[0xfaded]

To any Linux users, I recently bought a fully loaded M4 MacBook pro to replace my aging Lenovo and strongly regret it. I thought I would use it for playing with LLMs, but local dev on a Mac is not fun and I still don't have it fully set up. I'll probably replace it with a framework at some point in the near future.

Edit: okay, that garnered more attention than I expected, I guess I owe a qualification.

1. Everything is just slightly different. I had to split all my dot files into common/Linux/Mac specific sections. Don't expect to be able to clone and build any random C++ project unless someone in the project is specifically targeting Mac.

2. Not everything is supported natively on arm64. I had an idea and wanted to spin up a project using DynamoRIO, but wasn't supported. Others have mentioned the docker quirks.

3. The window manager. I'm not a fan of all the animations and needing to gester between screens (and yes, I've been down the hotkeys rabbit hole). To install a 3rd party window manager you need to disable some security setting because appearantly they work by injecting into the display manager and calling private APIs.

So my person takeaway was that I took the openness of the Linux ecosystem for granted (I've always had a local checkout of the kernel so I can grep an error message if needed). Losing that for me felt like wearing a straightjacket. Ironically I have a MBP at work, but spend my day ssh'd into a Linux box. It's a great machine for running a web browser and terminal emulator.

[coldtea]

>I thought I would use it for playing with LLMs, but local dev on a Mac is not fun and I still don't have it fully set up.

Sounds more like a you problem, probably due to unfamiliarity. There are endless options for local dev on a Mac, and a huge share of devs using one.

[heavyset_go]

I've used Macs for 20 years starting on the day 32-bit Intel Macs were released, and agree with the GP. Linux and Plasma spoiled me, going back to macOS and its windowing system feels like a step backward, especially for development, where using multiple windows is a must. Task switching is.. not good? I don't get window previews I can switch through when I hover over the dock, but I do on Linux.

Yes, I know about Yabai and the other things that modify the existing window manager. The problem is the window manager itself.

Outside of the windowing system, running native Linux if you're deploying to Linux beats using an amalgamation of old BSD utils + stuff from Homebrew and hoping it works between platforms, or using VMs. The dev tools that are native to Linux are also nice.

When it comes to multiple monitors, I want a dock on each monitor. I can do that in Plasma, but I can't in macOS, unless I use some weird 3rd party software apparently.

[Syntaf]

Agreed, as a software engineer of ~8 years now Mac is actually my _preferred_ environment -- I find it an extremely productive OS for development whether I'm working on full stack or Unity game dev in my free time.

[SomeUserName432]

I've been on a mac for ~4 years now.

It was a bit of a struggle to get used to it, coming from windows.

The only thing I really miss now is alt-tab working as expected. (It's a massive pain to move between two windows of the same program)

[rtpg]

Stuff like the containerisation story on Macs is so miserable. The fact that so many devs use Docker and on Mac and pay the orders of magnitude file costs (or do a bunch of other shenanigans) really makes for an unfun experience.

Really wish someone could have figured out something a bit better in that space in particular. Docker compose is a "least worst" option for setting up a project with devs when many are uncomfortable with other solutions, but it really takes the oxygen out of anything that might "work"

[windexh8er]

> Sounds more like a you problem...

I don't. I'm constantly shifting between my Linux desktop and a Mac for work. I also picked up a personal MBP with as much RAM as Apple allowed (still far overpriced and limited options) about a year and a half ago. While I don't regret it, it's still not my first choice.

If there's "endless options for local dev on a Mac" then I don't know how to describe the flexibility that a decent laptop running Linux gives you, comparatively. Honestly I think the Mac only excels in one area still today and that is: the breath of their paid for software library. The polish of Mac used to be the draw, but OS X has degraded over the years as Apple shifts to unify IOS and OS X. And don't get me started on the garbage that iCloud is that Apple continues to force feed harder and harder having, clearly, taken cues from the Windows team in Redmond.

I'm really hopeful we start to see more ARM options in non-Mac laptop formats soon. Because, while trivial, it is nice to be able to run small models for a variety of reasons.

It is interesting though that I see a "huge share of devs" using a Mac to write code targeting Linux environments when they could actually simplify their development environment by ditching Mac. To each their own.

