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The Acer Aspire 1 is getting really old at this point. Are there any modern ARM (or even RISCV!) laptops that are usable out-of-the-box with upstream Linux kern
by Zuiii 3y ago
The Acer Aspire 1 is getting really old at this point. Are there any modern ARM (or even RISCV!) laptops that are usable out-of-the-box with upstream Linux kernels/distributions?
(My laptop is dying and I need a new quality laptop that has good Linux support and battery-life.)
- pa7ch 3y agoM2 and M1 chips are pretty well supported by Asahi/Fedora linux now.
- nextos 3y agoSadly support is fairly good but IMHO not there yet for a daily driver: https://asahilinux.org/fedora/#device-support https://asahilinux.org/fedora/#device-support. Microphone and external displays are not working. Plus, you rely on macOS for firmware updates. An AMD ThinkPad has nearly the same performance, and much better software support thanks to x86_64. The compromise is decent but not great battery range (7-10 hours), mostly because of an older fabrication process. With that said, I prefer the quality of MacBooks and Apple customer service here in EU is miles ahead of Lenovo (outsourced, crazy prices). So a viable alternative would be awesome. Some Intel MacBook Airs used to be fantastic Linux devices.
- hedora 3y agoNote that HDMI out supposedly works on the pro, so the missing functionality is just the microphone, touchid, and thunderbolt/usb4. (Unless you have a usb3 display or really like dongles).
- prmoustache 3y agoI am happy to dock my laptop to one usb-c dock and not have to deal with hdmi, mouse, keyboard and jack output every time I come to my office. For most users Linux Asahi is only usable as a daily driver in non pros contexts on Mac Laptop and you'd be better of dedicating a computer (a mac mini?) for the office.
- caskstrength 3y agoI wouldn't call it "pretty well" even though I applaud Asahi team for their efforts.
- wyldfire 3y ago> The Acer Aspire 1 (A114-61) is an aging ARM laptop design built on the Snapdragon 7c Gen1. Agreed: it's old. But from inside Qualcomm, I can report that there's a clear change in priorities. Upstream was important before but now it's absolutely paramount. This message is unambiguous, from the CEO. I saw that Snapdragon 8 Gen3 (a phone -- not laptop -- SoC) got patches posted relatively close to its introduction. Given that, I hope that we'll see the same thing for Snapdragon X Elite. I don't have any access to the kernel team's plans so I have no idea what their schedule is like.
- greesil 3y agoThat's super awesome to hear. I am continuously surprised by how long it takes companies to pivot to compete effectively with Apple. The M1 came out in 2020? ARM support is part of the puzzle but the architecture lags so badly. And it's not just Qualcomm. Intel, Samsung, Google, Marvel, you get the picture.
- wyldfire 3y agoInterestingly, Qualcomm was shipping its ARM-based/Windows laptop chips prior to Apple's intro of the M1 Macbook. But they have failed to make a dent in the market. I think having something that amounts to ~parity in performance is not good enough to help lure customers to a new ISA. Like the M1, you have to give customers a really great story about switching.
- ComputerGuru 3y agoARM devices running Windows didn’t even focus on or reach performance parity before; it was mostly a winning-on-price strategy (but the savings were not quite worth it).
- greesil 3y agoThese companies think in terms of evolution and BOM cost, not revolution.
- 3y ago
- hedora 3y agoThe pinebook pro comes close, but I can’t get over the speaker whine and poor suspend life. Also, I think the aspire one might have higher specs.
- whatevaa 3y agoI have physically disconnected speakers in my pinebook, it's that bad.
- snvzz 3y agoPinetab-V
- yjftsjthsd-h 3y agoI'm not sure I'd describe the pinetab 2 or V as "usable out-of-the-box" yet
- snvzz 3y agoJH7110 has the best upstream support among Linux capable RISC-V SoCs. Any PineTab-V specific hardware, however, might add extra complication. Out of the box is just not a thing yet.
- helpfulContrib 3y ago[dead]
- amatecha 3y agoMNT Reform? Pretty sure it runs regular ol' Debian. Bonus: completely open-source hardware. https://shop.mntre.com/products/mnt-reform https://shop.mntre.com/products/mnt-reform
- bpye 3y agoI really want to like the MNT Reform and especially the MNT Pocket Reform - but it’s really hard to justify such a big perf delta with my M1 MBP.
- ryukafalz 3y agoWith it being modular there's always the potential for CPU upgrades in the future. But yes, it's much less performant than a modern x86 or Apple Silicon device. Performance isn't the primary goal, though admittedly it would be nice. This will of course never happen but imagine if there were an M1 CPU module for it. Qualcomm is maybe more realistic but from what I've heard it seems like they won't even talk to you if you're not ordering in huge quantities.
- vilunov 3y agoUnless they become bankrupt and no new modules will be released. It's hard to place faith in the future of a company like that, especially when I need a powerful CPU right now.
- amatecha 3y agoIt's interesting you say that, since that's one of the major benefits of open hardware - you're not beholden to the survival of a corporation to continue having support for your tech. Anyone can come along and get a PCB produced by one of the many "print on demand" services. Someone with similar skills to the team at MNT can pick up the entire ecosystem and build entirely new hardware for it without a shred of friction or red tape (or threat of lawyers lol) ... pretty badass if you ask me. Worst case scenario you hire/crowdsource someone to build an updated CPU module.
- ThibJP 3y agoThe x13s is "almost" fully upstream, there is a dedicated ubuntu kernel/iso for it which only add tweaks for mac address and other small issues.
- yjftsjthsd-h 3y agoTake your pick: https://wiki.postmarketos.org/wiki/Category:ChromeOS https://wiki.postmarketos.org/wiki/Category:ChromeOS