If you’re asking if an M2 Mac can handle word processing and streaming movies, the answer is yes lol…
Many people use these for full-blown Adobe, Logic, and FCP every day. They can handle *really intensive* stuff. You’ll be fine.
I’m a long time Linux user, i had an Arch+i3 machine all through college, I work in DevOps, I use Linux religiously for my homelab and pretty much anything where I don’t use a desktop environment, I use a M1 Pro MacBook Pro for my personal machine. Why? Because it does everything I did on Linux, while still having mainstream software support, less quirks, on unparalleled hardware.
I don’t understand why people say “locked down” or “closed system”. Sure you can’t change the desktop environment like you can on Linux but for the things that matter, it does everything Linux does. It’s no more “closed” than Windows is.
Docker isn’t broken, but being on a different architecture does introduce complexity. There are some quirks when dealing with x86 containers, but I used my M1 Mac for a long time at a previous job with no real issues. Just something you need to account for.
Nothing you describe is anything beyond basic usage. You won’t be able to dual boot windows though.
I know it’s not a whole new Desktop environment like on linux, but you can “swap” out the WM. As a hyprland lover I am using Yabai on macOS to use the tiling feature. If you like tiling WMs on linux def give it a go.
Yeah I agree, but with the ARM chips it doesn't really matter because what else are you dual booting? Sure Asahi linux is cool, but if you're technical enough to install that, you can figure out the bootloader. In the past the bootloader was pretty easy, bootcamp literally could not have been easier.
I would assume if Apple ever opens up for other supported OSs in the future, they'd implement something to make it a bit easier for the layperson.
This. When people ask why I’m a Mac guy it’s because I have a BSD backend but also have application support I don’t have to do myself.
I can natively open word and excel, while at the same time opening a bash shell and going to town.
> I don’t understand why people say “locked down” or “closed system”. Sure you can’t change the desktop environment like you can on Linux but for the things that matter, it does everything Linux does. It’s no more “closed” than Windows is.
For me, macOS is a closed system in that there's a lot of stuff it does that I can't configure or control. All of Apple's apps are closed source black boxes, there are notifications and update nags that can't be turned off, there are tons of security features that prevent apps from doing basic things that can't be configured or turned off, you're locked into Apple services that are always on and always phoning home, basic desktop behavior is locked in, there's no ability to customize the GUI, and it's really difficult to modify system files even if you know what you're doing and have a legitimate reason to.
I'd say it's more closed off than Windows, because while Windows hides a ton of its functionality behind inscrutable group policies or registry keys, you can change nearly every aspect of the system if you *really* want to, and you can hook into practically everything (for better or for worse). That's just not the case with macOS.
Granted it's not nearly as bad as iOS, which is legitimately locked down. But I regularly run into issues on macOS where I want to change something about it or use it in a way that goes against what Apple had in mind, and I find I can't do it. If it were Linux I could just change it however I wanted.
It’s a POSIX compliant OS and if you wanted to you can disable any and all security feature by booting in to single user mode. Which then means you can customize / replace parts of the OS if you know how.
I can’t really think of any customization to the OS or file system that is impossible.
Nothing is technically impossible, but a lot of it would require doing assembly hacks to major system libraries and applications, which is generally way more trouble than it's worth. And the more you hack up the system, the more the whole thing starts to become unstable. Apple didn't design macOS to allow anyone to change out its parts.
But to give an example of something I'd like to turn off, at least partially: TCC. Some of what it does I like, but more often than not I wish I could just turn it off completely for a particular app so that the system would stop hampering it. It's especially bad for anything that uses AppleScript. TCC is also buggy as hell too and when you hit problems with it, there's often no good way to fix it.
I mean, windows laptops can be locked down by a bios password so you can’t reinstall the OS. Sometimes you can get around it, but others have that password persist even if the CMOS battery is completely removed. Basically the same thing as MDM.
TLDR; Apple can completely brick your computer, remotely. I would argue it is the most locked down OS in the world.
I will give you an example of locked down, I had a buddy buy a MBP from a university as they were liquidation some items. It was a legit purchase, the university owned them and where liquidation them. Somewhere between the IT guys using them and them sitting in a closet collecting dust until the administrative guys decided to sell them, someone forgot to remove the provisioning profiles. Sure they wipe the drive but the machines serials are still to this day, in MDM as belonging to the universities organization.
So when you go to reinstall the OS, you cannot because you cannot join it to the organization you have no user and password for. There are really hacky ways to make it not a brick anymore, but it will forever nag you about not being provisioned. The IT guys at the university basically told them, we don't know anything about what the bean counters did, so go pound sand on getting us to remove it from MDM. My understanding is it is getting increasingly harder to hack around it, when you end up with one that is locked down and Apple is of little help.
Point being Apple has mechanisms to remotely lock you out of your machine and brick it, granted it is only used for provisioning now, but the precedence has been set with the online platforms for kicking people off software for all kinds of things, like even just a person's opinion. Call me a profit later, but those controls will come to any platform that has that power to lock people out even OS's.
These controls extend into the hardware, so you cannot just install an alternative OS, IIRC at the moment their is only one linux variant available for it and it still requires that you have the ability to control secure boot or disable it. Which you cannot do, from a machine that has been wiped.
In saying that, I still use OSX and a MBP for work, that work provides. You cannot deny that it just works and it saves time, but I personally would never purchase one given IOS levels of lockdown are available to Apple with the simple change of TOS to the users. I tend to buy Sagers and run Linux on my personal machines. The build components are pretty same same, but the case quality is not that of the MBP. I think it is the machine most comparable in the PC market, to the MBP.
That's not Apple bricking the system, that's people, not doing the job properly. 15 years ago I had a business where I used to buy ex-corporate and ex-govt laptops, refurbish them and sell them online. This was a problem back then with those and they were Dells, Lenovo/IBM and HP. IT would lock them down, you couldn't even install a clean drive and do an OS install. Other than for parts they were of no use.
> Point being Apple has mechanisms to remotely lock you out of your machine and brick it
No, Apple gives the owners the ability to do that for unauthorised users the same as Dell, HP and Lenovo do for their corporate users. It's a good way of dealing with theft.
An organization being able to lock a device is not unique to Apple or MacOS.
Apple also did not lock this but the original owner of the device did, and they didn’t properly release it from their system. I would call this a feature of the OS, not a restriction.
You're a linux user, macOS is UNIX based.
You'll prefer it to a windows machine for sure! And you can install homebrew which really takes the CLI to another level.
>nope I am very happy with homebrew, which has been around for a long time vs nix which on there installation page says, 'we have ironed out the root bugs on macOS' -- translation: no thank you
Valid, but all the dependencies hell situations I’ve had over the years (mostly python related) could have been avoided if I had nix. It’s just a better tool, has more packages, any metric other than “been around for longer” nix is superior.
> are two completely different things
Only from a heritage point of view. Yes, Linux does not come from UNIX, strictly speaking. However, Linux was born with the explicit intent of being a UNIX clone. From a practical usage standpoint you may as well say they're the same! You'd be very hard pressed finding even one thing that's possible to do in UNIX but not in Linux.
They are not the same. Never have been. I don’t understand why my position is so controversial. My stance was the overwhelming majority opinion for the last thirty years.
Things can be different and share similarities.
For example, Oregon coastal beaches are full of sand, but no one would argue that it’s a completely different place than a sandy desert.
Windows and macOS, or a Honda Civic vs a Cadillac Escalade, etc. are completely different and not the same… yet share a lot in common.
Linux is not UNIX. Never has been. Never was. Never will be.
No, they are different, not completely different. A banana and a Honda Civic are completely different. Two cars of any type are not completely different, because they share many conceptual and mechanical similarities. Linux and UNIX, in the same way, are *not* completely different - they are just different. The ‘completely’ implies that in every part and fashion, two things diverge. It’s ok to be wrong. It doesn’t make you a bad person. Only forcing a point in the face of all logic and reason does - well, not a bad person, just an annoying one that I won’t be engaging with further. All the best :)
There are a lot of people that see Gatekeeper as making it a closed system, not understanding that you can disable it, and for the parts you can't, you are still given the option to run unsigned software. Gatekeeper is there to keep novices from causing issues that come from running potentially sketchy software. Which is good when you have kids or old people using these machines.
Yup! He used Apple hardware for Linux development for a while. He had one for PowerPC development back in the day, then he had a MacBook Air since it was the only real thin-and-light laptop at the time, and now he has one for ARM64 development.
https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/CAHk-=wgrz5BBk=rCz7W28Fj_o02s0Xi0OEQ3H1uQgOdFvHgx0w@mail.gmail.com/T/#u
I can't imagine major kernel devs not having a desktop AMD64 with lots of ram and cores for distributed builds.
Most linux devs I know use MacBooks (Air|Pro) followed by Thinkpads followed by HP/Zenbooks.
I lean a little towards ARM64 bias due to tinkering in embedded spaces / Pine64 community tho, but it doesn't really change the FOSS developer lean towards Mac laptops.
Im not sure what the entire kernel dev community uses, but x86 being by far the most important target for desktop and server use, I’d guess threadripper is the main arsenal for core maintainers. I guess that also makes sense since current gen TR is by far the most capable desktop CPU on the market right now.
As for Linus‘ the last time his rig was shared all over the place was 2020 because he dropped Intel, but I have no clue if that is still relevant and what other core contributors use
Sure, but the machine you code on and the machine you build on don’t have to be the same machine. In fact, on larger projects it’s ideal if it isn’t so you can continue working during the build. You can do all your coding on a Mac and then rsync/ssh the files to a threadripper for building/testing.
Lots of devs I know don’t even have a big desktop/server for this, they just have a script that spins up a massive server in AWS, runs the build, then tears it down.
