Amazon's Jeff Bezos once revealed how he thinks of local PC hardware as antiquated, ready to be replaced by cloud options. Will DRAM prices make it come true?
That’s fair. I have a Mac laptop as well (base M2, MacBook Air, 16GB RAM, 1TB storage) and… it plays Cyberpunk. Game looks like ass, there’s no crowd hardly at all, my 4th gen Xeon ran it better (I think the Mac gets more frames but the Xeon made it look better… also had a 3GB graphics card). I’d rather play it on GeForce Now where it looks more like it does on my Xbox… but I’m just gonna play it on Xbox.
Blue Prince is another one I have on Mac. Plays almost as well as Xbox (far simpler game) but it’s a bit choppy. Stray looks/plays good, though.
Windows laptops are kinda ass to me. I can see the argument for the desktop if you’re a gamer, but IMO Windows laptops are a complete bust. I’d point someone toward a base M4 MacBook Air (maybe bump the storage to 512GB) and have an awesome desktop environment, and use GeForce Now for gaming. Of course Linux guys would not agree with that. Last time I tried Linux on a laptop, I ran into tons of driver issues. I’m sure that’s not the case in 2026. I’d still prefer macOS on a laptop. For a desktop, I like my Mac, but if that Xeon rig didn’t die on me, it would be running Linux now. Likely Ubuntu.
Linux is definately better in 2026 and I really don’t think it has more driver issues than windows now (which its not like windows has zero if you do a fresh install of generic windows instead of the vendors copy). So virtually zero. They can crop up and I have not seen any but I have seen people online still mention issues. Again not commonly. I personally use zorin because its an out of the box distro that uses the lte and I feel its very stable and functional. Thing is if you are used to mac you either would have to use the paid version to get the gui switcher function, or mess with the settings yourself to get it to act like a mac, or use another distro like elementary os which I believe is setup to behave like a mac. I was a big mac fanboy in the late aughts but went away from it when it went to all about being small and sleak over powerful with many ports along with apple care no longer being legendarily good. They use chromebooks at the schools I substitute and oh how I hate the reverse scrolling.
I actually wouldn’t want a Linux machine to act like a Mac. I like Macs because of the way they are, but I use Windows at work and I use it differently. I’ve tried to make them act like each other and it just doesn’t work. I have 30 years of experience with Windows that isn’t going away (I still reach for CTRL+ALT+DEL which on a Mac is CTRL+⌘+DEL (which doesn’t do shit (just tried it, it doesn’t do shit) but I also have 2.5 years of experience with Macs (and I do try ⌘+Q to quit apps, which is ALT+Q and I don’t think it does anything (unless a menu’s alt shortcut is Q, which would be very rare).
Linux… I’ve used it off and on (mostly off) since the 90s. I really liked Red Hat, in the Win98/2000 days. I know it became Fedora Core and is now just Fedora. Always liked Ubuntu. But — and I’m preaching to the choir here — I understand what Linux is, being a kernel and not an OS. A distro is just a set of tools. So yeah, I like GNOME, I like KDE enough, I’m sure there are other options and I honestly haven’t used either of those in a couple years.
Quick question: back in the day, you could switch desktop environments. There was KDE, GNOME, and another one (like X Windows or something). That was cool. I’m sure there’s a way to do that now. That’s what I’d have. One environment for some stuff, another for other stuff. I’m sure it’s possible. I just don’t really hear about it being done.
I think you don’t hear about it because its really not much of a thing nowadays. Like my distro zorin uses gnome and I was fine with it for awhile and I would belly ache on forums like this that they should switch to kde. Finally I got off my lazy but and installed kde. once I had the window manager just lists the options. I actually end up with a few because I installed all kde and zorin has its own (well its just a different preconfig of gnome) so I have a drop down for zorin, gnome, kde plasma, and kde x11. thats it done. by installing kde I got that with nothing further done on my part. So its so easy now you just don’t get people talking about it really. Personally I loved the next step machines which is why I liked osx but then when ios influence went into osx it drifted away from what I like. Now I mostly just want window snapping.
