puff_pastry
a month ago
Asahi is awesome! But this is also proves that laptops outside the MacBook realm really need to improve so much. I wish there were a Linux machine with the hardware quality of a MacBook
dllu
a month ago
Agreed. On the computer hardware side:
* x86 chips can surpass the M series cpus in multithreaded performance, but are still lagging in singlethreaded performance and power efficiency
* Qualcomm kinda fumbled the Snapdragon X Elite launch with nonexistent Linux support and shoddy Windows stability, but here's to hoping that they "turn over a new leaf" with the X2.
Actually, some Snapdragon X Elite laptops do run Linux now, but performance is not great as there were some weird regressions and anyway newer chips have caught up [1].
On the build quality side, basically all the PCs are still lagging behind Apple, e.g. yesterday's rant post about the Framework laptop [2] touched on a lot of important points. Of course, there are the Thinkpads, which are still built decently but are quite expensive. Some of the Chinese laptops like the Honor MagicBooks could be attractive and some reddit threads confirm getting Linux working on them, but they are hard to get in the US. That said, at least many non-Apple laptops have decent trackpads and really nice screens nowadays.
[1] https://www.phoronix.com/review/snapdragon-x-elite-linux-eoy...
999900000999
a month ago
I have no faith in Qualcomm to even make me basic gestures towards the Linux community.
All I want is an easy way to install Linux on one of the numerous Snapdragon laptops. I think the Snapdragon Thinkpad might work, but none of the other really do.
A 400$ Arm laptop with good Linux support would be great, but it's never ever going to happen.
cromka
a month ago
Facts are Linux support has heavily accelerated from both Qualcomm and Linaro on their behalf. Anyone who watches Linux ARM mailing lists can attest that.
Things have definitely changed, a lot.
dman
a month ago
Hardware has already been out for a year. Outside a custom spin by the ubuntu folks, even last years notebooks arent well supported out of the box on linux. I have a Yoga Slim 7x and I tried the Ubuntu spin out at some point - it required me to first extract the firmware from the Windows partition because Qualcomm had not upstreamed it into linux-firmware. Hard to take Qualcomm seriously when the situation is like this.
cromka
a month ago
Qualcomm _does_ upstream all their firmware, but vendors usually require a firmware binary to be signed with their keys, which are burned into the SoC. As a result you cannot use Qualcomm's vanilla firmware and need to extract the original firmware as provided by the vendor, otherwise it won't load. This is an actual security feature, believe it or not. Besides, chances are it wasn't even Qualcomm's firmware, but rather Cirrus for sound or display firmware, etc.
I get the hate on Qualcomm, but you're really one LLM question away from understanding why they do this. I should know, I was also getting frustrated before I read up on this.
dman
a month ago
I get where youre coming from but I think the job of a company pushing a platform is to make it "boring". ie it should work out of the box on debian/fedora/arch/ubuntu. The platform vendor (Qualcomm) is the only one with enough sway to push the different laptop manufacturers do the right thing. This is the reason why both Intel / Windows push compliance suites which have a long list of requirmements before anyone can put the Windows / Intel logo on their device. If Qualcomm is going to let Acer / Lenovo decide if things work out of the box on linux then its never going to happen.
999900000999
a month ago
Fantastic.
Can you please let me know if there is an ISO to get any mainstream Linux distro working on this Snapdragon laptop ?
ASUS - Vivobook 14 14" FHD+ Laptop - Copilot+ PC - Snapdragon X
It's on sale for $350 at Best buy and if I can get Linux working on it it would definitely be an awesome gift for myself.
Even if there's some progress being made, it's still nearly impossible to install a typical Linux distro on one of these. I've been watching this space since the snapdragon laptops were announced. Tuxedo giving up and canceling their Snapdragon Linux laptop doesn't instill much confidence
cromka
a month ago
There's an Ubuntu release specifically targeting new Qualcomm Elite based laptops: https://discourse.ubuntu.com/t/ubuntu-concept-snapdragon-x-e...
This includes Vivobook S15, not sure about the 14.
999900000999
a month ago
That covers the Elite, not the cheaper Snapdragon X laptops such as the ASUS Vivobook 14 (X1407QA).
I've followed that thread for almost a year. It's a maze of hardware issues and poor compatibility.
From your other response.
>but vendors usually require a firmware binary to be signed with their keys, which are burned into the SoC. As a result you cannot use Qualcomm's vanilla firmware and need to extract the original firmware as provided by the vendor, otherwise it won't load.
This makes the install process impossible without an existing Windows install. It's easier to say it doesn't work and move on.
It's going to be significantly easier to buy run Linux in an X86 laptop.
Not to mention no out of the box Linux Snapdragon Elite laptop exists. It's a shame because it would probably be an amazing product.
renewiltord
a month ago
This sounds a lot like how AMD’s approach had changed on Linux and still everyone I know who wants to use their GPU fully used Nvidia. For a decade or more I’ve heard how AMD has turned over a new leaf and their drivers are so much better. Even geohot was going to undercut nvidia by just selling tinygrad boxes on AMD.
Then it turned out this was the usual. Nothing had changed. It was just that people online have this desire to express that “the underdog” is actually better. Not clear why because it’s never true.