[neya]

Wow, this account's recent comment history is just full-on blasting with pro-apple opinions and attacking anyone who posts even a tinge of negativity about Apple or its recent product(s). I find it amusing we'd become so defensive about for-profit companies and their products..

[godelski]

  > Sounds more like a you problem

I'm sorry, I just really hate this Apple Fanboy rhetoric. It's frequent and infuriating. Don't get me wrong, I hate it when the linux people do it too, but they tend to tell you how to get shit done while being mean.

The biggest problem with Linux is poor interfaces[0] but the biggest problem with Apple is handcuffs. And honestly, I do not find Apple interfaces intuitive. Linux interfaces and structure, I get, even if the barrier to entry is a big higher, there's lots of documentation. Apple less so. But also with Apple there's just things that are needlessly complex, buried under multiple different locations, and inconsistent.

But I said the biggest problem is handcuffs. So let me give a very dumb example. How do you merge identical contacts? Here's the official answer[1]

  Either:
  1) Card > Look for Duplicates
  2) Select the duplicate cards, then Card > Merge Selected Cards.

Well guess what? #2 isn't an option! I believe this option only appears if you have two contacts that are in the same address book. Otherwise you have the option "Link Selected Cards". Something that isn't clear since the card doesn't tell you what account it is coming from and clicking "Find duplicates" won't offer this suggestion to you. There's dozens of issues like this where you can be right that I'm "holding it wrong", but that just means the interface isn't intuitive. You can try this one out. You can try this out. Go to your contacts, select "All Contacts" and then by clicking any random one try to figure out which address book that contact is from. It will not tell you unless you have linked contacts. And that's the idiocracy of Apple. Everything works smoothly[2] when you've always been on Apple and only use Apple but is painful to even figure out what the problem even is if you have one. The docs are horrendous. The options in the menu bar change and inconsistently disappear or gray out, leading to "where the fuck is that button?".

So yeah, maybe a lot of this is due to unfamiliarity, but it's not like they are making it easy. With Apple, it is "Do things the Apple way, or not at all". But with Linux it is "sure whatever you say ¯\_(ツ)_/¯". If my Android phone is not displaying/silencing calls people go "weird, have you tried adjusting X settings?" But if my iPhone is not displaying/silencing calls an Apple person goes "well my watch tells me when someone is calling" and they do not understand how infuriating such an answer is. Yet, it is the norm.

I really do want to love Apple. They make beautiful machines. But it is really hard to love something that is constantly punching you in the face. Linux will laugh when you fall on your face, but it doesn't actively try to take a swing or put up roadblocks. There's a big difference.

[0] But there's been a big push the last few years to fix this and things have come a long way. It definitely helps that Microsoft and Apple are deteriorating, so thanks for lowering the bar :)

[1] https://support.apple.com/guide/contacts/merge-contact-cards...

[2] Except it actually doesn't

[lholden]

I ended up doing something similar a few years ago. Picked up a MacBook Pro M1 Max back when the M1 stuff was new to replace an aging Lenovo running Linux. I actually really loved my Lenovo + Linux, but the M1 was new and shiny and I desperately wanted better battery life.

The hardware was great, but life on a Mac always felt a bit convoluted. Updating the OS was especially frustrating as a software developer because of all the interdependent bits (xcode, brew, etc) that often ended up breaking my dev environment in some way. It also always amazed me at the stuff that was missing. Like, how isn't the default terminal app fully functional after all these years? On the plus side, over the time I used it they did add tiling and the ability to hide the notch.

Finally at the start of the year I moved back to Linux and couldn't be happier. Had forgotten just how nice it is to have everything I need out of the box. The big thing I miss is Affinity Photo, though that looks like it's in the middle of dying right now.

[krisgenre]

Exactly! I too bought the M1 Macbook Air in 2021 because of its great battery life. I wanted a powerful device for hacking on personal projects at home (I use a Dell running Ubuntu at work) but every time I opened it there was always something frustrating about OS X that made it unsuitable for dev stuff (at least for me)

* Finder - this is my most hated piece of software. It doesn't display the full file path and no easy way to copy it

* I still haven't figured out how to do cut/paste - CMD + X didn't work for me

* No Virtualbox support for Apple Silicon (last checked 1 year ago)

* Weird bugs when running Rancher Desktop + Docker on Apple Silicon

But still Apple hardware is unbeatable. My 2015 Macbook pro lasted 10 years and the M1 is also working well even after 4 years.

