12 ms·

KDE beats macOS

189 points by macco 4y ago

nottorp 4y ago
I wonder. Does KDE still delete and redraw all tray icons when one of them updates? It was distracting as hell last time I used it extensively. Perhaps that's why the OP needs to hide them. You can find something to complain about with any DE.
sgt 4y ago
- naikrovek 4y ago
  yeah; I'm not a Mac fan and I've only begun using it seriously this year, and a lot of what he says is wrong, or easily discoverable if you just look. I'd love to see the much, much longer list from a Mac person who must now use KDE.
- wg0 4y ago
  KDE rivals mac? Don't think so. Been using it myself and even Gnome is better and neater IMHO. Whereas the gestures and workspaces on mac are really a productivity boost.
- distances 4y ago
  Not sure what you mean to imply. I've been using Mac daily at work for three years now, and KDE simply is better. I still prefer Mac over Windows though. Similarly to the article author, a lot of my grievances are about Finder. Either it is very poor as a file manager, or it's so undiscoverable that after all these years I have still not figured it out properly. These are all anecdotes and preferences, obviously. I do get that Mac hits all the boxes for some people.
  - dsego 4y ago
    Any specific grievances? The discoverability argument I don't buy, because the same people that will tinker for hours on a linux distro to learn and set it up, suddenly need things to be in their face or it's not discoverable.
    - distances 4y ago
      I'm sure it's partly just resistance to change. I did get some good tips from the comment someone linked: https://old.reddit.com/r/kde/comments/yvxz2l/kde_beats_macos_hands_down/iwklxej/ https://old.reddit.com/r/kde/comments/yvxz2l/kde_beats_macos... But discoverability is part of the issue. E.g. Finder doesn't list keyboard shortcuts for any of the items in the context menu. I now see they are listed in the app menu though. But I've used Finder for three years without these hints. And then I encounter things like I can't cut-paste a file. Is it something I can't just find, or is it not a Mac concept? I have to search the web to find an answer to things like this, and I probably resort to mv with Terminal. Which can probably be filed under change resistance.
      - dsego 4y ago
        > I can't cut-paste a file. Is it something I can't just find, or is it not a Mac concept? I'm sure if linux/kde/gnome implemented copy-move semantics instead of the usual cut-paste first, every linux evangelist would advocate it here for how superior it is to win/mac paradigms, sort of like package management flavor of the month, middle mouse button to paste text etc. I still remember how non-technical folks couldn't grasp the cut-paste concept back in win 95 days, like you cut a file and it's grayed out, where is it, what happens if you don't paste, does it disappear, etc Or having to double click to open files. Wasn't very discoverable for them, but very easy for me at the tender age of 12-13, probably because I was actually interested in tech and learning about all the ins and outs of windows, they were just trying to get stuff done. But it does depend on experience and open-mindedness.
        distances 4y ago
        I don't really get what you're saying. That there is another file moving semantic on Mac, and it's not that hard to figure out?
rnd0 4y ago
Beats macOS ...at what? Serious, not facetious, question. The only answer I can think of is "running on non-Apple hardware"
- goosedragons 4y ago
  Being usable out of the box? With KDE I don't need to go find a 3rd party app for decent window snapping, I don't need a 3rd party app to put files on my Android phone over USB, I don't need a 3rd party app to have the trackpad and scroll wheel mouse directions be "natural" and "unnatural" at the same time, I don't need a 3rd party app to be able to use the volume buttons to change the volume level of a sound device connected by HDMI or Display port, I don't need a 3rd party package manager to get the software I actually want to use, I don't need to give my terminal permission to display my fucking documents folder, I don't need to give every 3rd app I install special accessibility privileges to be able to it's damn job, I don't need to do things like manually copy over my R binary so I can use a debugger attached to it, etc.
  - beanjuice 4y ago
    These are all very specific complaints. By the numbers, does KDE answer the question "how do I interact with a school/volunteer/work .docx/.ppt/.xlsx file without likely breaking it?
    - goosedragons 4y ago
      That's a pretty specific complaint. You can use the web version of Office. You can install Office under Wine. I personally have Office 2010 installed on Linux. It works.
      - NayamAmarshe 4y ago
        OnlyOffice works great too.
      - agloeregrets 4y ago
        lol I love how the specific complaint is what 99% of businesses do in practice while the OP post complains about coping an R binary.
mongrelion 4y ago
I understand where the author is coming from but after going through the list of complaints it became obvious that they haven't fully read the manual as a few of the things that they say is lacking is simply not true. The rest of the points go about design choices and decisions made by Apple, which is fair enough: some opinions you will agree with. Some others you won't. And that's ok.
- nocman 4y ago
  > a few of the things that they say is lacking is simply not true. I would be interested in hearing precisely which things you are referring to (just out of curiosity on my part).
doix 4y ago
Intuitiveness is just what you are used to at this point. If you've been in the Apple ecosystem your whole life, then their UX seems intuitive to you. If you haven't, then it makes absolutely no sense. I first touched an apple device in my 20's, there was nothing intuitive about it. I couldn't do anything and was extremely frustrated. I'm sure the same applies to apple folks trying gnome/KDE/windows. People are getting introduced to touch devices from a young age now days. I bet they will find things intuitive based on the devices their parents gave them. It's kind of like religion at this point, did you grow up using Android or iOS? Switching would be a deliberate effort, like not following your families religion (with hopefully significantly less judgement).
- fps_doug 4y ago
  Absolutely this. UIs have been "good enough" for a very long time now. There were some minor breakthroughs/inventions along the way, but half of them were probably just responses to shifting usage patterns. You build up muscle memory and you're set. One example that comes to mind is more powerful/prominent search features. In the 90s, as a home user, you had a folder with some documents and in total, the number of installed games plus apps was probably around a dozen. So it was ok that on Windows, searching for files was hidden in a sub-menu and rather slow. Today, you have a bazillion tools and apps, games, documents from 30 years of migrating to a new system, backups, so you make search faster to access. People value consistency and gradual development, not failed, half-baked overhauls like the Windows 8 debacle. And obviously that stuff actually works. Which is continuing to be a big downside of KDE or Linux in general. Too many components working together, maintained by different teams and ever-changing. It's basically up to the Distros to find the perfect combination of library and software versions to get a good experience.
- uniqueuid 4y ago
  I don't really agree. The really interesting part of intuitiveness is how it scales once you became familiar with the basic set of UX primitives. At least from my experience with ~15 years of mac, ~15 years of on-and-off linux and windows, macOS has remained more consistent, because the primitives are much more universal. Take, for example copying. You can alt-drag a surprising number of things across many different apps and have them just work. Or holding alt in menus to show additional entries. Or holding shift or alt to resize items to preserve ratio on one or two sides. Or take dragging and dropping references to the current file from the proxy icon in the window top bar. Or dragging and dropping selected text as snippets. Or looking up words in the built-in dictionary. The amount of effort the mac team invested to re-use ux interaction modes is really crazy coming from other platforms, and it extends to abstractions such as disk images. One of the things that impressed me the most was how you could clone mac volumes to usb or firewire disks, boot from them, clone volumes to compressed images and restore them - all seamlessly, without messing with disk sizes, sectors, boot records or bioses - and it would just magically work. Granted, the story is no longer that easy with APFS and M1/M2 macs, but I still think this is a bar that no other operating system has reached.
sleepyfran 4y ago
Alternative title: KDE is different than macOS, hands down
throwntoday 4y ago
> Linux is great if you don't value your time Continues to be one of my favorite quotes. Yes I can spend endless hours getting arch installed with only the packages I want/need making sure it's totally optimized and then what, every single other part of my workflow now has to work around the limitations of linux. One day perhaps, but for now, macOS will do.
- preisschild 4y ago
  Or use literally any friendly distro? Fedora, PopOS, Ubuntu require the same amount of work to set up as a macbook. Just because arch takes time to set up (by design) doesn't mean all Linux distros are this needy. Sure, for Fedora you have to add the Flathub repo (1 click on a website) and if you have a nvidia gpu, then you have to enable the RPMFusion repo (also 1 click on a website). I'd argue installing Homebrew requires more effort.
  - herr_gurke 4y ago
    Time to set up is comparable, or even better for linux. The issue starts on the longer run, the moment when after one update hibernation stops working or bluetooth has issues and needs to be restarted with rfkill. I fully understand that its not fully linux fault - those are proprietary drivers and so on, but from the user perspective I would love to have a system that just works.
    - piaste 4y ago
      > the moment when after one update hibernation stops working or bluetooth has issues and needs to be restarted with rfkill I'll hype Fedora Silverblue/Kinoite once again for solving that. Don't like the new update? Messed up /etc in any way? Tried a questionable third-party RPM and what a surprise, it doesn't do what you wanted? Roll back in a single command, even from the boot screen. If 'ostree admin' was usable from the GUI [0], showing a screenshot of it would blow the mind of people using other operating systems. The downside is that upgrading RPMs now requires a reboot, but your apps are going to be Flatpaks (or AppImages, or Podman services) so they don't have that limitation. [0] Which will hopefully arrive soon to KDE: https://invent.kde.org/plasma/discover/-/merge_requests/166 https://invent.kde.org/plasma/discover/-/merge_requests/166