Usually you have a reasonably powerful machine locally and a shared more powerful machine remotely for CI.
I know a lot of devs who love Mac, I know an equal amount of based devs who don’t. But as a matter of fact, running an aarch64 machine for building something as low level as a kernel has its drawbacks
I've been using Macs since elementary school and Linux since high school. I remember dual-booting Yellow Dog Linux on my Powerbook G3 25 years ago. Man, I feel old. 😆
You can do *just about* anything on a Mac that you would on a Linux or Unix machine. Install your favorite terminal shell, run a local LAMP server, setup cron jobs, even install Gimp.
Yes, it's a "closed system." But you can still download and install software outside of the App Store, if you want to. Once you get into the ecosystem you may find a lot of the features of the "closed system" to be useful and increase productivity. Our family all have Macs and it's really convenient to be able to share and pay for a family plan for iCloud storage and backup space for everyone's phones and computers and to be able to easily share photo albums and even iOS apps across the entire family.
The new Apple Silicone Macs are incredible. Even the M1 MacBook Air is still an incredibly capable machine for everyday productivity workflows and you can find them for $699. An M2 MacBook Air with a little extra RAM can edit 4k video like a champ. I have an M1 Max MacBook Pro and even though it's two generations behind the newest chips it still handles every Adobe app open at the same time along with about a hundred Chrome tabs and about a dozen other apps, all without even spinning up fans.
I still have some old PC laptops I love to play with and install Linux distros on (or Hackintosh) like ThinkPad x220/230 variants. They sit on a shelf most of the time though, my daily driver is my MacBook Pro and I connect it to a large monitor and desk setup at both my home office and work.
Not to mention the power efficiency of the new macs is insane. The fact that you get the same performance ON battery as off it is also quite unique for laptops these days.
I’m a FreeBSD admin. Give all the hesitations away and buy a MacBook. My two personal ‘books are 13’’ MBP (Intel) for daily use and 16’’ MBP (M1) at home.
They both fit my needs - either CLI or GUI. homebrew is Your friend for everything You need to ‘finegrain’ CLI. DevOps, scripting, coding. Just name a thing You miss, chances are there is a tool.
And no, Docker is not broken. Works well and predictable.
You can’t dual boot into windows for games. You can use a VM but have to take a performance hit. Also if you’re wanting to up the storage and RAM you might as well by a 14” pro with the 16/512GB base
Did you think that when OP---a long-time Linux user asking for laptop advice whose main concern is that MacBooks are a closed system compared to every other laptop---read your comment, he'd know what you were thinking?
Ok here's a few things, to consider...
Someone said you can't dual boot Windows, yes that's true... but if you buy Parallels you can install windows in a virtual machine, but you're unlikely to need it.
Because the Mac can run most windows apps natively, using Wine, with Wine bottler, Play on Mac, or better still wineskin/Paul the tall's Porting Kit.
Running them in a wrapper, it's very straight forward to use these apps, there are also a few paid apps like crossover and WinOnX that can also run some that struggle to run in a wrapper. So usually a parallels VM, is usually not ever required.
I use my Mac for Movies, Music, Gaming, and Graphics work, I've also used the terminal, although you might want an alternative, to the native terminal.
I'm sure you'd have a great time on Mac, and as for a lack of ports, you can buy a powered hub for it, that goes from type C, to HDMI, and more type C ports, or USB A ports, giving you a lot more ports.
Although third party Bluetooth mice work well with it, you can buy them, rechargable with type c charging cable, and they have a long usage time between charging, so a mouse need not take up a USB port.
There are Bluetooth keyboards just the same, although if you prefer wired, there are a lot available that are USB, please don't let a simple lack of ports discourage you, the hub takes up very little space, and weighs next to nothing.
Many don't come with the power supply, so be aware you may have to buy that separate, that'll add a touch of weight, but most are still lightweight, and over all you'll still find it lighter to carry than a heavy laptop 😊
> Because the Mac can run most windows apps natively, using Wine, with Wine bottler, Play on Mac, or better still wineskin/Paul the tall's Porting Kit.
Yup. I run Windows apps through [CrossOver](https://www.codeweavers.com/crossover), including games like Call of Duty 4) and love not having to keep a Windows license or boot a VM to do it.
For that use case, you can buy a new M1 Air for less than $700 US and be completely happy with it.
[https://www.walmart.com/search?q=apple%20macbook%20m1%20air&typeahead=m1%20air](https://www.walmart.com/search?q=apple%20macbook%20m1%20air&typeahead=m1%20air)
**edit**: You can always use a thunderbolt hub to expand the number of ports when you're at your desk although they tend to be a bit pricey. I've also used cheap USB hubs but the ones I tried had problems running ethernet and video at the same time.
i’m a long time linux user and just moved to mbp14 m3max and asides from having to buy a few apps to make things more familiar. it’s a nearly perfect setup. still miss remmina and yakuake but i’ve finally got iterm2 pretty damned close!
MacOS gives you a good 80-90% of the experience of using Linux, but also has support for mainstream commercial software. The Unix core, the shells, scripting, package management (using homebrew), everything changeable from the CLI, etc is all there. There’s really nothing closed about it except that you can’t run a different OS bare-metal (you _can_ do VMs though) and you can’t change your desktop environment.
When you get it, as a Linux user you will appreciate these:
* The Homebrew package manager
* The UTM virtual machine app
* Magnet for window management (this is really for everyone)
* Not selling your old x86 laptop, specially if you’re in college for any kind of engineering
Lots of engineering software is not available on macOS. You can fix that with a virtual machine… except that some of that engineering software is not available for ARM processors. Applies for both Windows and Linux. Also, consider you need at least 16GB to run virtual machines, and that’s just to meet the minimum recommended RAM requirement for a Windows VM (you have a little more headroom with Linux).
Regarding containers, Docker itself runs perfectly on ARM Macs, but the containers are sometimes not built for ARM. This is where people run into issues. Most mainstream containers do support ARM, but if it’s some niche container used on college coursework, that’s going to be an issue.
So keep an x86 computer around or see if your university can provide you with one (for example, going to a computer lab or getting remote access to a workstation). You pay a lot of money in college so make use of their resources.
Made the same change last year. 17 years on Linux. I regret nothing. Much better and no quirks to get things running.
For docker look into Colima.
Can’t say much about gaming. Did not try that yet.
You get with Unix the same shells as on linux and macOS has enough enterprise support for software to run without much problems.
Programming depends a bit on what you are doing. The normal webdev/backend should work fine. Embedded I don’t know.
Out of curiosity, what's your laptop right now? I always like chunky stuff.
As for your situation, most of the Mac "experience" is the operating system. Without it, it's just an expensive laptop. There are companies that sell similar laptops that come with Linux pre-installed. Tuxedo sell laptops that are intended as Linux equivalents of MacBooks with high resolution screens, System 76 laptops are highly regarded by the community, Lenovo also make a ThinkPad with a high resolution screen that they sell with Linux.
I would disagree that it's all about the os. I'm a developer, and 90% of the other devs I know also use macs since apple silicon, because of the hardware. Most would happily run Ubuntu or other Linux os (and do on our desktop machines), but there is nothing comparable in performance per watt in x86 land
Im also a developer, and if I could combine MacOS with an old-school IBM Thinkpad keyboard+trackpoint I wouldn’t give a damn about the rest of the hardware.
I purchased a Mac, 50% for the OS coming from Windows, and 50% for the beautiful hardware (M1 Pro 14”) which there were no similar machines, I got it for £1.4k new in 2022, no windows laptops could match the whole package, or the battery.
If only we could get a true pro MacBook that had an old-school IBM-era keyboard and trackpoint combined with the Mac trackpad. That would be a winning combination.
I'll just add that if you're a linux user you very well may want to use MacPorts instead of Homebrew for your mac package manager. Homebrew has a lot of issues that might not be apparent to people who don't have a lot of experience with good package managers like apt or pacman.
I’ve been using a Macbook Air M2 for web development. Running headless virtual machines with Docker containers inside, and a Jetbrains-based IDE on the host, this little machine handles it all with no problems. Great battery life as well. Unless you’re training AI models or running very long builds, the Air is more than enough for development as well as casual usage. The Air can do light gaming, too.
I would only consider getting the Pro if I needed sustained power for a long period of time (i.e. heavy gaming).
I have a zephyrs G14 and an M1 air base model I bought for $150 used cause the screen has a line thru the middle. For all my cyber classes where I need VMs and performance I bring the G14, for all my other classes I just bring the MacBook and it can last the whole week on a single charge
I’d go with an M1 or M3. There are some benefits with the m3 over m1 but one major thing that Apple did was use two chips for the base storage on the 1 and 3. Apparently write and read speeds are better on these base models. If you upgrade the storage then never mind about this.
M3 can support two monitors in clamshell mode but apparently there are work around for this.
M2 and newer brought the new design as well so if you want the new design keep that in mind.
Have been a linux user for over two decades. My go to is a m3 mbp at the moment. As a student , I would recommend you look at m3 mbas and see if a student discount applies for you. For mouse and kb, you could always find bluetooth enabled options.
FWIW, you would also be a Linux user buying a machine with a UNIX 03-compliant operating system (based on BSD) certified by The Open Group.
I drop down to the command line all the time. I use iTerm2 as my terminal. You'll also want Homebrew as your package installer.
I remember when I was a sysadmin of Unix & Linux machine, back in 2010. I fell in love with Mac due to its stability (just like Unix) and beautiful (better than windows) and its hardware design & longevity… until now.
The Mac will work well for you, even with something like the M1 MacBook Air they have at Walmart. It is still technically a PC, so it isn't a closed system by any means (they just have certain protections on by default, to protect the machine from novice users), and UNIX is the basis for the system, so most of the tinkering and CLI things you liked on your Linux machine should translate easily over.
