14 ms·

From M1 MacBook to Arch Linux: A month-long experiment that became permanenent

253 points by articsputnik 1y ago

articsputnik 1y ago
Why I ditched my M1 MacBook for a $1000 ThinkBook running Omarchy, an opinionated Arch Distro.
- piskov 1y ago
  Marketing
- SwiftyBug 1y ago
  One thing I couldn't find in your post was the reason behind choosing the ThinkBook. I'm about to make the exact same switch you did (thanks for bringing up Omarchy, I hadn't heard of it before!). I'm considering a ThinkPad P14s. What made you decide on the ThinkBook?
  - articsputnik 1y ago
    My requirements were: affordable, as i didn't know if I stick to it, 32 GB of RAM, 14'' form factor and good keyboard. AMD for good Linux support. This ThinkBooks popped up, and I liked the look and just tried it. The matt screen was a bonus.
    - articsputnik 1y ago
      If i wanted a more similar device as macbook, i'd choose frameworker laptop, but they don't ship here where i live
      - piskov 1y ago
        Man, know thy mail forwarder Shipito is one of many
        SwiftyBug 1y ago
        Does it handle foreign country customs too?
        piskov 1y ago
        By foreign you mean destination country customs? No
andsoitis 1y ago
> It just works. One thing I noticed lately is that sometimes a shortcut breaks, or something is not working anymore. This is also because Omarchy is just brand new, and I’m inexperienced running Linux as my main OS. But for the last 5 years with the M1, hardware-wise, things just worked. My experience over two decades has been that running Linux is like having a car you need to spend every weekend in the garage tinkering with to keep running well. MacOS is lower effort. I haven't run Windows in a long time, but compared to Linux, it also doesn't require constant tinkering. While I also think Linux user experience becomes more and more "it just works", the incentives are such that a commercial experience like macOS is likely to always be a few levels above.
- fsflover 1y ago
  It definitely depends on your distribution. My relatives running Debian don't even know how to tinker with it or open a terminal.
- khedoros1 1y ago
  My early Linux experience involved a ton of manual configuration, documentation, and head scratching. But for the past 10 years or so, using Linux has felt like less of a fight than using Windows, and things have tended to "just work" for me.
  - NomDePlum 1y ago
    I run Ubuntu and definitely never been easier. Practically boring.
    - khedoros1 1y ago
      I used Ubuntu for some time, then Mint. I'm mostly settled on Fedora, and have been for a long time (aside from Raspbian on some Raspberry Pi's). It has a balance of progress and stability that I've been comfortable with. In my current job, we're using Ubuntu for our development machines. It's a solid system.
- bitwize 1y ago
johndoe0815 1y ago
What IMHO is more interesting than the article itself - what is this little cyberdeck-style mini notebook on the left in this picture that is part of the article? Does anyone have a link? https://www.ssp.sh/blog/macbook-to-arch-linux-omarchy/arch-btw.jpeg https://www.ssp.sh/blog/macbook-to-arch-linux-omarchy/arch-b...
- throwup238 1y ago
  Looks like a MicroJournal Rev 2: https://www.tindie.com/products/unkyulee/micro-journal-rev2-mother-of-twins/ https://www.tindie.com/products/unkyulee/micro-journal-rev2-...
- articsputnik 1y ago
  It's a distraction free typewriter (https://www.ssp.sh/brain/distract-free-typewriter/ https://www.ssp.sh/brain/distract-free-typewriter/). That particular model is a MicroJournal Rev. 2 with a Raspberry Pi Zero 2 in it. Check it out here: https://github.com/unkyulee/micro-journal/blob/main/micro-journal-rev-2-revamp%2Freadme.md https://github.com/unkyulee/micro-journal/blob/main/micro-jo...
- johndoe0815 1y ago
  Thanks a lot for the hints - the Micro Journal Rev.2 seems to be quite a nice device!
torben-friis 1y ago
coming from an m1, and given they're awesome as hardware goes, wouldn't asahi be the natural choice? honest question.
- abhinavk 1y ago
  The author ditched the M1.
spangry 1y ago
Oh darn, I thought they'd gotten Arch running on an M1 but they actually switched to a ThinkBook. I somewhat regret my expensive switch from Linux to MacOS. MacOS is just so weird, it doesn't make any sense to me. For the first time in my life I feel like some tech-illiterate grandpa trying to figure out how to make his blasted computer do stuff.
- sarmasamosarma 1y ago
  What’s so hard about it?
- ahepp 1y ago
  It was not super difficult to get Gentoo running on an m1 MacBook with the (unsupported) instructions some of the Asahi folks left around. I guess Arch might be a bit more difficult in some ways, given the weird status of arm64 being a different project from core Arch?
  - freehorse 1y ago
    Asahi was originally arch based. Not sure how it is faring now, though
    - Retr0id 1y ago
      Arch on aarch64 still exists but it is poorly maintained. I switched to Fedora and I've been happy with that choice, although I do miss the AUR at times.
- 0xfaded 1y ago
  Same, I have a Mac at work and can suffer the horrible window management by just having more physical monitors (3 + the built in screen). I bought one for home use because I liked the hardware and the idea of running local llms. Long story short I'm still using my 6 year old Thinkpad running arch.
  - piskov 1y ago
harshitaneja 1y ago
I have been on an M1 macbook pro since launch and while I love the hardware, easily my favourite device I have ever owned but MacOS has just always been the thing to be the faustian bargain coming from being a linux person. I spend a lot of time SSHed into more GPU capable linux machines for most of my work and thus get an escape but after driving a friend's linux machine I started looking for a way to daily drive a linux machine. I tried Asahi Linux and also tried to find some non apple machines including with Snapdragon X Elite ones but so far I haven't found anything with good battery life and a decent linux driver support. So far Asahi linux with the reduced battery life seems to be the best bet. I don't mind tinkering. I love tinkering. I am not looking for "just works" but something which I could get to work after putting in the hours. If someone has suggestions please share. Edit: Sorry to go somewhat off topic.
- heavyset_go 1y ago
  > If someone has suggestions please share. Stay away from ARM laptops and SoCs, they aren't there yet when it comes to Linux. If you like to tinker, go for it, but expect hardware to just not work, or worse, you'll get stuck on a kernel fork that never gets updated. If you want a good Linux machine, buy one from a vendor that explicitly sells and supports machines with Linux on them. IMO you can tinker as much as you want without forcing hardware compatibility issues upon yourself in order to have something to tinker with.
  - harshitaneja 1y ago
    That seems to be the conclusion I have been avoiding to reach. With graviton and other arm based linux server machines being a good bulk of my work I hoped I wouldn't have to worry about multi architecture docker builds. Ah well. Any suggestions for something well built but lightweight and that one could figure out how to get 8+ hours of actual daily usage battery life on?
    - OGEnthusiast 1y ago
      I've had a great experience with my Framework 13 (AMD), although I usually get 4-5 hours of battery life, so not quite the full 8 hours you're looking for.
keyle 1y ago
This is kind of a hard read. I'm no mac fanboy but at some point I decided to replace the frankenstein world of computing by something roughly coherent. Clearly this person just wants hackability and tweakability, which Arch will give you in spades. All power to them! I'd say this is a "fine" alternative, but not an upgrade. +1 for using an ARM processor though. Once you leave x86 and the fan parade, there is no going back. Silence is bliss.
AstroBen 1y ago
Omarchy never made much sense to me. The biggest benefit of Arch is that it's hackable and you can set it up exactly as you want it.. so why skip the entire process that teaches you how to do that?
- runjake 1y ago
  Because some of us want that minimalism and a good “power user” default setup to tweak from there. I spent all of the 90s learning Linux deeply and custom tweaking everything and trying everything posted to freshmeat.net. I bootstrapped my own Linux from scratch before LFS was a thing. Now I just want to get work down on an OS that feels like it belongs to power users and closely matches my deployment targets. This is why I switched to Omarchy.
  - AstroBen 1y ago
    In that case it for sure makes sense, but for the user like the writer who is new to linux? I'm very happy I went through the pain of setting everything up from scratch. It taught me how it all works. I just don't see how I'd get that same knowledge ever with Omarchy
    - runjake 1y ago
      It's just my experience, but it seems like nearly all younger people (<= 20s) don't want to deep dive on stuff like Linux or TCP/IP, they want to know enough to be effective (dangerous?) and move onto chasing basic competency in the next technology. I can from a time when sysadmins were expected to know C and kernel and TCP/IP internals, but that world is no more. Blame it on education, blame it on the pace of technology, I don't know. I'm not sure how I feel about that, especially thinking about when all the people who know and can build low-level stuff retire and die off. Maybe AI will save them. Who knows?
