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I cannot really accept a MacBook because it's a rental product where Apple has complete control over your machine. Used a Dell XPS for a while, it's a fairly g

I cannot really accept a MacBook because it's a rental product where Apple has complete control over your machine. Used a Dell XPS for a while, it's a fairly good experience with Linux (Ubuntu and Manjaro), but the build quality is pretty bad. Once it fell backwards from a coffee table and shorted the main board from the hit. I had to resolder a few SMD parts, was not fun. I also hit the corner or the "metal" lid which cracked and bent from an impact what wouldn't even scratch a MacBook. Needless to say, Dell's support was not helpful. Now I've got a new 2022 ASUS ROG Zephyrus M16, and so far the experience is much better. It's a sturdy machine, without any Dell's creaking and bending, the keyboard is much better as well. ASUS Linux community at https://asus-linux.org/ https://asus-linux.org/ is helpful and most of the features worked either out of the box, or with reasonable amount of tinkering. The price for it here in Shanghai is also reasonable, 12700h w/ nvidia 3060, 2T SSD, and 40GB DDR5 RAM is ~US$2250.

davidatbu 4y ago
> I cannot really accept a MacBook because it's a rental product where Apple has complete control over your machine. What are the specific things that you cannot do with your MacBook that are a deal breaker for you? I'm curious because I was previously a "hard-core" i3wm/Ubuntu user, but after switching to Mac/MacOS, the limitations (not running i3wm, pretty much) were not deal breakers for me, especially in light of the quality of the battery/microphone/speaker/bluetooth as a remote worker.
- mstaoru 4y ago
  Without going into too much detail, I think my biggest gripes are: - outdated utilities, like `make` v3, that bite you in the ass every now and then, - Docker support is bad, it's slow and quirky, and I use it a lot for development, - hard to trust homebrew's security model, - necessity to bind a phone number and email, deanonymizing your machine, - recent security blunders like root login without a password, - ridiculous amount of telemetry that's hard or impossible to disable.
  - davidatbu 4y ago
    Thanks for replying! > Docker support is bad, it's slow and quirky, and I use it a lot for development. That would probably be a deal breaker for me too if I used it for development. > hard to trust homebrew's security model Hmm, how is it different from, say, `apt`'s security model? > necessity to bind a phone number and email, deanonymizing your machine I'm not with you on this one. I log into Chrome/my phone anyways. > recent security blunders like root login without a password I had no impression that MacOS has root exploits at faster frequency than linux distros. Do you think that's the case? > ridiculous amount of telemetry that's hard or impossible to disable. I don't care too much about this one either.
    - mstaoru 4y ago
      I do care about those things ;) > Hmm, how is it different from, say, `apt`'s security model? Core Debian packages are handled by Debian Security Team, Homebrew packages are more like npm, where anyone can upload anything at any time. Also Homebrew's PATH fiddling is very insecure (check https://infotoast.org/site/index.php/2021/05/30/homebrew-is-a-major-security-flaw-install-macports-instead/ https://infotoast.org/site/index.php/2021/05/30/homebrew-is-...). MacPorts come with their own problems. It's just an all-around hacky, insecure software supply chain that is anything but trustworthy.

davidatbu 4y ago

> I cannot really accept a MacBook because it's a rental product where Apple has complete control over your machine. What are the specific things that you cannot do with your MacBook that are a deal breaker for you? I'm curious because I was previously a "hard-core" i3wm/Ubuntu user, but after switching to Mac/MacOS, the limitations (not running i3wm, pretty much) were not deal breakers for me, especially in light of the quality of the battery/microphone/speaker/bluetooth as a remote worker.

mstaoru 4y ago
Without going into too much detail, I think my biggest gripes are: - outdated utilities, like `make` v3, that bite you in the ass every now and then, - Docker support is bad, it's slow and quirky, and I use it a lot for development, - hard to trust homebrew's security model, - necessity to bind a phone number and email, deanonymizing your machine, - recent security blunders like root login without a password, - ridiculous amount of telemetry that's hard or impossible to disable.
- davidatbu 4y ago
  Thanks for replying! > Docker support is bad, it's slow and quirky, and I use it a lot for development. That would probably be a deal breaker for me too if I used it for development. > hard to trust homebrew's security model Hmm, how is it different from, say, `apt`'s security model? > necessity to bind a phone number and email, deanonymizing your machine I'm not with you on this one. I log into Chrome/my phone anyways. > recent security blunders like root login without a password I had no impression that MacOS has root exploits at faster frequency than linux distros. Do you think that's the case? > ridiculous amount of telemetry that's hard or impossible to disable. I don't care too much about this one either.
  - mstaoru 4y ago
    I do care about those things ;) > Hmm, how is it different from, say, `apt`'s security model? Core Debian packages are handled by Debian Security Team, Homebrew packages are more like npm, where anyone can upload anything at any time. Also Homebrew's PATH fiddling is very insecure (check https://infotoast.org/site/index.php/2021/05/30/homebrew-is-a-major-security-flaw-install-macports-instead/ https://infotoast.org/site/index.php/2021/05/30/homebrew-is-...). MacPorts come with their own problems. It's just an all-around hacky, insecure software supply chain that is anything but trustworthy.