I've been a Linux sysadmin for a long time, but I haven't used it in any practical terms on desktop for various reasons. Until I was in university, I used Windows exclusively, and started using macOS on my laptop as a portable.

I considered myself a Windows power user, and quite honestly as judged by my ability to diagnose and fix Windows problems far after my daily driving ended, I consider myself a highly technically capable user of Windows. I haven't memorized registry keys, but I can definitely dive into HKCU and have no problem with making modifications when necessary.

The allure of macOS when I switched to university was, quite frankly, the amazing macOS third-party software ecosystem. At the time, apps like Day One, Alfred, and OmniFocus were huge allures into the ecosystem. My use of Windows waned naturally as I felt like I wanted to use the same tools across all systems. I found the application model on macOS easy to use, and apps like Preview were a significant step up from their Windows counterparts.

Flash forward to the state of Windows and macOS in 2026, and both major operating systems are falling into disrepair for different reasons. On the macOS front, the disastrous Liquid Glass redesign in macOS 26 was the straw that broke the camel's back in terms of design. The design prior had been eroding away – almost as soon as I became a macOS user, iOS controls infiltrated the OS and design elements introduced with Catalyst and SwiftUI have been pushing this for a while. But Liquid Glass took this to the next level, effectively splitting the platform even more.

On the Windows side, I actually really like the Windows 11 look. Starting with Windows 8 and going through Windows 10, the Metro design language was king, with characteristic simplicity and low information density. Windows 11 really brought the design to a nice place.

But the elephant in the room with Windows is its direction. During this whole period of time, I've been using Windows exclusively for gaming, and that's it. As part of this, I systematically broke Windows update so I could have confidence in being able to control updates. Then, I stopped playing games for a significant period of time, and my personal install was more or less abandoned. This set the stage for today's windows, which has been plagued with quality issues that have been well-documented and memed on extensively.

Now, in terms of priorities, I actually don't care about my Windows install much. I don't need a working Windows install to play OldSchool RuneScape, the only game I'm actually playing as of late. And I'm not that motivated to leave macOS, despite the bad decision making in terms of design. But…Linux *has* been gaining popularity, so I felt now was a good time to experiment with it.

There is a natural tendency of people to choose familiar tools over new ones. Computing is no exception, and many people will feel tied to their old habits due to familiarity. This complacency can, at times, lead to mastery and so on and so forth. I try to live my life with the goal of making sure that I'm exploring as much as possible without being too locked into what I use. I used Android phones until I switched to iOS, and I was a “diehard Android fan” until a particular set of circumstances led me to switch.

Digression aside, I've always tested various Linux distros to see if they were worth using on a daily basis. Back in my early OS experimentation years, I got Ubuntu discs in the mail and even used them on a few particularly unstable laptops, but eventually went back to Windows for one reason or another.

My most recent test of Linux was on an Intel Bean Canyon NUC, which was heralded as having excellent Linux support. When I tested it, I found that not only did it have only average support, but the experience was actually better using the NUC as a Hackintosh running macOS than it was as a Linux device. Ouch.

Familiar tools may feel familiar, but as I've now covered, these tools are *not* the same tools I started with. macOS and iOS have yearly updates, and these updates have brought benefits and drawbacks. The experience has worsened, particularly on macOS, such that I don't feel like it's worth keeping forever.

One of the biggest aspects of criticism Linux has had is the requirement to tinker with and manage the default OS experience so that it is “usable”. I actually felt like this was a reasonable criticism for a time, but I've since decided that I've been misled by this too. While there is an inordinate amount of work to manage an arch install, your average linux distro probably requires the same level of tinkering as a modern Windows or macOS install, just exposed differently. On Windows, the thorn in your side is obscure registry keys. On macOS, it's defaults write commands. And in all worlds, control panels are unavoidable, though Windows can be relentlessly mocked for reinventing this several times and keeping panels from Windows 95 because nobody can be bothered to update them.

I digress. In truth, your average Linux distro probably takes the same level of effort to get setup in “just the way you like”. But this is the same of any new computer, just with different levels of familiarity. In other words, this shouldn't be a real issue.

I think GNOME is hot garbage, and is to blame for most of the Linux pushback people give. GNOME tries to be opinionated like Apple, and I think at this point I can say that it fails. GNOME Tweak Tool is practically mandatory because many “sensible defaults” are missing. Old versions of GNOME are much better than newer versions. But I think that the pushback people give with Linux starts with GNOME.

Therefore, if there is one thing I'd like to say on the subject of Linux and choices, don't make the choice to use GNOME. There are plenty of nice mainstream desktop experiences, like MATE (a fork of GNOME 2), Cinnamon, and of course, KDE.

It is at this point that many Linux users bring up more esoteric window managers like Hyprland³⁾ or i3. There are merits, but I don't think people should start here.

