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
Because as a general rule I am not techy enough to fix things when they go wrong, and in my experience, budget windows laptops tend to have things that go wrong. Fans die, components need to be replaced, et cetera. I'm a big fan of linux, and I've been full-timing it for at least a decade now. I never plan to change out my desktop, and if I ever end up with a second laptop, I'll likely keep linux on one of them. Fedora is an absolute joy to use. But sometimes, and especially when it comes to the thing I do actual school work on, I don't want to have to do things like running a virtual machine so that I can access the one screen writing program that my school allows, or deal with inconsistencies in which apps, websites, or services just refuse to play nice. It's not a fault of linux, it's a fault in the world that they won't allow certain things to function with the OS that most of the internet is built on. Like proton drive. Love it. It's great. But still no desktop client for linux. Not even a snap out in ubuntuland. I kinda... Just want simplicity in my life right now, and I don't want to have to worry about cheap hardware falling apart, and excellent software that the powers at be have decided isn't going to get acknowledged. And sadly, I'm not smart enough to do anything to help that situation for myself.
this is the reasoning i used to buy linux-first laptops 10-ish years ago before this one.