[thow-58d4e8b]

My past three workplaces let me choose between a high-end Windows laptop, or a Macbook. I always opted for Windows, due to some tooling I'm used to, but ended up regretting it on every occasion

The problems with non-Apple laptops are manifold. Surprisingly, there's very little practical difference between $1k and $4k laptop. System integrators don't spend their budget wisely - they cheap out on some parts, while overspending on other parts purely to drive benchmark numbers, without affecting overall user experience in meaningful ways. Windows laptops get about half the battery life of Macbooks at comparable prices, and Linux is even worse than that. Every Windows laptop I've ever had experienced some problems with drivers after Windows updates (usually Wifi, Bluetooth, webcam or audio) - Linux is even worse. Issues with sleeping, hibernating, or waking up for no discernible reason. Intel Turbo/SpeedStep screwing up thermals and battery life. And more

As much as I dislike Apple, when it comes to laptops, the competition is woefully behind

[Delk]

As much as I kind of hate beating a dead horse, the driver and power issues on Linux are very much a matter of hardware choice.

I suspend and hibernate my ThinkPad constantly, from once to several times a day, with no concerns. My uptimes are usually limited by wanting to have a kernel (or some other low-level) update actually take effect once in a while.

My OS install is old enough that I can't actually remember what kinds of tweaks I may have made power-wise apart from installing TLP, but I get comparable battery life on Linux and Windows. I don't think I'm that far from stock configuration. It used to be worse -- my current OS install was originally on a different laptop -- and battery life was perhaps ~20-25% worse on Linux than on Windows, but I don't see much of a difference nowadays. Intel CPU power states are managed by the CPU itself nowadays anyway.

If there is a difference, it's usually because sometimes script-heavy web pages left open on the background seem to cause Firefox to keep hogging more CPU time on Linux than on Windows.

Sure, hardware choices will be limited. You do have to be selective, and the realistic hardware options may or may not satisfy you, so it's entirely reasonable if e.g. an Apple combination of hardware and software turns out to be more attractive.

Not everything is perfect, of course, but it does sound baffling to hear that "Linux" has these constant issues that I haven't experienced in years in daily use. It's true that you have to pick your hardware, and there's probably still a higher chance of hardware compatibility issues if you haven't paid anybody to make sure the combination works, but in my experience, those stereotypical issues are pretty far from being a universal truth.