Macbook Pro - ditch OSX for Fedora?

[bwana]

Good thing we can all have our own opinion. I certainly see why some value the hardware, but for me the mac hardware is more a money drain, the only reason I live with it, is it just works with OSX, as opposed to rolling your own Hackingtosh (which I have done).

Longevity and reliability justify my buying MacBook Pro after MacBook Pro - can't imagine getting another brand of laptop to play nicely with OsX would be much fun either.

 

[icyrus]

I would not agree with definitely. For me they're of equal value.

I feel exactly the same way. The two go hand in hand.

 

[unskinnybob]

No...the best reason to have a Macbook is OSX otherwise you might use any other generic piece of ****.

OSX is the best *nix desktop OS.

Nonsense. Apple use superior quality hardware with the highest fault tolerance. That alone makes the hardware worth the money. I often switch between OSX and running Windows 10, depending on software requirements in my work environment. Right now I'm running Windows 10 again for Visio, Project and SQL reporting.

 

[shadow_man]

I can't see why you would do this. I'm an RHCE also (actually, mine's expired, I did it so long ao). My first linux install came on two stiffies somewhere in the mid-late 90's and I ran linux desktops continuously both at home and at work, until around 2007 when my HP laptop's mobo died for the 3rd time, and the 2nd hand Mac Mini I picked up a year earlier to play with became my makeshift desktop. I was impressed enough to pick up a white plastic MacBook and started using that as my main machine. At work, I kept the linux desktop until around 2012 at which point I switched to Windows for "enterprise software" reasons. After three years of Dell Hell I finally switched to a MacBook Pro with OSX late last year. Keep in mind, until a few months ago, I was a mostly Linux and a little of other *nix sys-admin at a hosting company. I spent most of my day fixing stuff customers broke (who ever thought it's a good idea to give customers root access??), testing new releases, automating stuff, etc.

So, with the peleasantries out of the way, here are my thoughts:

1. There's very little you learned in RHCE that is relevant on a desktop.

2. There are very few skills you acquire (or keep fresh) using a linux desktop that has practical application where you encounter Linux in a money-making capacity (web/db servers, mostly).

3. Most of what you can do on a linux desktop that has relevance in actual linux work, you can do on OSX too. In fact, having to cope with a slightly different environment where every thing isn't where you expected and you have to add dependencies and replace bsd variants of shell tools with gnu ones (hint: install brew) will probably do more to sharpen your skills than running fedora ever would.

4. Unless you're aiming to work for the next start-up that will go bust trying to usher in the year of linux on the desktop, most of the work linux people do can be done with no impact to efficiency from Linux, Windows and OS X. Get iTerm2 on OSX or SecureCRT on windows, and you have everything you could ask for in a terminal client.

YMMV

Thanks for taking the time to craft a well thought out answer. I've already got brew installed and have added relevant items I need like wget / ssh-copy-id etc. I also make use of iTerm2 for my terminal usage.

I just feel like i'm missing out on experience by only running Linux servers. That being said it looks like its a bit of a pain to run Linux on an Apple laptop as a) the camera doesn't work (drivers aren't open source) and b) things don't just work out of the box a lot of the time (both a pro and a con as you learn how to fix, but it takes precious time).

 

[garyc]

One potential advantage of going the Fedora way is that it will allow for migration from HFS+ to a more modern file system.

 

[konfab]

Thanks for taking the time to craft a well thought out answer. I've already got brew installed and have added relevant items I need like wget / ssh-copy-id etc. I also make use of iTerm2 for my terminal usage.

I just feel like i'm missing out on experience by only running Linux servers. That being said it looks like its a bit of a pain to run Linux on an Apple laptop as a) the camera doesn't work (drivers aren't open source) and b) things don't just work out of the box a lot of the time (both a pro and a con as you learn how to fix, but it takes precious time).

I view the camera not working as a bit of an advantage. I don't have to worry about Apple or the NSA spying on me.

 

[internetless]

Lots of opinions here ;-) Let's throw my 2c into the ring as well.

I have been running Linux as my desktop OS for as long as I can remember - since the days of Slackware on stiffies. I bought a Mac about 5 years ago just to learn something new. While I liked the experience, I ended up replacing OS X with Linux in the end, mainly because I prefer the freedom of doing things the way I want to, rather than how Apple (or whoever else) thinks it should be done. There is not only one way to do something;-)

The only issues I ever had (running openSUSE 13.2) were:

- an initial CPU temperature problem, for which I found a fix
- had to fiddle with the keyboard map a bit to make the Mac-specific keys do useful things

I have colleagues who also switched from Linux to OS X with the "it just works" mentioned here too. They were tired of fiddling to get things working in Linux. While I can't deny that this fiddling is sometimes necessary, I think everything I have learnt in the process, and the experience I have gained, far outweighs the occasional inconvenience / frustration. If it doesn't work the way you expected it to, there is always another way or another tool to get the job done. In my opinion this experience alone makes it worth while running Linux on your everyday workstation.

 

[milomak]

I run Debian Sid on mine so don't expect smooth sailing

 

[zippy]

I found the fiddling that I did getting Linux desktops to work and keep working has been of zero value to me. I dropped Linux as a desktop about 4 years ago when I bought a MacBook Pro. At home I use Linux as a server. My home desktop is a Windows machine, which I now use exclusively to remote into work, mainly because my work desktop is a Windows PC and trying use Windows applications with a Mac uk keyboard is painful. I use my MacBook for everything else. I ssh and use VNC into my Linux server and my raspberry pi's from my MacBook as they are headless.

I don't think it's a bad thing that Linux's strength does not lie in desktops. I haven't used Windows or OS X as a server, so I can't comment if they are better or not. Linux does the job and it's easy to operate, so I don't really care I find most of the arguments from either side are mostly about someone trying to justify their own choices, or they are just being fanboy douches I find my choices work for me and that it's actually a mix which I like. I doubt I will ever try and run everything on the same OS. That is so f####g boring and ana#

 

[vinodh]

I have the 12" MacBook and Ubuntu doesn't work on it. It boots up and gets to the desktop but the keyboard and trackpad don't work. I was hoping to experience some hi-res 16.04 LTS goodness but ended up with effectively an Ubuntu wallpaper.