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Comment by prmoustache | Hacker News Reader

As a linux user why would you buy hardware from a company that do not provide any modicum of support for it?

Because the hardware is really good. Better than any other hardware you can find (especially for a performance/watt standpoint, which for a laptop is somewhat important). Touchpad and keyboard are also top tier, screen is really nice, speakers are good and I ran out of adjectives.

Obviously everyone has to make their own decisions on tradeoffs, but for me there's no such thing as hardware good enough to put up with all the complications that Asahi Linux will face for some time to come (as they work to iron out all the kinks).

> especially for a performance/watt standpoint, which for a laptop is somewhat important

I think it is more important to have a working OS with common functionalities working.

Sure I'd love my thinkpad to have 15hours of battery life. But then I am not living in a tent either so I'd rather be able to use the onboard webcam, plug an external monitor, sound working without having to plug an external card and stable wifi. And I'd throw a 500gr powerbank in the backpack the handful of times I really need longer battery life.

Have you watched the video? It doesn't matter that the hardware is good, if you can't use most of it under Linux. Thunderbolt 4 becomes USB 2, HDMI? - no, camera? - no, sound? - no, HDR display? - no, battery life? - likely sucks too. A decent AMD Ryzen 3/4 laptop with a good screen will be a much better choice for Linux.

To not end up with a PC laptop, the likes of which haven't been meaningfully redesigned save for spec bumps for 15 years.

Trackpad, speakers, case, thermals, cpu - the lowest end MBA blows the highest end "ultrabook" out of the water.

The MBA is the best in performance per watt but there are better ultrabooks if you ignore the energy consumption.

> the lowest end MBA blows the highest end "ultrabook" out of the water

That's untrue

And remember the screen cracks?

https://9to5mac.com/2021/07/30/m1-macbook-screen-cracks/

It doesn’t really make sense to ignore energy consumption in a supposedly portable device. That’s like saying that a ship is more efficient way of transport, if you ignore that it can’t go over land.

Portable doesn't necessarily mean it needs to last as long as it takes you to hike accross a continent.

I use a laptop because I can move it from one room to another without shutting it down. While it would be nice to not have to plug it more than once a day, I'm fine with a 4-5hours autonomy.

But having more battery life definitely do not beat having functionalities such as external monitor, working internal webcam and sound.

> thermals

Apple has been consistently terrible at cooling design, the only reason m1/m2 systems don't have thermal issues is because they sidestepped the problem entirely by building a very thermally efficient chip.

Not having the problem in the first place is the best way to solve it. We are discussing finished products. My M2 air lasts a million hours and doesn't get hot. My XPS lasts 4 or 5 and burns the top of my legs.

I'm not sure yours is the criticism you think it is.

Ultimately, heat is waste, and the less of it you generate, the better. When I said "thermals" I meant chip design, not cooling system design. This is obviously one of the huge benefits of their vertical integration.

Making a difficult problem irrelevant is pretty solid engineering.

A chip that doesn't get hot sounds like pretty efficient cooling design to me.

So they treated the symptoms by treating the cause? Sounds like a win to me lol.

Actually Apples cooking has been pretty rock solid. What let apple down was Intel.

Intels mobile CPUs have been, and still are absolute trash.

I struggle to understand this Goalpost. Thermals and power go hard in hand. Battery life and noise follow suit. Overheated legs and wrists are not much fun either. In any case, most other laptops in a similar form factor have equal or worse cooling. Thermal throttling shows up on laptop reviews a lot.

they took entire class of problem and made it disappear, that's great engineering.

So.. they don’t have thermal issues?

There's very little comparable in the non-Mac world when it comes to battery life, no performance penalty for not being tethered, and heat/fan noise, mainly.

I've looked. There's a couple that are kinda in the same realm if you squint but come with tradeoffs like having to keep the CPU throttled to get anywhere near the advertised battery life.

But that doesn't apply at all if you're a Linux user?

I’ve read that battery life for Linux on M-series is still a good deal better than on quite a few other laptops despite it being non-optimal.

