6 ms·

Someone correct me if I am missing some nuance here but I think the two MacBook options aren't contenders for best laptop running Linux. The drivers simply don'

by wheats 4y ago

Someone correct me if I am missing some nuance here but I think the two MacBook options aren't contenders for best laptop running Linux. The drivers simply don't support basic things like the touchpad or wifi (at least not without extensive reworking and a modified kernel). Perhaps in some years Asahi Linux will be functional as a daily driver on the newer ARM/Apple Silicon but it's definitely a hobby laptop right now, and not close to being "best laptop for Linux".

NeverFade 4y ago
Linus himself uses Asahi over an M2 Macbook Air: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2022/08/linus-torvalds-uses-an-arm-powered-m2-macbook-air-to-release-latest-linux-kernel/ https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2022/08/linus-torvalds-uses-...
- cmckn 4y ago
  I mean to be fair he is the Linux power user.
  - aussiesnack 4y ago
    You'd think so, but from his own account he's not. Pre Asahi he used Fedora because it was easy to get working and he found Debian too hard to install. Could just be dry Finnish humour.
    - Jnr 4y ago
      For me personally it's much easier to install and maintain Arch based distros than Debian based ones. It is very simple and doesn't try to do everything in your place. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Ubuntu/Debian/Fedora and others are great if they work out of the box. As soon as some proprietary GPU or other driver gets involved it can get painful. I recently installed Fedora on latest Thinkpad with dedicated Nvidia GPU and could not get it to work properly on Fedora. Driver crashed and did not load during startup. After trying a bit I switched to Arch and while the initial setup took longer, everything works and I can actually update it without requiring to add some shady 3rd party repos or compiling essential packages after each update manually myself.
- PakG1 4y ago
  It's probably in his interest to run on the least stable environment possible to better identify kinks for prioritization.
  - verdverm 4y ago
    He actually believes the opposite. He wants to work from a reliable system so he can focus on the important work, not fiddling with drivers for touchpads or dealing with bugs that are secondary.
- runjake 4y ago
  I believe he also runs it in console mode and doesn't use graphics, X.org, Wayland, etc. So, keep that in mind.
  - ramraj07 4y ago
    Sounds like if you want to be a true Linux fanboy that’s the route you should be taking anyway..
  - boomboomsubban 4y ago
    I've never read that about Torvolds, who I believe uses fairly standard GNOME. Could you be confusing him with Stallman who does things like use wget for browsing the internet?
    - zote 4y ago
      They may be referring to how he uses that specific laptop. > uses fairly standard GNOME. Last I heard he is(was?) a Fedora user
      - boomboomsubban 4y ago
        >Last I heard he is(was?) a Fedora user Which uses GNOME.
        nobody9999 4y ago
        >>Last I heard he is(was?) a Fedora user >Which uses GNOME. Fedora's primary distribution may have Gnome, but there are many other desktop environments that are available "out of the box", as I'm sure you know. I've been running Fedora on dozens of systems over the last decade and I've never used Gnome -- because it's annoying and supremely unintuitive. XFCE FTW.
      - Mikeb85 4y ago
        Literally THE Gnome distro lol...
    - 4y ago
ergonaught 4y ago
I haven't any major issues running Linux in a VM on an M1. Not my first choice, perhaps, but it's certainly functional.
- piyh 4y ago
  How do you do this? I'm relatively new to mac, tried UTM and everything was stuck in QEMU modes and had terrible performance.
  - nortonham 4y ago
    I would like to know as well. UTM isn't great at the moment
    - zenosmosis 4y ago
      Parallels. I use an Ubuntu VM via Parallels on a Mac Studio M1 Max and the performance feels native.
      - joshspankit 4y ago
        Native? Are you comparing emulated x86 to native Windows ARM via dual-boot?
        xet7 4y ago
        Windows arm64 can not boot natively on M1/M2. There is no drivers for Windows to do that. It's just about running Win11 arm64 in Parallels in macOS. Asahi Linux has modified kernel where is M1/M2 drivers, and remaining of Asahi is from Arch Linux. Asahi is installed like new version of macOS, notification about it goes to Apple, Apple just does not know it's actually Asahi Linux install. M1/M2 hardware has possibility for Linux by design, Apple most likely had some minimal Linux running on it for test purposes. There are also other FOSS distros for M1/M2, they use partially same packages and ways to make installing dual boot OS possible. It's also possible to install macOS and Asahi Linux to external SSD drive and boot from there. But part of boot is still at internal drive, so it's not like boot at any computer yet.
johnwalkr 4y ago
Asahi is surprisingly good already including GPU support and the installer script is excellent. Well worth checking out if you happen to have an M1 mac. I actually thought I would kill a few hours on a day off installing it but everything was up and running in 15 minutes. But if Linux is a tool for your job I wouldn’t daily drive it yet.
mkurz 4y ago
You do miss some nuance here. Touchpad and Wifi does work great. I do use Asahi since more than 6 months as daily driver on my MacBook Pro M1 Pro. It works great, and now we even have a quite ok GPU Driver since like a month or so. I even run IntelliJ for Java/Scala dev. The only things not working I am waiting for is webcam and speakers. My bet in 2023 the whole system will just work for everyone and will be the killer laptop for Linux enthusiastics. Best Linux laptop I ever had, using ThinkPads and Dell for many many years (14 years in total now)
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- protortyp 4y ago
  Did flashing it with Linux have any impact on battery life? The main reason I switched from a Thinkpad T480 (2017) to a M2 Air two months ago was the horrible battery life of the Thinkpad. The M2 has been lasting me almost two days of work, compared to only 3 hours on the Thinkpad. But I miss quite a lot from linux
  - trenchgun 4y ago
    15 hours idling or something like 8 hours of use. https://social.treehouse.systems/@marcan/109348054803945724 https://social.treehouse.systems/@marcan/109348054803945724

by wheats 4y ago

NeverFade 4y ago

Linus himself uses Asahi over an M2 Macbook Air: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2022/08/linus-torvalds-uses-an-arm-powered-m2-macbook-air-to-release-latest-linux-kernel/ https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2022/08/linus-torvalds-uses-...

