We just tried out v15 and it was not at all what I expected. I expected it to be Mac like, clean, easy to use and understand, simplicity, it was none of that. It appears to be ported from Linux. Very clunky, not intuitive in any way shape form or function. I gave it my best shot but ultimately I wasted the price of admission and went back to Onyx. So much for my hopes of being an all-Mac shop.
I doubt that. The Linux kernel was 1991. First gui was in 1992. Caldera says that they started in '91 that would mean that Caldera would have had to start supporting first on Linux when the OS had to be compiled and installed on hardware, as well as without a gui (depending on when they started). It wasn't available pre-compiled back in that day. That means that Caldera would have had to start with a very much unproven platform that wasn't conducive to the non developer.
What I would suspect is that the UI moved to a more GPU or immediate mode display. Akin to what Blender uses. Now, that wouldn't have been ported from Linux as Linux and Windows have OpenGL and Vulkan for this type of immediate mode (and others, but those are the biggies and usually supported out of the box with video drivers, SDL is another layer as well and that is cross platform on all three, but that doesn't come from the video card driver itself, but another piece of software). However, on Mac's OpenGL (and to my knowledge no option for Vulkan) has been deprecated and have to use Metal (going back to Blender, they just got a big cash donation from Apple, probably in with regard to this aspect).
Immediate mode GUIs do not respect the native widgets out of the box. The company has to put more effort to do that on their own. Not impossible, but definitely more of an effort.
Immediate mode is the way that GUI is going. It's cross platform and supporting more platforms with less code, is the trend (why PWAs/Electron/Webview apps are all the craze as well). Plus the apps themselves can look more uniform across all platforms, which is actually more important, especially if a user does use multiple OSs (not necessary at one place, could be Windows/Mac at the office and Linux at home or vice versa). I know a lot of people that only like the native widgets and to a degree, I can understand that, however, that's not really the trend that is going, so I would suspect that we will be seeing more and more of this as we go on.
Now, I am speculating on the immediate mode part, this is just from my looking at the UI and how things are with other immediate mode UIs versus native widget UIs or targeting the low level native APIs themselves so I could be wrong about this. So keep that in mind.
To the OP:
With regard to switching, really only you can tell how easy or hard it is going to be. If you are able, I would put the trial on a separate computer and see how well the new workflow can be handled. Or keep what you have until the very last moment until you have to migrate to which ever one. Although, I will say that the cost of upgrade at some point is just a given. The downside in today's current times, that has certain implications, but I digress.
