CerebralHawks

Only I don’t dislike chili (Linux). What you’re saying is that someone who likes beans in their chili wouldn’t be welcome at a chili cook-off because beans don’t belong in chili in your opinion, and your opinion should be the law of the land.

Or are you saying a person can only attend a chili cook-off (or a discussion about Linux) if they eat chili every day (or use Linux)? Can someone who is merely interested in the subject not partake, Your Holy Imperial Majesty?

Interesting response. I’m not subbed the the Linux community; Lemmy is small enough, I just browse /all. Still, even among Linux users, there’s no best. You got the Arch guys, the Mint guys, the Ubuntu guys, and everyone in between, and hashing out which options are best has got to be an interesting part of it. So if you add Windows and macOS into the mix, you’re not really changing the conversation. Just more pros and cons to toss around. Saying things like “proprietary” and “Apple tax” are reductive and don’t really get anyone anywhere. Like who gives a shit. Really. Though I think a lot of people agree paid Linux and proprietary Linux is seldom good. Like Lindows/Linspire. Nobody liked that shit. There’s a new one that’s paid, or it’s free but has paid options, apparently it’s pretty popular? I forget the name right now. Marketing itself as a better alternative to Windows. And I get it. Support options and all that. It’s a good idea. But the Arch guys aren’t buying it, and I suspect the Mint and Ubuntu guys aren’t interested, either. But a Windows guy who, that’s all he knows? Maybe it’s a nice first step to something else.

Well, if you have an old Mac (like Intel era), I think Linux would be a good target if your Mac isn’t supported anymore. I’m not sure what Linux distros run on Apple Silicon. Linux being a bit lighter weight would mitigate some of the issues Mac guys have with certain Intel Macs (overheating). And certainly breathe new life into the machine.

I’m not quite sold on Mac Studio. For high end, I don’t want something that’s all on one chip and can’t be upgraded. But that’s what Apple Silicon is all about. Just seems like someone who needs that much computer would be better served by a different kind of machine. For cheap consumer grade computers, Macs are kinda hard to beat, but at every price point, there are other options. Hard to say what the best is. It would depend on the user.

Fair point, but also, the M4 Mac mini is $500 for a pretty competitive chip, 16GB RAM, and 256GB on-chip SSD. You can beat that with a PC (and probably get a bit bigger drive, like 500GB, and you’d be able to upgrade), but you wouldn’t save that much money. The Windows license puts it over; of course, the idea is you get someone to sell you one without a Windows license and install Linux. But if they aren’t including Windows, they aren’t selling in enough bulk to get the price down. There are a bunch of little computers from China that are competitive, but do you trust them? Up to you, I guess.

The other option, I went over in my top-level comment, is to find a gently used office PC that can’t be upgraded to Windows 11, like a 7th gen i5. It’s not gonna be competitive, performance wise, against that M4 Mac mini, though, but you might get it for like $100 from eBay or something, so maybe it’s fine.

To add to your point, not only does it run on “generic” hardware, it runs on “whatever” hardware.

You should ask the AI what the advantages are of Linux Mint over macOS. You should then ask the reverse and compare the pros and cons from both angles.

Note that the AI is just going to aggregate Reddit posts and dress up the language a bit. But you should get good information.

As a macOS user typing on a Mac mini (M2 Pro) running macOS 26.2 Tahoe, I will say that Linux is better for gaming via Proton. We have the Game Porting Tool Kit (GPTK) but this is not really user facing. We have paid options like CrossOver, and there used to be a free option called Whisky, but it’s been discontinued. Linux is kind of awesome for gaming and like, most games run on Linux now. (I choose to game on Xbox and Switch, but that’s beside the point.)

I think macOS is a slightly more polished product, but the trade-off for Linux is, you can run it on more hardware (like if you have an ageing PC and you don’t want to get a Mac — or, if you can find a decent PC for the price of an M4 Mac mini, which goes for $500), and you have more control over the software. For example, it just came up again in the Windows communities that Windows 11 can’t move its taskbar to the sides or the top like it’s done since Windows 95 through Windows 10. macOS has a menu bar that is stuck on the top always (always has been) but it has an application dock on the bottom that can move to the left (but not the right, nor can it sit on or under the menu bar at the top). In Linux, not only can you put your system bar wherever you want it, I think you can customise it to have more than one (like you can go macOS and have a menu/system bar and dock, but you can put them where you want them).

I personally wouldn’t choose Linux over macOS, but if I did, I would start with Ubuntu. Personal preference. And, while I wouldn’t trade my MacBook, I could use Linux on the desktop. I wouldn’t hate it. I like my Mac, but if I got ahold of an older PC, like something a company was getting rid of because it can’t run Windows 11 (say, a 7th generation i5 with 16GB of RAM would be nice), I’d wipe the drive and put Linux on it. I would not try to make it a Hackintosh (I’m honestly not gonna do the work). Coming from an office, it would likely be sold without a drive. So I’d get a cheap SATA SSD (like 500/512GB) and put Ubuntu on it.