Hacker News Reader

Comment by Zuiii | Hacker News Reader

The Acer Aspire 1 is getting really old at this point. Are there any modern ARM (or even RISCV!) laptops that are usable out-of-the-box with upstream Linux kernels/distributions?

(My laptop is dying and I need a new quality laptop that has good Linux support and battery-life.)

View on HN

> The Acer Aspire 1 (A114-61) is an aging ARM laptop design built on the Snapdragon 7c Gen1.

Agreed: it's old. But from inside Qualcomm, I can report that there's a clear change in priorities. Upstream was important before but now it's absolutely paramount. This message is unambiguous, from the CEO. I saw that Snapdragon 8 Gen3 (a phone -- not laptop -- SoC) got patches posted relatively close to its introduction. Given that, I hope that we'll see the same thing for Snapdragon X Elite.

I don't have any access to the kernel team's plans so I have no idea what their schedule is like.

That's super awesome to hear. I am continuously surprised by how long it takes companies to pivot to compete effectively with Apple. The M1 came out in 2020? ARM support is part of the puzzle but the architecture lags so badly. And it's not just Qualcomm. Intel, Samsung, Google, Marvel, you get the picture.

Interestingly, Qualcomm was shipping its ARM-based/Windows laptop chips prior to Apple's intro of the M1 Macbook. But they have failed to make a dent in the market. I think having something that amounts to ~parity in performance is not good enough to help lure customers to a new ISA. Like the M1, you have to give customers a really great story about switching.

ARM devices running Windows didn’t even focus on or reach performance parity before; it was mostly a winning-on-price strategy (but the savings were not quite worth it).

These companies think in terms of evolution and BOM cost, not revolution.

Apple is pretty unique there, right? They are the only ones selling macOS devices, so if you want macOS, you are eventually going to go to M-series. And they have enough control over the stack that, when they say it’ll go smoothly compatibility-wise, most people treat that as at least… plausible, for most use cases.

Not only does Apple move their existing users to the new chip eventually, but M series launches have usually resulted in upticks in market share.

>I think having something that amounts to ~parity in performance is not good enough to help lure customers to a new ISA.

Most people use computers to Get Stuff Done(tm).

Windows RT can't run Win32 and ARM can't run x86, at least not without significant caveats; people can't use Windows computers like that to Get Stuff Done(tm).

M* Apple on the other hand can run most x86 era MacOS software; people who were using Intel Macs to Get Stuff Done(tm) can use newer M* Apple Macs to Get Stuff Done(tm).

Computers are tools, their sole purpose is to enable their users to Get Stuff Done(tm). It is the natural order of the universe that Windows ARM computers, unable to Get Stuff Done(tm), completely and properly failed to capture market share.

I thought that info is outdated by multiple years? Windows on ARM can run x86 (since windows 10) and also x64 (since windows 11) just fine. The problem is that the devices you can buy are somewhat underpowered for the price, e.g. a surface pro with ARM is more expensive and less performant than the intel-based one (and they still don't offer an amd-based one)

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/arm/apps-on-arm-x8...

> M* Apple on the other hand can run most x86 era MacOS software;

Except for dropping 32bit libraries and all that?

> people who were using Intel Macs to Get Stuff Done(tm) can use newer M* Apple Macs to Get Stuff Done(tm).

Nope. Quite a few of those people needed bootcamp to get some software to run. Bootcamp is dead now and you are encouraged to run virtualized windows on arm; does x86/x64 emulation work properly inside such a VM?

Rosetta has nothing to do with VMs. You run win 11 arm in an arm VM and it's the windows 11 inside that has its own x86 emulation :)

Not that that helps in making everything work, but I just had to correct who's emulating what.

> Except for dropping 32bit libraries and all that?

32 bit libraries were dropped by Apple years ago when they were still all x86. Still an ass move, but again had to correct.

