I very much doubt that any pc laptop married with any given Linux distro will ever be a better macbook experience than a macbook running OS X. I understand that a lot of people like working in a Mac -- but unless you point out what don't like on the Mac it's hard to see why you'd switch.
Personally I love bare xsession+monad+apt-get of Debian, along with a sprinkle of schroot for running testing and sid in parallel, all with my home-dir available and on accessing the same X11 display. So OS X isn't really interesting. Apart from drivers married closely to the hardware, and maybe a nice collection of fonts (and font rendering) -- I won't feel very much at home in OS X.
I am curios: why would you want to move off of OS X?
At some point, OSX will jump the shark. It just doesn't fully take part in the nix ecosystem. Different projects like homebrew address some of these issues, but still, Darwin feels more like a nephew, rather than a son of nix. I don't think OSX has done anything really stupid yet.
On the other had, the nix ecosystem has really flubbed a lot of key opportunities for progress. You mentioned liking X11. Personally, I hate it. It's incredibly outdated. Rather than unifying behind a next generation display api, we have efforts divided between Weyland and Mir, ensuring that the display landscape for nix remains fragmented for the foreseeable future. This really is bonkers.
So, to answer your question, I want to move off OSX for the typical philosophical reasons, but I'm not willing to do it at the expense of basic ergonomics and fit and finish.
> So, to answer your question, I want to move off OSX for the typical philosophical reasons, but I'm not willing to do it at the expense of basic ergonomics and fit and finish.
It's good that we have diversity; I wouldn't move to OS X at the expense of basic ergonomics either (even though I do admire the finish :-).
I'm a bit curious about the frustration with X11. Sure, it's a cludge and has issues and so on -- but does it matter so much that people can't wait for the alternative? I really only see two cases were it matters: If you're writing an X11 server, or if you're writing an X11 screensaver. As we have both of those, and they work fine -- I don't really feel the pain.
I'll admit that I don't do a lot of programming for X11, but both qt and gtk seem fairly pleasant to work with as far as I can tell. It might be papering over cracks -- but those cracks have already been papered over?
Did you consider running chrome OS (maybe with a full GNU/Linux chroot)?
My frustrations with X11 are more specific to my line of work. I do a lot of front end work. X11 is just a mess. It's tough to call out dealbreakers with X11, since there's always some obscure workaround. It's tough to find careful explanations of X11 shortcomings without the discussion devolving into ranting.
Keep in mind X11 came out in the late 80s, and many of the current criticisms were expressed in the early 90s. We're full on 25 years beyond that now, with no de facto replacement.
> I very much doubt that any pc laptop married with any given Linux distro will ever be a better macbook experience than a macbook
And thank god for that. If Linux was reduced to a Mac-like experience, I would probably move on to something else, and quickly.
I need something for a power-user, something configurable, something which puts me in control. I need something which I can adapt to my needs, to flow with my work-flow. Something I can mold as I see fit. That is the promise of Linux.
What I don't need is ooh shiney rounded & patented buttons at the cost of everything else, with the late Steve Jobs having made all the decisions for me, with everything cast in stone. Oh sorry. Ceramics. My bad.
If you like it that way, good for you, feel free to stay on the Mac. A Linux laptop is supposed to be different. If you consider that to be at odds with a Macbook OSX experience, you're entitled to your opinion and you're probably right.
But that doesn't make the Linux experience bad. It just means it's not for you.
Personally I love bare xsession+monad+apt-get of Debian, along with a sprinkle of schroot for running testing and sid in parallel, all with my home-dir available and on accessing the same X11 display. So OS X isn't really interesting. Apart from drivers married closely to the hardware, and maybe a nice collection of fonts (and font rendering) -- I won't feel very much at home in OS X.
I am curios: why would you want to move off of OS X?