@futurebird I want to say you really should talk to IT about it if they actually could run Linux, but most these days are locked down. It's a crime that they sell to schools and such frankly. They're designed to be locked down, heavily tracked, etc etc and then to be abandoned and force schools to buy new ones every so often...
(Which really, quite literally, shouldn't be legal... I mean, how is that not a con?)
Installations can be mass deployed, just... the bootloader has to not be locked...
If I worked for IT and was an linux expert I would do this. But as it stands I'm not dealing with their stuff and can't demand they learn a whole new thing and do a bunch of work. I just walk in and expect all t he computers to work.
And they do this very well.
@futurebird Yeah, was just saying basically that if they could be unlocked that would be a great option (and it's easier to learn than you think.)
I suspect the point is moot. Any semi-modern Chromebooks are probably locked down as much as an Apple device (albeit sometimes easier to "jailbreak" via exploits.) Google and OEMs realized quickly they could use that to cash in and people weren't fast enough on the draw in telling them no.
apple laptops are pretty easy to do command line stuff on even with all of the security software.
I'm very happy with the macbooks in that way.
@futurebird @nazokiyoubinbou It's odd to me that I don't hear more people talking about this. Apple computers are pretty great for programming and especially web dev in my experience: you get a unix-like terminal environment, but you can also use all the corporate software you want. It's a bit heretical to say, but this ends up functionally being linux that will run adobe software natively, which is very useful to some people (AKA, me when I was doing front end web dev)
@sidereal @futurebird @nazokiyoubinbou they are extremely specific and strategic about their choice of incompatibilities and it makes them a very popular choice for businesses like twitter when i worked there. they also make it a requirement to buy physical hardware from them in order to run their software which includes the software you use to build your code for their platforms. it's a pretty impressively nasty flywheel and the antitrust suit was fascinating to read
@hipsterelectron @sidereal The hardware requirement in particular is a huge one. Even just getting the x86 version of MacOSX to run in a VM required a bunch of patches and hacks with exceptionally poor results.
Every single part of it is designed for lock-in, which seems like a bad choice when it comes to learning to me. When one is learning is when one should have the most options, not the least... Most FLOSS has Apple and Windows options in addition to Linux often supporting ARM, x86/64, and even sometimes crazy stuff like MIPS, but most Apple stuff does not have many other options.
I feel like everything you can do with an Apple system you can do with a Linux system and end up ultimately better off. (And yes, same for Windows...) But I'm a big fan of owning my own stuff.