> You run win 11 arm in an arm VM and it's the windows 11 inside that has its own x86 emulation :)

That was the question. For instance, as far as I understand WSL generally does not work inside VMs (because WSL2 or 1 or whatever number transparently uses another VM itself). So I wasn't sure whether WoW64 does work inside VMs, glad to hear it does.

The claim was that you have great backward compatibility due to Rosetta ... except that due to 32 bit libraries that is not actually as useful as claimed. Not sure what your correction is?

> except that due to 32 bit libraries that is not actually as useful as claimed. Not sure what your correction is?

32 bit apps were dropped in Mac OS Catalina in 2019, before the M1 was even hinted at. You had an x86 only Mac OS with no 32 bit support already.

Also 32 bit apps were marked as deprecated in High Sierra, some time in 2018.

Is that supposed to be a long time? If the claim is that you should get a mac for superior backward compatibility, then 5 years sounds very short.

for WSL2, with nested virtualization - it should

for WSL1 - virtualization is not used, it's more like syscall emulation

I cannot say for windows, but apple provides rosetta 2 for linux, to be run in a vm [1].

However, some would argue that if you need windows software, then you should not buy a mac in the first place. And I would argue it's microsoft's job to get windows running on M*, not apple's.

1: https://developer.apple.com/documentation/virtualization/run...

> Except for dropping 32bit libraries and all that?

That has got nothing to do with ARM. Apple decided to drop support for 32 bit apps several years before they introduced M1.

You still can emulate it.

> Windows RT can't run Win32 and ARM can't run x86, at least not without significant caveats; people can't use Windows computers like that to Get Stuff Done(tm).

Whilst what you say is true for Windows RT, Windows 11 on ARM64 absolutely can run x86 and x64 software [0]. Kernel mode software needs to be built for ARM64 but most user mode software should just work.

For what it’s worth x86 emulation predates Apple’s Rosetta 2, and x64 emulation was made available at about the same time [1].

[0] https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/arm/overview#suppo...

[1] https://blogs.windows.com/windows-insider/2020/12/10/introdu...

Isn't the windows' x86 emulator excruciatingly slow? If memory serves, people considered it barely usable. I remember videos from the time where even dragging a window was something to behold.

This is where apple made it transparent: rosetta 2 is completely invisible thanks to the introduction of the x86 memory model on M* chips that all other Arm socs lack, and that rosetta 2 leverages.

It's pretty reasonable if you run windows in a vm on apple silicon! (This probably doesn't help)

I’m not sure how accurate it is but according to this video they’re pretty close nowadays: https://youtu.be/uY-tMBk9Vx4

You may say that and it may be true now, but on launch there were issues and those are enough to hurt confidence that things will work (hence no buy). Microsoft loves messing up launches, Apple absolutely nailed theirs.

> The M1 came out in 2020?

... but i bet it had been in development for 5+ years before that. Not to mention it's an iteration of the earlier Apple phone chips.

> ARM support is part of the puzzle but the architecture lags so badly.

One thing to note about this laptop is the storage is eMMC. Even whatever's in the latest and greatest Raspberry Pi only has one pcie lane, and they didn't bother including a M.2 nvme slot for storage?

They're all still in the phone with crap storage mindset. It's not so relevant how fast your CPU is (and it's probably reasonably fast) if the software runs off storage that's slower and has more latency than sata...

Do you know the exact model that is supported? Acer Aspire 1 A114-61-S94P (Acer P/N: NX.A4DEB.002) currently retails for €250, and it looks like a great device for many usecases.

But it has 8 GB RAM / 128 GB eMMC. Other posts suggest the first generation (4 GB / 64 GB) is the only one that is supported. For instance, https://wiki.postmarketos.org/wiki/Acer_Aspire_1_A114-61_(ac...

How's the emulation layer like ?

I tired running Steam on ARM Linux with Box64, I have nightmares from the experience.

