Hey, folks,
My laptop broke the other day, and I need a replacement asap. But here's the rub: I despise windows. I've been a full time fedora user on my main device for a decade now, and I run Ubuntu on my desktop that I rarely touch because it's ooooold. I am not a techy person. At all. I'm an idiot, actually. I use Linux because it's cheaper, it keeps my aging hardware alive longer, and because politically I align pretty well with the idea of FOSS. And because I absolutely hate windows. I don't even like KDE, because it reminds me of windows. Cinnamon? Too much like windows! Lol. I love my workflow in gnome, I love that it's shiny and pretty and looks nice. And for the most part, I'm a browser based user. I rarely have cause to do much outside of the browser, except for sail the seas for some audiobooks. Even my papers for school are written in Google docs.
But also, on my desktop or a secondary device, I don't mind having to fiddle with things and get them working, I enjoy it. It makes me feel like I have actual tech skills when I absolutely do not. But on the device I use for school I just want something that works and I never have to think about. I feel like a traitor to the cause even considering it, but I think I want to get a used m1 air. I've never used a Mac before, though. I used an iPhone once, for about 10-15 minutes, and I hated it. But, like, of course I did. It was completely different, and incapable of doing the thing I wanted it to do.
How painful is the Linux to Mac transition? If I'm using an android phone, an Ubuntu desktop, and a MacBook, how awful is everything going to be to switch between devices? Am I going to regret this purchase, or, worse yet, become an apple fan boy and abandon my glorious FOSS devices forever?
Please assist
The biggest sacrifice in the transition is re-learning certain stuff because Mac is very opinionated, while Linux gives you a lot more freedom w.r.t. certain preferences. It's also a walled garden. Depending on who you are you could find it incredibly frustrating to use.
Installing/uninstalling applications suck imo. It's intuitive enough (drag a application to the trashcan). I feel like it doesn't clean things from startup or background services properly sometimes. As a result you could get an error stating that it can't find a service from an app that isn't even installed anymore.
Alternatively I am very satisfied with the battery life of the apple silicon ( ARM ) laptop I got from work.
Not sure how well it holds up for gaming ( if you're planning to do that ).
The old "there's an app for that" still rings true as per my latest experience. Certain things are simply not in the OS for a reason that is beyond me. A simple example is window management. Moving an application to a different screen or making it half sized etc... there simply aren't any shortcuts for it and you'll need to install an app for something that's pretty basic.
I'd advise you to install most of your software through homebrew ( if possible ). Apple is expensive. The peripherals cost more than the average windows/Linux ones.
Generally speaking, I feel like you lose flexibility and you're forced into the Mac-way of doing things. This isn't necessarily bad, but depending on how much of a power user you are, it could definitely generate friction.
If you do jump to mac I can suggest the following apps:
Raycast ( as a replacement for spotlight ): override the shortcut CMD+space yourself, more flexible and the free tier is very generous/useable. https://www.raycast.com/
Amd64 architecture programs won't run on it unless you use rosetta2. It's a compatibility layer, keep in mind that going forward you'll be able to run containers using rosetta2, but pure amd64 binaries might become an issue in the future ( https://developer.apple.com/forums/thread/787530 ). If this makes no sense to you it might also not really be relevant :).
Homebrew for software installs ( if supported ). You can think of it like a package manager for macos. Like
aptand the like: https://brew.sh/ You can use brew to install a GUI if you prefer that ( https://www.wailbrew.app/ )Caffeine prevents your mac going to sleep automatically: https://www.caffeine-app.net/
If you want to manage the menu bar at the top because it has too many icons you can use
ice: https://github.com/jordanbaird/IceMoving and resizing Windows using keyboard shortcuts: https://formulae.brew.sh/cask/rectangle
I've also used this to clean up background services and such which are no longer installed: https://www.titanium-software.fr/en/onyx.html It's worked to remove an error from an app that was no longer installed, but for whatever reason was still registered somewhere.
Note that there are alternatives. The ones I've listed are free, FOSS or freemium where the free tier is good enough.
You'll find more as you go along I guess. YMMV if you decide to take the leap.