    - TiredOfLife 1y ago
      Not everyone wants that deep of a knowledge. Not everyone has a spare machine to tinker with. With Omarchy you get a working good looking OS with thought out defaults and built in themes. It's ready to use, but can be customized.
f311a 1y ago
I recently switched to flashspace on macOS and it fits all my needs. I would love to try a linux laptop, but I want decent battery and no fan. Arm support for linux desktops is still very very limited and buggy.
slashnode 1y ago
> I’m surprised with what all worked out of the box, like hibernating, external monitors/keyboards, media keys. Not sure how much is thanks to DHH’s Omarchy, and what’s native Arch Linux support It's pretty much ALL Omarchy. If you install Arch by itself you get a tty prompt... and that's about it. Omarchy looks super impressive. Haven't used it myself, but the scripts and dotfiles in the Github repo (https://github.com/basecamp/omarchy https://github.com/basecamp/omarchy) have been inspiring
jasoneckert 1y ago
I think the biggest takeaway from this blog post is that developers and other professionals should take more note of the tiling window managers available on Linux like Sway and Hyprland - they are insanely fast and customizable to exactly what we need to be more productive. I'm a Sway user (ironically on Fedora Asahi Remix on a Mac) and I won't have it any other sway... er... I mean way.
- WD-42 1y ago
  To me it’s not even the tiling. It’s the ability to switch focus to windows in a directional manner. Like super hjkl or whatever. I have no idea how people are still using alt tab in 2025.
  - baq 1y ago
    > I have no idea how people are still using alt tab in 2025. Everything is full screen almost always. In a week I need windows tiled for maybe 2h.
    - wongogue 1y ago
      This workflow is even easier on a Tiling WM. These days I use niri which at its core, is just Alt-Tab blown up as your actual desktop.
      - baq 1y ago
        The point is I don’t need any wm for this workflow. It just works on any box regardless of OS.
      - aquariusDue 1y ago
        Seconding Niri, it's easier to configure compared to other Tiling WMs and has good out of the box defaults. Though you'll have to fiddle a bit with stuff like waybar, fuzzel and xwayland-satellite. But once you've configured that stuff you won't have to fiddle with it non-stop. I'm currently running it on Fedora, to be clear.
jmward01 1y ago
Power management in all aspects is one big thing that I wish was better in all distros. Hibernate/fans/shorter battery life are real usability things. I only use windows when I am at risk of being fired for not using it and macos is 'acceptable' but there are soooo many little things that make me cringe about it (.DS_Store littering every drive I touch is close to the top) but if I knew I could get mac hardware, including MPS backend working well in pytorch and battery life, with a solid distro guaranteed to work I would definitely buy that over all the pc hardware out there.
- bee_rider 1y ago
  Linux is more likely to have to deal with something like poor/nonexistent drivers that mean a device consumes extra power compared to Windows. But, * cpupower is pretty nice for manual control of your clock speeds * the diversity of window managers allows you to have something like a mostly-black UI, which can help on OLED screens. You can even invert the screen color in X, if your programs insist on rendering black-on-white. * not randomly cranking up the CPU for some windows whatever scan thing saves some power
- dijit 1y ago
  Unfortunately, at the behest of Microsoft, manufacturers just came out with s2idle suspend and removed s3 suspend. And it seems the only Microsoft has working support… so sleep issues continue to plague linux… again… after we just solved them. It makes me so furious. more info: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33608991 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33608991
  - trueismywork 1y ago
    Even windows have huge issuee.
- greatgib 1y ago
  My experience with mac is that yes it looks like to have longer battery life with less fan noise sometimes, but it might be by tricking you into a worse user experience of your machine. For example, you computer to always go to kind of sleep when it is not necessarily what you want. Like with the memory, you will not see app crashing upfront, but at some point macos stops all the other apps when you switch app. And like going from a web browser window, to a pdf, and back, or from a browser window to another, you will experience something like a 1s delay between your click and the window showing up from being minimized.
throwawee 1y ago
For over a decade I never heard anything good about Arch. The most common pitch was something like "it's fun to fix when it breaks", so I was completely blindsided when Valve based SteamOS off it. What did they see in it? I was due for a new SSD, so I decided I'd run it for a week or two. The moment it started being a nuisance, I'd wipe the drive. That was years ago and I'm still on it.
- boppo1 1y ago
  What do you like better than debian?
  - throwawee 1y ago
    Don't know if you responded to the right person since I didn't mention Debian, but I did try it and the other major distributions a long time ago. Honestly, distros mostly felt the same to me apart from their repositories. Debian soured me by keeping its repo perpetually out of date. It's nice to never get burned by an improperly tested package, but never having the latest features and non-security fixes is less nice.
    - baq 1y ago
      > It's nice to never get burned by an improperly tested package, but never having the latest features and non-security fixes is less nice. That’s stable for you, even the ‘less nice’ parts are a feature of the distribution if you’re running a fleet. On desktops people have been running testing or unstable for this reason since forever.
  - margalabargala 1y ago
    I run multiple arch systems and multiple Debian systems in my house. Debian is great if what you want to do, is something that has been easy for 5 years. You set it up and forget it. Debian breaks down whenever you try to do something new that requires some new dependency. Oh you want to run a Go program written in 2023? Now you have to download and install the new version yourself because the latest version in apt is 1.19. On arch stuff like that is generally not a problem. It's the best supported distro after the Debian based ones.
joshdavham 1y ago
How confident are people that Omarchy will be well maintained in the future? I'm considering making that same switch from MacOS to Arch, but I'm not sure if I should have confidence in something like Omarchy which is relatively new.
- dismalaf 1y ago
  Why does it need to be maintained? It's just an install script to install common apps on Arch and to install and configure Hyprland. It's not really a distro on its own.
  - weikju 1y ago
    Hyprland might change. Other apps that are installed or even compiled might go stale or change. The chaotic-aur in use might change or need replacing. Arch or upstream packages might make changes causing issues eg some recent issue with a session manager that broke a lot of installs. Etc.
- chrisvalleybay 1y ago
  If we look at how involved DHH has been with Rails since its inception, I trust Omarchy will follow the same path. This is his daily driver, and I don't think that will change after what happened with 37Signals vs. Apple.
  - bcye 1y ago
    Adding to this, they are moving all developers at 37Signals over over the next few years, so I figure it will be quite maintained.
- machomaster 1y ago
  DHH made Omarchy the official developer distro/setup in his company, so it has the support of the stable commercial entity known for its support of open source projects.
kylemaxwell 1y ago
I swapped from Linux to MacOS when the M1s came out, and I love the integration with all the iCloud stuff (particularly Messages). Occasionally I miss being on Linux, as somebody who did so for 20+ years before making the switch. But on Mac, stuff actually does Just Work. Reading this makes me a little misty-eyed and I miss my solid old Thinkpads from 10-20 years back.
notpushkin 1y ago
I’m waiting for the second hand Arm ThinkPads to drop. Fingers crossed.
- Eldandan 1y ago
  Second hand as in used from this generation? Or second generation? I can't wait for windows on arm to finally fully get there.
  - notpushkin 1y ago
    Used ones, yeah. Companies used to sell off entire fleets when they upgrade, sometimes pretty cheap. I’ve bought a perfectly usable T420 for something like $50 about 10 years ago. (Naturally, it was 4 years old at that point, but still.) Also curious about Windows on Arm, but my plan is to run Linux mainly (which hopefully gets better support at that point!)
nomdep 1y ago
Best thing about Omarchy is that is just a set of config files for Hyprland and Waybar plus bash scripts (even the screensaver is a bash script running in fullscreen )
throwmeaway222 1y ago
I don't know if anyone else agrees, but for some reason no one can replicate the smoothness of the Apple trackpad. And now with that PLUS the heatless apple silicon - I don't think I could go to another OS and the x86 hardware world. I would just feel like I'm in clunky-land. Now don't get me wrong, I like a lot about Linux desktops, but Mac gets a lot of things right. I don't want to take anything away from people migrating from Mac, but the PC didn't kill Desktop Linux, Mac did.
