this post was submitted on 02 Nov 2026
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I transitioned to Linux a few years ago, which has piqued my partner’s curiosity. She's been genuinely interested and asks questions about it, but she is so deeply integrated I don't know where to start. She uses iCloud, an Apple Watch, iPhone, iPad, a Mac desktop, plus whatever default proprietary software. She has a semi-technical background.

I want to help and be encouraging without overselling the ease of transition. There's always some friction with transitioning technology, and of course Apple makes that intentionally difficult. I came from a Windows ecosystem, so I'm lacking any direct insight for potential challenges.

Any advice or personal experiences on moving from the Apple ecosystem to Linux would be hugely appreciated!

(I can host services on my local server, so transitioning to something like Immich vs iCloud for photos is one option we've discussed).

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[–] djdarren@piefed.social 10 points 1 day ago (1 children)

apple makes you feel so cozy and content in their UI design that anything even slightly different is really disruptive

I switched from iPhone to Graphene a couple of years back after almost 15 years of iOS, and yeah, the transition from one to the other was the very steepest learning curve. It's almost like jumping from Mint to Arch. My partner wants my Pixel when I next upgrade so they can play with it and get used to it before having to make the jump from iOS, but I know it's going to be a painful transition for them.

[–] Dojan@pawb.social 5 points 1 day ago (2 children)

I recently put Graphene on my no-longer work phone. I think what makes it extra tough is that it feels familiar and simultaneously alien.

There’s an action centre, and you can edit toggles, but there are no editable sliders for audio and brightness. A lot of the icons feel like buttons but aren’t.

Then there’s the gestures. They feel a little off. The back motion can be done forward too, and there’s no preview of what “back” is. And I loathe the settings pane.

Graphene is nice, but I still dislike Android.

[–] lka1988@lemmy.dbzer0.com 0 points 12 hours ago* (last edited 12 hours ago)

I recently put Graphene on my no-longer work phone. I think what makes it extra tough is that it feels familiar and simultaneously alien.

Almost like Android is a direct competitor to iOS. Who'd've thought??

There’s an action centre, and you can edit toggles, but there are no editable sliders for audio and brightness.

The brightness slider is at the top of the quick settings panel. Audio slider comes up with the volume buttons and can be quickly expanded to control media/call/ring/notification/alarm volumes, all independently, no matter where you are in the OS.

A lot of the icons feel like buttons but aren’t.

Every icon in the quick settings panel is a button.

Then there’s the gestures. They feel a little off.

They're virtually identical to iOS.

The back motion can be done forward too

And I can't stand the fact that Apple didn't implement this.

and there’s no preview of what “back” is.

Why would there be? You know where you came from.

I'd argue that Apple's implementation of the "back" gesture is laughably terrible in comparison, what with the hilariously tiny back button and the back gesture doing separate things for some reason unknown to anyone.

And I loathe the settings pane.

I loathe all settings that require the use of a search bar to locate a setting that shouldn't require a search bar on the first place. I've used Android since the Eclair release, so I watched it evolve over the years and quickly figured out where the important settings ended up.

TL;DR - Skill issue

Its been damn near 20 years of Apple vs Android, why are we still whining about stupid shit that doesn't matter? If it bothers you that much, use something else.

[–] djdarren@piefed.social 3 points 1 day ago

For me the biggest hurdle was finding apps that felt the same as the ones I was used to.

Take Mastodon: I've gotten used to Moshidon now, but previously I used Ivory, which is ridiculously polished by comparison. The natures of iOS and Android mean that there are very few Android apps that are as ...pretty... as most iOS counterparts.

Also; functionality. I guess because iOS users are more likely to pay for apps, developers are more likely to cram in as many features and polish as they can. If you try to replace an app with 1:1 feature parity, you're mostly going to be disappointed. Photos on iOS is an incredibly useful, user friendly app which has almost all of the library and editing features most people need. Immich comes close, but not quite close enough for me to be able to confidently say that you could switch from one to the other without really noticing.