[HN Gopher] Asahi Linux with Sway on the MacBook Air M2 (2024)
___________________________________________________________________
Asahi Linux with Sway on the MacBook Air M2 (2024)
Author : andsoitis
Score : 146 points
Date : 2025-12-25 14:20 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (daniel.lawrence.lu)
(TXT) w3m dump (daniel.lawrence.lu)
| gsora wrote:
| Putting swaybar at the top behind the notch is a great idea!
| zozbot234 wrote:
| A new Wayland protocol is in the works that should support
| screen cutout information out of the box:
| https://phosh.mobi/posts/xdg-cutouts/ Hopefully this will be
| extended to include color information whenever applicable, so
| that "hiding" the screen cutout (by coloring the surrounding
| area deep black) can also be a standard feature and maybe even
| be active by default.
| gsora wrote:
| Wayland modularity is the gift that keeps on giving.
| imiric wrote:
| You can't be serious. Wayland is the opposite of modular,
| and the concept of an extensible protocol only creates
| fragmentation.
|
| Every compositor needs to implement the giant core spec,
| or, realistically, rely on a shared library to implement it
| for them. Then every compositor can propose and implement
| arbitrary protocols of their own, which should also be
| supported by all client applications.
|
| It's insanity. This thing is nearly two decades old, and I
| still have basic _clipboard_ issues[1]. This esoteric
| cutouts feature has no chances of seeing stable real-world
| use in at least a decade from now.
|
| [1]: https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=466041
| MarsIronPI wrote:
| You can see the same problem in the XMPP world, with a
| lot of the extensions implemented only by a few
| applications. But at least most XMPP extensions are
| designed to be backwards-compatible with clients that
| don't support them.
| samiv wrote:
| Shh...you're not supposed to mention these things alas
| you be down voted to death.
|
| I also have tremendous issues with Plasma. Things such as
| graphics glitching in the alt+tab task switcher or
| Firefox choking the whole system when opening a single 4k
| PNG image. This is pre-alpha software... So back to X11
| it is. Try again in another decade or two.
| imiric wrote:
| The thing is that I'm not experiencing this clipboard
| issue on Plasma, but on a fresh installation of Void
| Linux with niri. There are reports of this issue all
| over[1][2][3], so it's clearly not an isolated problem.
| The frustrating thing is that I wouldn't even know which
| project to report it to. What a clusterfuck.
|
| I can't go back to X11 since the community is
| deliberately killing it. And relying on a fork maintained
| by a single person is insane to me.
|
| [1]: https://old.reddit.com/r/hyprland/comments/1d4s9bw/c
| trlc_ctr...
|
| [2]: https://old.reddit.com/r/tuxedocomputers/comments/1i
| 9v0n7/co...
|
| [3]: https://old.reddit.com/r/kde/comments/1jl6zv7/why_do
| es_copyp...
| samiv wrote:
| Re X11 maintenance... I think it's mostly "done" and
| doesn't really need a lot of work. So not sure I see a
| problem there.
| cosmic_cheese wrote:
| YMMV and all, but my experience is that Wayland
| smoothness varies considerably depending on hardware. On
| modernish Intel and AMD iGPUs for example I've not had
| much trouble with Wayland whereas my tower with an Nvidia
| 3000 series card was considerably more troublesome with
| it.
| samiv wrote:
| As a user...why would I care?
|
| If my Ferrari has an issue with the brakes and I go to my
| dealer I don't care if the brakes were by Brembo.
|
| Blaming the vendor and their drivers is just trying to
| shift the blame.
| cosmic_cheese wrote:
| Generally true, though this particular case is due to a
| single company deciding to not play ball and generally
| act in a manner that's hostile to the FOSS world for
| self-serving reasons (Nvidia).
| samiv wrote:
| I don't even think it's even that. These bugs seem like
| bog standard bugs related to correct sharing of graphics
| resources between processes and accessing with correct
| mutual exclusion.Blaming NV is likely just a convenient
| excuse.
| bigyabai wrote:
| > my tower with an Nvidia 3000 series card was
| considerably more troublesome with it.
