ProgrammerHumor
convergingIssues
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Not pictured: BSD, tucked behind Linux, insisting he's not Linux.
I wish Windows could have just used some Unix like operating system like mac does.
Instead we got WSL, by the power of Microsoft's mighty shoehorns.
I did run a WinXP executable on my Win11 PC the other day though (just vanilla Compatibility Mode). That is pretty awesome
I ran a xp era game on proton on Linux. That game does not work on windows via any compatibility mode anymore. That's also pretty awesome.
I am sure DOZENS of people find that really offensive
You could say the exact same thing about MacOS
MacOS is BSD.
While BSD and Linux has some striking similarities, the nuances becomes quite clear once you actually try to get anything done on BSD.
BSD is pictured, it's just labeled as Mac OS.
What year is it?
The year of Linux desktop
Next year. This year we need to solve all Wayland issues. But next year it is.
Next year we're rewriting all C/C++ code in Rust. Can we try 2027?
Linux desktop will become useful the same year when Ferrari will win the championship
lec ham linux 2026
Nah we pretty much solved all the big issues. The next big things will be proper HDR support and a better Nvidia driver experience. Those features could help people migrate further. A lot of people are hooked already, but just too anxious to switch since they rely on the device.
There's never been more truth to this joke.
Is it 2038 already?
Year of Linux handheld more like. Anbernic is thriving, the legion go s just released, and the orange pi neo is soon tm
Again?
2001? (well, at least for me)
More like 1996-2025, as of 2025
No new meme under the Sun.
i’m not sure who is at fault here, but the fact that windows uses control and mac uses (functionally) the alt key as the main command modifier is the most infuriating thing on the planet
Mac uses the CMD (command) key for modifier actions. Anything that’s normally ctrl+key, is cmd+key. And somehow mac’s still have a ctrl key
I love my macbook, but the command key has always been a little weird to me. It’s like a toned down windows key but also doubles as ctrl key, while the actual ctrl key goes unused for most actions.
What's the purpose of the ctrl key then?
Interruptions in terminal lol
also emacs bindings. Ctrl a to go to start of line, Ctrl e for end. Works almost everywhere
Woah TIL. Thanks!
Right. Because the Control key existing ages before Windows or MacOS even existed. Though IBM in its infinite lack of wisdom moved it to an inconvenient location on the keyboard. So I always rebind CapsLock to be Control, as the computer gods intended.
(this rebinding of would freak out my boss at one job such that he stopped trying to use my computer, which was an added win)
This is the way.
unironically that's really useful when copying stuff from terminal because I know I won't accidentally kill anything with CTRL + C
Honestly? Ctrl+c to stop a process in terminal might be the only time I've ever touched that button on a mac.
That's the one nice thing about having the copy/paste on a different button than control.
I ingrained ctrl+shift+v so hard though that now I’m on a Mac for work and I do that by default so sometimes there’s no winning
As others have mentioned to kill a terminal process and i also use ctrl+space to switch keyboard layouts
modifier for some shortcuts
same with the "options" key which also change some menu options when viewing something like a right click menu etc (its kinda weird tbh, that they just dont show all options in a right click menu, to begin with)
There is thought behind it, for better or worse. From what I understood (with the caveat that I wasn’t born back then) UNIX used control in ways you wouldn’t want an OS to. Easiest example of the positive consequences of this is probably how in a macOS terminal window you can copy/paste things perfectly well with command, whereas control+C, control+U, and control+X are all very useful shortcuts that don’t get weird with more modern system shortcuts.
Otherwise I thiiiink the typical alt key is what is called the option key on macOS, which having read through the Wikipedia page for alt and alt gr (which, in a really annoying way to all non-American keyboard users is not simply a right alt) works differently. I’m sure there are arguments for both being useful, probably matter of taste, like most things.
But unlike on windows, you can remap all the modifiers it in the settings and it takes 10 seconds to do
MacOS is the only terminal where copy paste doesn't require memorizing random different keys.
This little quirks between different terminals on non Mac platforms drive me up the wall daily.
Personally I find using the command key on a mac way more ergonomic than the ctrl key on windows. I've remapped my windows system to swap ctrl and alt. If I've got my pinky on asdf (where I've usually got it), I've got to turn my whole hand to reach my left pinky down to ctrl. To hit command (or alt on windows) I just shift my thumb from the spacebar.
Emacs relies heavily on control and alt bindings so much that RSI in the pinky was often referred to as "Emacs pinky" for programmers.
It's a horrible reach lol.
On a standard keyboard I like remapping caps lock to act as escape on tap or control on hold. Make use of a prime real estate key.
