This is a topic for talking about operating systems! Whether you’re hopping around Linux distro, hating the new macOS user interface, or exploring WSL on Windows, this is a place to talk about it all. A place to get recommendations, ask questions, share information, complain a little. We’re all using some sort of operating system!
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Lately, and I’m not so thrilled about it, I’ve been using macOS after years of running Fedora Linux (with KDE Plasma). While some days I do use Linux still, I switched back to macOS specifically for some video editing, recording, and image editing software that I really enjoy using and haven’t found suitable replacements for on Linux. Since I was about 16 I’ve switched between macOS, Linux, and Windows, so it’s inevitable I’ll be back on Linux again as my main OS. I upgraded my mac to the latest version and there’s AI everywhere and weird, bad new design. I’m not thrilled. 
I shared in this thread:
This link:
which I think is also worth sharing here, as the recent rise of Omarchy has been confusing and baffling until it’s now become clear it’s a way to fund other open source projects that are aligned with their views. It’s so strange how much air time and money that distro (if it can even be called that) is taking up lately.
I’ve been an Apple guy essentially since Mac OS X first came out in 2001, when I bought a TiBook specifically for that reason. Before that, I’d been really excited about BeOS as a viable Windows competitor for PCs, but of course that fell down and didn’t last.
Last year, I bought a newer (used) Mac mini M2 Pro as my main Mac, and used my Mac mini M1 to install Asahi Fedora Linux (GNOME). That’s been a really fun experience, and I use that environment as much as I use anything else. I actually do all of my dev work in a cloud VPS, so I bounce around between my Mac, Linux box, and iPad Pro (which is my mobile “computer”) frequently.
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Whoa that’s awesome you can run Linux on that m1, I had no idea that was possible. I do think that the modern MacBook keyboards and hardware and speakers are exceptional. I’ve never used anything remotely close. Maybe I’ll try out Asahi!
When I was a teenager, I saved up from my first job to buy a white MacBook and that was a really big deal for me at the time. I loved that computer! I can’t remember why I was so interested in getting a Mac, but I had an iPod and for some reason thought that spending essentially all my savings on a MacBook would be a good idea. 
No regrets though! I like tinkering around with operating systems and hardware, even if I have a lot less time now to do so.
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It’s getting more difficult every day to find a distro of Linux that’s not involved with either AI or some kind of poor behavior by the maintainers, or a key package like hyprland. I’ve seen people sour on KDE over AI contributions. And of course the Linux kernel is not accepting AI contributions. Before long there isn’t going to be much that isn’t tainted in some way and I’m not even sure what distro to use.
I was trying out MainstreamOS the other day but that’s big on hyprland which is now sponsored by DHH and has had drama in its past. Got CachyOS on one computer which has lots of DEs as options and I chose Sway as it had the least stuff pre-loaded and let me configure things myself.
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Yeah, it’s a shame that blindly choosing “Linux” just because it’s obviously more ethical than going Apple or whatever is much less of a slam dunk now than it was just a few years ago. Regardless, I enjoy using tech that isn’t just firehosed out of corporate offices in SV or Redmond.
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I’ve have been curious about Elementary OS (https://elementary.io/), but I haven’t tried it yet. They’ve banned AI contributions (Generative AI Policy | Contributor Guide). Maybe I’ll give Elementary a try soon. I have also been curious about other unix-like operating systems like FreeBSD or Haiku. This topic might get to do some exploring. 
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Whoah, the topic that is giving me nightmares.
Since I just started my company, where I’m trying to do software as ethically as possible, I tried to move from MacOS to Linux. I’ve been using Fedora in the past, but this time decided to give Arch a try (with GNOME). Been daily driving it for months on my PC, mostly for coding, but also for art - photography with darktable & RapidRaw, graphics with Inkscape & GIMP, UI design with Penpot (web based).
I still keep my MacBook M1 Pro around for remote work, mostly when on a road & as a backup device.
I’ve been putting a lot of thoughts lately into switching to Mac with my main business tasks, as I just feel way more stable on Mac. In the end, Linux DEs are community backed, and no one really guarantees that they will work. Mac is… worse - closed as hell, with annoying bugs not resolved for years - but that’s just poor UX, in the end - it will do the job, and the apps will work most of the time, because I pay for that.
Some apps are not present on Linux at all, and that’s sad. Darktable is super complicated, RapidRaw is backed by a one person - I can’t put my clients businesses reliability on one random person in the world.
I still continue donating to open-source community, but I guess I’ll go with lesser evil for a bigger cause of providing my clients with software designed for privacy - even if I do that on Mac, using Canva (without AI features) & other proprietary software.
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Started running BSD back in the late 90s, switched to Linux at some point along the way, and never really looked back at anything else.
These days I run a combination of Qubes, Fedora, Proxmox, and Rocky Linux across a wide variety of hardware. Desktop wise I’ve been using AwesomeWM for as long as it’s been around, and I’ll continue using it until something better comes along, which seems unlikely.
I have to stop myself from laughing every time I see someone using Windows, which even after all this time seems to continue getting worse with every release.
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Re: the new Mac OS update
I wasn’t as turned off by the interface. I prefer a flatter design BUT I’m not a UI/UX guy and am willing to give leeway for trying something trying to go against the grain (provided usability is maintained unlike whatever windows 8 was).
But man the search in the settings not working - like at all - is driving me up a wall. I have Siri and Apple Intelligence turned off the settings. Don’t know where it’s located and you can barely search for it thanks to aforementioned search issues. But if you turn those off there’s no AI anywhere.
I come from gnome on fedora and found gnomes interface to be more unified and better but tbh the hardware quality made me switch. Newer thinkpads are going down the drain and the battery life (especially with Linux) and screens have never been good. There are projects to port Linux so when the EOS comes up I’ll install Linux on it. M series chips are objectively cool IMO and I appreciate the advancement in processor tech to achieve it.
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I’ve been playing with different window managers, file managers and terminals on my mac and linux machines recently.
On mac, I’m a big fan of aerospace wm and on linux, I really like archcraft with the sway window manager.
The lf file manager is on all my machines now. Much nicer than using mac finder or thunar.
For terminals, I’m still using iterm2 on mac, but on linux, I’ve switched to Kitty because it plays nicer with wayland.
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@wotaher I’m curious to learn more about your company (feel free to DM me so we don’t go off topic) - I am looking to document/make a directory of ethical, human-first software businesses. But aside from that, I feel ya, I’ve been on Fedora for almost a decade and Fedora sucks really bad - every time I upgrade, every major release, stuff breaks… I’m so tired of having to fix the OS for hours in order to do my work, so I recently switched to Rocky Linux as it’s a much more stable counterpart since it’s downstream of RHEL… So far it’s been better, but still have had a few issues I’m trying to work out if its my graphics stack, firmware, or the OS itself, but overall much more reliable.
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Right now, I develop on Rocky Linux 9. I currently use CLion, have also used Vim and VSCode before but VSCode annoys me these days. I’m not so sure about where JetBrains is headed, so I may change that but right now I just need to get stuff done. I chose Rocky after a decade of nonsense from Fedora and it’s rushed updates with half-working components causing login issues, audio issues, video issues, networking issues, etc… I’ve probably spent 1,000 hours of time that should have been on my work, instead on trying to fix the OS… It’s absolutely ridiculous to be having to do that in 2026. Buuuut, I generally prefer linux because it’s OSS, I can see what’s going on, and it has less centralized corporate backing than Windows and macOS, much less spyware and forced AI stuff.. And even if a distro does those things, can just switch to one of the many others.
I should also mention that I work on Linux professionally at my main job and am developing Linux systems software on my own as well.
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