There are also those using macOS on their MacBooks until Linux gets good enough to daily drive.

asahi's power management has improved by leaps and bounds. you'll never get the same kind of performance or battery life (and especially in combination) on any x86 laptop running windows or linux

I am a Linux user and not a MacBook owner, but I do really like (having used it myself in the past - 2013 Air, 2016 MBP - and seen others' recent stuff) Mac hardware. If my preferred Linux distro (Arch btw) just worked out of the box on Macs I would love one (though I do have a Framework now and the repairability etc. certainly would make me reluctant).

Also though, I have a Windows desktop pretty much just for Fusion 360. I really dislike Windows, macOS as a BSD derivative is obviously a bit more comfortable/familiar/usable, I would love to (legitimately) dual-boot macOS and Linux, the former to allow me to run software that's not available on the latter. WINE (even with Lutris etc. recent work) is too fragile and difficult to get working and keep working.

Hasn't "zero manufacturer support" been the normal state of Linux since forever? It's only recently that some level of official support has emerged in limited cases.

In laptops, Dell has been officially making Linux compatible models for years.

There are also smaller, specialist manufacturers that do Linux laptops. System76 is one that springs to mind, though other people have mentioned various others before.

Lenovo seems to have a pretty good selection of models offering Linux.

And most of them are similarly riddled with random bugs, like the CPU throttling to hell. E.g. the T480 has a more limiting throttling, because the motherboard can tell whether you hold it in your lap or not, but only on windows - on linux it defaults to the safe bet of being on your lap all the time. It can be circumvented by a python script that regularly overwrites this variable..

specific models? yes.

in general? no.

hell, there are more models of laptop made by the linux-only laptop manufacturers than officially supported by dell

Which serious hardware company has any modicum of support for linux? It’s not like the thinkpad runs on 100% open hardware, most of that was reverse engineered the same way.

The intel drivers are mostly written by intel engineers, same for AMD drivers.

I just checked on my works laptop, the only non intel component appearing via lspci is a realtek express card reader whose driver is copyrighted by Realtek Semiconductor Corp: https://github.com/torvalds/linux/blob/master/drivers/misc/c...

Have Apple engineers written a single line of code for linux drivers supporting apple silicium ?

Because Framework does not work with resellers (so my company cannot buy it), Dell keeps doing stupid Linux-hostile things (like re-releasing accessory revisions that break Linux features), and Lenovo has no high-end laptops available (at least not on the business side). And because managers all love their Macs, they always find a way to get company policy to allow for them.

Because absolutely nothing else is as good in all aspects. Not having a 100wh battery alone would disqualify the vast majority of other laptops.

But if you're a Linux user, wouldn't you want a laptop that can actually run Linux without tons of critical drawbacks?

Not to mention directly feeding a manufacturer with no support for Linux and several very problematic behaviors (iOS walled garden, no GPL3 in app store as well as no custom web engines + other bullshit limitations, NIH syndrome of galactic proportions) in place ?

Linux support by manufacturers, even when it exists doesn’t really exist so don’t overstate that.

How is ios related here? Should one settle for a worse laptop based on a completely different division of said company? OSX is reasonably open and you can mostly use it as a regular linux due to its UNIX-isms.

Because I primarily care about having the best computer. And then Linux is a nice to have.

For me it's the same base reason. I primarily care about having the best computer, which means Linux is a must.

The question started with: "As a linux user"...

Linux doesn't seem like a nice to have for Linux users.

I've used linux for a decade now and still use it on my desktop. But it's not a strict requirement for me. On my laptop I just need something that has a super good battery life and is performant. And the macbook is so far ahead of the rest that it wins for me.

I didn't buy the macbook expecting to install linux on it, but if I can later, that's just an extra win.

> I didn't buy the macbook expecting to install linux on it, but if I can later, that's just an extra win.

Except that was exactly the point of the discussion. People who buy an Apple laptop with the expectation of having a perfectly functionnal linux on it.

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