And then comes the wonderful realm of the BSDs and the OpenSolaris derivatives

Do you play PC games?
Yes
Do you care about privacy?
Yes
LOL get fucked
- You can install Steam on Linux. In fact I have 2 PCs in my house for my sons. They run Windows games flawlessly. See for compatibility in the ProtonDB.
  
  Yeah I installed Garuda yesterday and games worked great. It’s literally everything else that had me wanting a “Linux for fucking morons” class.
  
  And if that doesn't work, there's always ~~alcohol~~ Wine
  
  See the thing is, when you use Windows you don't need a compatability list.
- Linux gaming is pretty good these days. Basically the only major games you can't play are the ones running super intrusive anticheats.
- Maybe relevant 10 years ago, but not anymore. Hell, most games run better with Proton now, no background telemetry crap.
  
  FNV somehow runs more stable on my Steam Deck than my PC at this point.
  
  could just be my luck but out of a few games I tried nothing ran as smooth as windows and also no g sync for me
- Moved to Nobara os half a year back and haven't had much issue with any game so far, not anymore than I did on windows

- Isn't the whole Macs don't get viruses thing a myth by this point?
  There are a lot more sources for random untrustworthy Windows software than there are for MacOS but that's on the user the same way keeping your OS up to date is.
  
  Nothing is secure anymore, and it makes sense. The reason there are less apple hacks (anything I'm the ecosystem is susceptible) is by keeping things proprietary and their relative obscurity. There have been hacks on Mac's, iPhones, but also Linux, android, and of course windows.
- Windows is shit, but the days where you have to do configuration if you don't use some obscure notebook in one of the most used linux distros is over. I'd say gnome e.g. is pretty close to macos UI wise. There is also Hackintosh if you can't live without it.
  As for why I particularly hate apple:
  Bizarre pricing for comparably low tier Hardware (although not really comparable since apple makes their own ARM silicone)
  Bad repairability, including flimsy collabs to produce some overpriced block of metal just to change an jphone battery lol
  Walled garden / closed ecosystem. Blocking third party apps for users "security". All this green bubble / blue bubble bullshit.
  productivity and design wise alright machines, but utter trash when it comes to gaming.
  There are surely more / other points to make.
  
  Arch Linux Desktop for coding and gaming, MacBook for mobile productivity. Best of both worlds.
  I know with 100% certainty that if my MacBook did a thing last week, it will do it tomorrow. No lost files due to updates, no weird crashes, no ads, no candy crush. If I’m out somewhere, that reliability is worth the premium. And, at least on Mac computers, you can unlock the walled garden if you really need to.
  There is no use case for windows in my workflow. Might not be true for everyone though.
  
  That's only iOS, and I've heard that EU's trying to put an end to that. Third party apps works fine with macOS; never once have I even touched the app store, only Homebrew. I do agree that the lack of control and freedom you have is egregious, especially for such an expensive device, there really should be an toggle to turn all of that restriction off for those who knows what they're doing. I'm also pessimistic about the future of macOS given the absolute bullshit Apple's been pulling with iOS. I can only hope Asahi Linux gets feature parity with macOS by the time they do the same with macOS, else I'll have to sell my M1 MacBook and get something else, and that's a shame because despite less-than-ideal OS, the hardware is amazing.
- They don't contribute code back to the community and make billions in profit to the detriment of furthering the human species with their concentration of wealth and minimal innovation (since Jobs died).
  
  That’s not true. Some examples: WebKit LLVM clang Anything here: https://github.com/Developer-Ecosystem-Engineering
- It's mainly the terrible anti-consumer decisions of Apple that everyone dunks on, such as lack of repairability, lack of consumer choice, charging a fortune to change a single $1 chip, and being unable to run programs downloaded from anywhere but the app store.
  
  being unable to run programs downloaded from anywhere but the app store.
  I agree with everything else you said but this is just flat out incorrect.
- You can't upgrade ram or a hard drive. If you sell me a computer, charge $100 per 4 gigs of base speed ram, even more for storage, than have the audacity to tell me I can't upgrade it myself, you can fuck right off.
- Every time I offer similar views the responses I get are somewhere along the lines of
  But you can run Linux on windows! You can install most of the same tools on windows Just run everything in docker anyway
  I’ve been coding most of my life. Usually people don’t understand just how sucky the tool chains are on windows when you step into certain dev work.
  If I ever have to setup multiple python virtual envs again I’ll fucking just quit. Pipenv. Virtualenv. Poetry. Every fucking one on windows has been riddled with bugs
- Several reasons:
  Almost all of their products target the high end market (and even then, they are known to make stupid decisions to cut off high end use cases).
  OSX tends to be opinionated on certain settings and it is hard (or impossible) to change them.
  Many of the built in software only work if you exclusively use Apple products.
  Apple simps.
  
