4 ms·

What I want to know…can it run Linux? And can it run Linux better than a M3 MBA? I don’t want Windows. I don’t want MacOS. I want a thin, efficient, fast, ligh

What I want to know…can it run Linux? And can it run Linux better than a M3 MBA? I don’t want Windows. I don’t want MacOS. I want a thin, efficient, fast, light, affordable replacement for my aging Latitude 7370 running Linux.

numpad0 2y ago
Why would you be so obsessive about thin and light? Making hardware thin and light costs money and performance.
- dotnet00 2y ago
  Thin and light is better for portability, if I didn't care about portability I'd just use my far more powerful desktop.
- noirbot 2y ago
  Because the point of a laptop is to be portable? And a large chunk of that is being small and light? I could haul my full desktop and monitors around with me, but it's not worth the tradeoff. If I can get a computer that does 70% of what my desktop can do at a tenth of the weight and size, that's worth the money.
- jitix 2y ago
  IMO for many people a laptop means highly portable, wire free 'desktop' computing experience that you can't get on a tablet. Therefore the comparison for mobility is with a tablet and not a powerful Windows laptop. Plus many people working in tech have specific systems for specific tasks; I use a spec'ed up Windows laptop for heavy lifting and games, and an M1 Air as my main computer.
  - numpad0 2y ago
    But at the same time, many people also asks for performance improvements, and sometimes extra few USB A ports too. Plenty people makes hyperbolic claims such as which Apple Mx CPUs has x times more computation than which NVIDIA GPUs, superficially focusing on raw CPU performances. I know deep down that thinnest laptops with brightest displays sells the most in reality, marketing wise, but it just sounds a bit hypocritical to me.
    - jwells89 2y ago
      For ultraportables I think people just want performance to be “good enough” while also not getting hot or spinning up a fan. The M1 Air struck this balance very well – it was no speed demon but wasn’t pokey either, and battery life didn’t suffer for it. This was in stark contrast to contemporaries where any semblance of decent battery life required low power mode, which made them dog slow. Even today this is something that x86 laptops with current chips struggle with… there are a handful of x86 ultraportables that can get M1 MBA like battery life, but they have larger batteries than the MBA had and still need low power mode to pull it off reliably. That’s where a lot of the hype around “M-series SoC is capable of X performance” is rooted. It’s not the performance in and of itself, but the perf per watt, which allows that performance without also turning the laptop into a furnace/jet or destroying battery life.
- NBJack 2y ago
  Super critical for those that travel a lot, whether for work or personal needs. I've lugged some boat anchors around; having extra space for the necessities, or just being able to work in economy class on a long flight, are premiums I'm willing to pay for.
- heywire 2y ago
  I have both a Latitude 7370 for personal use and a Precision 3520 for work. Lugging that Precision around is a pain in the butt. It is big and bulky, noisy and hot. That said, as my eyes continue to age, the 13” screen of my Latitude does seem smaller than it once was, though the crispness of the 3200x1800 is much better than the grainy 1080p in the Precision. And I do miss the number pad sometimes. My perfect form factor these days would probably be a 14-15” in a similar profile as my Latitude (it is essentially a poor man’s XPS 13).
  - heywire 2y ago
    Correction: my work laptop is a Precision 3571 (used to have a 3520).
lights0123 2y ago
With official vendor support: https://www.phoronix.com/news/Qualcomm-Snapdragon-X-Elite https://www.phoronix.com/news/Qualcomm-Snapdragon-X-Elite
heavyset_go 2y ago
I believe there's some work done by Qualcomm developers on Linux, and they even have some marketing site about mainlining Linux support here[1]. Linux 6.10 has some drivers for hardware on the Snapdragon X Elite platform[2]. That said, Linux support does not come down to just SoC support. Each device using the Snapdragon platform will need support from manufacturers or volunteers to get Linux running on them, as they'll need DeviceTrees written for them, drivers for peripherals and whatnot. [1] https://www.qualcomm.com/developer/blog/2024/05/upstreaming-linux-kernel-support-for-the-snapdragon-x-elite https://www.qualcomm.com/developer/blog/2024/05/upstreaming-... [2] https://www.phoronix.com/news/Linux-6.10-eDP-DP-X-Elite https://www.phoronix.com/news/Linux-6.10-eDP-DP-X-Elite
School-Cotton 2y ago
Linux doesn’t run on any M3 Mac at all.
- heywire 2y ago
  Touché. I was thinking Asahi / M1.
daft_pink 2y ago
It would be nice to be able to purchase a Linux laptop with proper power management. I haven’t used a Linux laptop in a long time, but when I did, I found it didn’t manage different power modes well at all. I feel that’s the main drawback to a Linux laptop, so if arm chips fixed that it would be awesome.
- heywire 2y ago
  My Latitude 7370 is just about perfect. With gnome power profiles, I can easily switch between power saver, balanced, and performance, suspend/resume works fine. All peripherals work out of the box. It has a crisp 3200x1800 touchscreen that works great under Gnome. It is pretty much my perfect Linux laptop. I only wish the battery life was better, and that it had a more powerful CPU. It is fanless, so it throttles pretty quickly under load. I ran some tests, and completely idle at 30% brightness I can get 7h under Linux and 8h under Windows, so Linux still has some room for improvement. But as someone who uses Windows at work, there is no way I could go back to that personally. Not unless they released an open source version completely cleaned of crapware and bloat. The Enterprise / IOT versions are the closest I’ve come to that.
- nutrie 2y ago
  This is one of the main reasons I use Pop! on my Thinkpad. Their power management works great out of the box, I get three times the battery life compared to Win 10. Suspend often doesn't work properly, but to me, that's a minor issue, likely hw related.
thefz 2y ago
> What I want to know…can it run Linux? And can it run Linux better than a M3 MBA? And if it runs Linux, how much of the impressive battery optimizations am I going to sacrifice?
- yjftsjthsd-h 2y ago
  Keep in mind that sometimes the answer is negative; Linux sometimes outperforms Windows on the same hardware.