dontlaugh 4y ago
Someone gets it https://old.reddit.com/r/kde/comments/yvxz2l/kde_beats_macos_hands_down/iwklxej/ https://old.reddit.com/r/kde/comments/yvxz2l/kde_beats_macos...
pjmlp 4y ago
Maybe from user point of view. It is also missing the whole development experience with XCode, Swift, Objective-C, Metal, Instruments,.... versus KDE Frameworks and KDevelop.
Havoc 4y ago
Isnt this just different choices on customizability vs uniform polished approach.
brailsafe 4y ago
I guess I'd agree with more discoverable shortcuts for context menu items, but damn if 1 more button press for what is actually quite capable screenshotting just doesn't bother me at all. When I use Windows, I notice immediately that the thematic direction of Windows 8 and onward is just a sad and shallow veneer over a mountain of legacy icons and other cruft they don't believe matters, along with spyware and adware built into the stock os image, and the likelihood of needing to completely reinstall at some point. By comparison, this list of issues seems rather petty, and I guess that means macOS is doing pretty well. Nobody likes being forced to use something they're not familiar with or desire though, so I do sympathize. Haven't installed Ventura yet though...
lampe3 4y ago
To be honest I stopped caring what OS I'm running as long as it is not windows. I have a terminal open 99% of the time and I almost never open finder or Gnome Files. pacman or brew? really I don't care. Both install what I want with one command. VS Code is basically the same on every system. Gnome/KDE/MacOS all of them have there pros and cons. Right now what wins for me is the apple silicon. I can develop stuff without a fan running for 8 hours. Once Framework laptops come with a ARM Laptop were I can run gnome I can consider to switch again.
- drunkenmagician 4y ago
  +1 to this … I’m so over endless discussions individual philosophical and aesthetic preferences in o/s and window managers. As long as I can be productive and not have to ‘fix’ things constantly
- yibers 4y ago
  Wouls you care to elaborate a bit as to why you would care if the OS you are running os Windows?
  - irusensei 4y ago
    Not him but I share the same opinion. I've recently tried Windows 10 and 11 and the thing is trying to make you sign in to a Microsoft.com service from the moment you finish installing it. Dark patterns everywhere during the setup and in order to create a local account you must do weird stuff like inserting invalid Microsoft.com accountname or disconnecting the computer from the network during setup. Are you sure you want to have the """limited""" Windows experience? Third party software also doesn't help. I shit you not I had to install some Asus software that legit started sending me offers through the main OS notification widget. Using Windows is like walking through a very crowded Chinese market with lots of nagging merchants trying to pull you in plus AI enhanced security cameras everywhere. SIR HAVE YOU TRIED THE NEW EDGE BROWSER? WHY ARENT YOU USING EDGE? It's an ad platform that can run program nowdays. I might start calling it BonziBuddyOS. Now if you compare it with the clean default desktop macOS popular Linux distributions offer out of the box it makes a lot of sense for someone to avoid Windows.
ggerganov 4y ago
At work I use Gnome and at home I use MacOS - I am used to both environments. I am a C++ developer and spend most of my time in a terminal. Of course, it took some time over the years to have everything customized for my needs, but at the moment I feel equally productive on both. However, if I had to choose one, I will likely stick with Mac though. The performance of the new Apple Silicon chips is amazing and it's going to get even better.
- izacus 4y ago
  Why would hardware have to dictate your choice of software though ?
  - ggerganov 4y ago
    Ideally it shouldn't. But at the moment, I cannot use Apple Silicon on anything else other than Mac OS and I believe the performance of these chips is unmatched and it will not be anytime soon.
  - plgonzalezrx8 4y ago
    Because software runs on hardware...... Currently, some software runs INCREDIBLY FASTER and more efficient on M1/M2 Chips (ARM) vs running on X86-64.
KaiserPro 4y ago
> KDE beats macOS hands down "If you've been using KDE for years and are new to OSX." should be appended to the headline. I'm not going to defend OSX here. It is as obtuse as any other GUI system. My dad was always a KDE fan, I suspect because he had CDE/CDE like GUIs for a long time, and muscle memory is hard to overcome. I never really liked it, however for the longest time it did have more features and polish than gnome. I really don't like modern gnome (>3) its a pain in the arse to make it do what I want. However if you use it as the gods of UX intend, then its reasonably friction free. I've recently come back to windows 10. Its fine, has virtual monitors, keyboard shortcuts and powershell. I imagine that with me bothering to learn WSL it would be really rather quite good. However I have nothing really against OSX, apart from it insists on stacking windows ontop of each other, which is deeply annoying.
- easygenes 4y ago
  I have to say that WSL is an absolute nightmare. I just cannot stand it. Not only that, but Microsoft has deeply embedded Hyper-V into Windows, to the point that you can't run another hypervisor. I tried to get away from WSL by using VMware Workstation and found that Hyper-V was still under the hood and bogging down the system. All the documents I could find, including recent official ones from Microsoft, on removing Hyper-V so you could run another hypervisor were incomplete. I eventually got the VMware hypervisor running though, and it is so much better.
  - NayamAmarshe 4y ago
    WSL was a nightmare for me too. Hacks piled on top of other hacks, required to make Linux CLI work on Windows but it's just that, a hacky way to use Linux. Sometimes the system broke, sometimes the filesystem limitations and the performance was always bad, especially with anything involving a large number of files. It was just an awful experience all around. I think anybody who uses WSL over real Linux is only doing it because they either do not want to learn something better & different or they have hardware issues with Linux. So glad I moved to a real installation after wasting a whole month on WSL. Couldn't be any happier.
fernandotakai 4y ago
funny enough, i just moved back to linux after using macOS for almost a year. i decided to install KDE just to see what was going on and holy damn, it's SO GOOD. the only thing i installed (and configured) was a tiling window manager (bismuth https://github.com/Bismuth-Forge/bismuth/ https://github.com/Bismuth-Forge/bismuth/) and that was it. everything is working perfectly, it looks great and it's suuuper smooth.
panda-giddiness 4y ago
The only UI difference I find truly maddening is the inability to open a terminal in the current folder. On other operating systems, I can right click in the empty space to open a terminal in that directory; on macOS, I must instead right click on a subfolder, open a terminal in that subfolder, and then navigate up one directory (`cd ..`)... ...unless the current folder contains no folders, in which case I have to navigate up one directory (via keyboard shortcut -- this cannot be done natively in Finder) and then right click on the target folder (especially annoying if the parent folder contains many directories). I can only assume that I'm misinformed because the current paradigm makes no goddamn sense.
- ubercow13 4y ago
  Yeah its annoying. If you enable the pathbar status bar thing in finder, you can right click the current folder which is always visible there and launch the terminal. However if the folder has no contents there is still no way to do it with the keyboard I think.
  - panda-giddiness 4y ago
    Thanks!
- timeon 4y ago
  It would be better if you could do it that way but your workflow surprise me a bit. Maybe it is because I use column view in finder so folder and sub-folder are both one click. I use mac because I like (Next/Open/Gnu)Step so maybe that is why things are more intuitive for me.
- sbuk 4y ago
  Finder > View > Show Path Bar (Option + Command + P). Right click on the folder in the path bar > Open in Terminal.
- spython 4y ago
  I use forklift as my main file manager, it has a lot of power user features, and a button to open terminal in the current folder is one of them – https://binarynights.com/ https://binarynights.com/
sarmasamosarma 4y ago
gary17the 4y ago
macOS UI capabilities aside, I have to mention that the latest Kubuntu 22.04 Long Term Support (LTS) 2022 release with KDE Plasma 5.24 is a fantastic upgrade. The system is snappy, much more so than under the previous Kubuntu 20.04 2020 release. Moreover, the 5.15 Linux kernel seems to be handling huge memory allocations for virtual machines an order of magnitude faster than the previous 5.4 kernel. If you are tired of macOS, I wholeheartedly recommend giving Kubuntu 22.04 LTS a try. (You can always buy a second GPU and run macOS inside a QEMU virtual machine, 99% stable at native UI speeds with GPU passthrough.)
- timbit42 4y ago
  Snaps aren't snappy though. I switched to Linux Mint and put KDE on it.
  - gary17the 4y ago
    It's possible to run the entire Kubuntu system with `apt` and/or local `deb` packages only - I uninstalled `snapd` a long time ago.
    - timbit42 4y ago
      Right, but if you remove snapd, you then have to find somewhere else to get those packages. With Linux Mint, all the packages are in the default repo.
Labo333 4y ago
Most of their concerns are addressable by external apps like Rectangle, AltTab and Maccy. Try those, they are free and open source 10x productivity boosters!
NayamAmarshe 4y ago
I agree. After using both for a long time, I have to say KDE is less painful and faster in operation. MacOS has a lot of inconsistent or weird keyboard shortcuts. There's no proper window management, HDMI volume cannot be controlled, can't launch apps like VSCode or Terminal using keyboard shortcuts like Ctrl+ Alt + C and Ctrl + Alt + T. The shell takes like 2 seconds to load when opening terminal. Yes, MacOS is more beautiful OOTB but KDE hands down wins in the workflow and UX department.
- tgv 4y ago
  You can always install Quicksilver. It's pretty handy. I've bound it to ctrl-alt-space, and F is enough to launch Firefox, M to launch Mail, I enough to launch iTerm, etc., without creating shortcuts or editing settings. And if you want to launch some application with overlapping initials, type one or two more characters. And it's free.
  - NayamAmarshe 4y ago
    I installed ZorinOS instead and it's working great now but thanks for the recommendation, I'll give it a try.
bodge5000 4y ago