That’s fair. I have a Mac laptop as well (base M2, MacBook Air, 16GB RAM, 1TB storage) and… it plays Cyberpunk. Game looks like ass, there’s no crowd hardly at all, my 4th gen Xeon ran it better (I think the Mac gets more frames but the Xeon made it look better… also had a 3GB graphics card). I’d rather play it on GeForce Now where it looks more like it does on my Xbox… but I’m just gonna play it on Xbox.
Blue Prince is another one I have on Mac. Plays almost as well as Xbox (far simpler game) but it’s a bit choppy. Stray looks/plays good, though.
Windows laptops are kinda ass to me. I can see the argument for the desktop if you’re a gamer, but IMO Windows laptops are a complete bust. I’d point someone toward a base M4 MacBook Air (maybe bump the storage to 512GB) and have an awesome desktop environment, and use GeForce Now for gaming. Of course Linux guys would not agree with that. Last time I tried Linux on a laptop, I ran into tons of driver issues. I’m sure that’s not the case in 2026. I’d still prefer macOS on a laptop. For a desktop, I like my Mac, but if that Xeon rig didn’t die on me, it would be running Linux now. Likely Ubuntu.
Linux is definately better in 2026 and I really don’t think it has more driver issues than windows now (which its not like windows has zero if you do a fresh install of generic windows instead of the vendors copy). So virtually zero. They can crop up and I have not seen any but I have seen people online still mention issues. Again not commonly. I personally use zorin because its an out of the box distro that uses the lte and I feel its very stable and functional. Thing is if you are used to mac you either would have to use the paid version to get the gui switcher function, or mess with the settings yourself to get it to act like a mac, or use another distro like elementary os which I believe is setup to behave like a mac. I was a big mac fanboy in the late aughts but went away from it when it went to all about being small and sleak over powerful with many ports along with apple care no longer being legendarily good. They use chromebooks at the schools I substitute and oh how I hate the reverse scrolling.
I actually wouldn’t want a Linux machine to act like a Mac. I like Macs because of the way they are, but I use Windows at work and I use it differently. I’ve tried to make them act like each other and it just doesn’t work. I have 30 years of experience with Windows that isn’t going away (I still reach for CTRL+ALT+DEL which on a Mac is CTRL+⌘+DEL (which doesn’t do shit (just tried it, it doesn’t do shit) but I also have 2.5 years of experience with Macs (and I do try ⌘+Q to quit apps, which is ALT+Q and I don’t think it does anything (unless a menu’s alt shortcut is Q, which would be very rare).
Linux… I’ve used it off and on (mostly off) since the 90s. I really liked Red Hat, in the Win98/2000 days. I know it became Fedora Core and is now just Fedora. Always liked Ubuntu. But — and I’m preaching to the choir here — I understand what Linux is, being a kernel and not an OS. A distro is just a set of tools. So yeah, I like GNOME, I like KDE enough, I’m sure there are other options and I honestly haven’t used either of those in a couple years.
Quick question: back in the day, you could switch desktop environments. There was KDE, GNOME, and another one (like X Windows or something). That was cool. I’m sure there’s a way to do that now. That’s what I’d have. One environment for some stuff, another for other stuff. I’m sure it’s possible. I just don’t really hear about it being done.
I think you don’t hear about it because its really not much of a thing nowadays. Like my distro zorin uses gnome and I was fine with it for awhile and I would belly ache on forums like this that they should switch to kde. Finally I got off my lazy but and installed kde. once I had the window manager just lists the options. I actually end up with a few because I installed all kde and zorin has its own (well its just a different preconfig of gnome) so I have a drop down for zorin, gnome, kde plasma, and kde x11. thats it done. by installing kde I got that with nothing further done on my part. So its so easy now you just don’t get people talking about it really. Personally I loved the next step machines which is why I liked osx but then when ios influence went into osx it drifted away from what I like. Now I mostly just want window snapping.