Was looking at getting a macbook air with an m1 chip in it and running Asahi Linux on it. My question is how viable is it for daily life? E.g. browsing, torrenting, uni notes ect. Would it be equivalent to a regular x86 laptop running Linux? Or would I be missing useful features?
Edit: Another question is how it holds up against newer AMD laptops, as it is 3-4 years old at this point.
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While I’m definitely on the same page as you with regards to performance, battery, and a great touchpad, I do think that given we are on Lemmy and a lot of us are what you would call “power-users”, it is worth pointing out that MacOS is terrible to navigate with the keyboard.
As a small example (amongst many others), Macbooks do not come with dedicated home, page up, page down, end keys, and I’ve been using my wife’s M2 Macbook Air for quite a while (over a year), and STILL feel as though I can’t get the same snappy behaviour I can by using a keyboard for most of my navigation.
Once again, of course if people tend to navigate the OS using the touchpad this isn’t as much of a problem, but for folks who swear by the keyboard, you do feel it.
I’m hoping that the second iteration of the snapdragon x elites will be good enough to replace the Macbooks for what I do.
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You’d be making a few concessions, specifically Microphone, and HDMI
outin: https://github.com/AsahiLinux/docs/wiki/M1-Series-Feature-SupportThat being said, those wouldn’t deter me personally, especially if I got a good deal on one.
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I would not even consider it if it was 8GB, but this one is 16GB with 512gb of storage. It is a decent deal for what it is, and I’ve been looking for a decently powerful arm machine for awhile.
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Well, when it comes to laptops these days lots of brands can practically only be serviced/repaired by bringing them back to the Apple Store/manufacturer’s repair shop. Especially when it comes to lightweight models.
I miss my old Sager/Clevo gaming laptop where I could replace practically everything, I even upgraded the gfx card.
Yeah, i am retiring my XPS 13 only due to it having 8GB of RAM. It is quite an old model with i7-8550U - the speed is still perfectly fine as my daily driver, but I filled the memory to the brim way too often.
If you decide to buy a MacBook (and from my recent experience with an M1 Pro I would advise against it) you should check in advance if all your daily software is available. Asahi itself is fairly stable and enjoyable to use, the software repo is still lacking in a lot of places though. As others have said, you’ll probably be better off financially and mentally with a decently specced used Thinkpad if Linux is your primary OS.
It’s not great. I have one, and I am able to use it, but there are some issues. Battery life is the main one. It will probably get 6 hours or so of active use, but they don’t have good idle power management, so you don’t get much more by turning it off.
Their performance isn’t bad. It wasn’t ever all that great though. It was mainly ppw that people liked, and you wouldn’t really get that benefit with asahi because of the previously mentioned power management issues. Newer AMD laptops will absolutely outperform it.
Another issue that you didn’t ask about, but I feel is worth mentioning: apple’s build quality is bad. On mine, the display flashes pink sometimes. It did this before I ever put asahi on it. There are many reports of other users with the same issue. When I fist noticed it, it only happened once a month or so. Now I notice it 5-10 times a day, and I don’t use it that much (maybe an hour or so a day).
Also, according to Louis Rossmann, there is a data line next to a power line on the motherboard that can easily be shorted out in humidity. He has pointed out many design issues, and usually they persist for quite some time before apple does anything, if they ever do.
I know I am coming across as very biased against apple, but keep in mind that I bought one. I thought that M1 was a large step forward in the quality of their products, and thought it was worth it to get one. I was wrong.
You’ll need some active cooling if you’re gonna compile some code, so aim at pro 13, same size but without throttling in heavy tasks
Dual boot install first and make sure it’s working good for your needs. Power management and mic in asahi isn’t there.
The computer will be pretty good under asahi and blow everything else out of the water under macOS.
If you don’t already know it, go ahead and learn macOS.
If you’re worried about the ssd being slow, make an install medium and flatten and reinstall macOS with after filling the ssd with bits from dev/random.
Microphone doesn’t work yet, if you’re doing lots of facebook calls, it won’t work.
Not M1 but I tried installing Mint in my touch bar 2021 MBP and zero components worked. No track pad, no keyboard, wifi, Bluetooth etc.
Apple doesn’t provide the drivers.