Early this year, I finally made the switch from using primarily using Windows to using Linux. I went with Fedora after hearing good things about its reliability, but was bracing for a bit of a clunky front-end. Needless to say, I was shocked by how far it'd come and how nice it was. The key point I remember feeling at the time is that it felt like MacOS despite not having used a Mac in over a decade. Fast-forward to a month or so ago, I finally decide to get a mac to try it out, and the really strange thing about it was, Fedora felt more like MacOS than MacOS (or at least, it felt more like my vision of what MacOS would be). I do really like my Mac and I'm still using it for now at least, not saying either one is categorically better than the other, but that has stuck with me. I should probably try out KDE now as well, it looks a bit more windows-like but could be interesting
IshKebab 4y ago
I mean, sure some of those things are crap in MacOS. Some he is mistaken about or are super niche. He does have some valid points but you can't take a few annoyances and say "KDE beats macOS". I could easily find the same number of annoyances in KDE. Probably many more. He's just made peace with them. > Impossible to create a dotfile from Finder (only terminal) Yeah most people don't need this ever. If you're making dotfiles you know what the terminal is. > Lack of native clipboard Not sure what this is supposed to mean. It obviously has a clipboard. > Finder's weird shortcuts for rename vs open file (no way to open a file with keyboard?) Cmd-Down I think, but I agree the shortcuts are super weird. > Taking screenshots requires to click the preview in order to copy to clipboard, which also causes to save it to Desktop. There is a global shortcut to save directly to keyboard, but it requires 3 button presses. With KDE you can setup the preferred behavior and always copy to clipboard while at the same time saving to a specific path (and not always Desktop!) Mac's screenshot support is really good. Yes it requires 3 modifier keys but I still miss it on Windows. > Surprising lack of apps in the store (Firefox, Bitwarden, Zoom, Teams, VLC are all quite popular, yet only Bitwarden is there). The others require download from the website (basically a Windows-like experience) True but try installing an app that isn't in "the store" (which one again?) on Linux. There are pros and cons. > Finder: no side by side view for easily moving stuff between unrelated folders/paths You can open multiple windows.
- zamalek 4y ago
  > True but try installing an app that isn't in "the store" (which one again?) on Linux Typically Discover or Gnome Software. They integrate with several package managers (Apt, pacman, etc.). Discover does even more; being a single stop not only for apps, but also DE extensions. There is no paid app store, if that is what you meant, except on ElementaryOS. Some apps are still download-and-run or download-and-install. MacOS is strictly superior in the former case, as you can install apps by dragging them to the Applications folder (in Gnome and KDE you need to 'find' .local/share/applications). Downloading and running does generally work, unless you're on something without a standard FHS (e.g. NixOS). Overall, MacOS is strictly worse (as a development machine) than Linux in this regard: it has no native package manager. Containers are also still a fucking nightmare, even with the heroic efforts of the people behind Colima/Lima.
jebronie 4y ago
I don't know how to use X yet, so what I used before is better - the post
constantlm 4y ago
Several of the things listed are false (like the lack of ability to open files with your keyboard, which you can do with cmd-⬇) and app window switching (cmd+~)
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- kuschku 4y ago
  If you say the author's issue is invalid, then please explain: How can you configure macOS to have a keyboard shortcut that also makes sense on ISO keyboards to switch between all windows of all apps in a single UI?
  - pwinnski 4y ago
    Why do you think that "windows" are the appropriate level at which to consider things, rather than a hierarchy in which one first choose the appropriate "application" and then switches between windows for that application, if more than one exist? Using a "single UI" to do two different things seems like an odd choice, albeit clearly one you're used to.
    - layer8 4y ago
      Not the GP, but I routinely have use-cases where I switch back and forth between (say) two windows of one app and one window of another app. That, is, for a given task I have a “working set” consisting of windows of different apps, involving more than one same-app window for at least one of the apps. It would be annoying to have to switch between different keyboard shortcuts, instead of just getting LRU behavior within that “working set” of windows with a single keyboard shortcut. Which app the currently active window belongs to shouldn’t matter for switching back to the previously active window (or the second orevious one, etc.).
      - pwinnski 4y ago
        My experience on MacOS is that whichever window for a given app was current when you last switched away will be current when you switch back, so it's still a single combo-keystroke to switch as you're describing. My point was that people tend to favor whichever approach they're most used to. Switching only at the window level does "lose" information about the hierarchy, while switching with the hierarchy in place requires one to track the hierarchy which they might prefer not to do. One is not necessarily better than the other, and there are use-cases for both.
oleg_antonyan 4y ago
I had to stop the job interview when suddenly they said that I must use Mac. They ship MacBook to you and you have no choice of using Linux or anything else. Corporate policy. It's literally unusable for me after 15+ years on Linux with KDE (mostly). Tried Mac for 4 months at one of the previous jobs but escaped to a comfort zone. Sometimes habits are too strong, and alternative is not appealing enough.
- synergy20 4y ago
  same here, if I'm told I must use Mac at work, I'm out immediately.
- plgonzalezrx8 4y ago
  This seems so elitist that seems crazy to me. Maybe you're not as good as you think you are if a GUI change will literally make you "Literally Unusable". Especially with the mac terminal being Darwin which is virtually just Unix, and with Brew you can install literally anything you need for your workflow. I use arch btw.
  - oleg_antonyan 4y ago
    It certainty is elitist to a degree of laziness and 2021 job market. B/c why switch to something new that I know I don't like. But who knows what else year 2022 brings us, I wouldn't mind switching to Mac if this is literally the question of survival. Luckily not yet
- kennend3 4y ago
  I find some of these "use a mac at work" companies do it because boring companies are trying to be "hip and cool". One place i know uses Java exclusively, but the devs all have macbooks because they are cool? How/why does a macbook improve java app development vs the standard issue Lenovo's? It is like these old and boring companies think that by using macs they are suddenly "trendy and hip" and the millennials will flock to them?
  - parasubvert 4y ago
thomassmith65 4y ago
I hate the Mac*, but even so, nothing on that list of complaints is valid. Here's an example of what I consider a valid complaint: the placement of a Mac's app menubar at the top of the screen, instead of the top of an application window, is wrong. Two pieces of evidence: (1) it leads to confusion with multiple monitors and (2) new Mac users invariably have trouble remembering to look for app-specific choices at the top of the screen. Mac-users rebut this by claiming that Apple's design adheres better to Fitt's law, but time has proven the disadvantages outweigh that. If one chooses a window metaphor for an app, the app's controls should appear in close proximity to that window. In contrast, the list items here are mostly just wrong ("Lack of native clipboard") or superficial ("Can't create new file from Finder context menu"). *though imo Mac OS was lovable as recently as a decade ago.
- stratosmacker 4y ago
  The former is true, KDE ships with a clipboard manager with history, macos just has copy/paste. You need something like Maccy to manage history.
  - thomassmith65 4y ago
    If that's what the author meant by 'native'... okay. It rubbed me the wrong way since a big thing about the Mac going back to the mid 1980s was its native clipboard support.
  - dsego 4y ago
    I love the irony of complaining about missing a native functionality that's available as a third party app, but turning a blind eye to general lack of productive software on the linux/kde platform. It's like little smug kids teasing other kids with petty things "ha ha, my OS doesn't have a decent commercial photo editor or video production software, but you don't have a native clipboard manager, ha ha".
    - pxc 4y ago
      It's pretty simple: third party, commercial software isn't an OS feature. It's not part of the desktop environment. Things like the clipboard and its behavior are. And the macOS desktop environment is missing a ton of shit that you can take for granted across a dozen Linux desktop environments. They add up to a sense that the desktop itself on macOS is neglected and barren in its very fundamentals.
oneplane 4y ago
None of this has any true value, it's all just taste, human memory and preference. All you can do try try various systems and pick what works for you, while also remembering that you're not the only person in the world, and sometimes a not-as-good experience for yourself can mean a much better integration with the people you live and work with.
- agloeregrets 4y ago
  This. Hell, if you, as a skilled user, can't do your job on any OS just fine then the problem is you, not the software. You need to learn the software and adapt. Yes there are exceptions for some tasks where the hassle isn't worth it due to missing apps but with WSL on Windows, zsh on macOS and any various linux distro the average dev can do their job just fine. There are corrections for window snapping on macOS like Magnet. Hell the way macOS does hidden files is just straight linux. You learn to work where you are, not complain and bash the software, they are all perfectly good enough for a modern dev. I jumpped between macOS, Windows, Ubuntu and even chromeOS as a FE dev and all of them have a terminal, VS code, and even good Git Gui apps. That doesn't mean some tasks are not easier or that hard to use software design is the fault of the users, it's just that the complaints are pretty silly coming from someone who had to learn KDE's quirks and yes there are great solutions for this on any OS.
xiaq 4y ago
KDE is the last bastion of GUI customizability. Everyone else is absolutely horrified by the idea of maintaining a UI option used by less than 20% of the user base. For things that are used by more than 20% of users, they actively make it worse so that people stop using it and they can justify removing them.
- tmtvl 4y ago
  Heck, even KDE is unfortunately losing features (requiescat in pace, Desktop Cube, I'll never forget you), the days of a PC being very P may not last too much longer.
