You can like Linux without committing to it 100% of the time. It’s an operating system, not your wife.
this post was submitted on 02 Jun 2025
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I get annoyed by the thought of getting a Mac as well
- The prices they charge for SSD upgrades is seriously laughably criminal. That said…
- You could choose to get a MacBook Pro, which starts at a higher storage tier. It’s still going to be more expensive than the air with the same size SSD, but you’ll get an inch larger screen and it is a seriously good screen.
- I’ve found after years of owning Linux and Mac laptops that I get years longer out of the Mac laptop, all things considered. They may be more up front, but dollars per year they come out ahead.
- MacOS is UNIX based, so you should feel right at home in terminal.
- Finally, take advantage of their education pricing. At least in the US, they don’t check for eligibility. So your $1399 1TB MacBook Air is now 1279. Feel a little bit better about that price?
Bonus. The trackpad is head and shoulders above anything I’ve ever used. For me, that’s worth the price of admission alone.
I loathe Windows, love Linux, but Macbooks are my machine of choice for laptops. My last one lasted over a decade of abuse and travelled all over the world with me. Perhaps another manufacturer does as good a job on their portables but I've yet to find one. I have a ThinkPad for work and by comparison it feels clunky as all hell on every level.
Yeah. We have a 2009 MacBook pro here that still works great, other than being horrendously out of date. I was getting 6+ hours of battery life out of it when it was new, which is pretty surprising in those days.
And OS X is pretty nice (or was for the life of that laptop, I haven't used it much since then), and still Unix.
When my wife needed a new laptop a few years ago, we got her a Mac, because it's just so much less maintenance for me, compared to Windows. (She uses some stuff that Linux does not yet support.)
The trackpad is head and shoulders above anything I’ve ever used. For me, that’s worth the price of admission alone.
I always find this argument odd - I absolutely hate Mac touchpads. Maybe I'm just too used to non-apple hardware or something. Not arguing with you, just pointing out that this may not be a "bonus" for everyone.
Kinda why I put it as a “bonus,” as you’re right it’s subjective. For me, Apple trackpads are perfectly buttery smooth, and they get the accidental touch detection perfect (something my work Windows laptop drives me insane with.)
I recently got a (second hand) M1 MacBook Pro and the trackpad is surprisingly awful Compared to the last MacBook I had (a 2012 rMBP). I find it very awkward to drag things for some reason. I wonder if I am perhaps ”doing it wrong”
Interesting. Is that the old chassis or the new (notch) chassis. My first thought is damage somehow on account of it being second-hand.
Notch. I don’t think there is any damage. It just seems to ”let go” whilst dragging much too easily
Settings > trackpad > click
You can change the force required to "click" the trackpad. That applies to dragging too.
If your work doesn't value you enough to give you the tools you need, maybe you need to reconsider your work.
I'm not being facetious, if your computer is used for work, not to watch random videos but to actually be productive, and you have a better way to do it, then ask for the right tool. It's justified.
Yeah, whenever I had a job that required a Mac, they had the decency to loan me one. If my job required me to buy one, I'd be looking for another job. I hate Macs.
I'd cut my balls before giving any kind of money to Apple. If you really need a new laptop (debatable, se my reply to you comment above), you may just get a well specced Thinkpad with at least 16 GB RAM (new or 2nd hand), install Linux of it and use Windows in a VM with virt-manager.
Would a VM work? I've read that you can run MacOS inside a VM. Though I haven't attempted it (yet). Could do Windows in a VM too but virtualized ad-riddled spyware is still ad-riddled spyware.
My current cpu is too weak for my work to function in a vm on my current laptop.
Which CPU is that? Mine is and i5-8250U and can virtualize Windows in a decent manner.
Did you test windows in a VM?
Did you test wine?
You could also just buy an external camera if that's the problem?
I understand the disliking of windows because of privacy but you use it for work. Windows is not really going to spy on much.
Yo did consider this but my current laptop doesn’t run windows in a vm well enough. I think the cpu is too weak.
There is no way any laptop from 2021 doesn't run windows well enough in a VM. Did you give it only 1 core? 2 gigs of ram? Did you not install the guest tools so you get stuff like 3d acceleration?
At work we run windows in a VM on 15 year old hardware with 0 graphics acceleration and it does A OK.
What CPU do you have? Have you enabled hardware accelerated virtualization in the BIOS? Did you do any tweaking when running the VM? I had a Windows 10 VM on a 2013 laptop, so what you are describing might just be bad configuration.
