I've been considering this for a while -- especially after the Yosemite upgrade, in which my machine has been randomly hanging [0], and in which my machine gets noticeably slower (cmd-tab takes a quarter to a half a second to actually finish switching and repainting windows) over the course of a few days of uptime. OS X software quality is very clearly not a priority at Apple, which is a shame, because this machine is still the best hardware I've ever had the pleasure of using. I don't know what my next machine will be, but if things go at the current pace, I imagine it won't be running OS X.
My previous Linux machine was a Sony VAIO SZ, running Ubuntu 8.04; it did basically everything that I needed, and my only complaint that I'd have if downgrading to it today would be the reduction in battery life. Is there a great set of laptop hardware to run Linux on these days? What do people use when they just want a candy-reduced window system?
[0] MacBook Pro Retina 15", Mid 2012; periodically, usually while I am scrolling through a web page, the machine becomes unresponsive (sound stops, cursor stops), and a minute or two later, the machine powers off. Sometimes it reboots on its own; afterwards, there's no kernel panic log. As far as I can tell, something goes wrong, and after a few minutes, the SMC's watchdog timer gives up, and shoots the machine in the head.
This really sounds like a hardware problem, not Yosemite. I've upgraded 4 Macs (2 Airs, older iMac, and old MacBook Pro) and haven't seen any problems like you describe.
If it was a hardware issue, that's one thing, but:
I despise the "fresh install"/"just format it" response to problems - it shows that nobody really knows wtf is going on and/or can't help you, but maybe starting from a clean slate will make it not broken? (Until it happens again and you need to clean-slate it, naturally). Wreaks of Windows ME-level quality in both software and software support.
The "format it for Linux anyway" argument seems a litte fallacious to me. You'd have to format it to put any other OS on it, sure. The point is to get to a state (OS/whatever) where you don't have to resort to random "nuke blasting" methods to fix something.
If formatting once for Linux means I never have to nuke it from space again to fix an issue, then yeah, I'll take it.
I'm seeing this same exact issue on my MBPr13. Occasionally I'll wake the laptop and it will show gray garbage on the screen, so I'm suspecting some kind of video issue / interaction with scrolling in Safari. It really got bad with the 10.10.2 beta, so I'm hoping they fix it with a point release.
My previous Linux machine was a Sony VAIO SZ, running Ubuntu 8.04; it did basically everything that I needed, and my only complaint that I'd have if downgrading to it today would be the reduction in battery life. Is there a great set of laptop hardware to run Linux on these days? What do people use when they just want a candy-reduced window system?
[0] MacBook Pro Retina 15", Mid 2012; periodically, usually while I am scrolling through a web page, the machine becomes unresponsive (sound stops, cursor stops), and a minute or two later, the machine powers off. Sometimes it reboots on its own; afterwards, there's no kernel panic log. As far as I can tell, something goes wrong, and after a few minutes, the SMC's watchdog timer gives up, and shoots the machine in the head.