- Thinkpad X13s (barely works Ubuntu/Armbian)
- Microsoft Surface Laptop (barely works Fedora)
- Macbook Air (works Arch, Fedora, Debian)
Macbook Air M1 will provide you with 3x CPU power and will have the best drivers and largest community.
If you want 0.5x M1, you’re already out of options. The closest you get is 0.33x M1 that barely works.
Second off, there is no reason to list the Thinkpad X13s as "barely works". It had better power-management and GPU drivers than Asahi on day-one. The same probably goes for the Surface Laptop, if it's also got a Snapdragon GPU.
Thirdly, according to Geekbench (and every resource I could find), the Snapdragon 8cx Gen 3 exceeds 50% of the M1's performance without a struggle:
https://browser.geekbench.com/v6/cpu/2504172
https://browser.geekbench.com/v6/cpu/2490755
Making matters worse, the Snapdragon chip only maxes out at 9w, whereas Apple's chip will happily go to 30-40w during regular use. So, not only do you get better than the .5x M1, you get it with better battery life too!
https://www.theregister.com/2023/09/08/linux_on_the_thinkpad...
The trackpad is terrible though.
The CPU can’t do virtualization. M1 can, but can’t do nested virtualization.
I dunno about surface.
Linux on M1 is not ready for day to day usage for a user who wants everything to work.
https://www.theregister.com/2023/09/08/linux_on_the_thinkpad...
As of now it barely works. The experience is arguably worse than on Mac M1. But it’s improving fast.