I chose CachyOS and KDE for my experiment this time around. I chose KDE because it is the most mature desktop environment with the greatest corpus of good default apps. Plain and simple, KDE is an excellent default. I also chose it because it's probably representative of a happy middle ground for switchers.

KDE is probably best described as a Windows-like environment. Whereas GNOME 3 alienated its userbase and caused MATE's fork, and forever diverged, KDE Plasma has been much more unified and well-liked.

I've been using KDE since mid-December 2025, and I think I can confidently report that I'm very happy with it.

Many critics of macOS have derided it as anti-customization, but the truth is that Apple offers many, many alternatives to defaults that make it highly customizable. Even better, these settings are easily configured in Settings.app⁴⁾, which means that it isn't necessary to fiddle with config files or obscure command line settings. For example, key rebinding is trivially achieved, and the excellent IMEs for different languages are trivial to install.

Compared to macOS, KDE has reached a level of maturity that is very, very high. KDE settings is lovely, and working with it is very easy. I feel absolutely no qualms with working in KDE.

There are a few things that I'm sure some macOS power users will run into, so I'll share them.

1. No document proxy icons. If you discovered proxy icons and use them, you're SOL because this is a feature nobody even knows about on macOS.
2. Dolphin doesn't have a default column view for managing files, like Finder. Apparently there is even some history about how difficult this would be to maintain. Unfortunately, I really like the column view, so not having that is very saddening to me.
3. Spectacle, the default screenshot tool, does record the screen. But it doesn't capture audio in a reliable way (maybe at all), and it doesn't offer good settings for this. I have no idea what to say about this.
   1. Everyone swears by Flameshot, but that doesn't record the screen either.
4. Okular is a great alternative to Preview.app, but it doesn't support many of the same PDF editing tricks that Preview.app supports. This largely comes down to Quartz lineage. I secretly suspect that Apple hates paying Adobe for real Acrobat, so they want Preview.app to do as much as possible.

A great way to experience Linux is to just install KDE and use the KDE default apps for whatever you want to do.

So the Linux ecosystem is currently in the midst of a transition to Wayland, a next-generation display server. The previous mainstream display server was X.org (the X11 Windowing System, XWindows). Many apps don't work in Wayland without running in XWayland, which wraps X server apps such that they run under Wayland.

The problem with this approach is simple: software from one world can't easily work with software from the other world. For example, Discord screen audio is notoriously broken, because you can't easily cross between XWayland and Wayland.

For users with high DPI screens, XWayland windows don't scale with fractional scaling the way that Wayland windows do, so they can appear blurry or not scale at all.

With the exception of Discord screen sharing (arguably the single most important thing to fix for any gamers switching), no. Since every major platform is doing funny things with design and architecture right now, I would argue this is not a deal breaker. There are real benefits to Wayland, so the transition makes sense.

But again, not being able to share screen audio really sucks.

Personally, I would call device compatibility a mixed bag, but only in the strictest of senses. Many devices just work on Linux these days. The caveat is that the newer the hardware, the less likely to-be supported that hardware is. As a concrete example, my Lian Li cooler has a screen on it, and maybe I can install some software to manage it, but it isn't managed out-of-the-box. I have an nvidia graphics card that everyone swears will work fine, but I guess there are inherent issues with nvidia cards that maybe limits my potential and possibly adds input lag.

On my cute Linux laptop, though (full AMD setup), almost everything⁵⁾ works like a charm and it's genuinely wonderful.

I think the only real nitpick I have is that nvidia graphics are clearly underbaked compared to AMD, notably in the input lag and sync departments.

I find it very difficult sometimes to reason about hardware purchases, because in my mind, unless you're already a Linux user, you need to have pre-decided that you want to go down this path to buy hardware, otherwise it's just an expensive hobby. For example, nvidia makes the best GPUs. But if you want to use Linux, by far an AMD GPU will be better. And if you've already purchased nvidia, you don't really have the “experience” of knowing that it is actually better.

Newer hardware needs newer kernels to support it. The problem is that if you get new hardware and you've picked the wrong distro, you will not be able to use that hardware.

I think the best advice I would give someone today is to use CachyOS or Bazzite. I personally picked CachyOS, but Bazzite is probably the friendlier option for most newcomers. Outside of gaming, Fedora or Debian.

Going back to my history section, I think that Linux doesn't suck, at least in the sense that I'm now using it daily. I have reached for my Macbook once, but that was specifically to do some PDF work, which, again, that's a unique thing.

I do feel like I'm shooting myself in the foot by using nvidia graphics on my gaming PC, but I will likely change that and sell the graphics card.

I think that my answer would be different if I made different choices, though. I'm using CachyOS, which is rolling release and gets the latest versions of everything quite regularly. I don't think it's that beginner friendly, but it does work well for me.

KDE is the star of the show for me. It works really well, and I'm very happy with it. There is a level of polish in KDE that wasn't there the last time I used it. It's highly customizable, doesn't require extra tools to tune and tweak, and has functional desktop experiences. I really like it.