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

I think the lesson to be learned here is: "Just works" means different things to different people. The condescending replies, which seem to accuse the OP of not using the right distro, or not using "the good Linux hardware", are all by people for whom Linux does "just work" (for them). Personally, I don't think that Linux "just works", but again, that's based on the factors that I care about.

I install Ubuntu on all sorts of hardware, and it just works.

I have more issues with Apple OS’s. Latest example: Hotspot from iPone to iPad frequently drops and needs reconnection, Zoom volume is too low and I can’t fix it, privacy buttons are randomly enabled after disabled, etc.

I love X1 carbon, I'm addicted to it :)

Because all Linux distros are just an amalgamation of thousands of programs and libraries, each with their own aims and pulling in different directions?

That Linux distributions work as well as they do is a miracle in itself, I think. Comparing them with the massively vertically integrated software and hardware package built by the richest company on earth is unfair. Notice that whenever anyone has attempted to subsume different parts of the Linux stack (systemd, etc) into one project, the wider community hasn't really gone along with it without being dragged kicking and screaming, and some times it has led to further fragmentation. I don't think this is necessarily a bad thing too, I feel the chaotic evolution,-not-design character of the ecosystem gives us a computing environment that has a better chance of staying free of whatever the clergy of the alternative cathedral model would choose to do, especially when sponsored by amoral corporations.

So, I don't know what you would like to hear. Does Linux "just work" (whatever this marketing aphorism means?). I think it does, for me. My Dell XPS laptop running an Ubuntu LTS for work, a relatively expensive custom-built desktop rig running Debian Testing at home, and my medium-sized server for my personal projects running Debian Stable on AWS have run without any issues for more than a couple of years. Would I trade these for a massively expensive pretty aluminium box running a closed-source system that will take me several months to master as much as I have Linux (and really can never really, properly, understand due to it's closed nature) just to save me probably a couple of hours a year fixing minor issues on my Linux boxes? Probably not.

The truce is, it's because you defined it as so, for a lot of people, macOS doesn't "just works".

I use linux on most of my computers that doesn't do GUI/gaming, and Windows on the others, macOS doesn't work in any of the cases for me.