The OSNews Fundraiser, to celebrate the fact I posted 20000 stories in 21 years, is still underway. The first major incentive was reached, and I, a long-time Linux user, published my experiences using Windows 11 for a month. It wasn’t a success. Keep donating if you want to find out what a Linux user thinks of the current state of macOS!
The OSNews 2026 Fundraiser
➡️ Donate through Ko-Fi ➡️ Donate through SEPA transfer* ➡️ Buy merch from our store ➡️ Why a fundraiser?
€5000 incentive: Make me use Windows 11 for a month (the results were not great)
> €10000: Video tour of my office and my computers/devices collection <
€15000: Buy a Mac and use macOS for a month (and review it)
€20000: I get an OSNews tattoo
*Name: Thom Holwerda – IBAN: SE08 8000 0820 1684 4657 8414 – BIC: SWEDSESS
Why support OSNews?
- We do not run any ads, so we don’t have to be friendly to advertisers (i.e. the technology companies we’re supposed to report on).
- We are not owned and controlled by a large media company dictating our tone and content. You’d be surprised how many other sites are.
- We do not use any “AI”; not during research, not during writing, not for images, nothing.
- We rely entirely on your support to keep going.
I want to make sure I can run OSNews for another two decades and another 20000 posts, and I need your help to do so. Since my wife, who has a tough, underpaid job in elderly care, is largely unable to work due to health reasons caused by that very same job, my income has become a lot more crucial for our kids, my wife, and myself. With OSNews readers being more skeptical of subscription-like things like our Patreon than most people, it’s exactly these one-time donations that make up the bulk of your support.
Thank you.
I would be interested in seeing your thoughts on using the mac tbh. You might actually like them, It was the Neo that got me into them.
My first Mac was a Power Mac G4 733 with a 22 inch Cinema Display back in 2002. It was my work computer and it ran 9.2 and 10.3. I really liked the clean interface of OS 9 and it ran Final Cut Pro better. The whole company went under a few years later and I kept using that machine for a long time. The DVD burner was an expensive rarity and I was the cool kid with DVD Studio Pro who could burn DVDs.
I truly enjoyed OS X for a long time. The power of the Terminal, and I still got a few games, stability and access to stuff like Photoshop and Office. I had a PowerBook G3, then a G4. My mom got for herself a used 6500/300 that she used to browse the web until https became impossible. Then I rocked a heavily upgraded Mac Pro 2009 until 2 years ago as my main computer.
But little by little, I felt like my computer was not my own. Aggressive forced obsolescence made me lose access to programs I needed and games I still played. The security circus went a bit too far and made doing any kind of deeper customization a complete pain. Interface changes of questionable taste and utility made the computer less usable for me as a power user. AppleScript, Automator, Aperture, all basically died. Unable to run any other OS (my Mac Pro runs everything from Haiku to FreeBSD). At some point, I had a work 13 inch Intel MacBook Pro (a 3.5 GHz model) and the thing was basically thermal castration.
I still have my Mac Pro and I run it when I need FireWire (scanners, old Hasselblad camera) or when I need to access my old Aperture libraries. Migrating 20 years of work took me 1 year of lost Saturday mornings. My girlfriend fears the day they will just declare her M1 MacBook Air etrash (she only uses it for documents and web browsing) and I told her to just migrate away. She said she would rather pay 100 EUR every couple of years for a new macos rather than tossing her computer away (and migrating to a new one), but the whole “environment” bs is just a charade.
So now since everything sucks in a different way, I end up having to navigate Windows, old mac, freebsd and Linux to not go mad depending on the work flow. In the past, Windows or Mac had a few quirks but nothing infuriating. Now it is just a bag of hurt but sometimes what you need to do will need them. Sadly.
If I’m to pay you for something is surely not covering Windows 11 or macOS, both already getting way enough coverage, good or bad. There’s nothing “challenging” into it, not even getting a tattoo.
Instead, I’d like you to use AI for a month : to do simple tasks at first (asking questions like selecting a programming environment regarding your experience and usage, light vibe coding to start from an idea), CLI development inside a maturing project to improve it interactively/iteratively, then progressively more complex things like automation (OpenClaw, Home Assistant, …).
