> (that no amount of tweaking will get you on Linux).

It best not to use such firm definitives like that when what you actually mean is "more tweaking than a typical user would be bothered with". :)

> But macOS has a "package manager" – it's called App Store. You and I may not think it sufficient for our (developer) needs, but we're not representative users.

You're seriously going to defend the App Store?! The App Store isn't just garbage for developers, it's garbage for everyone because it misses so many non-developer productivity tools too. It doesn't even have Chrome nor Firefox in it.

> And for normal users and even myself it offers very useful functionality over what they'd get out of the typical native linux package manger

Sorry but I'm not buying that argument. You claim to be a "normal user" then talk about messing around with kernel parameters in Linux. I really don't think you're making any fair and balanced arguments on this topic at all.

> You can trivially reinstall everything on a different machine with a different os version (as long as it's not super ancient), and it works – no "DLL" hell, because everything is essentially self-contained.

I guess if you compare the App Store to manually loading software on Windows - literally the worst platform ever created for managing installed software - then the App Store would look good. But likewise if you compare a heart surgery to a lobotomy then heart surgery would look less invasive too. This is why I don't think it's productive to compare solutions to the worst examples.

> And since software is tied to your account, there is no need for crufty apt queries in the hope to get a list of packages out you can backup for reinstall elsewhere or after clean upgrade.

It's a pity that the App Store offers so little software so you end up falling back to 3rd party package managers. So now on OSX you not only need to run the same "crufty [package manager] queries" on OSX but you also need to install the package manager itself too.

> And I need to install a 3rd party package manager on (non-NixOS) linux distros anyway, because IMO apt, yum etc. fundamentally suck and nix is the only thing that doesn't.

A moment ago you were claiming to be a "normal user". Normal users don't install nix :) tbh I'm not the biggest fan of apt, yum is better but I do really like pacman. However claiming apt and yum suck when also praising the OSX App Store is just weird.

> I can ensure you it's entirely possible to have a high grade desktop with SSD and have linux fall over swapping endlessly without even being able to move the cursor anymore. Of course this doesn't happen in "everyday" usage otherwise no one would be running linux, but it's not that hard to trigger if you're running a VMs, a few browsers and dev tooling stuff that can potentially consume large amount of memory very quickly.

Right, I get you now. That context helps. Your previous description just said you were running a browser and sounded like it was happening everyday (so basically you were exaggerating by leaving key details out when describing the root cause). The problem there is that you're not just over commiting on memory but also over commiting on CPU resources too. That latter part matters because swapping can be CPU expensive too. Hence why your system is grinding to a halt.

Also I still think you're to blame a little there because if you're running VMs then you should be setting their thresholds to a level that doesn't overcommit your systems resources (baring in mind these tools aren't the stuff that "normal users" would be using either). It's like opening a bottle of wine and pouring yourself 4 glasses then complaining that the bottle is empty and you couldn't squeeze out a 5th glass (can you tell I'm drinking wine at the moment hehe?). You only have a finite amount of system resources so you cant really complain if you intentionally over commit them.