Ironic, I just switched to the Apple iPhone ecosystem 2 years ago after a decade of using exclusively Android, to rid myself of Google and to get better made apps.
- Phone: There is no phones anymore that interest me from the Android ecosystem and iPhones satiate my desire to upgrade every year from getting updates and not turning to shit from use over time. Plus there isn't much more I'd want other than a TouchID option besides FaceID. After moving my (big) whole family to iPhones, we iMessage and FaceTime a lot. I can't re-teach my mother all over again to use something else.
- Watch: My first and only watch was a year ago. Android ones don't interest me. Looking at the Amazfit GTR 2e and that looks good, but if I had to, I'd probably consider the PineTime watch cause it's cheap and obviously not sucking my information or reliant on an app.
- Laptop: I had a MacBook Pro 15 2017 that I recently traded for a MacBook Air M1 that is working better in every way. I don't use laptops much at all but I like it as an Apple dev environment when needed.
- Desktop: I have a custom built Ryzen+Radeon PC. I recently switched from Windows 10 when rumors about Windows 11 leaked. I currently use Ubuntu 20.04 (GNOME) at home and KDE Neon (Ubuntu 20.04) at work.
Linux Desktop Rant: But let me just say that Linux is a fucking disaster on the desktop still.
GNOME (GTK specifically) doesn't have an icon/thumbnail view mode when selecting files (GTK File Chooser Module) and they have refused to fix this. Every GTK base DE has this issue (GNOME, XFCE, Budgie, Cinnamon, Pantheon, LXDE Switching to a different unique DE like KDE doesn't help much either cause apps BUNDLE GTK in them and force you to use the GTK File Chooser module
The most promising unique and usable distro (elementary OS) for the average user still has 3 major flaws: GTK based, Ubuntu dependent, and buggy releases. Elementary OS 6 still has a LightDM bug that makes it so that if you lock the screen or it goes to sleep, you can't get back into your desktop session unless you force reboot.
The app ecosystem is splintering and some of the new options are just as bad or worse than regular package managers. I despise Canonical's Snap stuff. Everything about Snap sucks to use. Makes apps 3x slower, spams my volumes list with loop devices, has flawed sandbox security, and apps can't respect my OS's theme so everything looks like shit.
I tried this weekend to get Arch (gave up due to complex issues) and Manjaro i3 (I also tried various other Ubuntu distros) setup on my work laptop this week only to have the issues with my installs. Kubuntu doesn't allow me to encrypt my drive at installation. Arch and Manjaro fail to find my NVMe drive UUID at boot via GRUB EFI so it can't even get to the decrypting LUKS which I have to do manually. And now I find out OpenWebStart doesn't even support anything not Ubuntu/Debian even for it's compiling. IDK what else to use for launching JavaWeb applets. I ended up on KDE Neon cause it's KDE and Ubuntu and allowed encrypting my drive at installation, so that works I guess but boy am I not happy with this compromise.
Oh and guess what, KDE Plasma doesn't work well on Wayland. I already had it freeze and lock up on Wayland within just an hour of using it and now I'm running it on Xorg.
- Phone: There is no phones anymore that interest me from the Android ecosystem and iPhones satiate my desire to upgrade every year from getting updates and not turning to shit from use over time. Plus there isn't much more I'd want other than a TouchID option besides FaceID. After moving my (big) whole family to iPhones, we iMessage and FaceTime a lot. I can't re-teach my mother all over again to use something else.
- Watch: My first and only watch was a year ago. Android ones don't interest me. Looking at the Amazfit GTR 2e and that looks good, but if I had to, I'd probably consider the PineTime watch cause it's cheap and obviously not sucking my information or reliant on an app.
- Laptop: I had a MacBook Pro 15 2017 that I recently traded for a MacBook Air M1 that is working better in every way. I don't use laptops much at all but I like it as an Apple dev environment when needed.
- Desktop: I have a custom built Ryzen+Radeon PC. I recently switched from Windows 10 when rumors about Windows 11 leaked. I currently use Ubuntu 20.04 (GNOME) at home and KDE Neon (Ubuntu 20.04) at work.
Linux Desktop Rant: But let me just say that Linux is a fucking disaster on the desktop still.
GNOME (GTK specifically) doesn't have an icon/thumbnail view mode when selecting files (GTK File Chooser Module) and they have refused to fix this. Every GTK base DE has this issue (GNOME, XFCE, Budgie, Cinnamon, Pantheon, LXDE Switching to a different unique DE like KDE doesn't help much either cause apps BUNDLE GTK in them and force you to use the GTK File Chooser module
The most promising unique and usable distro (elementary OS) for the average user still has 3 major flaws: GTK based, Ubuntu dependent, and buggy releases. Elementary OS 6 still has a LightDM bug that makes it so that if you lock the screen or it goes to sleep, you can't get back into your desktop session unless you force reboot.
The app ecosystem is splintering and some of the new options are just as bad or worse than regular package managers. I despise Canonical's Snap stuff. Everything about Snap sucks to use. Makes apps 3x slower, spams my volumes list with loop devices, has flawed sandbox security, and apps can't respect my OS's theme so everything looks like shit.
I tried this weekend to get Arch (gave up due to complex issues) and Manjaro i3 (I also tried various other Ubuntu distros) setup on my work laptop this week only to have the issues with my installs. Kubuntu doesn't allow me to encrypt my drive at installation. Arch and Manjaro fail to find my NVMe drive UUID at boot via GRUB EFI so it can't even get to the decrypting LUKS which I have to do manually. And now I find out OpenWebStart doesn't even support anything not Ubuntu/Debian even for it's compiling. IDK what else to use for launching JavaWeb applets. I ended up on KDE Neon cause it's KDE and Ubuntu and allowed encrypting my drive at installation, so that works I guess but boy am I not happy with this compromise.
Oh and guess what, KDE Plasma doesn't work well on Wayland. I already had it freeze and lock up on Wayland within just an hour of using it and now I'm running it on Xorg.
It's all so tiring.