Is moving from MacBook to Windows Laptop (running Linux) a good idea?

November 1, 2015 11:02 PM

Has anyone had success transitioning from MacBook to a Windows laptop running Linux?

My current MacBook Pro has seen much better days and I'm thinking about getting a replacement.

Although a new MacBook is not off the table, I'm thinking about getting a Windows laptop instead, and putting Linux on it. With the exception of one or two apps, nearly everything I use is an open source piece of software that is identical to its Linux counterpart.

I'm wondering if anyone out there has gone from using Macs exclusively for years and then switched to a Linux laptop.

What were some unexpected drawbacks or pluses?

Recommendations for Linux-friendly laptops that provide a similar experience to the MacBook in terms of durability and quality? Note that I'm really only interested in this if I can beat the MacBook on price; otherwise I'll probably just buy another MacBook.

posted by Deathalicious to Computers & Internet (13 answers total)

Response by poster: Just in case anyone is wondering: I've upgraded the Macbook and from a systems perspective it's running fine. The problem is the keyboard is shot (none of the keys in the middle row work) and the screen is badly cracked. I suspect the repairs might be fairly costly if using genuine Apple parts and in any case I can't be without my computer for the time it'd take to repair it.
posted by Deathalicious at 11:06 PM on November 1, 2015

I did this while I was studying for a Masters a couple of years ago. There's a lot to love about desktop linux, package management being the most important. I bought a super-cheap netbook (back when netbooks were the coming thing) and it worked beautifully for me for three years or so as my main computer.

The big 'anti' argument is that if you're working with anyone who uses MS Office stuff you're going to be very frustrated. All of the Office clones (OpenOffice, LibreOffice) are terrible in that they simulate poorly the experience of using Word/Excel/etc. Yes, you can run it under Wine but frankly it's a pain. I've gone back to using Macs almost entirely for that reason.
posted by Fiasco da Gama at 11:21 PM on November 1, 2015

The only problem I've ever had switching back and forth has been software compatibility - I know plenty of Linux people who insist that you can replace all your software with open-source stuff, and that's just not true at all. You said you're already using open source with a couple exceptions, but be aware that some of the replacements in Linux just flat out suck.
posted by teponaztli at 11:26 PM on November 1, 2015 [2 favorites]

I'm probably a bad data point, since for me OS X is only ever a gateway to the Linux servers where I actually do everything. But, desktop-wise I'd recommend Mate over the current "standard" Gnome desktop environment which seems to be following the same "tablet-ify everything" path as Win 8 did. It's one of the supported desktops on Debian, and presumably the other mainstream distros too.
posted by russm at 11:28 PM on November 1, 2015

I found it impossible to get a working version of iTunes on Ubuntu, which was a pain when I got an iphone and couldn't transfer music to it (with an iphone you can't just drag and drop mp3s onto your phone) or back it up to my computer.
posted by needs more cowbell at 11:37 PM on November 1, 2015

I've done this relatively recently (maybe February?)- it wasn't super pleasant, but after a *lot* of tweaking it was tolerable. Was also much cheaper than buying a macbook, since I went all the way cheap. For reference my laptop was the cheapest of the cheap- an HP Stream 13 (~$200).

Hardware recommendations:

The dell xps developer editions seem really good. I have actually started seeing some devops-ish people start to carry them instead of the usual mbp. Last I looked they were maybe a bit cheaper than an average macbook?

I am a huge fan of thinkpads, so I would definitely consider the latest T-series; word is that thinkpads work very well with linux in general but I would check the thinkpad forums if you are looking at a specific model.

For pluses and minuses, take this with a grain of salt; I'm a sysadmin type who works with linux servers all day everyday, so something that is annoying for me might be a dealbreaker for someone less used to dealing with this garbage.

Things I was surprised by (pluses):

Suspend/resume actually worked (unlike the lots of times I'd tried this before)!

Booting from UEFI worked (with ubuntu 15.04, anyway) and was totally painless.

Virtually zero messing with any graphics controls, including stuff like plugging in an external monitor. No monkeying with X configs at all.


Minuses:

Lack of system-wide consistency for pretty much anything:
I kept finding tweaks I'd have to make in different apps/toolkits/etc because one was kde-based or another was gnome based (the list goes on and on). On the mac, there's one way, and that's pretty much it.

Lack of a unified settings control plane:
There are frequently utilities that control one part of a thing, but not all of it, or you have to actually hardcode config settings for stuff. I wanted mac-like mouse controls (including the two-finger scroll and such) and it involved a bunch of manual tweaks. Also annoying was keyboard remapping in some circumstances, if I'm remembering correctly.

Non-major numbered OS upgrades totally breaking things:
I was shocked at how randomly things would behave after updating packages; I'd frequently have a feature (like media keys) break after an update, and then start working a week later the next time I updated.

Performance that was surprisingly bad:
Even though it's a low-ish ram notebook, it seemed like perf should have been better than it was. Lots of random slowdowns that I never ran into with windows.

Awful battery life:
2-3 hours less than with win8/win10.