  On point 4, I hear way more from Apple haters than I do from Apple simps
- My dude, if you find you need to "babysit" Fedora or Ubuntu, I'm kind of doubting your tech literacy - i.e the basic level of tech literacy you need to operate macOS or Windows with.
  And also, just because something is UNIX doesn't make it good. Shout outs to HPUX.
  Also, Apple is tracking you on macOS and iOS, similarly to Google and Microsoft. They call it telemetry, but are you SURE they don't collect identifying information and canvas you?
- I wish macOS was a well managed Unix system.
- Because they're such a heavily walled garden.
  It's great for my parents who know nothing about technology and computers. They just need to go online and check emails and social media.
- Sorry I want a well-managed UNIX system with a nice GUI while not coding?
  Linux with KDE.
- I don't care what anyone says. On a user level MacOS is by far the best ready to go experience. I love using Linux Mint and I wish I would use it full time to be free of corporate OS's. But that's not the case and Mac is well ahead in my eyes.
  
  Just to be clear, because the following could be misunderstood when posted alone: I'm not looking for an argument, use whatever you prefer. I'm just curious.
  What use cases do you have that aren't available (or take lots of configuration) on Mint?
  
  KDE plasma
- Sorry I want a well-managed UNIX system with a nice GUI
  Does OSX still have that bug where if you merge two folders of the same name it deletes everything in one of them?
- I’m with you, it’s just Cool to hate on Apple or whatever.
- macOS is fine, for now, but with the direction Apple is going right now with all the spyware they're putting on iOS, I'd rather start using something else than get caught off guard when they start doing the same with macOS. I still have a MacBook, but I've long since switched to using Linux as my main system, so when the day comes and Apple decides to install spyware on macOS, I can ditch it in a heartbeat without shedding a single tear. Also, I'm not a big fan of the lack of options and customisability on macOS. I get that it's meant to help non-tech-savvy people so that they don't break their system, but at least make a toggle that's lets you turn all of that off for those who knows what they're doing.
  Lastly, Linux distros like Fedora or Mint is very easy to use, and at least in my opinion, entirely negates the argument that "Linux is hard". It's only as difficult as you want it to be. The only major roadblock is support for common proprietary apps, and while I don't usually use them, I've heard that they've become far better recently. As a cherry on top, it's lighter and, best of all, has no spyware.
- @railsdev @idk837384 It's the price, right? People shit on it for its price. You didn't mention price once! Lol
  
  Nah, $999 for a monitor stand is completely reasonable
- I am literally forced to use Apple at work. I can life with an iPhone, because I use it just for its intended, dumped down usage and I overcame the annoyance about Apples fascism (alternative web engine). If you are not able to automate 100% of your setup on a proper UNIX machine, please do the programming community a favor and switch your line of work. Apple is such a shit show: no keyboard driven workflow w/o extensive customization, how the fuck can I automate 100% of the the setup/customization, why the fuck do I have to upgrade every fucking single program interactively with a click, why are the package managers homebrew and macports as shitshow like Linux 25 years ago, why is macOS so bloated and fucking slow on a machine, why is the development experience for mac worse than Visual Studio 6 (!), Finder is such a sad joke compared to file managers on every other OS or DE, why can I not easily enable transparent file compression when I am a grown up user etc etc etc. Seriously, macOS is nice for consumers with too much money. The literally only thing macOS does which I envy is the tag system which works. Don't get me wrong, Linux is also a shit show, but compared to macOS it is like the best thing ever.
- One doesn't "get privacy", privacy can't be bolted on. One starts with full privacy and then begins losing it to bad decisions, like choosing an inauditable OS that phones home and everything.
- You’ve forgotten an important point: the price gap between apple and windows machines has closed significantly. A similarly-performing windows machine is now a similar price, if not more expensive, than the equivalent mac.
- Because they're such a heavily walled garden.
  It's great for my parents who know nothing about technology and computers. They just need to go online and check emails and social media.
- From my experience with people that are very pro Android vs the pro iOS crowd, it’s just that they’re trying to justify their own choice by uplifting the OS they chose and sometimes tend to focus only on the negatives of the other OS. The same can be said for the various desktop OS crowds.
  I’ve used both Android and iOS, as well as Windows and MacOS (and intend to try Linux at some point) over the years and I never thought one was generally better than the other. All these OSs have different target users and that’s ok. Just because you’re not the target user for OS A, doesn’t mean that OS B is objectively the best OS for everyone. It’s just the best OS for you. And why people feel the need to bash other people’s choices or even make fun of them for it is beyond me.
  