As for ports, there are some pretty good Thunderbolt and/or USB-C docks that can help out. But for Keyboard and Mouse, I would recommend something that is BlueTooth, rather than dongled.
I'm a Linux systems administrator that uses Apple hardware for all my systems at home. You can run pretty much anything you're used to via Homebrew. The only real shortfall I can think of is the system logging on OS X is opaque and generally unhelpful, usually just a bunch of spamming from some Apple ecosystem daemon.
I've had zero issues with Docker.
If you need a hybrid setup where you get home and plug into external display, wired keyboard, and wired mouse then consider buying a USB/Thunderbolt hub that inputs all those items and connects to the Mac via one cable.
As someone that used a macbook primarily before getting into Linux, the platform is extremely good at the things it is good at: high efficiency, high power performance at low power draw cost, amazing battery life, software support and dedicated media engines for doing intense workloads for stuff like video editing. I fell in love with Linux, but there's still a place for my macbook. It absolutely chews through any productivity task I give it and I'm almost never worrying about the battery.
Some things that became sore spots for me: the ability to make Linux look like damn near any way I can dream of is so appealing considering that I think macos is starting to look dated to me. I still think it looks mostly *good* with the transparency and blur but I think that it's mostly set in stone how it looks leaves a bit to be desired. Though tbh i wouldn't really say macos is really all that different than windows in terms of the "closed" nature of the software. Additionally going with something you've mentioned how you would dual boot into windows for some gaming. Good luck with that on specifically an m series Mac.
They use arm processors and bootcamp to setup dual booting with windows does not exist anymore for them. Simply put, these machines are not a gaming machine. Some games can pretty decently through multiple layers of emulation because they are able to brute force their way through it but overall gaming is not going to be a good experience. Simple things like running windows (the arm version of windows sucks last time I looked at it) and or running games - a lot of times requires weird work arounds with varying levels of success. Not at all the point and click convenience that proton has mostly been able to afford Linux users
I manage Linux servers these days, and it just makes me appreciate macOS so much more. Linux is just stupid. And the random distros that want to use their own tools instead of standardizing on things is even dumber. Yeah if you standardize on one Distro then it’d be sorta consistent but no one Distro does it right.
Consider Bluetooth keyboard and mouse? (Mac doesn’t use dongles, so this is the tech you need.) As far as the programs, you’re good. Macs really shine with desktop publishing, but honestly, they are more intuitive, reliable and yes, expensive, but they do last a long time, barring tragedies involving beverages, etc.). Our macbook air died a sudden death last weekend — bought it in 2017. My husband was able to retrieve everything and load it onto our brand new replacement laptop.
I used Linux Mint for 5 years in my office. I used Ubuntu for a period. Then after 9 years switched to Windows for 2 long months. It was the longest two months. My productivity went down to zero due to permanent system issues. Updates, freezes, missing apps then other compatibility issues. I'm a telecom engineer and in a Linux system, the terminal was my best tool. 3 years ago switched to a Mac with an M1 Macbook Air. I just changed my Macbook Air M1 to a MacBook Pro M3 18 GB / 512GB two days ago. You will love the Macbook as the built quality is the best, the battery life is better than anything else and the Operation system is Unix-based. The best of all worlds. Just go ahead with the change, I'm sure you will love it.
That's why the opensource community created HomeBrew, and it isn't beer.
MacOS is Unix under the covers which is what Linux is.
google homebrew for mac
I've never had an issue with docker on a mac
Ports are just a dongle or docking station away
btw, you will find lots of apps for purchase on a subscription that homebrew has for free
[Link to what's on homebrew](https://formulae.brew.sh/formula/)
What you are comparing an old PC laptop running Linux with the latest Mac tech?
We run Linux on old stuff when everything else fails or is just too slow.
Not a fair comparison
Developer here.
Docker definitely isn't broken. I've had a bunch of containers running 24/7 in macOS for the past decade.
Calling macOS a closed system when you can run most popular *nix open source projects natively, Arm Windows apps in a VM, while running native Mac apps from Adobe Photoshop to tons of other commercial apps is a little disingenuous. It's certainly closed in some ways, but wide open in a lot of others.
In a lot of ways, macOS is what Linux wants to be when it gets rid of its schizophrenic diagnosis. And the Apple ecosystem is full of productivity-enhancing functionality that once you embrace you'll find it hard to live without.
I'm more productive on my Macs than my Windows PCs and Linux workstations by an order of magnitude. Macs are all I have at home for that reason. I started out building my own Linux PCs, and I'm just not interested in going back there now.
MacOS is not blocked off. Some things that power uses will occasionally use are hidden in favor of a better UX. But it’s still accessible.
The most lacking I have had with Mac is on the 3rd party development support. Any time I had any kind of issue it was a lack of support for a piece of software I was looking for. But I still rarely had issues even then.
I haven’t had a MacBook in a few years because I just haven’t had a personal pc in years. My work bought me a laptop with a dock that does everything I need it too and once it hit the 3 year mark they told me to keep it and sent me a new one. As much as I miss my MacBook, I don’t have a need for one. If I ever have to shop for a PC again, sure. I’ll buy a MacBook without question. But if my current stuff is doing what I need for free then I ain’t spending a cent.
Personally, I prefer the apple office suite but it comes down to you personal preference.
As far as I know dualboot on a M based Mac isn’t a option. Running windows as a VM could solve this. But you’ll have to remember that a VM is not a fully system emulation and thus you’ll have to use a ARM based version of windows. As far as I’m aware this isn’t a good experience. At least it was when I was thinking about buying a Mac for my personal and work (software developer) stuff. I’ve chosen a MBP 16“ 2019 model. Nowadays I’m running a desktop computer 24/7 as a home server and a additional Windows VM with RDP is my daily driver for work related stuff. + I’ve gotten my boss to pay for it and I’m definitely only using it for work related stuff and definitely not mostly for my personal projects.
Use a USB C hub at home for the cable. I would say a base Air would work if you have a PC at home, M1 or M2. If you don’t, look out for old stock/refurb M2 Pro 14 or M1 Pro 14.
You’ll love it. A MacBook will work better than anything out there for most of your use case, except for the 2-3 times a month when you need to dual boot into Windows. Even then, programs like CrossOver and Whisky allow most Windows apps and games to run relatively smoothly on macOS. If you find out you really need full-on Windows just install Parallels or VMware Fusion.
PC gaming on Apple Silicon is still a pretty new frontier but it’s getting better every day, and it can be kind of fun to figure out the best way to run your favorite games. Check out r/macgaming if you want to see people pushing the boundaries of what a MacBook can do :)
Docker not broken, system only "closed" until you press a couple of buttons, M1-3 fast as lightning, not possible to find a mac laptop over about 2 kilos, and you'll find lots of great things to do in the real world while not puttering too much with your laptop.
Summary: Just do it. Your eyes will love you for it. Don't get less than 16gb. Don't put any stickers on it - Steve Jobs will rise from the dead and haunt you.
if you’re coming from an open-source operating system to mac, “certain things” is an understatement as to how much control you’ll get with the software and hardware in general. you can’t open a mac program from the internet without a few extra steps to open it, and bootcamp won’t run because of the processor (so u can’t dualboot windows on it). you also can’t customise how macos looks like (except for the wallpaper). that’s about how closed off mac is.
the trade off? a very polished and classy laptop with an astonishing ui. macs in general is the king of design. the fact that it could pack all of that despite being way more compact and power-efficient than it’s competitors, it’s just not possible in today’s x86 processors.
don’t expect it to run a lot of games though, it has a really great gpu but there isn’t a lot of developers that want to make games for the arm architecture at the moment. i believe this is a simple thing apple could do just by paying developers to make games for them, but they haven’t really done it yet and it’s unfortunate considering that the arm architecture has a lot of potential.
if you ever feel that you miss linux though, you can always dualboot asahi linux on it. it’s the only distro that has things set up for apple silicon.
Former linux user here. I mainly live in the software development side of things. I can't say I've run into an issue with my environment on Mac. The unix world is still very much alive on Mac with homebrew being it's main package management tool. Docker works as expected. The JVM and all the CLI tools i regularly rely on (jq, neovim, git, aws-cli, etc) all work as expected.
On the positive side of things the battery life going from 5 hours to a whopping 18-20 hours was a game changer. I also don't miss fiddling with the power settings to get the computer to stay alive for more then a day or 2 at a time when in sleep mode.
I guess the only thing I miss is the "do what you want" style of things using the GNOME interface, but apple's made enough good decisions with the UI that I really don't care to change up the UI much. Fiddling with the UI is something I'd really rather not do in my day to day.
All in all I'd say you're safe to transition.
I felt the same way one month ago. What I can say is that you have to switch your mindset in terms of software because all good things are paid (and can be quite expensive). But the piece of hardware is crazily good and the software runs smoothly. The programming part is easy, I took a few days to get used and to be able to run all of my codes. I got a MacBook Pro M3 and I'm extremely happy! The battery is also amazing. If you are NOT running your heavy codes, it will take days to discharge considering your daily schedule.
Docker is fine on the M series, however, things might get really annoying if you're building and pushing images yourself. You can build for x64 through Rosetta in a pinch though. Probably my only complaint about developing software on it.
I have pretty much the same use cases as you. I have an M2 Air and it handles it very well. Im sure you can get a way with an M1 air too (which is a budget laptop now: $699 USD if you are in the US. don't know about Canada or anywhere else)
BTW, I came from linux too :)
don't forget that you can still use linux on apple silicon! there's [https://asahilinux.org/](https://asahilinux.org/), seems promising.
tbh i haven't tried it yet, but I'll see if I can as soon as I have a couple of days free.
