itā€™s made for that system. Blaming Linux for lack of Adobe support is like blaming Windows for not supporting valgrind or zsh. Itā€™s up to the programā€™s developers to support it.

While I agree with you here and I exaggerated the thing a bit... the lack of Adobe and others is also Linux's fault, not only on those companies. It is really fucking hard to develop and support software for Linux when you've to deal with at least two major half-assed desktop environments (KDE and GNOME) and one of them decides to reinvent the wheel every now breaking APIs with little to no regard for software. To make things worse you'll end up finding out that most of the time people are running KDE + a bunch of GNOME/GTK/libadwaita components creating a Frankenstein of a system because some specific App depends on said components.

Some time ago I did a simple test, installed Photoshop 6.0 (from 2000) and MS Office 2003 on Windows 10 and guess what? Both worked just fine at the first attempt, zero hacks required, zero effort. Linux doesn't offer this.

True, but in my experience, the Windows installer can be more difficult to use and makes things very unfriendly for people who want to dual boot, when compared to Ubuntu and distros

You're citing the advanced special use case where the Windows installer isn't nice. C'mon regular people don't dual boot, they just have an OS and that's is. This also makes me question one thing, why is that Linux users are always so focused on "attacking" the Windows installer and saying their is better because it handles dual boot better? It does, but tell me, how would you know if your system is so perfect? Why would you ever need to dual boot? :)

If you mean updates, that is kinda true. Only kinda because you can use, say CTTā€™s winutil to switch to security updates only, with feature updates delayed by a few months.

I'm not sure if Windows will handle itself correctly even with that. It looks like the thing requires to be powered on everyday or it will eventually fail to boot, be slow, still ask for some kind of update or some other random issue. All the Windows machines I see failing (software wise) are always the ones that aren't daily driven.

Things will get there, to the point where I can see Linux being better than Windows 11 by the time Windows 10 goes EOL (2025).

That's essentially because Microsoft decided to make Windows 11 considerably worse than every other version before it. I don't believe they'll EOL Windows 10 that soon, after all Microsoft will have to support Windows 10 in some way shape or form after 2025 because there will be some stubborn governments and large businesses that will pay for it. They'll make those update available for everyone else because, from a business perspective, it makes much more sense to keep supporting those millions of systems than have their reputation crushed by the amount of security vulnerabilities that will pile up.

The issue is that Windows 12 is coming with all sorts of AI marketing gimmicks. Itā€™s yet unclear how Linux will respond to that.

I hope Linux doesn't react to that at all. But well we don't know what the absurdly funded and inept GNOME team will do. They'll most likely come with some bullshit about how AI is the the way to come up with their messed up view of a DE.

Over the years, Microsoft has used ruthless business practices (United States vs Microsoft Corp., the Halloween documents, EEE) to build up and maintain expansive market dominance.

Oh yeah and they'll continue to do so and somehow that makes them great. Without the amount of ruthless business practices they've been employing Windows would not have the position it has nowadays and we wouldn't have so much productive tools as we do. Even considering the Office case, the format thing is bad but frankly do you think (the community and open-source companies) would've ever be able to build something to complex, solid and feature-rich as MS Office is? Who would've set to finance and develop such a complex spreadsheet software for instance? Mind that LibreOffice doesn't have all the features Excel does and even when it does they sometimes aren't as good. Look at Google's pathetic attempt at spreadsheets, its still a for profit entity with a large interest and ecosystem capable of developing something better than MS but still it even lags behind Libre/OnlyOffice. And this is just the tip of the iceberg, suddenly we're talking about Dynamics NAV and other very complex solutions that all integrate very well with Office.

telemetry that you canā€™t even fully disable

This isn't true. Microsoft, unlike, let's say Apple, has all the spyware very well documented here and it can be disabled. In fact Microsoft has to have those things documented and toggles in place to disable them because they've a lot of costumers (some govt agencies) that wouldn't be able to use Windows without disabling those things.

What does MacOS have to offer? Nothing really. I mean, itā€™s kind of a middle ground between the two. Itā€™s a Unix system meaning the terminal experience is similar to Linux (aka itā€™s actually good) and it has the ā€œprofessionalā€ apps the OP was talking about

Yes, that's a very good description of macOS. That's why I called it the "toaster OS" and is good for your weekend surfing but still has a better position on the market because there's "professional" software for it. Too bad you can't disable the spyware.

but also suffering from a distinct lack of power user features or even decent window management features in the default desktop experience that it comes with

You should try macOS for a month or so, because their DE is way better than GNOME.

At least Apple isn't delusional about desktop icons, doesn't force people into the activities view and provides toggles to manage the DE. If the GNOME team decided to just do a pixel-perfect copy of macOS and removed most of the customization, 3rd party themes / all the crap that makes GNOME unusable and focused on making it properly then KDE would've already faded away and we had the chance to have a single, solid and stable Linux DE for the masses.

All the current themes, versions and tweaks of GNOME are inconsistent bring a very poor experience and thing every looks good. Here's a good example, both macOS and Windows have the ability to run containerized desktop applications but it is only on Linux that you launch an App and suddenly it doesn't respect your theme and goes back to some basic thing because it runs on flatpak and there's some bullshit about it. Or... your password management can't communicate with the browser... Or there's some incompatibility between the GKT version the app uses and something else on the system.