AMD is still hot garbage on Linux. Geohot primarily sells “green boxes”. And the MI300x didn’t replace H100s en masse.
avhception
a month ago
Maybe it's just that you're mostly viewing this through the LLM lens?
I remember having to fight with fglrx, AMDs proprietary Linux driver, for hours on end. Just to get hardware-acceleration for my desktop going! That driver was so unbearable I bought Nvidia just because I wanted their proprietary driver. Cut the fiddling time from many hours to maybe 1 or 2!
Nowadays, I run AMD because their open-source amdgpu driver means I just plonk the card into the system, and that's it. I've had to fiddle with the driver exactly zero times. The last time I used Nvidia is the distant past for me. So - for me, their drivers are indeed "so much better". But my usecase is sysadmin work and occasional gaming through Steam / Proton. I ran LMStudio through ROCm, too, a few times. Worked fine, but I guess that's very much not representative for whatever people do with MI300 / H100.
nottorp
a month ago
> and occasional gaming through Steam / Proton
And how does that work on AMD? I know the Steam Deck is AMD but Valve could have tweaked the driver or proton for that particular GPU.
GCUMstlyHarmls
a month ago
I play lots of games on a AMD GPU (RX 7600) for about a year and I can't remember a game that had graphical issues (eg driver bugs).
Probably something hasn't run at some point but I can't remember what, more likely to be a Proton "issue". Your main problem will be some configuration of anti-cheat for some games.
My experience has been basically fantastic and no stress. Just check that games aren't installing some Linux build which are inevitably extremely out of date and probably wont run. Ex: human fall flat (very old, wont run), deus ex mankind divided (can't recall why but I elected to install the proton version, I think performance was poor or mouse control was funky).
I guess I don't play super-new games so YMMV there. Quick stuff I can recall, NMS, Dark Souls 1&2&3, Sekiro, Deep Rock Galactic, Halo MCC, Snow runner & Expeditions, Eurotruck, RDR1 (afaik 2 runs fine, just not got it yet), hard space ship breaker, vrising, Tombraider remaster (the first one and the new one), pacific drive, factorio, blue prince, ball x pit, dishonored uhhh - basically any kind of "small game" you could think of: exapunks, balatro, slay the spire, gwent rougemage, whatever. I know there were a bunch more I have forgotten that I played this year.
I actually can't think of a game that didn't work... Oh this is on Arch Linux, I imagine Debian etc would have issues with older Mesa, etc.
avhception
a month ago
Works very well for me! YMMV maybe depending on the titles you play, but that would probably be more of a Proton issue than an AMD issue, I'd guess. I'm not a huge gamer, so take my experience with a grain of salt. But I've racked up almost 300 hours of Witcher3 with the HQ patch on a 4k TV display using my self-compiled Gentoo kernel, and it worked totally fine. A few other games, too. So there's that!
renewiltord
a month ago
Don’t know what LLM lens is. I had an ATI card. Miserable. Fglrx awful. I’ve tried various AMDs over the last 15 years. All total garbage compared to nvidia. Throughout this period was consistently informed of new OSS drivers blah blah. Linus says “fuck nvidia”. AMD still rubbish.
Finally, now I have 6x4090 on one machine. Just works. 1x5090 on other. Just works. And everyone I know prefers N to A. Drivers proprietary. Result great. GPU responds well.
avhception
a month ago
Well, I don't know why it didn't work out for you. But my AMD experience has improved fundamentally since the fglrx days, to the point where I prefer AMD over Nvidia. You said you don't know why people say that AMD has improved so much, but it definitely rings true for me.
I said "LLM lens" because you were talking about hardware typically used for number crunching, not graphics displays, like the MI300. So I was suggesting that the difference between what you hear online about the driver and your own experience might result from people like me mostly talking about the 2d / 3d acceleration side of things while the experience for ROCm and stuff is probably another story altogether.
renewiltord
a month ago
I see. I see. I got tripped up by 'LLM' since I got the GPUs for diffusion models. Anyway, the whole thing sounds like the old days when I had Ubuntu Dapper Drake running flawlessly on my laptop and everyone was telling me Linux wasn't ready: it's an artifact of the hardware and some people have great support and others don't. Glad you do.
walterbell
a month ago
Google has previously delivered good Linux support on Arm Chromebooks and is expected to launch unified Android+ChromeOS on Qualcomm X2 Arm devices in 2026.
ekianjo
a month ago
Isn't Google moving to Fuchsia?
cromka
a month ago
I don't think these are mutually exclusive, they're just unifying ChromeOS and Android for now.
walterbell
a month ago
On bare metal or pKVM?
birdboat00
a month ago
Fuchsia is dead sadly
Grazester
a month ago
It's very alive. It's being used for Google Nest hub devices. Through for HN that might as well it being dead, it seems.
gessha
a month ago
“Rumors of my death are greatly exaggerated”
Google folks pop up here and there and say it’s actively worked on. Unless you have more recent information, I believe the project is still alive.
ekianjo
a month ago
I thought it was the opposite and that it would replace Linux for Google products
robin_reala
a month ago
Citation needed? I don’t disbelieve you but I haven’t seen anything concrete.
valianteffort
a month ago
I bought a refurb gen 4 thinkpad on amazon for like $350 and it arrived almost brand new.
