Re: Comfortable in Linux

This is an appreciation post for Jack’s recent one, I am comfortable living in Linux, but….

In the Linux vs. Mac conundrum, I’ve read endless commentary from Linux folks justifying Linux and Mac folks justifying Mac. Just as with text editors, people like what they’re familiar with. And that’s to be expected.

Jack’s post was particularly interesting to me because, like me, he’s a Mac-familiar guy who feels a strong pull toward Linux, so much so that he spent an entire year going mostly in on it. And it was validating because his conclusions are similar to the ones I’ve reached in my prior attempts at this sort of move.

There are a couple things that are really hard for me to give up when going from Mac to Linux, and Jack addressed both of them. First, there are the macOS-only apps. The two that I’m most attached to are Alfred, because it’s the bomb, and Passwords, because I’ve migrated all of my family’s passwords into it. I assume I could eventually replicate my core Alfred stuff in something like Albert, and I’m working on various experiments to easily share a password from my phone to a Linux machine. I could get over these losses, but it’d cost.

Messages is also a bummer to lose. Boy do I love typing texts on a real keyboard instead of my phone. But I could make do.

Second, it’s hard for me to give up macOS’s Emacs-inspired shortcuts. I use these constantly. They’re so baked into muscle memory that I don’t even realize I’m using them. And it’s so flippin’ great that they also work in the terminal thanks to Readline. This sort of platform-wide consistency is really nice. I assume I’d eventually get fluent enough at the Linux equivalents, but again, it’d cost.

Losing both my core apps and the Emacs shortcuts is a bitter pill to swallow, so I keep coming back to the question: Why Linux? Is it just for novelty and my petty grievances with macOS, or is there some larger, longer-term value to be gained from switching?

Linux has yet to win this analysis, in part because it’s not a level playing field: I’m already highly fluent and efficient on a Mac, my family is all on Apple devices (iPhones, MacBooks, my Mac mini, iPads, AirTags), Apple still has the best hardware out there, and these days that hardware is even cost-competitive.

So, again, why Linux, Sal? Jack says:

The things I like about Linux are abstract. The “I’m in complete control of my computing environment” kind of things. I miss that feeling on the Mac, especially when I can’t launch an app that I downloaded or when I’ve had to dismiss the two thousandth permissions dialog that day. Also, I love the “This twelve-year-old ThinkPad still works great running Linux!”

Yep, same here, plus the novelty factor. And for me, that’s just not enough to outweigh all the pros of sticking with a Mac.

All of that said, my Thinkpad & Linux experiment is still on! My plan from the start was to have the Thinkpad as a plaything and to stick to my Macs when I just need to get stuff done. The Thinkpad can supply novelty when I’m feeling the need for it, but I can run back into the velvet cage of macOS when the edges feel too rough. I still like that plan.

And maybe, over time, bit by bit, I’ll get comfortable enough in Linux to reach a different conclusion. But for now, Macs are still my main squeeze.