  They're playing into the advertisers hands. Simple as that
- Spyware

Windows isn't afraid of tech, but MacOS is? Give me a break, the Unix style terminal is the reason for using MacOS professionally.
- Honestly, most windows users I know at least know where their files are stored and stuff like that. Average Mac users don't know if something is synced with the cloud or not and can't unpack a rar archive without calling support because they are deliberately kept dumb by that restrictive, overly oppinionated, lock-in OS and unrepairable, un-upgradable hardware ecosystem. I'm using linux as daily driver on laptop and desktop for almost a decade now and I hate windows with a passion, but mac manages to be even worse. Although windows is also getting worse with every version since win7, so they might be on par soon...
- Yeah this used to be the case up until the early 2000s. Then Microsoft started making Windows much less technical (e.g. instead of showing Error: HRESULT 0x80070002 it just showed Sorry, something went wrong :(). Conversely, Apple started exposing more tooling for MacOS, e.g. tracing, terminal, etc. instead of just showing <bomb picture> if something went wrong.
- Depends on the person. Most of the people I know who use MacOS, use it as a glorified Facebook machine. Outside of perhaps Word, they only use the web browser.
  
  In my circles it's used exclusively for software engineering. Mostly by people who like Linux but don't wanna deal with any instability brought by customizing your install.
  
  Computers are a tool and people use it for the needs that benefit them.
- To quote a designer friend of mine 'Apple is the king of average'. :-P Most people I see using apple don't even understand how shitty the UI is if your workflow is keyboard driven (snap windows w/o 3rd party programs for example.)
  
  I’m not sure if my experience is any kind interesting or not, but here goes. This is coming from the perspective of a software engineer.
  After using Windows for a few years, I switched to macOS for several years before needing to use some Windows-only software and switching back.
  I always hated using iPadOS, and for a long time, I assumed this was primarily due to the lack of windowed applications (as well as the lack of software that was truly competitive with Windows/macOS offerings, at least at the time).
  On the other hand, my experience with macOS is just the opposite. As soon as the feature was introduced, I started using applications exclusively in fullscreen whenever possible. This is partially the fault of macOS’s vanilla window system being unhelpful in several regards, but that doesn’t explain why I now miss it on Windows.
  Yes, I know Windows now implements comparable multitouch gestures, but in my experience, it is terrible to use. The scroll speed is far too fast and cannot be changed independently, AFAIK. And maximized applications still have to choose between a persistent window border and a borderless mode that comes with its own pitfalls. I really don’t like it, but I still use alt+tab 99% of the time, just like I did on XP and 7.
  I think the root of the problem is that you can only physically look at one thing at a time, but fullscreen applications work best in multitasking when the time spent switching windows (including the time spent consciously thinking about it) is minimized. iPadOS sometimes takes longer and the gesture is uncomfortable to perform on a tablet. Windows gets it wrong in how much you have to keep an eye on it. macOS, in my opinion, gets it just right.

bro why is kali in the "you have no life" section ?? Everyone knows ethical hackers get all the girls
- Please, please, PLEASE do not use Kali as a daily driver... The maintainers and the organization and every hacking role-model and educator on the internet says to not use it as a daily driver. You want Debian Testing if you're that worried about having debian-like features but getting a rolling release
  
  I have run into people who use kali as a daily driver. They mentioned it trying to seem cool but it made me think wow this guys an idiot.
- I went to school in cybersecurity (ended up being a run of the mill web dev) and the people who ran Kali knew the least. I blame Mr Robot

I use Arch btw
- Having a life is overated. Praise be the glory of Arch Linux.
  