If you're brave you can also explore home row mods, where alt ctrl command and shift are on your home row keys for each hand if you hold the key instead of tap.
And then ergo keyboards give you a lot more thumb buttons to work with too if you're not bound to a conventional one.
Once I switched to a Mac style keyboard (or binding on windows) all of my problems were solved. I’d consider a more ergonomic keyboard with other keys for better access to functions, but I’m too used to a standard layout. The closest I’ll go is my kinesis split keyboard.
I miss the MacOS version of Emacs that supported all the common Command key stuff. The Windows based "Windows" key is just bad, all around. Not as useful as Command key by far.
Don't remind me... I (a windows user since) have to start developing on Mac next month.
It will be so hard to get working with the new keyboard...
The worst is going back and forth constantly and never quite feeling like you can get fluent in the mac paradigm
Having to think about every keyboard action slows you down soooooo much.
My workaround was to ssh to the mac from my windows machine, since VSCode has great support for working that way, but it probably would have been stopped if they'd realized I was doing it.
It took a few years of whining before I could get IT to concede they didn't really have any reason for forcing all developers to use a mac except that's what they'd always done and approved a windows laptop
Not that hard, I have been using a 2017 MacBook Pro for about a year now and it became my second nature. MacOS itself has the weirdest shortcuts though. I use JetBrains IDEs, so my transition was kinda easy
The shortcuts on mac took getting used to for me, but (and maybe I was just using my pc wrong) my goodness do I prefer how much easier they are on mac, even just with simple things like non-standard latin alphabet characters
I highly recommend learning cmd instead of ctrl, it’s vastly more ergonomic, as someone who had to do the switch years ago.
That said, if you want complete control over your key mappings, look into Karabiner Elements, it’s an open source project that lets you map whatever you like.
I personally have caps-lock as an additional modifier key, allowing ijkl to be arrow keys, for example.
lol and then you got it wrong
Skill issue
This. I'd have granted the nothing works take 10-15 years ago, but of late I've spent more time fighting Windows headaches than Linux ones. If a component sucks on Linux you can at least just swap that out (or find a distro that already has).
Not saying that you're wrong but its the opposite for me.
I tried Linux Mint XFCE a few years ago (2022) and I hated playing roulette with lightdm on whether it will work or not. It was 50/50. Legit couldn't log in because I'd get login loops unless I add my user to the xauthority file.
Tried linux mint xfce again back in April this year and I experienced a login loop the first reboot after installing linux was complete 💀
I did try MX Linux Albeit in a virtual machine and its good.
Why didnt you try ubuntu? The vmware display driver is enough to kill a Victorian adult with the flashes it gives on the lock screen before you switch from x11 or whatever other option works.
The biggest problem I had with windows in the past 2 years is that Rufus had set up a password expiry policy so I had to change my login password after 42 days, twice before going to computer management, users and turning on "password never expires" option.
FWIW, my experience with XFCE has been poor and a lot closer to this meme. Gnome has been great. KDE also pretty good but not quite as slick and more weird defaults. Personally I've got straight Debian with the Proxmox kernel for my daily driver and a seperate Bazzite install for gaming/media.
One thing about the open source crowd, none of them are going to spend their time making proprietary stuff easy to use, and companies that are going to do that expect to be paid for the service, so especially for personal use the incentives point pretty strongly towards all FOSS.
graphics issues still suck, but it's getting closer
Nvidia is making a conscious effort to suck less shit. Wayland does some really nice things.
if you ever wanna give it another spin I'd say try either pop_os or straight Debian with plasma if you're running AMD
but yeah it's not surprising to me that you ended up off the mainstream path due to graphics hell..
NVidia has been getting a lot better on desktop (though the removal of power management from their newer drivers is something I'm still salty about, grr, gimme my easy overclocks back green people), but they're still a bit of a nightmare on laptops with hybrid graphics. The only way I could fully turn off the NVidia card in my laptop to reduce power usage when I'm not plugged in was to disable it in the BIOS.* Hoped to make the turning off automated with an AHCI hook like I did with reducing the CPU max frequency (sysfs writes let you do some funky stuff), but no such luck, apparently.
* Disabling the respective kernel modules does not work because NVidia's nvidia-modprobe ignores any and all kernel module blacklists and loads them back in once a graphics call to the card is made, and I can't remove nvidia-modprobe otherwise the card doesn't get used even when I want it to be. Tried building my own modified version of nvidia-modprobe that'd respect blacklists (NVidia put the source on GitHub, which is nice), but that didn't work either for some unknown reason.