Installed arch, setup some commands to underclock the processor on login and easily boost it when I'm compiling.
Battery life is great but I'm not running a GUI either. Good machine for when I want to avoid distractions and just code.
blks
a month ago
My personal beef with Thinkpads is the screen. Most of the thinkpads I’ve encountered in my life (usually pretty expensive corporate ones) had shitty FHD screens. I got too spoiled by retina screens, and I can’t comfortably use anything with lower DPI.
baobun
a month ago
FWIW if you buy new from Lenovo, getting a more high-res display has been an option for years.
I'm on the other side where I've been buying Thinkpads partly because of the display. Thinkpads have for a long time been one of the few laptop options on the market where you could get a decent matte non-glare display. I value that, battery life and performance above moar pixels. Sure I want just one step above FHD so I can remote 1080p VMs and view vids in less than fullscreen at native resolution but 4K on a 14" is absolute overkill.
I think most legit motivations for wanting very high-res screens (e.g. photo and video editing, publishing, graphics design) also come with wanting or needing better quality and colors etc too, which makes very-highly-scaled mid-range monitors a pretty niche market.
> I got too spoiled by retina screens, and I can’t comfortably use anything with lower DPI.
Did you make a serious effort while having an extended break from retina screens? I'd think you would get used to it pretty quickly if you allow yourself to readjust. Many people do multi-DPI setups without issues - a 720p and a 4k side-by-side for example. It just takes acclimatizing.
skydhash
a month ago
I have a 14” FHD panel (158 dpi) on an old (7 year) laptop and there’s more issues with low resolution icons and paddings than with font rendering. I wouldn’t mind more, but it’s not blurry.
cromka
a month ago
I just learned on Reddit the other day that people replace those screens with third party panels, bought from AliExpress for peanuts. They use panelook.com to find a compatible one.
ekianjo
a month ago
If you buy a X1 from Lenovo the screen is definitely going to be better. if not, you can simply change the screen from most of the other models.
dllu
a month ago
Old Thinkpads are great! I used to have a Lenovo Thinkpad X1 Carbon Gen 6 with Intel Core i7 8640U, 16 GB of RAM, and 1 TB SSD. I installed Arch Linux on it with Sway.
baobun
a month ago
> x86 chips can surpass the M series cpus in multithreaded performance, but are still lagging in singlethreaded performance
Nodding along with the rest but isn't this backwards? Are M series actually outperforming an Intel i9 P-core or Ryzen 9X in raw single-threaded performance?
Telaneo
a month ago
Not in raw performance, no, but they're only beat out by i9s and the like, which are very power hungry. If you care even a little bit about performance per watt, the M series are far superior.
Have a look at Geekbench's results.[1] Ignore the top ones, since they're invalid and almost certainly cheated (click to check). The iPads and such lower down are all legit, but the same goes for some of the i9s inbetween.
And honestly, the fact that you have to go up to power hungry desktop processors to even find something to compete with the chip that goes in an (admittedly high-end) iPad, is somewhat embarrassing on its face, and not for Apple.
dllu
a month ago
Yes, the M4 is still outperforming the desktop 9950X in single-threaded performance on several benchmarks like Geekbench and Cinebench 2024 [1]. Compared to the 9955HX, which is the same physical chip as the 9950X but lower clocked for mobile, the difference is slightly larger. But the 16 core 9950X is obviously much better than the base M4 (and even the 16 core M4 Max, which has only 12 P cores and 4 E cores) at multithreaded applications.
However, the M2 in the blog post is from 2022 and isn't quite as blazingly fast in single thread performance.
[1] https://nanoreview.net/en/cpu-compare/apple-m4-8-cores-vs-am...
nottorp
a month ago
Does an i9 P-core or Ryzen 9X run on 3.9 W while posting on HN?
baobun
a month ago
That's irrelevant to that claim being true or not. The fact that M series win in power efficiency is already addressed.
ksec
a month ago
The closest laptop to MacBook quality is surprisingly the Microsoft Surface Laptop.
As to x86, Zen 6 will be AMD's first major architecture rework since Apple demonstrated what is possible with wide decode. ( Well more accurately it should be since the world take notice because it happened long before M1 ). It still likely wont be close to M5 or even M4 with Single Threaded Performance / Watt, but hopefully it will be close.
andrekandre
a month ago
> Actually, some Snapdragon X Elite laptops do run Linux now, but performance is not great as there were some weird regressions and anyway newer chips have caught up [1].
geokon
a month ago
Honor strangely enough doesnt make any efforts to really support Linux
The machine quality is pretty damn good, but Huawei machines are still better. Apple level of quality. And Huawei releases their machines with Linux preinstalled
The company to watch is Wiko. Its their French spin off to sidestep their chip ban. They might put out some very nice laptops, but a bit tbd
erremerre
a month ago
Dealing with Honor support is a pain. They don't understand absolutely anything and is impossible to get them out of their script if you have a problem.
I have a Honor 200 pro, and the software is buggy and constantly replaces user configurations with their defaults every 3 or 4 days.