Then having compared the providers (Gemini, Claude, Mistral, Kimi, …), benchmarked them, select which one corresponded best to what usage, provide a hand-on approach from hater to “lover” of the technology, recognizing its intrinsic benefits for some selected purposes (LLM for Stackoverflow replacement, bug/security flaw detection, cancer diagnosis, image generation, …) but also highlighting what it’s not for (and shouldn’t be used for). What if politicians were replaced by a citizen driven AI ?
Because computers are just broad tools used to run more refined tools (coding, AI) to get the job done, nothing more after all. Btw some lightweight LLM can now even run on ESP32 grade MCUs : https://github.com/DaveBben/esp32-llm
An in-depth and honest analysis of AI and some coding (i.e. Python) from you, that’s what I would be looking for.
That would be mutually beneficial.
Good point. Or maybe really the more edgy alternatives: one of the BSDs, Haiku, etc..
We’re living in a world of AI, Python, … not BSD, Haiku, etc. Why would you try those if you cannot use it to run nowadays technologies ? Lagging behind with “retro” tech may have its appeal, but the present days don’t offer much room for them. If you may install BSD on most hardware, I bet Haiku might be more selective. Could we revive Windows 10 grade computers unable to switch to Windows 11 (no TPM, no recent CPU) with BSD or Haiku and turn them into capable daily driver devices ? That would lower e-waste and increase alternatives to Windows 11 and macOS.
Fair point, but we are still talking about “osnews” and the challenge is a daily-driver challenge. No one daily drives Python.
I propose that we do both, then. For Thom, adopting AI and scripting in his daily life would most probably be way further away from his comfort zone than simply switching operating systems.
A OS vs automation vs friction/success rate kind of challenge.
Maybe an obscure BSD variant somewhere is the most automation/AI friendly environment out there. =)
I don’t think covering Windows 11 and macOS as potential daily drivers is any relevant either. Of course both are. I don’t need paying Thom to be the next “Angry Operating System Nerd” ranting about what could be better in Windows 11 or macOS, he does already in many articles, we do know already, so no much added value here.
If I pay Thom, it is not just to live in its “comfort zone” but to have an honest opinion about a technology that has entered our daily life, does he like it or not, and is getting deeply rooted into it (Copilot, Recall, Gemini, Alexa, Opera or even Firefox) so that would be more interesting to take an “Embrace, Extend, and Extinguish” stance (with no Extinguish part though, I’m not sure this is going away anytime soon).
Who better than him with his years long experience of technology to actually use it wisely and not rely on chitchatting and selected bad examples ? It’s still just a technology that could adapt easily to what we want it to do, provided we ask it nicely to. Not slapping an AI sticker on it and voilà.
Thom is the best qualified to propose a rightful mean of the AI and how to bend it the OSNews way, provided he gets more comfortable with it first, first hand I mean, overcoming his initial preconceptions. I’m pretty sure he’ll like it once he understood how to use it as a tool to help him, not to replace him (i.e. as a translator).
We absolutely can. I have a Skylake era laptop and mini-PC that both run OpenBSD as daily operating systems that do everything I need them to do. Microsoft left them behind so I picked them up for under $40 each; the laptop has a 1080p screen, USB-C, even a 4G modem that is compatible with OpenBSD if I wanted to throw in a SIM card and use it instead of Wi-Fi on the go. It also boots Haiku off of a second SSD and runs it flawlessly too. The mini-PC also has two SSD slots, one for OpenBSD and the other for testing other operating systems; it has USB-C and three DisplayPort outputs. Speaking of Python, it is available for both OpenBSD and Haiku as well.
The only thing “retro” about either of those operating systems is someone’s ill informed and prejudiced attitude.
Count me in, but it must be a good/strong model (Claude Opus 5 or better) and you promise to genuinely try open minded (your word is more than enough to me). I wage 120 EUR right ahead.
I love it.
AB.
And I want a working offline Linux based environment provided at the end of the month to reproduce his findings.
Game on!
So you think Windows 11 and macos get more than enough coverage… but ask Thom to cover AI ? Is AI not everywhere enough to your taste ? And the way you phrase it, it’s like he’s bound to love it in the end, as if there were no alternative.