- Tiberium 1y ago
  I do agree that Apple Silicon is way, way more energy efficient and comparable to some top desktop x86 chips, but.. From reading different reviews and tests apparently it's normal for the CPU/SoC to reach a temperature of up 100C at full load, with the case being around 45-50C. Do you mean "heatless" as in specifically the outside case temperature - so those x86 laptops heat up the case way more than that?
  - crinkly 1y ago
    As the owner of an M4 Pro and an Intel Ultra 7 laptop, the M4 pro is uncomfortably cold most of the time. The ultra 7 is uncomfortably hot. The Mac sucks in the winter. The PC sucks in the summer. The PC is however entirely unusable due to that without plugging an external mouse and keyboard in which is the problem.
  - numpy-thagoras 1y ago
    My M4 Max under full load for audio transcode required manual fan curve changes to get the temperature down from 110º C (yes, it really got that hot) to 95º C (much better). It doesn't even get that hot with LLMs running with max fans, where the SoC is about 80º C. Aside from those use cases, the M4 Max runs 43º C or less even in summer conditions.
- makeitdouble 1y ago
  > no one can replicate the smoothness of the Apple trackpad There are newer trackpad for Windows, and the Surface line had pretty good trackpad as well (not Magic Trackpad levels, but perhaps 80% there ? The more surprising part to me when I gave up on the Magic Trackpad moving to windows is I was over it in a week. I only ever used trackpads for a decade, but mouse's just work that much better on Windows/Linux, especially getting the extra buttons actual physical click helped a lot. The paradigms are just different enough that the Trackpad makes less sense than on macos.
renewiltord 1y ago
[flagged]
cycomanic 1y ago
> But the quality of MacBooks is just another level. I had 3 or 4 so far since 2010, and each of them held at least 5 years. Crazy good. When I read things like this it really sounds like there is some reality distortion field in the mac world. How is that anywhere special? I'm running a thinkpad X1 as my 2 main laptops (it was my only work machine until 2 years ago) and I never felt the need to replace it. It gave me 8-10h battery life and the only issue I ever had was that 1.5 years ago the battery was reaching end of life and capacity started dropping very fast. That was just a 70$ repair I could easily do myself. My youngest daughter just inherited my mother's x220 (?) (she has been running Linux) that I got for my mother in 2011 or 2012. That never received any work and still works fine except that I didn't change the battery so you have to run it of ac power. My older daughter and my mother both just got some used thinkpads that are >3years old and don't have any issues either. So from my experience a 5 year lifetime for a macbook is really nothing special and definitely not "crazy good".
- simonh 1y ago
  I don’t know what he’s talking about. I’ve not had a Mac last less than 7 years as a main workhorse, and my 2014 first generation 5k 27” is still going strong as a living room machine. It could still be my daily driver to be honest.
- pjerem 1y ago
  I’d say it’s barely 3 things : - The trackpad (but other manufacturers now have tolerable alternatives and anyway you can work without it) - The screen : at an equivalent price point (and even more), nothing comes close to Apple screens. The cheapest MacBook have a better screen than most high end PCs. - The audio : Apple truly did some sorcery to get such an awesome sound from machines that are flat as sheet. It’s so good that you can watch a movie on your MacBook without earbuds and don’t be bothered. Everything else like build quality is overall better than most other alternatives but a few other manufacturers are also good at it. I say this as someone who uses a MacBook for work despite loving Linux and who hates what macOS have become. The hardware is really that good.
  - sudosysgen 1y ago
rock_artist 1y ago
There are two points I feel are worth focusing and I’ve experienced similar: - Linux is fast. Few years ago I wanted to run Linux and used my MacBook Air 2013 (one of the best machines I’ve had). It was amazing how Ubuntu ran so sleek especially comparing to the MacBook Pro 2018 with macOS. - x86_64 feels less portable than arm. Since I got MBP from my work I’ve also got another machine for Windows. I’ve went with 13” MSI Perstige with 125H which was the latest back then offering hybrid cores (performance + economy). It’s 1kg is amazing and the OLED is also nice. But in order for the machine to actually compile and be snappy I need to ensure it’s not dropping to 0.4-0.8Ghz and then it easily gets warm and noisy. The MBP 2021 also shows age. But even with more frequent fans and 80% of original battery it outperform the younger MSI since day one. TL;DR * Unless you need specific software, Linux distros are great and fast. Much more joy (imho) than Windows. * SoC/ARM is still rare but it would be much more interesting comparison to current Macs in terms of portability (fans, battery life)
mproud 1y ago
“Permanenent?”
deafpolygon 1y ago
> It’s only 2-3 weeks in total that I run it full time. Oh. Still in the honeymoon phase.
gtsnexp 1y ago
The dream: an Arch-friendly laptop that runs as cool as Apple Silicon, with Apple's monitor, Apple's trackpad, Apple's audio. Ask HN: What am I looking for?
- ulbu 1y ago
  macbook + asahi
  - gtsnexp 1y ago
    Has Asahi reached maturity yet?
    - ulbu 1y ago
      apart from usb-c video and hdmi audio, works great.
      - evertedsphere 1y ago
        what's the battery life like?
- christophilus 1y ago
  Dunno, but my Lenovo with Intel Aura is cool, quiet and runs for a long time. Its speakers are great, too. It’s comparable in those respects to a MacBook Pro (which I also own, M4). I never use the MacBook, though. I can’t stand osx. The Lenovo screen isn’t as good, though. I still prefer my 5-year old 4K oled xps.
pjmlp 1y ago
As usual these kind of posts are from people mostly using Apple's hardware as pretty UNIX, and not really as developers into the Apple ecosystem, the Cult of Mac crowd. The same that fill FOSDEM corridors with MacBooks, despite the main purpose of the whole weekend, or at least how its roots were almost 30 years ago.
- wkat4242 1y ago
  Yes I was one of those. But I've moved off Apple years ago because their UNIX got more and more delapidated and all their fancy cloud stuff was unusable to me for not working on all my OSes. Every new release I'd tick off more and more features that were unusable to me, hated all the iOSification of a desktop OS, and hated the new hardware lockdowns. The actual new features I liked were few and far between. So I just gave up on Apple completely. I had already left iOS at that point because of its locked down nature (no alternative appstores mainly and no hardware support for OpenPGP cards over NFC)
reacharavindh 1y ago
> fan noise. > battery level not the same. > touchpad. The reasons for not using Linux on the laptop remains the same after decades :-(
- stainablesteel 1y ago
  i've been using linux for over a decade and had none of these problems on 5 machines that i'd installed it on
  - XzAeRosho 1y ago
    It really depends on the driver lottery. Do you have good driver support? Good, you'll have a mostly flawless experience. Generic drivers? You either get weird cpu usage patterns, or perfectly normal behavior. Maybe an update will break everything. Welcome to the Linux Driver Lottery. It's really good nowadays, but the issues remain the same sadly, and it's not Linux devs fault either, it's just the manufacturer lack of support.
frou_dh 1y ago
Sorry, but even as a computer geek, I will never delude myself into thinking crude TUIs are a step up for local applications.
- SwiftyBug 1y ago
  I've been finding myself liking TUIs more and more. I've been using lazygit, lazysql, and lazydocker for over a year now, and not once have I felt the need to use their native GUI counterparts. I'm getting to the point where I wish almost everything was a TUI. I think that as a macOS user, TUIs are simply better if your goal is to rarely leave your keyboard's home row, especially when TUIs implement common vim patterns like slash for search and hjkl for navigation.
creakingstairs 1y ago
> And most important, instant workspace navigation. The reason why I was upset with Apple: with the latest update, Yabai didn’t work flawlessly anymore I just wish Apple would let us have instant workspace navigation. It is pretty much the only reason why I wrestle with getting Yabai working on every major OS update. There is “reduced animation” setting but it has a short fade in-and-out animation and it drives me crazy.
- SwiftyBug 1y ago
  Same thing for me. Except that I don't feel comfortable disabling everything that needs to be disabled for Yabai to work. My solution was to use AltTab[1] (switch windows, not apps) and not use the fullscreen options. I keep windows sizes maxed, I don't have the Dock visible. I just need to alt + tab to quickly switch windows. [1] https://github.com/lwouis/alt-tab-macos https://github.com/lwouis/alt-tab-macos
- boronine 1y ago
  I also used yabai for this purpose but found a solution that doesn’t require messing with security: https://www.boronine.com/2025/02/09/Instant-Workspace-Switching/ https://www.boronine.com/2025/02/09/Instant-Workspace-Switch...