[skydhash]

I have an M1 air and 8th gen intel Dell (openbsd) and I’m much happier wit the Dell for hacking on stuff. MacOS is pretty much a nightmare if your workflow is not apps and IDE centered.

[linehedonist]

What’s missing in the terminal app?

[stevage]

The one that always surprises me is that there is absolutely no image editor of any kind.

But really, I just don't use that many desktop apps (or at least, not generic ones) so I don't have much of an issue on MacOS.

[abrookewood]

Pretty sure you can run Asahi on that? Might have been worth the effort instead of swapping out the machine as it's still pretty capable.

[cromka]

You can run Affinity Photo on Linux via Wine, though

[thewebguyd]

> The window manager. I'm not a fan of all the animations and needing to gester between screens (and yes, I've been down the hotkeys rabbit hole). To install a 3rd party window manager, you need to disable some security setting because appearantly they work by injecting into the display manager and calling private APIs.

Specifically for this, there's Aerospace (https://github.com/nikitabobko/AeroSpace) which does not require disabling SIP, intentionally by the dev.

For using the vanilla macOS workspaces though, if you avoid using full screen apps (since those go to their on ephemeral workspace that you can't keybind for some stupid reason), if you create a fixed amount of workspaces you can bind keyboard shortcuts to switch to them. I have 5 set up, and use Ctrl+1/2/3/4/5 to switch between isntead of using gestures.

Apart from that, I use Raycast to set keybindings for opening specific applications. You can also bind apple shortcuts that you make.

Still not my favorite OS over Linux, but I've managed to make it work because I love the hardware, and outside of $dayjob I do professional photography and the adobe suite runs better here than even my insanely overspeced gaming machine on Windows.

[nextos]

Mac laptop hardware is objectively better, but I am on the same camp as the parent post. For most development workflows, Linux is my favorite option. In particular, I think NixOS and the convenience of x86_64 is usually worth the energy efficiency deficit with Apple M.

It will be interesting to see how this evolves as local LLMs become mainstream and support for local hardware matures. Perhaps, the energy efficiency of the Apple Neural Engine will widen the moat, or perhaps NPUs like those in Ryzen chips will close the gap.

[foxandmouse]

Thanks for sharing Aerospace, can’t believe I overlooked it! It’s like finding out someone fixed half the things that make macOS feel like a beautiful prison .Somehow it makes the whole OS feel less… Apple-managed.

[radley]

Is there a HN bingo card? Because we always get a top comment for Linux user who tries Mac and decides they prefer Linux.

[disgruntledphd2]

I kinda agree with the OP, but then I was a Linux user for well over a decade. I do think that C/C++ libraries are much, much more of a pain on Mac as soon as you go off the beaten path (compiling GDAL was not pleasant, whereas it would be a breeze on Linux).

Some of this is probably brew not being as useful as apt, and some more of it is probably me not being as familiar with the Mac stuff, but it's definitely something I noticed when I switched.

The overall (graphical) UI is much fluider and more convenient than Linux though.

[monegator]

Meh, i've had a macbook for 15 years, i'm on the league that thinks that snow leopard was the last good OS they made. Still get to use one almost daily at work, but honestly i prefer using windows for developing, if linux is not an option.

My 2012 MPB still lives on running debian (not ideal because some driver quirks, but miles better in terms of responsiveness and doing actual work on it than whatever OSX i could put on it)

I honestly agree with the parent. I'd love a macbook M because the hardware is simply fantastic, but if i can't put debian on it, then i'll pass

[tannhaeuser]

I have to agree. The loss of sense of reality among Linux fanboys is really annoying.

I had been a Linux notebook user for many years and have praised it on this board years ago. But today the Linux desktop has regressed into a piece of trash even for basic command line usage while providing zero exclusive apps worth using. It's really sad since it's unforced and brought upon Linux users by overzealous developers alone.

Mac OS trounces Linux in absolutely every way on the desktop it's not even funny: performance, battery life, apps, usability, innovation. Available PC notebook HW is a laughable value compared to even an entry level Apple MacBook Air. Anecdata but I have no less than five "pro" notebooks (Dell Lattitude, XPS, and Lenovo Thinkpad) come and go with basic battery problems, mechanical touchpad problems, touchpad driver issues, WLAN driver issues, power management issues, gross design issues, and all kind of crap come and go in the last five years so I'm pretty sure I know what I'm talking about.

