I was a Mac guy for 12+ years and switched to Linux on desktop + Framework about 2 years ago.
It takes time. On many dimensions, the Framework running Linux is laughably worse. I never thought about battery life while the lid is closed until my Framework.
That being said, running Linux is very fun and can be productive if you choose a well-supported distribution and desktop environment. I landed on KDE Plasma and Fedora/Kununtu. It has been my daily driver and I see no reason to go back.
My gateway to Linux was buying an old Thinkpad T580 and messing around Arch Linux. If you’re on the fence, this may be a good place to start.
> I never thought about battery life while the lid is closed until my Framework.
In the days of S3, I never thought about it either. Ironically it's on my Mac that I have to remember to hibernate if I won't use my laptop for a week or whatever, because it'll die if I don't. It just happens to be that it was on a Mac on which I first tried "modern standby" features.
Anyway I feel you. This big battery life improvement is what has convinced me my next laptop can be a Framework.
I’ve been on Fedora Gnome but wonder if I’d like Plasma. I know that I can try it on a USB stick and I’ve also read that other people have made sure to install their operating system and their files on different partitions to make distro switching easier.
> Strategy Credit: An uncomplicated decision that makes a company look good relative to other companies who face much more significant trade-offs. For example, Android being open source
This reminds me of Clayton Christensen's theory of disruption.
Disruption happens when firms are disincentivized to switch to the new thing or address the new customer because the current state of it is bad, the margins are low. Intel missed out on mobile because their existing business was so excellent and making phone chips seemed beneath them.
The funny thing is that these firms are being completely rational. Why leave behind high margins and your excellent full-featured product for this half-working new paradigm?
But then eventually, the new thing becomes good enough and overtakes the old one. Going back to the Intel example, they felt this acutely when Apple switched their desktops to ARM.
For now, Claude Code works. It's already good enough. But unless we've plateaued on AI progress, it'll surpass hand crafted equivalents on most metrics.
This isn’t the narrative, at least in any circle I speak to. The narrative is currently that everyone needs to strive to be using hundreds of dollars of tokens a day or you aren’t being effective enough. Executives are mulling getting rid of code review and tests. I’ve never seen such blind optimism and so little appreciation for how things can go wrong.
Maybe it'll work. Yes, disruption usually starts from the low end, but plenty of low-end alternatives die out without ever disrupting the high-end option.
Right now it's making crappy, unmaintainable code, and while you can make a lot of money with crappy, unmaintainable code, the need for good code hasn't gone away.
If you want to experience what your app is really like for the vast majority of real world people, go get a cheap monthly prepaid phone and try it out. Using the modern web on them is a complete nightmare. The screens are physically small and low resolution. The phone I had to use for a year and a half is 800something by 500something, which is literally first generation Android era resolution from over ten years ago. Information density matters. Huge buttons that get in the way are not merely frustrating, they are a design mistake and a demonstration that the designer is out of touch with reality, just as you seem to be here.
Please, get a crappy phone, get a crappy chromebook, make sure your app isn't frustrating to use for people that can't afford new, fast things.
It takes time. On many dimensions, the Framework running Linux is laughably worse. I never thought about battery life while the lid is closed until my Framework.
That being said, running Linux is very fun and can be productive if you choose a well-supported distribution and desktop environment. I landed on KDE Plasma and Fedora/Kununtu. It has been my daily driver and I see no reason to go back.
My gateway to Linux was buying an old Thinkpad T580 and messing around Arch Linux. If you’re on the fence, this may be a good place to start.
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