This is a Post in Progress. I’ll update whenever I learn more.

Learnings from a Ubuntu user that wants a fanless solution and beautiful screen.

Why did I want this?

Fanless is just so nice
Meet, Zoom, … all these are killing my Ubuntu machines when sharing screens and doing fancy stuff
My desktop machine (an Intel NUC) has come of age and needed a replacement/upgrade.

Like

Before the negatives, there are some things which are great.

The keyboard is nice (no magic toolbar)
Many things are rather fast
Physical headphone jack
Amazing sleep/start up
Amazing battery
Speakers are really good, not like on the Pro but still really likeable and almost too good to provide “background noise/radio” while working.
Rosetta seems to work rather well (but really solves one problem by creating another, see Python below)

(Yes, “Amazing” is not an absolute, but a very subjective opinion.)

DISlike

Python2.7.16

Yes it’s true - Apple Ships Python 2.7.16 as the interpreter, although that was sunset over a year ago!

Ansible?
Want Python3 as main interpreter?
Want to only have ARM wheels?

DON’T! It’s a mess. You soo easily end up with some wheels from your interpreter running “as” x86, and some “as” arm. Jikes.

No USB-A port

The USB-A universe is just so ubiquituiuos and prevalent … Lots of new prefererals needs to be bought. The two USB-C ports

Window Management, Workspace management

Yes this a pain. Rectangleapp.com helps for windows, but creating workspaces is still a pain. The second monitor (anyone that isn’t “primary”) is always fixed.

Moving windows with Meta + click: https://apple.stackexchange.com/a/365860/400142

Resizing windows with Meta + right-click: Not Yet Found.

Sloppy focus: No Good Solution found.

Biggest pain: ARM

Want npm/nvm?

https://github.com/serverless/serverless/issues/8696
https://github.com/nodejs/build/issues/2474

Want Homebrew to manage packages for you?

https://github.com/Homebrew/brew/issues/7857