Alp's slow slide from best in industry to one of the worst is something of a tragedy.
I removed the leaf from one of my salmon Alps and was surprised to find that the loud thock was so much nicer than very faint leaf noise other linears make. I wonder why Alps even bothered making tactile switches (maybe the tactile bump is very dependent on condition) because they went from bad tactiles to excellent linears.
I think a lot of people quite like tactile Alps switches, it just depends on the type. I'm not sure whether or not I have tried Salmons, if it was, it would have been very briefly on an old Apple board at a recycling facility. The guy I know there was specifically hoarding that one, so there wasn't any way I was going to bring it home. I have a brown Alps IBM nursing terminal board that, while currently scratchy, does seem to feel quite nice otherwise.
I could see Matias' tactiles being good if they did not have the dampened sliders. For some reason most of those feel pretty rough to me, although I have one board with them that's pretty well worn that feels pretty great (for tactiles anyway). Their linears, which have the same dampened slider in another color, are like butter, and their clickies are great too. If I put the undampened sliders from their clickies into the otherwise tactile switches, they feel nice and smooth. I don't get it.
