5 ms·

Can someone tell me why there isn't almost any laptop with Linux and ARM? Is it more efficient than x86 though

dijit 10mo ago
Software/driver compatibility and rational fear of change from users. (My work laptop is one of the few ARM laptops: Thinkpad T14s with Quallcomm Snapdragon Elite)
- raddan 10mo ago
  If you don’t mind me asking, what do you think of that laptop? What kind of workloads do you run and how is battery life? What OS? Would you choose it again?
  - dijit 10mo ago
    Was trying to install Linux on it, though its not working like a standard x86 laptop (for the installer on debian for example). Battery is good, hardware is really rock solid (though I dislike the new plastic for the keyboard). Really can’t complain, it’s nearly as good as my Macbook. It runs Windows 11 today, and everything I need runs fine (jetbrains, rustc, clang, msvc, terraform and of course python). I’m a technical CTO with infrastructure background, most of my time is spent in spreadsheets these days unfortunately.
    - raddan 10mo ago
      Cool, thanks!
jeremyjh 10mo ago
Chromebooks are essentially this, but not that great for local development.
- fragmede 10mo ago
  Depends on which one, and what you want to locally develop.
  - jeremyjh 10mo ago
    Is there one that even has a full keyboard?
    - fragmede 10mo ago
      HP makes a 17" Chromebook if that's what you're after.
- tomComb 10mo ago
  So then one solution might be to buy a Chromebook, and put regular Linux on it? I don’t think the Chromebook are locked down.
  - jeremyjh 10mo ago
    Yes you can do that, I think there are also chroot options; its running a Linux kernel already. edit: actually it looks like this era is coming to an end; Crouton was archived earlier this year. Probably it still works on older models: https://github.com/dnschneid/crouton https://github.com/dnschneid/crouton
PhilipRoman 10mo ago
How is the bootloader/peripheral compatibility on the non-SBC ARM systems these days? Can you plug in a boot disk on different machine and expect it to just work? My main problem with ARM is that many manufacturers act as if they're special little snowflakes and deserve to have their custom patched kernel/bootloader/whatever.
- torginus 10mo ago
  Afaik a lot of bootloaders are proprietary/wonky, a lot of SOCs run custom bootloaders. However if you do manage to boot things up, hardware with open-source drivers should just work, for example Jeff Geerling has couple of videos on youtube about running his RPi with external AMD graphics cards connected via PCIe, and it works.
- AlotOfReading 10mo ago
  This is the goal of the Arm SystemReady compliance label. The selection is still pretty limited and what's out there is generally buggy, but there's a few boards out there you can buy like the Orion O6 [0]. If you just want a stable system with predictable performance, you're probably better off with a more traditional system though. [0] https://radxa.com/products/orion/o6/ https://radxa.com/products/orion/o6/
CCs 10mo ago
It is a pain to make any new platform useful enough for large adoption. Apple made a lot of effort to get MacBook M1 useable, same for AWS with Graviton. Eventually it will be adopted for Linux laptops too, even without a specific vendor focusing on it, but it will take time.

dijit 10mo ago

Software/driver compatibility and rational fear of change from users. (My work laptop is one of the few ARM laptops: Thinkpad T14s with Quallcomm Snapdragon Elite)

raddan 10mo ago
If you don’t mind me asking, what do you think of that laptop? What kind of workloads do you run and how is battery life? What OS? Would you choose it again?
- dijit 10mo ago
  Was trying to install Linux on it, though its not working like a standard x86 laptop (for the installer on debian for example). Battery is good, hardware is really rock solid (though I dislike the new plastic for the keyboard). Really can’t complain, it’s nearly as good as my Macbook. It runs Windows 11 today, and everything I need runs fine (jetbrains, rustc, clang, msvc, terraform and of course python). I’m a technical CTO with infrastructure background, most of my time is spent in spreadsheets these days unfortunately.
  - raddan 10mo ago
    Cool, thanks!

jeremyjh 10mo ago

Chromebooks are essentially this, but not that great for local development.

fragmede 10mo ago
Depends on which one, and what you want to locally develop.
- jeremyjh 10mo ago
  Is there one that even has a full keyboard?
  - fragmede 10mo ago
    HP makes a 17" Chromebook if that's what you're after.
tomComb 10mo ago
So then one solution might be to buy a Chromebook, and put regular Linux on it? I don’t think the Chromebook are locked down.
- jeremyjh 10mo ago
  Yes you can do that, I think there are also chroot options; its running a Linux kernel already. edit: actually it looks like this era is coming to an end; Crouton was archived earlier this year. Probably it still works on older models: https://github.com/dnschneid/crouton https://github.com/dnschneid/crouton

PhilipRoman 10mo ago

How is the bootloader/peripheral compatibility on the non-SBC ARM systems these days? Can you plug in a boot disk on different machine and expect it to just work? My main problem with ARM is that many manufacturers act as if they're special little snowflakes and deserve to have their custom patched kernel/bootloader/whatever.

torginus 10mo ago
Afaik a lot of bootloaders are proprietary/wonky, a lot of SOCs run custom bootloaders. However if you do manage to boot things up, hardware with open-source drivers should just work, for example Jeff Geerling has couple of videos on youtube about running his RPi with external AMD graphics cards connected via PCIe, and it works.
AlotOfReading 10mo ago
This is the goal of the Arm SystemReady compliance label. The selection is still pretty limited and what's out there is generally buggy, but there's a few boards out there you can buy like the Orion O6 [0]. If you just want a stable system with predictable performance, you're probably better off with a more traditional system though. [0] https://radxa.com/products/orion/o6/ https://radxa.com/products/orion/o6/

CCs 10mo ago

It is a pain to make any new platform useful enough for large adoption. Apple made a lot of effort to get MacBook M1 useable, same for AWS with Graviton. Eventually it will be adopted for Linux laptops too, even without a specific vendor focusing on it, but it will take time.