The one thing Mac isn't great for is games, and I think SteamOS/Proton/wine comes along nicely and timely as Windows is finally turning to the dark side entirely.

[delbronski]

As a long term Mac user who works on ROS a lot I hear you. Most people here think local dev means developing a React app. Outside of mainstream web frameworks Mac sucks for local dev.

[lavp]

I’ve found Macs to be good for most dev stuff with the exception of non-Dockerized C++.

Unfortunately I do a lot of C++… I hate the hoops you have to go through to not use the Apple Clang compiler.

[devilsdata]

I have a pretty good cross-platform dotfiles setup for both Mac OS and Linux that I use Chezmoi to provision. I try not to repeat myself as much as possible.

Here's my repository: https://github.com/lkdm/dotfiles

I use Linux at work and for gaming, and Mac OS for personal stuff. They both build from the same dotfiles repository.

Some things I've learned is:

- Manually set Mac's XDG paths to be equal to your Linux ones. It's much less hassle than using the default system ones.

  - See my .profile as an example on how I do this: https://github.com/lkdm/dotfiles/blob/main/dot_profile.tmpl

- Use Homebrew on both Linux and Mac OS for your CLI tools

- Add Mac OS specific $PATH locations /bin, /usr/sbin, /sbin

- Do NOT use Docker Desktop. It's terrible. Use the CLI version, or use the OrbStack GUI application if you must.

- If you use iCloud, make a Zsh alias for the iCloud Drive base directory

- Mac OS ships with outdated bash and git. If you use bash scripts with `#!/usr/bin/env bash`, you should install a newer version of bash with brew, and make sure Homebrew's opt path comes before the system one, so the new bash is prioritised.

I hope this is helpful to you, so feel free to ask me anything about how I set up my dotfiles.

[saltcured]

I can relate. I've spent almost 30 years working primarily on Linux. I moved Windows to be under VM when I needed it around for occasionally using MS Office, first under vmware and later under kvm. Now I don't even use it as a VM, since work has Office 365.

My work got me a similar M4 MacBook Pro early this year, and I find the friction high enough that I rarely use it. It is, at best, an annoying SSH over VPN client that runs the endpoint-management tools my IT group wants. Otherwise, it is a paperweight since it adds nothing for me.

The rest of the time, I continue to use Fedora on my last gen Thinkpad P14s (AMD Ryzen 7 PRO 7840U). Or even my 5+ year old Thinkpad T495 (AMD Ryzen 7 PRO 3700U), though I can only use it for scratch stuff since it has a sporadic "fan error" that will prevent boot when it happens.

But, I'm not doing any local work that is really GPU dependent. If I were, I'd be torn between chasing the latest AMD iGPU that can use large (but lower bandwidth) system RAM versus rekindling my old workstation habit to host a full size graphics card. It would depend on the details of what I needed to run. I don't really like the NVIDIA driver experience on Linux, but have worked with it in the past (when I had a current gen Titan X) but also did OpenCL on several vendors.

[kristianp]

Speaking of the P14s, I have an Intel version from 2 years back and battery life is poor. And I hunger for the mac's screen for occasional photography. The other thing I found difficult is that there's no equivalent of the X1 Carbon with an AMD chip. It's Intel only. The P14s is so much heavier.

[1-more]

> I still don't have it fully set up

Highly recommend doing nix + nix-darwin + home-manager to make this declarative. Easier to futz around with.

[unshavedyak]

Seconded. I have a mostly CLI setup and in my experience Nix favors that on Mac, but nonetheless it makes my Nix and Linux setups a breeze. Everything is in sync, love it.

Though if you don't like Nixlang it will of course be a chore to learn/etc. It was for me.

[cyrialize]

If you don't mind me asking, why do you prefer this set up over just using brew?

I've poked around articles and other posts about this, but I'm not sure I quite get it.

If I just need to install packages, would brew just work for me?

I have a collection of bash scripts in my dotfiles for setting things up, and I've been meaning to adapt them for my linux laptop. It seems like Nix may be helpful here!

