> Maybe they want a unixy desktop with working sound ?
In my experience, this has not been an issue for the past 10-15 years atleast. Before that there were some problems with few (external) soundcards or random cpu spikes with the mixers.
However, the UX can still improve. Switching audio outputs with multiple outputs like external displays etc is not very smooth or intuitive.
Some bluetooth headsets have issues but I've had those with a mac as well.
I'm running Linux everyday and I really wouldn't recommend it for any serious audio stuff.
There is great audio software coming to Linux (Bitwig, Reaper, etc) which is great but the underlying infrastructure is a mess.
There are like 3-4 audio subsystems running, I never know which one is it, setting latency is wizardry and sometimes it doesn't run at all. It's usually fine when I run stuff like Spotify, VLC, or Youtube in Firefox, so for user-level audio, Linux is fine IMO. But when I run something where I care about latency and multichannel output, it's hit or miss. It runs fine one day and then I get no sound on another or distorted sound or sound playing at wrong speed and wrong pitch (yay, 44,1 vs 48).
Maybe it's the distros I'm using, maybe there are some that work better, but the UX isn't as great as with macOS. On Manjaro, update sometimes get audio notification removed from tray and I can't change volume using mouse or dedicated keys. Then I have to look for few hours for a solution only to have the same thing happen again three months later (same with brightness keys on laptop). On Ubuntu Studio with an external soundcard, I get randomly distorted sound or no sound at all. So it's easier to use some shitty onboard sound, great.
I like Linux, I use Linux daily, but sound on Linux is terrible. It's much better than it was, yes, but still terrible. For anything more than "play a song here", macOS is much better.
Fedora Silverblue with Pipewire will just use a single subsystem and that's it. Inmutable OS and the rest of software it's Flatpak. The issues are gone. Oh, you need a proper devel environment with dnf/rpm? Just use "toolbox enter" and install all the complex envs under that container.
It sounds like your specifically fighting your distros problem, or something that its not your understanding.
I would not consider Linux sound Terrible, but to be fair, I only use it every day for regular development tasks for the last 10 years. Maybe I've become accustomed to whatever problem you see that I don't.
I moved from Linux to M1 MacBook recently. I know my greps and vims, but I was tired of audio glitches during high CPU usage, system not waking up from sleep, total OS freezes, super loud fans, and so on.
Now I get none of that. I don't think I've ever heard the fans. Audio just works, everything is super snappy. It always wakes up. I'm no longer afraid of bluetooth.
And on top of that, setting my $DAYJOB VPN took three minutes and it just works, where on Linux I had constant problems with DNS breaking, and setting it up was always an hour of work, praying I got the config files right this time.
It really seems to be "unixy desktop with working sound", the best of both worlds.
Exactly my experience. After 15 years, I became an apple fanboy in 15 days. I still do hate losing my muscle memory on some bash shortcuts, but I'd say it was very much worth it.
There's only a 1% chance these days on Linux that your sound won't work or your computer won't sleep when you close the lid or your wifi won't work, or your ethernet, or your cooling, or a peripheral, or CPU/memory spikes.
And a 90% chance it'll be at least one such thing.
All of those things work fine on every computer in my household that runs Linux. This spans thinkpad, dell and ASUS laptops, Dell desktops, home-built gamer type desktops, a few raspberry pi's, and a SFF PC we use to run Kodi on the main TV.
I do find it amusing in a thread about how you have to turn off a core security feature to be able to use containers properly on a Mac that the discussion immediately turns to how bad Linux sound drivers supposedly are. Honestly, I went in the other direction (Mac to Linux) and I've found the waters to be just fine. I don't know if I just have the magic touch or something, but ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.
Haha now that you mention it touch (trackpad) absolutely sucks on Linux when I last tried it - I couldn't even get palm rejection to work.
But this isn't bashing on linux desktop (I would use it if Mac wasn't an option) as much as giving a reason why people would use MacOS despite being annoyed by SIP.
The sound is an internal meme where the linux devops would regularly have to drop off calls to talk (restart to unmute :)).
On my desktop I couldn't even boot installer without running with safe mode, otherwise I'd just get stuck on a blank screen (ancient 1050 TI GPU and standard desktop components otherwise, so not exotic/new stuff).
I've used linux desktop for >decade and Gnome shell feels like home but these days I feel like I don't have the time for linux adventures. Maybe I'll mix it up with my next device, but I'm not reading great things about AMD power modes and Linux.
> The sound is an internal meme where the linux devops would regularly have to drop off calls to talk (restart to unmute :)).
Hmmm once every full moon MS Teams running on ungoogled chrome do not seem to realize my Bose BT Headset is paired and available (and in that case I just use the internal soundcard) but I have seen people having sound issues on MS teams and needing to reboot regardless of the OS they were using. Windows, Linux, even some MacOS users so I wouldn't use that as a generalization.
> In my experience, this has not been an issue for the past 10-15 years atleast. Before that there were some problems with few (external) soundcards or random cpu spikes with the mixers.
May be some confusion. To run linux on a newer Mac with "Apple Silicon" (ARM based), you need to go through a lot of hoops and much work needs to be done still for a stable environment. Check out https://asahilinux.org/about/
Or maybe you thought they meant running linux in general on a PC (Intel x86 32/64 bit)? In that case I agree - driver issues like that have been mostly ironed out by now.
I'm getting early PulseAudio vibes with PipeWire though. BT audio devices stuttering and sometimes losing audio completely regardless of output devices unless I restart the daemon. I guess it stabilizes again during next few years.
In my experience, this has not been an issue for the past 10-15 years atleast. Before that there were some problems with few (external) soundcards or random cpu spikes with the mixers.
However, the UX can still improve. Switching audio outputs with multiple outputs like external displays etc is not very smooth or intuitive.
Some bluetooth headsets have issues but I've had those with a mac as well.