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Advice for a Mac user switching to Linux?
(sh.itjust.works)
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this post was submitted on 19 Jan 2026
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Depending on how all-in on the Apple you are, there will be a few main sticking points for you.
1: Gestures If you use a trackpad, you're going to have to adjust to a more limited set of gesture commands. The same with button mapping on a mouse. You'll almost certainly need to learn new ways to move around your desktops.
2: PDFs Preview is a godsend to Mac users. Preview does everything bar editing PDFs. You will no longer have Preview. You'll need to find three or four applications that replicate its features. And all of them will feel a bit lacking in comparison.
3: Apple Music Apple don't believe in Linux, so if you use AM and wish to continue listening to lossless on your computer, you're going to have to either use WinBoat to run a Windows VM into which you can install AM, or you're going to need to use Waydroid in order to run the Android version of the AM app. Neither is great, but both (mostly) work.
But ultimately it is worth it. I use my Mac much less than I used to, and my iPad almost not at all now.
This is really useful. I don’t use Apple Music, but the gestures and preview do sound like something to get used to. Why is there no third party preview? Seems like a pretty basic program to have.
In terms of gestures, the one thing I do still struggle with is Linux not having a useful equivalent to BetterTouchTool. Whenever I set up a new macOS, that's pretty much the first thing I install. As a result, I'm so used to using a middle click for Expose that even after a year of mostly using Linux, I still find myself middle clicking several times a day and wondering why it's not showing me all the windows.
The closest I've found is Input Remapper, which can help you get your mouse buttons to perform a bunch of things. However, as far as I can tell, it will only allow you to save one at a time, which makes it mostly useless. So I'm forcing myself to get used to the Linux defaults instead.
I'm not from mac land, so I don't know how much Preview does. I'll comment on how its done in PC land.
Or you can get other apps that handle PDF's and images.
Switching to linux means switching to other applications. You aren't getting Preview and you aren't getting Safari. You get other software that does the same things.
Literally the only thing Preview can't do is edit a PDF. It can do markup and annotation, but not edit the basic structure of the document.
That one program can rotate individual pages, add and remove them, resize them, crop them. You can reorder pages just by dragging the thumbnail around in the side bar. It's really, really useful.
In my year or so of using Linux I've yet to find one program that can replicate everything Preview can do, so I have several that I draw upon depending on my need. It's little things like that which keep me from fulling abandoning macOS.
Apple are many things, but their history of making software that puts the user first is a huge chunk of why so many people swear by using Apple stuff.