I’ve recently had to acquire a Windows machine for C#/.NET Core development. I had been using my MacBook Pro with both the macOS tools and Bootcamp for as long as I could but just got to a point where it wasn’t practical fighting against the current any longer.
I had been considering building a desktop anyway, so knew the parts I needed to order, and despite having never built a computer before, found it was very straightforward.
I put Ubuntu and PopOS before installing Windows as it was taking an age to create a bootable USB (another story). To my surprise, absolutely everything worked straightaway, with PopOS even downloading the correct nVidia drivers for the pretty new 1660 Super I bought. Even Windows later required help finding the right drivers for GPU, WiFi and Bluetooth.
I’ll almost certainly getting a second drive to dual boot (probably Pop) as the Linux experience (for the few hours I used it) was utterly flawless and a far cry from previous attempts with Linux on Apple hardware, and even Windows and macOS on their respective native hardware. Truly impressive.
Sidenote RE: leaving Apple. I was skeptical about ever truly leaving Apple despite knowing that I’d need to build a non-Apple computer for these projects. That said, despite being heavily invested in their ecosystem (iPhone, iPad, iCloud Drive, Apple Music and friends and family using FaceTime & iMessage almost exclusively) I’m not sure I’ll ever buy another Mac again.
All the things I worried about (non-Retina screens, clunky/ugly/unpolished operating systems, ecosystem) are proven to be irrelevant and for the first time in over a decade I’m actually excited by computers again. I’m looking forward to improving the hardware in this computer, building another to act as a homeserver and start playing with all the exciting things that are very “un-Apple”. As @sasajuric said, it’s very liberating no longer being dependant on a single company for your work environment.