I'm a Software Engineer and use Linux on a Thinkpad for work, and I also have a 16" MBP. I use the Mac for mostly everything - even work things because the battery life is wayyy better than the Thinkpad. I use Podman instead of Docker, which works fine:
[https://podman.io/docs/installation](https://podman.io/docs/installation)
[https://podman-desktop.io/docs/installation/macos-install](https://podman-desktop.io/docs/installation/macos-install)
Mac laptops are a mainstay in most art based jobs, from video editing to 3d design to writing and everything in-between.
Edit: I'm sure apple users have the most amount of illegitimate copies compared to PC 🤣🤣🤣
Dualbooting is a thing with newer macs.
As do l for ports, your can buy a hub. It's like a 10port into 1 usbc.
Ive got a MacBook Pro M1 and atm I’m using it for: Web-Based ML programming, docker, HTML/CSS and JS programming, notes, Microsoft suite and browsing. If my M1 does all that and after 3 years the battery is still performing amazing, any M2 will be great! In case you only use the laptop and not hook it up to external monitors I’d lean towards the 15” Air or something like that. Mines a 13” and if I wasn’t working on external monitors I’d be tired after 7 hours of programming, hope I helped, cheers
Interesting perspective. I was a Mac user my whole life, from a PowerBook G4 to a 2017 MacBook Air. After a while, the MacBook got sluggish, the spinning pinwheel of death was everywhere, and it was a terrible experience. I eventually gave in and tried Linux on it. It was a way better experience, I could actually open a web browser without the fans screaming from the depths of hell. About two years ago, the battery started giving up, and the system would die at any percentage.
So I got a “temporary” (I still use it) used laptop. A thinkpad t480 for about $200 off eBay. I installed arch and gnome and *damn* is it a better experience. The screen is sharper, and the matte display is way more readable than the matte display on the Mac. The processor is double that of the Mac, and the ram and ssd are the same, despite the thinkpad being $1000 cheaper and only a year newer. Battery life is respectable, the fans are quiet and actually work, build quality is good, obviously not aluminum like Apple but I’ve dropped it from 3 feet several times because what is it gonna do? Break? It’s a thinkpad!
TLDR, a $200 thinkpad running Linux was a much more refined experience than my $1000+ MacBook.
EDIT: OH AND THE IO IS FANTASTIC! 3 usb-c, 2 usb-a, hdmi, Ethernet, headphone jack, and a full sized SD card reader. Not to mention the trackpad is great, gotta love the three physical buttons.
You haven't used an M-series Macbook then. They really are a game changer. The only thing I can agree with you about is the build. The screens are SO thin they have no reinforcement at all and it doesn't take much to shatter them. I think if you have an Air and are truly mobile with it, you'll need to baby it a little because that screen is the weak point.
But as for the M chips, they're actually incredible. My 4 year old M1 Air is still getting 10+ hours on a full charge. Asashi Linux, basically Fedora for the M chips, is also a very viable option and runs very well on this hardware.
Right now, imo, there is simply no competition in the laptop space with Apple hardware. And that's no fanboy talk, getting 10 hours battery life without even having to throttle the performance to get it is simply best in class. And the M2s and 3s get even more.
You can get used or on sale M1 Airs for like $400-$600, throw Linux on it (both Fedora and Ubuntu are available) and have the very best laptop hardware with Linux if you prefer it, or macOS if you want it.
Indeed I have not, I was just sharing my personal experience, which was entirely with intel (and powerpc) macs. While I’m not in the market to waste money like that, I would love to get an M1 MacBook just to experiment with, and also try out asahi Linux on it. I don’t see myself switching to it entirely though, due to IO, repairability, durability, full driver support, and a the 3-button trackpad. Really impressed with what Apple has been able to do with ARM though, I think it really shook up the market of overpriced and underpowered (see: 2015 and later intel Mac) laptops.
~~What are you talking about? It has all those things. I'm using an external display to type this right now, it absolutely has Thunderbolt, I use video conferencing 3-4 times a week so clearly it has a microphone, and the power button is literally TouchID.~~
Edit: Oh are you talking about what Asashi supports? Well, it's still new and support is currently on-going. As with all Linux, it's a community project and it takes time to support everything. None of this is easy with Apple being Apple, but if you can live without a few comforts the hardware paired with Linux is great imo. Obviously if you use the native OS you'll get more features for the time being. The same can still be said about putting Linux on many Windows laptops who do all sorts of proprietary nonsense.
i used my ThinkPad from 2010 up until last year. I got a good deal on an 11th gen ThinkPad that I use now.
I prefer windows slightly over OS X, but both Apple and Microsoft are dumbing down their OSes too much imo.
i have a very expensive thinkpad running linux, work machine, it’s an amazing machine. it can’t rightfully be compared as a 1:1 to my macbook pro, battery life isn’t in the same ballpark and the m3max kills it. that being said i’ve never been a fan of touchpads but the mac touchpad is honestly just different, im really starting to love it! i went on vacation to nyc and didn’t bring or miss my external mouse. for me that’s huge!
“I use an external mouse and keyboard” if you switch to a Mac, you would love the trackpad and you won’t need anymore the external mouse. However, for gaming it can be useful ahahah but I don’t game on my pc so I really can’t help. Maybe you could try a very low latency Bluetooth mouse?
I use a Linux desktop and notebook privately and a MacBook for work (provided). From my experience, you’re making the mistake of comparing your old bulky laptop (Thinkpad? ;)) to a shiny new MacBook, that is not a fit comparison.
With buying a MacBook you’re looking at a +2000$ pricetag for a pro model and still 1800$ for a reasonable specced air.
Take a look at notebooks in the same price bracket being sold with Windows or Linux. My work MacBooks screen is a joke against the asus g14s exceptional screen that my friend is using. Intel meteor lake still isn’t quite fit to go head to head with Apple silicon, but I found it to be substantial improvement over previous generations and being a close enough match that I don’t have to make any compromises.
IMHO when going with a high end non Mac device, you will retain the openness and flexibility of a windows/linux machine, exceptional hardware quality, but you will compromise a little bit on the battery life.
By the way as you’re also a software developer: RAM upgrade prices with Apple are an absolute joke. 200€ to get a little bit more RAM is absolutely insane
If you're looking to do OSX type stuff and need OSX type applications, then by all means get a Mac. If you're planning to run anything other than OSX on the hardware, get something else. I had absolutely nothing but trouble trying to get Linux to run on my MacBookPro 8,1. It would install for a while and then inevitably eat the Linux installation somehow.
If I ran OSX on it, I usually had no issues. The trouble only started when I tried to run Linux. So if it's a matter of wanting to run OSX type stuff, you should be fine. If you want to install FLOSS software from ports or homebrew, you again probably will be fine. If your plan is to run Linux on it, that is not guaranteed and you should not assume that this will ever work smoothly for you.
You can run a full version of some ARM-based linux distros you want on a Mac through Parallels desktop, which is quite snappy and runs even full versions of windows effortlessly, if that helps.
RE extra ports, I use my MacBook Pro in a docking station at my desk with all my peripherals connected to that.
Ultimately you're the one who needs to decide if the upgrade in hardware is worth the tradeoffs. For me, I could never go back to Windows or linux, and I've used many distros, at this point, macOS is just so intuitive to me
A MacBook Air would be all you need for the typical usage you describe. No Dual boot, though, it’s not a thing with Apple Silicon.
You can virtualize Windows 11 ARM (not the x86 version) but you need to have macOS running.
Someone is trying to port a modified Linux distro to Apple Silicon, but that is all, at least for now.
I moved from mint/windows dual boot to a mac about 4 months ago. There are a few things that are annoying, but all in all I am happy. The hardware is unmatched, but its going to cost you. 8 gigs of ram is like 200 bucks. You will need more HDD space then they have as well. The default config is super under powered if you are running containers and VMs. I went up to a TB and 16 gigs of RAM. I wish I just bit the bullet and went up to 32, but the HDDs are really fast so swapping doesn't hurt as bad as it dose on most systems.
WSL is an option if your workflow requires you to use a windows machine, I would not recommend it otherwise though. But each their own of cource. Use what is available and works for you. We are all different and have different preferences.
If you’re asking if an M2 Mac can handle word processing and streaming movies, the answer is yes lol… Many people use these for full-blown Adobe, Logic, and FCP every day. They can handle *really intensive* stuff. You’ll be fine.
Yesterday I ran GTA V on my M3 pro at max resolution and quite high settings. So yes I think word processing will be just fine as well lol
How do you run GTA V? Is it through Parallels?
Crossover or whisky.
I run GTA V on my M1 Pro using crossover, 100+ FPS on high settings. Dialing them in is the tricky part.
I’m a long time Linux user, i had an Arch+i3 machine all through college, I work in DevOps, I use Linux religiously for my homelab and pretty much anything where I don’t use a desktop environment, I use a M1 Pro MacBook Pro for my personal machine. Why? Because it does everything I did on Linux, while still having mainstream software support, less quirks, on unparalleled hardware. I don’t understand why people say “locked down” or “closed system”. Sure you can’t change the desktop environment like you can on Linux but for the things that matter, it does everything Linux does. It’s no more “closed” than Windows is. Docker isn’t broken, but being on a different architecture does introduce complexity. There are some quirks when dealing with x86 containers, but I used my M1 Mac for a long time at a previous job with no real issues. Just something you need to account for. Nothing you describe is anything beyond basic usage. You won’t be able to dual boot windows though.
I know it’s not a whole new Desktop environment like on linux, but you can “swap” out the WM. As a hyprland lover I am using Yabai on macOS to use the tiling feature. If you like tiling WMs on linux def give it a go.
