this post was submitted on 16 Jul 2025
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Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).
Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.
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I agree... I love my Macbooks for how well the hardware works, and I love how I can open up terminal and do pretty much anything I want. What I don't like is how consumer hostile it is when it comes to being able to upgrade or repair. I also don't like Apple's insistence on telling me what I do and do not want in a product. According to Steve Jobs no one wants a touchscreen on their laptop, and even though he's been dead for over a decade and the market has shown otherwise, they still don't have a touchscreen Macbook (and if they ever do release one they'll fawn over how innovative they are for doing so).
Anecdotally, I had a touchscreen convertible laptop before my current MacBook. I even got the pencil for it that let me draw on the screen, which I wanted to use for taking notes. The pencil sucked in practice (this was a >1000€ laptop, not much less expensive than my MacBook! maybe that’s just what I get for buying HP though.) and sooner rather than later I got an iPad for taking handwritten notes, and the touchscreen itself turned out to be a gimmick that I used in the beginning but eventually turned off.
Sometimes, they’re right. For example, kind of the reverse: people wanted floating windows on the iPad for years. I always said this would be incredibly awful to use in practice without a mouse. Now they added windows on the iPadOS 26 beta and I tested it and it was exactly as finicky as I expected it to be. Hopefully they’ll still polish it so that it’s at least as good to use as the old side-by-side view (which they unfortunately removed), but this really isn’t it right now.
People might want a device with all the input methods and the most versatile multitasking, but I don’t think this is reasonably doable in a way that’s as polished as devices built with a main input method and UI purpose-built for that input method. In the past I might have said that Apple are the only people that could do this correctly, and only by investing a significant amount of resources, but after the iPadOS 26 situation… oof.
I have had touchscreen laptops at work, and I've had touchscreen chromebooks for personal use and I love the option of the touchscreen, but it isn't something I use exclusively. Sometimes, while typing it's much easier and faster to 'click' on a link, or new field, by tapping my screen rather than grabbing my mouse or going to a touchpad. I agree that trying to use the screen on a laptop while it is in 'laptop mode' is difficult, but there is a use case where it's preferred, and I end up with fingerprints on my non-touchscreen screens when I forget which computer I'm on.
Yeah using it for quick tapping something on the screen I can see being faster than the touchpad. I don’t know if it’s worth the fingerprints on the display though personally :^)
$500 option
Oh, it'll be more than that!