> I should be the user, it should be the tool, not the other way around.
> A good operating system: Mac OS. Windows has become so user-hostile that I refuse to get near it. Linux breaks the rule above: a person's primary task should not be computing, but being human.
That's certainly understandable, although it can also be contradictory with your goal of having quiet technology that leaves the user alone.
MacOS can be opaque and annoying at times, especially when there are no settings for something you want or need, but piles of "social" settings junk you don't need.
Recently macOS wasted my time to find a way to map the begin and end keys of my K380 keyboard, which wasn't even an issue with Linux. No settings for that, it's still getting in my way.
It also takes some effort to silence it; I routinely get popups about my screen time, suggestions and whatsnot. All those are distractions and wastes of time I don't have with Linux.
Otherwise I use a slim stable distribution (Debian stable) with a tiling WM and mate-settings-daemon: few processes running, few updates, and I feel in actual control of the machine. It's really leaving me alone, wastes little of my time and feels quieter to me than macOS.
Anyway, you're posting this on HN so I guess you assumed that kind of answer.
What seems appalling to me is that Apple never deemed necessary to map Begin/End, nor to provide a setting to do so.
The hardware can be annoying too with the lack of connectivity, or the minimalist, mostly unlabeled keyboard that requires konami codes for brackets, tilda or pipes (fr layout).
On the software side, I should add to that my daily gripes with the clumsy and slow window manager, the forced (slow) animations, the lack of jails or containers, the need for extensions (sometimes payware) for menial tasks such as setting the battery charge thresholds or putting the scroll wheel back to the "natural" direction, but I would digress.
macOS constantly bugs me with little annoyances and wastes of time I never have with Sway, and I have no control over them. I guess I'm just not the target audience.
> A good operating system: Mac OS. Windows has become so user-hostile that I refuse to get near it. Linux breaks the rule above: a person's primary task should not be computing, but being human.
That's certainly understandable, although it can also be contradictory with your goal of having quiet technology that leaves the user alone.
MacOS can be opaque and annoying at times, especially when there are no settings for something you want or need, but piles of "social" settings junk you don't need. Recently macOS wasted my time to find a way to map the begin and end keys of my K380 keyboard, which wasn't even an issue with Linux. No settings for that, it's still getting in my way.
It also takes some effort to silence it; I routinely get popups about my screen time, suggestions and whatsnot. All those are distractions and wastes of time I don't have with Linux.
Otherwise I use a slim stable distribution (Debian stable) with a tiling WM and mate-settings-daemon: few processes running, few updates, and I feel in actual control of the machine. It's really leaving me alone, wastes little of my time and feels quieter to me than macOS.
Anyway, you're posting this on HN so I guess you assumed that kind of answer.