macOS vs Linux | the ULTIMATE comparison
www.youtube.com
🔍 Discover the Battle of Titans: macOS vs. Linux! 🚀Are you torn between Apple’s sleek macOS and the open-source power of Linux? 🍎🆚🐧 In this epic showdow...

Spoiler: GNOME wins

Btw their GNOME Theme manager is here

  • fart_pickle@lemmy.world
    436·
    5 months ago

    I’ve been macOS user for past decade. I’ve switch to Linux a year ago and the first thing I did when I tried Gnome was to switch to KDE. I like how Gnome tries to mimic macOS but it’s still has long way ahead. Gnome was really good on a touch device but I kept hitting the wall with small quirks and eventually I switched to KDE. I know it’s unpopular opinion but I find macOS UI superior to both Gnome and KDE.

    • krimsonbun@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
      191·
      5 months ago

      everyone has their preferences, and maybe it could also have something to do with you being so used to the macOS ui that anything else feels weird or wrong in a way?

      • Womble@lemmy.worldEnglish
        141·
        5 months ago

        Fwiw i have almost exactly the same feeling going from gnome to macos, sure its polished but it goes out of its way to make anything even slightly complicated incredibly difficult. So yeah im pretty sure its mostly familiarity.

      • fart_pickle@lemmy.world
        41·
        5 months ago

        That’s true, I might be biased because I was using macOS way longer. On the other hand I’ve been using Windows even longer and I have never liked Windows UI. I guess I have some expectations on how UI should look and work and macOS just hit the sweet spot.

      • fuckwit_mcbumcrumble@lemmy.dbzer0.com
        1·
        5 months ago

        I went from windows to Linux (gnome and cinnamon) to Mac OS, and I find Mac OS’ UI to just be the best overall. And that’s continuing to use all of them previous system still, just adding another OS on top. In the end I’ve settled on Mac OS for my home use.sure o can’t tweak the UI to my hearts content, but from the start I get a solid user friendly and consistent experience.

    • Eugenia@lemmy.mlEnglish
      7·
      5 months ago

      Just because Gnome has a top panel doesn’t mean it tried to copy MacOSX. Gnome tried to copy phone UIs (that have a top panel), not Mac or Windows. And that was the reason why many disliked Gnome, in fact. It seems that it’s optimizing for tablets and phones, while it’s running on desktops.

      • Fonzie!@ttrpg.network
        1·
        4 months ago

        It’s more than just that; it’s the dock, it’s the application list’s look, it’s the large rounded corners on everything, it’s the icon style… All of it

      • fart_pickle@lemmy.world
        101·
        5 months ago

        First of all I like how all apps, even the 3rd party ones, look alike. When using a new app I don’t have to learn the new UI. Most of the things are in the same place and I can almost intuitively click trough the UI. Also macOS feels smoother - I don’t know how to describe it, it just works out of the box and I don’t need to adjust the settings. The only thing I was updating was the touchpad scroll direction. Everything else had default settings set to my preferences. I liked the animations, placement of various elements and the fact I didn’t have to look how things work. It was as easy as it was designed to be for 5 year olds.

        • ProgrammingSocks@pawb.social
          71·
          5 months ago

          This is more an issue with GTK vs Qt apps. If you mainly use modern GTK apps it’s fairly consistent in my experience. Qt takes a Windows design philosophy with tons of nested context menus.

    • _edge@discuss.tchncs.de
      3·
      5 months ago

      I’ve been macOS user for past decade.

      I find macOS UI superior to both Gnome and KDE.

      I’m not surprised.

      Also, I’m not sure if Gnome tries to mimic OS X or Windows or KDE, for the sake of this argument. Gnome (classic) was invented to replace (original) KDE, which sort-of tried to replace Windows.

      Stuff evolves. UIs oscillate between minimalism and overload.

    • TherouxSonfeir@lemm.ee
      12·
      5 months ago

      Because it is superior. It has been designed meticulously by hundreds of paid designers and developers who are all working towards a single goal. Apple literally wrote the book on user interface, and they apply those design principles to everything they do.

      Granted, it may not always be the best choice for all users.