That could be a total gamechanger. With their new ARM chip's performance, if they are really prioritizing upstream contributions I could absolutely see a world where my next laptop is has a qualcom chip and runs linux. I have generally viewed Qualcomm as little more than pattent trolls for... pretty much the entire time I have been aware of their existence. It seems like they are intent on changing that and I hope they do!

That's quite surprising to me because I remember the pain of building / updating Android distributions, often held back by old kernels. Qualcomm did have their own relatively well available kernel version, but it still significantly differed from mainline.

Would this make running linux on mobile phones, old and new, more realistic in the not-to-distant future?

I'm not seeing Qualcomm upstream support for their old phone/tablet SoC's to the kernel mainline, that work is still being done by the pmOS folks and other community members. New phones will probably benefit more.

The x13s is "almost" fully upstream, there is a dedicated ubuntu kernel/iso for it which only add tweaks for mac address and other small issues.

M2 and M1 chips are pretty well supported by Asahi/Fedora linux now.

Sadly support is fairly good but IMHO not there yet for a daily driver: https://asahilinux.org/fedora/#device-support. Microphone and external displays are not working. Plus, you rely on macOS for firmware updates.

An AMD ThinkPad has nearly the same performance, and much better software support thanks to x86_64. The compromise is decent but not great battery range (7-10 hours), mostly because of an older fabrication process.

With that said, I prefer the quality of MacBooks and Apple customer service here in EU is miles ahead of Lenovo (outsourced, crazy prices). So a viable alternative would be awesome. Some Intel MacBook Airs used to be fantastic Linux devices.

Note that HDMI out supposedly works on the pro, so the missing functionality is just the microphone, touchid, and thunderbolt/usb4. (Unless you have a usb3 display or really like dongles).

I am happy to dock my laptop to one usb-c dock and not have to deal with hdmi, mouse, keyboard and jack output every time I come to my office.

For most users Linux Asahi is only usable as a daily driver in non pros contexts on Mac Laptop and you'd be better of dedicating a computer (a mac mini?) for the office.

I wouldn't call it "pretty well" even though I applaud Asahi team for their efforts.

MNT Reform? Pretty sure it runs regular ol' Debian. Bonus: completely open-source hardware. https://shop.mntre.com/products/mnt-reform

I really want to like the MNT Reform and especially the MNT Pocket Reform - but it’s really hard to justify such a big perf delta with my M1 MBP.

With it being modular there's always the potential for CPU upgrades in the future. But yes, it's much less performant than a modern x86 or Apple Silicon device. Performance isn't the primary goal, though admittedly it would be nice.

This will of course never happen but imagine if there were an M1 CPU module for it.

Qualcomm is maybe more realistic but from what I've heard it seems like they won't even talk to you if you're not ordering in huge quantities.

Unless they become bankrupt and no new modules will be released. It's hard to place faith in the future of a company like that, especially when I need a powerful CPU right now.

Granted - the hardware is open so it doesn’t have to be the original manufacturer coming up with new CPU modules.

This substitute manufacturer has to be financially motivated to do so, i.e. there should be enough potential customers

It's interesting you say that, since that's one of the major benefits of open hardware - you're not beholden to the survival of a corporation to continue having support for your tech. Anyone can come along and get a PCB produced by one of the many "print on demand" services. Someone with similar skills to the team at MNT can pick up the entire ecosystem and build entirely new hardware for it without a shred of friction or red tape (or threat of lawyers lol) ... pretty badass if you ask me. Worst case scenario you hire/crowdsource someone to build an updated CPU module.

Take your pick: https://wiki.postmarketos.org/wiki/Category:ChromeOS

The pinebook pro comes close, but I can’t get over the speaker whine and poor suspend life. Also, I think the aspire one might have higher specs.

I have physically disconnected speakers in my pinebook, it's that bad.

Pinetab-V

I'm not sure I'd describe the pinetab 2 or V as "usable out-of-the-box" yet

JH7110 has the best upstream support among Linux capable RISC-V SoCs.

Any PineTab-V specific hardware, however, might add extra complication.

Out of the box is just not a thing yet.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com