A better title would be 'My Failed Attempt Switching to a Lenovo X260 from a MBP 13"'. His 'failure' has not really something to do with Linux itself (he did tried a BSD), more with inadequation between hardware and driver support (btw, if the author wander here: you should have tried at least ubuntu before jumping on arch or nixos).
If you're going to switch to Linux, why would Arch Linux be your first pick? I'm sure there are even harder distributions to choose from but wouldn't Ubuntu, Fedora, or Mint be much easier to start with? I like Arch Linux and I'm currently running it on my laptop. I like to think I'm a moderately experienced user after using Linux for 9 years, but it took me around 2 weeks of evenings tinkering with Arch to get it fully set up. That just seems like a terrible choice if you're coming from a Mac.
This reads more of a guy buying the wrong product and not knowing anything about linux and giving up quickly.
The title is very misleading. The vast majority of the post is about laptop specs. The only things he says about Linux are: he had difficulty writing a PKGBUILD under Arch, and the palm detection didn't work under NixOS.
OP complains about MacBook Pro and needing 32 GB of RAM yet he accepts a 720p screen because it's good for writing/Vim never mentioning why he needs 32 GB of RAM.
Why on earth was the author trying to write a PKGBUILD? 4 years of daily use at home and at work, and I've never needed to do that to get a system up and running. Where would you even get the idea that this was necessary?
I had a good time switching to Windows / Ubuntu and I talked about my experience here.
http://blog.jasonkim.ca/blog/2017/01/01/my-macbook-pro-alter...
You do need to spend some time tweaking and fixing up minor issues here and there when you install ubuntu, but in the end it was worth it.
Why is the author comparing an OS designed to run on that particular hardware to manually installing an OS on a machine for which the author hadn't investigated compatibility?
If you compare OSX on Apple hardware to Linux on hardware that ships with Linux pre-installed (probably Ubuntu) I imagine the usability would be comparable.
edit: typo
Allow me to add: If you own a Mac now, please do yourself and every happy linux user a favor and stay there… Reading the never ending torrent of “linux is not as great as MacOS and no hardware is as great as a Mac” gets really, really tiresome… Different folks, different tools…
If you are/were attracted to a Mac, you would probably never be happy with a linux box… For myself it was the other way around (years, and years ago), bought a Mac, hated it furiously, fire-sold it a few months later (a top of the line last-gen PowerMac G4, when it came out)… Having to use the bloody trackpad is so bad ergonomics (when used to the TrackPoint), way to closed-off and “magic” OS, no reasonable good free software (at the time).
Same as reading a review of a Landrover from a guy that has been driving sportscars all his life.. “Not low enough”, “bulky”, “boring sound”….
(copy paste from my comment on the article)
Installed Debian 9 on my 2014 Macbook Pro 13" and am very happy with it. It is just for experimenting purposes, but it was so smooth I hang on to it. (complete story here :https://syncaddict.net/2017/08/ubuntu-16-04-on-macbook-pro-1...)
I did buy the late 2016 MBP 15" with touch bar, but it is really not that excellent. Not as excellent as my 2013 MBP 15" was. It is a good machine, but underwhelming by Apple standards.
> You want a fucking good trackpad. [...] This is your primary input device.
Heh, alright buddy.
1. You don't know how to search for laptops. 2. Try Windows?
I wonder why he didn't try Gentoo also
Very low value article. Sigh.
Buy $500 laptop with a fake description, install a hard distribution and complain that it doesn't work. Author buys a Macbook Air for God knows how much and say it's way easier. This is not really a fair attempt at switching! This is like using a Raspberry Pi and complaining about its performance. For the next time:
1. Get a decent laptop, preferably one that is known to work in Linux (though in my experience, most 1-5 yo laptops have decent drivers). I got mine for $650 with IPS 1080p (Zenbook UX305CA).
2. Use a easy distribution such as Ubuntu where you just have to click "next" few times.
3. Enjoy your Operative System!