Switching From Mac to Linux
So, the writing is on the wall, I have roughly one year to fully switch to Linux. Apple has decided to abandon support for Rosetta 2. The next version of MacOS won’t have it at all. I had to reinstall Rosetta 2 via the command line when I upgraded my MacBook Pro to macOS 27. Hell, my apps are starting to warn me. Specifically, this warning pops open when I open Local to work on my author website.
Now, to be clear, I know I can just download the Apple Silicon version of Local to resolve this problem. Well, the smaller problem this notification is alerting me about. But, there’s a bigger problem that this reminds me of: Apple has made the unilateral decision to kill support for Intel apps. And I’ve been down this road twice before. I know that I don’t want to travel down this road again.
The first big shift: Apple killing the original Rosetta
I switched to Mac with the first 17″ MacBook Pro. It was the first MacBook Pro, because before the switch to Intel, they called them PowerBooks and iBooks. This was also a month or two before they released the next version of that same MacBook Pro. Hell, I remember buying my first Mac at a London Drugs in Calgary, Alberta. Hell, thinking back on it, it was roughly twenty years ago when I made the decision to switch to Mac.
Though, there was another game I was playing a lot around that time. Neverwinter Nights. A game I learned about from a web comic called MegaTokyo. Yes, I am that old. And it was never updated by Bioware/Aspyr for Intel Macs, either as a fully Intel binary or a Universal binary. Aspyr wound up abandoning a bunch of their titles when Apple killed the first Rosetta. And one of those titles that was killed for Intel Macs was Neverwinter Nights. In fact, it was only playable on the Mac through the GOG version and PortingKit. At least until Beamdog revived Neverwinter Nights and made it playable on modern Macs.
The second big shift: Apple killing support for 32-bit apps
The thing that really killed the playability for most of my Steam library was Apple killing support for 32-bit apps. But also, there was one Mac app that I really loved: CSSEdit by MacRabbit. CSSEdit was killed both by inertia (they decided to create an all-in-one IDE and abandoned CSSEdit). Eventually, MacRabbit went down with it. I hate to say it, but tools like CSSEdit really increased my personal joy of editing CSS. No, I’m not being hyperbolic.
And, of course, Aspyr abandoned its 32-bit games. Anyone who remembers Aspyr’s response to Apple killing Rosetta saw this coming from a mile away. Pretty much, most of the games in my Steam library had this banner.
Needless to say, with Apple Silicon, Apple started killing Boot Camp support. Add to this the death of the Hackintosh and a bunch of other moves and using a Mac is starting to look less free. The walled garden starts looking more like the Forest in the Stranger path of Slay the Princess.
This wasn’t what I signed up for.
I think it’s worth reminding you that I switched to Mac in a time when it made sense. Apple switching to Intel’s chipsets meant wider software compatibility. Boot Camp and products like Parallels and VirtualPC for Mac made it easier. After all, I could jump into Windows for that one irritating app that I could only run in Windows.
And the interface was impressive. Third party apps like Quicksilver and Alfred improved the experience. Apps like CSSEdit, Transmit, and Coda made web development seamless. Exciting. Fun.
But, the underpinnings are the why I signed up for this… at first. MacOS was (and largely, still is) a system where Linux utilities can run natively. I can run all sorts of command line tools on my Mac, and install plenty of other tools. If I need a library, I can probably install it with Homebrew. Hell, when Steve Jobs announced Mac OS X at WWDC in 2000, he sold up the Unix base.
As someone working in systems that, while nominally could work on Windows, are actually a pain in the ass on Windows. PHP development in Windows was (and maybe still is) a nightmare.
A swan song
This is a love song from a woman who had a coveted six digit ICQ number and a Geocities website. I used to edit the open directory while scrobbling what songs I was listening to. I used to share public bookmarks. It’s hard not to reckon with the impermanence of things when I’ve seen generations of platforms come and go. Maybe it’s why tech savvy millennials old enough to remember when it was cringe to be a geek like me feel so old. We’ve seen empires fall, love. And maybe that’s what makes this a swan song too.
