Just do it. Put something like Linux Mint on your Mac. It'll work fine. And it's free.
Or maybe Fedora : Gnome might feel more familiar for a Mac user.
real mice have more than 2 buttons.
I don’t use a mouse
I recently switched my parents old Macbook with a random Dell Notebook running ZorinOS and they're pretty happy with it so far! So maybe that could be an option for you? Their guides are very easy to follow as well - https://help.zorin.com/
You should look at getting a laptop from Starlabs with Ubuntu preinstalled on it.
I was also suggested purityc, framework, and system76, what is especially good about starlabs?
The quality of their hardware is very high and reminds me of macbook pros that I've had in the past. They test their laptops on Ubuntu, so if you choose to have that preinstalled you know that everything will just work. I've run Debian and Fedora on mine and both have been fine too. The other good things in my book are that they use Coreboot which is an open source bios and their customer support is excellent.
Jumped recently. I was old Mac. It reminds me of when Mac used to be basic. I like it. Less fussy…if you want it to be.
I think you just have to make the jump and install a distro on your computer while accepting that it’s not because you don’t like the first distro that all of them are the same.
Once the first step is done and your old OS isn’t around anymore, you’ll be forced to find something suited to your needs.
Do you plan on installing Linux on your Mac? If it’s Intel based it’s easy, but if it’s an M model your choices are more restricted..
I’m planning on getting a new laptop, which of course is a whole other ball game.
Get a usb drive and try out different distros before committing. With Linux you can make use of a feature called LiveUSB which allows you to boot from USB a full usable operating system without changing anything in your filesystem.
The steps here should work for any distro not just Ubuntu. https://documentation.ubuntu.com/desktop/en/latest/how-to/create-a-bootable-usb-stick/
Once created, restart your mac and hold alt when you hear the chime and select the USB drive from the boot screen. Spend sometime in the new OS, get a feel for it, and if you like it you can install, if not, restart and you will be back in macOS as if nothing happened.
What’s different between Mac OS and Linux besides Apple’s cloud walled garden? You can bash your way through both file systems. Windows is the outlier.
Ignore the guy who said that you don't have to use Gnome. Gnome is the most Mac-Like, and so is Elementary OS (that is directly copying MacOS). So I'd suggest either Debian 13 with Gnome, or Elementary OS. Elementary OS, by being based on Ubuntu, it has more stuff ready to go (Debian might still need manual adding of repositories, e.g. non-free, if you want to have an accelerated video encoding driver with your video editor).
Don’t.
You like the user experience, you like the hardware, you don’t need to switch to linux to become independent from big tech.
Even if you needed to switch your operating system, what computer are you gonna use it on that isn’t under the control of big tech (however you choose to define that)?
Even if you had a computer you understood the hardware of and ordered in a group buy from a small manufacturer, and therefore wasn’t under the control of big tech, the linux operating system has thousands of core components maintained or developed by people who are in the employ of big tech to do just that! Are you really out from under the thumb of big tech when they’re paying the people that do the lions share of work in key components of your operating system who just so happen to always seem to make choices in that role which align with their bosses needs?
What might be better than switching from mac to linux would be considering exactly what big tech you’re trying to get away from and why, then doing so on the system you already understand and feel comfortable with.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).
Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.
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