Why I’m finally dumping Ubuntu and switching to a Mac
I love Ubuntu. I really admire how Canonical took a great Linux distribution and turned into something humane.
There’s just one problem with it: it sucks, but it’s not their fault. Let me explain.
I’ve used Linux as my primary OS for over a decade. I know how it feels to edit XF86Config just to get 3D acceleration working. I compiled the kernel more times than I care to remember. I hacked the code of Fluxbox because I didn’t like how the desktop switching worked. Back then a full reinstall took two days to configure. Good times.
Then Ubuntu came along. The stability of Debian without mindless config files. Everything just worked or was a few clicks away. Kind of. I could spend my time using the system, not configuring it. It was a dream come true.
And that’s the problem*. With Ubuntu most things work so good that I refuse to hack it to get the few other things working great as well. I can read through a 20 page thread about my specific laptop, install some tools and change a few kernel parameters, but that’s where it stops. Thus I suffer from small daily annoyances.
Things just break or don’t work normally. I sometimes have trouble resuming from suspend. Often it just completely freezes. Sometimes after a restart I’m back to the default wallpaper and launcher icons. I must click like crazy to get YouTube to go full screen. At times I have trouble hooking up the big screen. WebGL doesn’t work. Programs crash. The list goes on. Then there’s this:
I’ll be a Good Samaritan and send the report. Click.
Dafuq?
I don’t blame Canonical for all these issues, only some. They can’t control everything coming from upstream. That said, the small things continue to frustrate me.
What to do? It seems I have four three options: continue being annoyed, try a different distro, switch to Windows or get a Mac.
As Ubuntu is already the de-facto desktop Linux distribution, using something with less community support doesn’t seem like a good idea to me.
I’ve been admiring the innovation in Apple for years. With OS X, the iPod, the iPhone and finally the iPad they have driven the entire computer industry further quicker than I could have imagined.
Now they came out with this. Watch the video if you can:
You must admit that this is the best laptop ever built. Every reviewer says the screen is gorgeous. When the Ubuntu community is only discussing what to do with high resolution displays, Apple stores sell the Macbook Pro Retina.
I decided I’ve had it with the small annoyances and just want something that works. Plus the specs don’t hurt the deal at all.
My next laptop will have a 2880x1800 resolution display, 16GB of RAM and a 512GB SSD. Plus a UNIX-based operating system that was hand-crafted for the hardware that runs it… and can even run Photoshop natively!
Heck, even Linus Torvalds loves his Macbook:
“I’m have to admit being a bit baffled by how nobody else seems to have done what Apple did with the Macbook Air — even several years after the first release, the other notebook vendors continue to push those ugly and *clunky* things. Yes, there are vendors that have tried to emulate it, but usually pretty badly. I don’t think I’m unusual in preferring my laptop to be thin and light.”
Expect a review once it finally arrives.
See you on the other side!
* Starting a sentence with a conjunction is not the problem.
Cover photo credit Quentin Meulepas
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