johnchristopher 4y ago
Biggest burn I had: Drag and dropping a named folder on the desktop where a folder with the same name already lived resulted in the desktop folder content being replaced with the dropped folder content and the loss of all its content. I was expecting a merge or a copy/overwrite dialog, not the overwrite of the desktop folder content.
- pxc 4y ago
  That is absolutely, stunningly bad UI.
- periheli0n 4y ago
  Hope you had timemachine on which allowed you to instantly recover the contents?
periheli0n 4y ago
I made the switch from Linux to KDE a few years back. It takes a while to learn all the new keyboard shortcuts—in fact most of the missing bits quoted in the article are present, just not where/how you were used to them in KDE. What really sold me on MacOS though was multi-finger touchpad gestures, like three-finger drag and four finger desktop switch. It's difficult or even impossible to get that on Linux (at least it was a couple years back when I last tried). Then there are other small things like the consistent availability of emacs-like keybindings. I'm using Ctrl-t to exchange ('transpose') two adjacent characters all the time to fix typos in-place. Under Linux this is very much hit-and-miss and depends on the app toolkit. Bottomline: one you're used to MacOS it's not worse than KDE (which is still great BTW).
contingencies 4y ago
Unintuitive things about macOS: the bar at the top is used both for app-context menus and for system-context settings. Wuh? If you want to scan something, you have to go via system settings instead of running an app. Wuh? They keep breaking drivers for important things, especially USB things, especially if it so happens that they decide to sell them themselves (like external keyboards). About a year ago I had an issue where previously functional USB UART drivers stopped working, result being I had to buy a Linux laptop for firmware work. Then, just last week, my Cherry mechanical keyboard stopped working, the windows key had previously functioned seamlessly as 'command' but ceased to do so. No amount of fiddling seemed to fix it. At this point I'll never buy another Apple device. Fixing anything hardwareish requires remembering undocumented key combinations at boot time. No rollback support on config changes. One could go on...
- sbuk 4y ago
  > Unintuitive things about macOS: the bar at the top is used both for app-context menus and for system-context settings. Wuh? Not unintuitive different to what you are used to. > If you want to scan something, you have to go via system settings instead of running an app. Wuh? No, you use Preview.app, which is the default image viewer in macOS, and always has been. > They keep breaking drivers for important things, especially USB things, especially if it so happens that they decide to sell them themselves (like external keyboards). About a year ago I had an issue where previously functional USB UART drivers stopped working, result being I had to buy a Linux laptop for firmware work. Then, just last week, my Cherry mechanical keyboard stopped working, the windows key had previously functioned seamlessly as 'command' but ceased to do so. No amount of fiddling seemed to fix it. At this point I'll never buy another Apple device. No different to any other OS. Fedora managed to break my wifi drivers in the last update. More often, it's hardware manufacturers dragging their heels. > Fixing anything hardwareish requires remembering undocumented key combinations at boot time. https://support.apple.com/en-gb/HT201255 https://support.apple.com/en-gb/HT201255 looks like a duck and quacks like a duck... > No rollback support on config changes. Sort of, though using Time Machine is very effective. > One could go on... One could, and one woud still be mostly wildly incorrect...
  - 4y ago
resuresu 4y ago
People tend to forget MacOS is BSD under the hood, not a Linux distribution. So the way it handles installation software is going to be different. I personally think the way BSD handles software is better, Linux blurs the line between 3rd party software and system dependencies and that causes all kinds of issues when it’s time to update or remove stuff.
- ColonelPhantom 4y ago
  >Linux blurs the line between 3rd party software and system dependencies How does BSD avoid this? I guess package manager installed software does get lumped in, but is that really 3rd party software in a meaningful sense? I very much like how it's all in one place. User-installed software usually gets installed into /usr/local or /opt, which is separate from the system-managed trees.
tgv 4y ago
How does this particular list of very minor gripes get so many upvotes? And it's not just minor gripes, half of them are wrong. Some of them have been addressed by others, but: * Taking screenshots requires to click the preview in order to copy to clipboard, which also causes to save it to Desktop. No, it doesn't. * Surprising lack of apps in the store Says someone defending KDE? But hey, strangely enough I'm typing this in Firefox. I've got Teams running, and Zoom. There really is more than one way to install an app. * The stupid amount of app icons in the "tray" bar. Not collapsible, not hideable. What does that mean? There's no tray bar. Is it the menu? Is it the Dock? In both cases, it's untrue, or the writer means something else. * No easy way to open a path in Finder Cmd-shift-G or Go > Go to folder isn't easy enough? What's KDE's super brilliant solution? * Finder: no side by side view for easily moving stuff between unrelated folders/paths Can't open two windows? And even if all were true, it misses so many other points, it's embarrassing. What OP means is: I've got a fixed workflow, and now I have to learn a few new shortcuts.
- sgloutnikov 4y ago
  For moving files between folders tabs in Finder works fine, you don't even need a new window.
- jasonlotito 4y ago
  > Taking screenshots requires to click the preview in order to copy to clipboard, which also causes to save it to Desktop. > No, it doesn't. How do you take a screenshot that saves the screenshot to a specific spot that isn't the Desktop and ALSO stores the screenshot in the clipboard? cmd+shift+3/4 doesn't store the screenshot in the clipboard. It just stores in on the Desktop. You can click the preview and it will move it into the clipboard as well as save it. The other method, that puts the screenshot directly into the clipboard with ctrl+cmd+shit+3/4 but it doesn't save the screenshot. What's the single keyboard shortcut command to take a screenshot and have it saved to your machine as well as have it stored in your clipboard? I'll enjoy watching people down vote learning and knowledge sharing.
  - bentheklutz 4y ago
jklinger410 4y ago
I've been using computers since Windows 95 and I personally find KDE to be the most confusing and broken DE that I've tried. Simply try to edit/move the bottom bar in edit mode, or change the global theme, and watch it fall apart.
jb1991 4y ago
The article seems ignorant of native tools built right into macOS. For example, it claims macOS is missing: > Missing native Alt+Tab and individual window switching (only does app switching) This is simply false, and the whole list is by someone who just hasn't made an effort to learn how to use a new OS they are not familiar with. For example, I just use Command-tilda, two keys right next to each other, to switch between windows of the same app, and Command-Tab to switch between different apps altogether. Is this not what the author wants?
- nmjohn 4y ago
  When I first switched to osx many years ago, this was a pretty jarring change. I was used to alt+tab switching between all windows, and had muscle memory tied to that. Today, however, I couldn't imagine going back. Having separate toggles for switching apps vs. switching app windows is so much faster and useful - once you get used to it. But it does take retraining muscle memory.
  - jb1991 4y ago
    What I don't understand is the author of this article making statements like this that reveal they have not put in any effort to learn a whole new OS. Imagine if I switched to KDE and soon wrote an article bashing KDE because I just couldn't figure out how to do basic things. Some effort is necessary to see what an OS offers, and this author clearly hasn't done it.
    - kuschku 4y ago
      macOS has no customizability, claiming that this makes it more "intuitive" and you don't need "effort to learn" it. If you need to spend "effort to learn" anyway, you might as well just go with something like KDE, where on top of having learnt the environment, you can now also customize it.
      - trymas 4y ago
        > claiming that this makes it more "intuitive" and you don't need "effort to learn" it. just out of curiosity opened: https://www.apple.com/macos/ventura/ https://www.apple.com/macos/ventura/ . Not a word on intuitiveness and effortlessness.
it 4y ago
I tried using Linux for my laptop at Google but it was a torment due mainly to the wonkiness of the trackpad driver. I've been happily using Macs ever since. Linux is for servers.
barbariangrunge 4y ago
Personally… gnome is where it’s at. Much better keyboard driven workflow than any other environment
- prmoustache 4y ago
  I am in the same boat. For me it is either gnome or i3/sway + rofi. I love that kde exist and is a great alternative for the people who don't like gnome but it is not for me. I hate windows and am confused by MacOS which feels totally unintuitive to me.
hipsterstal1n 4y ago
> I recently quit a job that made me use a Mac after less than 3 months, and I'm not even kidding, that was part of why. Imagine quitting your job over an operating system.
lakomen 4y ago
I vote to ban reddit links from HN
bigpeopleareold 4y ago
Comparing KDE and macOS is weird. One is a DE, the other an OS (and a hardware commitment.) I would never buy a Mac for myself. I can't justify the cost for a new one. I use KDE - it works well, it's full-featured and lighter in resource usage than GNOME. I have a older macbook, but I don't like the lack of default UI features I just got used to in KDE. (Window tiling, robust clipboard, the more than acceptable file manager, the underlying OS's package manager, simple way to put graphs and monitors in my panel(s)). It's not all perfect, but 'perfect' is not a problem to solve. I can't justify using macos with these things that just work well enough. Also, if I had to use a Mac again as a daily driver, the first program I would install is a VM and install like Debian or FreeBSD on it and then setup KDE.
raydev 4y ago
> for the first time in my life I was finally forced to use MacOs daily Okay, thanks for letting us know up front that you went into this unwillingly and you aren't interested in doing a balanced review. I was able to close the tab very quickly!
daviddever23box 4y ago
Now that's funny...come back at me bro when your laptop, desktop, tablet, and mobile handset devices talk to each other. Until then, don't forget to take care of yourself, including showers, vegetables, and sunlight. Toodles!