I would avoid anything Honor in the future at any cost.
andrepd
a month ago
> On the build quality side, basically all the PCs are still lagging behind Apple,
This is an oft-repeated meme, but not really true. Thinkpads, high-end lightweight gaming laptops like the Asus G14... There are many x86 laptops with excellent build quality.
heavyset_go
a month ago
Check out Ubuntu Certified hardware[1].
I've moved completely to EliteBooks and am very happy with my decision. The build quality is superb, they're upgradeable, everything is replaceable and there's an excellent market and after market for parts, and HP has codepaths in their firmware for Linux support, meaning even Modern Standby works well.
Price points for refurb and used hardware are great, too.
Quothling
a month ago
The key qualities of something like a macbook air are:
It has no fans.
It's temperature never changes unless you really push it. I've never used any other laptop where I could feel at least some warmth when it was turned on.
My m1 air still has enough battery to run for a full day of usage, here several years after I bought it. Basically never loses power while the lid is closed either, but that is less of an issue.
bigyabai
a month ago
> unless you really push it
This is indeed a problem. My Macbook Pro (with active cooling!) would commonly come within 5c of junction temp when compiling, mdworker_shared was running, or Docker was working.
It was an issue with the Intel Macs too, just much more readily apparent since they throttled faster. I wish Apple backed down from this hill, for the sake of my damned gonads.
Quothling
a month ago
My m1 air with 8gb of ram has been doing docker and all my golang, C/Zig and Python work without issues so far. If I were to sell it, I'd probably grade the keyboard and mousepad (the clicking) 5/10 now. Not sure if it's because I've been a little rough with it (I have small children who sometimes kick the keyboard etc) or if the quality is lower than it was back when I had my 201(5 or 6) macbook pro which was frankly in a condition as good as new when I switched to this one.
It throttes and stuff, but it still outperforms the t14 i7 with 32gb ram I've got from my company. Granted, that one has a lot of enterprice stuff running, but still...
I do hope someone will make a pc that is as close to an air as possible though. I like Apple, but I'm not a fan of being bound to an US tech company these days. I'm not important enough to be targeted personally, but what if the US government decides to ban all Danes from US tech in the war for Greenland? Or the more likely scenario, what if Apple decides to go full Microsoft with AI and what not?
jama211
a month ago
But they’re heavier, slower, have more impactful active cooling, have much worse battery life (mostly due to the processor), and have some lower quality user interface components. Don’t get me wrong they’re decent hardware! It’s just the macbook air benchmark is very high.
virtualwhys
a month ago
Looking at a Thinkpad 16" P1 Gen 8 with 2X 1TB SSD, 64GB RAM, QHD+ screen, centered keyboard like MBP (i.e. no numpad), integrated Intel GPU, lightweight (4 lbs) for a little under $2.5K USD.
Closest I've found to an MBP 16" replacement.
Have been running Dell Precision laptops for many years on Linux, not sure about Lenovo build quality and battery life, but hoping it will be decent enough.
Would run Asahi if it supported M4 but looks it's a long ways away...
kristianpaul
a month ago
How is battery life? I still use MacBooks only because of that
manaskarekar
a month ago
Does lid close to sleep and open to wake work as expected?
vbezhenar
a month ago
I'm using T14s Gen 4 Intel and sleep works for me. I'm using it in clamshell mode connected to external display 99% of the time, so I don't really use sleep all the time, but the few times I tested it, it worked. Actually every hardware peripheral, including fingerprint sensor, worked out of the box. I was pleasantly surprised by that kind of support.
colordrops
a month ago
I've got a relatively new p16s with a hybrid Nvidia/Intel GPU, and a p14s gen 5 with an AMD GPU, and I was able to get both of them to suspend by closing the lid. Not sure if the issue you speak of is unique to the P1 or not, but all my ThinkPads have been decent with Linux.
manaskarekar
a month ago
Thanks.
I’ve had issues with T14s for a couple of gens where the machine wakes up during the closed lid and runs the battery down. I’ve tried the usual troubleshooting.
This has been a non issue on Dell machines for almost 20 years.
colordrops
a month ago
Oh some kernel params and other settings can help with that. These are mine, and it's been working great:
Kernel params
## Seems to be needed for suspend to S0 (s2idle) without hanging (only needed on p16s)
acpi_osi="Windows 2022"
# Prevent spurious wakeups from a firmware bug where the EC or SMU generates spurious "heartbeat" interrupts during sleep
acpi.ec_no_wakeup=1
# Prevents dock from waking up laptop right after suspend
usbcore.autosuspend=-1
# Disable Thunderbolt PCIe root port wakeup (RP09)
echo disabled > /sys/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:1d.0/power/wakeup || true
# Disable USB XHCI controller wakeup
echo disabled > /sys/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:14.0/power/wakeup || true
# Disable ACPI wakeup for XHCI and RP09 (toggle if enabled)
grep -q "XHCI.*enabled" /proc/acpi/wakeup && echo XHCI > /proc/acpi/wakeup || true
grep -q "RP09.*enabled" /proc/acpi/wakeup && echo RP09 > /proc/acpi/wakeup || truecromka
a month ago
That's possibly because they had S3 disabled and used 'modern standby': https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/design/de...
