Back in 2006 I switched from Linux and Windows to Mac as my primary operating
system. I paid for my white macbook with my first real paycheck. This was right
after they switched to the Intel platform and it really was an amazing time to
step in. At the time
it was the perfect combination of a great UX, combined with the power a
unix-ish system.

Since then I’ve gradually got more locked into the Apple ecoystem. With a
bit of a grudge too, as what was once the technically superior, and arguably
the cooler option
has slowly become a bit of an icon of vendor lock-in and various other
practices that I, as a developer am not super comfortable with.

But the thing that has stopped me from switching back always has
been convenience. Mac, unlike Linux has a reputation for having a great out-
of-the-box experience and hardware support. And of course the fact that the
switch itself would cause quite of a time-sink, because there’s a lot of new
things to learn, new software to find and new habits to form.

But right now I’m typing this off a Kubuntu installation on a Dell computer.
So what changed?

Apple is losing the argument

In 10 years a lot has changed, but the main thing Apple and OS X had going for
it was it’s “it just works” reputation. I feel this has stopped being true.

For the longest time, the top three application I use constantly on any daily
basis have been the following three:

• Firefox
• Thunderbird
• Terminal (tmux + vim)

My habits have not changed that much, what have changed is that apparently
over the years it’s become harder and harder for my Mac to perform these
tasks. For a developer that does almost everything in a terminal and do
virtually no compiling, the most basic computer should arguably be able to
handle these applications quite well.

But for some reason the iMac from last year with 8GB of memory is simply
doing a worse job at it than the basic Macbook I had in 2006 running OS X
Tiger. Starting applications is terribly slow, starting a new terminal session
takes forever, after start-up it takes up to 15 minutes for the machine to
feel somewhat smooth. The effect on my much newer iMac is much stronger
than my comparatively underpowered Macbook air. The prime difference is that
the latter has an SSD. On the Big Mac ‘force quit’ and reboots are both
frequent enough to be anger inducing. And yes I did do a a full reinstall!

It really seems that the last well-performing OS Apple has created is Snow
Leopard, and I now also see that as the time they absolutely peaked. To say
that this is planned obsolescence is giving them too much credit, as it feels
more like it stems from a lack of planning. Performance optimization of new
software seems to end when it works smoothly on ‘current’ hardware, which
means that it doesn’t take long for hardware to get branded ‘old’. Even though
every OS X release comes with the promise of better performance, my own
experience tells me the inverse is true. How awesome would it be if OS X
developers were forced to run base-line 5-year old hardware? I imagine that
this problem would not exist.

Everything these days feels worse, and it’s extremely frustrating that I got
this big honking machine fairly recently, and it already feels old and not fun
to use. This was a big expense! I justified it because programming is my
livelyhood.

So there was my reason to try Linux. I had a sneaking suspicion that running
Linux on the same hardware would easily outperform OS X. Granted, I do believe
that Linux tends to be a bit more ‘maintenance’ heavy, but if it runs fast,
I consider it a win.

But where to start? I didn’t want to lose my main development machine, so
instead I used my 4-year old Air.

Choosing a Linux distribution

The first choice for Linux distributions these days is always Ubuntu.
Lately Ubuntu has been a bit naughty though by adding Amazon to the standard
list of icons, and sending them all your search queries.

It seemed like a good idea to pick something else, but I had no idea where to
start looking. The cool kids always seem to go for Arch Linux these days,
and I also considered installing Debian. All seem to have their pros and
cons, and it was hard to make a good choice. I even resorted to googling “how
to pick a Linux distro” only to be none the wiser.

In the end I decided to just play it safe. I’ve been using Debian-based
distributions for a long time, so since I’m already making all these changes,
lets go for a system I know.

Debian itself somehow seemed a bit ugly from the screenshots, and I am a bit
shallow in that regard. That leaves Ubuntu and

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