Why do you need a login manager at all. Just boot to TTY. In fact realistically you can just boot straight in to your environment. Your likely not running multiple users anyway.
You also made the classic Linux noob trap, which is when you encounter a problem, instead of swapping out the component, you yeet your entire system and start over, which means that your creating a new set of problems to solve, instead of working through and refining the system you already have.
You also made the classic Linux noob trap, which is when you encounter a problem, instead of swapping out the component, you yeet your entire system and start over
This was what I did for way too long. I don't know why it feels like the right choice when you're starting out. Finally broke it though!
Swapping out individual components requires quite a high degree of familiarity with what that component actually does, lest you break something even more. A newbie won't have that familiarity yet, hence why installing something else entirely (be it a different distro, or even just Windows) is the go-to option.
Linux is definitely much more user-friendly now than it used to be even just 10 years ago, but the ability to do this sort of tinkering is far too much to expect from the average user.
Sneaky, but good choice haha
Yep. Same here, Every time i've tried switching over to linux (mint, zorinOS ubuntu, lubuntu, xubuntu, SteamOS and some more i forgot the names of) I've been extremely disappointed by how much tinkering it needs to make it do what i want, if what i want is slightly more exotic. It's like it's actively fighting me every step of the way.
I can live with windows 11. Heck I can even find enjoyment in using with Windows 98 SE. Linux is just work though.
It’s the things we take for granted from other OS’s (mostly Windows).
I tried “re-experiencing” modern desktop Linux 2-3 years ago after getting fed up with WSL2 quirks.
My last try to daily drive Linux was probably a decade ago, and failed a few weeks in, so I was definitely optimistic as to all the new Linux improvements/modernizations I’ll be seeing this time around.
Used to be a Ubuntu fan so I installed the latest version of that.
My WHO setup is laptop + 32” 2K + 27” FHD.
Getting those monitor’s DPI and resolution setup on Ubuntu was several levels of fucked. Left me traumatized, and I’m pretty sure it was later that week that I ordered my first ever MacBook.
Ubuntu
found the problem
Windows has really turned to hot garbage. Even using enterprise Microsoft tools has me wanting to change to 3rd party options for mdm. Intune works better for Mac than windows at this point.
It's not like the admin tools were ever pleasant to use but they were at least consistently rough around the edges. Live service Windows has been a disaster; them throwing barely tested patches out the door several times a day is a support nightmare. At least in Azure you get reports about what they broke and you can quickly close out tickets once you know it was an MS issue - nothing nearly so helpful with Windows or Office.
If a component sucks on Linux you can at least just swap that out (or find a distro that already has).
This. I was having an issue with KDE's screen locker the other day, so I just replaced it with i3lock. If the same thing happened to me on Windows, I would... install Linux.
Linux is much better, but you're still definitely going to have random issues you can only fix via some obscure cli tool only a random forum post form 2011 talks about. (If you're lucky, I once had to write a custom systemd service and script to disable my laptop's touchscreen. Which wasn't too bad, except it was like the 15th thing I tried, because writing a custom service for that seems stupid.)
Meanwhile I switched from Windows to Mint and my touchscreen stopped working.
I run a corporate environment of 60 linux pcs for a manufacturing assembler.
The touch screen aspect of linux makes me want to curb stomp a kitten. What linux does poorly, it does infuriatingly so.
Linux is mostly: The system broke either because of your actions or your inactions, either way, the system warned you and you decided to proceed....
Well, except for sound, that is always problematic.
Pipewire is pretty much set it and forget it for sound nowadays
Unless your trying to work with DAWs then things are problematic
A good user interface meets the user where they are within reason. The average user shouldn’t need to jump through hoops to make an OS reasonably useful.
idk, this days almost everything works out of box
People have been saying that since forever.
More and more things are working out of the box, so it's reaching the threshold of "good enough" for more and more people.
I'm saying it from my experience. Depends on distro of course, but I personally had almost no problems with fedora (and that distro is not considered beginner friendly)
Linux is user friendly. It's just very picky about who its friends are.
Ubuntu just works out of the box for me. No hoops.
I had three different Ubuntu machines throughout my career. First two did work out of the box, but on the newest one Nvidia drivers are fucked and external displays keep randomly disconnecting. It's just luck of the draw.
It works for a some, but not all. It’s probably one of the more user friendly Linux distributions out there. It’s quite nice and I like it.
The terminal also has a good user interface. If you have brains, you can run anything and on anything.
It should have. It has a different target audience than the rest of the OS though.