Grazester
a month ago
Somewhat related yet not. I had a Dell laptop near kill itself waking up while in my backpack and near melting itself. I think I blame Windows update for this though. This resulted in the laptop not being able to power on most of the times after that.
shmerl
a month ago
Never used MacBooks, but Lenovo Thinkpad laptops with Linux are really good in my experience. Get anything recent with AMD.
cromka
a month ago
The best recent experience is arguably with current Intel chips, actually, because of the battery usage that can reach 20 hours, easily matching Macbooks: https://www.notebookcheck.net/Intel-empire-strikes-back-with...
Performance is still very high so if they don't need the current top tier AMD horsepower, Intel is the way to go. It's also quieter, cooler and doesn't throttle. Not to mention the ability to use SRIOV GPU for running Windows software in a VM.
Also, Lenovo tends to limit HiDPI displays to Intel CPUs, for some ekhm unknown reason.
shmerl
a month ago
With current situation in Intel (lot's of Linux developers leaving), I'd stick to AMD anyway.
cromka
a month ago
That's fair, actually. Didn't consider that.
cromka
a month ago
... but then again:
https://www.phoronix.com/news/Intel-Panther-Lake-NPU-Firmwar...
shmerl
a month ago
They aren't completely backing out, but I suspect their support levels will get worse.
farmin
a month ago
I am giving my MacBook Air M2 15” to my wife and bought a Lenovo E16 with 120hz screen to run Kubuntu last night. She needed a new laptop and I am had enough of macOS and just need some stuff to work that will be easier on an intel and Linux. Also I do bookwork online so bigger screen and dedicated numpad will be nice. It reviews well and seems like good value for money with current holiday sales but I don’t expect the same hardware quality or portability just a little more freedom. I hope I’m not too disappointed. https://www.notebookcheck.net/Lenovo-ThinkPad-E16-G3-Review-...
heavyset_go
a month ago
If you're running desktop Linux, you will have a better experience with a rolling release than being stuck with whatever state the software that was frozen in Debian/Ubuntu is in, especially when it comes to multimedia, graphics, screen sharing, etc.
Modern desktop Linux relies on software that's being fixed and improving at a high velocity, and ironically, can be more stable than relying on a distro's fixed release cycles.
KDE Plasma, Wayland support, Pipewire, etc all have had recent fixes and improvements that you will not get to enjoy for another X months/years until Canonical pulls in those changes and freezes them for release.
Similarly, newer kernels are a must when using relatively recent hardware. Fixes and support for new hardware lands in new kernels, LTS releases might not have the best support for your newer hardware.
akdev1l
a month ago
> can be more stable than relying on a distro's fixed release cycles
Stability for a distro means “doesn’t change” not “doesn’t crash”.
Debian/ubuntu are stable because they freeze versions so you can even create scripts to work around bugs and stuff and be sure that it will keep working throughout that entire release.
Arch Linux is not stable because you get updates every day or whatever. Maybe you had some script or patch to work around a bug and tomorrow it won’t work anymore.
This does not say _anything_ about crashing or bugs, except that if you find a bug/crash on a stable system then it is likely you can rely on this behaviour.
raffraffraff
a month ago
Agree. If you use a rolling release you definitely need a strategy for stability. I turn off automatic updates and schedule planned full updates that I can easily roll back from. I've had two breakages over the years that required snapper rollback. (Rolling back from a major distro upgrade isn't that easy)
It's a tradeoff that I'm happy with. I get to have a very up to date system.
cromka
a month ago
> you will have a better experience with a rolling release than being stuck with whatever state the software that was frozen in Debian/Ubuntu is in
That's a wild statement!
farmin
a month ago
That’s interesting comment. I didn’t think about that. I’ve only ever used Ubuntu flavours so I’ll search through what the popular rolling releases are out of interest.
kcb
a month ago
I just upgrade Ubuntu every 6 months. To me that's a pretty good compromise between up to date packages and stability.
kombine
a month ago
I would recommend Fedora KDE Edition over Kubuntu, but I guess it's a personal choice.
farmin
a month ago
I’ve only ever used Ubuntu flavours but maybe I should give it a try. Thanks
bluecalm
a month ago
Fedora also has ThinkPad compability program and a nice way to install/update Lenovo drivers.
The problem with Ubuntu, as other mentioned, is that you get ancient version of some packages. Fedora is nicely up to date.
wobfan
a month ago
Is this actually such a big point? I feel like (subjectively) on Ubuntu everything gets updated just as fast, and even if not, there's a new full release every 6 months. Or is this actually rather slow in comparison to Feroda?
I've also only used Debian based stuff my whole life and even moving from apt to dnf or whatever it was causes too much friction for me haha, though it's not that bad obviously, if I really would see the positives.
bluecalm
a month ago
I guess it depends. I find it annoying when I read about some feature and then it turns out the package is several versions behind the newest one and I can't try it without jumping hoops to install it from some alternative source. That happened with GCC and ImageMagick to me on Ubuntu and I swiftly uninstalled it :)
650REDHAIR
a month ago
I outfitted our 10 person team with the E16 g2 and it’s been great.
