I am not sure I understand this argument. Kubernetes typically runs on Linux. I use an Apple laptop, work mostly with headless Linux VMs and Kubernetes. What is a “poor man’s Linux”?
I have run Linux laptops before. After running it for five years, I came to the conclusion that it did not make a good laptop for my use-case. Poor suspend-resume support, poor wireless networking support means I can not just pick and go. (And no one has yet to replicate Apple’s trackpad experience). So yes, I run Apple laptop with MacOS and use my TUI tools, sometimes with Linux running in an VM, sometime remotely to a full headless VM with my full dev suite via mosh because I use cli and TUI for dev.
Your turn. You still have not defined “poor man’s Linux”.