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.
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.
No one should buy a laptop with every single fucking component soldered on. Fuck Apple and every company that does what they do. Get yourself a Framework laptop or one from an actual Linux vendor like System76, Tuxedo, Starlabs…etc. That way you’re able to upgrade your shit down the road when you need to. Apple shit is you get what you get.
While I generally agree, the OP is asking about an M1, so they’re probably considering a used laptop. No profits to Apple, and better for the environment.
Of course apple profita from used laptops. If noone buys used apple laptops some of those who are replacing cannot afford the new one and there is a crowding out effect. Moreover, the higher the demand for other vendors, the higher the support for them.
Don’t ever buy apple devices. It’s not a good company
Do not buy an M-series mac just for asahi linux. It’s a cool project. It is not daily driveable (yet). However, for using it as a regular laptop with MacOS… Agh, I’m gonna get hate for this, but it’s amazing. I’m a firm believer that you cannot get a better laptop experience than this. Great battery life, great performance, great screen, great touchpad. And as for MacOS, it’s like worse GNOME with KDE settings, really nothing to write home about. Install homebrew and it functions like you’re used to with linux distros…
Ik apple bad and all, but the way I see it, they are just as bad as other manufacturers like DELL, just that their products are actually good while they work…
As for the actual performance, it completely obliterates X86 counterparts around it’s price range, unless you need to game or do graphically intensive stuff.
deleted by creator
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.
Mac comes built in with those shortcuts just by holding command. Command left and right is home and end. Command up and down is page up page down.
And yeah there are definitely some holes? But Karabiner-Elements closes them up better than anything on windows does.
For navigation by keyboard you need to turn off a bunch of the animations and it’s very very snappy. I use Hammerspoon and can jump between apps faster than on Linux and windows.
I am aware that command left and command right is home and end. However, I still prefer to use shift + end to highlight from my cursor to the end of the line as opposed to shift + command + right. There’s also switching between tabs, it’s a similar thing, 3 keys instead of 2.
However, the most important part of this is I cannot even have ALT+Q behave as ALT+F4. I cannot have F11 act as fullscreen EVERYWHERE.
“Global” mappings are the biggest issue for me, but I do strongly prefer having dedicated home, page up, page down, end keys.
Currently typing this on a Microsoft Surface without dedicated home, page up, page down and end keys, and I am heavily noticing the difference, despite using fn + down to behave as page down.
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.