Two minor issues- it’s HEAVY compared to T models.
Because of the weight try not to walk around with the lid up and holding it from one of front corners. I’ve noticed one of them is kind of warped from walking around the office holding it that way.
farmin
a month ago
That’s great news thanks. I got the gen 3 so maybe some improvements. Weight is ok as I really just move it around the house. I buy used Panasonics for the workshop.
Are you running windows?
lostlogin
a month ago
> I’ve noticed one of them is kind of warped from walking around the office holding it that way.
That’s not at all reassuring.
RamRodification
a month ago
Kubuntu is nice. Not sure why it's not more popular. Or maybe it's just a quieter user base?
arcade79
a month ago
Been a kubuntu user since .. 2006? 2007? Don't remember when kubuntu became a thing, but as soon as I tried Ubuntu, I went kubuntu. I believe it was 5.10 or 6.04 or something. :-)
Am growing tired of Ubuntu though. Just not sure where I should turn. I want a .deb based system. Ubuntu is pushing snaps too heavily for my liking.
import
a month ago
So, Debian? No snaps and that’s my main motivation
esseph
a month ago
I was a very long time debian user who got burned by Ubuntu and derivatives far too many times personally and professional. I moved to Fedora a few years back and it was a great decision. No regrets.
MrDrMcCoy
a month ago
Just use Debian and switch it to Testing. Works amazingly well and you'll always have relatively current and generally stable software.
fylo
a month ago
I liked Ubuntu and variants back when it first came out and I was newer to Linux but it didn't take long for me to realise there always seemed to be a better option for me as a daily driver. To me its like an new Linux user OS where a lot of stuff is chosen for you to use basically as is. Even the name Kubuntu where the K is for KDE but on other distros you would just choose your DE when you install.
farmin
a month ago
I agree. It feels like combination of peak windows UI with the ease of Ubuntu baked in. Then the little mobile app they have that gives you shared clipboard with iOS is cool.
speed_spread
a month ago
Also consider Kinoite, the immutable Fedora KDE (like Silverblue). Very effective and robust.
kwanbix
a month ago
If I was you I will have gone for the T or X series
downrightmike
a month ago
We almost had really nice arm laptops, but they got super greedy about it having AI and no one wanted them.
bigyabai
a month ago
ARM is a capricious licensor. It's hardly surprising.
TacticalCoder
a month ago
> I wish there were a Linux machine with the hardware quality of a MacBook
It really depends what you mean by "quality". To me first and foremost quality I look for in a laptop is for it to not break. As I'm a heavy desktop user, my laptop is typically with me on the couch or on vacation. Enter my MacBook Air M1: after 13 months, and sadly no extended warranty, the screen broke for no reason overnight. I literally closed it before going to bed and when I opened the lid the next day: screen broken. Some refer to that phenomenon as the "bendgate".
And every time I see a Mac laptop I can't help but think "slick and good looking but brittle". There's a feeling of brittleness with Mac laptops that you don't have with, say, a Thinkpad.
My absolute best laptop is a MIL-SPEC (I know, I know, there are many different types of military specs) LG Gram. Lighter than a MacBook too. And every single time I demo it to people I take the screen, I bent it left and right. This thing is rock solid.
I happen to have this laptop (not my vid) and look at 34 seconds in the vid:
The guy literally throws my laptop (well, the same) down concrete stairs and the thing still just works fine.
The friend who sold it to me (I bought it used) one day stepped on it when he woke up. No problemo.
To me that is quality: something you can buy used and that is rock solid.
Where are the vids of someone throwing a MacBook Air down the stairs and the thing keeps working?
I'm trading a retina display any day for a display that doesn't break when it accidentally falls on the ground.
Now I love the look and the incredible speed of the MacBook Air laptops (I still have my M1 but has its screen broke, I turned it into a desktop) but I really wish they were not desk queens: we've got desktops for that.
I don't want a laptop that require exceptional care and mad packaging skills when putting it inside a backpack (and which then requires the backpack to be manipulated with extreme care).
So: bring me the raw power and why not the nice look of a MacBook Air, but make it sturdy (really the most important for me) and have it support Linux. That I'd buy.
ricardobeat
a month ago
Notice how much the screen wobbles after opening the laptop, around the one minute mark. That does not happen even with the cheapest Macbook Air, that’s the kind of design quality people refer to.
As for light and sturdy, the Netbook era had it all. A shame the world moved on from that.
lloeki
a month ago
Counter anecdata.
My wife is the bane of electronic devices.
Phones simply won't survive a week without an industrial case. Screen projectors last as short as a single day.
The only computers that survived her JerryRigEverything levels of abuse are MacBooks+ who routinely fall off tables, stairs, or simply hands.
One even fell off open 90 degrees and rotationally fell right on the far edge at what would be the maximum torque position; there was massive deformation of the lid aluminum but the lid was still flat, the glass had no cracks, and the whole thing perfectly functional.
(note: these are the older designs from the first unibody to the last Intel laptop, not the newer Mx ones)
+ Well, except one, which had an entire pint toppled towards and sloshed right upon the screen which had the liquid slide straight into the exhaust vents. There was an audible poof as the screen went black)
lostlogin
a month ago
> Where are the vids of someone throwing a MacBook Air down the stairs and the thing keeps working?
