When comparing macOS vs Fedora, the Slant community recommends Fedora for most people. In the question“What is the best laptop OS?” Fedora is ranked 2nd while macOS is ranked 25th. The most important reason people chose Fedora is:
Fedora is backed by RedHat, the 2nd biggest Linux kernel contributor in the world. Using a distribution made by RedHat means that it will be fine-tuned to work as efficiently as possible since it's made by the same people who work extensively on the kernel and know its ins and outs.
Specs
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
Pro Polished UI
The UI of Mac OS is rather unrivaled. The smooth, responsive, and cohesive UI makes the system quite joyous to use.
Pro Based on Unix
macOS being a UNIX certified system means that you can install a lot more stuff with a lot fewer headaches than if you were on Windows.
Pro Easy access to lots of great dev tools
There's a large selection of great development tools available for OSX. The operating system itself comes bundled with a powerful terminal emulator, called Terminal. Additionally, Apple provides tools, like Xcode, an IDE that contains a comprehensive collection of tools for developing OSX and iOS software, for free.
Pro Powerful terminal
It's very similar to a Linux terminal.
Pro Best support for Objective-C
Pro More commercial software and gaming support compared to other Unix systems
Adobe CC, MS Office, Steam games.
Pro Has many special tools for developers
Has support for multiple IDEs.
Pro Lots of open-source software available
Because it's Unix under the fancy GUI, most open source ports easily to it.
Pro Ideal setup, out of the box
Next to no custom configuration is necessary.
Pro Great Git GUI tools
Tower, Kaleidoscope, SourceTree.
Pro Has software that only runs on Mac
For example, Sketch.
Pro Streamlined workflow between devices
Because this is an Apple product, there is a streamlined workflow between your computer and all mobile devices. For example, if you type an a Pages document, once you save, you can open the updated document just moments later on your iPad, and vice versa. The same goes for iMessage, (yes, you can text people with your phone number from your computer. Actually, you can text other people with apple devices with just your Apple ID, with or without a phone number, for free!) Numbers, Notes, Reminders, Contacts, and just about any other Apple workflow application.
Pro Great modifier key layout
Pro Using VMware you can also run Windows 10 on the Mac
This is useful for testing and some development tools that are Windows-only (XML Spy, MapForce).
Pro You need it to compile macOS or iOS apps
Pro Backed by one of the biggest Linux kernel contributors
Fedora is backed by RedHat, the 2nd biggest Linux kernel contributor in the world. Using a distribution made by RedHat means that it will be fine-tuned to work as efficiently as possible since it's made by the same people who work extensively on the kernel and know its ins and outs.
Pro Integration with GNOME
It perhaps has the best integration with GNOME (GNOME software works out of the box).
Pro Focuses on innovation
By using bleeding edge software, Fedora allows for innovation to take place by testing out things which other distros are not willing to try due to fears of having instability issues.
Pro Fast and stable updates
Pro Frees developers from some backward compatibility restraints
Fedora has a relatively short life cycle: version X is supported only until 1 month after version X+2 and with approximately 6 months between versions this means that a version of Fedora is supported for approximately 13 months. This promotes leading-edge software because it frees developers from some backward compatibility restraints.
Pro Strong commitment to free software philosophy
Pro Fast performance
Pro Very good integration with Flatpak and Snap Packages
Pro Huge array of binary packages ready to install
Pro Can still be installed in a bad sector on the hard disk
Pro Linus Torvalds' distro of choice
Pro Create user after the installation
Very good for selling PC‘s with Fedora.
Pro Frequent updates to latest versions of software, so quick security and other bug fixes
Latest version software often means quick bug fixes, more useful features. For example, for a daily user of TeX, the latest TeX distro is a must. It's also useful to be able to use recent external hardware such as USB Wi-Fi dongles or printers.
Pro Minimalist GNOME
Fedora Workshop does not come with bloatware. It is a minimal GNOME installation, which makes it very simple and nice to use out of the box.
Pro The best choice for sysAdmin and developers
Nearly flawless, perfect performance and consistency with development and operational software.
Cons
Con Expensive
OSX is tied Apple hardware and Apple hardware tends to be expensive for what it gives.
Con Limited hardware
Usually, the hardware that can run this can't be upgraded.
Con Most software is closed source
For people who like to use open source tools for their development work, this may be a problem. There's plenty of advantages to open source software, one of which is the ability to tinker with and customize the tools themselves that you are using. Although there's plenty of FOSS tools available for Mac, especially through Homebrew, the number of packages available is much lower than the number of packages available for any Linux distribution.
Con Closed source
Mac OS is closed source itself, which means that it is developed more slowly and has more problems.
Con No native package management
A comparison of package managers available for OSX can be found here.
Con Poor application support
Fewer apps run on Mac OS than on Windows or Linux.
Con Bash version is obsolete
macOS comes with an obsolete version of Bash, due to licensing issues.
Con Vendor-Lock-in
You are now forced to use the Apple services.
Con Silly modifier keys layout
The Command key is strange, Alt is where Super should be.
Con Poor X11 integration
The most open source software does work but is very poorly integrated due apples ancient version of the X-server.
Con Very few options for running hosted, on the cloud
Con Too little customization options
Con Touchbar on Macbook Pro's
Con Not very user-friendly
Con Updating to a new release can be problematic
While there are a few tools on offer that will upgrade an old Fedora release to the newest, there can often be problems with these methods. Some that may not even crop up at first but will show later down the road. Being that upgrading can be an issue, it can be exacerbated by the fact that Fedora updates every six month, which means twice a year there is a risk of completely borking ones install.
Con Proprietary drivers are unsupported
Fedora does not support proprietary drivers, meaning that users may have problems with a lot of hardware when using Fedora. The software to make that kind of hardware work can be installed, but it can be done only through third-parties and it's not easy for the average user.
Con Unstable
Some packages may break, because there isn't an option to test them before rolling them out.
Con Dnfdragora needs work
As the default package installer, this piece of software needs a lot more polish. It's not explicit in saying things are installed, more granularity in package selection is needed, and the ability to move columns around to see if you're installing the correct version.
Con Optimus support is straight terrible
Running on a laptop with optimus gpu or the driver for your powerful gpu is not gonna happen.
Con Not for beginners
It is not a user-friendly distro like ubuntu, PCLos. You will be required to learn a lot of commands even for simple activities.
Con Slow
It is quite slow on some computers.
Con Basically owned by RedHat
Community? Forget it! RedHat says what Fedora must do.
Con Too many changes to upstream packages leading to a "Fedora way" of doing things
Linux should be Linux, but Fedora is constantly introducing breakage and changes which move things in the wrong direction and make things worse for everyone.
Con Controlled by big corpos
Con 86'ed
Description of the word. Support for 32-bit architecture ended with Fedora Release 30.
Con Wayland does not work with Prime/Optimus
On a pc with hybrid video, you must use Gnome on Xorg to let the Prime or Optimus technology work.