Craving Linux, but fearing sunken cost to Apple hardware I have.
TLDR: Last year I bought an M1 Pro Macbook Pro, which is fantastic hardware, but since I got more into Linux and customization. Now I'm considering selling the Mac and going for some ThinkPad / Framework. But I fear having worse hardware and regretting it.
So, last year I bought second hand M1 Pro 14" Macbook Pro 16GB for what I consider a really nice price of around 1000€. As a long time Windows user at that time with some casual WSL and dualbooting to Linux, coming from a mid spec Lenovo Gaming Ideapad from around 2018 (i5, GTX1650) the Mac felt like a revolution to me. I work in a creative professional industry and having that kind of power with such battery life and the best display I have ever seen in my life seems magical to this day, the only slight bottle neck being the GPU performance which is a little behind for todays cutting edge (But I know that for stuff like Blender renders desktop will always be better and I do not want my laptop to fulfill this).
But since my old gaming laptop has been laying around with its inferior portability and I now had a new stable machine to work on I decided to wipe windows and install Linux on it to use it as my home desktop for games and hobby programming. And the experience has been amazing (I have had experience already with Linux, installing stuff like Arch and Debian, messing stuff up this time I chose Fedora) And now I can't stop loving this system, it games well, it is hackable and customizable, when something bugs me I get into a rabbit hole and fix it and learn stuff, I can play with DE's and nowadays I can even run some professional software I need through Wine. For serious work that hardware is just too slow for me and sucks as a portable laptop and has mediocre screen.
My mind has now been infected with the Linux freedom candy, I have the apple ecosystem (with Iphone and Apple TV) working, I like its features and almost everything I need for my professional needs is mostly fulfilled with the MacBook, but whenever I hit a wall in the ability to fix or configure my system because of apples design decisions I am furious. To be honest it is still miles better that when I was on windows, at least MacOs is UNIX and I don't need to learn two shell environments. To give an example: I am not able to remove a title bar which always slides down from the top in Firefox when I am in full screen, just because apple has decided to always shove the 3 buttons in my face, while in theirs Safari this is working as expected, but I do not want to use Safari...
Whenever I encounter some problem like this it is always "install an app for that" or "modify some system stuff in a really hacky way" which feels horribly wrong and unstable. My inner child which likes to tinker is fed up with the constant friction, even though MacOs is sufficient for productive work.
Last think to mention is that I am considering investing into a nice desktop setup in the near future for render heavy lifting, local AI and gaming.
So with this anamnesis out of my way, my current intrusive thoughts/dilemma is that I could sell my Macbook for around 800€ and invest that money into a laptop which would be running Linux, like Framework or mid tear second hand ThinkPad. But I really do not wish to sacrifice portability for the laptop and with that I fear that in the 1000€ price range the hardware wont be enough for my creative professional work, so then I would have to also rely much more on the desktop setup, which I want to get in the future. I will be grateful for your experience with laptops around this price range in the year 2026, as my last unit of measure is that old gaming laptop.
My second option would be to sell the Mac and use that money together with the money I am saving towards the desktop to buy some really nice modern laptop like the new Framework pro.
But I feel that would be falling into the trap of thinking that laptops should do what desktops are made for, and also I fear relying on cutting edge hardware to be my only device in the terms of Linux stability and Wine translations I need to do.
My third options is to get rid of the the old gaming laptop (which will happen sooner or later) and use the scrap money to buy some cheap Thinkpad like the T480 or T14 whichever generation i get my hands on. Just to satisfy my tinkerer Linux craving needs. And I bite the bullet and keep the Macbook for my professional work until the point when I invest in a nice Desktop setup and maybe I would be able to just use that dirt cheap laptop to ssh and remote into the powerfull desktop(Anyone have experience with that?). Or I continue to live in the two OS schizophrenia between my laptop and Desktop. (Or maybe even triple since having to use windows time to time is inevitable).
But what I fear in this scenario is that I quickly find out that these 6 - 10 years old ThinkPads laptops made for bussiness excel will feel horrible to use and that it only seems attractive because of the old ThinkPad overhype created by hobbyist or hardcore programmers who mainly use TUI and manipulate text files (not to be looking down on people who make do with what they have), myself I am in the weeds of making my UIs as minimal and not needlessly taxing when on Linux.
I just feel like I am missing a scale or proper frame of reference to know how will these different price brackets of hardware feel like to use on daily basis, because my sense in this field has been completely obliterated by using Apple Silicon and even though the MacBook has mostly held its value it still seems like its whole package of screen, body, speakers, and silicon has even greater premium value for me, I just hate the thought of staying on MacOs and having to dealing with its boundaries and roadblock it gives towards adopting open software stacks and non apple services.
I will be grateful for experiences of people facing similar dilemmas or of those who often have access to different hardware to compare and are able to capture the feeling of being on something cutting edge vs mid to low level when on Linux. Maybe it all vibes after all, and maybe I just tend to obsess about changing hardware for the chase of having "the other"...
My market area is central Europe, but I am not looking for straight up purchase recommendations, more I wish to spark discussion about how people navigate these decisions.
PS-1: I know Asahi Linux is a thing, but considering my need for stability, finding support and thinking about my time as investment towards something which will always be jeopardised by Apple in the future, this seems like a dead end to me.
PS-2: I do not consider desktop IO like monitors and keyboard etc. as a cost factor, I already have those.