numpad0 2y ago

Why would you be so obsessive about thin and light? Making hardware thin and light costs money and performance.

dotnet00 2y ago
Thin and light is better for portability, if I didn't care about portability I'd just use my far more powerful desktop.
noirbot 2y ago
Because the point of a laptop is to be portable? And a large chunk of that is being small and light? I could haul my full desktop and monitors around with me, but it's not worth the tradeoff. If I can get a computer that does 70% of what my desktop can do at a tenth of the weight and size, that's worth the money.
jitix 2y ago
IMO for many people a laptop means highly portable, wire free 'desktop' computing experience that you can't get on a tablet. Therefore the comparison for mobility is with a tablet and not a powerful Windows laptop. Plus many people working in tech have specific systems for specific tasks; I use a spec'ed up Windows laptop for heavy lifting and games, and an M1 Air as my main computer.
- numpad0 2y ago
  But at the same time, many people also asks for performance improvements, and sometimes extra few USB A ports too. Plenty people makes hyperbolic claims such as which Apple Mx CPUs has x times more computation than which NVIDIA GPUs, superficially focusing on raw CPU performances. I know deep down that thinnest laptops with brightest displays sells the most in reality, marketing wise, but it just sounds a bit hypocritical to me.
  - jwells89 2y ago
    For ultraportables I think people just want performance to be “good enough” while also not getting hot or spinning up a fan. The M1 Air struck this balance very well – it was no speed demon but wasn’t pokey either, and battery life didn’t suffer for it. This was in stark contrast to contemporaries where any semblance of decent battery life required low power mode, which made them dog slow. Even today this is something that x86 laptops with current chips struggle with… there are a handful of x86 ultraportables that can get M1 MBA like battery life, but they have larger batteries than the MBA had and still need low power mode to pull it off reliably. That’s where a lot of the hype around “M-series SoC is capable of X performance” is rooted. It’s not the performance in and of itself, but the perf per watt, which allows that performance without also turning the laptop into a furnace/jet or destroying battery life.
NBJack 2y ago
Super critical for those that travel a lot, whether for work or personal needs. I've lugged some boat anchors around; having extra space for the necessities, or just being able to work in economy class on a long flight, are premiums I'm willing to pay for.
heywire 2y ago
I have both a Latitude 7370 for personal use and a Precision 3520 for work. Lugging that Precision around is a pain in the butt. It is big and bulky, noisy and hot. That said, as my eyes continue to age, the 13” screen of my Latitude does seem smaller than it once was, though the crispness of the 3200x1800 is much better than the grainy 1080p in the Precision. And I do miss the number pad sometimes. My perfect form factor these days would probably be a 14-15” in a similar profile as my Latitude (it is essentially a poor man’s XPS 13).
- heywire 2y ago
  Correction: my work laptop is a Precision 3571 (used to have a 3520).

