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Macbooks make one of the good linux laptops (the ones that have support like older retina macbooks). And the truth is Macbook Air is one of the handful ARM cons

Macbooks make one of the good linux laptops (the ones that have support like older retina macbooks). And the truth is Macbook Air is one of the handful ARM consumer laptops you can easily buy right now even though ARM is the superior everyday computing platform to x86. What a weird time in personal computers.

pfranz 6y ago
Is that true generally? I know my old (2008?) Macbook Pro supported Linux well, but I think that took a few years to get things like good trackpad, bluetooth, and wifi support. I remember getting a new one and it couldn't boot into the installer for most distros and still had driver issues (that might have been resolved). Macs seem to support Linux a few years after release. They were usually a great choice when modern macOS got too slow for that model. I also never found a good fit on the Windows side for a Linux laptop. I always ran Linux on a desktop. So maybe I would choose a Mac laptop to run Linux...
- tumblewit 6y ago
  Linux support on consumer hardware depends on community contribution generally. So it will take time generally to have good support. However in 2021 it’s no longer necessary to buy a good laptop and struggle to put linux on it. There are some great linux options like the xps developer edition or system76 and i know thinkpads also have a lineup now of linux. These generally should have good linux drivers for hardware (though for certain oems it’s not necessarily the case the drivers will be open source). System76 is probably the go to linux laptop right now.
- valparaiso 6y ago
  Yes. Linux core maintainers wrote article on LWN several years ago why the love and use MacBooks.
paxys 6y ago
Old Macbooks make good linux laptops. This hasn't really been the case for a while now.
- tumblewit 6y ago
  Yeah I guess I should have said old there. The touchbar macbooks are definitely not something that fits this case
  - paxys 6y ago
    Things have been spotty since well before the touchbar. I doubt anyone is running Linux reliably on any Macbook built after like 2014. There are still open issues with keyboard, touchpad, display drivers, brightness, sleep, nvme and lots more.
    - apatheticonion 6y ago
      Even Windows runs like crap on a MacBook - with similar driver issues
    - kelnos 6y ago
      Yep. In 2018 I tried to run Linux on a 2016 MacBook Pro, and it was a pain. The keyboard/touchpad weren't supported without an out-of-tree driver, and audio and suspend-to-RAM didn't work at all. I hear things are better with that model now (I gave up in 2019 and got a Dell XPS13): keyboard/touchpad driver has been upstreamed and I believe there are patches to get audio working, but I don't know about suspend.
    - haskal 6y ago
      I run NixOS on Mac on 2015 Macbook Pro Retina, works like a charm. Everything works on KDE.
- kreetx 6y ago
  A 2015 mbp works pretty well, are there problems with the newer ones?
  - aspett 6y ago
    2015 was the last year they worked well.
baq 6y ago
Don’t equate ARM with Apple silicon. If the M1 was an x86 cpu it’d blow Intel out of the water exactly the same way it did now.
- 58028641 6y ago
  Not quite as fast. M1 has 8 wide decode, which would be difficult to do with x86 because x86 has variable instruction lengths.
  - ben-schaaf 6y ago
    > Zen 2 has has 8-wide issue in many places, and Ice Lake moves up to 6-wide. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25258985 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25258985

pfranz 6y ago

Is that true generally? I know my old (2008?) Macbook Pro supported Linux well, but I think that took a few years to get things like good trackpad, bluetooth, and wifi support. I remember getting a new one and it couldn't boot into the installer for most distros and still had driver issues (that might have been resolved). Macs seem to support Linux a few years after release. They were usually a great choice when modern macOS got too slow for that model. I also never found a good fit on the Windows side for a Linux laptop. I always ran Linux on a desktop. So maybe I would choose a Mac laptop to run Linux...

tumblewit 6y ago
Linux support on consumer hardware depends on community contribution generally. So it will take time generally to have good support. However in 2021 it’s no longer necessary to buy a good laptop and struggle to put linux on it. There are some great linux options like the xps developer edition or system76 and i know thinkpads also have a lineup now of linux. These generally should have good linux drivers for hardware (though for certain oems it’s not necessarily the case the drivers will be open source). System76 is probably the go to linux laptop right now.
valparaiso 6y ago
Yes. Linux core maintainers wrote article on LWN several years ago why the love and use MacBooks.

paxys 6y ago

Old Macbooks make good linux laptops. This hasn't really been the case for a while now.

tumblewit 6y ago
Yeah I guess I should have said old there. The touchbar macbooks are definitely not something that fits this case
- paxys 6y ago
  Things have been spotty since well before the touchbar. I doubt anyone is running Linux reliably on any Macbook built after like 2014. There are still open issues with keyboard, touchpad, display drivers, brightness, sleep, nvme and lots more.
  - apatheticonion 6y ago
    Even Windows runs like crap on a MacBook - with similar driver issues
  - kelnos 6y ago
    Yep. In 2018 I tried to run Linux on a 2016 MacBook Pro, and it was a pain. The keyboard/touchpad weren't supported without an out-of-tree driver, and audio and suspend-to-RAM didn't work at all. I hear things are better with that model now (I gave up in 2019 and got a Dell XPS13): keyboard/touchpad driver has been upstreamed and I believe there are patches to get audio working, but I don't know about suspend.
  - haskal 6y ago
    I run NixOS on Mac on 2015 Macbook Pro Retina, works like a charm. Everything works on KDE.
kreetx 6y ago
A 2015 mbp works pretty well, are there problems with the newer ones?
- aspett 6y ago
  2015 was the last year they worked well.

baq 6y ago

Don’t equate ARM with Apple silicon. If the M1 was an x86 cpu it’d blow Intel out of the water exactly the same way it did now.

58028641 6y ago
Not quite as fast. M1 has 8 wide decode, which would be difficult to do with x86 because x86 has variable instruction lengths.
- ben-schaaf 6y ago
  > Zen 2 has has 8-wide issue in many places, and Ice Lake moves up to 6-wide. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25258985 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25258985