[ekidd]

> Otherwise if I want to ditch the work Macbook for a Linux system

Year-old MacBook Pros typically make fairly nice Ubuntu machines. The hardware is standard enough that you can find step-by-step installation instructions: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/MacBookPro The biggest limitations in recent years have been (1) no webcam, and (2) somewhat flaky (but still usable) wifi.

It's not as nice as a supported Ubuntu preload directly from your hardware vendor, but you get the nice physical build quality of Apple's hardware.

[VSpike]

I may not be able to go with a Linux system at all since company policy is Mac only, but if I ever do manage to do it, I know that they will want me to use (1) not a Mac and (2) not old hardware. Kind of a shame since my research suggested the same: that year or two old Mac was a good hardware platform for Linux. The same to an extent applies to Lenovo hardware and everything else designed primarily for Windows. If it were for personal use, I'd go for an old Thinkpad or old Macbook.

[NTripleOne]

I'm confused, if your company is Mac only, how would you end up sitting next to your boss with a Dell anyway?

[inlineint]

There is an open source webcam driver now [1], although it has some problems.

[1] https://github.com/patjak/bcwc_pcie