[martypitt]

I appreciate this comment!

I'm often envious of these Macbook announcements, as the battery life on my XPS is poor (~2ish hours) when running Ubuntu. (No idea if it's also bad on Windows - as I haven't run it in years).

Thanks for the heads-up.

[coldtea]

Not that useful as a heads up.

MacOS is great for development. Tons of high profile devs, from Python and ML, to JS, Java, Go, Rust and more use it - the very people who headline major projects for those languages.

2ish hours battery life is crazy. It's 8+ hours with the average Macbook.

[root_axis]

Yes, macOS sucks compared to Linux, but the m chip gets absolutely incredible battery life, whereas the framework gets terrible battery life. I still use my framework at work though.

[ElijahLynn]

Yes, there is a dilemma in the Linux space. But is running Linux on a MacBook a viable option these days? Is Ashahi Linux solid enough?

I much prefer a framework and the repairability aspect. However, if it's going to sound like a jet engine and have half the battery life of a new m series Mac. Then I feel like there's really no option if I want solid battery life and good performance.

Mac has done a great job here. Kudos to you, Mac team!

[acomjean]

The AMD chips I'm using with integrated graphics have 6+ hours of battery life (system76 pangolin) and the newer intel ultra chips are decent on battery too. +/- a bit depending on how hard you end up pushing them machine. Huge improvement over my frist linux laptop, though it had a nvidia chip set but would go only 2-3 hours per charge.

[dent9]

You're doing it wrong. Mac is by far one of the best development environments and is used by millions for dev, including LLMs. In fact I'm running LLMs and image AI models right now on my M4 MBA and everything works perfectly.

For your dotfiles there's not too many differences just make a separate entry point for zsh that only includes the zsh + macOS things (a few system calls are different in macOS) and then set your .zshrc to load the zsh + macOS version instead of the Linux or "universal" one. This is trivial if you've split your dotfiles into multiple separate files to import individually from a central master file per OS.

For window management you want to use CMD + ` to switch windows in the same app and CMD + Tab to switch apps. You also want to utilize the touch gestures for App Expose and Mission Control.

The only thing that's still wonky is the touchpad Natural Scroll vs the mouse wheel scroll, there's a third party "Scroll Reverser" app that can give you normal mouse wheel scroll and Natural Scroll on the touchpad at the same time. Hopefully some day Apple will make that a native feature.

Stop trying to install third party window managers.

[konart]

>but local dev on a Mac is not fun

What are the differences though? I have mbpr and a pc with Fedora on it and I barely see any differences aside from sandboxing in my atomic Kinoite setup and different package manager.

People often hating on brew but as a backend dev I haven't encountered any issues for years.

[leakycap]

The issues I see people struggle with on a Mac is that development often needs things in a non-default and often less-secure setup.

There isn't a "dev switch" in macOS, so you have to know which setting is getting in your way. Apple doesn't like to EVER show error alerts if at all possible to suppress, so when things in your dev environment fail, you don't know why.

If you're a seasoned dev, you have an idea why and can track it down. If you're learning as you go or new to things, it can be a real problem to figure out if the package/IDE/runtime you're working with is the problem or if macOS Gatekeeper or some other system protection is in the way.

[ruszki]

I can tell you in one sentence: try to have a DNS server when mDNSResponder sits on port 53 (for example because you use the new virtualization framework).

And there are a lot of such things, which are trivial or non problem in Linux.

[freeqaz]

Use Aerospace for window management. No animations. No disabling of security. It just works. https://github.com/nikitabobko/AeroSpace

[ivankra]

Funny you say that, as a long term Linux user who was in the exact same boat as you, I actually find Mac M4 my best Linux laptop purchase ever so far. I think what you're missing is its virtualization story. Put UTM on it, and you're back to a familiar environment, just on much nicer hardware. The first time I booted into my Linux desktop on it, I was blown away by how much snappier it felt compared to my ~5 year old top-of-the-line PC build.

