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Somehow, I Bought a MacBook

May 2026 (858 Words, 5 Minutes)

If someone told me few years back that I would genuinely enjoy using Apple products, I would have laughed honestly.

I was deeply into Linux. Arch Linux, EndeavourOS, KDE, GNOME, i3wm, terminal customization, distro hopping, shell configs and what not!

I still maintain Linux laptops. I still use terminal heavily. I still get excited seeing clean GNOME or Hyprland setups online. I still randomly tweak configs at 1AM for absolutely no reason. That curiosity never really went away.

But recently, something unexpected happened.

I bought a MacBook Air M5.

And somehow… I completely understand the hype now.

Linux Changed How I See Computers

Linux taught me many things. And honestly, it still does.

Before Linux, laptop was just a machine where I opened browser, watched YouTube, played Assasins Creed Origins and did random college work. Linux made me curious about computers in a way nothing else did. Suddenly I wanted to understand operating systems, filesystems, package managers, desktop environments and terminal workflows.

I still remember the excitement of discovering Arch Linux for the first time. Installing a new desktop environment felt exciting. Tweaking desktop environments and Configuring polybar felt exciting. Even making terminal transparent and blurry for absolutely no practical reason felt exciting! Classic Linux user behavior honestly.

I spent crazy amount of time on Unixporn subreddit and random GitHub dotfiles repositories. Half the time I was customizing my setup more than actually using the laptop productively.

I started trying different desktop environments, different distros and different workflows. Some weekends I spent more time customizing desktop than actually using laptop productively. At one point I kept changing between KDE, GNOME, XFCE and i3wm every few months. Most of the time there was no real reason behind it. I just liked trying different setups and seeing how people use their systems differently.

EndeavourOS, NixOS And Why Linux Started Feeling Special

Currently I still have two old laptops lying around. One is my old college laptop — HP Pavilion 15-cc102tx. The other one is my brother’s old HP Envy laptop. Yeah, I was a sucker for HP laptops back then. Cheap and best lol. One laptop runs EndeavourOS and the other one runs NixOS.

While installing NixOS on my brother’s laptop, I somehow messed up the Windows dual boot setup completely. Windows got stuck on recovery blue screen with “Your PC couldn’t start properly”. I ended up spending entire night fixing it. Creating Windows bootable USB again, wiping things properly, reinstalling Windows from scratch and setting everything up again. I broke things. I panicked for few minutes. Then slowly started understanding what actually went wrong. Somewhere in that process, I have learnt way more about computers than I normally would.

EndeavourOS gives me that familiar Arch feeling I always enjoyed — lightweight, minimal and close to upstream without making setup painful. NixOS still confuses me sometimes honestly. Every time I edit configuration.nix, I spend half the time checking documentation again. The declarative configuration model of NixOS is insanely cool.

Somewhere My Preferences Started Changing

I think this started around the time I moved from KDE to GNOME. KDE is extremely good and customizable. But over time I noticed I was spending too much time adjusting small things constantly. GNOME felt calmer to me. Less settings. Less tweaking. Cleaner workflow. Earlier I used to enjoy spending hours customizing every small thing. Now I slowly started preferring setups where I can open laptop and continue work immediately. I did not realize it back then, but I think that change in preference slowly pushed me closer toward macOS too.

Then Came The MacBook Air

Recently I bought MacBook Air M5. Even typing that still feels slightly illegal as a Linux fanboy. But, This machine is genuinely impressive.

The first thing I noticed was how little friction exists while using it. Open lid and it instantly works. Close lid and battery barely drops. No fan noise. No random heating. And the battery - Mac really outshined every laptop company out there. The trackpad is ridiculously good too. Everyone on internet keeps praising MacBook trackpads and honestly now I understand why. And the build quality feels premium in a way most Windows laptops still struggle to match.

The Funny Part: I Finally Understand Apple Users

For years I used to think Apple users exaggerated everything. Now suddenly I am using iPhone, MacBook Air and AirPods ecosystem together.

The ecosystem integration is genuinely convenient. Copy something on phone and paste it on laptop. AirPods switching automatically. Notes syncing instantly. Calls appearing directly on laptop. Small small things individually, but together they remove lot of friction from daily life.

And the funny thing is, macOS still feels somewhat familiar to a Linux user underneath all the polished UI. You still have terminal, zsh, package managers and UNIX tools available. I still use all my configs and dotfiles on my new mac.

Linux Is Still Part Of My Setup

Buying MacBook did not replace Linux for me. I still use Linux laptops regularly. Sometimes I randomly spend weekends trying new tools or changing setups again. Some days I want stability and long battery life. Some days I want to sit and experiment with Linux configs for few hours.

macOS became my primary laptop for daily work and portability. Linux still remains the place where I experiment more.

Right now I am also slowly working on my first proper Linux rice on my EndeavourOS setup. It is still nowhere near complete. Maybe once I finish it properly, I will write another blog about that journey too.