What does "average user" mean in context anyway? What stuff do they need for OS to be "useful" to them?
Browse the web
If you tack “without extra effort” to all three, then it starts to make sense (except maybe for Windows). And even for Linux: you can get Zorin or Mint and essentially everything works out of the box no worse than the other two.
For me the issue with Linux is always getting commercial software to work, because a lot of it isn't released for Linux or open source and once you start wine-ing you start to rapidly approach "more effort than dual boot".
At work were on macos because of that - at least it's posix and the big software companies tend to support it. But it drives me mad that I needed third party software to get 800dpi no mouse accel and that my "pro" device only supports one external monitor etc.
This is, as always, a valid point in this discussion. And the problem is it’s pretty much insurmountable for Linux: Photoshop, for instance, is the graphic design industry standard, but if Adobe won’t release its source code or build it for Linux, then that’s all there is to it—Linux users aren’t getting it (except via Wine, etc.). It’s a shame the flagship of open source software is still to some extend beholden to closed-sourced corporate interests.
All it would take is for someone to spend millions of hours making an alternative, billions marketing it, then giving it away for free.
Edit: And billions to Adobe for licences so your software is compatible with theirs.
Yeah, and it's really hard to justify migration to open source in a professional setting. Be it Photoshop & lightroom, autocad / catia / solid edge or matlab, loads of industries have a deal breaker. And for people who like to play video games... Well used to be that league could run under wine, but not anymore - with the industry trend towards more and more intrusive monitoring it seems like fewer rather than more games (at least in that category) run under Linux.
I kinda hate it tbh. I would love to use Linux more again. But until people manage to build lightroom and autocad alternatives that are actually (close to) as good I can't really switch. And on my personal pc I'd always have to have a dual boot for games, can't even risk kvm anymore because of threats of account bans.
Depends on your profession I guess. As a software developer I have all that I need working under Linux.
Gaming on Linux has never been easier, with Proton configuring Wine automatically and the Steam Deck making the devs take notice of Linux related issues. Sure a few multiplayer games have Linux-incompatible monitoring/anti-piracy/anti-cheat stuff but they are the exception rather than the norm.
Why did you bring up a candidate in the 2025 race for the mayor of the city of New York?
In macs case it's "without extra money" Mac will do just about everything the way you want you just have to pay for an app. Except window management, I don't think there is any salvaging that.
I honestly don't understand why people are die hard over an OS. Use whatever OS works with your hardware and can run the software you need. All 3 can do 99% of what most users want because it can open a browser.
Use Arch linux for a few days and you'll be die hard too
Plus it has the power to restore your virginity, and you can ward off social interaction with the divine rune (laptop sticker).
yeah, but people on subreddits like this are not the 99% of people who only want a working browser
No, people on subreddits like this are mostly one math course away from dropping their CS major.
Because I support good consumer friendly business practices and want to encourage others to support those practices too so they become more profitable than predatory consumer practices, and hopefully the stuff thats not available through consumer friendly means become available by those means when companies see it as profitable.
I am die hard over Linux because when something breaks, I can quite literally go read the code, and know EXACTLY what is happening. There is literally no problem I can't solve, given enough motivation/time.
I live in a free and open world where EVERY single thing I do on my computer is traceable, and transparent.
I have NO IDEA what is happening in the black box of Microsoft/Apple.
Why would I choose a system that intentionally kneecapped me from managing my system, GUARANTEED is transmitting personal private information to remote servers, and cost money to boot?
Edit:
Op says "I don't understand.", I provide my experience, and why I make the choices I do.
Reddit thinks this is controversial... never change Reddit. Never change.
Linux is only free if you don't value your time
Or you can lose time and money on Windows :D
I know it depends on the user but Windows gave me so many headaches over the years lol
[removed]
Ok, you described windows. What about other two? /s
Honestly true for me. Personally, I think windows is a bit of a hot mess of a joke. Then there is one that just works (Mac) and one that you can find out why it don’t work and you can tinker with it until it works (Linux). But that is just for me
Windows is a fine example of too big a userbase to fail. It works, but in a way that supports the horrific legacy decisions they made 2+ decades ago in Windows NT because some megacorp still insists their Powershell script needs backwards compatibility.
Mac generally just works, but very occasionally they imagined it should work very differently than you want it to. And since Apple knows best, it's very hard to make it work differently unless you get deep into the CLI and/or writing your own code, your own scripts or whatever.
Linux works in that "well, if I google enough on the forums I can make this work and then it's pretty reliable" way. Like I literally just installed CachyOS on a Surface Pro and it used wifi to install it. And then I booted it and it had no wifi because that wifi driver wasn't installed by default? But yes, I did some googling and an hour later all was fine.