I'm as much of a fan of Mac OS as the next Linux user here, but it's a very decent hypervisor and Stuff Just Works out of the box, for the most time. No more screwing around with half-baked qemu wrappers for me, vfio, virgl and what not. And running stuff without virtualization is a non-starter for me, I've been concerned about supply chain attacks before it became fashionable. Of course it would be even nicer if new Macs could run Linux natively, and I hope Asahi project will succeed with that, but until then I'm pretty happy running Linux desktop virtualized on it.

arm64 support is very decent across all the different OS now, I hardly miss Intel. I can even reasonably play most AAA games up to maybe mid-2010s on a Windows VM that's just a three finger swipe away from my main Linux desktop.

[achandlerwhite]

What are the quirks with local dev that make it not fun?

[jayd16]

There are surprisingly a lot of permission headaches and rug pulls in the last few big OS updates that have been really annoying.

[Zizizizz]

For me, who came from linux the only thing I don't like is the overview menu's lack of an (x) to close a window. The way slack stacks windows within the app so it's hard to find the right one. Pressing the red button doesn't close the app from appearing in your CMD+Tab cycle between apps, you also have to press CMD+Q. (Just a preference to how windows and linux treat windows, actually closing them. Rectangle resolved the snap to corner thing (I know MacOS has it natively too but it's not too great in comparison).

Things I prefer: Raycast + it's plugins compared to the linux app search tooling, battery life, performance. Brew vs the linux package managers I don't notice much of a difference.

Things that are basically the same: The dev experience (just a shell and my dotfiles has it essentially the same between OS's)

[sofixa]

Docker works very weirdly (it's a desktop application you have to install that has usage restrictions in enterprise contexts, and it's inside a VM so some things don't work), or you have to use an alternative with similar restrictions (Podman, Rancher Desktop).

The OS also has weird rough edges when used from the terminal - there are read-only parts, there are restrictions on loading libraries, multiple utilities come with very old versions or BSD versions with different flags than the GNU ones you might be used to coming from Linux, the package manager is pretty terrible. There are things (e.g. installing drivers to be able to connect to ESP32 devices) that require jumping through multiple ridiculous hoops. Some things are flat out impossible. Each new OS update brings new restrictions "for your safety" that are probably good for the average consumer, but annoying for people using the device for development/related.

[jtbaker]

docker being nerfed is pretty much the only thing I can think of.

[pm2222]

I hear you. Apple hw and Linux combination would be have been great for me.

[JadeNB]

Can't you literally install Linux on Apple hardware?

[uaas]

How about Asahi Linux, or a Fusion/Parallels VM on macOS?

[akulbe]

I want to love Linux on the desktop as much as the next Linux fan, but I always end up coming back to the Mac (begrudgingly).

I really liked Windows when WSL came out, but the direction Microsoft seems to be going makes me want to run the other way.

Windows or macOS... for the hardware working well, generally just works as expected. The tradeoffs you make with each, are different. But it's usually not a hardware thing, as to why (in my experience).

I just put Linux on a 5th-gen ThinkPad P1. It works... mostly. Sound works... at about 50% volume of what Windows or macOS would output. This has consistently been an issue with me, every time I've tried to use Linux on the desktop.

It ends up being some set of compromises to use Linux.

And when video is a frequent part of my work and personal use... the quality of it on Linux just doesn't cut it.

For server usage... forget it. Linux wins, hands down. Zero contest. :D

[CjHuber]

I also like the multi desktop experience on KDE more, but I‘ve recently found out you can at least switch off some of the annoying behavior in the Mac settings, so that e.g it no longer switches to another desktop if you click on a dock icon that is open on another desktop

[foxandmouse]

I thought the same thing when I saw the M5 in the news today. It’s not that I hate macOS 26, hate implies passion.. what I feel is closer to disappointment.

The problem is their philosophy. Somewhere along the way, Apple decided users should be protected from themselves. My laptop now feels like a leased car with the hood welded shut. Forget hardware upgrades, I can’t even speed up animations without disabling SIP. You shouldn’t have to jailbreak your own computer just to make it feel responsive.

Their first-party apps have taken a nosedive too. They’ve stopped being products and started being pipelines, each one a beautifully designed toll booth for a subscription. What used to feel like craftsmanship now feels like conversion-rate optimization.

I’m not anti-Apple. I just miss when their devices felt like instruments, not appliances. When you bought a Mac because it let you create, not because it let Apple curate.

[Panzer04]

Usually there's an accessibility option of some kind that disables animations; at least it exists in android and I feel like it existed in iOS (though I haven't used that in ages). I'm surprised Mac doesn't have something similar.