  • AwkwardLookMonkeyPuppet@lemmy.worldEnglish
    324·
    5 months ago

    As a regular user of both, I’m able to accomplish custom stuff faster with Linux, but Mac is pretty hands off once you get it set up. That said, it’s a garbage OS out of the box. It’s 2024 and it doesn’t even have windows snapping or back button support. You have to install and configure 3rd party tools to make it behave like something created in the last two decades. I’m pretty sure Apple doesn’t give a shit about their Mac OS anymore, since most of their money comes from iOS and store purchases/subscriptions.

      • Womble@lemmy.worldEnglish
        3·
        5 months ago

        I mean gnome and kde both have it so that doesnt feel correct for why macos doesnt.

        • milicent_bystandr@lemm.ee
          91·
          5 months ago

          If true, presumably that gnome and kde don’t believe in the software patent but Apple doesn’t want to try its luck and risk getting in a lawsuit.

          (That said, they’re not exactly short of lawyers for a lawsuit… Maybe it’s in their interest to uphold the principle of software patents?)

          • ozymandias117@lemmy.worldEnglish
            14·
            5 months ago

            Gnome and KDE had this feature LONG before Microsoft, so they have prior art to prove it’s an invalid patent

              • ozymandias117@lemmy.worldEnglish
                2·
                5 months ago

                Yeah, I meant it’s unlikely Microsoft would try to sue Gnome or KDE for it, because they’d likely lose the patent

                • meliante@lemmy.world
                  1·
                  5 months ago

                  Yeah but my understanding is if they have a patent or the copyright or whatever it is, if they do not go after any single possible infringement, they’re potentially throwing away those rights at a later time. At least that’s how I understand it works in the USA at least?

    • Delusion6903@discuss.onlineEnglish
      1·
      5 months ago

      I use both Mac and Pop!_OS (Gnome) and I like and dislike both. MacOS has a great qulcklook that I miss in Gnome. Sushi almost corrected that oversight but it hasn’t worked right for me in a couple of years now. I also like Mac’s useful icon shortcut in the window title bar.

      Gnome’s extension system is a clusterfuck, but at least I can decide how windows function, unlike Mac.

  • gregorum@lemm.eeEnglish
    223·
    5 months ago

    Gnome’s Nautilus is a long way away from being Finder. It certainly trying very hard, and there are some things I like about Nautilus more than I like about Finder, but Finder has a lot of polish that is missing from Nautilus.

    That said, I look forward to The development of Nautilus and all of the improvements that will bring.

    • Womble@lemmy.worldEnglish
      9·
      5 months ago

      Huh, i have the complete opposite reaction. Having to move to macos for work finder is probably my least favourite bit. It feels like it is deliberately trying to hide the file system and my files from me and just give me the files it thinks i want, id have nautilus or thunar installed in a heartbeat.

    • toddestan@lemm.ee
      41·
      5 months ago

      Finder? Polished? Even compared to Windows Explorer, Finder is terrible.

    • olympicyes@lemmy.worldEnglish
      21·
      5 months ago

      The list of things you can do is a bit cherry picked too. For example, in a web browser file upload dialog, try previewing the images you want to upload. You can’t do it in Gnome. It’s been an outstanding fix request for 20+ years!

    • anothermember@lemmy.zip
      1·
      5 months ago

      I love Gnome but I think KDE’s Dolphin beats them all. Fortunately being Linux you can always use Dolphin with Gnome.

    • youmaynotknow@lemmy.ml
      12·
      5 months ago

      All I read here is “finder is better, but I won’t give you any reasons”. My sister is a die hard Apple fan, and she hates finder. So, yeah, unless you can bring a good argument for your claim, finder is pretty crap.

  • Railison@aussie.zoneEnglish
    10·
    5 months ago

    There are some gaps in this video owing to the guy not knowing some different keyboard shortcuts in macOS and just assuming they don’t exist.

    I’d say macOS is still more consistent than Linux but it certainly peaked in Snow Leopard.

  • exanime@lemmy.today
    8·
    5 months ago

    MacOS is like taking an athlete (Linux), dressing it up as a K-pop band member and tying it to a post so they can only move in a specific way and sing the same song.

    Why would anyone want that when you can have the pure, raw performance and stamina of the athele and make with them whatever you’d like?