Enabling virtualization in the BIOS is required for usable performance. Tweaks are optional but I highly recommend them because out of the box Windows VM feels pretty sluggish mainly because of bad graphics configuration. For that I use Quickemu which is a script that automatically sets up your VM for optimal performance. (Works for MacOS VMs too but I have not tried it) Finally you can try debloating your Windows 10 installation with Chris Titus' Winutil, which btw also includes some useful Windows tools like a GUI for package manager.
That's odd... My laptop is a shitty E-series Thinkpad from 2018 with 16 GB RAM and runs Windows in a VM quite well.
I read on the other thread that the software preventing you from using linux is a video conferencing app. If you could give us more details on what this application is maybe some of us might know a more precise way around the problem, but with so little info at least I am stumbling in the dark.
As for general purpose advice, many people already said what I would have: either use a VM (mind you if configured properly VMs can run quite fast) or use remote desktop and somehow pass your webcam/microphone to the remote pc (there are USB over IP solutions out there that basically allow you to pass a USB signal over the network, like this for example; I haven't actually tried it myself but it does exist).
OP doesn't want help, they just want to complain
why not get a Framework laptop and run it with linux for all times except for when you need to run your special windows app?
I don’t think framework comes out to be much cheaper if any cheaper than a MacBook Air.
If you can, you could get one of the Intel Mac's and dual boot Linux and Mac. Or run Linux in their boot loader. I've done it with two other laptops (given to me by work and then they gave me the laptops when I left the job).
The aluminum case, track pad, and overall machine is pretty good. If your thinking of buying a laptop though, there are better laptops for the price, but you probably know that already.
Dual boot
My problem is not with the Mac operating system, it’s mostly the pricing of their hardware. I’m not going into debt over it or anything, but knowing that I’m overpaying just stings a bit.
I get the bitter taste in the mouth, but when the alternative is Windows???? I made my choice and bought an iMac recently so that I could finally ditch the last windows pc in the house (everything else is Linux). And then had my work PC updated to Win11 last week. Uggghhh …
I have been using Ubuntu on my work laptop for the past 9 years. Last month I switched to a different department, they only allow Windows. Now I have a very-locked-down windows 11 PC. It's been a very difficult transition for me.
So, I hate Apple as much as the next nerd, but even I have to admit the new m.whatever chips are pretty slick. My wife is in design and has always fussed over Apple, so I relented and got her an Air for her last upgrade. Considering the price it's still an impressive, sturdy little machine with bonkers battery life.
I have a goddamn bulletproof T14 with 32gb ram and a 5850X. It’s a beast of a dev laptop.
I just got a M4 air, base spec +32g ram. I also do homelab things. It’s effectively a thin client, and it’s beautiful for that. I charge it once every couple of weeks. And as an ARM platform, the cpu is honestly very good, and the emulation layers you get with Rosetta 2 are kind of just… magic as a result of how good they work for almost everything. And yes there are gotchas. And places that doesn’t work. But honestly - and I know this makes me sound like an Apple fanboi - Apple absolutely perfected the form factor for a high-endurance, high efficiency ultraportable here, imo. The battery life is genuinely batshit crazy. And yes it is expensive.
Side note: they’re forcing you to BYO? Any chance you are able to get a dedicated work device?
Yeah! My wife has an m1 air which I borrowed to use for work on our last trip. I was blown away by how low the cpu usage percent was and even the ram usage was about 2-3gb lower than my windows system.
In the past I've always used macbooks, I'd justify the price increase with awesome post-sale support, I can't anymore, it's just overpaying, I've had 2 macbooks sitting there taking powder because they started cheating over the 2 years warranty, and by not covering design flaws in another (cracked screen inside with no outside sign), don't get macs
Hey, look at it this way:
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macOS is, if nothing else, certified UNIX. Which means under the hood it's actually a lot like Linux.
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Are you really overpaying for the hardware? Apple makes the hardware and the OS and every other OS subsidizes the cost of their OS with ads (Windows and Android). At the very least, it feels like you're paying a higher price for the hardware by having a small amount of more respect for your privacy in respect to invasive advertising.
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The new Apple developed silicon (M1-M4) is actually really solid stuff, and as such, are you really overpaying when it comes to quality hardware and a quality OS?
It's valid to think you're overpaying, I'm just saying maybe to try to view it a different way if you have to buy it anyway.
GNU is not Unix
Just install windows on your old laptop and use it exclusively for that app.
Install the app on the corp phone