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I'm a full-time teacher that spends a fairly large amount of time working on a computer. After 25 years of using Macintosh computers full-time, I decided to switch to using a Linux laptop as my primary machine. These pages describe my experience and offer some ideas on how you might do the same.

Migration Assistant

I used a MacBook Air 13-inch (mid 2013) for three years, and considered it one of the best computers I'd ever owned. When Apple stopped updating that line in 2016 in favor of a new product line that no longer seemed to justify the price difference, I decided to pursue other options, and documented my transition in a small website, From Apple to Ubuntu.

Current Setup

As of 2018 I'm using Ubuntu 18.04 on a Dell XPS 13 (Developer Edition) and happier than ever with the role that machine plays in my teaching. If you're looking for information on how to transition to using Ubuntu, check the notes at From Apple to Ubuntu. Or, just get the tl;dr on my current setup.

Why Ubuntu?

Ubuntu is a Linux distribution that is free of charge, open source, well-supported, well-documented, and able to be installed and run on just about any piece of hardware you can name. You've almost certainly already used Ubuntu indirectly in your interaction with a website—many webservers run on some variant of Linux, including Ubuntu.

In the context of these webpages, however, we're talking about using Ubuntu on the "desktop", whether that's on a Mac or PC tower or laptop. And most of the people I know who use Desktop Ubuntu have done so after transitioning from the Apple or Windows operating systems.

Just as there is a cost to updating your hardware, there is a cost to switching to a new operating system. Sometimes that cost is financial, sometimes it's cognitive, sometimes it's just the time that it takes to adjust to a different piece of software or a different workflow.

When there are benefits, however, that outweigh the costs, then the decision is easier,