Solutions I've been given for running FL Studio on Linux:
- Disembowel the program (install Wine)
- Use Windows (Dualboot Linux and Windows)
- Use Windows (in a fucking virtual machine)
- Don't
I would love to use Linux if it didn't prevent me from doing the thing I love to do most
I mean if Windows VSTs run just fine through yabridge (wine wrapper for VSTs), I don't know why FL Studio wouldn't.
What do you have against Wine/Proton? It's a re-implementation of the Win32 API that just straightforwardly lets Windows apps run, and does not involve modifications of the program or it's innards.
I don't think it allows for ASIO passthrough, which is essential for music recording and mixing / mastering, for example. I am not 100% sure about that though, I was researching this quite a while ago.
Ah, that'd make some sense. Device driver type stuff is way further behind if supported at all. Game support seems like the main driving use case.
I think "Nothing works the first time" is more appropriate for Linux.
Everything works eventually. You just have to put in the work. And once it does... *chef's kiss*
I honestly don't believe I've ever hit a problem in Linux that didn't have a 100% understandable cause and solution once you dig in. It's just, sometimes when you discover what the solution is, you choose not to do it! But, its literally entirely open to you. How deep are you willing to go?
“Just works” is dependent on your hardware first and foremost, and then your software and devices next.
If you buy hardware that’s supported and you are willing to use Linux software it 100% just works. It’s when you have to find work arounds for weird hard/software where the waters get muddy.
anyone thinking that in Linux "nothing works" really never used it. I've been using it as my only OS for over 20 years now, it not only works but works well.
The more accurate criticism is lack of native support. There's a lot of production software that simply won't cater to Linux users.
It's a fine criticism, but becoming less and less relevant as time goes on.
I mean, on my desktop, I basically use just one of Firefox, Steam, VSCode, Terminal for 99% of the things I do on my computer.
The big thing for me is the Abode suite, which I despise the price, but no other software can beat the functionality. I've had some of it working on Wine in the past, but it's just not the same.
cool, but that's vwry far from "nothing works".
The even more accurate criticism is windows users don’t like Linux because it’s not windows. They are not looking for Linux, they’re looking for not-windows but full compatibility with windows software and workflow.
The Linux subs are filled with windows 10 refugees constantly posting things like:
“What? Linux can’t even open my .exes?”
“Package manager? I want to click through a million convoluted and redundant menus to change settings!”
“I have a brand new printer that only works with proprietary drivers for windows, why doesn’t it work on Linux?”
“Why can’t Linux devs just reverse engineer every piece of software that exists for free so I can use X”
“Linux sucks!”
Nothing works. That's why you need a super computer for it. The top 500 supercomputers run Linux. That's how inefficient it is as an operating system. You need a supercomputer and a team of engineers to run it.
triggered
My webcam doesn't work (MIPI IPU6), sleep with 5g modem doesn't work (it must be disabled in BIOS), power management is far from the Ideal, ...
Finally drank the kool aid with macOS and stopped fighting it. Favorite OS by far now. Performant, lots of support, and just works 99% of the time. Just gotta sell your soul to John Apple.
People still got hate-boners about Apple, but Jesus Christ is the user experience light years ahead of Windows (or Android for that matter.) You’re right though, you have to sell your soul to get all the seamless benefits. At this point I just buy the newest used Apple _______ that I can afford at the time, even if it’s 5+ years old. The hardware is unparalleled and just keeps going and going, with few exceptions. And the software pretty much does its thing and I never worry about it after setting things up to my preferences. I have to use Windows at work and while I grew up with it and am proficient in it, there’s always some weird bullshit to deal with. Always. Everything feels janky AF after getting used to Apple.
Also, his name is Tim Apple. Thank you for your attention to this matter.
I just wish game and software companies would actually release their damn product on Mac every now and then.
Light years ahead? Lol. Apple has by far the worst UX. I'm a senior dev, been using a Mac M1 for three years now, before that had a Intel based Mac with Windows installed, very recently downgraded to M2 16 GB, I have a 15 pro too. My primary phone is a cheap Android and personal laptop is Windows. I work 10 hours per day on Linux using Mac. I am a Mac/ios dev too and hence, using their developer betas of ios 26 and Mac os 26.