  - creakingstairs 1y ago
    > Using native functionality, you have the option of a seizure-inducing sliding animation or an equally time-wasting fade Amen. I tried switching to Aerospace, but it would become visibly laggy when connected to an external display and switching a screen that had Zed open for some reason. So I've switched back to Yabai :(
porridgeraisin 1y ago
I am still in the market for a laptop that a) has good linux drivers b) has a big battery ~80wh or more c) metal build d) good touchpad, screen, keyboard, e) strictly no dGPU. I genuinely don't care about the CPU, all of them are good enough for me. Although I suppose if I'm going to be spending on a laptop in 2025, I will be looking for one with 24 or 32GB of RAM instead of 16GB. Macbook Pros satisfy b), c), d) and e). I currently have an HP laptop that satisfies a), c), d), and e). But is just 43Wh (now 36Wh after a few years).
- sylens 1y ago
  I realize touchpad quality is subjective but is a Framework 13 not an option?
  - porridgeraisin 1y ago
    55-60wh battery unfortunately. That cuts off 2.5hrs-ish of usage on linux, compared to 85wh laptops. Didn't hear great things about the build quality and touchpad although these were just reddit reviews. I really like the repairability though, so I'll be watching their product line.
samrolken 1y ago
I might consider something like this, but I can connect four monitors to my MacBook Pro. How easy is it to find a Linux-friendly laptop which can also do this?
- Wilder7977 1y ago
  How? Finding a Mac docking station that works with 2 monitors is already a lottery. 70% of people in my company, me included, ended up plugging the HDMI directly into the mac (and a DP into the docking station), while the same docking station worked flawlessly with 2 monitors on Linux. I haven't tried four monitors, but I have to say that multiple monitors handling is something so far I would list under the downsides on Mac.
  - SSLy 1y ago
    macos only supports multiple display outputs over one cable if it's thunderbolt.
- flakeoil 1y ago
  I'm curious. Why do you need four monitors for you workflow? Is it to avoid using Alt-Tab or similar to switch between apps? Do you have to be able to see all four monitors at exactly the same time? Couldn't having two monitors and two app screens on each monitor work? I'm not questioning you, just curious and wonder if I miss something using only one monitor and Alt-Tabbing my way around.
btbytes 1y ago
Common things in all these Pro-Apple threads: 1. Macbook users who have/are using non-Apple laptops that find the average work-issued Intel laptops to be just meh or worse. 2. People that only buy some exclusive Lenovo, Framework laptops (that are not that common out in the real world (e.g: in US)) refuse to acknowledge the positive experience of Macbook owners. I have had only 3 personal MacbookAir/MBPs since 2006 (and the previous i5 Mba is perfectly functional after a battery replacement and a HDD upgrade - sitting next to me running Mint Linux, that I plan to hand off to my 10yo.) In the meantime, I've also had 4 other MBPs and 3 windows laptops through work. In no way and form, the intel laptops were/are better than the macbooks on average.
mythz 1y ago
I've owned several laptops over the years and have come to regret each of my non Apple laptop purchases which never got more than 3-4 years life without some hardware failures, Surface was the worst which died after 10 months of low sporadic usage. Whilst my gen 1 MB Air has been too slow for anything, my 2013 MB Intel still looks and runs great which the kids still make good use of. My latest M2 MB is by far the best I've ever owned with great build quality, performance, battery life where it's the first time I can confidently travel without a power brick. Whilst Apple's non-Desktop hardware is always best-of-class, I've become increasingly dissatisfied with the direction of macOS and Windows which IMO have both become power-user-hostile and have switched to a Linux desktop full-time. Everyone's been predicting the year of the Linux Desktop for 20+ years, but I believe we're at a turning point for Linux adoption with Windows 11 becoming an intolerable ad/spyware infested marketing platform and Apple's continued ignorance of developers and ambitions of turning its neglected macOS into a locked down appliance. Hopefully Valve can continue their investments in Steam Deck and Arch Linux to accelerate the adoption, their contributions to Proton have already IMO unblocked the biggest barrier to adoption. Whilst currently a happy Fedora user I like the direction, taste, philosophy and community behind Omarchy from what I've seen after kicking the tires in a VM, will look into switching over after they bring out their ISO.
- BoxOfRain 1y ago
  I used a 2015 MacBook Pro up until 2021 when I replaced it with its M1 successor, the 2015 MacBook went to a sibling where it's still their main machine. Apparently it works fine, a little slow but perfectly usable for decade old hardware. I'm in a similar position to you OS-wise, I still use my Mac for things I specifically need macOS for but my main OS is definitively Linux these days. I use Kubuntu at work and CachyOS at home, needing a machine with a decent GPU for some of my projects got me back into PC gaming after a decade or so and gaming on Linux is actually good now which surprised me. People meme about the year of the Linux desktop but modern KDE is legitimately really good and certainly the least annoying UX out of the major desktop OS environments in my opinion.
- didibus 1y ago
  Ya, the hardware is just too good, and I guess a combination of software and hardware that delivers the instant sleep/wakeup and killer battery life. But the UX of MacOS is just okay I'd say. I need to heavily customize it, adding proper alt+tab, speeding up the animations, and so on.
mark_l_watson 1y ago
I would like to make the switch but I inherited a 7K Apple Studio monitor when my Dad died two years ago and I fear that I will never get full use of the monitor moving away from macOS. BTW, my favorite Linux machine is an about ten year old MacBook Air running Ubuntu. That slim little laptop is still amazing.
- TiredOfLife 1y ago
  That is the monitor DHH uses with Framework laptop and Beelink miniPC.
  - mark_l_watson 1y ago
    Thanks!
dismalaf 1y ago
> I had to replace my full mainboard as the GPU was broken within the first two weeks, so that might be bad luck. But the quality of MacBooks is just another level. I had 3 or 4 so far since 2010, and each of them held at least 5 years. Crazy good. Having to replace a board and only lasting 5 years is good? I had a ThinkPad that lasted almost 10 years, then an Acer Swift which lasted 5 years and was doing great until our home burnt down in a wildfire (!!), and now I have a several years old MSI which is doing fine. Also never needed any repairs for any laptop I've ever bought... Seeing that quote makes me think Apple quality is shit...
mococa 1y ago
I was thinking about going down that path. I already use Arch (btw) on my gaming desktop, and I was tempted to build another machine exclusively for Arch (btw). But given the prices, I thought it would make more sense to buy a Mac Studio, and that’s what I plan to do soon.
ritcgab 1y ago
The copilot key on every new Windows® laptop, though.
mattbettinson 1y ago
Excuse my ignorance but how does OS development even work? Being a mostly web developer, it just seems to arcane to change an OS - like, pre-application layer.
- aeblyve 1y ago
  Not unlike web development, you're working against a contract (in this case, CPU instructions/features, storage formats, bus formats) defined by some megacorporate legacy. You also have support from pieces of embedded firmware running inside storage devices or other peripherals. The book at http://ostep.org http://ostep.org gets into some details. Another useful illuminator: https://gwern.net/computers https://gwern.net/computers As much as possible is generally done using simulators before testing on any real hardware.
- solardev 1y ago
  Once you're smart enough, the oscilloscope isn't that different from console.log().
mancerayder 1y ago
Do people have a preferred, recent Thinkpad model they know works well with Linux?
mantra2 1y ago
If only Adobe gave a shit about Linux.
kristianp 1y ago
It seems the ThinkBook 14 G7 ARP the uses chips like AMD Ryzen 7 7735HS, which have TDP of 35-54W and zen 3+ [1]. That would explain the fan noise and lack of battery life. I'm think about going in the other direction, because my p14s (2023) screen is starting to feel too small for my old eyes and the battery life was never good. I think a Macbook Air upgraded to 32GB would provide enough speed, whilst having a better screen. There doesn't seem to be an X1-like Thinkpad that has a 15 or 16 inch screen that I can find. One problem is lenovo has so many product lines it takes in depth research to find what you're looking for. Has anyone tried newer AMD cpus in Thinkpads? My workflow is very linux oriented and my brain doesn't like the idea that I'll need to develop on mac and deploy to linux. That seems too risky to me and I don't need or want docker if I don't have to use it. https://www.amd.com/en/products/processors/laptop/ryzen/7000-series/amd-ryzen-7-7735hs.html https://www.amd.com/en/products/processors/laptop/ryzen/7000...
udev4096 1y ago
[flagged]
- saagarjha 1y ago
  Has nothing to do with Apple

