But why would you? Those Intel Macs were terrible. If you’re thinking “cheap Linux box,” IMO the best way to do that is get a used PC from a corporation that is unloading them during an upgrade (like a Dell or HP workstation), like an i5 with 8GB RAM (or 16 if you’re lucky), they pull the hard drive for security (and it’s almost always an HDD), you drop a SATA SSD in it, put Linux on it, and you have a pretty good computer, even (and maybe especially) if you run a headless server and remote into it with your daily driver computer (what you surf the web on, which could even be an Android phone or maybe an iPhone, not sure about that).
FR, I had a £4k top spec one, Intel i9, 64GB as my work laptop… And even back then, I wouldn’t have bought it myself for £800 if given the chance. Absolutely atrocious, particularly in terms of thermal design. I remember one summer, having Intel vTune installed and seeing the CPU laptop throttle to 0.25 GHz with Zoom open, because it would wake up the power hungry GPU and the laptop couldn’t deal with a British 30°C summer.
The Apple Silicon ones are lovely in comparison. When I swapped it, I remember going through a whole flight using my laptop without charging thinking “what sorcery is this”.
Shame there isn’t a decent equivalent ARM laptop that can do Linux.
But why would you? Those Intel Macs were terrible. If you’re thinking “cheap Linux box,” IMO the best way to do that is get a used PC from a corporation that is unloading them during an upgrade (like a Dell or HP workstation), like an i5 with 8GB RAM (or 16 if you’re lucky), they pull the hard drive for security (and it’s almost always an HDD), you drop a SATA SSD in it, put Linux on it, and you have a pretty good computer, even (and maybe especially) if you run a headless server and remote into it with your daily driver computer (what you surf the web on, which could even be an Android phone or maybe an iPhone, not sure about that).
FR, I had a £4k top spec one, Intel i9, 64GB as my work laptop… And even back then, I wouldn’t have bought it myself for £800 if given the chance. Absolutely atrocious, particularly in terms of thermal design. I remember one summer, having Intel vTune installed and seeing the CPU laptop throttle to 0.25 GHz with Zoom open, because it would wake up the power hungry GPU and the laptop couldn’t deal with a British 30°C summer.
The Apple Silicon ones are lovely in comparison. When I swapped it, I remember going through a whole flight using my laptop without charging thinking “what sorcery is this”.
Shame there isn’t a decent equivalent ARM laptop that can do Linux.