6 ms·

Asahi is getting closer and closer to "daily driver" usability at an amazing pace. Anyone have an idea how soon we should expect GPU support to be in mainline?

jjtheblunt 4y ago
i'm using it as a daily driver for a couple months easily, but my daily driving happens to not require the not-quite-perfect device drivers. i shutdown for sleep, for instance, which works just fine, since boot and login is super fast and restores everything.
- nu11ptr 4y ago
  Possibly stupid q: Why buy a mac if you are just going to run Linux on it? I suspect any comparable PC would be more economical (w/ exception of power draw).
  - sofixa 4y ago
    The hardware is pretty good. Utterly unmaintainable, unserviceable and unapgradeable, extremely overpriced tiering (e.g. adding storage or RAM which you have to do at purchase time), with limited options (e.g. i cannot stand glossy screens with shitty reflections everywhere causing eye strain), but still very good. However the software (macOS) is pretty shit and IMO hard to adapt to coming from any other OS. Raw performance per watt, and per weight/dimensions is best in class. For pure performance (e.g. an Asus ROG Zephyrus) or lightness (e.g. LG Gram) there are better options, but if you want all three it's hard to beat. I personally think the hardware is so good, even with the caveats, but the software so bad that I'm honestly tempted to get an Air for portability or a Pro as a daily driver when Asahi Linux is good enough for me and the prices are right (so some sale or something, sticker prices are ridiculous if you max everything, and you kind of have to due to the impossibility of upgrades).
    - kitsunesoba 4y ago
      Serviceability is improved (though still not amazing) in all the machines with chassises redesigned during the "M" era — the "notched" MBP 14/16 and Air have easily accessible bottom screws (no need to remove rubber feet first) and don't have batteries glued in. Keyboards can be changed independently from the top case too. Notably, many Windows laptops fail on both of those counts (like the LG Gram which hides screws under adhesive-attached feet). But yes, it's difficult to find laptops as well-rounded as MacBooks are. Generally laptops will require you to make significant sacrifices in multiple categories to be good at one or two things, which is less true of MacBooks (particularly the 14"/16" Pro models), especially if you want good performance without the laptop being huge and bulky and/or have horrible battery life with constantly-screaming fans. The 14"/16" models get you performance in the ballpark of a desktop Ryzen 5800X while unplugged and still getting great battery life while also being silent and still reasonably portable, along with a killer screen, great speakers, decent keyboard and great trackpad.
      - tambourine_man 4y ago
        Macs, for me, are the software. This is something that became pretty evident during the Intel era. And I bought Macs exclusively when the hardware was both much slower and pricier than PCs (68k and PPC), because I loved the software so much. Funny to read such an opposite opinion. I don’t mind the pretty casing, but it’s icing on the cake.
        tambourine_man 4y ago
        On a second thought, there where some transformative hardwares though. The iMac 5k for me, almost a decade later, is still better than anything other vendors have to offer. It’s my childhood dream monitor. Such a shame that they never sold it separately. The M series laptops seem like an inflection point as well. A fanless powerhouse with more than a day's work of battery life and best in class monitor and trackpad.
        pram 4y ago
  - callesgg 4y ago
    Not that I would buy a new Mac and install linux on it... But if I did, it would be cause apple has unmatched hardware build quality. (But also the battery time would as you mention also be a nice thing)
  - recuter 4y ago
    I get 12+ hours of battery life on my M1 Air, no longer bother with cables and outlets at coffee shops. What else I could buy of similar weight/size/battery/quality? Even if knew of an alternative, there are other unexpected perks to going with Apple: travel constantly, occasionally selling my old one and switching to a new machine is easy whereas with other brands would be impossible. Amortized cost is less than $1/day. If this Asahi thing pans out (I'm guessing maybe in a year or two it won't use twice the battery) I'll immediately dual boot and spend the majority of my time in it. :)
    - nextos 4y ago
      This also happened when Macs transitioned to Intel and Core 2 Duo laptops were released. At the same price point, PCs were much noiser and had much poorer battery range. ARM laptops from other brands are starting to pop up but they will take at least a year to catch up in terms of performance. Right now, ThinkPad X13s runs Linux very decently, but it's less powerful than the M1. In the US market it might be cheaper than M1 Mac Airs. In Europe it's 50% more expensive and customer support is poor.
