[Nursie]

> M1 macbook is a locked down

Sure, iOS is certainly restrictive, fully locked-down, app store only etc etc, and I'd love a full-fat firefox with its plugin system available on my phone. But what are you doing on a non-Mac laptop that you can't do on an M1 mac?

I'm a big fan of linux and have used it as a main machine for many years, but use an M4 macbook as my daily driver at the moment (everyone else I work with does too, it's just easier). I haven't felt limited at all. I can build and install whatever I like, I have brew for my tooling needs...

Yeah I don't see it with Mac. Unless you're actually needing linux and dockerisation won't cut the mustard I guess.

[esseph]

If you're a Linux sysadmin type, it's nice to stay in the same environment as your vms, kubernetes, docker/podman containers, etc.

You also get nice eBPF tools.

[throw0101c]

> If you're a Linux sysadmin type, it's nice to stay in the same environment as your vms, kubernetes, docker/podman containers, etc.

I help sysadmin a few hundred servers, and given the choice I went with a MacBook because Terminal and SSH was good enough to admin stuff. MacOS is also pretty good with the business-y apps I have to deal with at times.

A colleague went with a x86 laptop and installed Ubuntu on it, and has regular issues with audio (Google Meeting, Zoom, etc), screen sharing (seems to be Wayland), etc.

At a previous job I had a Linux workstation under my desk and a Windows laptop, but with hybrid/remote I 'combined the two' into a Apple laptop.

[esseph]

Yeah, I would never in a million years run anything on Ubuntu. It's not exactly known for stability and reliability.

[Nursie]

Sure, it's definitely nice to have a consistent env, no particular argument there.

It's more "where are the barriers/locks?" that I was interested in

[esseph]

Well, I can't really put Linux on most Macs. That's a barrier to me.

Apple doesn't want my money, because Apple doesn't want to sell me a laptop. Apple wants to sell me a curated experience with multiple components in their ecosystem.

[undeveloper]

On M1 / M2, asahi linux has decent support. People daily drive it.

[esseph]

Yes there has been some initial work done, but it's not exactly a mainstream daily driver suitable for deploying in a production environment.

[timeon]

Not sure if this relevant here but OS not phoning home constantly would be nice.

[frfl]

Just my opinion here, after ~4 years of using it at work and daily driving Linux for personal use, including development, for a decade:

- The user interface and UX is pretty and all[1], but doesn't quite work as I'd like and I can't really do much beyond a few limited "hacks". Switching workspaces has a horrible and annoying animation I can't turn off. All applications windows are grouped together and for example some actions cause all of them to jump to the top. Top-level shortcuts are limited and I can't do the same things I can on Linux - eg, I bind Super+Enter to open a new terminal window, on MacOS I can kind get a janky version of that, but due to how the window manager works, it not as streamlined as Linux

- The whole notarization stuff and signing - I mean okay, security, great. But it's annoying and you have to pay Apple like $100(?) a year just for the privilege of developing software for their platform. When I did desktop app dev on MacOS, I had to do `xattr com.apple.quarantine` commands to turn off the security nonsense that prevented me from running our own app I or my coworkers wanted to test locally.

- I have a list of utilities/apps I need to install on a new MacOS machine just to get it to partially behave the way I want. Ideally MacOS should let me customize it directly with the necessary options so these extra apps aren't necessary. Nothing I'm asking is all that complicated - Linux environments provide it more or less by default with a few setting tweaks, even Windows behaves closer to what I want and I'm no fan of Windows.

- Recently I noticed MacOS was using bunch of CPU while idling - I traced it down to some background indexing scanning that was running constantly. I had to look up esoteric command line commands to stop it - which didn't work. I ended up disabling Spotlight almost completely to make it stop using my CPU every time I stepped away for a few mins.

Annoying stuff like this really puts me off of MacOS. Like I'm being forced to conform to their way of thinking and using a device. I'm an adult, let me decide for myself.

tldr; I just like Linux, it works, it's slick, I can turn-on/off, add/remove whatever I want. I'm not restricted to what some company thinks my workflow should look like.

[1]: I'm leaving out their "glass UI" blunder... what a horribly silly thing that is. Plenty to be said about that and others already have, so I won't repeat it here.

[Nursie]

OK, so this seems like a list of gripes about MacOS.

It's absolutely fine to have personal preferences on UX, customisability etc. This is why I swore off GNOME at the Gnome 3 transition and have never looked back, for example. If it doesn't work for you it doesn't work for you.

But it doesn't really support the assertion that you can't use the power of an M1 because of "how locked down everything is and most of that power is pretty useless".

Again, not trying to say "Thou shalt love MacOS!", but more that I don't think your points there really reflect something so locked down as to be useless. Just something with a UI you don't get along with.

[frfl]

Honestly I'm tried and didn't expect this thread to blow up like this.

People can use whatever they want. They're adults. I don't wanna debate. I just shared my random opinions.

If I had the choice, since I have a free Macbook laying around right now, I'd slap Linux on it and be happy - unfortunately doesn't look like Asahi Linux is quite ready yet for me to do so, few missing things. I ran Linux on a Intel Macbook (which I also didn't purchase, was given to me) for all of university and I was a happy camper.

That being said, would I buy a Mac voluntarily - nope. I'd rather buy a Thinkpad, install Linux, and I'm set for a decade honestly.

[Nursie]

Good for you, totally valid choice. I'm not saying you shouldn't use what you want, or even that Mac is best (or even that mac is best for me!)

I'm only taking you to task on the "locked down" assertion.