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Comment by shmerl | Hacker News Reader

Is there any major migration from Linux to Mac OSX on the desktop? Did you see any statistics?

It's just an impression from my own life. 3-5 years ago, lots of people around me used Linux. Many of these same people now use Macs. Not exactly scientific, I know.

Well, impressions of course can differ. I observe lot's of people moving from Windows to Linux, and never yet observed anyone moving from Linux to Mac OSX. But globally this probably doesn't mean much.

I did for what it's worth, for exactly this kind of reason. I needed my computer to just work so I could.

Surely it can depend on the computer and the kind of work you need to do. But I doubt there are any systems which "just work" for every single use case and scenario in the world. So if you found something that fits your particular needs (and wasn't achievable on Linux) - good. But for many use cases Linux is even better than Mac OSX. So it depends.

Of course you're right about the corner cases where somebody has particular requirements, but I'm also counted among the Linux-to-Mac migration. I couldn't afford the amount of time I was spending just to keep my desktop functioning, so I got a macbook. I run a dozen Debian or Ubuntu servers, but my primary workstation is a mac laptop.

Honestly, this article made me realize how much I take it for granted that all of the LCD projectors and dual-monitor setups I've encountered in the last half-decade have just worked with my mac. I thought back to 1999, when I got my first Xinerama dual-head setup working with X11 after about 4 hours of work...

xf86config? Oh the pain! One of the video cards was running at 50hz in 15-bit color mode. Madness.

I'm using "Nvidia X Server settings" tool for setting multiple monitors. Never had any problems with it on my Debian testing. And configuring system is usually trivial. How long ago did you stop using Linux for the desktop? If it was indeed around 1999 - then really, try again. Linux is not standing in one place.

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