      - atchoo 4y ago
        Interesting product. 230g lighter with 10 hours longer battery life than an M1 Air. > In Europe it's 50% more expensive It's basically the same price in the UK. £84 more than an equivalent M1 Air on the Lenovo site right now.
        nextos 4y ago
        That's a good price. In mainland EU, right now, the X13s is €1490 in lenovo.com. A MacBook Air M1 is €1200, and I can get almost 10% off using academic discount. Plus, the Snapdragon CPU in the X13s is still far from the M1 in regular benchmarks. Linux support is better in the X13s, except for the camera. It's an IR one, and this might never be well supported.
      - Kuinox 4y ago
        There was ARM laptops before M1, nobody wanted them. M1 was ahead because it was 1 silicon node ahead for a year. The competition already caught back: https://www.cpubenchmark.net/power_performance.html https://www.cpubenchmark.net/power_performance.html
  - rowanG077 4y ago
    Linux is more user friendly for some developers. Linux support with Asahi is also markedly better then any comparable PC. Hardware wise it beats all windows laptops. Essentially it comes down to that macs have great hardware but shitty software. The later which asahi fixes.
  - emmo 4y ago
    The Mac Mini is actually a pretty nice little unit, and not priced too terribly.
  - jjtheblunt 4y ago
    not at all a silly question... it runs forever and _fast_, the ergonomics are kick ass for my body dimensions (i mean, it's comfortable), and it's _silent_.
  - coutego 4y ago
    There are no comparable laptops to M[1,2] Macs, AFAIK. Linux on an M1 simply flies. It's just stupidly quick. A MacBook with Linux is the most amazing Linux machine that exists, even without the GPU acceleration. I bought my first MacBook just because of the M1 processor and /despite/ the OS, which is ok-ish but not my cup of tea. I'm looking forward to running Linux on it as my daily driver.
  - School-Cotton 4y ago
    There are a number of reasons. 1. I prefer Mac hardware to any PC hardware (I don't know any manufacturers who come close to apple in hardware quality, so I don't think the "comparable PC" you cite even exists in reality). 2. I prefer to use Linux, since I'm more familiar with it, I'm more likely to be able to debug it when things go wrong (macOS Just Works more reliably, but when it doesn't, I'm stuck), and also I work on software that runs in prod on Linux and I don't want to deal with Docker for Mac. 3. While this is not yet the case, I think it's likely that someday Asahi will run better and more reliably on macs than mainstream distros run on PC laptops. The reason is that they only have one target (or, I suppose, one very closely related family of targets) whereas there are a pile of different PC vendors that are all subtly broken in different ways. I've _never_ seen a high-end PC laptop run Linux without tons of bugs and weird quirks; to get a solid Linux laptop experience, you seem to need to eschew discrete graphics cards and use a system that's a few years old at minimum.
    - Conan_Kudo 4y ago
      I would probably suggest that Lenovo comes pretty close to Apple in terms of build quality. I have both Macs and ThinkPads and they both feel pretty good. The Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 10 is available with Fedora Linux as an option[1] and pretty much everything works out of the box with great performance. If you're in Europe, you can also get the ThinkPad Z13 and Z16 (which are AMD-based laptops) with Fedora as well, and that should be coming to the North American Lenovo store soon (hopefully). Lenovo works with Fedora to ensure that things work, and there's a nice process to make sure everything stays "good" with Fedora Linux on Lenovo hardware. [1]: https://www.lenovo.com/us/en/p/laptops/thinkpad/thinkpadx1/thinkpad-x1-carbon-gen-10-(14-inch-intel)/21cbcto1wwus2 https://www.lenovo.com/us/en/p/laptops/thinkpad/thinkpadx1/t...
      - School-Cotton 4y ago
        That laptop is not “high-end”. i7 processor, standard (not 4K) screen resolution, Intel graphics. I also have a thinkpad, and it gives me no end of issues, presumably largely due to the Nvidia GPU. There are also some weird non-GPU-related quirks; for example, charging over USB-C sporadically stops working (requiring an unplug and re-plug of the cable), especially when the battery is low.
  - dopeboy 4y ago
    Two reasons: battery life + touchpad.
  - coldtea 4y ago
    Power+performance, great battery life, great build quality, great hardware...
    - teaearlgraycold 4y ago
      Yup
  - pard68 4y ago
    I do not (currently) use this but I am interested in this. My reason is simple, I have a Mac and not a PC running Linux because my employer provides Macs and not PCs. If I got to use the computer I want, than I'd use a PC and run Linux (have at prior employers who didn't have/care about MDM).
  - chrisseaton 4y ago
    > any comparable PC Not sure such a thing exists!
  - jurschreuder 4y ago
    Simple: Apple is the best built laptop. No other brand even comes close. Linux is the best OS. I have no idea how people can work on Windows, I think other people used to Linux will agree. OSX feels like a really old fork of Linux that has not kept up with the open source Linux.