There was a very good video on MacOS that Iā€™d recommend: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-KYbHJulEo8

And btw, this video is bullsht. The guy goes to review macOS in 2023 and instead of using the latest version of the system, macOS 14, goes for macOS 11 that isn't even supported anymore. This is the same as taking Windows 7 or Mandriva Linux reviewing it and saying "FEELS OLD". lol

Well, I upvoted your response as well because there's a lot I agree with.

However:

You've to deal with two major half-assed desktop environments

Simple. Ignore them Both!!!! Why should they follow the same UI and design guidelines as either of them or work to be well-integrated with either? Last I checked, OnlyOffice and Chromium both are not following either of them. Just do your own thing and that's fine. Last time I used Adobe products, their UI wasn't like Windows 10 OR Windows 11. It was a different vibe entirely.

Outside of UI elements, that's what universal packaging formats like Flatpak with Portals are trying to address. The application lives in its own container/sandbox and doesn't give a fuck about your DE or any of that.

Both worked just fine

Yeah, I'm 99% sure that would not happen on Linux. As in, both these specific pieces of software working just fine, but also ancient software that "just works" on modern systems. Unless of course, we're talking about universal packages that will probably still work 10, 20, or 30 years down the line.

Why would you ever need to dual boot? :)

Because it sure as hell ain't perfect. I wish it was, but it is not there and I'm not sure when it will be (if ever). There is some software that is Windows only and there are no alternatives for it. An example I personally deal with is AutoHotKey. A game I play practically requires Macroing at a certain level and THE macro made for it is written in AHK and is so advanced that it will likely never be ported to anything else. I even experimented with creating a proof-of-concept to see if it can be done in Python with Pyautogui and image detection didn't work. Pixel detection did but it was just too goddamn slow. But I digress.

I'm not sure Windows will handle itself correctly even with that

It usually does for me.

That's because Microsoft decided to make Windows 11 significantly worse.

They did, but that's not the only reason Linux will be better than Windows. Linux already beats Windows in some areas (Resource usage, Telemetry or lack thereof, CLI experience) even though most users don't care about any of these.

I hope Linux doesn't react to that at all.

So do I.

the absurdly funded and inept Gnome team... their messed up view of a DE

Please forgive me for not checking the link before responding, but I already agree with the statements you make about GNOME. Maybe I'll check the link out for fun after I write this.

I completely agree with the points you made about Office.

This isn't true. Microsoft has all the spyware very well documented

Wow. That's new. I genuinely didn't know that. I'll have to keep that in mind.

You should try MacOS for a month or so because their DE is better than GNOME.

The second part isn't surprising. The first part is something I will consider. I tried using QEMU with those scripts that make it easy to set up MacOS inside QEMU but it was still just too slow so I never touched it again. I'm too broke to afford Apple Hardware and don't have spare cash even for preowned stuff. I'll check if my university's CS dept (where I'm studying) has any Mac machines I can try out.

On the short rant about GNOME, I pretty much agree. And going back to a previous point you made: both DEs suck in their own ways.

On containerized apps, they are still pretty new. I'm hoping they become good, but the idea of a Single DE for Linux is not something I ever expect to happen. Maybe if the distros get their shit together and realise GNOME sucks and then start financially supporting KDE instead so that Plasma finally irons out the bugs and UX issues to become the dominant DE (because let me tell you: KDE is poor, and they shouldn't be if they ever want Plasma to become the major DE and finally rid us of GNOME).

This video is bullshit

I apologise. I'm not familiar with MacOS, the video is old, and I haven't watched it in ages, I just so happened to remember about it when writing my response.

Linux already beats Windows in some areas (Resource usage, Telemetry or lack thereof, CLI experience) even though most users donā€™t care about any of these.

Microsoft did a good job with Windows Terminal and WSL, one of the reasons I use less macOS today is precisely that. I would love to run full Linux and I've given it a few attempts but then when there's no (real) MS Office, Adobe etc. things go downhill. To be fair if one has to virtualize to get stuff done I would rather be on macOS, at least I would have less to virtualize.

I tried using QEMU with those scripts that make it easy to set up MacOS inside QEMU but it was still just too slow

Yeah that's a common issue with virtualizing macOS. Even on VMWare it can be painful, the issue isn't lack of resources it's a 3D acceleration / GPU thing. macOS has limited support for GPUs as well know and with Apple "ARM" CPUs things will get even worse, so what happen is that the drivers and virtualization solutions can't provide anything compatible to the OS that will render 3D graphics at a recent framerate and with Metal support.

If you don't want to run macOS and have the time / access to hardware / interest / money an hackintosh is an interesting solution. My latest attempt on that was a HP EliteDesk 800 G6 Mini that I was able to get second hand for 300ā‚¬. Intel Core i5-10500T / 16 GB RAM / 256GB NVME.

That machine runs macOS very well, mostly because the CPU is supported out of the box by macOS and the iGPU was also the same of some other intel CPU included on some real mac. The trick with hackintosh is making sure your CPU and GPU are supported by the system natively otherwise it will be painful and never work properly.

Obviously not the fastest Mac out there but for web surfing in general, editing documents and some light coding it will get the job done. I got everything working including sleep/wake, filevault, iservices, dual display, 4k output and internal speakers on the first attempt without much effort and I can share the config with you or someone with this machine that comes across this post.