Ubuntu literally does not have an easy way to configure what happens when you close a laptop. I want it to hibernate instead of sleep. Someone else didn't want it to go to sleep at all. None of the settings options allow this. While Googling it for a friend the only result was running a few commands and changing some stuff in some config file. You cannot possibly expect a business analyst who hasn't even opened the terminal once in their life to not be immediately put off and scared by this. This is the advantage of Macs. They literally do just work
So, does "Just Work" now include easily accessible noob-proof configuration of the things you want? In that case, macOS doesn't Just Work for me, because I want to be able to see what apps are playing sound or recording and manually set them to different sinks/sources, maybe even have sound playing from multiple devices at the same time. On Linux with PulseAudio and pavucontrol, this is effortlessly configurable with an intuitive GUI. I'm not even sure this is possible on macOS.
My point is, unless we agree on roughly what features are required, "Just Works" is a useless subjective specifier. We all have different priorities, so we either have to accept that there's no universal way to evaluate OSs or agree on some subset that really should Just Work.
By the way, KDE Plasma has pretty comprehensive GUI settings on power-related settings. I think having GNOME 3 and Ubuntu be the de-facto standard Linux experience is actually harming the perception of desktop Linux. People switch expecting a customizable, power-user friendly experience and get a DE that's trying to be the opposite.
Everything you require is not in the least beginner user problems. I'm talking basic issues faced by a person who only views emails, looks at spreadsheets and word documents and opens their browser
I get that, and my setup is definitely not beginner-friendly. But I think we need to agree on what beginners actually do, because I wouldn't say customising power settings falls into that category.
The problem as I see it is that even people who really are beginners sometimes want to reach for more advanced functionality, and different systems expose different advanced functions in a user-friendly way.
Try soundflower for mac. I think JACK audio also works on Mac/Win.
> "Just Works" is a useless subjective specifier.
I'd say a good usable mail client, a readily available video editor, sound recording software and office suite are more important than an advanced audio mixer.
> sound playing from multiple devices at the same time
This seems like a very niche use case. Along the lines of the usual nerdy response of linux being able to compile gcc or run vim and why would anyone use their computer for anything else.
> I'd say a good usable mail client, a readily available video editor, sound recording software and office suite are more important than an advanced audio mixer.
I'm not disputing that. It isn't hard to agree on what an average user definitely needs and therefore must work. The hard part is where to draw the line, what is still needed and what is niche.
> This seems like a very niche use case.
Maybe. But it's very much something an "average user" might want. It's actually something I want to be able to do so I can watch a film with my sister, each with our own headphones. That's a real user need, not something "meta" like the FLOSS things you mentioned (not a solution by itself, but something that can help a programmer fill that user need).
