It seems that you're heavily in the minority with this. Even the weird bugs you mention are very unexpected. I've used a Mac for 15 years and never heard of an issue related to thumb drives. You may just have a lemon. See if you can just replace it (warranty, etc, not just spending more money).
I manage a bunch of Ubuntu desktops at work and the most common issue seems to be that if you leave a machine alone for too long (a week or two), then when you log back in the DBUS or something seems to get hung up and the whole interface is mostly unusable until you log out and log back in. It can be so bad you can't even focus a window anymore or change the input focus. Next most common issue is DKMS randomly fucking up and installing a kernel without the nVidia or VirtualBox modules leaving the machine useless.
- High-refresh displays cause strange green/purple artifacting
- Plugging in multiple displays just outright doesn't work
- Still a surprisingly long boot time compared to my x201 (almost a teenager now!)
- No user replaceable storage is a complete disservice when your OEM upgrades cost as much as Apple charges
- Idle temps can get a little uncomfortable when you're running several apps at once
...and the biggest one...
- A lot of software just isn't ready for ARM yet
Maybe I'm spoiled, coming from Arch Linux, but the software side of things on ARM still feels like they did in 2012 when my parents bought me a Raspberry Pi for Christmas. Sure it works, but compatibility and stability are still major sticking points for relatively common apps. Admittedly, Apple did a decent job of not breaking things any further, but without 32-bit library support it's going to be a hard pass from me. Plus, knowing that Rosetta will eventually be unsupported gives me flashbacks to watching my games library disappear after updating to Catalina.
Compatibility issues are the most painful part of architectural shifts, although Apple's pretty good at them by now and a lot of desktop software "just works."
> Plus, knowing that Rosetta will eventually be unsupported gives me flashbacks to watching my games library disappear after updating to Catalina
RIP my 32-bit macOS Steam library. Though I think some 32-bit Windows games can run under Crossover.
I wish that Apple would commit to supporting Rosetta 2 indefinitely, but realistically they'll pull the plug on x86 emulation just as they did with their 68K and PowerPC emulators. Apple is about the Next Big Thing and not so much about long-term backward compatibility.
However Windows on ARM under Parallels may get better over time - a number of x86 Windows games already run. And who knows, maybe we'll be able to boot native ARM Windows at some point...
On the up side, M1 Macs get access to the only game library Apple cares about: iOS games (including Apple Arcade and some pretty decent iPad games.)
I use an M1 MacBook Pro (16Gb Ram) for personal projects and as my standard home/travel computer. It is amazing and fast.
I use a Lenovo Carbon X1 Laptop with similar specs (i5, 16Gb Ram, m.2 ssd) for work that runs RHEL 8 (Red Hat Enterprise Linux). It's insanely fast and stable.
The overhead to run RHEL is so small it would blow your mind at the performance you get from almost nothing. Mac or Windows are crazy bloated by comparison. I know I am sparking an eternal debate by saying this, but I personally have never found Ubuntu to be as stable for a workstation (but ubuntu server is great) as RHEL is.
With that being said, I still think the M1 mac is the best computer I have ever owned. While linux is great for work, I personally enjoy the polished and more joyful experience of Mac for personal use. There are a million quality of life improvements that Mac offers that you won't get in Linux. The app ecosystem on mac is incredible.
When most people make comparisons for the M1 Mac, they are comparing windows PCs (generally Intel-based ones since Mac previously used Intel) and they compare intel-based Macs. I have never seen someone comparing it to linux performance. The speed of the M1 mac is far better than Windows and far better than old Macs. There is no question. Before my M1 mac I used a MacBook Pro with an i7, 16Gb RAM, and the upgraded dedicated graphics card. The little M1 MacBook outshines it at least 2 to 1. Best of all, the fans never turned on, and my old MacBook Pro had constant fan whine which drove me crazy.
The other incredible feat of the M1 Mac is the battery life. I run my laptop nearly exclusively on battery power now. I treat it like an iPad. You plug it in when it gets low, but I can use it for about a week between charges (I use it for 2-3 hours each day). I don't turn the screen down or modify my performance. I keep the screen fairly bright and just cruise away. I love it.
While Linux might be able to outshine on performance, it doesn't outperform with battery. My Lenovo laptop is worth about 2x my MacBook Pro. It is a premium laptop and yet running RHEL I will be lucky to get 6 hours. Compare that to ~20 hours of my MacBook.
Worse is when you start grabbing code off of Git and the configure script bombs out because it wants a library two versions ahead of the one in the repo. But you don't want to upgrade it because obviously that's going to cause an issue with whatever installed that library originally. So now you're thinking about containers but that adds more complication...
Like everything it is a double edged sword.
Fedora is probably better if you want up-to-date packages on a platform that's relatively similar to production.
if you're running a homelab and regularly 'wrangling' a package manager which is broken/incomplete by design, why are you choosing distros based on package availability rather than on the quality of the tooling? surely you can package anything you need to use
No idea about HW encoders quality/speed on M1
LOTS of people "actually do ‘work’" with their macs. Without trouble.
> i love my 2013 macbook air for most daily tasks, but never was there a time where i couldnt do with having a windows and linux device on hand
Are those devices also 8 year old low-mobile-tier hardware optimized for battery use and low thermals? I've never needed a windows or linux computer on hand.