253 points by articsputnik 1y ago

articsputnik 1y ago

Why I ditched my M1 MacBook for a $1000 ThinkBook running Omarchy, an opinionated Arch Distro.

piskov 1y ago
Marketing
SwiftyBug 1y ago
One thing I couldn't find in your post was the reason behind choosing the ThinkBook. I'm about to make the exact same switch you did (thanks for bringing up Omarchy, I hadn't heard of it before!). I'm considering a ThinkPad P14s. What made you decide on the ThinkBook?
- articsputnik 1y ago
  My requirements were: affordable, as i didn't know if I stick to it, 32 GB of RAM, 14'' form factor and good keyboard. AMD for good Linux support. This ThinkBooks popped up, and I liked the look and just tried it. The matt screen was a bonus.
  - articsputnik 1y ago
    If i wanted a more similar device as macbook, i'd choose frameworker laptop, but they don't ship here where i live
    - piskov 1y ago
      Man, know thy mail forwarder Shipito is one of many
      - SwiftyBug 1y ago
        Does it handle foreign country customs too?
        piskov 1y ago
        By foreign you mean destination country customs? No

andsoitis 1y ago

> It just works. One thing I noticed lately is that sometimes a shortcut breaks, or something is not working anymore. This is also because Omarchy is just brand new, and I’m inexperienced running Linux as my main OS. But for the last 5 years with the M1, hardware-wise, things just worked. My experience over two decades has been that running Linux is like having a car you need to spend every weekend in the garage tinkering with to keep running well. MacOS is lower effort. I haven't run Windows in a long time, but compared to Linux, it also doesn't require constant tinkering. While I also think Linux user experience becomes more and more "it just works", the incentives are such that a commercial experience like macOS is likely to always be a few levels above.

fsflover 1y ago
It definitely depends on your distribution. My relatives running Debian don't even know how to tinker with it or open a terminal.
khedoros1 1y ago
My early Linux experience involved a ton of manual configuration, documentation, and head scratching. But for the past 10 years or so, using Linux has felt like less of a fight than using Windows, and things have tended to "just work" for me.
- NomDePlum 1y ago
  I run Ubuntu and definitely never been easier. Practically boring.
  - khedoros1 1y ago
    I used Ubuntu for some time, then Mint. I'm mostly settled on Fedora, and have been for a long time (aside from Raspbian on some Raspberry Pi's). It has a balance of progress and stability that I've been comfortable with. In my current job, we're using Ubuntu for our development machines. It's a solid system.
bitwize 1y ago

johndoe0815 1y ago

What IMHO is more interesting than the article itself - what is this little cyberdeck-style mini notebook on the left in this picture that is part of the article? Does anyone have a link? https://www.ssp.sh/blog/macbook-to-arch-linux-omarchy/arch-btw.jpeg https://www.ssp.sh/blog/macbook-to-arch-linux-omarchy/arch-b...

throwup238 1y ago
Looks like a MicroJournal Rev 2: https://www.tindie.com/products/unkyulee/micro-journal-rev2-mother-of-twins/ https://www.tindie.com/products/unkyulee/micro-journal-rev2-...
articsputnik 1y ago
It's a distraction free typewriter (https://www.ssp.sh/brain/distract-free-typewriter/ https://www.ssp.sh/brain/distract-free-typewriter/). That particular model is a MicroJournal Rev. 2 with a Raspberry Pi Zero 2 in it. Check it out here: https://github.com/unkyulee/micro-journal/blob/main/micro-journal-rev-2-revamp%2Freadme.md https://github.com/unkyulee/micro-journal/blob/main/micro-jo...
johndoe0815 1y ago
Thanks a lot for the hints - the Micro Journal Rev.2 seems to be quite a nice device!

torben-friis 1y ago

coming from an m1, and given they're awesome as hardware goes, wouldn't asahi be the natural choice? honest question.

abhinavk 1y ago
The author ditched the M1.

spangry 1y ago

Oh darn, I thought they'd gotten Arch running on an M1 but they actually switched to a ThinkBook. I somewhat regret my expensive switch from Linux to MacOS. MacOS is just so weird, it doesn't make any sense to me. For the first time in my life I feel like some tech-illiterate grandpa trying to figure out how to make his blasted computer do stuff.

sarmasamosarma 1y ago
What’s so hard about it?
ahepp 1y ago
It was not super difficult to get Gentoo running on an m1 MacBook with the (unsupported) instructions some of the Asahi folks left around. I guess Arch might be a bit more difficult in some ways, given the weird status of arm64 being a different project from core Arch?
- freehorse 1y ago
  Asahi was originally arch based. Not sure how it is faring now, though
  - Retr0id 1y ago
    Arch on aarch64 still exists but it is poorly maintained. I switched to Fedora and I've been happy with that choice, although I do miss the AUR at times.
0xfaded 1y ago
Same, I have a Mac at work and can suffer the horrible window management by just having more physical monitors (3 + the built in screen). I bought one for home use because I liked the hardware and the idea of running local llms. Long story short I'm still using my 6 year old Thinkpad running arch.
- piskov 1y ago

harshitaneja 1y ago

I have been on an M1 macbook pro since launch and while I love the hardware, easily my favourite device I have ever owned but MacOS has just always been the thing to be the faustian bargain coming from being a linux person. I spend a lot of time SSHed into more GPU capable linux machines for most of my work and thus get an escape but after driving a friend's linux machine I started looking for a way to daily drive a linux machine. I tried Asahi Linux and also tried to find some non apple machines including with Snapdragon X Elite ones but so far I haven't found anything with good battery life and a decent linux driver support. So far Asahi linux with the reduced battery life seems to be the best bet. I don't mind tinkering. I love tinkering. I am not looking for "just works" but something which I could get to work after putting in the hours. If someone has suggestions please share. Edit: Sorry to go somewhat off topic.

heavyset_go 1y ago
> If someone has suggestions please share. Stay away from ARM laptops and SoCs, they aren't there yet when it comes to Linux. If you like to tinker, go for it, but expect hardware to just not work, or worse, you'll get stuck on a kernel fork that never gets updated. If you want a good Linux machine, buy one from a vendor that explicitly sells and supports machines with Linux on them. IMO you can tinker as much as you want without forcing hardware compatibility issues upon yourself in order to have something to tinker with.
- harshitaneja 1y ago
  That seems to be the conclusion I have been avoiding to reach. With graviton and other arm based linux server machines being a good bulk of my work I hoped I wouldn't have to worry about multi architecture docker builds. Ah well. Any suggestions for something well built but lightweight and that one could figure out how to get 8+ hours of actual daily usage battery life on?
  - OGEnthusiast 1y ago
    I've had a great experience with my Framework 13 (AMD), although I usually get 4-5 hours of battery life, so not quite the full 8 hours you're looking for.

keyle 1y ago

This is kind of a hard read. I'm no mac fanboy but at some point I decided to replace the frankenstein world of computing by something roughly coherent. Clearly this person just wants hackability and tweakability, which Arch will give you in spades. All power to them! I'd say this is a "fine" alternative, but not an upgrade. +1 for using an ARM processor though. Once you leave x86 and the fan parade, there is no going back. Silence is bliss.

