I don’t get why anyone would want to run Linux on Apple hardware. Apple hardware is very expensive and you could buy a faster Intel or AND machine for less money.

Who would buy a Mac and put Linux on it?

What am I not understanding?

I’ve been running Linux on MacBook Pro’s for years and the main benefits are: high quality display, excellent trackpad, solid build quality. Yes they are more expensive than other laptops but the display and trackpad especially are 2 things you interact with constantly. I haven’t done it on the new M laptops but the thing most people cite there is a super low power / quiet device. Main downside presently is the soldered ram and SSD. But still I’m planning to get a Mac to run Linux on it once things are more stabilized.

> I've been running Linux on Macbook Pro's for years

> I haven't done it on the new M laptops

From these two comments, I am guessing you are running on pre-touchbar (2016) Macbook Pro's, because the touchbar models before the M1/M2 were absolutely horrendous for running Linux. You can see a table of features that do or do not work still on those models[0], notably wifi -- perhaps the most critical feature for a laptop to be useful as a mobile device.

The pre-2016/pre-touchbar Macs are such nice pieces of hardware despite their age, but it gets me wondering why not invest in another hardware platform that supports Linux well, is modern but has high quality hardware?

Some examples I can think of are the XPS and the Thinkpad Carbon.

[0] https://github.com/Dunedan/mbp-2016-linux