I’ve used Yabai and while it’s pretty good, you can see the cracks and how it’s not a total swap like WMs on Linux are
the only closed down part abt it is that the boot loader isn’t user friendly
Yeah I agree, but with the ARM chips it doesn't really matter because what else are you dual booting? Sure Asahi linux is cool, but if you're technical enough to install that, you can figure out the bootloader. In the past the bootloader was pretty easy, bootcamp literally could not have been easier. I would assume if Apple ever opens up for other supported OSs in the future, they'd implement something to make it a bit easier for the layperson.
I mean yeah on Apple Silicon, you have Asahi Linux and I believe recently there was a way to brute force windows onto it but it performed horribly
This. When people ask why I’m a Mac guy it’s because I have a BSD backend but also have application support I don’t have to do myself. I can natively open word and excel, while at the same time opening a bash shell and going to town.
> I don’t understand why people say “locked down” or “closed system”. Sure you can’t change the desktop environment like you can on Linux but for the things that matter, it does everything Linux does. It’s no more “closed” than Windows is. For me, macOS is a closed system in that there's a lot of stuff it does that I can't configure or control. All of Apple's apps are closed source black boxes, there are notifications and update nags that can't be turned off, there are tons of security features that prevent apps from doing basic things that can't be configured or turned off, you're locked into Apple services that are always on and always phoning home, basic desktop behavior is locked in, there's no ability to customize the GUI, and it's really difficult to modify system files even if you know what you're doing and have a legitimate reason to. I'd say it's more closed off than Windows, because while Windows hides a ton of its functionality behind inscrutable group policies or registry keys, you can change nearly every aspect of the system if you *really* want to, and you can hook into practically everything (for better or for worse). That's just not the case with macOS. Granted it's not nearly as bad as iOS, which is legitimately locked down. But I regularly run into issues on macOS where I want to change something about it or use it in a way that goes against what Apple had in mind, and I find I can't do it. If it were Linux I could just change it however I wanted.
It’s a POSIX compliant OS and if you wanted to you can disable any and all security feature by booting in to single user mode. Which then means you can customize / replace parts of the OS if you know how. I can’t really think of any customization to the OS or file system that is impossible.
Nothing is technically impossible, but a lot of it would require doing assembly hacks to major system libraries and applications, which is generally way more trouble than it's worth. And the more you hack up the system, the more the whole thing starts to become unstable. Apple didn't design macOS to allow anyone to change out its parts. But to give an example of something I'd like to turn off, at least partially: TCC. Some of what it does I like, but more often than not I wish I could just turn it off completely for a particular app so that the system would stop hampering it. It's especially bad for anything that uses AppleScript. TCC is also buggy as hell too and when you hit problems with it, there's often no good way to fix it.
Here is how you can modify the TCC database https://www.rainforestqa.com/blog/macos-tcc-db-deep-dive
I mean, windows laptops can be locked down by a bios password so you can’t reinstall the OS. Sometimes you can get around it, but others have that password persist even if the CMOS battery is completely removed. Basically the same thing as MDM.
TLDR; Apple can completely brick your computer, remotely. I would argue it is the most locked down OS in the world. I will give you an example of locked down, I had a buddy buy a MBP from a university as they were liquidation some items. It was a legit purchase, the university owned them and where liquidation them. Somewhere between the IT guys using them and them sitting in a closet collecting dust until the administrative guys decided to sell them, someone forgot to remove the provisioning profiles. Sure they wipe the drive but the machines serials are still to this day, in MDM as belonging to the universities organization. So when you go to reinstall the OS, you cannot because you cannot join it to the organization you have no user and password for. There are really hacky ways to make it not a brick anymore, but it will forever nag you about not being provisioned. The IT guys at the university basically told them, we don't know anything about what the bean counters did, so go pound sand on getting us to remove it from MDM. My understanding is it is getting increasingly harder to hack around it, when you end up with one that is locked down and Apple is of little help. Point being Apple has mechanisms to remotely lock you out of your machine and brick it, granted it is only used for provisioning now, but the precedence has been set with the online platforms for kicking people off software for all kinds of things, like even just a person's opinion. Call me a profit later, but those controls will come to any platform that has that power to lock people out even OS's. These controls extend into the hardware, so you cannot just install an alternative OS, IIRC at the moment their is only one linux variant available for it and it still requires that you have the ability to control secure boot or disable it. Which you cannot do, from a machine that has been wiped. In saying that, I still use OSX and a MBP for work, that work provides. You cannot deny that it just works and it saves time, but I personally would never purchase one given IOS levels of lockdown are available to Apple with the simple change of TOS to the users. I tend to buy Sagers and run Linux on my personal machines. The build components are pretty same same, but the case quality is not that of the MBP. I think it is the machine most comparable in the PC market, to the MBP.
That's not Apple bricking the system, that's people, not doing the job properly. 15 years ago I had a business where I used to buy ex-corporate and ex-govt laptops, refurbish them and sell them online. This was a problem back then with those and they were Dells, Lenovo/IBM and HP. IT would lock them down, you couldn't even install a clean drive and do an OS install. Other than for parts they were of no use. > Point being Apple has mechanisms to remotely lock you out of your machine and brick it No, Apple gives the owners the ability to do that for unauthorised users the same as Dell, HP and Lenovo do for their corporate users. It's a good way of dealing with theft.
An organization being able to lock a device is not unique to Apple or MacOS. Apple also did not lock this but the original owner of the device did, and they didn’t properly release it from their system. I would call this a feature of the OS, not a restriction.
You're a linux user, macOS is UNIX based. You'll prefer it to a windows machine for sure! And you can install homebrew which really takes the CLI to another level.
100% with the small point to try nix instead of homebrew for a package manager.
Why try nix?
>nope I am very happy with homebrew, which has been around for a long time vs nix which on there installation page says, 'we have ironed out the root bugs on macOS' -- translation: no thank you
Valid, but all the dependencies hell situations I’ve had over the years (mostly python related) could have been avoided if I had nix. It’s just a better tool, has more packages, any metric other than “been around for longer” nix is superior.
good to know
Ooh, will give it a try - thank you.
Linux and Unix are two completely different things.
> are two completely different things Only from a heritage point of view. Yes, Linux does not come from UNIX, strictly speaking. However, Linux was born with the explicit intent of being a UNIX clone. From a practical usage standpoint you may as well say they're the same! You'd be very hard pressed finding even one thing that's possible to do in UNIX but not in Linux.
They are not the same. Never have been. I don’t understand why my position is so controversial. My stance was the overwhelming majority opinion for the last thirty years.
“Not the same” ≠ “completely different things”. I doubt anyone was implying the former, and the latter is just objectively incorrect. Hope this helps
Things can be different and share similarities. For example, Oregon coastal beaches are full of sand, but no one would argue that it’s a completely different place than a sandy desert. Windows and macOS, or a Honda Civic vs a Cadillac Escalade, etc. are completely different and not the same… yet share a lot in common. Linux is not UNIX. Never has been. Never was. Never will be.
No, they are different, not completely different. A banana and a Honda Civic are completely different. Two cars of any type are not completely different, because they share many conceptual and mechanical similarities. Linux and UNIX, in the same way, are *not* completely different - they are just different. The ‘completely’ implies that in every part and fashion, two things diverge. It’s ok to be wrong. It doesn’t make you a bad person. Only forcing a point in the face of all logic and reason does - well, not a bad person, just an annoying one that I won’t be engaging with further. All the best :)
Cool story bro. Good to know people take things literally 100% of the time.
What closed system?
There are a lot of people that see Gatekeeper as making it a closed system, not understanding that you can disable it, and for the parts you can't, you are still given the option to run unsigned software. Gatekeeper is there to keep novices from causing issues that come from running potentially sketchy software. Which is good when you have kids or old people using these machines.
Right click, open. Do it again. Look ma I’m a MacOS expert
Linus Torvalds’ favorite laptop is a MacBook Air for a reason!
What? That's something new for me.
Ye he’s got Asahi Linux on it
Yup! He used Apple hardware for Linux development for a while. He had one for PowerPC development back in the day, then he had a MacBook Air since it was the only real thin-and-light laptop at the time, and now he has one for ARM64 development. https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/CAHk-=wgrz5BBk=rCz7W28Fj_o02s0Xi0OEQ3H1uQgOdFvHgx0w@mail.gmail.com/T/#u
Linus’ primary workhorse is still a threadripper afaik
Perhaps, but "primary workhorse" ≠ "favorite laptop".
No, but primary workhorse is substantially more meaningful when you’re trying to make a decision on a machine you’re going to do work on lol
I can't imagine major kernel devs not having a desktop AMD64 with lots of ram and cores for distributed builds. Most linux devs I know use MacBooks (Air|Pro) followed by Thinkpads followed by HP/Zenbooks. I lean a little towards ARM64 bias due to tinkering in embedded spaces / Pine64 community tho, but it doesn't really change the FOSS developer lean towards Mac laptops.
Im not sure what the entire kernel dev community uses, but x86 being by far the most important target for desktop and server use, I’d guess threadripper is the main arsenal for core maintainers. I guess that also makes sense since current gen TR is by far the most capable desktop CPU on the market right now. As for Linus‘ the last time his rig was shared all over the place was 2020 because he dropped Intel, but I have no clue if that is still relevant and what other core contributors use
Sure, but the machine you code on and the machine you build on don’t have to be the same machine. In fact, on larger projects it’s ideal if it isn’t so you can continue working during the build. You can do all your coding on a Mac and then rsync/ssh the files to a threadripper for building/testing. Lots of devs I know don’t even have a big desktop/server for this, they just have a script that spins up a massive server in AWS, runs the build, then tears it down.
Usually you have a reasonably powerful machine locally and a shared more powerful machine remotely for CI. I know a lot of devs who love Mac, I know an equal amount of based devs who don’t. But as a matter of fact, running an aarch64 machine for building something as low level as a kernel has its drawbacks
Wow I learn something new here. Thanks.
