In the end of November 2022 (1 year ago), I switched from MacOs to Linux (Debian with KDE Plasma) on my MacBook.
No regret! Was a very good decision.
I think, I’ll never go back.
Experience:
- I did not know about KDE Plasma until 1 year ago. The picture in my head about Linux was pretty much GNOME. I’m a huge fan of KDE Plasma now. KDE Plasma 6 in 2024 will probably be awesome.
- The GitHub repository “Awesome-Linux-Software” was awesome during the first weeks. It made me realize that most of the stuff I was already using, is also available for Linux. Only software I had to leave behind: Affinity Designer (IMO far more intuitive to use than GIMP, sorry FOSS community) and Visual Studio for Mac (which is dead anyway)
- The only advanced thing I had to do in the beginning: My WIFI connection is always gone when I close my MacBook, but there is not automatic reconnect when I reopen it. None of the usual stuff recommended when using Debian on a MacBook helped. So, I had to write a service that checks for this (something with rmmod, modprobe, brcmfmac, …). Probably too much for a casual user and hopefully not necessary for them…
TODO in the next year:
- Trying out gaming on Linux, maybe buying a Steam Deck
- Migrating to KDE Plasma 6 (and switching to Wayland)
- Recommending
our religionLinux to others
u can use visual studio code instead of visual studio. about gaming - not that hard using wine+lutris, the future is here, we can install and run exe-s in linux!
Yes, I’m using VSCodium, but Visual Studio is of course totally different regarding features.
At the moment, I don’t have the hardware to run games… Will try it out next year…
There’s plenty of great old games and also newer games that don’t require high specs.
For example indie games like Slay the Spire & Hades
And there’s always Nintendo games like Pokemon that you can play through emulators (Bsnes, Mgba, MelonDS, Dolphin, Citra, Yuzu, etc.)
The feature difference is artificial due to first party extension licensing restrictions.
That’s Visual Studio Code vs VSCodium - I believe OP is referring to Visual Studio, the full blown IDE that’s been out for far longer than VS Code, which does have a completely different feature set.
Try playing Xonotic. It is FPS that runs natively and on dualcore celeron with iGPU it gives 60 fps on ultra and 120 on default. It runs mostly in single thread and you are likely to be GPU-bound.
If you are trying to avoid MS and liked Atom, there’s also https://pulsar-edit.dev/
You probably couldn’t game very much on a macbook. Maybe you could on the more expensive variants with Radeon Pro graphics, but those aren’t your typical gaming GPUs.