When comparing macOS vs Lubuntu, the Slant community recommends macOS for most people. In the question“What is the best OS for gaming?” macOS is ranked 14th while Lubuntu is ranked 19th. The most important reason people chose macOS is:
The UI of Mac OS is rather unrivaled. The smooth, responsive, and cohesive UI makes the system quite joyous to use.
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 Part of the Ubuntu family
Being based on Ubuntu (which itself is based on Debian), there's a good amount of information and support to be found when searching for it, both on Lubuntu specifically and Ubuntu that also applies to Lubuntu. It also means that there are certain security and usability standards enforced and you can use Ubuntu .deb packages.
Pro Lightweight
By utilizing minimal software Lubuntu is able to use less resources and power.
Pro Stable
Pro LXDE desktop
Lightweight X11 Desktop Environment performs fast and conserves resources.
Pro Offers a long term support release
Lubuntu offers a long term support release with their 14.04 Trusty Tahr based version.
Pro Uses Openbox as the default window manager
Lubuntu (LXDE) uses the lightweight Openbox window manager to manage its windows. By using Openbox by default LXDE is able to remain lightweight as there is no built in composite manager in Openbox to take up resources.
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 No composite manager
Being a modern desktop many users expect compositing, even on lightweight systems. Without compositing there will be screen tearing, a lot of it. Though there is built in support for users to add their own compositors such as Compton.
Con Long term support not as long as other Ubuntu spins
Lubuntu has not always had LTS support. Luckily they do offer a 3 year LTS now but it is shorter than other Ubuntu spins that receive a full 5 years of support.
Con Clock in panel is broken currently in LXDE
The clock panel applet does not work as expected in the newest versions of LXDE. If the clock is set to not show seconds in the display when waking from suspend the clock will not update until the time actually changes in the applet which means it can take up to a minute for the clock to update when seconds are not shown. The work around to this is to display seconds on the clock which allows it to update after suspend within one second. Sadly the clock does not display seconds correctly as it skips them by one to three at least once a minute, often more.
This is also not the first time there have been problems with the panel clock which clearly illustrates this to be an ongoing problem for the developers.
Con Lacks some window management features
There's no built-in way to snap windows to the sides, re-size them by double clicking the bar, or dragging to the edges.
Con Redundant
There is absolutely no reason to install it, since it uses the same package repositories as Ubuntu and you can transform any Ubuntu install into a Lubuntu install.