If you got this far, you may want to note that I switched to windows 10 when it came out, and I have been happy enough with it that I haven't switched it back- it's faster and I get much better battery life (and it doesn't break at random every few weeks).

If you have a faster laptop you can run virtualbox and have linux *and* windows, without having to deal with desktop linux- I like this approach a lot.
posted by AaronRaphael at 12:51 AM on November 2, 2015

I started to write a long post like AaronRaphael above but... no, i've failed at this. I'm a sysadmin, and i've been screwing around with desktop linux since this site was very young(and so was i, comparatively)

Recommendations for Linux-friendly laptops that provide a similar experience to the MacBook in terms of durability and quality? Note that I'm really only interested in this if I can beat the MacBook on price; otherwise I'll probably just buy another MacBook.

This... doesn't really exist, unless you hit a really cool sale or buy this years model on closeout as next year starts or something. The good machines don't cost appreciably less than a basic macbook. And honestly, the base model macbook pro retina 13 is fine. Need to spend less? Buy a refurb, they're literally as good as new. That said...

Things that CANNOT be beat by any windows laptop(or said machine running linux) i've tried:

Quality and responsiveness of trackpad. Macs win at this by a huge margin. And when you're using that almost all the time, it just sucks to use something shittier. Even the otherwise best, and most expensive windows machines STILL can't get this right. And more importantly, most of them don't have good linux drivers. Buttonless trackpad drivers on linux are painmachines, the only exception to this is proprietary google magic in chromeOS.

Battery life in category of machine at price point. This isn't strictly true, but i have the same experience as Aaron that linux shaves off battery life. So you'll pay the PC penalty on battery life... then the linux penalty. Booooo

Build quality ehhh... yea. My roommate borrowed my X series thinkpad and destroyed it. Not by dropping it or anything, but just abusing it. Then, because i'm a masochist i guess, i let her borrow my uber rare and awesome 17in antiglare macbook pro. I also dropped the 13in pro i had before it like 8 feet onto a metal radiator and nothing happened besides a tiny dent. I really like thinkpads, but that would have shattered the display on my X or something bad.

The aforementioned point about software you'd have on a mac. Itunes IS frustrating as hell. So are other things. You end up having to set up and maintain a VM as well, or dual boot... which basically means admining TWO machines. This actually pissed me off more than anything else.

Stuff that's mostly OK now:

Drivers. The past couple times i've set up a linux install i didn't really have to fuck with anything. It just "worked". You could probably tweak to some optimal state if you felt like it, but there was no "Oh, X Y and Z don't work out of the box" scenario which i was so used to. Support for laptopy things like volume buttons and such seems ok now too.

Suspend/resume as mentioned above. I have no idea how this finally got resolved and i still don't trust it, but that's mostly me being old man yells at cloud. It really does work OK now.

Stuff that's arguably better:

Keyboards. Apple used to have pretty good keyboards, and they're determined to shit them up. It started with the macbook air, got worse with the first retina macbook pro(which i'm typing this on), and has continued to get worse-er with the new "macbook". Thinkpads(the real ones, T, X, W off the top of my head. None of that "edge" crap), the big dells like the precisions, maybe the XPS13 which everyone i know likes, all have good keyboards. Some of them are definitely better than the new BS-travel mac keyboards.

Ports. Without stupid dongles. I get mad every time i have to use an ethernet dongle or the thunderbolt-firewire adapter to plug in an audio interface or external raid that doesn't cost $3000.


Overall, i stuck with the macbook. My next machine will be... another macbook, even though i love to complain about stupid issues this one had because i'm a moron and bought the very first retina model on sight. The 13in retina macbook pro is almost a peerless machine if you get one refurbed for ~$1000. Everything similar costs more or is built a lot shittier, and stuff like the yoga 3 pro would lose half its fun on linux anyways(while also being built crappier, and having a crappy keyboard). I have a certain amount of respect for say, a thinkpad x250... but you have to pay MORE than a macbook to get an SSD and the good display. The T series doesn't match up either... and the matched up xps13 is only cheaper if you buy it from some ebay seller when it gets posted on slickdeals as a firesale.
posted by emptythought at 3:38 AM on November 2, 2015 [2 favorites]

If you have a newer iOS device, don't worry too much about iTunes. At least from a device management standpoint. Everything can be done "through the cloud" now, including downloading music if you sign up for iTunes Match which stores all your music online. Then you can stream or download your music on all your devices. Just make sure to keep your digital music files somewhere.

I wouldn't switch to Linux. But if I was going to, I wouldn't let iTunes stop me.

Try installing Linux in a virtual machine to get a taster. I think that Ubuntu lets you do this very easily.
posted by reddot at 5:28 AM on November 2, 2015

I think we could use some more details about your situation:

- what are the "one or two" proprietary apps that you depend on?
- what do you mainly use your macbook for?
- what's your motivation for trying Linux?
- do you have a technical background, or interest in acquiring one?

One note: "The past couple times i've set up a linux install i didn't really have to fuck with anything. It just "worked"."

