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I did maintain a Linux laptop (Ubuntu) for all my personal and development usage, from 2003-2011. Based on my experience at that time, it is entirely incorrect to claim that the experience with device drivers (wifi, bluetooth) and sleep/suspend/hibernate is better on Linux. Those things basically never worked right, battery experience was terrible, and many times during that era I lost a day's work because something was broken early in the boot sequence, and I couldn't even start X Windows.

In 2011 I switched to macOS due to my job and I have never had to deal with any of that. Ever. Perhaps the Linux laptop experience has improved significantly since then though.

Furthermore, there was no hardware nearly as nice as Apple laptops on which to install linux. (Yeah, other than Apple laptops, but I felt like I didn't have the money to justify that).

However I of course agree with your points regarding Vagrant/Docker and shell scripting. It is a shame that MacOS could not be based on Linux.




The device drivers compatibility and availability on Linux these days has never been better. Even better than Windows and OS X out of the box in many cases. Seriously, there has been huge improvements in the last few years.

If you want to run Linux on a laptop and get the best experience, a Mac is not the best option. Thinkpad (business class X and T series) is what you are looking for.


Linux has come far in seven years. I haven't had issues with wifi or bluetooth for years on quality hardware (Thinkpad, Dell.) YMMV


I begrudgingly use a MBP now after many years dealing with similar issues on Linux. The hardware is great, things adjacent to hardware are great (drivers, external monitors, configuration) but I would prefer to have the windowing system behave more like Gnome. Things like Alt+click to drag a window, Alt-Tab cycling through windows not apps (and stick to the same desktop workspace at that) menu bar location etc.


FWIW Alt-Tab, for me, does cycle through windows not apps, and windows within the same workspace only. Check SystemPreferences => Keyboard => Shortcuts => "Move focus to next window"




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