cmckn 4y ago
I mean to be fair he is the Linux power user.
- aussiesnack 4y ago
  You'd think so, but from his own account he's not. Pre Asahi he used Fedora because it was easy to get working and he found Debian too hard to install. Could just be dry Finnish humour.
  - Jnr 4y ago
    For me personally it's much easier to install and maintain Arch based distros than Debian based ones. It is very simple and doesn't try to do everything in your place. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Ubuntu/Debian/Fedora and others are great if they work out of the box. As soon as some proprietary GPU or other driver gets involved it can get painful. I recently installed Fedora on latest Thinkpad with dedicated Nvidia GPU and could not get it to work properly on Fedora. Driver crashed and did not load during startup. After trying a bit I switched to Arch and while the initial setup took longer, everything works and I can actually update it without requiring to add some shady 3rd party repos or compiling essential packages after each update manually myself.
PakG1 4y ago
It's probably in his interest to run on the least stable environment possible to better identify kinks for prioritization.
- verdverm 4y ago
  He actually believes the opposite. He wants to work from a reliable system so he can focus on the important work, not fiddling with drivers for touchpads or dealing with bugs that are secondary.
runjake 4y ago
I believe he also runs it in console mode and doesn't use graphics, X.org, Wayland, etc. So, keep that in mind.
- ramraj07 4y ago
  Sounds like if you want to be a true Linux fanboy that’s the route you should be taking anyway..
- boomboomsubban 4y ago
  I've never read that about Torvolds, who I believe uses fairly standard GNOME. Could you be confusing him with Stallman who does things like use wget for browsing the internet?
  - zote 4y ago
    They may be referring to how he uses that specific laptop. > uses fairly standard GNOME. Last I heard he is(was?) a Fedora user
    - boomboomsubban 4y ago
      >Last I heard he is(was?) a Fedora user Which uses GNOME.
      - nobody9999 4y ago
        >>Last I heard he is(was?) a Fedora user >Which uses GNOME. Fedora's primary distribution may have Gnome, but there are many other desktop environments that are available "out of the box", as I'm sure you know. I've been running Fedora on dozens of systems over the last decade and I've never used Gnome -- because it's annoying and supremely unintuitive. XFCE FTW.
    - Mikeb85 4y ago
      Literally THE Gnome distro lol...
  - 4y ago

ergonaught 4y ago

I haven't any major issues running Linux in a VM on an M1. Not my first choice, perhaps, but it's certainly functional.

piyh 4y ago
How do you do this? I'm relatively new to mac, tried UTM and everything was stuck in QEMU modes and had terrible performance.
- nortonham 4y ago
  I would like to know as well. UTM isn't great at the moment
  - zenosmosis 4y ago
    Parallels. I use an Ubuntu VM via Parallels on a Mac Studio M1 Max and the performance feels native.
    - joshspankit 4y ago
      Native? Are you comparing emulated x86 to native Windows ARM via dual-boot?
      - xet7 4y ago
        Windows arm64 can not boot natively on M1/M2. There is no drivers for Windows to do that. It's just about running Win11 arm64 in Parallels in macOS. Asahi Linux has modified kernel where is M1/M2 drivers, and remaining of Asahi is from Arch Linux. Asahi is installed like new version of macOS, notification about it goes to Apple, Apple just does not know it's actually Asahi Linux install. M1/M2 hardware has possibility for Linux by design, Apple most likely had some minimal Linux running on it for test purposes. There are also other FOSS distros for M1/M2, they use partially same packages and ways to make installing dual boot OS possible. It's also possible to install macOS and Asahi Linux to external SSD drive and boot from there. But part of boot is still at internal drive, so it's not like boot at any computer yet.

johnwalkr 4y ago

Asahi is surprisingly good already including GPU support and the installer script is excellent. Well worth checking out if you happen to have an M1 mac. I actually thought I would kill a few hours on a day off installing it but everything was up and running in 15 minutes. But if Linux is a tool for your job I wouldn’t daily drive it yet.

mkurz 4y ago

You do miss some nuance here. Touchpad and Wifi does work great. I do use Asahi since more than 6 months as daily driver on my MacBook Pro M1 Pro. It works great, and now we even have a quite ok GPU Driver since like a month or so. I even run IntelliJ for Java/Scala dev. The only things not working I am waiting for is webcam and speakers. My bet in 2023 the whole system will just work for everyone and will be the killer laptop for Linux enthusiastics. Best Linux laptop I ever had, using ThinkPads and Dell for many many years (14 years in total now)

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
protortyp 4y ago
Did flashing it with Linux have any impact on battery life? The main reason I switched from a Thinkpad T480 (2017) to a M2 Air two months ago was the horrible battery life of the Thinkpad. The M2 has been lasting me almost two days of work, compared to only 3 hours on the Thinkpad. But I miss quite a lot from linux
- trenchgun 4y ago
  15 hours idling or something like 8 hours of use. https://social.treehouse.systems/@marcan/109348054803945724 https://social.treehouse.systems/@marcan/109348054803945724