  I feel like I missed my opportunity to brag about using Arch. I did an install a while back and the Arch wiki spoonfed everything to me. Once I got KDE installed, I honestly didn't feel much a difference between my Arch install and, say, EndeavorOS. That said, I haven't done any major upgrades yet, so...

Guess I don't have a life.
Use btw I Arch.
- There's a Lemmy instance where you don't have to say that.

i use linux BECAUSE i fear technology...
maybe more accurately it should be 'understand' technology, but then why would windows be there ?
- You fear the people that really own the technology, not the technology itself.
  
  thats where your wrong. i fear both
  
  thats where your wrong. i fear both

I use Windows because i need to use certain Software
- I use windows because I like things that just work.
  
  *for about 2 years until the next reformat lol
  
  The real joke is in the comments.
- I haven't had issues running a few things I needed within a VM. However, those tasks aren't demanding.
  Looking at you "iCloud for Windows".
- when I get a larger hard drive I will dualboot. Linux is MUCH easier for development stuff. I am using windows right now so I can continue to use some software (like Affinity Photo)
- such as? just use WINE
  
  My main Problem is with my music production Software and Hardware, which cant be easily installed with wine. Other than that i have affinity suit which works with wine, but not without Problems. Lastly i use davinci resolve, which claims to Support linux natively but barely works.
  
  Things that straight up ban the use of wine exist, y'know
  
  Adobe
  
  So I have some old music projects that are basically stuck on Windows. Even if I moved over all the files and ran the plugins through WINE, I would have to go through the entire project and fill in the blanks with the WINE-bridged plugins and redo all the automation I have. Running the program through WINE isn't really an option because my projects were just below the performance limit on native Windows. I know some programs run on WINE better than Windows, but I need real-time audio with a specific audio interface that doesn't support Linux. I could use WINEASIO, but I would still be losing a lot of performance compared to native Windows, where again I am regularly reaching the performance limit of my setup.
  Also, I'm holding off for a few months on installing Debian onto my Windows work laptop because all my technical programs are ready on Windows immediately. I'm waiting until I get more storage and until I know if the programs I need for my future job are compatible with WINE.
  I love WINE as much as the next Linux user, but it can't solve everything. I acknowledge that it is Windows rather than WINE or Linux that is making things difficult for us. Unfortunately, I need to have a native Windows partition for the foreseeable future, although I'm doing almost everything else on Debian on my home PC.
  
  WINE doesn't work for everything. I've heard Adobe products are hit and miss and I have yet to get Office to work.
  
  Heavily modded skyrim hates wine.

I'm posting from an actual abacus.

What an odd take.
Every dev I know must be terrified of technology as they all use apple laptops. I don’t love apple but they make a pretty sweet *nix laptop for dev work.
- My shop is about half and half, and I wouldn't say that the devs with macs are afraid of technology, but I would say they don't look real comfortable using a command prompt...
  
  lol it’s the opposite for me. many people use terminal all day every day and run Linux VMs if necessary.

Has Gentoo stopped being the distro of choice for people with too much time on their hands?
- Compiling the browser or figuring out how to not trigger qtwebengine-dependency. No time to post anything.
- I thought that was Arch, but it seems like NixOS is stealing all their users

It's more about gaming compatibility for me.
I know Linux had been making great progress. But not every game runs well on non mainstream OS's.

why the heck is gentoo isn't in no life section but Kali is????
- Exactly. Kali is just Debian
- Because rl gentoo penguins rule? 🤷
  
  epic

Linux is to main stream -> OpenBSD
- NetBSD is love, NetBSD is life.
- What benefits do you have using Unix over Linux?
  
  I don't think OpenBSD is Unix, both unix like. For a usecase, I don't know if there even is a scenario where you would want OpenBSD as a desktop user, other than preference. I guess it would feel a bit like gentoo.

- AFAIK, Fedora is considered stable and is a great choice.
  
  Fedora just works, it made me stop Distro hopping. I don't want to use something else, but when the day comes on that Red Hat starts making questionable choices, I'll go back to Debian.
  