AstroBen 1y ago

Omarchy never made much sense to me. The biggest benefit of Arch is that it's hackable and you can set it up exactly as you want it.. so why skip the entire process that teaches you how to do that?

runjake 1y ago
Because some of us want that minimalism and a good “power user” default setup to tweak from there. I spent all of the 90s learning Linux deeply and custom tweaking everything and trying everything posted to freshmeat.net. I bootstrapped my own Linux from scratch before LFS was a thing. Now I just want to get work down on an OS that feels like it belongs to power users and closely matches my deployment targets. This is why I switched to Omarchy.
- AstroBen 1y ago
  In that case it for sure makes sense, but for the user like the writer who is new to linux? I'm very happy I went through the pain of setting everything up from scratch. It taught me how it all works. I just don't see how I'd get that same knowledge ever with Omarchy
  - runjake 1y ago
    It's just my experience, but it seems like nearly all younger people (<= 20s) don't want to deep dive on stuff like Linux or TCP/IP, they want to know enough to be effective (dangerous?) and move onto chasing basic competency in the next technology. I can from a time when sysadmins were expected to know C and kernel and TCP/IP internals, but that world is no more. Blame it on education, blame it on the pace of technology, I don't know. I'm not sure how I feel about that, especially thinking about when all the people who know and can build low-level stuff retire and die off. Maybe AI will save them. Who knows?
  - TiredOfLife 1y ago
    Not everyone wants that deep of a knowledge. Not everyone has a spare machine to tinker with. With Omarchy you get a working good looking OS with thought out defaults and built in themes. It's ready to use, but can be customized.

f311a 1y ago

I recently switched to flashspace on macOS and it fits all my needs. I would love to try a linux laptop, but I want decent battery and no fan. Arm support for linux desktops is still very very limited and buggy.

slashnode 1y ago

> I’m surprised with what all worked out of the box, like hibernating, external monitors/keyboards, media keys. Not sure how much is thanks to DHH’s Omarchy, and what’s native Arch Linux support It's pretty much ALL Omarchy. If you install Arch by itself you get a tty prompt... and that's about it. Omarchy looks super impressive. Haven't used it myself, but the scripts and dotfiles in the Github repo (https://github.com/basecamp/omarchy https://github.com/basecamp/omarchy) have been inspiring

jasoneckert 1y ago

I think the biggest takeaway from this blog post is that developers and other professionals should take more note of the tiling window managers available on Linux like Sway and Hyprland - they are insanely fast and customizable to exactly what we need to be more productive. I'm a Sway user (ironically on Fedora Asahi Remix on a Mac) and I won't have it any other sway... er... I mean way.

WD-42 1y ago
To me it’s not even the tiling. It’s the ability to switch focus to windows in a directional manner. Like super hjkl or whatever. I have no idea how people are still using alt tab in 2025.
- baq 1y ago
  > I have no idea how people are still using alt tab in 2025. Everything is full screen almost always. In a week I need windows tiled for maybe 2h.
  - wongogue 1y ago
    This workflow is even easier on a Tiling WM. These days I use niri which at its core, is just Alt-Tab blown up as your actual desktop.
    - baq 1y ago
      The point is I don’t need any wm for this workflow. It just works on any box regardless of OS.
    - aquariusDue 1y ago
      Seconding Niri, it's easier to configure compared to other Tiling WMs and has good out of the box defaults. Though you'll have to fiddle a bit with stuff like waybar, fuzzel and xwayland-satellite. But once you've configured that stuff you won't have to fiddle with it non-stop. I'm currently running it on Fedora, to be clear.

jmward01 1y ago

Power management in all aspects is one big thing that I wish was better in all distros. Hibernate/fans/shorter battery life are real usability things. I only use windows when I am at risk of being fired for not using it and macos is 'acceptable' but there are soooo many little things that make me cringe about it (.DS_Store littering every drive I touch is close to the top) but if I knew I could get mac hardware, including MPS backend working well in pytorch and battery life, with a solid distro guaranteed to work I would definitely buy that over all the pc hardware out there.

bee_rider 1y ago
Linux is more likely to have to deal with something like poor/nonexistent drivers that mean a device consumes extra power compared to Windows. But, * cpupower is pretty nice for manual control of your clock speeds * the diversity of window managers allows you to have something like a mostly-black UI, which can help on OLED screens. You can even invert the screen color in X, if your programs insist on rendering black-on-white. * not randomly cranking up the CPU for some windows whatever scan thing saves some power
dijit 1y ago
Unfortunately, at the behest of Microsoft, manufacturers just came out with s2idle suspend and removed s3 suspend. And it seems the only Microsoft has working support… so sleep issues continue to plague linux… again… after we just solved them. It makes me so furious. more info: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33608991 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33608991
- trueismywork 1y ago
  Even windows have huge issuee.
greatgib 1y ago
My experience with mac is that yes it looks like to have longer battery life with less fan noise sometimes, but it might be by tricking you into a worse user experience of your machine. For example, you computer to always go to kind of sleep when it is not necessarily what you want. Like with the memory, you will not see app crashing upfront, but at some point macos stops all the other apps when you switch app. And like going from a web browser window, to a pdf, and back, or from a browser window to another, you will experience something like a 1s delay between your click and the window showing up from being minimized.

throwawee 1y ago

For over a decade I never heard anything good about Arch. The most common pitch was something like "it's fun to fix when it breaks", so I was completely blindsided when Valve based SteamOS off it. What did they see in it? I was due for a new SSD, so I decided I'd run it for a week or two. The moment it started being a nuisance, I'd wipe the drive. That was years ago and I'm still on it.

boppo1 1y ago
What do you like better than debian?
- throwawee 1y ago
  Don't know if you responded to the right person since I didn't mention Debian, but I did try it and the other major distributions a long time ago. Honestly, distros mostly felt the same to me apart from their repositories. Debian soured me by keeping its repo perpetually out of date. It's nice to never get burned by an improperly tested package, but never having the latest features and non-security fixes is less nice.
  - baq 1y ago
    > It's nice to never get burned by an improperly tested package, but never having the latest features and non-security fixes is less nice. That’s stable for you, even the ‘less nice’ parts are a feature of the distribution if you’re running a fleet. On desktops people have been running testing or unstable for this reason since forever.
- margalabargala 1y ago
  I run multiple arch systems and multiple Debian systems in my house. Debian is great if what you want to do, is something that has been easy for 5 years. You set it up and forget it. Debian breaks down whenever you try to do something new that requires some new dependency. Oh you want to run a Go program written in 2023? Now you have to download and install the new version yourself because the latest version in apt is 1.19. On arch stuff like that is generally not a problem. It's the best supported distro after the Debian based ones.

joshdavham 1y ago

How confident are people that Omarchy will be well maintained in the future? I'm considering making that same switch from MacOS to Arch, but I'm not sure if I should have confidence in something like Omarchy which is relatively new.

dismalaf 1y ago
Why does it need to be maintained? It's just an install script to install common apps on Arch and to install and configure Hyprland. It's not really a distro on its own.
- weikju 1y ago
  Hyprland might change. Other apps that are installed or even compiled might go stale or change. The chaotic-aur in use might change or need replacing. Arch or upstream packages might make changes causing issues eg some recent issue with a session manager that broke a lot of installs. Etc.
chrisvalleybay 1y ago
If we look at how involved DHH has been with Rails since its inception, I trust Omarchy will follow the same path. This is his daily driver, and I don't think that will change after what happened with 37Signals vs. Apple.
- bcye 1y ago
  Adding to this, they are moving all developers at 37Signals over over the next few years, so I figure it will be quite maintained.
machomaster 1y ago
DHH made Omarchy the official developer distro/setup in his company, so it has the support of the stable commercial entity known for its support of open source projects.

kylemaxwell 1y ago

I swapped from Linux to MacOS when the M1s came out, and I love the integration with all the iCloud stuff (particularly Messages). Occasionally I miss being on Linux, as somebody who did so for 20+ years before making the switch. But on Mac, stuff actually does Just Work. Reading this makes me a little misty-eyed and I miss my solid old Thinkpads from 10-20 years back.

notpushkin 1y ago

I’m waiting for the second hand Arm ThinkPads to drop. Fingers crossed.

Eldandan 1y ago
Second hand as in used from this generation? Or second generation? I can't wait for windows on arm to finally fully get there.
- notpushkin 1y ago
  Used ones, yeah. Companies used to sell off entire fleets when they upgrade, sometimes pretty cheap. I’ve bought a perfectly usable T420 for something like $50 about 10 years ago. (Naturally, it was 4 years old at that point, but still.) Also curious about Windows on Arm, but my plan is to run Linux mainly (which hopefully gets better support at that point!)

nomdep 1y ago

Best thing about Omarchy is that is just a set of config files for Hyprland and Waybar plus bash scripts (even the screensaver is a bash script running in fullscreen )

throwmeaway222 1y ago

I don't know if anyone else agrees, but for some reason no one can replicate the smoothness of the Apple trackpad. And now with that PLUS the heatless apple silicon - I don't think I could go to another OS and the x86 hardware world. I would just feel like I'm in clunky-land. Now don't get me wrong, I like a lot about Linux desktops, but Mac gets a lot of things right. I don't want to take anything away from people migrating from Mac, but the PC didn't kill Desktop Linux, Mac did.

