From 14 years old till 29, my experience with desktop Linux

In uni, I ran Ubuntu 7.04 for a summer on a Thinkpad R21. Similar to the author, I was obsessed in customizing in and making it look like OS X but without any direct experience with using a Mac. I even had a ding sound for completed downloads in Transmission-GTK and some form of grass wallpaper (but not the REAL grass wallpaper).

I then had the realization that what I really wanted was a Mac. I was fortunate enough for my family to purchase me one which, with an AppleCare exchange for a unibody model, lasted me a whopping 11 years (Tiger to Mojave). I also still have that iPod nano from the back-to-school promo they used to have.

Fun read. Is mind blowing that I haven't had a Windows machine in over 2 decades at this point. I have had some MacBooks, but mainly because that is what companies would buy for me.

My personal machines have been Ubuntu or derivative for a long time now. To the point that I don't even know what I'm missing in alternatives, anymore. Used to be it was games, Steam has been a blessing there.

I wonder if there is a market for something that runs after first install, or via the Settings app, that "makes my install look like X", for X in (Win2k, MacOS, Win10) say.

The point being that this very short list of options is extremely thoroughly-worked-out, which is a level simply not available today in a stock Ubuntu distro and its themes. I can choose elementary, or Mint, bitbthat is essentially an OS distro level decision. I can download some themes, but its not interchangeable at will, and the depth of implementation of gnome or kde themes is very shallow.

I expect that to truly do this would require not just graphical styling but also switching lots of packages around (eg a file manager). Maybe the path there looks like a giant Nix config to capture all the dependencies?

I really appreciate hearing the story that weaves all these computing choices together! Somehow that human element contains more actionable information than a dense data sheet, and I now I know I'll give Gnome and some of the apps mentioned a try!

Perhaps I'll try it in a VM on a M1 MacBook Pro, with Nix, to really have fun! I think personal computer software can be improved a lot with lessons from the Infrastructure as Code world, notably the ability to create reproducible, version controlled computing environments!

I roughly follow the same path Windows - Linux - macOS - Linux. But nowadays my Linux was mainly using VSCode as a frontend via a MacBook.

However, I spent significant amounts of time using Arch Linux. Compared to stable released Ubuntu etc., I like opportunity to jump on bugs in open source packages and fix them, they have taught me a lot. Using open source software but not its bleeding edge version is a missing opportunity I would say.

I've run Ubuntu on my home computer since I was about 16. Now I'm 40. It has been great. Some frustrations. But a good experience. I'm surprised that more people don't take the leap and run Ubuntu.

I thought this was an interesting point.

      GNOME looks like macOS as KDE looks like Windows

I'm not sure how much of this is true, has anyone run the 4 of them around the same recent period?

I've tried desktop Linux every few years for many years and the result is always the same - the user experience is inconsistent and flaky. It has surely got better but there is always the feeling that it is a "Frankenstein GUI".

Windows is guilty of this too - what a mess of different user interface styles and a patchwork of stuff being stitched together.

MacOS by comparison is a beautifully consistent GUI well thought out and logical and things just work.

Every time I go back to Windows I am reminded of how broken the whole experience is - multitasking is not smooth, tasks don't end when asked, the system won't shut down, applications freeze.

And if you think I['m just an Apple fanboy, I'm not - I spent many many years as a hard core Windows fanboy and I love Linux and use it as a server OS daily.

The thing is - making a consistent, easy to use well thought out operating system experience is a gargantuan task and it must take gargantuan time money and effort to do it well.

I’d like to see someone copy macOS accessibility features on Linux, then I might come around to using it again.