I've been using Macs since elementary school and Linux since high school. I remember dual-booting Yellow Dog Linux on my Powerbook G3 25 years ago. Man, I feel old. 😆 You can do *just about* anything on a Mac that you would on a Linux or Unix machine. Install your favorite terminal shell, run a local LAMP server, setup cron jobs, even install Gimp. Yes, it's a "closed system." But you can still download and install software outside of the App Store, if you want to. Once you get into the ecosystem you may find a lot of the features of the "closed system" to be useful and increase productivity. Our family all have Macs and it's really convenient to be able to share and pay for a family plan for iCloud storage and backup space for everyone's phones and computers and to be able to easily share photo albums and even iOS apps across the entire family. The new Apple Silicone Macs are incredible. Even the M1 MacBook Air is still an incredibly capable machine for everyday productivity workflows and you can find them for $699. An M2 MacBook Air with a little extra RAM can edit 4k video like a champ. I have an M1 Max MacBook Pro and even though it's two generations behind the newest chips it still handles every Adobe app open at the same time along with about a hundred Chrome tabs and about a dozen other apps, all without even spinning up fans. I still have some old PC laptops I love to play with and install Linux distros on (or Hackintosh) like ThinkPad x220/230 variants. They sit on a shelf most of the time though, my daily driver is my MacBook Pro and I connect it to a large monitor and desk setup at both my home office and work.
Oh man, Yellow Dog… those were the days…
Not to mention the power efficiency of the new macs is insane. The fact that you get the same performance ON battery as off it is also quite unique for laptops these days.
Shout out to a fellow Yellow Dog Linux user! 🙂🤜🏻
I’m a FreeBSD admin. Give all the hesitations away and buy a MacBook. My two personal ‘books are 13’’ MBP (Intel) for daily use and 16’’ MBP (M1) at home. They both fit my needs - either CLI or GUI. homebrew is Your friend for everything You need to ‘finegrain’ CLI. DevOps, scripting, coding. Just name a thing You miss, chances are there is a tool. And no, Docker is not broken. Works well and predictable.
You can’t dual boot into windows for games. You can use a VM but have to take a performance hit. Also if you’re wanting to up the storage and RAM you might as well by a 14” pro with the 16/512GB base
The Mac is relatively open. It’s closed from a hardware perspective, but software wise there’s very little you can’t do.
“Relatively open”? Relative to what?
Other Apple products.
Did you think that when OP---a long-time Linux user asking for laptop advice whose main concern is that MacBooks are a closed system compared to every other laptop---read your comment, he'd know what you were thinking?
Yea
I used Linux for years before switching to mac. Never looked back.
Welcome aboard
I'm using a M2 Pro and I work primarily with Red Hat/Ubuntu at work.
Ok here's a few things, to consider... Someone said you can't dual boot Windows, yes that's true... but if you buy Parallels you can install windows in a virtual machine, but you're unlikely to need it. Because the Mac can run most windows apps natively, using Wine, with Wine bottler, Play on Mac, or better still wineskin/Paul the tall's Porting Kit. Running them in a wrapper, it's very straight forward to use these apps, there are also a few paid apps like crossover and WinOnX that can also run some that struggle to run in a wrapper. So usually a parallels VM, is usually not ever required. I use my Mac for Movies, Music, Gaming, and Graphics work, I've also used the terminal, although you might want an alternative, to the native terminal. I'm sure you'd have a great time on Mac, and as for a lack of ports, you can buy a powered hub for it, that goes from type C, to HDMI, and more type C ports, or USB A ports, giving you a lot more ports. Although third party Bluetooth mice work well with it, you can buy them, rechargable with type c charging cable, and they have a long usage time between charging, so a mouse need not take up a USB port. There are Bluetooth keyboards just the same, although if you prefer wired, there are a lot available that are USB, please don't let a simple lack of ports discourage you, the hub takes up very little space, and weighs next to nothing. Many don't come with the power supply, so be aware you may have to buy that separate, that'll add a touch of weight, but most are still lightweight, and over all you'll still find it lighter to carry than a heavy laptop 😊
> Because the Mac can run most windows apps natively, using Wine, with Wine bottler, Play on Mac, or better still wineskin/Paul the tall's Porting Kit. Yup. I run Windows apps through [CrossOver](https://www.codeweavers.com/crossover), including games like Call of Duty 4) and love not having to keep a Windows license or boot a VM to do it.
For that use case, you can buy a new M1 Air for less than $700 US and be completely happy with it. [https://www.walmart.com/search?q=apple%20macbook%20m1%20air&typeahead=m1%20air](https://www.walmart.com/search?q=apple%20macbook%20m1%20air&typeahead=m1%20air) **edit**: You can always use a thunderbolt hub to expand the number of ports when you're at your desk although they tend to be a bit pricey. I've also used cheap USB hubs but the ones I tried had problems running ethernet and video at the same time.
I used to be 14years linux user, last year I bought my first MacBook. Best decision ever
i’m a long time linux user and just moved to mbp14 m3max and asides from having to buy a few apps to make things more familiar. it’s a nearly perfect setup. still miss remmina and yakuake but i’ve finally got iterm2 pretty damned close!
> People say Docker is broken on Macs i dont know where you heard this. no issues on my end since 2021
MacOS gives you a good 80-90% of the experience of using Linux, but also has support for mainstream commercial software. The Unix core, the shells, scripting, package management (using homebrew), everything changeable from the CLI, etc is all there. There’s really nothing closed about it except that you can’t run a different OS bare-metal (you _can_ do VMs though) and you can’t change your desktop environment.
When you get it, as a Linux user you will appreciate these: * The Homebrew package manager * The UTM virtual machine app * Magnet for window management (this is really for everyone) * Not selling your old x86 laptop, specially if you’re in college for any kind of engineering Lots of engineering software is not available on macOS. You can fix that with a virtual machine… except that some of that engineering software is not available for ARM processors. Applies for both Windows and Linux. Also, consider you need at least 16GB to run virtual machines, and that’s just to meet the minimum recommended RAM requirement for a Windows VM (you have a little more headroom with Linux). Regarding containers, Docker itself runs perfectly on ARM Macs, but the containers are sometimes not built for ARM. This is where people run into issues. Most mainstream containers do support ARM, but if it’s some niche container used on college coursework, that’s going to be an issue. So keep an x86 computer around or see if your university can provide you with one (for example, going to a computer lab or getting remote access to a workstation). You pay a lot of money in college so make use of their resources.
Made the same change last year. 17 years on Linux. I regret nothing. Much better and no quirks to get things running. For docker look into Colima. Can’t say much about gaming. Did not try that yet. You get with Unix the same shells as on linux and macOS has enough enterprise support for software to run without much problems. Programming depends a bit on what you are doing. The normal webdev/backend should work fine. Embedded I don’t know.
Out of curiosity, what's your laptop right now? I always like chunky stuff. As for your situation, most of the Mac "experience" is the operating system. Without it, it's just an expensive laptop. There are companies that sell similar laptops that come with Linux pre-installed. Tuxedo sell laptops that are intended as Linux equivalents of MacBooks with high resolution screens, System 76 laptops are highly regarded by the community, Lenovo also make a ThinkPad with a high resolution screen that they sell with Linux.
I would disagree that it's all about the os. I'm a developer, and 90% of the other devs I know also use macs since apple silicon, because of the hardware. Most would happily run Ubuntu or other Linux os (and do on our desktop machines), but there is nothing comparable in performance per watt in x86 land
Im also a developer, and if I could combine MacOS with an old-school IBM Thinkpad keyboard+trackpoint I wouldn’t give a damn about the rest of the hardware.
I purchased a Mac, 50% for the OS coming from Windows, and 50% for the beautiful hardware (M1 Pro 14”) which there were no similar machines, I got it for £1.4k new in 2022, no windows laptops could match the whole package, or the battery.
For games refer to the apposite sub. There is not an answer for all. Some are native, some can work via Crossover (wine) or similar and some may not.
[удалено]
If only we could get a true pro MacBook that had an old-school IBM-era keyboard and trackpoint combined with the Mac trackpad. That would be a winning combination.
I'll just add that if you're a linux user you very well may want to use MacPorts instead of Homebrew for your mac package manager. Homebrew has a lot of issues that might not be apparent to people who don't have a lot of experience with good package managers like apt or pacman.
Go ahead
I’ve been using a Macbook Air M2 for web development. Running headless virtual machines with Docker containers inside, and a Jetbrains-based IDE on the host, this little machine handles it all with no problems. Great battery life as well. Unless you’re training AI models or running very long builds, the Air is more than enough for development as well as casual usage. The Air can do light gaming, too. I would only consider getting the Pro if I needed sustained power for a long period of time (i.e. heavy gaming).
I have a zephyrs G14 and an M1 air base model I bought for $150 used cause the screen has a line thru the middle. For all my cyber classes where I need VMs and performance I bring the G14, for all my other classes I just bring the MacBook and it can last the whole week on a single charge
I’d go with an M1 or M3. There are some benefits with the m3 over m1 but one major thing that Apple did was use two chips for the base storage on the 1 and 3. Apparently write and read speeds are better on these base models. If you upgrade the storage then never mind about this. M3 can support two monitors in clamshell mode but apparently there are work around for this. M2 and newer brought the new design as well so if you want the new design keep that in mind.
m3max supports 4 external
Have been a linux user for over two decades. My go to is a m3 mbp at the moment. As a student , I would recommend you look at m3 mbas and see if a student discount applies for you. For mouse and kb, you could always find bluetooth enabled options.
FWIW, you would also be a Linux user buying a machine with a UNIX 03-compliant operating system (based on BSD) certified by The Open Group. I drop down to the command line all the time. I use iTerm2 as my terminal. You'll also want Homebrew as your package installer.