  I've been a user for years and I would agree with that. The only issue I've seen people have recently are with Red Hat and their recent source code policy change
  https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2023/06/red-hats-new-source-code-policy-and-the-intense-pushback-explained/
- I think Ubuntu has turned to garbage with whatever canonical is doing but I do think Linux Mint is pretty great
  
  I'm having a ton of fun with Mint. I'm finding it tight, full of relevant software, and quite configurable.
- I don't really know if they're bad, since I haven't touched either in years, but they're both definitely easy distros to get into for beginners who dont want to spend hours configuring their system, thus them being in the yes part of having a life.
  
  I don't know why someone would call them bad. Especially if you're trying to install them on non-mainstream hardware. There's just more support for them.
  My own journey to Linux started with FreeBSD. Want to talk about hard to find drivers? Now I have two laptops running Ubuntu and Mint, with Ubuntu running as a VM on Win10.

What is the puzzle piece? Linux from scratch?
- I think it's Kali
  
  Kali is the dragon below the puzzle piece.

Have no life, still chose Fedora / Debian. The days of Ubuntu are long gone tho.
- This meme is broken. I use fedora and have no life.
- What about Suse?
- They should've added another path, "Do you like amazon?" -> Ubuntu

Facebook has an os?
- If not /s, then that's Fedora lol
  
  Was not /s .
  That's the damn FB logo. Lol

lol, yeah somebody really hates Macs..... I work in tech, and lots of my colleagues also use Mac, I love my Mac....
- i only like my mac because of the speakers; ultra the bright screen; and the cmd & ctrl key separation. as soon as someone else decides to build a laptop with those qualities (preferably better) i'd ditch mac in a heartbeat.

"Do you have a life", FTFU!

Fedora in the 'has a life section'? Yes, having to reinstall an old version of shim-x64 on an encrypted disk, because the new version breaks the handover from UEFI to bootloader (and therefore even rescue mode is not accessible) is something that everybody is able to do in an instant.
Or dealing with a crashing window manager, getting your Bluetooth headset to work in a stable and predictable manner, etc.
I've had Fedora as a daily driver for over two years, switched to Manjaro because I grew tired of having to deal with a constant stream of issues and crashes. I won't say that there is anything inherently bad about Fedora and I may have had a stroke of bad luck, but it is relatively bleeding edge and therefore one should expect issues to pop up from time to time.
- Works on my machine
- I've been using fedora for about 2 years as well, absolutely the best and most stable Linux experience I've ever had. Been using Linux as my daily driver since about 2008

Wooooo!!! Ubuntu
- Wubuntu

Why you put kali in no life 🧐 what problem does it have
- It'S a HaCkeR dIsTrO /s
  My guess is the person who originally made this doesn't have all that much Linux experience and doesn't know that Kali is just Debian with lots of pre-installed security tools (and not intended as a daily driver)
  
  From its core I think it's correct we just need a Compactable kernal and drivers and some script to get our work done

And here I thought I didn't have a life. What a a pleasant surprise!

"do you have a life" -> "Are you independently capable"
FTFY
- Ah yes me the intellectual using Kali Linux to play Skyrim
  
  How else will you pen test the dragons?

I wouldn't say I'm that techy and I recently jumped over to Linux Mint from Windows because it has the C-compiler gcc pre-installed and it's UNIX seems to be a better experience for programming. It was easy to install, I find I'm going back to Windows less and less. I used to use Photoshop a lot, now I'm just using Krita. I'm lovin it so far. Only games are a problem maybe, although the game I play has a linux version, I just can't be bothered loading yet.
Linux Mint is supposed to be the easy for-the-layman Linux distro and that's been my experience so far - everything has worked, no issues.
- I wouldn't say I'm that techy
  I really like the C-compiler and general programming experience
  
  Yeah, okay, I am a little bit techy, but so far I haven't had to employ any of my limited techy abilities in Linux Mint. I didn't even notice I was using it more, it just happened over a few months that I was finding there was no need to go back to Windows. To load programs on Linux Mint I just google "How to load program X on Linux", and there will be a page saying, type "sudo apt install programname" in Terminal and it always works and I'm done. (I'm a beginner programmer who was told to try Linux for the Unix stuff) .
  If you're a gamer, I would look up any discussion of gaming in Linux - that would be my only proviso.
- Not sure why you got downvotes, my non-techy dad uses Mint to play civilization 5 and hasn't used windows for at least a decade now.