    • https://gigatexal.blog -he/him@mastodon.social
      2·
      5 months ago

      @exanime @boredsquirrel ehh macOS has really polished software. It can also run a lot of the open source software Linux gets. Media seems better on it. Rogue Amoeba makes some legit stuff. But it’s more or less tied to the hardware. If it were open I’d run Linux on it and im hoping Asahi gets us there. macOS also a bit more user friendly focused. 🤷🏾‍♂️

      • pukeko@lemm.eeEnglish
        3·
        5 months ago

        I’m writing this from an M2 Air running NixOS via the Asahi bootloader installer and it’s an absolute delight. There are a few missing packages for the architecture, but surprisingly few. Everything works fine, except the fingerprint reader. (Having said all that, I like macos just fine.)

        • https://gigatexal.blog -he/him@mastodon.social
          1·
          5 months ago

          @pukeko that’s wonderful to hear. I got an M3 max (a huge stupid purchase I agonized about for a month before convincing myself I earned it lol) coming in just 10 or so days. But M3 support is behind M2 for now. And I don’t fault them for it. I’ll wait patiently for it to work.

          My dream would be a finger print reading immutable Fedora running Sway with full disk ZFS encryption.

          • pukeko@lemm.eeEnglish
            2·
            5 months ago

            I had a thinkpad that got much of the way there. I never tried ZFS encryption, but I’m sure someone in the nixos world has figured that out.

  • nomadjoanne@lemmy.world
    6·
    5 months ago

    I think Gnome wins as I have it. But I would take the vanilla macos shell (not the underlying OS, just the shell) over vanilla Gnome.

    • piexil@lemmy.world
      2·
      5 months ago

      I really enjoy the “maximize windows go to their own workspace” thing that macOS does, it combines really nice with swiping workspaces with the trackpad.

      There’s a gnome extension that mimics this but it’s kinda buggy and feels like a hack.

      • nomadjoanne@lemmy.world
        2·
        5 months ago

        Oh gawd, I hate that (sorry 😅). But so long as it was just an option, even a default one, that would be fine with me.

        • piexil@lemmy.world
          1·
          5 months ago

          Yes an option is best! Currently I have it with an extension although it’s kinda broken

          I know not everyone likes it either. I only like it on my laptop, where I use the trackpad to switch between workspaces. It’s more clunky on a desktop

  • RickAstleyfounddead@lemy.lol
    61·
    5 months ago

    Remember if you got harassed with macos hate comments.
    Apple is a multimillion corpo and you don’t have to defend any.

  • Skunk@jlai.lu
    4·
    5 months ago

    I solved that problem by using a tiling window manager on every OS. Configure it to use your favorite shortcuts (from i3wm in this case), put super + spacebar as the whatever launcher you like and tadaaaa!

    Everything feels more or less the same.

    I do that since I became addicted to i3wm years ago. The worst part is just remembering the keywords to type in the launcher according to what OS you’re on.

    • boredsquirrel@slrpnk.netOP
      1·
      5 months ago

      I am trying to use the LXQt stack with Wayland compositors currently. Havent tried labwc, which sounds like a good candidate for the job, but all the others pull in a ton of dependencies that I actually decided to try it with Kwin now, as I like KDE Plasma and I know Kwin is solid.

      I also really like COSMIC but it has a long way to go to become plasma like. Plasma 6 is pretty nice in many things.

  • mlg@lemmy.worldEnglish
    77·
    5 months ago

    I feel like this video exposes the restrictions of both desktop environments compared to already completed solutions like KDE, XFCE, and Compiz which can all be configured to be 1:1 with Mac or 1:1 with Windows.

    I can personally say going from windows to stock GNOME on both Ubuntu and Fedora was definitely not a nice experience at all.

    • boredsquirrel@slrpnk.netOP
      7·
      5 months ago

      You just said XFCE is more complete than GNOME?

      And Compiz is just a single (outdated, Xorg based) Compositor, how whould that work?

      Strong point haha, I am interested about arguments.

      (Yes KDE has a ton more. But it has too much maybe. I like how COSMIC epoch just takes all the best of the others, learning from the stuff they do just now, but with a fresh codebase in Rust)

      but yeah GNOME is very restricted in stupid ways, especially as for example an app entry modification setting is not a huge thing.

      • mlg@lemmy.worldEnglish
        3·
        5 months ago

        I meant in the sense of the UI lol.

        Gnome and kde are both way ahead in that they offer a proper app library and integration with devices.