I use both of these daily. Both in phones and Laptops, and although Mac is frustrating but still manageable by getting a 3rd party app for each and every thing, ios on the other hand is the worst os, ages behind Android for UX. My 15pro is worse in almost every single thing than my cheap Android (except Camera which is not a clear winner either, hit or miss 5/10 times, and processor for cost reasons). Every app, every single one, every feature of iPhone is at least 3-4 years old in terms of UI & UX. It's been more than 1.5 years I got this phone and I still have no use to this, it feels downgrade in every single daily utility of a phone.
When you say, it has the best UX, it is for people who do nothing with their laptops of phones except browsing internet or scrolling reels. Which is the majority I know, but that doesn't mean it's best.
Been using Windows for at least 2 decades, yet to feel the same mess I feel in Mac OS. Most apps of Mac/ios have bugs, and not just with the beta version, most of their new software have shitty QC, too many bugs, if A works, B stops.
I can agree it is easier to use, but UX? It's shit. For me, the best laptop would be an Apple silicon Mac with Windows. You can't change my view, which is based on my personal developer experience.
Which is why I use all three of them.
Now, nothing works but when they do, they never works well in a way I want it.
Why’s everyone so salty here. Use what you like and chill.
No, we have to shit talk other OSes! Otherwise, how will my completely subjective opinion based on my own user experience and adeptness with a particular OS for my own particular use case tower above others?
I have to feel superior!
Honestly, anyone who uses a prebuilt OS is a normie casual. I'm personally building my own OS by reflecting moonlight onto magnetic tape storage, all powered by 13 feral hamsters putting out a whopping 50,000 picowatts. I've been using it to calculate digits of Pi, and I'm going to find the first digit in a few years.
Interesting. I only tried 11 rabid mice, but I began to have issues starting up. I don't know if it was the literal bug in the code in the storage medium or the power inconsistencies when a cat walked by but was having issues POSTing.
I've been online since the early 90s and people are still going on about it. Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux are all mature OSes that can do basically whatever you want them to do without much issue. They're all fine.
Skills issue, all around.
« Nothing works »
=> literally hosts the entire internet
Linux as a server side, exclusively command line operating system and Linux as a daily driver gui based desktop operating system are not the same thing
Hyprland has been one of the best gui experiences so far for me cuz you can implement tons of rules and hotkeys to conform exactly how you want it to be
Windows: Designed to benefit microsoft
MacOS: Designed to benefit apple
Linux: Designed to benefit YOU.
linux works great till u have a problem
Linux just means it's really annoying when it doesn't work. But its always a nice excuse for not getting anything else done.
Unless of course you ask the clueless intern to magically get a piece of software that's been abandoned for half a decade already to somehow work on a distro it wasn't designed for with barely any documentation to work off of. So you can then integrate it with a half baked chunk of code written by another intern with even less documentation, because you're too cheap to just buy something that actually fucking works.
Yes I'm still salty about it.
lol what isn't working for you people? At least on Mac (and to some extent Linux distros like Ubuntu / Mint). I dev on Mac professionally and I'm rarely unhappy or surprised by how things work. Outside some of the quirks other mentioned (CMD vs. CTRL) it is a really great platform to dev on.
I think macos should be "everything works almost how you want it not to work"
If my dad can play and work on linux just fine yall should be ashamed
I came here to say precisely this. I could understand this from regular citizens, and I often do, it can be daunting, but from programmers???
I hate having to choose between my software working and not having to meddle with my OS, and freedom with no bloat. (Or I can use macos where nothing works and I can't change anything, but at least I can send photos from my iphone easily)
And in the center is GNU Herd: "nothing."
As a former Embedded Linux/RTOS C dev who somehow ended up developing pretty much exclusively backend systems on Windows and occasionally some C# based embedded apps.....
C#/.NET is lovely. It's a wonderful development experience. It's so much easier! I get so much more done with so much less work lol
And in the center is TempleOS
I'd move Linux up about halfway into that triangle and call it good. Haven't had an issue in several years myself but I do anytime I touch Windows just about. Just reinstalled Windows recently; guess what, driver time (no wireless)!
My Linux works great! On it now.
Windows users 🤝 Mac users
clowning on Linux
Mac users 🤝 Linux users
clowning on Windows
Linux users 🤝 Windows users
clowning on Mac
Linux should be "nothing works out of the box".
This chart makes me sad, because I can find no fault with it's accuracy.
Ok, that's a lie. I needed a new and better way to explain my lack of enthusiasm for Mac. I've been just flippantly saying "walled gardens irritate me" and pretending people understand what that means.
(Draws in deep breath)
SKILLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL ISSUEEEEEEEEEEEEEE
It barely matters anymore, few people still build locally. Only valid excuse for Windows is basically CAD, shitty industrial tools needing serial and/or some exotic protocols which don’t play nice in VMs and gaming.
