The exact same thing happened to me. Now I have a big tower PC for serious work (32 cores, 64 Gb RAM, dual 1080) plus a nice laptop (XPS 13), for a combined cost of less than this MBP.
While the Linux software ecosystem is not quite as smooth as macOS, I have found it to be quite adequate for my work.
How exactly are you calculating that your desktop+laptop is cheaper than the MBP?
64GB of ram apparently sells for around $600 right now, plus $500 for each 1080, plus $700 for a 16 core threadripper (I'm not sure what 32 core processor you're using or if you're using multiple processors, but the next gen threadripper will be 32 and cost about this much), plus $1000 for the base model Dell XPS 13 9370 puts you at a total of $3300 before we even get to the motherboard, case, monitors, keyboard, mouse, power supply, storage, laptop upgrades, etc. This also assumes that you built the desktop yourself while valuing the time you spent researching and building at $0.
Anyways, saying that your setup cost less than a MBP seems pretty ridiculous even if it is technically accurate when you only consider the "max" price of a MacBook pro.
While the Linux software ecosystem is not quite as smooth as macOS, I have found it to be quite adequate for my work.