I currently use three computers. A Mac for daily work. A Windows machine for games. And a 2013 Mac Pro running Proxmox as a homelab server.
This is one too many. Possibly two too many.
The experiment: replace the Mac and the Windows machine with a single Arch Linux box. Same hardware as the Windows machine. Different drive.
Why Linux
There are three specific reasons, not a general philosophical position.
First, macOS fullscreen transitions. Every time you switch between fullscreen apps, macOS plays a half-second animation. There is no setting to turn it off. It is a small thing that compounds into a persistent low-level irritation over a working day.
Second, games and work are on different machines. This means two sets of peripherals, two screens, or a KVM switch. It is inelegant.
Third, Hyprland. It is a Wayland compositor and tiling window manager for Linux. It is also the best window manager I have used. Workspaces, layout, animations — all configured in a single Lua file. Everything does exactly what you tell it to. The Mac has nothing comparable.
The use cases
Replacing two machines means covering everything both machines currently do. The list:
- Website development via Docker
- Media — YouTube, Apple TV, Apple Music
- Web browsing
- Email via iCloud
- Python development for Raspberry Pi Pico projects
- Gaming — Forza Horizon 6, The Division 2, Terminator: Dark Fate, Turtles: Shredder’s Revenge, Doom Eternal, Left 4 Dead 2, and Game Boy and SNES emulation via Epilogue Operator hardware
- 3D design and printing — currently Tinkercad, Fusion 360, and Bambu Studio
- Design — currently the Adobe suite, which I need to leave anyway
What works without question
Docker runs on Linux. It is arguably more at home there than anywhere else. Already tested.
Web browsing, email via IMAP, and Python development have no meaningful Linux barriers. The Pico toolchain runs on Linux without incident.
Left 4 Dead 2 has a native Linux client. Doom Eternal, Turtles, and Terminator run well through Proton. Forza Horizon 6 sits at silver on ProtonDB, trending gold — promising but untested on this hardware. The Division 2 uses BattleEye, which now has Proton support.
Emulation is solid. RetroArch and standalone emulators are well-maintained on Linux. The Epilogue Operator, the hardware I use for Game Boy and SNES cartridges, explicitly lists Linux as a supported platform alongside Windows, macOS, Steam Deck, and Raspberry Pi.
Bambu Studio has a native Linux build. Tinkercad is a web app. Penpot — an open source Figma alternative — runs in Docker and is self-hostable.
What needs a replacement
Fusion 360 has no Linux client. The workaround via Wine is unreliable. The replacement is Plasticity, which covers the same solid modelling workflow and has a native Linux version.
Adobe has no Linux client. Photoshop and Illustrator are the tools in regular use, primarily for UI and web assets. The replacements are GIMP and Inkscape. Neither is a drop-in, but for this use case they are sufficient. The Adobe exit was overdue regardless.
What is still unknown
Apple TV and Apple Music have no Linux apps. Both are accessible via browser, but Apple TV is limited to HD rather than 4K under Widevine, and Apple Music via browser loses offline support and some integration. Whether this is acceptable in practice remains to be seen.
The gaming list needs real-world testing. ProtonDB ratings are a forecast, not a guarantee.
The verdict so far
The hard blockers dissolved on inspection. Every use case has a path — either it works directly, or there is a credible replacement already in hand.
The experiment starts now.