189 points by macco 4y ago

I wonder. Does KDE still delete and redraw all tray icons when one of them updates? It was distracting as hell last time I used it extensively. Perhaps that's why the OP needs to hide them. You can find something to complain about with any DE.

sgt 4y ago

naikrovek 4y ago
yeah; I'm not a Mac fan and I've only begun using it seriously this year, and a lot of what he says is wrong, or easily discoverable if you just look. I'd love to see the much, much longer list from a Mac person who must now use KDE.
wg0 4y ago
KDE rivals mac? Don't think so. Been using it myself and even Gnome is better and neater IMHO. Whereas the gestures and workspaces on mac are really a productivity boost.
distances 4y ago
Not sure what you mean to imply. I've been using Mac daily at work for three years now, and KDE simply is better. I still prefer Mac over Windows though. Similarly to the article author, a lot of my grievances are about Finder. Either it is very poor as a file manager, or it's so undiscoverable that after all these years I have still not figured it out properly. These are all anecdotes and preferences, obviously. I do get that Mac hits all the boxes for some people.
- dsego 4y ago
  Any specific grievances? The discoverability argument I don't buy, because the same people that will tinker for hours on a linux distro to learn and set it up, suddenly need things to be in their face or it's not discoverable.
  - distances 4y ago
    I'm sure it's partly just resistance to change. I did get some good tips from the comment someone linked: https://old.reddit.com/r/kde/comments/yvxz2l/kde_beats_macos_hands_down/iwklxej/ https://old.reddit.com/r/kde/comments/yvxz2l/kde_beats_macos... But discoverability is part of the issue. E.g. Finder doesn't list keyboard shortcuts for any of the items in the context menu. I now see they are listed in the app menu though. But I've used Finder for three years without these hints. And then I encounter things like I can't cut-paste a file. Is it something I can't just find, or is it not a Mac concept? I have to search the web to find an answer to things like this, and I probably resort to mv with Terminal. Which can probably be filed under change resistance.
    - dsego 4y ago
      > I can't cut-paste a file. Is it something I can't just find, or is it not a Mac concept? I'm sure if linux/kde/gnome implemented copy-move semantics instead of the usual cut-paste first, every linux evangelist would advocate it here for how superior it is to win/mac paradigms, sort of like package management flavor of the month, middle mouse button to paste text etc. I still remember how non-technical folks couldn't grasp the cut-paste concept back in win 95 days, like you cut a file and it's grayed out, where is it, what happens if you don't paste, does it disappear, etc Or having to double click to open files. Wasn't very discoverable for them, but very easy for me at the tender age of 12-13, probably because I was actually interested in tech and learning about all the ins and outs of windows, they were just trying to get stuff done. But it does depend on experience and open-mindedness.
      - distances 4y ago
        I don't really get what you're saying. That there is another file moving semantic on Mac, and it's not that hard to figure out?

rnd0 4y ago

Beats macOS ...at what? Serious, not facetious, question. The only answer I can think of is "running on non-Apple hardware"

goosedragons 4y ago
Being usable out of the box? With KDE I don't need to go find a 3rd party app for decent window snapping, I don't need a 3rd party app to put files on my Android phone over USB, I don't need a 3rd party app to have the trackpad and scroll wheel mouse directions be "natural" and "unnatural" at the same time, I don't need a 3rd party app to be able to use the volume buttons to change the volume level of a sound device connected by HDMI or Display port, I don't need a 3rd party package manager to get the software I actually want to use, I don't need to give my terminal permission to display my fucking documents folder, I don't need to give every 3rd app I install special accessibility privileges to be able to it's damn job, I don't need to do things like manually copy over my R binary so I can use a debugger attached to it, etc.
- beanjuice 4y ago
  These are all very specific complaints. By the numbers, does KDE answer the question "how do I interact with a school/volunteer/work .docx/.ppt/.xlsx file without likely breaking it?
  - goosedragons 4y ago
    That's a pretty specific complaint. You can use the web version of Office. You can install Office under Wine. I personally have Office 2010 installed on Linux. It works.
    - NayamAmarshe 4y ago
      OnlyOffice works great too.
    - agloeregrets 4y ago
      lol I love how the specific complaint is what 99% of businesses do in practice while the OP post complains about coping an R binary.

mongrelion 4y ago

I understand where the author is coming from but after going through the list of complaints it became obvious that they haven't fully read the manual as a few of the things that they say is lacking is simply not true. The rest of the points go about design choices and decisions made by Apple, which is fair enough: some opinions you will agree with. Some others you won't. And that's ok.

nocman 4y ago
> a few of the things that they say is lacking is simply not true. I would be interested in hearing precisely which things you are referring to (just out of curiosity on my part).

doix 4y ago

Intuitiveness is just what you are used to at this point. If you've been in the Apple ecosystem your whole life, then their UX seems intuitive to you. If you haven't, then it makes absolutely no sense. I first touched an apple device in my 20's, there was nothing intuitive about it. I couldn't do anything and was extremely frustrated. I'm sure the same applies to apple folks trying gnome/KDE/windows. People are getting introduced to touch devices from a young age now days. I bet they will find things intuitive based on the devices their parents gave them. It's kind of like religion at this point, did you grow up using Android or iOS? Switching would be a deliberate effort, like not following your families religion (with hopefully significantly less judgement).

fps_doug 4y ago
Absolutely this. UIs have been "good enough" for a very long time now. There were some minor breakthroughs/inventions along the way, but half of them were probably just responses to shifting usage patterns. You build up muscle memory and you're set. One example that comes to mind is more powerful/prominent search features. In the 90s, as a home user, you had a folder with some documents and in total, the number of installed games plus apps was probably around a dozen. So it was ok that on Windows, searching for files was hidden in a sub-menu and rather slow. Today, you have a bazillion tools and apps, games, documents from 30 years of migrating to a new system, backups, so you make search faster to access. People value consistency and gradual development, not failed, half-baked overhauls like the Windows 8 debacle. And obviously that stuff actually works. Which is continuing to be a big downside of KDE or Linux in general. Too many components working together, maintained by different teams and ever-changing. It's basically up to the Distros to find the perfect combination of library and software versions to get a good experience.
uniqueuid 4y ago
I don't really agree. The really interesting part of intuitiveness is how it scales once you became familiar with the basic set of UX primitives. At least from my experience with ~15 years of mac, ~15 years of on-and-off linux and windows, macOS has remained more consistent, because the primitives are much more universal. Take, for example copying. You can alt-drag a surprising number of things across many different apps and have them just work. Or holding alt in menus to show additional entries. Or holding shift or alt to resize items to preserve ratio on one or two sides. Or take dragging and dropping references to the current file from the proxy icon in the window top bar. Or dragging and dropping selected text as snippets. Or looking up words in the built-in dictionary. The amount of effort the mac team invested to re-use ux interaction modes is really crazy coming from other platforms, and it extends to abstractions such as disk images. One of the things that impressed me the most was how you could clone mac volumes to usb or firewire disks, boot from them, clone volumes to compressed images and restore them - all seamlessly, without messing with disk sizes, sectors, boot records or bioses - and it would just magically work. Granted, the story is no longer that easy with APFS and M1/M2 macs, but I still think this is a bar that no other operating system has reached.

sleepyfran 4y ago

Alternative title: KDE is different than macOS, hands down

throwntoday 4y ago

> Linux is great if you don't value your time Continues to be one of my favorite quotes. Yes I can spend endless hours getting arch installed with only the packages I want/need making sure it's totally optimized and then what, every single other part of my workflow now has to work around the limitations of linux. One day perhaps, but for now, macOS will do.

preisschild 4y ago
Or use literally any friendly distro? Fedora, PopOS, Ubuntu require the same amount of work to set up as a macbook. Just because arch takes time to set up (by design) doesn't mean all Linux distros are this needy. Sure, for Fedora you have to add the Flathub repo (1 click on a website) and if you have a nvidia gpu, then you have to enable the RPMFusion repo (also 1 click on a website). I'd argue installing Homebrew requires more effort.
- herr_gurke 4y ago
  Time to set up is comparable, or even better for linux. The issue starts on the longer run, the moment when after one update hibernation stops working or bluetooth has issues and needs to be restarted with rfkill. I fully understand that its not fully linux fault - those are proprietary drivers and so on, but from the user perspective I would love to have a system that just works.
  - piaste 4y ago
    > the moment when after one update hibernation stops working or bluetooth has issues and needs to be restarted with rfkill I'll hype Fedora Silverblue/Kinoite once again for solving that. Don't like the new update? Messed up /etc in any way? Tried a questionable third-party RPM and what a surprise, it doesn't do what you wanted? Roll back in a single command, even from the boot screen. If 'ostree admin' was usable from the GUI [0], showing a screenshot of it would blow the mind of people using other operating systems. The downside is that upgrading RPMs now requires a reboot, but your apps are going to be Flatpaks (or AppImages, or Podman services) so they don't have that limitation. [0] Which will hopefully arrive soon to KDE: https://invent.kde.org/plasma/discover/-/merge_requests/166 https://invent.kde.org/plasma/discover/-/merge_requests/166

dontlaugh 4y ago

Someone gets it https://old.reddit.com/r/kde/comments/yvxz2l/kde_beats_macos_hands_down/iwklxej/ https://old.reddit.com/r/kde/comments/yvxz2l/kde_beats_macos...

pjmlp 4y ago

Maybe from user point of view. It is also missing the whole development experience with XCode, Swift, Objective-C, Metal, Instruments,.... versus KDE Frameworks and KDevelop.