Tiberium 1y ago
I do agree that Apple Silicon is way, way more energy efficient and comparable to some top desktop x86 chips, but.. From reading different reviews and tests apparently it's normal for the CPU/SoC to reach a temperature of up 100C at full load, with the case being around 45-50C. Do you mean "heatless" as in specifically the outside case temperature - so those x86 laptops heat up the case way more than that?
- crinkly 1y ago
  As the owner of an M4 Pro and an Intel Ultra 7 laptop, the M4 pro is uncomfortably cold most of the time. The ultra 7 is uncomfortably hot. The Mac sucks in the winter. The PC sucks in the summer. The PC is however entirely unusable due to that without plugging an external mouse and keyboard in which is the problem.
- numpy-thagoras 1y ago
  My M4 Max under full load for audio transcode required manual fan curve changes to get the temperature down from 110º C (yes, it really got that hot) to 95º C (much better). It doesn't even get that hot with LLMs running with max fans, where the SoC is about 80º C. Aside from those use cases, the M4 Max runs 43º C or less even in summer conditions.
makeitdouble 1y ago
> no one can replicate the smoothness of the Apple trackpad There are newer trackpad for Windows, and the Surface line had pretty good trackpad as well (not Magic Trackpad levels, but perhaps 80% there ? The more surprising part to me when I gave up on the Magic Trackpad moving to windows is I was over it in a week. I only ever used trackpads for a decade, but mouse's just work that much better on Windows/Linux, especially getting the extra buttons actual physical click helped a lot. The paradigms are just different enough that the Trackpad makes less sense than on macos.

renewiltord 1y ago

[flagged]

cycomanic 1y ago

> But the quality of MacBooks is just another level. I had 3 or 4 so far since 2010, and each of them held at least 5 years. Crazy good. When I read things like this it really sounds like there is some reality distortion field in the mac world. How is that anywhere special? I'm running a thinkpad X1 as my 2 main laptops (it was my only work machine until 2 years ago) and I never felt the need to replace it. It gave me 8-10h battery life and the only issue I ever had was that 1.5 years ago the battery was reaching end of life and capacity started dropping very fast. That was just a 70$ repair I could easily do myself. My youngest daughter just inherited my mother's x220 (?) (she has been running Linux) that I got for my mother in 2011 or 2012. That never received any work and still works fine except that I didn't change the battery so you have to run it of ac power. My older daughter and my mother both just got some used thinkpads that are >3years old and don't have any issues either. So from my experience a 5 year lifetime for a macbook is really nothing special and definitely not "crazy good".

simonh 1y ago
I don’t know what he’s talking about. I’ve not had a Mac last less than 7 years as a main workhorse, and my 2014 first generation 5k 27” is still going strong as a living room machine. It could still be my daily driver to be honest.
pjerem 1y ago
I’d say it’s barely 3 things : - The trackpad (but other manufacturers now have tolerable alternatives and anyway you can work without it) - The screen : at an equivalent price point (and even more), nothing comes close to Apple screens. The cheapest MacBook have a better screen than most high end PCs. - The audio : Apple truly did some sorcery to get such an awesome sound from machines that are flat as sheet. It’s so good that you can watch a movie on your MacBook without earbuds and don’t be bothered. Everything else like build quality is overall better than most other alternatives but a few other manufacturers are also good at it. I say this as someone who uses a MacBook for work despite loving Linux and who hates what macOS have become. The hardware is really that good.
- sudosysgen 1y ago

rock_artist 1y ago

There are two points I feel are worth focusing and I’ve experienced similar: - Linux is fast. Few years ago I wanted to run Linux and used my MacBook Air 2013 (one of the best machines I’ve had). It was amazing how Ubuntu ran so sleek especially comparing to the MacBook Pro 2018 with macOS. - x86_64 feels less portable than arm. Since I got MBP from my work I’ve also got another machine for Windows. I’ve went with 13” MSI Perstige with 125H which was the latest back then offering hybrid cores (performance + economy). It’s 1kg is amazing and the OLED is also nice. But in order for the machine to actually compile and be snappy I need to ensure it’s not dropping to 0.4-0.8Ghz and then it easily gets warm and noisy. The MBP 2021 also shows age. But even with more frequent fans and 80% of original battery it outperform the younger MSI since day one. TL;DR * Unless you need specific software, Linux distros are great and fast. Much more joy (imho) than Windows. * SoC/ARM is still rare but it would be much more interesting comparison to current Macs in terms of portability (fans, battery life)

mproud 1y ago

“Permanenent?”

deafpolygon 1y ago

> It’s only 2-3 weeks in total that I run it full time. Oh. Still in the honeymoon phase.

gtsnexp 1y ago

The dream: an Arch-friendly laptop that runs as cool as Apple Silicon, with Apple's monitor, Apple's trackpad, Apple's audio. Ask HN: What am I looking for?

ulbu 1y ago
macbook + asahi
- gtsnexp 1y ago
  Has Asahi reached maturity yet?
  - ulbu 1y ago
    apart from usb-c video and hdmi audio, works great.
    - evertedsphere 1y ago
      what's the battery life like?
christophilus 1y ago
Dunno, but my Lenovo with Intel Aura is cool, quiet and runs for a long time. Its speakers are great, too. It’s comparable in those respects to a MacBook Pro (which I also own, M4). I never use the MacBook, though. I can’t stand osx. The Lenovo screen isn’t as good, though. I still prefer my 5-year old 4K oled xps.

pjmlp 1y ago

As usual these kind of posts are from people mostly using Apple's hardware as pretty UNIX, and not really as developers into the Apple ecosystem, the Cult of Mac crowd. The same that fill FOSDEM corridors with MacBooks, despite the main purpose of the whole weekend, or at least how its roots were almost 30 years ago.

wkat4242 1y ago
Yes I was one of those. But I've moved off Apple years ago because their UNIX got more and more delapidated and all their fancy cloud stuff was unusable to me for not working on all my OSes. Every new release I'd tick off more and more features that were unusable to me, hated all the iOSification of a desktop OS, and hated the new hardware lockdowns. The actual new features I liked were few and far between. So I just gave up on Apple completely. I had already left iOS at that point because of its locked down nature (no alternative appstores mainly and no hardware support for OpenPGP cards over NFC)

reacharavindh 1y ago

> fan noise. > battery level not the same. > touchpad. The reasons for not using Linux on the laptop remains the same after decades :-(

stainablesteel 1y ago
i've been using linux for over a decade and had none of these problems on 5 machines that i'd installed it on
- XzAeRosho 1y ago
  It really depends on the driver lottery. Do you have good driver support? Good, you'll have a mostly flawless experience. Generic drivers? You either get weird cpu usage patterns, or perfectly normal behavior. Maybe an update will break everything. Welcome to the Linux Driver Lottery. It's really good nowadays, but the issues remain the same sadly, and it's not Linux devs fault either, it's just the manufacturer lack of support.

frou_dh 1y ago

Sorry, but even as a computer geek, I will never delude myself into thinking crude TUIs are a step up for local applications.

SwiftyBug 1y ago
I've been finding myself liking TUIs more and more. I've been using lazygit, lazysql, and lazydocker for over a year now, and not once have I felt the need to use their native GUI counterparts. I'm getting to the point where I wish almost everything was a TUI. I think that as a macOS user, TUIs are simply better if your goal is to rarely leave your keyboard's home row, especially when TUIs implement common vim patterns like slash for search and hjkl for navigation.

creakingstairs 1y ago

> And most important, instant workspace navigation. The reason why I was upset with Apple: with the latest update, Yabai didn’t work flawlessly anymore I just wish Apple would let us have instant workspace navigation. It is pretty much the only reason why I wrestle with getting Yabai working on every major OS update. There is “reduced animation” setting but it has a short fade in-and-out animation and it drives me crazy.

