5 ms·

The available options are: - Thinkpad X13s (barely works Ubuntu/Armbian) - Microsoft Surface Laptop (barely works Fedora) - Macbook Air (works Arch, Fedora,

The available options are: - Thinkpad X13s (barely works Ubuntu/Armbian) - Microsoft Surface Laptop (barely works Fedora) - Macbook Air (works Arch, Fedora, Debian) Macbook Air M1 will provide you with 3x CPU power and will have the best drivers and largest community. If you want 0.5x M1, you’re already out of options. The closest you get is 0.33x M1 that barely works.

smoldesu 3y ago
First off, those are not your only options (nor your only OS options) Second off, there is no reason to list the Thinkpad X13s as "barely works". It had better power-management and GPU drivers than Asahi on day-one. The same probably goes for the Surface Laptop, if it's also got a Snapdragon GPU. Thirdly, according to Geekbench (and every resource I could find), the Snapdragon 8cx Gen 3 exceeds 50% of the M1's performance without a struggle: https://browser.geekbench.com/v6/cpu/2504172 https://browser.geekbench.com/v6/cpu/2504172 https://browser.geekbench.com/v6/cpu/2490755 https://browser.geekbench.com/v6/cpu/2490755 Making matters worse, the Snapdragon chip only maxes out at 9w, whereas Apple's chip will happily go to 30-40w during regular use. So, not only do you get better than the .5x M1, you get it with better battery life too!
- lynguist 3y ago
  Here is the complete writeup on X13s: https://www.theregister.com/2023/09/08/linux_on_the_thinkpad_x13s/ https://www.theregister.com/2023/09/08/linux_on_the_thinkpad...
emptysongglass 3y ago
Is the X13s still barely working on Linux?
- lynguist 3y ago
  https://www.phoronix.com/news/Armbian-23.08-Released https://www.phoronix.com/news/Armbian-23.08-Released The CPU can’t do virtualization. M1 can, but can’t do nested virtualization.
Takennickname 3y ago
This is so wrong. Everything in this message is wrong.
- kevincox 3y ago
  It would be much more helpful if you can point out what is wrong and what the correct information is. Is it that they don't work at all? Is it that they work better than mentioned?
  - speed_spread 3y ago
    Standard Linux distros are available for [Dell, Lenovo, others] ARM hardware and they work much better than anything Asahi-based. Asahi deserves _a lot_ of respect, but a full-on stable distribution it is not. Maybe in a year, after Fedora has fully ingested Asahi lessons will we get a non-experimental distribution for Apple hardware. Also maybe by then will we have another generation of non-Apple aarch64 CPU that will close the performance gap with the admittedly superior M chips.
  - Takennickname 3y ago
    ThinkPad works basically perfectly. I dunno about surface. Linux on M1 is not ready for day to day usage for a user who wants everything to work.
    - lynguist 3y ago
      Here you see the complete writeup: https://www.theregister.com/2023/09/08/linux_on_the_thinkpad_x13s/ https://www.theregister.com/2023/09/08/linux_on_the_thinkpad... As of now it barely works. The experience is arguably worse than on Mac M1. But it’s improving fast.
Scoring6931 3y ago
I have an X13 with Ubuntu 20.04 and it works flawlessly. The trackpad is terrible though.
- emptysongglass 3y ago
  The X13 or X13s?
  - Scoring6931 3y ago
    X13

smoldesu 3y ago

First off, those are not your only options (nor your only OS options) Second off, there is no reason to list the Thinkpad X13s as "barely works". It had better power-management and GPU drivers than Asahi on day-one. The same probably goes for the Surface Laptop, if it's also got a Snapdragon GPU. Thirdly, according to Geekbench (and every resource I could find), the Snapdragon 8cx Gen 3 exceeds 50% of the M1's performance without a struggle: https://browser.geekbench.com/v6/cpu/2504172 https://browser.geekbench.com/v6/cpu/2504172 https://browser.geekbench.com/v6/cpu/2490755 https://browser.geekbench.com/v6/cpu/2490755 Making matters worse, the Snapdragon chip only maxes out at 9w, whereas Apple's chip will happily go to 30-40w during regular use. So, not only do you get better than the .5x M1, you get it with better battery life too!

lynguist 3y ago
Here is the complete writeup on X13s: https://www.theregister.com/2023/09/08/linux_on_the_thinkpad_x13s/ https://www.theregister.com/2023/09/08/linux_on_the_thinkpad...

emptysongglass 3y ago

Is the X13s still barely working on Linux?

lynguist 3y ago
https://www.phoronix.com/news/Armbian-23.08-Released https://www.phoronix.com/news/Armbian-23.08-Released The CPU can’t do virtualization. M1 can, but can’t do nested virtualization.

Takennickname 3y ago

This is so wrong. Everything in this message is wrong.

kevincox 3y ago
It would be much more helpful if you can point out what is wrong and what the correct information is. Is it that they don't work at all? Is it that they work better than mentioned?
- speed_spread 3y ago
  Standard Linux distros are available for [Dell, Lenovo, others] ARM hardware and they work much better than anything Asahi-based. Asahi deserves _a lot_ of respect, but a full-on stable distribution it is not. Maybe in a year, after Fedora has fully ingested Asahi lessons will we get a non-experimental distribution for Apple hardware. Also maybe by then will we have another generation of non-Apple aarch64 CPU that will close the performance gap with the admittedly superior M chips.
- Takennickname 3y ago
  ThinkPad works basically perfectly. I dunno about surface. Linux on M1 is not ready for day to day usage for a user who wants everything to work.
  - lynguist 3y ago
    Here you see the complete writeup: https://www.theregister.com/2023/09/08/linux_on_the_thinkpad_x13s/ https://www.theregister.com/2023/09/08/linux_on_the_thinkpad... As of now it barely works. The experience is arguably worse than on Mac M1. But it’s improving fast.

Scoring6931 3y ago

I have an X13 with Ubuntu 20.04 and it works flawlessly. The trackpad is terrible though.

emptysongglass 3y ago
The X13 or X13s?
- Scoring6931 3y ago
  X13