I have a standard AMD CPU+GPU, and Manjaro has spontaneously rebooted (the hardest of crashes) at least 10 times in the last 2 years. I use Windows 10 on this machine about 10 times more often and in the same time-frame it has crashed _maybe_ once.
My first Linux install was Mandriva in 2001, followed quickly by Slackware, then Debian, Ubuntu, Pop!OS and now I pretty much exclusively use Arch and Manjaro. I'm pretty sure that in all those 20 years, every time I use up almost all my RAM, the system becomes entirely unusable, to the point where I can't even interact enough to kill programs, and not even the OOM saves the system from total lockup, so I need to power off and on. I've _never_ had this experience on Windows. It gets slow, but it can recover.
The only time where Windows (kernel) was less reliable for me than Linux, as a desktop user, was when I had Windows Millenium Edition -- when my journey all began.
I'd still say I prefer Linux, but it's largely because it's better for my work on systems software. It's definitely not nicer to use as a desktop if you hate crappy products and like good ones.
Regarding spontaneously reboots: I never ever experienced this on Linux besides once having a hardware defect. (I would check the RAM in your case first; Manjaro is an Arch derivative so it incorporates the latest SW but it's not so terribly unstable that it would crash every two month I guess; not sure of course. I'm avoiding Arch for exactly the reason not being stable enough cause it's extremely fresh SW).
Regarding the unresponsiveness on low memory: That's an known problem caused by a live-lock in the kernel. It has a few solutions by now. Just have a look at Facebooks oomd (or one of the solutions working in a comparable way):
I disagree, I think I dealt with the two key elements of what you wrote.
> Seeing all the comments here I'm asking myself once more how people can bear such crappy products. Especially as the products are overpriced on any reasonable scale.
Sure, macOS is a crappy product. A product that crashes to reboot is an even crappier product.
> With a stock Linux you never see anything even close to all those catastrophes.
Crashing to reboot is a bigger catastrophe, so I see worse on Linux.
And I don't mean this in a harsh way, but I know it's a known problem, I just said I've been dealing with it in one form or another for about 20 years. The fact that it has been 20 years means it's a crappy product for desktop, and I won't believe otherwise until it's capital f Fixed in standard installs.
One of the first things I do when I get a machine is install Linux, either to disk or in a VM, and it's the best thing to have happened in the OS space in the last 50 years, but it's still a crappier product for desktop than macOS or Windows. I use all 3 regardless.
The core of my question was something completely different.
I think I should better have left out any comparison to another OS. This part is actually only there to underpin my basic assumption. That is that macOS is as it stands right now quite terribly broken.
If even Apple friendly media starts to complain loudly and this gets some traction over here where people are usually quite objective, and just at the same time I read how macOS fails in regard to most basic OS functionality (memory management, which is at the core of an OS) I take it as a fact that macOS is utterly broken.
Now discussing whether the other mentioned OS is even more broken is the exact flame that I wanted to rather avoid.
I fully agree that crashing to reboot is an unbearable catastrophic failure. But that's not the point.
The question was how a product which (also) fails in catastrophic manners seems bearable to otherwise mostly reasonable people.
If I would've got a computer that needs to be restarted at least once a day as the system has eaten all memory for no reason (or it would just restart itself for no reason) I would look for something else. That's for sure!
In the case of Linux crashing you can at least try your luck with some other hardware (or just distribution). There are rumors that Linux runs rock stable on some machines. So catastrophic failures like spontaneous reboots aren't at least a fundamental and general flaw of this system.
In case of the current Apple issues on the other hand there is not much room to escape though. Also those issues seem to be quite fundamental (like an OS with a more or less completely broken memory management), and also affect more often than not large parts of the user base (if not even everybody as it is, or was lately, the case with a lot of other severe macOS bugs). But people stick to those products despite their severe failures. That's the part I don't get. Honestly, as said already before. Like I would not stick with a computer that self reboots randomly (if I couldn't repair it) I would also not stick with machines that start to have flaws like Windows ME. Especially as there is nothing you can really do about such a problems despite hoping for some good will at Apple.
Even this thread is quite long I didn't see good answers until now. People don't tell why they stick with a broken system they can't repair themself but try to point out that other systems could be equally broken. Despite this is obviously not true as for some people even Windows works fine most of the time. Which, again, can't be said about the current state of macOS. By now one can see die-hard fans complaining loudly, usually about issues that fall in the category of catastrophic failures. Still the majority seems to endure those troubles. Otherwise one would see consequences on Apple's balance sheet.
Maybe it's me who doesn't see the great value proposition that lets one forget about everything else. That also part of the reason I'm asking. I was hopping that I would get some meaningful answers at least here. But despite the usual "everything's equally broken, it makes no difference" (which to some degree is of course right, but only to some degree as pointed out above) or the just nonsensical but also usual "the other stuff is even more broken" (which is objectively not true at this point in time) there wasn't much… I'm wondering whether gaining no new insights was worth bringing up a question which provoked (as expected) mostly down votes. Maybe I have to accept that some human behavior doesn't have any rational explanation and asking about those things only causes troubles.
The egregious macOS bug will be fixed shortly. AFAIK it's only happening in some of the big upgrades released in the last few months. Shockingly bad for a company with Apple's resources, but how many people are affected and for how long? Just the people who upgraded promptly or bought a new device? It's an indictment of Apple but most people intentionally don't upgrade promptly (because it's a hassle, or they know to wait for the bugs to be ironed out). It's an _extremely_ effective mitigation strategy to just not do big upgrades until they've been out for about 6 months. For the type of OS that macOS is, that's an extremely low cost strategy.
If as a hypothetical we imagine macOS and Linux have the same number of "regular" users who upgrade after a few months, and "lemming" users who upgrade ASAP (directly, or indirectly by buying a new product that only comes with the new version), and we look at the number of people affected by crappiness in each crappy product, it's basically just "lemming" users for macOS, and all users for Linux. There's no strategic fix for Linux.
This has nothing to do with open source vs commercial software. Most software from both camps is just really crappy from an end-user perspective, and culturally, both camps are largely getting worse with time at about the same rate. I disagree that Linux is any kind of oasis in the desert of crappy software. We have to ask the same "why do we put up with this?" questions of Linux as well.
My first Linux install was Mandriva in 2001, followed quickly by Slackware, then Debian, Ubuntu, Pop!OS and now I pretty much exclusively use Arch and Manjaro. I'm pretty sure that in all those 20 years, every time I use up almost all my RAM, the system becomes entirely unusable, to the point where I can't even interact enough to kill programs, and not even the OOM saves the system from total lockup, so I need to power off and on. I've _never_ had this experience on Windows. It gets slow, but it can recover.
The only time where Windows (kernel) was less reliable for me than Linux, as a desktop user, was when I had Windows Millenium Edition -- when my journey all began.
I'd still say I prefer Linux, but it's largely because it's better for my work on systems software. It's definitely not nicer to use as a desktop if you hate crappy products and like good ones.