I think you’re missing something. Sure Thom thinks AI is worthless, as in bringing no real, lasting benefits to its users. But I also get the feeling that the main reason he hates it is for the toxic effects it has on the world humans live in. No amount of “hands on” usage is going to blow his mind to the point he’ll be willing to overlook these. So really, what’s the point ?
I mean, I don’t participate in the fundraiser as I prefer to donate monthly (I have no clue why my profile doesn’t show it, btw, but since I don’t really care I haven’t felt like raising the issue), because I don’t feel like my money should be used to force anyone to do anything. But forcing someone to participate in a movement they feel is harming humanity… boy, does that look like a sadist move. It’s literally taking a page from 1984.
I believe there is still a bug in the site affecting donation level flair; I upped my monthly donation amount at the first of the year but Thom told me about the bug and that’s why I still have the silver flair.
worsehappens,
Well, it’s pretty clear that Thom won’t ever love AI because he hates it out of principal. I can respect that, hating AI isn’t an issue for me., however I do think the arguments against it may need to be updated to reflect technological evolution. Saying that AI/LLMs suck because they they are not capable makes for poor long term arguments. These tools are advancing at an incredible rate and the argument that it’s not useful isn’t one future generations will relate to. However the point that they take jobs/autonomy away from humans seems like a legit long term gripe. The “data centers are bad” seems to carry some water (ahem), but to me this may be more a criticism of corporate over building/over investment than about AI technology per say. Too much of a good thing can make it a bad thing. The “AI will enslave humans” is another argument some have used, however Thom can’t use this argument yet because he’d have to implicitly concede how AI is advancing and becoming much more capable with time.
Thom is not a horse riding Amish I want to convert to gasoline powered car.
AI is there to stay and has improved by a large margin, long gone are the silly Will Smith eating spaghetti videos.
I just started “vibe coding” early this year because I too wasn’t really convinced about it, and I had this “jaw dropping” moment asking myself “it can really do this ?” when I provided it with broad explanation of my problem and came up with a nicely elaborated bullet point list of things to do to help me going through my struggles. It was spot on at an accuracy level I checked under the desk to see if there was no hidden Indian operator listening and doing the interface with his remote colleagues. The response time was just too fast to be the case anyway.
Of course sometimes I got disappointed by its hallucinations and had to “refocus” it because coding doesn’t leave much room for interpretation.
But image generation and story telling does (perchance.org is a marvel, see https://perchance.org/enhanced-ai-story) and using its hallucinations can be an advantage here (plot twists being one of them).
Currently AI serves as a money laundering machine for big corps getting large amount of public money, and don’t worry their bosses are getting huge salaries and bonuses for it. But us “peasants” can still use the technology at our advantage, thank to the incredible boost in performance during the last two years. It’s just a tool that has no bad intentions toward humans, at least not directly even though we read some recent stories about AI escaping their Petri dishes.
Especially if it’s an AI fly : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lnCe6KFMPMo
Imagine that you’d like to use macOS.
I’m more interested in the tour of Thom’s office, I bet he has some interesting old tech there. I will never buy a Mac anyway, it would be like buying a leaking luxury boat with a fixed date when it’s going to sink.
Back in the day when I was a Apple user primarily, The hardware was so-so but Mac OS was the thing that kept everyone going, now it’s flipped – macOS is UTTER RUBBISH it’s horrendous to use (from Finder, nagging notifications to upgrade, sign into iCloud, Settings being a disaster, crap window management, locking down of the bsd userland you name it).
I remember the good old days where you could clone your mac to a iPod over fire wire and boot from it, visits the the Apple Store resulted in some interesting shenanigans. Expect to pay a LOT of money for addon’s to make macOS usable.
Oh also on the hardware – sublime – EXCEPT the F***NG notch on a LAPTOP SCREEN!!
garybuk,
I hate those too! My latest phones have them and I miss the ones that didn’t. Depending on the background color It’s a noticable hole that’s especially prevalent when the phone is sideways and the hole takes up application space – rendered right there with a hole. Totally un-professional looking to me. I’d rather have the camera be in the bezel like phones used to do, but maybe that’s just me.
With this money, I could buy a maxed-out Mac Studio with its display that would actually have a purpose…
It’s nice you have your fan club.
In 20 years, the dude sure grew a loyal fanbase. I’m one. Because his rants rocks.
Actually true!