Ask HN: How do Linux/Ubuntu compare to macOS in terms of UI/UX and app support?
If you have switched recently from macOS to Linux or Ubuntu, how do they compare in terms of UI/UX, app support, responsiveness and overall feel?
When you put it in terms of those requirements between macOS and any other Linux distro, there is no such comparison because of the level of UI/UX consistency that macOS has over any Linux distro is not even close.
For a Linux distro to achieve this macOS-like consistency, they must have some sort of unified SDK for GUI development or a standard desktop stack for developers to work against. The difficulty here is that the nature of the Linux ecosystem is that the users are free to swap-in/out alternative system components. That's a blessing of freedom for its power-users and a curse for some developers. To some extent, macOS does both but limits which parts of its system can be swapped.
This consistency even goes further into the hardware for MacBook users but that would be even more unfair as a comparison.
That's a very superficial and uninformed view. I can write a Qt app for macOS and it doesn't have the same consistency as an AppKit app. It's also just a framework. I would also argue that lumping Linux distros together makes no sense because it's Apples and Oranges. OP basically needs to compare Desktop Environments to have a sense of what it's like.
Personally I think Gnome and the underlying GTK framework is pretty close these days in look and feel compared to macOS. With the 3.36 release it has also gained a noticeable smoothness. They also have a HIG and generally strive for a consistent experience with a design group guiding the development.
Fedora provides a very nice out of the box experience for Gnome. So does Debian or Ubuntu.
There are some things you need to use Linux for, and where I need to do those things I ssh into a Linux VM for the most part. The fit & finish of X windows and Linux simply are not there in comparison to OSX.
The UI/UX is the main reason I'd switch to a Mac, if only they were competitively priced and didn't have some horrible glaring flaw.
As a longtime Linux user though, it makes me sad that an OS with such potential is probably never going to achieve it because people keep reinventing the wheel rather than solving problems that benefit the entire community.
Or for me personally: a macOS Sidecar clone. Or an easy to use, cross-distro way to run Windows apps inside a VM with GPU acceleration.