Hacker News Reader

Comment by who-shot-jr | Hacker News Reader

Would like to switch to Linux but hardware/laptop options are horrible compared to MacBook M series machines.

Then please don’t make the leap. Because beyond your specific hardware design requirements that are “must be a macbook” there is a lot more trade offs you’re going to have to make. Letting go of your prudeness about what constitutes good and bad hardware should be the easiest barrier to cross.

Out of the box on CachyOS with KDE Plasma, I don't even have windows remembering their positions across a multi-monitor setup. That was shocking to experience with a current-day DE. And I believe it's not KDE's fault specifically but Wayland not having that feature yet, but that makes 0 difference to the user. If OP is hesitant to switch because of superficial hardware complaints, they're going to have a hell of a time actually using it as their main operating system for any significant amount of time.

I have used Thinkpads for over a decade and I don't feel like I'm missing out on anything. I can't imagine any scenario where a MacBook M chip would be required to be productive, it feels like a weird hill to die on.

Extremely noisy, flimsy keyboard, atrocious touchpad, rip-my-eyes out display.

ThinkPad T14s is silent, keyboard is known as one of the best across all laptops even if it has got thinner. Trackpoint is there for a reason. The display I will grant you, it is not as amazing as Apple's. But I'm using my laptop to code not watch movies.

Half of these can’t be real issues because macbooks had the same issues for decades and an aluminum body was enough to overcome that. What happened? Oh right the vanity shot through the roof.

Battery life is not remotely competitive

I understand the battery life sucks, but 8 hours is enough for me.

That said I don't have high CPU processes running all the time. If I did I imagine the battery life difference would be more of a problem.

Battery life that needs to last all day is a first world computing problem. Most people leave their laptops plugged in and as long as you don’t run 10 chromium apps or other reasource hogs in the background, you will easily get 10-12 hours of battery.

I daily drive an M1 MacBook Air and a Thinkpad X1 Carbon Gen 11 running Arch/Hyprland. Software-wise I absolutely adore the latter, but hardware-wise it falls short of the Mac on nearly every level.

Battery life is horrendous (despite extensive tuning). The speakers are complete crap (despite using Easy Effects). Fans get loud sometimes because, well, it's x86_64.

It's a shame, because even though the Apple Silicon CPU is faster on paper, the same task flies on the Thinkpad compared to the Mac. And of course the Thinkpad's keyboard is fantastic.

Honestly the one thing I simply can't look past are the speakers. I work from home so battery life isn't a massive issue for me. Fans I can look past. But I simply cannot stand listening to music or watch a YouTube video on it, they are SO bad.

I have a T14s and recently bought an iPad Air and was blown away by how good the speakers and display are. (I understand the iPad Pro is even better) Speaker and display is just not a priority for thinkpad it seems. Noise cancelling headphones solve the problem for me.

OTOH with Linux you can get an OLED display and amazing speakers right now if you want!

I bought an expensive Dell and I regret the decision everyday. Just after 2 years, lots of things are breaking down and that's not counting the battery which barely last 2 hours now. Also finding components/parts if you are not US-based is hell; compared to Apple which has better support and an international presence.

Try M1 or M2 with Asahi Linux.

I installed omarchy, gave it couple of days.

Well, I will stay on windows with wsl and macos in the foreseeable future.

I will elaborate:

The first update after install failed.

To make my two screens work (one of them portait) I needed to learn how to modify text config. And for some reason my 23” display ran at 150% instead of 200% scaling.

Keymaps in komorebi on windows are alt+hjkl to focus windows and alt+shift+hjkl to move them. On omarchy it’s some accords with arrows. Arrows on system that touts vim and tui! I don’t have arrows on my uhk keyboard.

The font is too small. To make it at least 10 you don’t have one setting for that.

The list just goes on and on.

So, like I’ve said, I’m perfectly ok with windows and wsl for my C# stuff and my mac for everything else.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com