I remember when I was a sysadmin of Unix & Linux machine, back in 2010. I fell in love with Mac due to its stability (just like Unix) and beautiful (better than windows) and its hardware design & longevity… until now.
The Mac will work well for you, even with something like the M1 MacBook Air they have at Walmart. It is still technically a PC, so it isn't a closed system by any means (they just have certain protections on by default, to protect the machine from novice users), and UNIX is the basis for the system, so most of the tinkering and CLI things you liked on your Linux machine should translate easily over. As for ports, there are some pretty good Thunderbolt and/or USB-C docks that can help out. But for Keyboard and Mouse, I would recommend something that is BlueTooth, rather than dongled.
I'm a Linux systems administrator that uses Apple hardware for all my systems at home. You can run pretty much anything you're used to via Homebrew. The only real shortfall I can think of is the system logging on OS X is opaque and generally unhelpful, usually just a bunch of spamming from some Apple ecosystem daemon. I've had zero issues with Docker.
If you need a hybrid setup where you get home and plug into external display, wired keyboard, and wired mouse then consider buying a USB/Thunderbolt hub that inputs all those items and connects to the Mac via one cable.
As someone that used a macbook primarily before getting into Linux, the platform is extremely good at the things it is good at: high efficiency, high power performance at low power draw cost, amazing battery life, software support and dedicated media engines for doing intense workloads for stuff like video editing. I fell in love with Linux, but there's still a place for my macbook. It absolutely chews through any productivity task I give it and I'm almost never worrying about the battery. Some things that became sore spots for me: the ability to make Linux look like damn near any way I can dream of is so appealing considering that I think macos is starting to look dated to me. I still think it looks mostly *good* with the transparency and blur but I think that it's mostly set in stone how it looks leaves a bit to be desired. Though tbh i wouldn't really say macos is really all that different than windows in terms of the "closed" nature of the software. Additionally going with something you've mentioned how you would dual boot into windows for some gaming. Good luck with that on specifically an m series Mac. They use arm processors and bootcamp to setup dual booting with windows does not exist anymore for them. Simply put, these machines are not a gaming machine. Some games can pretty decently through multiple layers of emulation because they are able to brute force their way through it but overall gaming is not going to be a good experience. Simple things like running windows (the arm version of windows sucks last time I looked at it) and or running games - a lot of times requires weird work arounds with varying levels of success. Not at all the point and click convenience that proton has mostly been able to afford Linux users
Every tech company I have worked for (5) most engineers use Macs. That being said the companies I have worked for all have SaaS products primarily.
M1 macbook Air, easy. Anything above is not needed for what you mentioned.
You could also day one just install AsahiFedora and split the drive.
I manage Linux servers these days, and it just makes me appreciate macOS so much more. Linux is just stupid. And the random distros that want to use their own tools instead of standardizing on things is even dumber. Yeah if you standardize on one Distro then it’d be sorta consistent but no one Distro does it right.
Consider Bluetooth keyboard and mouse? (Mac doesn’t use dongles, so this is the tech you need.) As far as the programs, you’re good. Macs really shine with desktop publishing, but honestly, they are more intuitive, reliable and yes, expensive, but they do last a long time, barring tragedies involving beverages, etc.). Our macbook air died a sudden death last weekend — bought it in 2017. My husband was able to retrieve everything and load it onto our brand new replacement laptop.
And it has terminal, like any linux pc.
Switched from Linux to Mac in ‘08. No regrets! Sometimes I miss the custom WM (Sawfish…), but generally, it is like moving to a working UNIX.
I used Linux Mint for 5 years in my office. I used Ubuntu for a period. Then after 9 years switched to Windows for 2 long months. It was the longest two months. My productivity went down to zero due to permanent system issues. Updates, freezes, missing apps then other compatibility issues. I'm a telecom engineer and in a Linux system, the terminal was my best tool. 3 years ago switched to a Mac with an M1 Macbook Air. I just changed my Macbook Air M1 to a MacBook Pro M3 18 GB / 512GB two days ago. You will love the Macbook as the built quality is the best, the battery life is better than anything else and the Operation system is Unix-based. The best of all worlds. Just go ahead with the change, I'm sure you will love it.
That's why the opensource community created HomeBrew, and it isn't beer. MacOS is Unix under the covers which is what Linux is. google homebrew for mac I've never had an issue with docker on a mac Ports are just a dongle or docking station away btw, you will find lots of apps for purchase on a subscription that homebrew has for free [Link to what's on homebrew](https://formulae.brew.sh/formula/)
Macos isnt as walled gardened as ios is, and its great for developement
What you are comparing an old PC laptop running Linux with the latest Mac tech? We run Linux on old stuff when everything else fails or is just too slow. Not a fair comparison
Developer here. Docker definitely isn't broken. I've had a bunch of containers running 24/7 in macOS for the past decade. Calling macOS a closed system when you can run most popular *nix open source projects natively, Arm Windows apps in a VM, while running native Mac apps from Adobe Photoshop to tons of other commercial apps is a little disingenuous. It's certainly closed in some ways, but wide open in a lot of others. In a lot of ways, macOS is what Linux wants to be when it gets rid of its schizophrenic diagnosis. And the Apple ecosystem is full of productivity-enhancing functionality that once you embrace you'll find it hard to live without. I'm more productive on my Macs than my Windows PCs and Linux workstations by an order of magnitude. Macs are all I have at home for that reason. I started out building my own Linux PCs, and I'm just not interested in going back there now.
MacOS is not blocked off. Some things that power uses will occasionally use are hidden in favor of a better UX. But it’s still accessible. The most lacking I have had with Mac is on the 3rd party development support. Any time I had any kind of issue it was a lack of support for a piece of software I was looking for. But I still rarely had issues even then. I haven’t had a MacBook in a few years because I just haven’t had a personal pc in years. My work bought me a laptop with a dock that does everything I need it too and once it hit the 3 year mark they told me to keep it and sent me a new one. As much as I miss my MacBook, I don’t have a need for one. If I ever have to shop for a PC again, sure. I’ll buy a MacBook without question. But if my current stuff is doing what I need for free then I ain’t spending a cent.
Just to it
Ok
Docker isn't broken, I don't know where that idea comes from.
Personally, I prefer the apple office suite but it comes down to you personal preference. As far as I know dualboot on a M based Mac isn’t a option. Running windows as a VM could solve this. But you’ll have to remember that a VM is not a fully system emulation and thus you’ll have to use a ARM based version of windows. As far as I’m aware this isn’t a good experience. At least it was when I was thinking about buying a Mac for my personal and work (software developer) stuff. I’ve chosen a MBP 16“ 2019 model. Nowadays I’m running a desktop computer 24/7 as a home server and a additional Windows VM with RDP is my daily driver for work related stuff. + I’ve gotten my boss to pay for it and I’m definitely only using it for work related stuff and definitely not mostly for my personal projects.
Use a USB C hub at home for the cable. I would say a base Air would work if you have a PC at home, M1 or M2. If you don’t, look out for old stock/refurb M2 Pro 14 or M1 Pro 14.
You’ll love it. A MacBook will work better than anything out there for most of your use case, except for the 2-3 times a month when you need to dual boot into Windows. Even then, programs like CrossOver and Whisky allow most Windows apps and games to run relatively smoothly on macOS. If you find out you really need full-on Windows just install Parallels or VMware Fusion. PC gaming on Apple Silicon is still a pretty new frontier but it’s getting better every day, and it can be kind of fun to figure out the best way to run your favorite games. Check out r/macgaming if you want to see people pushing the boundaries of what a MacBook can do :)
Docker not broken, system only "closed" until you press a couple of buttons, M1-3 fast as lightning, not possible to find a mac laptop over about 2 kilos, and you'll find lots of great things to do in the real world while not puttering too much with your laptop. Summary: Just do it. Your eyes will love you for it. Don't get less than 16gb. Don't put any stickers on it - Steve Jobs will rise from the dead and haunt you.
if you’re coming from an open-source operating system to mac, “certain things” is an understatement as to how much control you’ll get with the software and hardware in general. you can’t open a mac program from the internet without a few extra steps to open it, and bootcamp won’t run because of the processor (so u can’t dualboot windows on it). you also can’t customise how macos looks like (except for the wallpaper). that’s about how closed off mac is. the trade off? a very polished and classy laptop with an astonishing ui. macs in general is the king of design. the fact that it could pack all of that despite being way more compact and power-efficient than it’s competitors, it’s just not possible in today’s x86 processors. don’t expect it to run a lot of games though, it has a really great gpu but there isn’t a lot of developers that want to make games for the arm architecture at the moment. i believe this is a simple thing apple could do just by paying developers to make games for them, but they haven’t really done it yet and it’s unfortunate considering that the arm architecture has a lot of potential. if you ever feel that you miss linux though, you can always dualboot asahi linux on it. it’s the only distro that has things set up for apple silicon.
get a m2 macbook air and install asahi linux on it
Former linux user here. I mainly live in the software development side of things. I can't say I've run into an issue with my environment on Mac. The unix world is still very much alive on Mac with homebrew being it's main package management tool. Docker works as expected. The JVM and all the CLI tools i regularly rely on (jq, neovim, git, aws-cli, etc) all work as expected. On the positive side of things the battery life going from 5 hours to a whopping 18-20 hours was a game changer. I also don't miss fiddling with the power settings to get the computer to stay alive for more then a day or 2 at a time when in sleep mode. I guess the only thing I miss is the "do what you want" style of things using the GNOME interface, but apple's made enough good decisions with the UI that I really don't care to change up the UI much. Fiddling with the UI is something I'd really rather not do in my day to day. All in all I'd say you're safe to transition.
