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
I have been using Linux on desktop and Mac on laptops for over twenty years now! I initially bought a refurbished white iBook G4 in 2005 while I was using Gentoo on my desktop.
I spend the vast majority of my time in a terminal and a browser.
As others have said, the difference in Command and Control buttons will take a little getting used to and will be especially frustrating if you have an external keyboard that you use for both desktop and laptop. But it’s not really that bad.
As a heavy terminal user, I like having the different buttons for different things! You keep your dirty GUI functions to your own Command button and let me keep Control doing what it does. As an example, you can use common terminal keyboard shortcuts (readline shortcuts; Ctrl-a to go to the beginning of a line, for example) in many places on OS X because of the difference between Ctrl and Cmd.
I have found MacOS to work quite well as a laptop operating system, personally!