Havoc 4y ago

Isnt this just different choices on customizability vs uniform polished approach.

brailsafe 4y ago

I guess I'd agree with more discoverable shortcuts for context menu items, but damn if 1 more button press for what is actually quite capable screenshotting just doesn't bother me at all. When I use Windows, I notice immediately that the thematic direction of Windows 8 and onward is just a sad and shallow veneer over a mountain of legacy icons and other cruft they don't believe matters, along with spyware and adware built into the stock os image, and the likelihood of needing to completely reinstall at some point. By comparison, this list of issues seems rather petty, and I guess that means macOS is doing pretty well. Nobody likes being forced to use something they're not familiar with or desire though, so I do sympathize. Haven't installed Ventura yet though...

lampe3 4y ago

To be honest I stopped caring what OS I'm running as long as it is not windows. I have a terminal open 99% of the time and I almost never open finder or Gnome Files. pacman or brew? really I don't care. Both install what I want with one command. VS Code is basically the same on every system. Gnome/KDE/MacOS all of them have there pros and cons. Right now what wins for me is the apple silicon. I can develop stuff without a fan running for 8 hours. Once Framework laptops come with a ARM Laptop were I can run gnome I can consider to switch again.

drunkenmagician 4y ago
+1 to this … I’m so over endless discussions individual philosophical and aesthetic preferences in o/s and window managers. As long as I can be productive and not have to ‘fix’ things constantly
yibers 4y ago
Wouls you care to elaborate a bit as to why you would care if the OS you are running os Windows?
- irusensei 4y ago
  Not him but I share the same opinion. I've recently tried Windows 10 and 11 and the thing is trying to make you sign in to a Microsoft.com service from the moment you finish installing it. Dark patterns everywhere during the setup and in order to create a local account you must do weird stuff like inserting invalid Microsoft.com accountname or disconnecting the computer from the network during setup. Are you sure you want to have the """limited""" Windows experience? Third party software also doesn't help. I shit you not I had to install some Asus software that legit started sending me offers through the main OS notification widget. Using Windows is like walking through a very crowded Chinese market with lots of nagging merchants trying to pull you in plus AI enhanced security cameras everywhere. SIR HAVE YOU TRIED THE NEW EDGE BROWSER? WHY ARENT YOU USING EDGE? It's an ad platform that can run program nowdays. I might start calling it BonziBuddyOS. Now if you compare it with the clean default desktop macOS popular Linux distributions offer out of the box it makes a lot of sense for someone to avoid Windows.

ggerganov 4y ago

At work I use Gnome and at home I use MacOS - I am used to both environments. I am a C++ developer and spend most of my time in a terminal. Of course, it took some time over the years to have everything customized for my needs, but at the moment I feel equally productive on both. However, if I had to choose one, I will likely stick with Mac though. The performance of the new Apple Silicon chips is amazing and it's going to get even better.

izacus 4y ago
Why would hardware have to dictate your choice of software though ?
- ggerganov 4y ago
  Ideally it shouldn't. But at the moment, I cannot use Apple Silicon on anything else other than Mac OS and I believe the performance of these chips is unmatched and it will not be anytime soon.
- plgonzalezrx8 4y ago
  Because software runs on hardware...... Currently, some software runs INCREDIBLY FASTER and more efficient on M1/M2 Chips (ARM) vs running on X86-64.

KaiserPro 4y ago

> KDE beats macOS hands down "If you've been using KDE for years and are new to OSX." should be appended to the headline. I'm not going to defend OSX here. It is as obtuse as any other GUI system. My dad was always a KDE fan, I suspect because he had CDE/CDE like GUIs for a long time, and muscle memory is hard to overcome. I never really liked it, however for the longest time it did have more features and polish than gnome. I really don't like modern gnome (>3) its a pain in the arse to make it do what I want. However if you use it as the gods of UX intend, then its reasonably friction free. I've recently come back to windows 10. Its fine, has virtual monitors, keyboard shortcuts and powershell. I imagine that with me bothering to learn WSL it would be really rather quite good. However I have nothing really against OSX, apart from it insists on stacking windows ontop of each other, which is deeply annoying.

easygenes 4y ago
I have to say that WSL is an absolute nightmare. I just cannot stand it. Not only that, but Microsoft has deeply embedded Hyper-V into Windows, to the point that you can't run another hypervisor. I tried to get away from WSL by using VMware Workstation and found that Hyper-V was still under the hood and bogging down the system. All the documents I could find, including recent official ones from Microsoft, on removing Hyper-V so you could run another hypervisor were incomplete. I eventually got the VMware hypervisor running though, and it is so much better.
- NayamAmarshe 4y ago
  WSL was a nightmare for me too. Hacks piled on top of other hacks, required to make Linux CLI work on Windows but it's just that, a hacky way to use Linux. Sometimes the system broke, sometimes the filesystem limitations and the performance was always bad, especially with anything involving a large number of files. It was just an awful experience all around. I think anybody who uses WSL over real Linux is only doing it because they either do not want to learn something better & different or they have hardware issues with Linux. So glad I moved to a real installation after wasting a whole month on WSL. Couldn't be any happier.

fernandotakai 4y ago

funny enough, i just moved back to linux after using macOS for almost a year. i decided to install KDE just to see what was going on and holy damn, it's SO GOOD. the only thing i installed (and configured) was a tiling window manager (bismuth https://github.com/Bismuth-Forge/bismuth/ https://github.com/Bismuth-Forge/bismuth/) and that was it. everything is working perfectly, it looks great and it's suuuper smooth.

panda-giddiness 4y ago

The only UI difference I find truly maddening is the inability to open a terminal in the current folder. On other operating systems, I can right click in the empty space to open a terminal in that directory; on macOS, I must instead right click on a subfolder, open a terminal in that subfolder, and then navigate up one directory (`cd ..`)... ...unless the current folder contains no folders, in which case I have to navigate up one directory (via keyboard shortcut -- this cannot be done natively in Finder) and then right click on the target folder (especially annoying if the parent folder contains many directories). I can only assume that I'm misinformed because the current paradigm makes no goddamn sense.

ubercow13 4y ago
Yeah its annoying. If you enable the pathbar status bar thing in finder, you can right click the current folder which is always visible there and launch the terminal. However if the folder has no contents there is still no way to do it with the keyboard I think.
- panda-giddiness 4y ago
  Thanks!
timeon 4y ago
It would be better if you could do it that way but your workflow surprise me a bit. Maybe it is because I use column view in finder so folder and sub-folder are both one click. I use mac because I like (Next/Open/Gnu)Step so maybe that is why things are more intuitive for me.
sbuk 4y ago
Finder > View > Show Path Bar (Option + Command + P). Right click on the folder in the path bar > Open in Terminal.
spython 4y ago
I use forklift as my main file manager, it has a lot of power user features, and a button to open terminal in the current folder is one of them – https://binarynights.com/ https://binarynights.com/

sarmasamosarma 4y ago

gary17the 4y ago

macOS UI capabilities aside, I have to mention that the latest Kubuntu 22.04 Long Term Support (LTS) 2022 release with KDE Plasma 5.24 is a fantastic upgrade. The system is snappy, much more so than under the previous Kubuntu 20.04 2020 release. Moreover, the 5.15 Linux kernel seems to be handling huge memory allocations for virtual machines an order of magnitude faster than the previous 5.4 kernel. If you are tired of macOS, I wholeheartedly recommend giving Kubuntu 22.04 LTS a try. (You can always buy a second GPU and run macOS inside a QEMU virtual machine, 99% stable at native UI speeds with GPU passthrough.)

timbit42 4y ago
Snaps aren't snappy though. I switched to Linux Mint and put KDE on it.
- gary17the 4y ago
  It's possible to run the entire Kubuntu system with `apt` and/or local `deb` packages only - I uninstalled `snapd` a long time ago.
  - timbit42 4y ago
    Right, but if you remove snapd, you then have to find somewhere else to get those packages. With Linux Mint, all the packages are in the default repo.

Labo333 4y ago

Most of their concerns are addressable by external apps like Rectangle, AltTab and Maccy. Try those, they are free and open source 10x productivity boosters!

