I develop on GNU/Linux begrudgingly. It has all of my tools, but I have a never-ending stream of issues with WiFi, display, audio, etc. As far as I'm concerned, GNU/Linux is something that's meant to be used headless and ssh'd into.
What distro do you use? I switched from Mac to Pop, and it’s great.
I had already decided that 2021 would be my year of the Linux desktop, but Apple forced my hand a bit early. My 2019 Mac’s WiFi went. Had to lose my primary dev machine for over a week as it shipped out to have a bunch of hardware replaced.
So, I built a PC with parts that have good Linux support. I think that’s the key. I imagine System76 machines would run smoothly. It’s definitely not as smooth a UX as Mac, but I like being in an open ecosystem on a machine I can repair. And it’s had a number of perks such Docker running efficiently for once.
Edit: I can now trivially repair my computer if it breaks. The entire rig cost about 1/4 what my MacBook cost, and it is much faster.
For what its worth I've been thinking about going to a Mac M1 laptop for email/HR plus an small-form-factor Ubuntu box for development (i.e. Intel NUC, Asus PN-50) that I can ssh into and run headlessly locally.
With a hybrid 1-2 days in the office and the fact that the NUC form factor has gotten smaller and higher performance, I could make a case to actually stick it in my laptop bag for the 1-2 days and do email/surf only on my train commute. I was never really that productive working on the train anyways.
Except for when the wifi fails or your SD card that you boot off of gets corrupted or you try to do something that requires a bit more power than 1.2GHz and 1GB RAM can handle.
Raspberry Pi 4 has up to 8GB of RAM and a 1.5GHz CPU, but your point still stands. Even with those specs it won't provide a fully smooth desktop experience.