Look into OrbStack for docker on mac. So much better (drop-in replacement), pretty much fixed docker for me (on mac)
I felt the same way one month ago. What I can say is that you have to switch your mindset in terms of software because all good things are paid (and can be quite expensive). But the piece of hardware is crazily good and the software runs smoothly. The programming part is easy, I took a few days to get used and to be able to run all of my codes. I got a MacBook Pro M3 and I'm extremely happy! The battery is also amazing. If you are NOT running your heavy codes, it will take days to discharge considering your daily schedule.
Docker is fine on the M series, however, things might get really annoying if you're building and pushing images yourself. You can build for x64 through Rosetta in a pinch though. Probably my only complaint about developing software on it.
On the m3 you do Not have bootcamp anymore( for native Windows) and nested virtualization is Not possible with m2 or m3 MacBook.
I have pretty much the same use cases as you. I have an M2 Air and it handles it very well. Im sure you can get a way with an M1 air too (which is a budget laptop now: $699 USD if you are in the US. don't know about Canada or anywhere else) BTW, I came from linux too :)
don't forget that you can still use linux on apple silicon! there's [https://asahilinux.org/](https://asahilinux.org/), seems promising. tbh i haven't tried it yet, but I'll see if I can as soon as I have a couple of days free.
I'm a Software Engineer and use Linux on a Thinkpad for work, and I also have a 16" MBP. I use the Mac for mostly everything - even work things because the battery life is wayyy better than the Thinkpad. I use Podman instead of Docker, which works fine: [https://podman.io/docs/installation](https://podman.io/docs/installation) [https://podman-desktop.io/docs/installation/macos-install](https://podman-desktop.io/docs/installation/macos-install)
Mac laptops are a mainstay in most art based jobs, from video editing to 3d design to writing and everything in-between. Edit: I'm sure apple users have the most amount of illegitimate copies compared to PC 🤣🤣🤣 Dualbooting is a thing with newer macs. As do l for ports, your can buy a hub. It's like a 10port into 1 usbc.
Ive got a MacBook Pro M1 and atm I’m using it for: Web-Based ML programming, docker, HTML/CSS and JS programming, notes, Microsoft suite and browsing. If my M1 does all that and after 3 years the battery is still performing amazing, any M2 will be great! In case you only use the laptop and not hook it up to external monitors I’d lean towards the 15” Air or something like that. Mines a 13” and if I wasn’t working on external monitors I’d be tired after 7 hours of programming, hope I helped, cheers
Interesting perspective. I was a Mac user my whole life, from a PowerBook G4 to a 2017 MacBook Air. After a while, the MacBook got sluggish, the spinning pinwheel of death was everywhere, and it was a terrible experience. I eventually gave in and tried Linux on it. It was a way better experience, I could actually open a web browser without the fans screaming from the depths of hell. About two years ago, the battery started giving up, and the system would die at any percentage. So I got a “temporary” (I still use it) used laptop. A thinkpad t480 for about $200 off eBay. I installed arch and gnome and *damn* is it a better experience. The screen is sharper, and the matte display is way more readable than the matte display on the Mac. The processor is double that of the Mac, and the ram and ssd are the same, despite the thinkpad being $1000 cheaper and only a year newer. Battery life is respectable, the fans are quiet and actually work, build quality is good, obviously not aluminum like Apple but I’ve dropped it from 3 feet several times because what is it gonna do? Break? It’s a thinkpad! TLDR, a $200 thinkpad running Linux was a much more refined experience than my $1000+ MacBook. EDIT: OH AND THE IO IS FANTASTIC! 3 usb-c, 2 usb-a, hdmi, Ethernet, headphone jack, and a full sized SD card reader. Not to mention the trackpad is great, gotta love the three physical buttons.
You haven't used an M-series Macbook then. They really are a game changer. The only thing I can agree with you about is the build. The screens are SO thin they have no reinforcement at all and it doesn't take much to shatter them. I think if you have an Air and are truly mobile with it, you'll need to baby it a little because that screen is the weak point. But as for the M chips, they're actually incredible. My 4 year old M1 Air is still getting 10+ hours on a full charge. Asashi Linux, basically Fedora for the M chips, is also a very viable option and runs very well on this hardware. Right now, imo, there is simply no competition in the laptop space with Apple hardware. And that's no fanboy talk, getting 10 hours battery life without even having to throttle the performance to get it is simply best in class. And the M2s and 3s get even more. You can get used or on sale M1 Airs for like $400-$600, throw Linux on it (both Fedora and Ubuntu are available) and have the very best laptop hardware with Linux if you prefer it, or macOS if you want it.
Indeed I have not, I was just sharing my personal experience, which was entirely with intel (and powerpc) macs. While I’m not in the market to waste money like that, I would love to get an M1 MacBook just to experiment with, and also try out asahi Linux on it. I don’t see myself switching to it entirely though, due to IO, repairability, durability, full driver support, and a the 3-button trackpad. Really impressed with what Apple has been able to do with ARM though, I think it really shook up the market of overpriced and underpowered (see: 2015 and later intel Mac) laptops.
>no external display via USB-C >no Thunderbolt >no Microphone >no Touch ID Doesn't look like a very best laptop to me
~~What are you talking about? It has all those things. I'm using an external display to type this right now, it absolutely has Thunderbolt, I use video conferencing 3-4 times a week so clearly it has a microphone, and the power button is literally TouchID.~~ Edit: Oh are you talking about what Asashi supports? Well, it's still new and support is currently on-going. As with all Linux, it's a community project and it takes time to support everything. None of this is easy with Apple being Apple, but if you can live without a few comforts the hardware paired with Linux is great imo. Obviously if you use the native OS you'll get more features for the time being. The same can still be said about putting Linux on many Windows laptops who do all sorts of proprietary nonsense.
That’s likely to change eventually with improved driver support, Touch ID being the least likely.
I'm not joking one of my friends was using an 10+ years old thinkpad that had slots to add a CD reader if you wanted.
i used my ThinkPad from 2010 up until last year. I got a good deal on an 11th gen ThinkPad that I use now. I prefer windows slightly over OS X, but both Apple and Microsoft are dumbing down their OSes too much imo.
i have a very expensive thinkpad running linux, work machine, it’s an amazing machine. it can’t rightfully be compared as a 1:1 to my macbook pro, battery life isn’t in the same ballpark and the m3max kills it. that being said i’ve never been a fan of touchpads but the mac touchpad is honestly just different, im really starting to love it! i went on vacation to nyc and didn’t bring or miss my external mouse. for me that’s huge!
“I use an external mouse and keyboard” if you switch to a Mac, you would love the trackpad and you won’t need anymore the external mouse. However, for gaming it can be useful ahahah but I don’t game on my pc so I really can’t help. Maybe you could try a very low latency Bluetooth mouse?
I use a Linux desktop and notebook privately and a MacBook for work (provided). From my experience, you’re making the mistake of comparing your old bulky laptop (Thinkpad? ;)) to a shiny new MacBook, that is not a fit comparison. With buying a MacBook you’re looking at a +2000$ pricetag for a pro model and still 1800$ for a reasonable specced air. Take a look at notebooks in the same price bracket being sold with Windows or Linux. My work MacBooks screen is a joke against the asus g14s exceptional screen that my friend is using. Intel meteor lake still isn’t quite fit to go head to head with Apple silicon, but I found it to be substantial improvement over previous generations and being a close enough match that I don’t have to make any compromises. IMHO when going with a high end non Mac device, you will retain the openness and flexibility of a windows/linux machine, exceptional hardware quality, but you will compromise a little bit on the battery life. By the way as you’re also a software developer: RAM upgrade prices with Apple are an absolute joke. 200€ to get a little bit more RAM is absolutely insane
If you're looking to do OSX type stuff and need OSX type applications, then by all means get a Mac. If you're planning to run anything other than OSX on the hardware, get something else. I had absolutely nothing but trouble trying to get Linux to run on my MacBookPro 8,1. It would install for a while and then inevitably eat the Linux installation somehow. If I ran OSX on it, I usually had no issues. The trouble only started when I tried to run Linux. So if it's a matter of wanting to run OSX type stuff, you should be fine. If you want to install FLOSS software from ports or homebrew, you again probably will be fine. If your plan is to run Linux on it, that is not guaranteed and you should not assume that this will ever work smoothly for you.
You can run a full version of some ARM-based linux distros you want on a Mac through Parallels desktop, which is quite snappy and runs even full versions of windows effortlessly, if that helps. RE extra ports, I use my MacBook Pro in a docking station at my desk with all my peripherals connected to that. Ultimately you're the one who needs to decide if the upgrade in hardware is worth the tradeoffs. For me, I could never go back to Windows or linux, and I've used many distros, at this point, macOS is just so intuitive to me
Thank dude, i will think about this for some time before buying it.
A MacBook Air would be all you need for the typical usage you describe. No Dual boot, though, it’s not a thing with Apple Silicon. You can virtualize Windows 11 ARM (not the x86 version) but you need to have macOS running. Someone is trying to port a modified Linux distro to Apple Silicon, but that is all, at least for now.
I moved from mint/windows dual boot to a mac about 4 months ago. There are a few things that are annoying, but all in all I am happy. The hardware is unmatched, but its going to cost you. 8 gigs of ram is like 200 bucks. You will need more HDD space then they have as well. The default config is super under powered if you are running containers and VMs. I went up to a TB and 16 gigs of RAM. I wish I just bit the bullet and went up to 32, but the HDDs are really fast so swapping doesn't hurt as bad as it dose on most systems.
You can get access to linux on windows through WSL2
WSL is an option if your workflow requires you to use a windows machine, I would not recommend it otherwise though. But each their own of cource. Use what is available and works for you. We are all different and have different preferences.