Thoughts on leaving macOS for Linux? (split thread)

Never understood what is the point to get a expensive machine for development, especially if you don’t plan on doing more exotic stuff like running or training models. If you plan on investing such a large sum, then I think you will get better value by getting a proper server and placing it in a datacenter in your country.

I personally have used for the last year the cheapest air m1 and it’s more than enough to work on elixir projects, it usually doesn’t even get warm. I have a setup with a docking hub, where I can connect it to proper keyboard/mouse and monitors. The only limitation I don’t like is that m1 chips support only 2 monitors in total.

It is for our geeky self esteem, man. I can make do with a cheap chrome book, but I don’t want to be seen with it.

You leave the house!?

I’m not much of a gearhead and blindly just buy Apple stuff, although being Canadian I’m second guessing this atm (I’m hoping this changes, but I won’t be needing a new laptop for a long while). I got a new job recently so I have a M3 MacBook Air from last year. I use the track pad and keyboard that comes with the laptop I’m using. I once tried getting into mechanical keyboards but, believe it or not, I actually like chiclet keyboards (well, except for the awful butterfly era, those were horrendous). I also go between working at a desk and on my couch, so an external keyboard never really made sense.

Software-wise I’m not very fancy. I’ve been using solely Vim for the past 15 years, I haven’t fully jumped on the AI train yet (I’ve used copilot a bit but don’t love it) and what else… Recently I’ve been trying to find a browser I actually like that isn’t Chrome but it’s been tough. I’m probably forgetting some stuff.

Yep. Also it has a memory leak, at least on macos, where after a while you notice a delay that keeps getting long and long every time you switch to it. At least that was happening for me.

I tried Zen for a bit and don’t much like it. Arc is decent. I really, really, really want to like Orion. I’ve been using it a lot lately but it’s still so buggy. They recently released a whole bunch of patches (as in, not even 24 hours ago) so I’m all this stuff gets sorted out soon.

But I plan to do a lot with it actually. Plus I hate slow machines in general. Not like I stress my machine 24/7 but (1) I have ideas for project that would do that and (2) I work in a flow state and can absolutely have my productivity destroyed if I have to wait 7 minutes for something.

Plus, future-proofing. I don’t want to buy machines every few years. As we chatted with you before, I want to get something that will last me good 10 years or more. Computers are tools and they have to be reliable and durable. So I’ll do my best to find one such machine.

I know you are kind of joking (or you’re not? ) but I honestly give zero fraks about prestige. At my last company’s meetup I was one of the few people with Linux laptops and was actually pretty proud of it. And as said above, it was and still is pretty damn fast, often faster than Macbooks, even the M series.

If you are buying enterprise-grade parts that are certified and have long-term support then I can agree with the price of 8k you mentioned above.

If you are buying consumer-grade electronics, there is simply no guarantee on how long it will last, and the saddest thing is that everything is made disposable these days, so you most likely won’t be able to repair it, this is especially true if we talk about laptops.

I simply don’t see why you would pay 3x-4x the price for the hardware to last 10 years instead of upgrading every 4-5 years.

That was a one-time investment that I’ll never repeat again. It was an informed decision as I was ramping up my efforts in contracting back then. Which is a thing I want to put behind me now. I’ll be finding a stable job and will be holding on to it for a while. Not because of the world markets or anything else – we the programmers will always have a job no matter what the passionate LLM advocates say – but because I need a more peaceful phase in my life with much less turbulence. Anyway, off-topic but still a needed context.

It will not be 3x-4x though. It will be just be a high-end consumer-grade PC with carefully selected parts to make it professional i.e. with a motherboard that has more PCIe lanes. Should be no more than +20% price compared to a high-ish end gaming PC, for example. So definitely no more than 3000 EUR I think. If even that.

Yeah, agreed, this is why I am not interested in modern laptops. The one I have I’ll use until it breaks. Laptops should just be terminals to more powerful machines anyway.

Good thing I don’t give a hoot about LLMs then.

But yep, valuable advice, thank you. Hopefully ROCm catches up with CUDA one day before we are buried.

I’ve seen it, it’s a pretty interesting concept and I hope they will be successful, so they can drop the price more in the future.

Back in the day it was very pricey for the specs, but looks like it’s getting there. If they ever release a version with a ARM CPU that can at least last closely to 7-8 hours on battery(while doing work), then this most likely will be my next choice of laptop for many years to come.