Your chances of having that "just worked" experience have definitely improved over the years, but to maximize those chances you still want to carefully research Linux-compatibility of the specific model (with the specific options) you choose. Two very similar-sounding wireless cards, for example, can sometimes have vastly different levels of Linux compatibility.
posted by bfields at 5:42 AM on November 2, 2015 [1 favorite]

If you don't depend on any OS X specific software, then the biggest things you're going to miss are good UI design (especially a focus on typography which is still way way behind in even the snazziest X desktop environments) and world-class power management.

From a desktop user perspective, the major user-oriented distros (Ubuntu and Fedora) are pretty hassle free these days, so long as you've got supported-out-of-the-box hardware and never want to install something that isn't in the package ecosystem.

But you can't really beat the macbook pro *that much* on price and get a laptop of an equivalent quality. The Dell XPS13 Developer Edition is probably the premier Linux laptop, and starts at $1000 (here), but that really only compares well to the Macbook Air since you'll have to drop $300 more to get a Retina-quality display, thus making it price competitive with the mbpro. If you want a Lenovo X1 Carbon with a good display and 8GB of ram, you're only gonna save about $100 compared to the MBPro, and that's with a little less of a powerful i5 chipset. The Acer Aspire s7 configurations I could find are all as pricey as a Macbook Pro. The Chromebook Pixel is $999 but only has 32GB of disk space, although it is a beautiful machine. The next price point is $1299 (although that does have 16GB of ram, which is nice).

I focussed a lot on display quality. But that's for a reason. The retina displays are a really amazing and immediately became a feature I couldn't be without as soon as I used one in 1:1 mode. So much screen real estate!

Apple really hits the right pricepoint on their laptops. The only reasons to buy a linux laptop instead of an mbpro, as far as I can tell, are (a) they're just more money than you can spend and (b) you have ethical issues surrounding the use of non-free (as in speech) software. If (b) is the case, I'd either get a Dell XPS13 Developer edition (although that has some freedom issues too! firmware and such), or a Chromebook Pixel at the more expensive price point.

Also, you can get 16gb of ram in an mbpro which future-proofs it for a very long time.
posted by dis_integration at 5:54 AM on November 2, 2015 [2 favorites]

Response by poster: I'm a coder. Most of my time is spent in Eclipse, ssh, and the browser. The only Mac only app I'd miss is TextWrangler.

I do occasionally have to open Word files, which I'd forgotten about. So not being able to open them consistently might be a deal breaker.

I am very comfortable with command line Linux but less so for Linux with a GUI.

Based on feedback in this thread I'm considering just getting my MacBook repaired. I received a quote of $354 to replace the screen and keyboard which seems reasonable. I'd still need a replacement laptop in the meantime but that could definitely just be something cheap that reliably runs Eclipse and a browser and I can do everything else through ssh.
posted by Deathalicious at 6:51 AM on November 2, 2015

I did this a few years back, except I went from mostly Windows to Linux. From Mac it would have been even easier. I didn't experience the problems with the Office incompatibilities discussed up thread, but then most of my documents are pretty basic without brand specific frills. Open Office worked fine 95% of the time with most issues being just minor formatting type problems. My frustration was not on the major programs but little things and it has been a few years so I don't remember the details, but I had to borrow my wife's laptop more than a few times. I am not sure I would want to be dependent on just a Linux box without access to a Mac or Windows box. Photo editing drove me to the Mac when my Linux box finally died but now even that has good open source non-destructive editing tools. I will admit that I miss Linux a lot and am contemplating reformatting my aging macbook for Linux when I finally get a new macbook in a year or so.
posted by caddis at 7:53 AM on November 2, 2015

I used a variety of linux flavors and windows versions through the 90s and early 2000s, and then switched to macs from 2006-2010. I switched back to linux because I was sick of DRMed media and I couldn't afford a new mac.*

I had switched to macs because I was sick of fiddling and fixing shit all the time with linux and windows.** So I was hesitant to go back to linux. But I've been very happy for the last several years, and I think that's in large part because linux has become much more friendly AND because I went with a system76 laptop. (System76 builds computers especially for linux use and they come preinstalled with Ubuntu). I've found them to be good quality machines with a lot of bang for the buck and I never had to fuss with getting drivers right. They're also a great company to work with and have good warranties. My fan got destroyed (my fault) and they had two options for repair - send it in (pay shipping and nothing else) or get the fan mailed free of charge to do it myself. They even talked me through part of the repair when I couldn't find the last goddamn screw.

I do need to read and edit Office documents a fair amount. Open Office looks like crap, but usually gets the job done. If the formatting is finicky or they're using lots of weird animations or something, I pop open a windows vm that I also use for some of the in-house windows programs at my job.

I'm on my second laptop from the Lemur line and couldn't be happier. The biggest difficulties I had switching were extricating my media, deciding on alternative programs (still have not satisfactorily replaced OmniFocus), and adjusting to how much uglier it is.

* Maybe I was also mad at apple for not fixing my laptop even though it was clearly a manufacturing issue.
** My horror of windows may be outsized due to being in tech support for pre SP2 XP and Vista.
posted by congen at 8:46 PM on November 5, 2015