[ericmcer]

Many people want that though?

I just want shit to work, and most modern devs function many levels above the OS most of the time. Stuff I write is gonna run in a browser, a phone or a containerized cloud env. I don’t care about how configurable my OS is I just want to do my work and sign off.

[baka367]

It was different for me. I tried to move from Windows to Linux multiple times, but my Dell just refused to run it reliably no matter what. After fidling with multiple distros I finally bit the bullet and went for a mac. I cant be more happier to have a Linux experience without the Linux pains.

Note that there certainly are quirks around arm64, however, coming from windows, i am no stranger to have to deal with such issues so they bother me less.

The best thing is, that i can confidently put mac into my backpack without worries of it performing a suicide due to not-fully-sleeping (common windowns issue)

[LeoPanthera]

> Everything is just slightly different. I had to split all my dot files into common/Linux/Mac specific sections. Don't expect to be able to clone and build any random C++ project unless someone in the project is specifically targeting Mac.

This seems like a very unfair complaint. macOS is not Linux. Its shell environment is based on Darwin which is distantly related to BSD. It has no connection to Linux, except for its UNIX certification.

[yoavm]

Why is it unfair? The OP literally stated "To any Linux users". They aren't saying it's worse, just that if you're coming from Linux it can be hard to adapt. Sounds reasonable to me.

As a Linux user, I sometimes dream about the Apple hardware, and I tell myself "How hard can it be to get used to MacOS?! It has a shell after all!". The OP reminded me that it can be quite difficult.

[Philpax]

That can be true while still being a genuine irritant. Windows and POSIX shells are different enough that you'd never assume that a script would be compatible between them - but the same is not true between your average Linux distro and macOS, which leads people to repeatedly get bit when trying to write a script that supports both.

[wingworks]

I get the comment about Docker. Not being able to share memory with docker makes it a pain to use to run things alongside mac, unless you have mountains of ram.

[skopje]

So basically you're a linux user who is mad macOS isn't linux? Don't get me wrong, Tahoe is the worst GUI upgrade ever, but the last time I had problems with lack of native Mac-Arm support was ... 2021? I think your arguments are topical and don't point to a significant problem with the build ecosystem. Yes, rare niche packages haven't all migrated to Arm, but ... that's all you got?

[karmelapple]

> To install a 3rd party window manager you need to disable some security setting

Depends what you mean by window manager, but an app like Magnet does not require disabling security settings.

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/magnet/id441258766?mt=12

[woodruffw]

I'm sympathetic to all of this except the part about DynamoRIO: I've barely seen people compile DynamoRIO successfully on Windows and Linux, so struggles on macOS don't seem that unusual. It seems like a marginal case to ding the Mac on.

(I have a handful of patches in DynamoRIO.)

[bonsai_spool]

I recommend looking at Lima for setting up deterministic build environments on a Mac! I use it with Ansible to provision testing environments:

https://github.com/lima-vm/lima

[mike-cardwell]

I've been forced to use Macbooks for development at work for the past 7 years. I still strongly prefer my personal Thinkpad running Debian for development in my personal life. So don't just put it down to lack of familiarity.

[kgc]

Try Aerospace. Completely solved window management for me.

Also for dev, set up your desired environment in a native container and then just remote into it with your terminal of choice. (Personally recommend Ghostty with Zellij or Tmux)

[AlexeyBrin]

macOS has a different dev culture than Linux, but you can get pretty close if you install the Homebrew package manager. For running LLMs locally I would recommend Ollama (easy) or llama.cpp. Due to the unified memory, you should be able to run larger models than what you can run on a typical consumer grade GPU, but slower.

[stonecharioteer]

Look up Aerospace for the mac. You don't need to disable anything in security.

[neop1x]

You can disable most animations in the Accessibility settings under Reduce Motion.

[aftergibson]

Hello! Yes! Writing this from my commute home using my companies M3 Pro and I hate it. I'm waiting for a new joiner so I can hand this off to a new starter who has a different brain to me.

I can write up all the details, but it's well covered on a recent linuxmatters.sh and Martin did a good job of explaining what I'm feeling: https://linuxmatters.sh/65/

[lexarflash8g]

Big fan of the podcast Late Linux Linux btw

[surfingdino]

Can you not install Parallels and use it to run Linux under Mac OS X?

