Linux desktop, CentOS, SuSE, Fedora, Ubuntu all have worked fine for me the past 15 years. I have fewer problems than when I have to do something on/with Windows. So either all my machines and all my experiences were really lucky or your post is an elegant troll.
2011 people having problems with multiple apps trying to use audio at the same time. This is one of the things that drove me away from desktop linux in 2008. 3 years later it still isn't a solved problem. My gut tells me that in 2013, it's still not a solved problem.
I've no doubt that some people get it to work for their use cases OK. But the fact that it was, even 2 years ago, enough of a problem that people still encountered it... architecturally, that's a symptom of something really broken.
I'm not really interested in learning the ins and outs of modprobe and kernel driver recompiles to try to get sound working as I expect it to - it works the way I expect it to on my macbook, which leaves me time to do other more important stuff.
My anecdotal evidence using my MacBooks (3 since 2008) carry as much weight as anyone else's linux anecdotes.
And osx is by no means perfect. I just have had far fewer problems related to hardware and drivers than I ever did on Linux.
In 9 years of desktop linux, audio was a constant problem. It's been an extremely rare issue on my MacBooks.
What it demonstrates is that even in 2011, the base issues of how audio should even work hadn't really been sorted out. oss vs alas vs pulseaudio vs whatever aren't issues I want to be concerning myself with - this is just one reason I left for the macbook world.
Also, they are using ALSA instead of PulseAudio. In my experience, the latter deals with multiple sources much better, to the point that I can even route and combine sources for streaming.
We weren't comparing Linux and Windows. I also agree that Linux wins hands-down in that particular matchup (unless you want to game...). The question for me is OSX vs Linux, and for me, OSX is WAY easier, and I get most of the deliciousness of Linux on the command line.
A lot of people do prefer OSX. Between OSX and Windows, I'd choose OSX in a heartbeat because cygwin wasn't so great when I tried it a while back.
I did try OSX for a while, and wanted to like it because I can get it for free at work, but I'm so used to Linux that OSX quirks really annoyed me. Things like package management being an aftermarket hack, pain trying to get functional RAID10, Apple changing core functionality between releases breaking my setup, etc. For me, Linux is WAY easier. :-)
A fair point. Thanks for posting. I never really got good at running Linux on the desktop; I gave up each time I tried, due to a sound driver issue or similar. I suppose if I'd stuck with it, I might feel as you do.