For some anecdata, I have:
Stood on mine Poured water on it. Been hit by a car while cycling and fallen on it. Dropped it.
It’s fine. Has a few scratches and a small dent. The predecessor is a 2013 Air which has had a hard life. It’s going great.
A colleague put a piece of a4 paper between keyboard and screen then closed it, squeezed it and cracked the screen. Don’t do that.
zdragnar
a month ago
I've owned two LG gram laptops. Neither were milspec, but both were really nice. Sure, the screen quality isn't going to win any awards, nor will the speakers, but the light weight, fantastic battery life and snappy performance always get a recommendation from me.
backscratches
a month ago
Starlabs are good quality Linux laptops, designed in house. Love my starbook
mgaunard
a month ago
I never understood why people claim the Macbook is so good.
Bad keyboard, bad aluminium body, soldered ram...
Is it just the Apple Silicon that somehow makes it worth it? It's ARM, most software is still written and optimized for x86.
alluro2
a month ago
I adore my Linux setup and have switched back to it after using M1 Pro for 3 years.
But through all the Dells, Thinkpads and Asus laptops I've had (~10), none were remotely close to a full package that MBP M1 Pro was.
- Performance - outstanding
- Fan noise - non-existent 99% of the time, cannot compare to any other laptop I had
- Battery - not as amazing as people claim for my usage, but still at least 30% better
- Screen, touchpad, speakers, chassis - all highest tier; some PC laptops do screen (Asus OLED), keyboard and chassis (Thinkpad) better, but nothing groundbreaking...
It's the only laptop I've ever had that gave me a feeling that there is nothing that could come my way, and I wouldn't be able to do on it, without any drama whatsoever.
It's just too bad that I can't run multiple external displays on Asahi...
(For posterity, currently using Asus Zenbook S16, Ryzen HX370, 32GB RAM, OLED screen, was $1700 - looks and feels amazing, screen is great, performance is solid - but I'm driving it hard, so fan noise is constant, battery lasts shorter, and it's just a bit more "drama" than with MBP)
akdev1l
a month ago
iirc M1 just cannot do multiple displays at all :-(
A modern M4 should tho
doublextremevil
a month ago
Excellent power efficiency in apple silicon - good battery life and good performance at the same time. The aluminum body is also very rigid and premium feeling, unlike so many creaky bendy pc laptops. Good screen, good speakers.
sagarm
a month ago
Aluminum and magnesium non-Apple laptops are just as stiff. There's just a wider spectrum of options, including $200 plastic ARM Chromebooks available.
ricardobeat
a month ago
Do you have any examples? The top-of-the-line Surface laptops are still comparatively flimsy, same for Samsung and Vaio. What’s better?
palata
a month ago
> Is it just the Apple Silicon that somehow makes it worth it? It's ARM, most software is still written and optimized for x86.
I am very much a Linux person. But the battery life with macOS on the Apple Silicon is absolutely insane.
Greed
a month ago
Yes, this is the true dividing factor for me. The battery life of the new ARM laptops is an astounding upgrade from any device I have ever used.
I've been a reluctant MacBook user for 15 years now thanks to it being the de-facto hardware of tech, but for the first time ever since adopting first the M1 Pro and then an M2 Pro I find myself thinking: I could not possibly justify buying literally any other laptop so long as this standard exists.
Being able to run serious developer workflows silently (full kubernetes clusters, compilers, VSCode, multitudes of corpo office suite products etc), for multiple days at a time on a single charge is baffling. And if I leave it closed for a week at 80% battery, not only does that percentage remain nearly the same when resumed-- it wakes instantly! No hibernation wake time shenanigans. The only class of device which even comes close to being comparable are high end e-ink readers, and an e-ink reader STILL loses on wake time by comparison.
I'm at the point now where I'm desperately in need of an upgrade for my 8 year old personal laptop, but I'm holding off indefinitely until I discover something with a similar level of battery performance that can run Linux. As I understand it, the firmware that supports that insane battery life and specifically the suspend functionality that allows it to draw nearly zero power when closed isn't supported by any Linux distro or I would have already purchased another MacBook for personal use.
ActorNightly
a month ago
>But the battery life with macOS on the Apple Silicon is absolutely insane.
Run a lightweight DE like i3wm with any modern thinkpad and you will get similar usable battery life of around 6-8 hours.
Generally though, battery life isn't an issue anymore considering fast charging is everywhere.
palata
a month ago
I am running Sway on a Gentoo on a 4 years old X1 carbon.
> you will get similar usable battery life of around 6-8 hours
My macbook M3 gives me way more than 6-8 hours, it's simply insane. It literallly lasts for multiple days.
> Generally though, battery life isn't an issue anymore considering fast charging is everywhere.
Not an issue indeed, I got used to always charging my X1 carbon. But then I got an M3 for work, and... well it feels like I don't have to charge it ever :-).
As I said: very much a Linux person, but the M3 battery life is absolutely insane.
brokencode
a month ago
I’ve never heard someone describe the aluminum body as bad.. what do you not like about it?