NayamAmarshe 4y ago

I agree. After using both for a long time, I have to say KDE is less painful and faster in operation. MacOS has a lot of inconsistent or weird keyboard shortcuts. There's no proper window management, HDMI volume cannot be controlled, can't launch apps like VSCode or Terminal using keyboard shortcuts like Ctrl+ Alt + C and Ctrl + Alt + T. The shell takes like 2 seconds to load when opening terminal. Yes, MacOS is more beautiful OOTB but KDE hands down wins in the workflow and UX department.

tgv 4y ago
You can always install Quicksilver. It's pretty handy. I've bound it to ctrl-alt-space, and F is enough to launch Firefox, M to launch Mail, I enough to launch iTerm, etc., without creating shortcuts or editing settings. And if you want to launch some application with overlapping initials, type one or two more characters. And it's free.
- NayamAmarshe 4y ago
  I installed ZorinOS instead and it's working great now but thanks for the recommendation, I'll give it a try.

bodge5000 4y ago

Early this year, I finally made the switch from using primarily using Windows to using Linux. I went with Fedora after hearing good things about its reliability, but was bracing for a bit of a clunky front-end. Needless to say, I was shocked by how far it'd come and how nice it was. The key point I remember feeling at the time is that it felt like MacOS despite not having used a Mac in over a decade. Fast-forward to a month or so ago, I finally decide to get a mac to try it out, and the really strange thing about it was, Fedora felt more like MacOS than MacOS (or at least, it felt more like my vision of what MacOS would be). I do really like my Mac and I'm still using it for now at least, not saying either one is categorically better than the other, but that has stuck with me. I should probably try out KDE now as well, it looks a bit more windows-like but could be interesting

IshKebab 4y ago

I mean, sure some of those things are crap in MacOS. Some he is mistaken about or are super niche. He does have some valid points but you can't take a few annoyances and say "KDE beats macOS". I could easily find the same number of annoyances in KDE. Probably many more. He's just made peace with them. > Impossible to create a dotfile from Finder (only terminal) Yeah most people don't need this ever. If you're making dotfiles you know what the terminal is. > Lack of native clipboard Not sure what this is supposed to mean. It obviously has a clipboard. > Finder's weird shortcuts for rename vs open file (no way to open a file with keyboard?) Cmd-Down I think, but I agree the shortcuts are super weird. > Taking screenshots requires to click the preview in order to copy to clipboard, which also causes to save it to Desktop. There is a global shortcut to save directly to keyboard, but it requires 3 button presses. With KDE you can setup the preferred behavior and always copy to clipboard while at the same time saving to a specific path (and not always Desktop!) Mac's screenshot support is really good. Yes it requires 3 modifier keys but I still miss it on Windows. > Surprising lack of apps in the store (Firefox, Bitwarden, Zoom, Teams, VLC are all quite popular, yet only Bitwarden is there). The others require download from the website (basically a Windows-like experience) True but try installing an app that isn't in "the store" (which one again?) on Linux. There are pros and cons. > Finder: no side by side view for easily moving stuff between unrelated folders/paths You can open multiple windows.

zamalek 4y ago
> True but try installing an app that isn't in "the store" (which one again?) on Linux Typically Discover or Gnome Software. They integrate with several package managers (Apt, pacman, etc.). Discover does even more; being a single stop not only for apps, but also DE extensions. There is no paid app store, if that is what you meant, except on ElementaryOS. Some apps are still download-and-run or download-and-install. MacOS is strictly superior in the former case, as you can install apps by dragging them to the Applications folder (in Gnome and KDE you need to 'find' .local/share/applications). Downloading and running does generally work, unless you're on something without a standard FHS (e.g. NixOS). Overall, MacOS is strictly worse (as a development machine) than Linux in this regard: it has no native package manager. Containers are also still a fucking nightmare, even with the heroic efforts of the people behind Colima/Lima.

jebronie 4y ago

I don't know how to use X yet, so what I used before is better - the post

constantlm 4y ago

Several of the things listed are false (like the lack of ability to open files with your keyboard, which you can do with cmd-⬇) and app window switching (cmd+~)

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
kuschku 4y ago
If you say the author's issue is invalid, then please explain: How can you configure macOS to have a keyboard shortcut that also makes sense on ISO keyboards to switch between all windows of all apps in a single UI?
- pwinnski 4y ago
  Why do you think that "windows" are the appropriate level at which to consider things, rather than a hierarchy in which one first choose the appropriate "application" and then switches between windows for that application, if more than one exist? Using a "single UI" to do two different things seems like an odd choice, albeit clearly one you're used to.
  - layer8 4y ago
    Not the GP, but I routinely have use-cases where I switch back and forth between (say) two windows of one app and one window of another app. That, is, for a given task I have a “working set” consisting of windows of different apps, involving more than one same-app window for at least one of the apps. It would be annoying to have to switch between different keyboard shortcuts, instead of just getting LRU behavior within that “working set” of windows with a single keyboard shortcut. Which app the currently active window belongs to shouldn’t matter for switching back to the previously active window (or the second orevious one, etc.).
    - pwinnski 4y ago
      My experience on MacOS is that whichever window for a given app was current when you last switched away will be current when you switch back, so it's still a single combo-keystroke to switch as you're describing. My point was that people tend to favor whichever approach they're most used to. Switching only at the window level does "lose" information about the hierarchy, while switching with the hierarchy in place requires one to track the hierarchy which they might prefer not to do. One is not necessarily better than the other, and there are use-cases for both.

oleg_antonyan 4y ago

I had to stop the job interview when suddenly they said that I must use Mac. They ship MacBook to you and you have no choice of using Linux or anything else. Corporate policy. It's literally unusable for me after 15+ years on Linux with KDE (mostly). Tried Mac for 4 months at one of the previous jobs but escaped to a comfort zone. Sometimes habits are too strong, and alternative is not appealing enough.

synergy20 4y ago
same here, if I'm told I must use Mac at work, I'm out immediately.
plgonzalezrx8 4y ago
This seems so elitist that seems crazy to me. Maybe you're not as good as you think you are if a GUI change will literally make you "Literally Unusable". Especially with the mac terminal being Darwin which is virtually just Unix, and with Brew you can install literally anything you need for your workflow. I use arch btw.
- oleg_antonyan 4y ago
  It certainty is elitist to a degree of laziness and 2021 job market. B/c why switch to something new that I know I don't like. But who knows what else year 2022 brings us, I wouldn't mind switching to Mac if this is literally the question of survival. Luckily not yet
kennend3 4y ago
I find some of these "use a mac at work" companies do it because boring companies are trying to be "hip and cool". One place i know uses Java exclusively, but the devs all have macbooks because they are cool? How/why does a macbook improve java app development vs the standard issue Lenovo's? It is like these old and boring companies think that by using macs they are suddenly "trendy and hip" and the millennials will flock to them?
- parasubvert 4y ago

thomassmith65 4y ago

I hate the Mac*, but even so, nothing on that list of complaints is valid. Here's an example of what I consider a valid complaint: the placement of a Mac's app menubar at the top of the screen, instead of the top of an application window, is wrong. Two pieces of evidence: (1) it leads to confusion with multiple monitors and (2) new Mac users invariably have trouble remembering to look for app-specific choices at the top of the screen. Mac-users rebut this by claiming that Apple's design adheres better to Fitt's law, but time has proven the disadvantages outweigh that. If one chooses a window metaphor for an app, the app's controls should appear in close proximity to that window. In contrast, the list items here are mostly just wrong ("Lack of native clipboard") or superficial ("Can't create new file from Finder context menu"). *though imo Mac OS was lovable as recently as a decade ago.

stratosmacker 4y ago
The former is true, KDE ships with a clipboard manager with history, macos just has copy/paste. You need something like Maccy to manage history.
- thomassmith65 4y ago
  If that's what the author meant by 'native'... okay. It rubbed me the wrong way since a big thing about the Mac going back to the mid 1980s was its native clipboard support.
- dsego 4y ago
  I love the irony of complaining about missing a native functionality that's available as a third party app, but turning a blind eye to general lack of productive software on the linux/kde platform. It's like little smug kids teasing other kids with petty things "ha ha, my OS doesn't have a decent commercial photo editor or video production software, but you don't have a native clipboard manager, ha ha".
  - pxc 4y ago
    It's pretty simple: third party, commercial software isn't an OS feature. It's not part of the desktop environment. Things like the clipboard and its behavior are. And the macOS desktop environment is missing a ton of shit that you can take for granted across a dozen Linux desktop environments. They add up to a sense that the desktop itself on macOS is neglected and barren in its very fundamentals.

oneplane 4y ago

None of this has any true value, it's all just taste, human memory and preference. All you can do try try various systems and pick what works for you, while also remembering that you're not the only person in the world, and sometimes a not-as-good experience for yourself can mean a much better integration with the people you live and work with.

agloeregrets 4y ago
This. Hell, if you, as a skilled user, can't do your job on any OS just fine then the problem is you, not the software. You need to learn the software and adapt. Yes there are exceptions for some tasks where the hassle isn't worth it due to missing apps but with WSL on Windows, zsh on macOS and any various linux distro the average dev can do their job just fine. There are corrections for window snapping on macOS like Magnet. Hell the way macOS does hidden files is just straight linux. You learn to work where you are, not complain and bash the software, they are all perfectly good enough for a modern dev. I jumpped between macOS, Windows, Ubuntu and even chromeOS as a FE dev and all of them have a terminal, VS code, and even good Git Gui apps. That doesn't mean some tasks are not easier or that hard to use software design is the fault of the users, it's just that the complaints are pretty silly coming from someone who had to learn KDE's quirks and yes there are great solutions for this on any OS.

xiaq 4y ago

KDE is the last bastion of GUI customizability. Everyone else is absolutely horrified by the idea of maintaining a UI option used by less than 20% of the user base. For things that are used by more than 20% of users, they actively make it worse so that people stop using it and they can justify removing them.

tmtvl 4y ago
Heck, even KDE is unfortunately losing features (requiescat in pace, Desktop Cube, I'll never forget you), the days of a PC being very P may not last too much longer.

