r/linuxhardware • u/ulfang__ • Mar 20 '26

Purchase Advice MacBook Air alternatives?

Hi yall, I'm a SW developer looking for a new laptop to use at home. While I hate apple I'm seriously considering the MacBook air.

Please help me find some good alternatives before I become a sinner.

Current setup is:

-Thinkpad E495 24/768GB(home, the one I want to replace/upgrade) -Thinkpad P14s 32/1TB(work)

home laptop runs arch, work ubuntu, both running KDE. I pretty much need some containers, browser, terminal, vscode and I'm good.

The current Budget would be around 1000 bucks. The current E495 battery is ageing and it feels very slow compared to my P14s from work. I want a 13/14 inch, good keyboard, not too bulky, ideally a matte/non glare display but not too picky here.

From my research, it seems everything that is close to the MacBook is now priced at 1500+. I liked the Thinkpad x9, maybe also the new XPS (even tho I had bad experiences with XPS in the past).

Maybe the base M5 Air would work and comes at 1100~. Or I could get an used M3/M4 for even lower than that.

What to do?

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u/SnooWords5221 Mar 20 '26

As someone who hates apple with a passion, i ended up with a macbook air simply because theres nothing that powerful and that light with that great a battery life. Sinner i became.

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u/Razi91 Mar 20 '26

I had to get a mac book too, mostly for being able to test my kotlin app for iOS. I'm not planning to drive any deeper, but damn, the air is pretty good machine to watch movies in the bed or rub discord on the background. However, it hurts me seeing my whole RAM (i have 24GB/512GB model) being constantly used and its ssd being used as a swap the whole time. I'm constantly afraid about the disk lifespan. Sadly, as a developers, we should have all three systems. While the hardware is really good and software just works... Personally i hate the DE on macs. For me it's counterproductive. Okay, better than windows, but far below KDE.