The number one benefit is the Apple Silicon processors, which are incredibly efficient.
Then it’s the trackpad, keyboard and overall build quality for me. Windows laptops often just feel cheap by comparison.
Or they’ll have perplexing design problems, like whatever is going on with Dell laptops these days with the capacitive function row and borderless trackpad.
Philpax
a month ago
The keyboard and body are not bad at all - rather, they're best in class, and so is the rest of the hardware. It is a premium hardware experience, and has been since Jony Ive left, which is what makes the software so disappointing.
rsync
a month ago
"... bad aluminium body ..."
Would you elaborate ?
I believe there are a few all-metal laptops competing in the marketplace but was unaware they were actually better than the apple laptops ... what all aluminum laptops are better and how are they better ?
bigyabai
a month ago
I know multiple people with Macbook contact phobia from the static charge the chassis builds up.
swiftcoder
a month ago
This is trivially solvable by using the 3-prong plug on the power adapter, btw. That grounds the laptop properly, no more charge build-up.
(unfortunately in the EU they only provide the 3-prong plug in the long-tail variant, which is kind of a bummer)
mgaunard
a month ago
why would you want a laptop being made of metal?
it's a stylistic choice, not a logical one.
kstenerud
a month ago
Because the body is the heat sink, so it has no fan.
That alone is already very compelling for me (no noise, no fan to wear out). Then on top of that it has:
* Amazing battery life
* Great performance
* The best trackpad in the world
* Bright, crisp screen
The only downsides are the lack of upgradability and the annoying OS, but at least it's UNIX.
mgaunard
a month ago
I just turn off trackpads, I'm not interested in that kind of input device, and any space dedicated to one is wasted to me. I use nibs exclusively (which essentially restricts me to Thinkpads).
My arms rest on the body, the last thing I want is for it to be a material that leeches heat out of my body or that is likely to react with my hands' sweat and oils.
anjel
a month ago
> and the annoying OS
"...It's just a flesh wound..."
iknowstuff
a month ago
It feels great and it's recyclable.
browningstreet
a month ago
Strawman. Because Apple designed it well. Metal’s not an issue. My legacy 2013 MacBook Air still looks and feels and opens like new.
I was looking at Thinkpad Auras today. There are unaligned jutting design edges all over the thing. From a design perspective, I’ll take the smooth oblong squashed egg.
Every PC laptop I’ve touched feels terrible to hold and carry. And they run Windows, and Linux only okay. Apple MacBooks are a long mile better than everything else and so I don’t care about upgraded memory — buy enough ram at purchase time and you don’t have to think about it again.
Memory upgrades aren’t priced super well, granted, but I could never buy HP Dell Lenovo ever again. They’re terrible. I’ve had all of them. Ironically the best device I’ve had from the other side was a Surface Laptop. But I don’t do Microsoft anymore. And I don’t want to carry squeaky squishy bendy plastic.
Most of all, I’m never getting on a customer support call with the outsourced vendors that do the support for those companies ever ever ever again. I’ll take a visit to an Apple store every day of the week.
esseph
a month ago
I've had 4 Lenovos and out of the Asus, Dell, HP, Panasonic, and Sony laptops I've had, they always seem to have excellent Linux support.
browningstreet
a month ago
My team is going through a lot of pain right now with new Lenovo Aura laptops. But I haven’t had a chance to Linux-ify them.
esseph
a month ago
T series or x13 in particular.
Not sure about anything else, have ONLY used those.
trueno
a month ago
Feel like these critiques are 10 years old.
zapzupnz
a month ago
I'd understand this about the 2016 MacBooks with the butterfly switch keyboards. I don't understand this in 2025.
inatreecrown2
a month ago
the screen is very good, the trackpad is very good, the screen does not wobble or bend - it is sturdy. and it is quiet!
ralphc
a month ago
Rarely mentioned is the audio, the Mac's bass and overall sound is much better than any other laptop its size.
lostlogin
a month ago
Right now I’m sitting in front of a hotel tv with speakers that are so crap that we are putting the sound through the MacBook to improve things.
Telaneo
a month ago
If the Macbook has a bad keyboard (ignoring the Butterfly switches, which aren't on any of the M series machines, which are the ones people actually recommend and praise), then the vast majority of Windows machine have truly atrocious keyboards. I prefer the keyboard on my 2012 Macbook to the newer ones, but it's still better than the Windows machines I can test in local stores.
I prefer the aluminium to the plastic found on most Windows machines. The Framework is made from some aluminium alloy from what I know, and I see that as a good thing.
The soldered RAM sucks, but it's a trade-off I'm willing to make for a touchpad that actually works, a pretty good screen, and battery life that doesn't suck.
spankibalt
a month ago
> "I never understood why people claim the Macbook is so good."
Apple's good enough for the average consumer, just like a 16-bit home computer back in the day. Everyone who looks for something bespoke/specialized (e. g. certified dual- or multi-OS support, ECC-RAM, right-to-repair, top-class flicker-free displays, size, etc.) looks elsewhere, of course.
IOT_Apprentice
a month ago
It sounds like you have not tried a M series laptop in the last 3 years. Shrug.
zapzupnz
a month ago
Last 5.