johnchristopher 4y ago

Biggest burn I had: Drag and dropping a named folder on the desktop where a folder with the same name already lived resulted in the desktop folder content being replaced with the dropped folder content and the loss of all its content. I was expecting a merge or a copy/overwrite dialog, not the overwrite of the desktop folder content.

pxc 4y ago
That is absolutely, stunningly bad UI.
periheli0n 4y ago
Hope you had timemachine on which allowed you to instantly recover the contents?

periheli0n 4y ago

I made the switch from Linux to KDE a few years back. It takes a while to learn all the new keyboard shortcuts—in fact most of the missing bits quoted in the article are present, just not where/how you were used to them in KDE. What really sold me on MacOS though was multi-finger touchpad gestures, like three-finger drag and four finger desktop switch. It's difficult or even impossible to get that on Linux (at least it was a couple years back when I last tried). Then there are other small things like the consistent availability of emacs-like keybindings. I'm using Ctrl-t to exchange ('transpose') two adjacent characters all the time to fix typos in-place. Under Linux this is very much hit-and-miss and depends on the app toolkit. Bottomline: one you're used to MacOS it's not worse than KDE (which is still great BTW).

contingencies 4y ago

Unintuitive things about macOS: the bar at the top is used both for app-context menus and for system-context settings. Wuh? If you want to scan something, you have to go via system settings instead of running an app. Wuh? They keep breaking drivers for important things, especially USB things, especially if it so happens that they decide to sell them themselves (like external keyboards). About a year ago I had an issue where previously functional USB UART drivers stopped working, result being I had to buy a Linux laptop for firmware work. Then, just last week, my Cherry mechanical keyboard stopped working, the windows key had previously functioned seamlessly as 'command' but ceased to do so. No amount of fiddling seemed to fix it. At this point I'll never buy another Apple device. Fixing anything hardwareish requires remembering undocumented key combinations at boot time. No rollback support on config changes. One could go on...

sbuk 4y ago
> Unintuitive things about macOS: the bar at the top is used both for app-context menus and for system-context settings. Wuh? Not unintuitive different to what you are used to. > If you want to scan something, you have to go via system settings instead of running an app. Wuh? No, you use Preview.app, which is the default image viewer in macOS, and always has been. > They keep breaking drivers for important things, especially USB things, especially if it so happens that they decide to sell them themselves (like external keyboards). About a year ago I had an issue where previously functional USB UART drivers stopped working, result being I had to buy a Linux laptop for firmware work. Then, just last week, my Cherry mechanical keyboard stopped working, the windows key had previously functioned seamlessly as 'command' but ceased to do so. No amount of fiddling seemed to fix it. At this point I'll never buy another Apple device. No different to any other OS. Fedora managed to break my wifi drivers in the last update. More often, it's hardware manufacturers dragging their heels. > Fixing anything hardwareish requires remembering undocumented key combinations at boot time. https://support.apple.com/en-gb/HT201255 https://support.apple.com/en-gb/HT201255 looks like a duck and quacks like a duck... > No rollback support on config changes. Sort of, though using Time Machine is very effective. > One could go on... One could, and one woud still be mostly wildly incorrect...
- 4y ago

resuresu 4y ago

People tend to forget MacOS is BSD under the hood, not a Linux distribution. So the way it handles installation software is going to be different. I personally think the way BSD handles software is better, Linux blurs the line between 3rd party software and system dependencies and that causes all kinds of issues when it’s time to update or remove stuff.

ColonelPhantom 4y ago
>Linux blurs the line between 3rd party software and system dependencies How does BSD avoid this? I guess package manager installed software does get lumped in, but is that really 3rd party software in a meaningful sense? I very much like how it's all in one place. User-installed software usually gets installed into /usr/local or /opt, which is separate from the system-managed trees.

tgv 4y ago

How does this particular list of very minor gripes get so many upvotes? And it's not just minor gripes, half of them are wrong. Some of them have been addressed by others, but: * Taking screenshots requires to click the preview in order to copy to clipboard, which also causes to save it to Desktop. No, it doesn't. * Surprising lack of apps in the store Says someone defending KDE? But hey, strangely enough I'm typing this in Firefox. I've got Teams running, and Zoom. There really is more than one way to install an app. * The stupid amount of app icons in the "tray" bar. Not collapsible, not hideable. What does that mean? There's no tray bar. Is it the menu? Is it the Dock? In both cases, it's untrue, or the writer means something else. * No easy way to open a path in Finder Cmd-shift-G or Go > Go to folder isn't easy enough? What's KDE's super brilliant solution? * Finder: no side by side view for easily moving stuff between unrelated folders/paths Can't open two windows? And even if all were true, it misses so many other points, it's embarrassing. What OP means is: I've got a fixed workflow, and now I have to learn a few new shortcuts.

sgloutnikov 4y ago
For moving files between folders tabs in Finder works fine, you don't even need a new window.
jasonlotito 4y ago
> Taking screenshots requires to click the preview in order to copy to clipboard, which also causes to save it to Desktop. > No, it doesn't. How do you take a screenshot that saves the screenshot to a specific spot that isn't the Desktop and ALSO stores the screenshot in the clipboard? cmd+shift+3/4 doesn't store the screenshot in the clipboard. It just stores in on the Desktop. You can click the preview and it will move it into the clipboard as well as save it. The other method, that puts the screenshot directly into the clipboard with ctrl+cmd+shit+3/4 but it doesn't save the screenshot. What's the single keyboard shortcut command to take a screenshot and have it saved to your machine as well as have it stored in your clipboard? I'll enjoy watching people down vote learning and knowledge sharing.
- bentheklutz 4y ago

jklinger410 4y ago

I've been using computers since Windows 95 and I personally find KDE to be the most confusing and broken DE that I've tried. Simply try to edit/move the bottom bar in edit mode, or change the global theme, and watch it fall apart.

jb1991 4y ago

The article seems ignorant of native tools built right into macOS. For example, it claims macOS is missing: > Missing native Alt+Tab and individual window switching (only does app switching) This is simply false, and the whole list is by someone who just hasn't made an effort to learn how to use a new OS they are not familiar with. For example, I just use Command-tilda, two keys right next to each other, to switch between windows of the same app, and Command-Tab to switch between different apps altogether. Is this not what the author wants?

nmjohn 4y ago
When I first switched to osx many years ago, this was a pretty jarring change. I was used to alt+tab switching between all windows, and had muscle memory tied to that. Today, however, I couldn't imagine going back. Having separate toggles for switching apps vs. switching app windows is so much faster and useful - once you get used to it. But it does take retraining muscle memory.
- jb1991 4y ago
  What I don't understand is the author of this article making statements like this that reveal they have not put in any effort to learn a whole new OS. Imagine if I switched to KDE and soon wrote an article bashing KDE because I just couldn't figure out how to do basic things. Some effort is necessary to see what an OS offers, and this author clearly hasn't done it.
  - kuschku 4y ago
    macOS has no customizability, claiming that this makes it more "intuitive" and you don't need "effort to learn" it. If you need to spend "effort to learn" anyway, you might as well just go with something like KDE, where on top of having learnt the environment, you can now also customize it.
    - trymas 4y ago
      > claiming that this makes it more "intuitive" and you don't need "effort to learn" it. just out of curiosity opened: https://www.apple.com/macos/ventura/ https://www.apple.com/macos/ventura/ . Not a word on intuitiveness and effortlessness.

it 4y ago

I tried using Linux for my laptop at Google but it was a torment due mainly to the wonkiness of the trackpad driver. I've been happily using Macs ever since. Linux is for servers.

barbariangrunge 4y ago

Personally… gnome is where it’s at. Much better keyboard driven workflow than any other environment

prmoustache 4y ago
I am in the same boat. For me it is either gnome or i3/sway + rofi. I love that kde exist and is a great alternative for the people who don't like gnome but it is not for me. I hate windows and am confused by MacOS which feels totally unintuitive to me.

hipsterstal1n 4y ago

> I recently quit a job that made me use a Mac after less than 3 months, and I'm not even kidding, that was part of why. Imagine quitting your job over an operating system.

lakomen 4y ago

I vote to ban reddit links from HN

bigpeopleareold 4y ago

Comparing KDE and macOS is weird. One is a DE, the other an OS (and a hardware commitment.) I would never buy a Mac for myself. I can't justify the cost for a new one. I use KDE - it works well, it's full-featured and lighter in resource usage than GNOME. I have a older macbook, but I don't like the lack of default UI features I just got used to in KDE. (Window tiling, robust clipboard, the more than acceptable file manager, the underlying OS's package manager, simple way to put graphs and monitors in my panel(s)). It's not all perfect, but 'perfect' is not a problem to solve. I can't justify using macos with these things that just work well enough. Also, if I had to use a Mac again as a daily driver, the first program I would install is a VM and install like Debian or FreeBSD on it and then setup KDE.

raydev 4y ago

> for the first time in my life I was finally forced to use MacOs daily Okay, thanks for letting us know up front that you went into this unwillingly and you aren't interested in doing a balanced review. I was able to close the tab very quickly!

daviddever23box 4y ago

Now that's funny...come back at me bro when your laptop, desktop, tablet, and mobile handset devices talk to each other. Until then, don't forget to take care of yourself, including showers, vegetables, and sunlight. Toodles!