        Xfce is just a bunch of apps stuck together that happen to be good enough on their own, but aren’t really interconnected.

        I mentioned compiz because iirc it was one of the first compositors to outshine all the fancy window effects and behavior of Mac and Windows and still be configurable for both. Things like app switchers, snap windows, workspaces, etc. It just feels more intuitive to use than stock gnome.

        I currently use an unholy combination of xfce with compiz, but once xfce upgrades to Wayland, I’ll probably get Wayfire to replace compiz.

        • boredsquirrel@slrpnk.netOP
          2·
          5 months ago

          I didnt know Windowses Window manager (DWM? Explorer?) had any fancy effects. It is boring as hell but also stable as hell.

          yeah I dont know what the best minimal Wayland compositor is.

          I am using KDE Plasma since I first tried it, but have separate drives with GNOME, COSMIC-Epoch, Cinnamon etc.

          Also want to try LXQt (but it seems many of “their apps” like yarock or qpdfview are not packaged anymore?) and looking for the best Compositor here.

          • cosmic-comp: honestly I think soon the best. But pre-alpha, no selinux profile yet, and pulls in complete cosmic (packaging issue)
          • kwin: best currently, tons of needed features, but pulls in half of KDE and random other stuff
          • wayfire: probably nice? Pulls in also a lot of GTK stuff
          • labwc: no idea, probably the best minimal one, but as I never heard anything I suppose less good?
          • something louvre? No idea
          • mutter: likely just good for GNOME? Could be a good option, if they dont intentionally make stuff only work with GNOME
          • something that XFCE, Cinnamon, Budgie will produce

          And that left out sway, niri, hyprland, river and other tiling WMs.

    • boredsquirrel@slrpnk.netOP
      11·
      5 months ago

      I asked that once and it is pretty different.

      1. GNOME didnt look like that all the time. I dont know when but they went from bottom panel to top panel to left side panel to this layout.
      2. The top bar is used differently. Workspace indicator, but no global menu (which makes no sense) or app menu. Extensions can make it pretty much the same
      3. The dock is hidden and forces the workflow with workspaces. I dont think thats a crazy feature and dash to dock makes it equal again
      4. The window buttons are different
      5. The top bars are thicker etc.

      Some settings are different, the tiling works better but yeah it is too similar.

    • verdigris@lemmy.ml
      7·
      5 months ago

      Because it’s very different? The bar defaulting to the top is the main similarity.

      • toddestan@lemm.ee
        11·
        5 months ago

        It’s been a while since I’ve used Gnome, but back when I did I also felt it lacked a lot of configurability much like the Mac.

        In comparison, KDE felt a lot more like Windows (or how Windows used to be in the past) where you could configure and tweak all sorts of things.

        • verdigris@lemmy.ml
          7·
          5 months ago

          Okay… I don’t agree and I think it’s very objectively obvious that there are huge differences in the UX and design philosophy.

  • N0x0n@lemmy.ml
    612·
    5 months ago

    Both are too similar and both suck :/

    I mean, I do not want a copie of a closed sourced GUI where everything is behind some obscure hidden configuration… I often had that strange feeling of “why can’t I do that?” For simple basic things.

    GNOME and MacOS both give me the same feeling of closed DE where you’re not in control over basic functionalities :/.

    I have a Mac and GNOME on my debian desktop, I hate both, but luckily I can change my DE on linux so I would say MacOS sucks way more ^^.

    Just my 50cent.

    • verdigris@lemmy.ml
      8·
      5 months ago

      GNOME settings are not obscured? And if you want more customization you can use tweaks, which, it’s true, don’t have centralized settings, but you have the power – on MacOS you’d be paying $5-10 for every tweak.

      • N0x0n@lemmy.ml
        11·
        5 months ago

        Just a simple example, on vanilla gnome you can not set nightlights to “always”, how stupid is that? Yeah there are some tweaks made by people you can download from the official gnome website… But than you have to trust their plugin/scripts…

        I really don’t like that kind of modification :/

        Yeah MacOS is probably the worst OS/GUI that ever existed, and that’s why following a similar path sounds just a bad idea…

    • boredsquirrel@slrpnk.netOP
      31·
      5 months ago

      I agree on that feeling. Even though GNOME is very customizable but the barrier to that is big.