jjtheblunt 4y ago

i'm using it as a daily driver for a couple months easily, but my daily driving happens to not require the not-quite-perfect device drivers. i shutdown for sleep, for instance, which works just fine, since boot and login is super fast and restores everything.

nu11ptr 4y ago
Possibly stupid q: Why buy a mac if you are just going to run Linux on it? I suspect any comparable PC would be more economical (w/ exception of power draw).
- sofixa 4y ago
  The hardware is pretty good. Utterly unmaintainable, unserviceable and unapgradeable, extremely overpriced tiering (e.g. adding storage or RAM which you have to do at purchase time), with limited options (e.g. i cannot stand glossy screens with shitty reflections everywhere causing eye strain), but still very good. However the software (macOS) is pretty shit and IMO hard to adapt to coming from any other OS. Raw performance per watt, and per weight/dimensions is best in class. For pure performance (e.g. an Asus ROG Zephyrus) or lightness (e.g. LG Gram) there are better options, but if you want all three it's hard to beat. I personally think the hardware is so good, even with the caveats, but the software so bad that I'm honestly tempted to get an Air for portability or a Pro as a daily driver when Asahi Linux is good enough for me and the prices are right (so some sale or something, sticker prices are ridiculous if you max everything, and you kind of have to due to the impossibility of upgrades).
  - kitsunesoba 4y ago
    Serviceability is improved (though still not amazing) in all the machines with chassises redesigned during the "M" era — the "notched" MBP 14/16 and Air have easily accessible bottom screws (no need to remove rubber feet first) and don't have batteries glued in. Keyboards can be changed independently from the top case too. Notably, many Windows laptops fail on both of those counts (like the LG Gram which hides screws under adhesive-attached feet). But yes, it's difficult to find laptops as well-rounded as MacBooks are. Generally laptops will require you to make significant sacrifices in multiple categories to be good at one or two things, which is less true of MacBooks (particularly the 14"/16" Pro models), especially if you want good performance without the laptop being huge and bulky and/or have horrible battery life with constantly-screaming fans. The 14"/16" models get you performance in the ballpark of a desktop Ryzen 5800X while unplugged and still getting great battery life while also being silent and still reasonably portable, along with a killer screen, great speakers, decent keyboard and great trackpad.
    - tambourine_man 4y ago
      Macs, for me, are the software. This is something that became pretty evident during the Intel era. And I bought Macs exclusively when the hardware was both much slower and pricier than PCs (68k and PPC), because I loved the software so much. Funny to read such an opposite opinion. I don’t mind the pretty casing, but it’s icing on the cake.
      - tambourine_man 4y ago
        On a second thought, there where some transformative hardwares though. The iMac 5k for me, almost a decade later, is still better than anything other vendors have to offer. It’s my childhood dream monitor. Such a shame that they never sold it separately. The M series laptops seem like an inflection point as well. A fanless powerhouse with more than a day's work of battery life and best in class monitor and trackpad.
        pram 4y ago
- callesgg 4y ago
  Not that I would buy a new Mac and install linux on it... But if I did, it would be cause apple has unmatched hardware build quality. (But also the battery time would as you mention also be a nice thing)
- recuter 4y ago
  I get 12+ hours of battery life on my M1 Air, no longer bother with cables and outlets at coffee shops. What else I could buy of similar weight/size/battery/quality? Even if knew of an alternative, there are other unexpected perks to going with Apple: travel constantly, occasionally selling my old one and switching to a new machine is easy whereas with other brands would be impossible. Amortized cost is less than $1/day. If this Asahi thing pans out (I'm guessing maybe in a year or two it won't use twice the battery) I'll immediately dual boot and spend the majority of my time in it. :)
  - nextos 4y ago
    This also happened when Macs transitioned to Intel and Core 2 Duo laptops were released. At the same price point, PCs were much noiser and had much poorer battery range. ARM laptops from other brands are starting to pop up but they will take at least a year to catch up in terms of performance. Right now, ThinkPad X13s runs Linux very decently, but it's less powerful than the M1. In the US market it might be cheaper than M1 Mac Airs. In Europe it's 50% more expensive and customer support is poor.
    - atchoo 4y ago
      Interesting product. 230g lighter with 10 hours longer battery life than an M1 Air. > In Europe it's 50% more expensive It's basically the same price in the UK. £84 more than an equivalent M1 Air on the Lenovo site right now.
