From 14 years old till 29, my experience with desktop Linux

In uni, I ran Ubuntu 7.04 for a summer on a Thinkpad R21. Similar to the author, I was obsessed in customizing in and making it look like OS X but without any direct experience with using a Mac. I even had a ding sound for completed downloads in Transmission-GTK and some form of grass wallpaper (but not the REAL grass wallpaper).<p>I then had the realization that what I really wanted was a Mac. I was fortunate enough for my family to purchase me one which, with an AppleCare exchange for a unibody model, lasted me a whopping 11 years (Tiger to Mojave). I also still have that iPod nano from the back-to-school promo they used to have.

Fun read. Is mind blowing that I haven&#x27;t had a Windows machine in over 2 decades at this point. I have had some MacBooks, but mainly because that is what companies would buy for me.<p>My personal machines have been Ubuntu or derivative for a long time now. To the point that I don&#x27;t even know what I&#x27;m missing in alternatives, anymore. Used to be it was games, Steam has been a blessing there.

I wonder if there is a market for something that runs after first install, or via the Settings app, that &quot;makes my install look like X&quot;, for X in (Win2k, MacOS, Win10) say.<p>The point being that this very short list of options is extremely thoroughly-worked-out, which is a level simply not available today in a stock Ubuntu distro and its themes. I can choose elementary, or Mint, bitbthat is essentially an OS distro level decision. I can download some themes, but its not interchangeable at will, and the depth of implementation of gnome or kde themes is very shallow.<p>I expect that to truly do this would require not just graphical styling but also switching lots of packages around (eg a file manager). Maybe the path there looks like a giant Nix config to capture all the dependencies?

I really appreciate hearing the story that weaves all these computing choices together! Somehow that human element contains more actionable information than a dense data sheet, and I now I know I&#x27;ll give Gnome and some of the apps mentioned a try!<p>Perhaps I&#x27;ll try it in a VM on a M1 MacBook Pro, with Nix, to really have fun! I think personal computer software can be improved a lot with lessons from the Infrastructure as Code world, notably the ability to create reproducible, version controlled computing environments!

I roughly follow the same path Windows - Linux - macOS - Linux. But nowadays my Linux was mainly using VSCode as a frontend via a MacBook.<p>However, I spent significant amounts of time using Arch Linux. Compared to stable released Ubuntu etc., I like opportunity to jump on bugs in open source packages and fix them, they have taught me a lot. Using open source software but not its bleeding edge version is a missing opportunity I would say.

I&#x27;ve run Ubuntu on my home computer since I was about 16. Now I&#x27;m 40. It has been great. Some frustrations. But a good experience. I&#x27;m surprised that more people don&#x27;t take the leap and run Ubuntu.

I thought this was an interesting point.<p><pre><code> GNOME looks like macOS as KDE looks like Windows </code></pre> I&#x27;m not sure how much of this is true, has anyone run the 4 of them around the same recent period?

I&#x27;ve tried desktop Linux every few years for many years and the result is always the same - the user experience is inconsistent and flaky. It has surely got better but there is always the feeling that it is a &quot;Frankenstein GUI&quot;.<p>Windows is guilty of this too - what a mess of different user interface styles and a patchwork of stuff being stitched together.<p>MacOS by comparison is a beautifully consistent GUI well thought out and logical and things just work.<p>Every time I go back to Windows I am reminded of how broken the whole experience is - multitasking is not smooth, tasks don&#x27;t end when asked, the system won&#x27;t shut down, applications freeze.<p>And if you think I[&#x27;m just an Apple fanboy, I&#x27;m not - I spent many many years as a hard core Windows fanboy and I love Linux and use it as a server OS daily.<p>The thing is - making a consistent, easy to use well thought out operating system experience is a gargantuan task and it must take gargantuan time money and effort to do it well.

I’d like to see someone copy macOS accessibility features on Linux, then I might come around to using it again.