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by intricatedetail 1493 days ago
I hate Apple, but every time I run something resource intensive on my laptop and it starts to sound like a plane going to take off I go to Apple.com and hover over Check out button. Once there is a reliable way to run Linux on M1/2 I'll switch.
2 comments

If you run msoffice apps on a mac you'll be burning cpu like no ones business. I've a 2019 macbook pro 16, fans rev up regularly as excel (or power point, or word..) is using 100% cpu. The mac window manager process is a hog also. Honestly I switched to mac for work assuming "it just works" , but unfortunately it does not. M1 are likely better, but not overly impressed on the SW side.
Why do you think that Linux would run as fast or efficiently on an M1 Mac as an operating system that was designed from the ground up to run well on it?
For devs, MacOS is still pia. Asahi is still far behind. I just don’t get why Apple wouldn’t embrace Linux. Who’s stopping that from happening now that Jobs is gone?
What benefit does Apple get by “embracing Linux”?

And more “devs” are using Macs than Linux so it must not be too bad. That’s not even to mention that Android developers are saying Macs are fasted for development than x86 PCs and of course iOS developers are using Macs.

What benefit is there in “embracing Linux” for Apple? Better software? Better hardware support? Popularity?

I don't think it's about running faster, clearly OP wants to use Linux over MacOS, same for me. For dev work Linux is still king, and I happen to also personally prefer the KDE UX over MacOS.

So while Mac laptops are great hardware wise, it doesn't run the software I want, so that's why I'm still buying laptops made for Windows.

Except when dev work means anything related to graphics programming, than the king is naked.
Mac laptops have bad GPUs generally though, that's why people I know who work on games have Windows laptops most of the time, basically beefy gaming laptops. Or to be honest most of them don't even use laptops and develop on a desktop for that same reason.
I am lost, so for graphics developers, dev work Linux is still king or not?
For graphics I don't know, probably depends what kind of graphics you're targeting. By king I didn't imply most popular, I doubt Linux is the most popular at anything honestly. I meant that I find it still excels at development because of the way the OS and userland tools are setup. If I needed to do some graphics programming and I could get away with using Linux for it I probably would still choose it.

But for graphics, unless we're talking 2D or simple stuff, I'd imagine you'd want some beefy GPU, and that means you're buying a PC which gives you the choice of Windows or Linux.

My complaint is that Mac laptops don't let you install Linux and MacOS didn't embrace Linux with something like WSL for example either, and that holds me back, because otherwise the laptops are very enticing.

> graphics programming

You mean as in Vulcan and games, or rendering? Linux is your best choice unless you are using some Windows first framework like Unity. (AFAIK there is no OS X first one.)

That answer only reveals the lack of knowledge of the state of the art in GUI and 3D graphics tooling in general.

To your information all relevant middleware supports Metal, like Unity and Unreal.

Isn't great that the "best choice" needs to rely on workarounds like Proton, and Electron apps, and gets zero ports from Android/Linux.

I'm not so sure about that I work in graphics and we're 99% linux