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Two weeks switching from Mac to Linux: distros, dotfiles, and the binary problem

2026-05-30 Sat ⏱ 55 min @ThePrimeTimeagen

Trash, a 10-year Mac user, recounts two weeks of switching an old 2015 MacBook Air to Linux, going through Fedora, Linux Mint, and finally Pop!_OS with Hyprland before becoming fully "Linux-pilled." The crew walks through his hand-built dotfiles, the pain of Wi-Fi drivers and tiling/middle-click quirks, and hardware recommendations. Casey then delivers an extended explanation of why distributing binaries reliably is Linux's one unsolved problem, with Win32 and the browser as the only durable cross-platform substrates.

The distro journey

  • Started on a 2015 MacBook Air after wiping macOS; hardware was the main obstacle since Mac is a closed platform with poor driver support.
  • Fedora: loved the defaults but could not get internet working; hand-typed 200-character commands from ChatGPT on another Mac; a USB ethernet adapter also failed.
  • Linux Mint Cinnamon: hated the look ("Ew"), still no networking. Gave up for 48 hours and paid for a $20 ChatGPT plan.
  • Pop!_OS (Hail Mary): drivers worked out of the box and Wi-Fi finally worked. Got roasted for it looking "made for children."

Hyprland and the configuration rabbit hole

  • Switched to Hyprland; initially could only open a terminal by accident. Everything needs a config file.
  • Tiling-by-default confused a long-time floating-window user; middle-click paste meant he kept pasting terminal commands for 3 days.
  • Built dotfiles by hand and pushed them to GitHub. Uses Waybar, btop, Yazi, Neovim with Telescope, Lua config, anime (Demon Slayer) wallpapers. Next: Wallust.
  • Plans to buy a dedicated machine, try Arch and NixOS, then likely Fedora, and eventually game on Linux.

Hardware advice

  • Avoid Nvidia discrete GPUs on Linux; prefer AMD or Intel integrated.
  • Linux-first vendors (System76, Framework) are safest. Casey won't buy Lenovo again after bad customer service.
  • Sponsored Dell XPS units have strong battery life.

Casey's core argument: binary distribution is Linux's unsolved problem

  • The kernel API is stable, but userland has never had a reliable "ship one binary that runs everywhere forever" story.
  • This is the flip side of a strength: shipping your own userland enabled distro diversity (Mint, Pop!_OS, NixOS, Omarchy/DHH) but made binaries incompatible across distros and even revisions.
  • Containerization (Docker), AppImage, Flatpak, Snap are partial solutions but break shared config/state and integration.
  • Two durable substrates persisted: Win32 (via Wine/Proton) and the browser. macOS also bad at stable binaries.

Package managers and "should I even switch distros?"

  • Updating one program can be done via AppImage or local make install without updating the whole system; Arch's AUR/paru makes almost everything installable.
  • For an outdated package: add the upstream project's repo, or build from source / use Flatpak/AppImage.
  • If you standardize on Hyprland, distro differences reduce to the package manager and the out-of-box install experience. Always flash the latest ISO for better drivers.