Blazing fast and stable. But the changes in the UI are driving me and many of my clients bonkers.
FWIW, I have been running it since release on my 27" iMac without issues. I’d say I’m happy enough with it.
I like some of the changes but I don’t like all of the extra space between icons–I don’t think that is an efficient design. 
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Oh, yeah. We run our Electronic Medical Records system on Linux and a ton of other applications as well. Even Microsoft touts how well their Azure cloud system supports Linux.
I just get sad every time I poke at a desktop linux system because it doesn’t seem much different than it did 10+ years ago.
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I think part of the reason you don’t see more desktop linux is due to Steve Jobs and NeXT. Many of us that would be running Linux today instead opted to use Apple’s Unix based mainstream OSX.
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May I remind you that Apple released several “minor” 2GB+ updates for Big Sur over the last couple of weeks? Just to fix… well… you tell me.
Unfortunately. I would switch to a Linux desktop immediately if it was on par with the server version.
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au contraire I depend on our Linux servers to run my own personal cloud-like system and my husband is entirely on Linux will all 10+ fof his computers 
It’s not the operating system I object to with cloud services it’s the privacy and security issues I have with them.
You mean this?
Service exited due to SIGKILL | sent by mds[88]
My log is full with these messages. Apparently this is not new though.
That doesn’t surprise me. I meant it was likely all of us, except you, rely on cloud services.
Yep, thats the one. No it is not new, all the more reason one should expect it fixed by now. I correlate that crash log, the kernel panics and the overall slowness to the frequency of that process crashing. Correlation is not causation I know. I did observe at several occasions the daemon crashing at the same time safari (or Fusion or other internet connected apps) had hiccups. Again, not fantastic evidence for finger pointing… I always think to do some debugging with Dtrace but it takes such a nose dive into the underlying tech - no time/interest for that really.
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For me it Big Sur offers no new features that I can use, has IMHO an ugly UI that is more difficult for me to read, and still breaks some of the software I use. In some cases I can buy my way out of the problems with paid upgrades (like with Bartender) but others I’m still stuck (SuperDuper!). I’m also concerned by Apple’s continual removal of utility programs.
So I can only see moving to the current macOS when forced by purchase of an Apple Silicon Mac (which has other issues for me, like inability to run old Windows VMs), by lack of security upgrades, or by inability to run new programs I want to use that won’t run on the older OS.
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I dislike the aesthetics of Windows and a lot of the UI experience of using it, but this is a strong mark in favour of it. I would be much happier if Apple were to adopt a monthly patching cadence, which in today’s world already seems disturbingly slow to me.
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I’m fine with the look. Stability hasn’t been an issue for me. Sometimes one of the many pop-up windows to give access to something won’t go away. It’s annoying, but doesn’t make me scream.
What irritates me is I find the UI to be less functional. Many things that used to be readily available are buried under one or more mouse clicks. And some of them require hovering the mouse for a bit before they appear. I don’t know who this helps or what purpose it serves, but it slows me down with no upside (visual or otherwise). Dislike.
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The spacing of menubar icons makes it barely impossible to use tools parked in the menubar on a 13" MacBook without an external monitor. The fact that Bartender changed to not switch between two sets of icons, but more so expands the one to the left also doesn’t help. (Yes, I’m aware of the reduced spacing option in Bartender, but for whatever reason, it looks worse than before Big Sur.)
Dark mode has taken a step back and the border-gloss makes windows look even cheaper.
The rounded corners of all windows create weird artifacts in the corners of the display or when windows are tiled.
The fact that apps can colorize accents of the save dialog is distracting and cheaply executed. If I’m using MS Excel, for example, save a document and then resize the save dialog window there is a delay of the green accent overlay snapping to the blue base colored items of the favorites sidebar.
AirPods auto-switching doesn’t work 8 out of 10 times for me. And my AirPods get stuck in a connection attempt loop almost daily I have to revoke the pairing and repair them.
Connections via AFP to external network devices just randomly stop working.
Connections via SMBv3 sometimes get sluggish for no apparent reason and it takes ages to load a folder.
But even local folder discovery feels significantly slower from time to time (with sufficient free disk space).
And the cherries on top are the horrible icons in System Preferences that make it harder to parse the grid. This also applies to some other system icons, especially the Launchpad one.
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Are you aware of the option to have Bartender open a second ‘bar’ beneath the menu bar? That has been my preferred option with Bartender 4:
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Immensely enjoyed this thread when reading through it.
Any good Mac Power User worth his/her salt running Big Sur on an M1 mini knows:
- when your M1 mini reboots and all your privacy settings are gone again, just smile and reboot again to get them back
- when your M1 mini cannot run for more than 3 days without a reboot, it gives you extra practice time to hone your rebooting skills.
- when your favorite folders that you dragged and rearranged in the Finder sidebar are all gone, simply drag them there again and again. Just takes a few minutes each time. Easy peasy!
- when you are old school and plug in your SD card into an SD card reader (Who still does that?) and you select it from the Locations section in the Finder side bar and 5 minutes later, it is gone, just check the network section of your Mac and you’ll find it there. And never again in the Locations section. After all, you did know that an SD card is a network device, right?
- when you get up from your chair with your AirPods Pro in your ears and you plan on leaving the room, take the AirPods out and leave them on the desk. They are not supposed to work in other rooms, and them having worked throughout most of the house on Catalina was just an accident. If you leave the room with them, Apple just makes it a bit harder each time to reconnect so eventually you have to reboot.
- when you plug in your iPad Pro to move files from your Mac to it, dragging them has now been designed to keep you more entertained by often failing. Maybe you should use Airdrop instead? Hey, we all prefer to use WiFi in our Ethernet-networked homes anyway, right?
- when your M1 mini crashes and after rebooting lets every device know that another Mac connected using your Apple ID, it’s just Apple’s way to keep said devices entertained.
Really only minor issues - no reason to contemplate a Snow Big Sur edition! Instead give us 100+ incredibly compelling new features where neither MacSparky, Stephen nor TJ could name even half of them.
p.s.
We are a month away from WWDC and it’s very telling that our IT department still has Big Sur blocked for all Catalina users running Intel Macs and no plans to lift that block. And no, they don’t give you M1 MBPs, either, if your laptops dies today. You get trusted 16-inch Intel MBP’s running Catalina.
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SD cards were an invaluable part of SneakerNet, the legacy networking platform using wetware protocols. Isn’t “Locations” where you look for them? 
Apple clearly Sherlocked those “brain entrainment” games, building them into the OS so you automatically get smarter while you do your daily tasks. It’s the intellectual equivalent of a treadmill desk.
“Big Sur: Snowcaps. Because even if the jagged rocks are still there, everything looks better when covered under a fresh layer of powder.”
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My 16-inch running Catalina spontaneously panicked/rebooted multiple times a week and no one could tell me why. Big Sur, from the early betas, has been far more reliable for me than Catalina ever was.
Still prefer my M1 MacBook Air, though…
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