> a pocket computer that won't let you install software of your choice!
My Ubuntu tablet did not let me either. It was a major disappointment. Anyway, the OS is no longer maintained and the best thing to do is to use it as a large clock.
I'm now using a large iPad Pro, probably the best piece of personal computer hardware I've seen so far... 500GB SSD, fast ARM processor, 120Hz screen with fantastic colors and brightness, LTE, four speakers with excellent sound, ...
I cannot program Lisp on it, but I could not do that on the Ubuntu tablet either and the Ubuntu UI/UX was lacking.
I always liked SUN's hardware, incl. the SPARC machines. Solaris was nothing I would run on my machine. I never liked it. Not its UI, not the OS APIs, not the documentation, it's like food one does not like.
> I recently installed FreeBSD on a 16 year old laptop as an experiment, and it works fine.
My Macbook runs nicely a 4k screen with full scaling UI support. That's more important to me, than trying to use old hardware. I have old laptops around, but nothing is compelling to use. The new machines with fast/large SSDs, low-power CPUs, high-res screens, external 4k screens, are more interesting to me.
2018 again won't be the year of the Linux desktop - it is just not there for people who value UI/UX more than low-level configurability.
Okay, serious question: what is the UI / UX experience you get from your OSX system that you think is lacking on Ubuntu? Or one of the other free OSs?
Perhaps my requirements are different.
Firefox, Emacs, SLIME, CCL, Roswell, Ruby, Node, RubyMine, and SyncThing run pretty much identically on all OSs I've tried. Spotify still doesn't support FreeBSD (no Widevine), so I run that in a Linux VM. Kerbal Space Program I haven't tried on FreeBSD, only Linux and OSX (I do have an old MBP I keep around as a gaming and movie machine, as it has a 15" screen and DVD drive).
I found Ubuntu configuration easier than Windows last I tried (Vista) and file based configuration in FreeBSD is the easiest of all, especially courtesy the excellent FreeBSD Handbook.
Also I run a tiling window manager (StumpWM) to avoid unnecessary window chrome, and also to avoid using the mouse.
The last time I used OSX extensively was back in 2011 or so, at Lonely Planet, where we had a fleet of iMac pairing stations. They were ludicrously hard to set up identically; all our attempts at the time to create a "pairing environment setup script" failed to varying degrees. And the screens, as large and beautiful as they were, were the devil in our weirdly lit office because they weren't available in matte options.
Possibly it comes back to your description of "food you don't like", but I really didn't enjoy my time on Apple devices.
Ubuntu/Linux is catching up with Wayland to the macOS compositor from years ago.
> Possibly it comes back to your description of "food you don't like"
I like that macOS deals nicely with hiDPI ('Retina') screens.
> Firefox, Emacs, SLIME, CCL, Roswell, Ruby, Node, RubyMine, and SyncThing run pretty much identically on all OSs I've tried.
Personally I prefer to use the LispWorks IDE (which has a nice port to macOS) and the Clozure CL IDE over GNU Emacs/Slime. GNU Emacs/Slime are not bad, but UI-wise it's a nightmare.
I hope no year will ever be the year of the Linux desktop. I use Debian and it is awesome, both on the server and desktop. So as long as Linux is a niche, all is well. How awful if it would become mainstream, think viruses etc. So it's a good thing that people like you don't like it. Keep it up!
My Ubuntu tablet did not let me either. It was a major disappointment. Anyway, the OS is no longer maintained and the best thing to do is to use it as a large clock.
I'm now using a large iPad Pro, probably the best piece of personal computer hardware I've seen so far... 500GB SSD, fast ARM processor, 120Hz screen with fantastic colors and brightness, LTE, four speakers with excellent sound, ...
I cannot program Lisp on it, but I could not do that on the Ubuntu tablet either and the Ubuntu UI/UX was lacking.
I always liked SUN's hardware, incl. the SPARC machines. Solaris was nothing I would run on my machine. I never liked it. Not its UI, not the OS APIs, not the documentation, it's like food one does not like.
> I recently installed FreeBSD on a 16 year old laptop as an experiment, and it works fine.
My Macbook runs nicely a 4k screen with full scaling UI support. That's more important to me, than trying to use old hardware. I have old laptops around, but nothing is compelling to use. The new machines with fast/large SSDs, low-power CPUs, high-res screens, external 4k screens, are more interesting to me.
2018 again won't be the year of the Linux desktop - it is just not there for people who value UI/UX more than low-level configurability.