SwiftyBug 1y ago
Same thing for me. Except that I don't feel comfortable disabling everything that needs to be disabled for Yabai to work. My solution was to use AltTab[1] (switch windows, not apps) and not use the fullscreen options. I keep windows sizes maxed, I don't have the Dock visible. I just need to alt + tab to quickly switch windows. [1] https://github.com/lwouis/alt-tab-macos https://github.com/lwouis/alt-tab-macos
boronine 1y ago
I also used yabai for this purpose but found a solution that doesn’t require messing with security: https://www.boronine.com/2025/02/09/Instant-Workspace-Switching/ https://www.boronine.com/2025/02/09/Instant-Workspace-Switch...
- creakingstairs 1y ago
  > Using native functionality, you have the option of a seizure-inducing sliding animation or an equally time-wasting fade Amen. I tried switching to Aerospace, but it would become visibly laggy when connected to an external display and switching a screen that had Zed open for some reason. So I've switched back to Yabai :(

porridgeraisin 1y ago

I am still in the market for a laptop that a) has good linux drivers b) has a big battery ~80wh or more c) metal build d) good touchpad, screen, keyboard, e) strictly no dGPU. I genuinely don't care about the CPU, all of them are good enough for me. Although I suppose if I'm going to be spending on a laptop in 2025, I will be looking for one with 24 or 32GB of RAM instead of 16GB. Macbook Pros satisfy b), c), d) and e). I currently have an HP laptop that satisfies a), c), d), and e). But is just 43Wh (now 36Wh after a few years).

sylens 1y ago
I realize touchpad quality is subjective but is a Framework 13 not an option?
- porridgeraisin 1y ago
  55-60wh battery unfortunately. That cuts off 2.5hrs-ish of usage on linux, compared to 85wh laptops. Didn't hear great things about the build quality and touchpad although these were just reddit reviews. I really like the repairability though, so I'll be watching their product line.

samrolken 1y ago

I might consider something like this, but I can connect four monitors to my MacBook Pro. How easy is it to find a Linux-friendly laptop which can also do this?

Wilder7977 1y ago
How? Finding a Mac docking station that works with 2 monitors is already a lottery. 70% of people in my company, me included, ended up plugging the HDMI directly into the mac (and a DP into the docking station), while the same docking station worked flawlessly with 2 monitors on Linux. I haven't tried four monitors, but I have to say that multiple monitors handling is something so far I would list under the downsides on Mac.
- SSLy 1y ago
  macos only supports multiple display outputs over one cable if it's thunderbolt.
flakeoil 1y ago
I'm curious. Why do you need four monitors for you workflow? Is it to avoid using Alt-Tab or similar to switch between apps? Do you have to be able to see all four monitors at exactly the same time? Couldn't having two monitors and two app screens on each monitor work? I'm not questioning you, just curious and wonder if I miss something using only one monitor and Alt-Tabbing my way around.

btbytes 1y ago

Common things in all these Pro-Apple threads: 1. Macbook users who have/are using non-Apple laptops that find the average work-issued Intel laptops to be just meh or worse. 2. People that only buy some exclusive Lenovo, Framework laptops (that are not that common out in the real world (e.g: in US)) refuse to acknowledge the positive experience of Macbook owners. I have had only 3 personal MacbookAir/MBPs since 2006 (and the previous i5 Mba is perfectly functional after a battery replacement and a HDD upgrade - sitting next to me running Mint Linux, that I plan to hand off to my 10yo.) In the meantime, I've also had 4 other MBPs and 3 windows laptops through work. In no way and form, the intel laptops were/are better than the macbooks on average.

mythz 1y ago

I've owned several laptops over the years and have come to regret each of my non Apple laptop purchases which never got more than 3-4 years life without some hardware failures, Surface was the worst which died after 10 months of low sporadic usage. Whilst my gen 1 MB Air has been too slow for anything, my 2013 MB Intel still looks and runs great which the kids still make good use of. My latest M2 MB is by far the best I've ever owned with great build quality, performance, battery life where it's the first time I can confidently travel without a power brick. Whilst Apple's non-Desktop hardware is always best-of-class, I've become increasingly dissatisfied with the direction of macOS and Windows which IMO have both become power-user-hostile and have switched to a Linux desktop full-time. Everyone's been predicting the year of the Linux Desktop for 20+ years, but I believe we're at a turning point for Linux adoption with Windows 11 becoming an intolerable ad/spyware infested marketing platform and Apple's continued ignorance of developers and ambitions of turning its neglected macOS into a locked down appliance. Hopefully Valve can continue their investments in Steam Deck and Arch Linux to accelerate the adoption, their contributions to Proton have already IMO unblocked the biggest barrier to adoption. Whilst currently a happy Fedora user I like the direction, taste, philosophy and community behind Omarchy from what I've seen after kicking the tires in a VM, will look into switching over after they bring out their ISO.

BoxOfRain 1y ago
I used a 2015 MacBook Pro up until 2021 when I replaced it with its M1 successor, the 2015 MacBook went to a sibling where it's still their main machine. Apparently it works fine, a little slow but perfectly usable for decade old hardware. I'm in a similar position to you OS-wise, I still use my Mac for things I specifically need macOS for but my main OS is definitively Linux these days. I use Kubuntu at work and CachyOS at home, needing a machine with a decent GPU for some of my projects got me back into PC gaming after a decade or so and gaming on Linux is actually good now which surprised me. People meme about the year of the Linux desktop but modern KDE is legitimately really good and certainly the least annoying UX out of the major desktop OS environments in my opinion.
didibus 1y ago
Ya, the hardware is just too good, and I guess a combination of software and hardware that delivers the instant sleep/wakeup and killer battery life. But the UX of MacOS is just okay I'd say. I need to heavily customize it, adding proper alt+tab, speeding up the animations, and so on.

mark_l_watson 1y ago

I would like to make the switch but I inherited a 7K Apple Studio monitor when my Dad died two years ago and I fear that I will never get full use of the monitor moving away from macOS. BTW, my favorite Linux machine is an about ten year old MacBook Air running Ubuntu. That slim little laptop is still amazing.

TiredOfLife 1y ago
That is the monitor DHH uses with Framework laptop and Beelink miniPC.
- mark_l_watson 1y ago
  Thanks!

dismalaf 1y ago

> I had to replace my full mainboard as the GPU was broken within the first two weeks, so that might be bad luck. But the quality of MacBooks is just another level. I had 3 or 4 so far since 2010, and each of them held at least 5 years. Crazy good. Having to replace a board and only lasting 5 years is good? I had a ThinkPad that lasted almost 10 years, then an Acer Swift which lasted 5 years and was doing great until our home burnt down in a wildfire (!!), and now I have a several years old MSI which is doing fine. Also never needed any repairs for any laptop I've ever bought... Seeing that quote makes me think Apple quality is shit...

mococa 1y ago

I was thinking about going down that path. I already use Arch (btw) on my gaming desktop, and I was tempted to build another machine exclusively for Arch (btw). But given the prices, I thought it would make more sense to buy a Mac Studio, and that’s what I plan to do soon.

ritcgab 1y ago

The copilot key on every new Windows® laptop, though.

mattbettinson 1y ago

Excuse my ignorance but how does OS development even work? Being a mostly web developer, it just seems to arcane to change an OS - like, pre-application layer.

aeblyve 1y ago
Not unlike web development, you're working against a contract (in this case, CPU instructions/features, storage formats, bus formats) defined by some megacorporate legacy. You also have support from pieces of embedded firmware running inside storage devices or other peripherals. The book at http://ostep.org http://ostep.org gets into some details. Another useful illuminator: https://gwern.net/computers https://gwern.net/computers As much as possible is generally done using simulators before testing on any real hardware.
solardev 1y ago
Once you're smart enough, the oscilloscope isn't that different from console.log().

mancerayder 1y ago

Do people have a preferred, recent Thinkpad model they know works well with Linux?

mantra2 1y ago

If only Adobe gave a shit about Linux.

kristianp 1y ago

It seems the ThinkBook 14 G7 ARP the uses chips like AMD Ryzen 7 7735HS, which have TDP of 35-54W and zen 3+ [1]. That would explain the fan noise and lack of battery life. I'm think about going in the other direction, because my p14s (2023) screen is starting to feel too small for my old eyes and the battery life was never good. I think a Macbook Air upgraded to 32GB would provide enough speed, whilst having a better screen. There doesn't seem to be an X1-like Thinkpad that has a 15 or 16 inch screen that I can find. One problem is lenovo has so many product lines it takes in depth research to find what you're looking for. Has anyone tried newer AMD cpus in Thinkpads? My workflow is very linux oriented and my brain doesn't like the idea that I'll need to develop on mac and deploy to linux. That seems too risky to me and I don't need or want docker if I don't have to use it. https://www.amd.com/en/products/processors/laptop/ryzen/7000-series/amd-ryzen-7-7735hs.html https://www.amd.com/en/products/processors/laptop/ryzen/7000...

udev4096 1y ago

[flagged]

saagarjha 1y ago
Has nothing to do with Apple