      - nextos 4y ago
        That's a good price. In mainland EU, right now, the X13s is €1490 in lenovo.com. A MacBook Air M1 is €1200, and I can get almost 10% off using academic discount. Plus, the Snapdragon CPU in the X13s is still far from the M1 in regular benchmarks. Linux support is better in the X13s, except for the camera. It's an IR one, and this might never be well supported.
    - Kuinox 4y ago
      There was ARM laptops before M1, nobody wanted them. M1 was ahead because it was 1 silicon node ahead for a year. The competition already caught back: https://www.cpubenchmark.net/power_performance.html https://www.cpubenchmark.net/power_performance.html
- rowanG077 4y ago
  Linux is more user friendly for some developers. Linux support with Asahi is also markedly better then any comparable PC. Hardware wise it beats all windows laptops. Essentially it comes down to that macs have great hardware but shitty software. The later which asahi fixes.
- emmo 4y ago
  The Mac Mini is actually a pretty nice little unit, and not priced too terribly.
- jjtheblunt 4y ago
  not at all a silly question... it runs forever and _fast_, the ergonomics are kick ass for my body dimensions (i mean, it's comfortable), and it's _silent_.
- coutego 4y ago
  There are no comparable laptops to M[1,2] Macs, AFAIK. Linux on an M1 simply flies. It's just stupidly quick. A MacBook with Linux is the most amazing Linux machine that exists, even without the GPU acceleration. I bought my first MacBook just because of the M1 processor and /despite/ the OS, which is ok-ish but not my cup of tea. I'm looking forward to running Linux on it as my daily driver.
- School-Cotton 4y ago
  There are a number of reasons. 1. I prefer Mac hardware to any PC hardware (I don't know any manufacturers who come close to apple in hardware quality, so I don't think the "comparable PC" you cite even exists in reality). 2. I prefer to use Linux, since I'm more familiar with it, I'm more likely to be able to debug it when things go wrong (macOS Just Works more reliably, but when it doesn't, I'm stuck), and also I work on software that runs in prod on Linux and I don't want to deal with Docker for Mac. 3. While this is not yet the case, I think it's likely that someday Asahi will run better and more reliably on macs than mainstream distros run on PC laptops. The reason is that they only have one target (or, I suppose, one very closely related family of targets) whereas there are a pile of different PC vendors that are all subtly broken in different ways. I've _never_ seen a high-end PC laptop run Linux without tons of bugs and weird quirks; to get a solid Linux laptop experience, you seem to need to eschew discrete graphics cards and use a system that's a few years old at minimum.
  - Conan_Kudo 4y ago
    I would probably suggest that Lenovo comes pretty close to Apple in terms of build quality. I have both Macs and ThinkPads and they both feel pretty good. The Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 10 is available with Fedora Linux as an option[1] and pretty much everything works out of the box with great performance. If you're in Europe, you can also get the ThinkPad Z13 and Z16 (which are AMD-based laptops) with Fedora as well, and that should be coming to the North American Lenovo store soon (hopefully). Lenovo works with Fedora to ensure that things work, and there's a nice process to make sure everything stays "good" with Fedora Linux on Lenovo hardware. [1]: https://www.lenovo.com/us/en/p/laptops/thinkpad/thinkpadx1/thinkpad-x1-carbon-gen-10-(14-inch-intel)/21cbcto1wwus2 https://www.lenovo.com/us/en/p/laptops/thinkpad/thinkpadx1/t...
    - School-Cotton 4y ago
      That laptop is not “high-end”. i7 processor, standard (not 4K) screen resolution, Intel graphics. I also have a thinkpad, and it gives me no end of issues, presumably largely due to the Nvidia GPU. There are also some weird non-GPU-related quirks; for example, charging over USB-C sporadically stops working (requiring an unplug and re-plug of the cable), especially when the battery is low.
- dopeboy 4y ago
  Two reasons: battery life + touchpad.
- coldtea 4y ago
  Power+performance, great battery life, great build quality, great hardware...
  - teaearlgraycold 4y ago
    Yup
- pard68 4y ago
  I do not (currently) use this but I am interested in this. My reason is simple, I have a Mac and not a PC running Linux because my employer provides Macs and not PCs. If I got to use the computer I want, than I'd use a PC and run Linux (have at prior employers who didn't have/care about MDM).
- chrisseaton 4y ago
  > any comparable PC Not sure such a thing exists!
- jurschreuder 4y ago
  Simple: Apple is the best built laptop. No other brand even comes close. Linux is the best OS. I have no idea how people can work on Windows, I think other people used to Linux will agree. OSX feels like a really old fork of Linux that has not kept up with the open source Linux.