As someone who had to help coworkers with Windows, Mac and Linux problems one of the main problems of macOS is the fact that you have to use the clumsy GUI for so many things and that the Unix-like underpinnings are badly maintained and outdated so many systems have several versions of the same tool installed in various locations (OS-, Homebrew-, MacPorts- or whatever other package manager of the day versions).
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
What is the quick look function you're referring to? Are you talking about command spacebar to quickly find stuff? You can do that in Pop with the super key.
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.
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.
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!
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.
Anything is better than Mac... I hate how every time I try to push the green circle in the top left it now goes into full screen mode (if you don't hold option every single time). Who the fuck wants full screen mode?
That one feature is honestly enough to use anything else. It didn't used to be this way... But Apple has been screwing up their products for over a decade now.
KDE is okay out of the box, there are like 5 things I normally change from the defaults. It has tons of powerful apps (unlike GNOME?) Like KDENLive, Kate, etc.
GNOME on the other hand has tons of circle apps, with GIMP and Inkscape being the big players.
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?
@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. 🤷🏾♂️
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.)
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.
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.
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.
@boredsquirrel I personally use neither of those, but I've had to fix issues on computers running both.
I can tell that the apple GUI is clumsy, but sadly inevitable when you want to do stuff. I would always lose time trying to tile or move windows without success.
At least in #Gnome, it's #linux so you can fix everything without being forced into using a badly designed GUI and a lot of things work well. Though you'd better not be looking for some customization on Gnome, but if you bought an apple device you've already kissed customization (and fair prices) goodbye so to me there is no real question between the two in terms of user experience.
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.
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.
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.
How can people claim Gnome isn't trying to copy the Mac UI? If he didn't say mac at all during the video, I'd think this is some Chinese desktop environment being compared with Gnome.
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.
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
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
The window buttons are different
The top bars are thicker etc.
Some settings are different, the tiling works better but yeah it is too similar.
The entire video reveals how similar they are. Gnome is just Mac's UI and tools with a linuxy feel. Gnome devs even have the same ideology as Malus "We know best".
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 ^^.
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.
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...
Why would grandma want to do that? I have set up computers for tech illiterate people with Linux quite successfully. You just tell them: „if it wants your password, you did something wrong. Never enter your password, unless you know exactly why“ Set and forget.
@HollandJim@possiblylinux127 I had my mom running Linux. The biggest issues came from her expecting to having to install drivers and stuff when attaching a printer. " How do I make it work?" It just does. Linux issues only appeared because Windows is difficult.
It's quite amazing you've picked that example. I just didn't remember some people had to mess with video drivers. Last time I've done it was probably a decade ago, on Windows.
I get your point but truth be told I never expected any family member to update their own stuff. If they want my help I take away their admin rights and do everything myself, remotely when needed. And Linux is much easier to deal with than Windows.
My mom is not technical in the slightest and she's been very happily using a laptop with Fedora Silverblue on it for 4+ years. I've had to help her with two problems, one of which didn't even end up being a Linux problem.
I think this is mostly because people who know about it have a mental block that it's only for nerds. Millions have been using Android on their phones for years, though we'll limit ourselves to desktop GNU/Linux type distributions for this discussion.
Actual usage of Linux has gotten much easier since 2006ish when I first tried it out. With all the popups and ads in Windows nowadays, its rapidly becoming harder to use than Linux, something I did not expect. I don't see a combined Linux User Group/ Bingo Club/ Bridge Group forming anytime soon, but Linux Mint isn't any harder to use than Windows, even for normies with an average level of tech skills.
ok gnome sucks a lot gnome doesn‘t prodoce errors - it is an error, a very ugly error. i‘m not a fanboy, i use sytems thts works -bsd,macos,debian,alpin but i hate gnome.
I destroy every computer with a Gnome interface that I get my hands on in no time. But that's what I like about Gnome - destroy everything and go away.