I decided to use all of the 3 main desktop operating systems for a period of 3 months each just to see what worked best out of interest. I thought I might as well share what I found here and maybe generate some discussion on the state of desktop computing in general.
Windows Pros: >does mostly just werk >best software support >best file manager by far Windows Cons: >vast amounts of data collection that cannot be disabled >clusterfuck of UPW/W32 design and features (e.g. transparency, some stuff updating through store others not, icons all over the place) >plagued by little things trying to push you to use Microsoft's services (Sign in with Microsoft for more security, "trusted" Microsoft apps, "reccomended" browser etc.) >have to install everything from an uncentralized sources and random mirrors >have to install proprietary software for what should really work OOTB
macOS Pros: >does literally just werk >looks very nice and consistent out of the box >surpsingly intuitive once you learn how it works macOS Cons: >gimped by shitty hardware >non-apple peripherals work like shit (mouse scrolling in particular) >finder lacks a lot of what you'd expect to see (e.g. cut and paste) >creates a bunch of extra files that makes hidden folder view a pain in the ass to use
GNU/Linux Pros: >very customizable >fantastic package managers make aquiring and updating software very safe and convenient GNU/Linux Pros: >no media thumbnails >no good file manager (e.g. can't set zoom on a directory basis) >have to fix a bunch of shit before its even remotely usable (e.g. screen tearing) >random problems with things that should not be problems (shutting down not working, restart hanging) >many FLOSS alternatives are just shit compared to their propriatary equivalent (I'm sorry, but LibreOffice falls into this category) >vertical scrolling very slow in some applications for seemingly no reason
Basically, they're all shit, but for different reasons.
That was supposed to be cons on the second GNU/Linux list, I clearly didn't proofread it properly.
Colton Cooper
I hope it won't take too long until I can run everything under a Linux hypervisor at comfortable ease of use and near native performance. Preferably with window manager integration so I could just mix and match programs from different VMs.
William Gutierrez
What distro did you use for the comparison? What file managers did you test?
Luis Bell
Xubuntu and Arch. Xubuntu was actually my main OS, so that was really used for several years, arch for a couple of weeks purely out of interest. File managers were Thunar, Nautilus (and its many forks) and PCManFM.
Evan Peterson
They are all shit but Winblows work the best. fuck
What does a file manager need to able to do, before you'd call it good? With Nemo you have an adjustable default zoom level, but you can also set it individually for each directory.
Jack Price
As much as I hate to admit it, for general usability day to day it has worked the best, and that's coming from someone who used Xubuntu for years. As I said though, its still got many problems, and I imagine some of them, like the UWP/W32 divide are only going to get worse.
I liked how snappy Thunar was, but you can't save zoom on a directory basis, and the window position on screen is not saved and resets every time. Nautilus is buggy as fuck on XFCE and is seemingly a known issue, but it hasn't been fixed for months. It also looks really inconsistent because its from Gnome and has a crappy transparency affect unlike everything else. Mind you, Windows now also suffers from this. Also, the file picker is terrible. I know its basically a meme at this point, but once you've used the one on macOS/Windows, how bad it really truly is is evident.
Aiden Reed
I work with all three on a daily basis and for my use cases macos is the most broken shit. Are the other two flawless? Absolutely not. But macos has lots of bugs, is slow af and is overall annoying and time consuming to use. You do things exactly the same way 3 times, it works only once. It feels like every day Apple adds a new even more ridiculous error than yesterday.
Alexander Wright
The restart hanging is a known issue with Arch, it happens because they always find a way to fuck up the default configuration
