The difference: in Linux it is a usability issue to be fixed, whereas on macOS it is a feature and explicit design goal to make it that way. In general, I have found that things which are difficult on Linux are so because the problem is difficult, not because the people who make my computer have paternalistic attitudes about my usage of it.
> In general, I have found that things which are difficult on Linux are so because the problem is difficult [...].
Hard disagree. Audio mixing is not difficult[1]. The Linux kernel guys were right - it does not belong in the kernel. The userspace story however, has been a complete shitshow for decades. I think Pipewire mostly fixed that? Not sure, sometimes I still have to log out and back in to fix audio.
The funniest part? It's been working in the BSDs all along. I recommend reading the source of sndiod[1].
What's even worse? Probably systemd. I try not to hold a strong opinion - I tolerate it, the way I tolerate traffic when taking a walk. The technical issue however is several orders of magnitude simpler - again, the BSDs come to mind, but you can also write a complete PID1 program in about 20 lines of straightforward C[2]. I don't mind the commands being unfamiliar (they're already all different in almost every OS family); it's that the entire package is dreadfully large in scope, opaque, and I find it more difficult to interact with than anything else in this landscape.
I agree PulseAudio, Pipewire, ALSA, etc. are a pretty big shit show in Linux and have been for some time. From what I understand there are a few stories there with various levels of screw ups, but at no point was this situation the goal, and we are moving closer to an easy to use system that "just works" for these needs.
However, it's worth noting that audio experts doing high grade mixing in production are using these systems quite effectively and have been for a long time. It's similar to Blender in that regard with it always having the "guts" of doing great things, but only the experts that knew the correct spells to cast were able to use it effectively before the UI/UX was improved with 2.x and later I believe.
I work in live media production. I would never consider doing any mixing on Linux - just like I wouldn't consider putting Docker containers on a Mac to serve live HTTP traffic.
There are indeed always exceptions to generalizations, as you've pointed out. Though pulseaudio always trudged along fine for me (not like audio had always worked for me on other systems), and pipewire works perfectly.
So it’s purely ideological without any real world difference?
Are most people better off with Apple defaults?
And it’s not because the problem is “difficult”. It’s because for 20 years it has been claimed that this will be the “year of Linux on the Desktop” and it’s never been good enough for most people.
It’s perfectly fine. KDE and Gnome are both now more cohesive, more intuitive, and less buggy than either Windows or MacOS.
The problem with Linux is that, while it’s very good, it’s different.
Nobody actually cares how intuitive something is, at least not in absolute. People will still say Windows is intuitive. Pretty much nothing in Windows, from the registry to COM to IIS to setting/control panel/computer management, is intuitive. But they know how to use it and are used to that particular brand of buggy inconsistency.
Linux desktops have been high quality for a long time now. The reality is you, and others, measure quality as “how much is it like windows” or “how much of it is like macOS”. When that’s your metric, Linux will always come up short, just by definition.
If I pick up a Linux laptop right now, how well will it handle low latency audio? How well will it handle power management? My graphics hardware? Getting WiFi to work reliably is still an issue.
Can I get a high performance Linux laptop with good battery life, fast graphics, that runs cool and silent?
Yes, I just bought one a few months ago actually. A new lunar lake laptop. It gets 12 hours of battery life and has plenty performance for programming, plus 32 gigs of ram. It’s under 3 pounds and the screen is OLED.
And yes, everything works. On bleeding edge 2 month old hardware.
I even use thunderbolt 4 to connect my external displays and peripherals. Not only does it work, but it’s pleasant. KDE has a settings panel for thunderbolt. I can even change my monitor brightness in KDE settings. No OSD required!
But wait, there’s more! I’m running 2 1440p monitors at 240hz and the system never even hiccups.
But wait, there’s more more! The battery settings are really advanced so I can change the power profile, maximum charge, everything.
The only thing I’m unsure about in your comment is “low latency audio”. It seems low latency to me, but I’m not an audio engineer.
I can certainly get a Framework (Fedora and Ubuntu officially supported), throw my prefered Bluefin-Framework image in and get working
Battery life around 7 hours is the average I see reported, Fast/Silent will depend on the model, but I don't see the issue really
Upgradability and easeness of battery replacement are a plus
I just picked framework because they were first to come to mind, but I think Dell has a nice Linux story, Tuxedo also comes to mind
7 hours battery life is less than half of what I get on my MacBook Air. That wouldn’t last me on my ATL - HNL flight I took last year or my MCO - LHR 10 hour flight I’m taking this year.
These are the typical reviews I see around the Framework
> Getting WiFi to work reliably is still an issue.
This should not be an issue. I have hardware that varies a lot and I literally buy random wifi dongles for $1, $4, $5, Amazon, AliExpress, etc. and they have all just worked on first plugin. I can easily take my phone and tether it to my PC using USB-C and it appears in my Gnome network list and just starts using it for Internet.
> how well will it handle low latency audio
Pretty well you can use OBS to verify this. There are plenty of settings if you want to tune that.
> My graphics hardware?
Just ignore Nvidia and move on. Sure they might figure it out one day, I gave up a decade ago and I use Intel integrated or AMD dedicated for GPUs. Nvidia does "work" for most purposes but it will cause you a headache eventually and those are not worth $400 to me.
> How well will it handle power management?
I enjoy the basic controls that Gnome provides that give me a simple way to basically say "go all out" or "save some battery" etc. There are finer grain controls available and I have used commands in the past to push crappy hardware to it's limits before I chucked it (old Intel iGPUs)
> Can I get a high performance Linux laptop with good battery life, fast graphics, that runs cool and silent?
You can get ones that are specifically marketed for this purpose. Tuxedo is one that specializes in this and obviously System76 also do. These have a higher price point than a regular Dell system, which IMO is the better option in some ways. Dell sells more systems and has more users and it will "just work". They sold Linux systems for years and still do I believe.
Regarding "running silent" this is a gripe I have, not that it runs loud but some laptops have custom RGB crap and sometimes in Linux I don't have access to the extra functionality to customize my lighting or manually set my fans to ramp up etc. There are projects that aim to do this, but I have not looked into them beyond the most basic `fancontrol` built in command.
I think once you expand the scope to "most people" it might become impossible to say what the correct answer for that large of a group is. In the past their value add might have been more compelling and their feature lock not as draconian. It appears some people think that has changed over time.
That isn't the denotation of my post; I was not characterizing Linux as a whole, but only responding to your specific (unsound) analogy. It works better for me, for a number of reasons including that above. Perhaps it will work better for you, as well. :)
The second part of your post is incoherent to me, I can't tell what you're trying to say.