I use all three OS. I use Linux for various home brew applications, MacOS is my daily driver, and I have a windows desktop rig for gaming. By far Windows is the biggest pain in the ass. It is like they have engineer at Microsoft whose entire job is to make the OS infuriating.
Why in 2025 can I not use a bluetooth headset?? Oh but you can.,.. No you cannot~! You get to pick between terrible audio and a functioning mic, or no mic and good audio. MacOS when you pair a bluetooth headset, in the words of Todd Howard "it just works." No BS.
Windows Search is another point of serious contention. Is there someone whose job is to make it worse each iteration. MacOS spotlight is great. You can search for a file and it will find quickly. Windows? I can search with the entire file name including type and half the time it does not return the result. "But you can make search better by modifying X,Y,Z setting." No! Why does a user need to modify file search. Shit should work out the box, this is a feature that has been around for over 20 years.
I could go on all day. MacOS. It is either works great and is incorporated into the OS. Or Apple doesn't have the feature but a TP app developer has make an app that can be easily installed through the built in App Store. No problem.
Remembering the time my laptop trackpad wasn't working in Aseprite on Linux Mint, which I assumed was a Linux quirk
I ended up reverting that laptop to Windows (so I could have both Linux and Windows, as my main desktop is Pop OS). The same issue with the trackpad persisted on Windows. Turns out this laptop is just weird lmao
I've started making OS-type decisions like this. It feels different than older eras of deciding an OS, more flexible:
- SteamOS is coming ... Microsoft doesn't prioritize their OS department anymore ... why am I loyal to Windows?
- I'm going to Ubuntu!
- I love Ubuntu, I can't wait to master it and move to Debian or something!
- I want to develop an ML Music project asap ... I am still so slow at, and learning about, my beloved Ubuntu...
- I could not live without Linux at this point! despite my sluggishness. I need both... hmm...
- I'm going to Windows 11 with WSL (configured with extra vmem and such)! Until I have more time to learn GNOME and bash inside and out.
Most accurate meme, i have seen in a while
Correction with Linux: Anything works if you put in enough hours to configure or program it. It's just that there's not necessarily enough time to do it before the Sun expands and engulfs the Earth.
Just download one of the easy distros and check for updates weekly...
Nothing works after I put in a console command.
Skill issue.
Put Windows 11 down with Linux.
I tried to open a folder in a new window yesterday and file explorer crashed 🙃
Goddamn do I feel this now... I just finished building my first pc and after having a hate-hate relationship with Windows, I thought I would dip my toes into Linux. I installed Linux mint as it sounded like a nice, all round, but also gaming welcoming distro. Installed it, worked, me happy. I installed steam. Then the horrors began. I installed a game, steam installed proton, needed a restart. Steam started to act weird. It took me an hour to realize that it was hardware acceleration that broke it. Fine, quick toggle, restart and fixed. Then I tried running the game. Black screen, after X seconds (how long usually the jntro credits take), the music began and the cursor changed. BUT the game window was STILL all black! I called a friend who games on Pop_OS. We spent a few hours troubleshooting. Suddenly he found a forum thread that mentioned that my gpu (rx 9070xt) is TOO NEW for mint and I need to upgrade my kernel and mesa... WHAT THE ACTUAL FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCK HOW CAN A GPU BE TOO NEW????
Why doesn't anyone make an operating system that doesn't suck? Is everyone stupid?
In college we once had a guy from Intel as a guest in our class, and he was asked which OS he thought was best. His response, paraphrased, was "I don't care. They all stink. Pick your favorite way to waste your processor's performance."
Based
It's a clever way to get out of answering the question.
As another guy from Intel (unless this was Oregon State ca. 2017, in which case hello again) yeah this tracks.
I don't care what you run on them. They all suck in their own ways and the fan bases of all of them are worse. Feel free to light processor cycles on fire in whatever way you choose.
This was University of Utah ca. 1999, so back then we were still wasting processor cycles, just not nearly as fast.
it’s amazing how efficiently modern computers can waste processing power
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8BvAKvcW31A
Ah, I was still at Gigabyte back then. I am deeply sorry to all owners of our Socket 478 boards.
Ugh, those brackets, so many brackets broken. I was teaching at the time and students built machines as part of their classwork and holy Christ the amount of broken brackets on that platform. I loved it though, such a fantastic design with such meh construction.
I mean, what’s the alternative? Run code directly on the processor without an OS? I suppose that would be far more efficient but now you’ve got the problem that your computer only runs one thing.
