I use a MacBook Air with the 24GB RAM upgrade for exactly this use case. You won’t be running Linux easily outside of Docker (or similar tools) but the AI tools are all pretty reliable running on bare MacOS. Also, the lack of active cooling will limit you after 10-20min of running it hard, which is the trade off for how incredibly mobile the thing is.
Nvidia's long been rumored to be designing desktop and probably laptop SOCs. Once those come out, that will probably be the Linux option in that range. Not sure if any of it is slated for 2025, but it's been around the corner for a few years now.
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