… And that’s ultimately why I’m leaving Mac. Because I feel like I’ve been expected to give up so much. And maybe it’s à propos that I feel like quoting Severance right in this moment. Specifically, when Mr. Drummond prepares to sacrifice the Emile, the goat Lorne brought towards the end of Cold Harbour (yes, I am aware the official spelling is without the “u”, don’t care).
Mr. Drummond: We commit this animal to Kier and his eternal war against pain. (hands the bolt gun to Lorne)
Lorne: How many?
Mr. Drummond: How many what?
Lorne: (dejected) How many more must I give?
Mr. Drummond: As many as the Founder calls.
Because here’s the thing… I’m learning that a lot of these sacrifices, a lot of these dead apps… things don’t need to be this way. We can choose a different path. I can choose a different path.
There has to be a better way.
Now, I’m not saying I necessarily disagree with the most charitable motivations for Apple’s decisions. 32-bit applications are kind of why we’re facing the Epochalypse. Sometime around ☉︎ in 29° Capricorn : ☽︎ in 3° Cancer : Monday : Year ⅤⅠ.ⅰ of the New Aeon (that’s sometime in the evening on January 18th, 2038 here in the Yukon or 3:14am on January 19th, 2038 UTC in normie speak). The shift to 64-bit pushes this problem so far into the future, Crowley would be as old as a dinosaur. ARM architecture is providing performance gains that, to be quite honest, leave even the best x86 processors in the dust. And PowerPC was legitimately stunted for its time.
The word of sin is restriction, after all. But the thing is, are we choosing restriction when there is a better way forward? I think Apple is choosing restriction, and we can see this reflected in the path Valve chose when facing an existential threat from Windows 8.
Valve chose the better way
But the thing is, people in the FOSS community are preparing for this. We’re tackling the Year 2038 problem as a community. And I believe that the Stop Killing Games movement and platforms like GOG are going to move the needle in the right direction. However, we have more than hope that things can be better. Valve has shown, with its support of projects like Proton and FEX, that not only can we do better but there is money to be had in doing better. We don’t have to abandon old software. We can not only choose compatibility, there’s a market to be had in doing so. Hell, Valve threw its support behind Linux due to troubling changes with Windows 8 and the threat of a walled garden. But even after making that choice, they contributed to free and open source software.
Now, I won’t lie. The first attempts Valve made with Linux were… hamfisted. Their first Steam Machines only supported games that offered a Linux-native port. This caused the first Steam Machines to die as a project. But, Valve didn’t give up. Valve iterated and that’s what allowed them to build and market devices like the Steam Deck. By learning the lessons their previous failures offered, Valve made a hardware lineup that has a long waiting list, even during the RAMpocalypse. And yes, that includes a new Steam Machine.
So, Apple can do better. What disappoints me is that they chose not to.
The joy of computing
Let me put forward an analogy. Growing up, I hated physical education (or PE). I grew up in Texas, and field day always seemed to be scheduled on the hottest day of the year. The things on that day I looked forward to the most were going inside the air conditioned school for lunch (even though we couldn’t eat the lunch in the school) and the snow cone at the end of the day. We would sit on a hot concrete play area, cross-legged, and wait for that damned snow cone. But also, being transgender, physical education was never fun and it only got worse when we went to middle school. That’s when we started having to change in sex-segregated locker rooms and I was forced to change with boys. It was less “physical education” than it was torture, plain and simple.
But, when I became an adult and started transitioning, there was a shift. I could make choices. I could choose activities that didn’t make me feel like shit. Swimming, spin classes, pilates… hell, I’m even planning on learning capoeira (yeah, I know, I wrote a book featuring capoeira and I barely know the basics). It turns out, when you’re an adult and learning the shit that we should have actually been taught in physical education, people are less willing to treat you like shit. Maybe it’s because it’s harder to treat people like shit when they pay a monthly membership fee? I dunno. But, in this shift, I’m discovering the joy of movement for the first time.
Similarly, I think by choosing choice and an open platform, I’m choosing to embrace the joy of computing. That’s what I’m hoping to gain by this shift. And that’s what I feel like I had when I first switched to Mac.
And that’s what I’m reclaiming by switching to Linux.
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