[foldr]

It doesn't make a huge amount of sense to buy a Mac if you're not going to use Mac OS as your daily driver. A lot of the benefits (e.g. battery life, touchpad quality) are dependent on software as well as hardware, and are greatly diminished on Windows or Linux.

[abainbridge]

I've never been that impressed with the Mac Mini's battery life or touchpad :-)

[qz2]

Actually I had a Mac mini with the touchpad and the damn thing disconnected three times a day. All my input devices have wires now and the stick out of the right places.

[foldr]

Touché. But seriously, most people who want to run Linux on Mac want to do it because they like Apple's laptop hardware. If you want a compact Linux desktop then a NUC should probably serve you just as well. Or at least, this was the case while Apple was still using Intel chips. If Apple Silicon lives up to expectations then I suppose there could finally be a compelling reason for running Linux on a Mac desktop.

To be clear, I'm not saying that there couldn't possibly be any good reason for wanting to run Linux on a Mac desktop. But desktops are already a niche product for Apple, and people who want to run Linux on Mac desktops are arguably a tiny niche within a niche.

[JAlexoid]

Mac Mini doesn't raise those issues.

[tonyhb]

libinput's touchpad support is pretty great recently. working on an xps 17, and the touchpad is - no joke - just like the touchpad on my previous MBP.

[postalrat]

You can speculate but we will never know for certain.