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Already using Asahi Linux on my M1 Air; can't wait until the GPU stuff lands! Extremely impressive work by all involved!

by tpush 4y ago

School-Cotton 4y ago
What’s your battery life like compared to macOS?
- matheusmoreira 4y ago
  I'd also like to know. We recently had an interesting thread about Linux power management and efficiency on laptops. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33644165 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33644165
- DefineOutside 4y ago
  I've get around 6 hours on asahi linux. MacOS battery is at least twice as good - not sure since I've never ran out of battery on MacOS. Sleeping works on macOS so I always have to remember to turn off the laptop on linux. Good for taking notes though, the CPU dips to 40 FPS on desktop sometimes and can't play videos.
  - School-Cotton 4y ago
    Thanks for answering. This is totally without hardware graphics acceleration, right? As my understanding is that gpu drivers are still an experimental work in progress. If so, it’s pretty cool that you still get 6 hours even with that handicap. I’m excited to see how it looks once the GPU works well.
    - DefineOutside 4y ago
      Yes, no GPU acceleration. All on the CPU. Mainly on google docs though and other websites, nothing very intensive.
    - urthor 4y ago
      The battery life is more about power management logic. I'd expect we'll be a long, long time, before Apple's power management logic is implemented.
      - saagarjha 4y ago
        Sounds more like it would be lower priority than very difficult?
        urthor 4y ago
        It's not a single, difficult feature. It's a system wide tuning of voltage frequency plus idle times for all sorts of micro-controllers, plus who knows what else. In its own way, it's extremely, extremely difficult.
        saagarjha 4y ago
        Yes, I’m aware. I’m just putting it in the context of the rest of the project.
        urthor 4y ago
        True true, fair enough.
      - reacharavindh 4y ago
        I read elsewhere on HN the other day that a PSCI API extension patch is awaiting upstream review to be merged into the Linux kernel and that power management would work better with that merged. May be an usable Asahilinux on M* MacBooks are not that far off..
  - cercatrova 4y ago
    Damn, if that's the battery life I might as well get a Framework or System76 laptop built more specially for Linux.
sebosp 4y ago
I struggle to understand their endurance on their live coding sessions, for example https://youtu.be/VYAT6NZUQUE https://youtu.be/VYAT6NZUQUE I want to watch them carefully and slowly from the start, it's so good to see the development workflow, testing, etc, initially the music was a bit difficult for me but seeing such progress and knowledge is amazing, just amazing
nextlevelwizard 4y ago
As a hobby or are you actually getting some benefits?
- pimeys 4y ago
  I guess the biggest benefit is to be able to run Linux and stay away from macOS. For many of us this is a huge thing.

Already using Asahi Linux on my M1 Air; can't wait until the GPU stuff lands! Extremely impressive work by all involved!

by tpush 4y ago

Already using Asahi Linux on my M1 Air; can't wait until the GPU stuff lands! Extremely impressive work by all involved!

School-Cotton 4y ago

What’s your battery life like compared to macOS?

matheusmoreira 4y ago
I'd also like to know. We recently had an interesting thread about Linux power management and efficiency on laptops. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33644165 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33644165
DefineOutside 4y ago
I've get around 6 hours on asahi linux. MacOS battery is at least twice as good - not sure since I've never ran out of battery on MacOS. Sleeping works on macOS so I always have to remember to turn off the laptop on linux. Good for taking notes though, the CPU dips to 40 FPS on desktop sometimes and can't play videos.
- School-Cotton 4y ago
  Thanks for answering. This is totally without hardware graphics acceleration, right? As my understanding is that gpu drivers are still an experimental work in progress. If so, it’s pretty cool that you still get 6 hours even with that handicap. I’m excited to see how it looks once the GPU works well.
  - DefineOutside 4y ago
    Yes, no GPU acceleration. All on the CPU. Mainly on google docs though and other websites, nothing very intensive.
  - urthor 4y ago
    The battery life is more about power management logic. I'd expect we'll be a long, long time, before Apple's power management logic is implemented.
    - saagarjha 4y ago
      Sounds more like it would be lower priority than very difficult?
      - urthor 4y ago
        It's not a single, difficult feature. It's a system wide tuning of voltage frequency plus idle times for all sorts of micro-controllers, plus who knows what else. In its own way, it's extremely, extremely difficult.
        saagarjha 4y ago
        Yes, I’m aware. I’m just putting it in the context of the rest of the project.
        urthor 4y ago
        True true, fair enough.
    - reacharavindh 4y ago
      I read elsewhere on HN the other day that a PSCI API extension patch is awaiting upstream review to be merged into the Linux kernel and that power management would work better with that merged. May be an usable Asahilinux on M* MacBooks are not that far off..
- cercatrova 4y ago
  Damn, if that's the battery life I might as well get a Framework or System76 laptop built more specially for Linux.

sebosp 4y ago

I struggle to understand their endurance on their live coding sessions, for example https://youtu.be/VYAT6NZUQUE https://youtu.be/VYAT6NZUQUE I want to watch them carefully and slowly from the start, it's so good to see the development workflow, testing, etc, initially the music was a bit difficult for me but seeing such progress and knowledge is amazing, just amazing

nextlevelwizard 4y ago

As a hobby or are you actually getting some benefits?

pimeys 4y ago
I guess the biggest benefit is to be able to run Linux and stay away from macOS. For many of us this is a huge thing.