[sebiol]

For me a VM set up via UTM works quite well on my Mac. Just make sure you do not virtualize x86, that kills both performance and battery life. This way I get the nice battery life and performance in a small packge but am not limited by MacOs for my development.

[TranquilMarmot]

> I'll probably replace it with a framework at some point in the near future.

I kind of did the opposite. I have a first-gen Framework and really enjoy it, but WOW that thing runs scorchingly hot and loud. Too hot to put on your lap even doing basic workflows. Battery life is also horrible, maybe ~4 hours if you're doing any sort of heavy work, ~6 hours if you're just browsing the web. Did I mention it's loud? The fans spin up and they sound like a jet engine. The speaker on it is also substandard if that matters to you - it's inside the chassis and has no volume or bass.

Last year I replaced it with an M4 Pro Macbook and the difference is night and day. The Macbook stays cool, quiet, and has 10+ hour battery life doing the same sort of work. The trade-off is not being able to use Linux (yes, I know about Asahi, the tradeoffs are not worth it) but I have yet to find anything that I can't do on linux.

I also _despise_ the macOS window manager. It's so bad.

[skinnymuch]

My issue is how much I care about looks. If it’s not pretty, I have a harder time using stuff outside the CLI/TUI.

Linux is too ugly for me to use as my main device. Same with what I’ve seen of Android.

[godelski]

I suggest you head over to /r/unixporn, and you'll probably be presently surprised. Contrary to popular belief, most of this stuff is not very hard to setup. Of course, there are people also showing off custom tooling and the craziest (and sometimes silliest) things they can pull off, but a beautiful interface is usually something you can do in under an hour. It is customary to include a repo with all configurations, so if you wanted to direct copy paste, you can do it much faster than that.

Unless you're talking about the look of the physical machine. Well then that's an easier fix ;)

https://www.reddit.com/r/unixporn/

[yoavm]

In my opinion, Apple is the one doing very poorly on (software) looks recently. Liquid Glass looks like a joke. Both KDE and GNOME look better. The new Expressive Material 3, on Android, actually looks great.

[stevenwalton]

  > To any Linux users,

I have a Macbook Air and I pretty much use it as an ssh machine. It is definitely over priced for that, but it at least beats the annoyance of having to deal with Windows and all the Word docs I get sent or Teams meetings... (Seriously, how does Microsoft still exist?)

Since I mostly live in the terminal (ghostty) or am using the web browser I usually don't have to deal with stupid Apple decisions. Though I've found it quite painful to try to do some even basic things when I want to use my Macbook like I'd use a linux machine. Especially since the functionality can change dramatically after an update... I just don't get why they (and other companies) try to hinder power users so much. I understand we're small in numbers, but usually things don't follow flat distributions.

  > I had to split all my dot files into common/Linux/Mac specific sections

There's often better ways around this. On my machine my OSX config isn't really about specifically OSX but what programs I might be running there[0]. Same goes for linux[1], which you'll see is pretty much just about CUDA and aliasing apt to nala if I'm on a Debian/Ubuntu machine (sometimes I don't get a choice).

I think what ends up being more complicated is when a program has a different name under a distro or version[2]. Though that can be sorted out by a little scripting. This definitely isn't the most efficient way to do things but I write like this so that things are easier to organize, turn on/off, or for me to try new things.

What I find more of a pain in the ass is how commands like `find`[3] and `grep` differ. But usually there are ways you can find to get them to work identically across platforms.

  > Don't expect to be able to clone and build any random C++ project unless someone in the project is specifically targeting Mac.

But yeah, I don't have a solution to this... :(

[0] https://github.com/stevenwalton/.dotfiles/blob/master/rc_fil...

[1] https://github.com/stevenwalton/.dotfiles/blob/master/rc_fil...

[2] https://github.com/stevenwalton/.dotfiles/blob/master/rc_fil...

[3] https://github.com/stevenwalton/.dotfiles/tree/master/rc_fil...

[thehamkercat]

local-development has been fine for me on m4 pro sequoia (i switched from archlinux), not much different

but i absolutely hate MacOS26, my next laptop won't be a macbook

It's a shame what they did to this awesome hardware with a crappy update