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Ask HN: Why is there no Linux distro that “just works” like macOS?

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Re: Ask HN: Why is there no Linux distro that “just works” like macOS?

#32

Post by ThePhysicist »

First of all, building an OS that works for everyone is tremendously hard. Doing so with a community of volunteers without central governance doubly so. Linux needs to support a wide range of hardware out of the box. And hardware is becoming increasingly complex, modern graphics card drivers e.g. rival the Linux kernel in terms of the total number of lines of code. So I'm actually impressed Linux works that well. Apple, on the other hand, builds a proprietary OS that just needs to run on select hardware, and they have full authority over all decisions down to the hardware level.

Regarding "just works" I'm also not sure MacOS is a good example. I'm using both Kubuntu (5 year old Lenovo T460p) and MacOS (brandnew M1 Macbook Pro) every day and I experience more crashes / freezes on the latter. And despite the vast speed advantage of the M1 (one M1 core is almost as fast as my entire Lenovo CPU) KDE often feels much more snappy and responsive. So yeah, modern Linux is pretty damn impressive in my humble opinion.

Re: Ask HN: Why is there no Linux distro that “just works” like macOS?

#33

Post by aspenmayer »

reph2097 wrote: post #22

MacOS doesn't "just work" if you install it on non-Apple hardware. Most of the time it won't even boot. Nuff said.

Hackintoshes are definitely flakier but mostly due to breaking changes in OpenCore or your boot method, which you want to keep patched so you don’t have issues with macOS updates. If your environment and threat level allow it, you could simply not update once you get a stable config, and just image the entire boot drive. As long as your UEFI config doesn’t get corrupted, you’re fine. I’m sure that could be saved as well through rEFInd or similar tools.

Once you’ve assembled this house of cards, it’s fairly stable, I assure you. Just don’t look at it sideways. :P

Re: Ask HN: Why is there no Linux distro that “just works” like macOS?

#34

Post by raverbashing »

daneel_w wrote: post #20

To people commenting how "well if you install Linux the right way on the right hardware like this here purpose-built laptop, it also 'just works'", what the OP is trying to underline isn't just the technical aspect of the OS booting flawlessly and recognizing its periphery, but also the whole experience that comes after. One special part of this, which is easily overseen, is the fact that Apple has poured hundreds of…

> One special part of this, which is easily overseen, is the fact that Apple has:

- vertically integrated and sells a very narrow selection of hardware

That's 90% of the "just works". The UX/UI part is the other 90% (yes the math is right)

And to be fair, MacOS is full of weird UX quirks, and sometimes it does not work. But they have the best trackpads, very good usability (and it's not just Cargo Culting) that goes beyond the surface

The limited hardware helps with ACPI/UEFI and most of the general issues around Power/sleeping etc.

Re: Ask HN: Why is there no Linux distro that “just works” like macOS?

#35

Post by develatio »

It really depends on what exactly you're looking for in the "it just works" experience, but since you mention "screen recording" and "external devices" I'll assume that you're specifically asking about the modern gamer-streamer (w/ mic, hardware-based sound control, multiple inputs, ViV, etc...) setup and not a basic-browser-and-mail setup.

Linux, as in "in the desktop environment", has a HUGE (a can't highlight and stress enough the word HUGE) technical debt. It runs on a graphical server that was designed way before GPUs were even a thing (let alone multi-GPU, variable refresh rate monitors, HDPi, HDR, etc...). And because of all the design limitations, X just can't compete with either Windows nor MacOS (in that specific environment setup that you're asking for). It just can't. Period.

Mir and Wayland were born precisely to fix this entire mess. Mir never really took off (because of community backlash?), while Wayland is... well... it has been "in progress" for +10 years and it's still not "there". It will get there, eventually, at which point it might be able to offer the "it just works" experience. Or it might not. We'll have to wait and see.

The audio system was already fixed. A few times... We jumped from Jack, OSS and Alsa to PulseAudio and now to PipeWire and things look promising, but PipeWire is also in the progress, so we're not entirely there yet either.

Bottom line is: There can't be a distro that "just works", because we're missing the pieces to assemble such a distro.

Re: Ask HN: Why is there no Linux distro that “just works” like macOS?

#38

Post by lnxg33k1 »

Well because it wouldn’t make sense, you have a bunch of software that is build in a decentralised way without an overlord oversight, you are not bound to a corporation and to shareholder interests, but the main point is that if you aren’t bound to an approval process, an sdk, policies, then it’s hard to create a unified experience like on OSX. My question is that: if there is OS X, if there is windows, why do people want to turn Linux in a bad copy of those? Just use those. If Linux was easy, unified, behind an approval process then it would make no sense for it to exist, if you want Linux to be like OS X, just fucking use OS X

Re: Ask HN: Why is there no Linux distro that “just works” like macOS?

#39

Post by gregopet »

Please stop using "it just works", you're not Apple's marketing department. Sure it just works for some people, but Linux distros and Windows also just work for some people. I've had and I've experienced a fair share of Apple WTFs and some stuff I could never get working properly. Computers are hard, "It just works" is a marketing slogan, nothing more.
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