should i biology major get a mac or a pc

I don't know if it makes you feel better, but most programs that don't port from Linux to Mac are poorly designed, they are shaky and tricky on any platform. Some free Linux programs you download will refuse to compile, some will work incorrectly, others will still be only for PC running Windows. There will be still some pieces of software out of your grasp. Most proprietary software packages associated primarily with Wintel platform have been ported and available for Mac as well. Mac is not an obscure minority platform it used to be over decade ago. Most Linux applications will port seamlessly.

It's easy and comfortable, but runs on top of OS X, which is kind of Unix. It will give you direct uncomplicated access to the largest part of Bioinformatics software. If you intend to have a variety of tools and problems to address and really limited to user-level interaction with your computer I would recommend to settle on a good Mac with a nice big screen.

If you know your toolbox, say, Matlab, than just go for the easiest most comfortable platform on which it runs. An expert user would solve the problem easier, but beginners depend on 3rd party applications to do the job. As Jan has pointed, the variety of tools is such that no single platform can harbor them all. There is no simple answer, even with the extra conditions you have formulated.

Should i biology major get a mac or a pc