Ask HN: Has anyone moved away from Mac?

I've been on a mac for 20 years, but recently I've been eyeing going Linux + Ryzen Mobile. Steam for gaming.

For those of you that have moved, what has been your experience?

I left several years ago and moved to Windows with WSL. It has worked well for me.

I have tried using Linux as a daily driver but can't. Years ago I used BeOS and then Linux as drivers but my needs expanded.

Issues with Linux... there's software that I need that doesn't have an equivalent that meets my needs on Linux so, I would need to limit my Linux usage to only the other things I need but...

Not all of the games I enjoy from steam work on Linux so at that point. It's Linux only for development.

I need zoom for working with other developers and it is less stable for me on Linux than Windows or Mac.

There's a few minor annoyances with Linux beyond that but...

Some personal software I refuse to move off means no Linux for that.

My favorite video game isn't available for Linux on Steam so, I didn't end up playing games on Linux.

I can do development on Linux except for the zoom problems.

I have Linux machines I can ssh into for doing kernel hacking, otherwise, WSL gives me everything I need for development and I get the rest from the few applications I use on windows.

I find Linux, windows, and macOS all flawed but for me Windows ones are the most acceptable.

I suggest you give Linux a go and see if it works out. Given you mention steam, start by verifying all the games you want are available on Linux.

I stopped using my 2009 MBP in 2021. It had three batteries and a HD to SSD upgrade by that time. For heavy lifting I have been using a Debian minitower with 3 LCDs since 2017. I do 90% of my work on the minitower. For on the road use, I have a Lenovo ChromeBook.

I'm not a gamer, but for development Debian Linux is absolutely perfect. Having multiple screens allows me to have reference information a mere glance away.

I have toyed with other people's recent Macs and I find that with each upgrade Apple increasingly locks you into their ecosystem and ways of working.

I am not a fan of extended use of laptops. By sitting so close to the LCD you end up with myopia and other eye aliments.

I’ve been on some Mac or another for 20+ years now, and just upgraded to a refurbished M3 Max for LLM experimentation. I just don’t see the appeal for me of going to windows, although Linux is always possible if we get some decent affordable unified memory boxes from nvidia (eg digits). Macs keep killing on performance/watt though, I wish someone would compete with Apple more aggressively.

Note I don’t really use any Mac apps (well, just apps that are available on other platforms, like vscode, chrome), so that wouldn’t stop me from switching.

The only macs I used were work issued ones, and all of them have been terrible. I can't imagine spending your own money on those. I went through 5 in a 4 year period, through no fault of my own.

At home I was Linux for the longest time, running VFIO passthrough to a windows VM. Once WSL2 got released, Im fully on Windows. WSL2 does everything I need in terms of Linux, so now I pretty much have the best possible setup since I can run any software. Pytorch with GPUs within WSL2 works great as well.

You do have to get Windows Pro though to be able to disable a bunch of stuff, but once you do its a pretty smooth experience.