Graduate student going into Bioinformatics looking for a new personal laptop. Mac or PC?

Question

[kstangline]

Hello, Bioinformaticians!

I'm new here and I'm really interested in pursuing bioinformatics. I'm currently a first-year MSc student. The actual computer work will be concentrated next year so I have some amount of time to learn everything I can manage. My undergrad is a classic, broad BSc in Biochemistry so I have practically zero experience doing bioinformatics.

So my question is, how different is MacOS/Linux/Windows in the context of bioinformatics? I'll be buying a new laptop to replace my old one and I'm thinking of moving to MacOS OR buying a Windows machine and putting Linux on it. I've read anecdotes that Windows is pretty useless in bioinformatics. Can you shed light on why? And are Macs enough, even though they are less powerful than PCs?

Thanks!

[ATpoint]

I used a standard Mac Book Pro 13'' from 2010 with 8GB RAM, standard Dual Core processor and an 256GB SSD for several months while I got into bioinformatics. Got most standard things done decently. Especially as a bioinfo rookie, you'll spend much time on writing, reading and understanding code, concepts and file formats, so the stats of your laptop are not too important. Get a system that you feel comfortable with but do not stress you bank account too much on it.

Answer 1

[GenoMax]

If you are planning to use central compute resources then it does not matter what you get. PC/macOS would be fine. You would just ssh into your server and do the work there, with your laptop acting as a conduit for the server.

If you expect to do all of your analysis locally on the laptop then getting Mac or Windows is more or less on par (with advent of Linux subsystem for Windows 10). You would be able to most of your work with either a PC (with linux subsystem installed) or a Mac. Cost may be the main consideration in that case.

Answer 2

[marypthomas88]

I am new to bioinformatics; I come from a unix computational science background. When I work, I tend to connect to multiple machines, or to have several ssh terminals open to one machine. Hence, I cannot tolerate any drops in the SSH connections. I have used OSX mac book pro for 10 + years. I use this because it has a robust built-in terminal app, and multiple desktops, and the ssh connection keep-alive function allows me to keep my sessions going for hours. In addition to stability of connections to remote resources, I tend to do a lot of computations locally, and the OSX is native "unix", and that helps streamline my work. I recently got a work PC with Win10 system + a VM app to give me a virtual ubuntu environment. It dropped ssh connections frequently, and was much slower than a native terminal app on my laptop. I am going to try installing linux on the PC.Maybe that will be good enough.

[GenoMax]

Rather than a VM you should use Linux subsystem for Win 10. It is free and provides a native bash shell on Windows. There is choice of 3 linux distros available in app store to choose from (including ubuntu) at last check. Don't compare this to macOS which is native unix.

[5heikki]

Copy&Paste is still total misery in WSL but I recall reading that they were in the process of fixing it. Being a certified UNIX doesn't really mean anything anymore. We have multiple Linux distros that are also UNIX just like macOS. Personally, I don't like where macOS and Apple's design in general (keyboard, useless touchbar replacing important keys, etc) are going. Most importantly however, I could never go back to non-tiling Window managers and there's nothing decent in that area for macOS. IMO Dell XPS DE is currently the best laptop for bioinfo/coding/whatever given that you have remote access to a more powerful box/cluster for the heavy stuff. Also, everyone should use mosh (or tramp mode) instead of ssh..