I’ve had laptops with linux before, but linux was never the original laptop OS and modifying the configuration was always necessary. It used to be fun to hack and modify an OS on an old laptop but I guess if I’m going to spend 600 or 700 bucks (or more!) I’d rather not have to worry about modifications.
One of my worries is that in the past I’ve experienced bad or terrible changes to battery life/performance after installing linux. I’m guessing that that won’t be the case with a linux native laptop? Any experience… (dell, system76,…)? I remember trying to fix this in various ways that the internet had suggested but it never came out as I wanted.
My other worry is the keyboard and shortcuts. I’ve been using a mac at work which in my experience has a fairly different keyboard short cuts, is that still the case? (is this distro dependent?) I remember always having to modify cut and paste for terminals to match the browser’s cut and paste short cuts in ubuntu. This always seemed silly. Again not sure if I want to do this if I’m shelling out a significant amount of money.
Any advice or stories about going from a mac-unix-ish setup to a pure linux setup?
Should I stop trying and stick with macs?
What you interact with is only a very small portion of the OS. In Mac’s case, they use a desktop manager called Aqua, and that’s what you used to draw windows, do keybinds, handle audio, all that fun stuff. Linux has that as well, but Linux is all about choice.
There are many different DEs (Desktop Environments) and it gets a bit addicting installing and trying them out. There’s even more window managers, which is like the DE, but is purely just how you navigate windows, and not extra stuff like keybinds, menus, launching programs, etc. You’re going to probably use Gnome by default since that’s what most use, but I recommend trying out other popular ones like KDE, Mate, or XFCE.
Since most people judge operating systems with what they interact with, trying out different desktop environments will make Linux feel drastically different, almost like an entirely different operating system. They will be all in your distro’s package manager and are all very popular. Under the hood, everything runs the same, but your experience with the computer will be entirely determined by the desktop environment, so you should test them out till you find one you like the most.