The MacBook Air with M2 and M3 now starts with a 16GB base model and is the same price as the old one. The newer MacBook Pro models with M4, M4 Max, and M4 Pro also have 16GB of RAM in their base models.
https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2024/10/new-macbook-pro-features-m4-family-of-chips-and-apple-intelligence/
FYI, macOS is fully certified Unix, and for Linux fans, there is a distro named Asahi Linux.