Brain Overflow

My Mac Was Probably a Mistake

God I miss Linux. I don't think my Mac has worked out the way that I envisioned when I got the thing.

To be honest, though, I probably underestimated the depth of the change and the amount of work that it would take to get up to speed in a different OS, even having been familiar with it from years of previous use. I am a very different user now compared to when I had a MacBook.

I also just ended up not really needing the accessibility features that much. It's great that they exist, but most of what I really use my computer for is computer nerd stuff, not writing emails or whatever. It's also just more of a pain most of the time trying to get dictation to get what you are saying vs. typing it.

The real reason I don't need the accessibility features is that my RSI is 99.5% improved/gone (yay), so they're not very necessary. I was also very interested in having a 'just works for real' computer because I was starting to get a business going at the time, but I'm not actively pursuing that right now, so it's not a factor I need to sacrifice other productivity for.

I've overall just found the OS itself to be kind of a pain. I understand that this is hilarious coming from someone that previously religiously used Linux. But a lot of things have been unexpectedly hard due to bugs affecting MacOS--Docker broke, VirtualBox broke, Nix broke, etc. The Docker issue has a workaround but I haven't gotten to it yet. I wish it just...wasn't broken in the first place lol. I miss the Silverblue/Nix/Bluefin kind of experience.

All of this makes me want to never start from scratch in a new OS again, and to get something like my older setup back (probably going back to sway). Cool MacOS tools exist like Hammerspoon, Karabiner, and Aerospace, where I could have done a lot of configuration to fix my user experience, but I never had the time/will to do the work to get them where I need them to be.

I'm diving back into Nix hell in (a little bit of) anger. Asahi Linux + NixOS apparently works great, so we'll see what I can do for myself this time.

#linux #mac