I used a MAC for my PhD but forgot that this could be a option.

A MAC would be a good way to go as a happy medium. You get all the security and flexibility of Linux with the stability and ease of use of Windows is you want it. Installing on a MAC is generally easier too without the need for sys admin skills. Performance-wise a MAC is exceptional for almost everything.

If I could afford it I would be using MACs with Linux PCs for servers.

The only person whose opinion matters, as regards your progress, is your supervisors.
Actually you need to be forming your own opinions on this as well. To do this, look at how many pages and references a typical thesis in your field contains. Now divide that down to see the average "per 3 months" amounts. Then compare with what you currently have and understand that you will need to re-write some of it and will gradually improve your speed and quality of output as you go. It's not an exact science but it will give you a feel for where you are. I would use that as evidence if your supervisor starts to be negative.

I have to say though that 5400 words is around half of a typical 12 month Masters thesis. I'd say you were well ahead of schedule. Your supervisor is wrong about being able to use your literature review in your thesis. You can't just simply invent another literature review. The problem here might be the ridiculous and time-wasting issue of "self-plagiarisation" but you get around that by simply re-wording it. That is what I did when I wrote up my papers into my thesis. I'm afraid that in academia you'll find yourself dealing with this sort of infuriating stupidity all the time. Prepare yourself for an onslaught of breathtaking idiocy which includes endless nonsense about the "importance" of "university league tables", "poster prizes", "journal impact factors" and "prestige". So glad that I am out of that system now :-D

It sounds to me like you are asking whether you should compromise your PhD ambitions to suit your employer's needs.

It also sounds like you are prepared to accept that your work supervisor has the final say on whether you do a PhD at all.

Is that really what you want to do? Do you really want to hand this much control of your life over to someone else who has no interest in what you want?

Is quitting your job and going full time on the PhD not an option for you?

TQ, I have used Linux (Ubuntu) for quite a while now and would never go back to Windows. It has a firewall built in to it that you can switch on and you don't generally need to worry about having anti-virus packages installed as Linux is considerably safer than Windows.

A word of caution though. Don't assume you can install Linux on any machine. I would check online for the specific make and model because some manufacturers have switches to prevent Linux installation. This may be less of an issue today but I would certainly look into this. Lenovo machines specifically ring a bell. A couple of links below.

The final word of caution. Linux is absolutely brilliant. It's faster and safer than Windows. However when it does go wrong it REALLY goes wrong. You might find yourself needing to open a terminal window and type in some commands. For those with no system administrator experience this can be a nightmare and online forums are full of arrogant and dismissive "read the fucking manual" types. You don't need to be an expert but this generally isn't an operating system that our parents generation will ever embrace as fully as Windows.

Glad to hear you have put these worries behind you.
You are correct about Visa issues being a problem for non-EU students trying to get work in the EU. This was a problem 20 years ago when I was involved in recruitment at the company I was in and I wouldn't imagine that things have got much easier.

TQ, this is more likely to be the problem for your colleagues than the uni they worked at but obviously I can't be sure about individual cases. In my experience many CVs are either absolutely crap or don't really stand out so that might be a problem too. Add in that the jobs they apply for might be over subscribed. I think all of these have higher weighting than where you studied.

If your science is good enough, nobody will care that much about where you did your PhD.
Neither will they care if you did your postdoc in the same country, region, uni or under the same supervisor.
Being a researcher is difficult enough without fellow scientists spreading unhelpful and potentially
very damaging nonsense like this.
Please stop it sciencephd.

If I remember correctly I put my own name either in larger font or I underlined it to indicate this was my research. My supervisor's name was on everything I did as reference.

Are you sure you even want an academic career? To be honest it sounds like you don't.

By the way I would ignore the nonsense about doing a postdoc under your PhD supervisor being frowned on. Too many people are prepared to spread absolute horse manure without thinking it through. It's not 1950 any more. Do a postdoc with whoever you want, Follow where the research that you want to do leads you.

The US system is ridiculously long and won't solve the problem you have now listed in 3 separate threads.

The correct and only way to deal with this sort of question and kill it stone dead is to say:-

"I thank the examiner for his interesting suggestion. This warrants further investigation and will form the next phase of this work".

I would then add a couple of sentences in the vein of what rewt has suggested above as regards why you chose H2SO4 and not other acids and a hypothesis about how you think HCl would compare. This is standard stuff to check that you've thought it through.

The costs indicated above are horrendous.
I used the university printer for the viva copies. If I remember, there were 3 of these but it was £15 in total.
For the final hardback I used an external printer and got two copies. The cost was less than £25 per copy. I got one for me and one for the uni. My supervisor asked me to get him one but changed his mind when I said "No problem, I will get a costing for you". These guys earn upwards of £40k or £50k. They have a bloody cheek expecting a broke student to pay for their copy.

I should also add that success at work is about achieving particular goals and not recording a specific number of hours.

Yes I know that feeling. Unfortunately your colleagues will not be able to keep that going so try to bear that in mind. Think about this. If they are working 13 hours a day, when do they actually have a social, home or personal life? Unless they are curing cancer (and actually probably not even then), there is literally nothing worth ruining your life for. China, Japan, the UK and the US are dreadful societies for this kind of work-slavery nonsense but none of it beats the fact that you get about 80 years on earth. Be very careful about how you want to spend it. I can also pretty much guarantee that they are not productive for 13 hours every day. It's probably around half that. And if they are in a lab I'd be deeply worried about one of them causing an accident through fatigue. The whole thing is beyond stupid.
In addition to limiting yourself to 9-10 hours a day I'd also make sure you get at least one day off every week.

Working these sorts of hours every day is totally unsustainable and sooner or later you will burnout and you may find you can't easily recover from it.
Life is a marathon not a sprint. You have at least a 40 year career to think about so slow things down a bit.

I once put some methanol solution in a sealed flask, set the heater to 120 degrees C to try and force some precipitate to dissolve in it and walked away for lunch.
I was rushing and forgot to both check the boiling point of methanol and to provide a release path for the gases produced.
It exploded, taking the fumehood roof and the expensive vacuum glassware with it.
Don't even know how much this cost but it took 2 months to get replacement specialist glass from the USA.

A week beforehand I nearly killed mysellf by sticking a needle into an autoclave at high pressure with a full syringe attached. The syringe exploded and brushed past my ear landing 30 feet away, melted. Couldn't hear properly for a while.

Lost count of the number of rotary evaporators I have allowed to boil dry.

I also left a sink running that I had plugged with paper towels for half an hour. The ensuing flood took hours to clean up and the staff room was directly below the lab.

Everyone makes mistakes. Some former colleagues have scars to prove it. Hint, never throw raw sodium into a sink full of crushed ice to "quench it". I also witnessed a building evacuation during to HF leakage and a colleague had an NMR tube of liquid oxygen blow up in his hand leaving his face scarred.

Chemistry is just too bloody dangerous and needs computational advances ASAP.