@ffg@a2mi.socialLenovo laptop I just received for the new job is the first time I will have a Windows computer as my main work machine since (I think) 2002 or so. I had a Dell at a different job from about 2004-2007, but I ran SUSE on it.
OK, now that I’ve done this to it, I'll probably be OK.
So really, at this point, the biggest observable difference, with the two machines side by side, is that the fans spin up on the Lenovo if I even look at it funny, and the MBP is always completely silent. That's Intel vs. Apple Silicon, folks.
@ffg while I’d say Lenovo is probably slightly better than Dell on the business series, I feel they are sadly much worse than the highly reputable IBM ThinkPads from back in the day.
You can still beat Windows into submission and make it a quite pleasant work environment, but be ready to edit the registry a lot to turn off various - ahem - improvements.
@ffg haha and cool! I would have thought you have robust shell rc files with your preferences since the beginning.
Congrats on the new job!
@andbenn Thanks!
And yes, I actually do have a customized .zshrc I use, but it relies on oh-my-zsh on the backend. My first priority was to turn Windows into something I understood. :)
@ffg WSL is really great at least. I gave up on MacOS because it was such a bad Unix; with WSL I can have a good Unix.
It's possible to have quiet or even fanless Intel machines but harder than ARM. Apple is also very, very good at thermal engineering and designing quiet hardware. Their old Intel iMacs were also remarkably quiet.
@nelson My very first computing experiences were with. the Apple II, so I'm a lifer. My first Unix was NextStep, and later FreeBSD, so I’ve always been comfortable with MacOS. I’m enjoying WSL/Ubuntu, though.
@ffg @nelson Mine was a Commodore PET, so I've been a tech orphan forever. (the PET maybe had no fan? The casing definitely has a lot of gaps.)
As Gruber pointed out today, the new Surfaces look like the tipping point for ARM over Intel/AMD.
More fundamentally this is reduced instruction set design finally achieving dominance. Alongside ARM chips, we're also seeing a surge of investment in RISC-V, and piling onto that there's it's new international dimensional.