Well, barebones Linux or BSD wastes the least amount of processor. Except that modern Linux distributions like to add all the bloat back to make things feel more modern. If you run a basic distro though with just basic TWM window managers and console windows, it's pretty darn efficient and pleasing to the neckbeards.
But then I can guarantee you that many popular commercial applications that are computer intensive will either not work or not work as well as a bloated windows instal.
Now that I'd have to buy new hardware and pay money for an os that drives me crazy at work I fully switched over to Linux. Fucking Counterstrike is unplayable (can't hold 60fps, Windows did ~380) Also getting any slicer (3d Printing software) to work was a pain, whatching it struggle to render anything is also no joy.
Probably whole different story if you have a new(ish) amd GPU, but the vintage Nvidia card is basically only good for displaying 500 browser tabs and 800 terminals across the 4 screens.
NVIDIA drivers on linux are completely cooked and X11 dependent.
I'm running Wayland on Nvidia just fine, they've been a lot better since 570.
The issue is probably them having an old GPU because the drivers for GPUs before the like 10xx series iirc are dogshit. The proprietary modern ones are fine (not as good as windows but I play new released games just fine and that's the most intense my GPU gets).
Yeah there's no winning, I just get a kick out of how basically every modern CPU is like taking a top fuel dragster to run your errands.
Imagine telling someone 15 years ago that we would have 3nm processes in cell phones lmao
When I started here 22nm was the bulk production node. Sub 2nm goes out soon.
There are phone chips closing in on 5ghz and kilowatt+ chips in servers.
I’m incredibly excited for the angstrom era. I’m going to be jumping at the first chance I get to buy a chip measured in single digit angstroms instead of nanometers. Just the idea of it is incredible, even if the performance or thermals suck
Just be aware that number is basically meaningless, and has been since 22nm or 14nm. I'm still super excited for it, but bear in mind that the true sub 2nm stuff was only in the "we made some in a lab" stage last year.
My main take aways from the "Operating Systems" course of my computer science degree:
1) Kernels are weird,esoteric eldritch horrors
2) Never try to write your own
No no no, you have that backwards. Kernels are weird, esoteric eldritch horrors, which is why you SHOULD try to write your own. It's a good way to shed whatever sanity you thought you had.
You must have had a completely shit instructor and class. I learned that OS kernels are complex yet approachable and I can reasonably write one of my own with enough gumption and grit. In fact, it's one of my active personal projects right now. I hope it will become a playground to explore further topics in computing, including programming language and compiler design.
In light of recent benchmarks Intel-AMD, this looks like the Prof. Skinner meme: “no, it’s the OSs who stink”.
Now in seriousness though, yeah each and any abstraction will have a trade-off, mostly in performance. On the other side, the list of errata in processors are long…
Haha fair enough lol, but consider, whatever's burning cycles on a 285k is probably doing just as much to a 9950X3D.
I have my own choice words for the thread scheduling practices all around, but at least AMD's guys now get their own flavor of that hell with twin CCDs with differing cache sizes.
On a desktop, I completely agree, who really cares? Most people can get by just fine with webapps for most things. I've honestly grown to hate macOS the most for desktop since it seems to get very little of Apple's attention or money these days. It feels quite dated for how expensive their hardware is.
On a server, unless you are forced to use Windows you probably use Linux and you probably enjoy it (I love it). Unlike desktop applications, server applications are where Linux and the Unix philosophy have flourished. Once you understand the basics of your chosen shell, navigating the filesystem, and how to edit files with a CLI editor you are well on your way to becoming a backend wizard. You can setup, maintain, modify, contribute to, and glue together different software to solve your computing problems, it's absolutely glorious.
If you are forced to use Windows, you can still use WSL to get Linux. Meanwhile the Windows part of the OS which is jealous that you're spending time in the Linux console will takes it upon itself to slow down your computer just so that you don't forget that it exists.
("Sorry, I know you're doing work right now, but I decided that this would the perfect time to recompile all of our .NET applications so that you get the best user experience should you ever decide to actually use one of our apps.")
Oh man this is so accurate, it hurts.
Sincerely, a DS with WSL.
More than half of the baffling Python issues I debugged on Windows the past year magically vanished when I changed nothing and ran with WSL. Same exact environment. Also Python almost runs as fast as the next slowest language on Linux
Not surprising given that Intel does not believe in Richard Stallman's view of libre versus non-libre.
Sounds like a classic Intel response! Sometimes it's not about the OS, but how you make the most out of the hardware.
Holy mother of based
Normally intel folks would shill Wintel