lights0123 2y ago

With official vendor support: https://www.phoronix.com/news/Qualcomm-Snapdragon-X-Elite https://www.phoronix.com/news/Qualcomm-Snapdragon-X-Elite

heavyset_go 2y ago

I believe there's some work done by Qualcomm developers on Linux, and they even have some marketing site about mainlining Linux support here[1]. Linux 6.10 has some drivers for hardware on the Snapdragon X Elite platform[2]. That said, Linux support does not come down to just SoC support. Each device using the Snapdragon platform will need support from manufacturers or volunteers to get Linux running on them, as they'll need DeviceTrees written for them, drivers for peripherals and whatnot. [1] https://www.qualcomm.com/developer/blog/2024/05/upstreaming-linux-kernel-support-for-the-snapdragon-x-elite https://www.qualcomm.com/developer/blog/2024/05/upstreaming-... [2] https://www.phoronix.com/news/Linux-6.10-eDP-DP-X-Elite https://www.phoronix.com/news/Linux-6.10-eDP-DP-X-Elite

School-Cotton 2y ago

Linux doesn’t run on any M3 Mac at all.

heywire 2y ago
Touché. I was thinking Asahi / M1.

daft_pink 2y ago

It would be nice to be able to purchase a Linux laptop with proper power management. I haven’t used a Linux laptop in a long time, but when I did, I found it didn’t manage different power modes well at all. I feel that’s the main drawback to a Linux laptop, so if arm chips fixed that it would be awesome.

heywire 2y ago
My Latitude 7370 is just about perfect. With gnome power profiles, I can easily switch between power saver, balanced, and performance, suspend/resume works fine. All peripherals work out of the box. It has a crisp 3200x1800 touchscreen that works great under Gnome. It is pretty much my perfect Linux laptop. I only wish the battery life was better, and that it had a more powerful CPU. It is fanless, so it throttles pretty quickly under load. I ran some tests, and completely idle at 30% brightness I can get 7h under Linux and 8h under Windows, so Linux still has some room for improvement. But as someone who uses Windows at work, there is no way I could go back to that personally. Not unless they released an open source version completely cleaned of crapware and bloat. The Enterprise / IOT versions are the closest I’ve come to that.
nutrie 2y ago
This is one of the main reasons I use Pop! on my Thinkpad. Their power management works great out of the box, I get three times the battery life compared to Win 10. Suspend often doesn't work properly, but to me, that's a minor issue, likely hw related.

thefz 2y ago

> What I want to know…can it run Linux? And can it run Linux better than a M3 MBA? And if it runs Linux, how much of the impressive battery optimizations am I going to sacrifice?

yjftsjthsd-h 2y ago
Keep in mind that sometimes the answer is negative; Linux sometimes outperforms Windows on the same hardware.