|
| I think you're describing a driver error from before
| Nvidia really supported Wayland. My 3070 exhibited
| similar behavior but was fixed with the 555-series
| drivers.
|
| The Vulkan drivers are still so/so in terms of
| performance, but the smoothness is now on-par with my
| Macbook and Intel GNOME machine.
| IshKebab wrote:
| Omg I thought I was going senile... copy & paste not
| working... I definitely pressed ctrl-c didn't I?
|
| Bloody Wayland.
| cevn wrote:
| You know what OS doesn't handle the notch? OSX. It happily
| throws the system tray icons right back there, with an obscure
| work around to bring them back. Software quality at Apple these
| days...
| OutOfHere wrote:
| What is the prospect for newer M support, e.g. M3, M4? I am
| hesitant to adopt something that doesn't work with current and
| future models.
| markus_zhang wrote:
| Without official support, the Asahi team needs to RE a lot of
| stuffs. I'd expect it to lag behind a couple of generations at
| least.
|
| I blame Apple on pushing out new models every year. I don't get
| why it does that. A M1 is perfectly fine after a few years but
| Apple treats it like an iPhone. I think one new model every 2-3
| years is good enough.
| lagniappe wrote:
| >I don't get why it does that.
|
| I've got a few ideas
| stetrain wrote:
| If you want the latest and greatest you can get it. If an M1
| is fine you can get a great deal on one and they're still
| great machines and supported by Apple.
| cosmic_cheese wrote:
| M1 is indeed quite adequate for most, but each generation has
| brought substantial boosts in performance in single-threaded,
| multi-threaded, and with the M5 generation in particular GPU-
| bound tasks. These advancements are required to keep pace
| with the industry and in a few aspects stay ahead of
| competitors, plus there exist high end users whose workloads
| greatly benefit from these performance improvements.
| markus_zhang wrote:
| I agree. But Apple doesn't sell new M1 chip laptops anymore
| AFAIK. There are some refurbished ones but most likely I
| need to go into a random store to find one. I only saw M4
| and M5 laptops online.
|
| That's why I don't like it as a consumer. If they keep
| producing M1 and M2 I'd assume we can get better prices
| because the total quantity would be much larger. Sure it is
| probably better for Apple to move forward quickly though.
| Kirby64 wrote:
| > That's why I don't like it as a consumer. If they keep
| producing M1 and M2 I'd assume we can get better prices
| because the total quantity would be much larger.
|
| Why would this be true? An M5 MacBook Air today costs the
| same as an M1 MacBook Air cost in 2020 or whenever they
| released it, and is substantially more performant. Your
| dollar per performance is already better.
|
| If they kept selling the same old stuff, then you spread
| production across multiple different nodes and the
| pricing would be inherently worse.
| wtallis wrote:
| In the US, Walmart is still selling the M1 MacBook Air
| new, for $599 (and has been discounted to $549 or better
| at times, such as Black Friday).
|
| In general, I don't think it's reasonable to worry that
| Apple's products aren't _thoroughly_ achieving economies
| of scale. The less expensive consumer-oriented products
| are extremely popular, various components are shared
| across product lines (eg. the same chip being used in
| Macs and iPads) and across multiple generations (except
| for the SoC itself, obviously), and Apple rather famously
| has a well-run supply chain.
|
| From a strategic perspective, it seems likely that
| Apple's long history of annual iteration on their
| processors in the iPhone and their now well-established
| pattern of updating the Mac chips less often but still
| frequently is part of how Apple's chips have been so
| successful. Annual(ish) chip updates with small
| incremental improvements compounds over the years.
| Compare Apple's past decade of chip progress against
| Intel's troubled past decade of infrequent technology
| updates (when you look past the incrementing of the
| branding), uneven improvements and some outright
| _regressions_ in important performance metrics.
| eigenspace wrote:
| The project is effectively dead
| shadowpho wrote:
| What why?
| eigenspace wrote:
| It's really hard to do and nobody is paying for it?
| nicoburns wrote:
| Because key developers have left the project, and
| developers who are capable of such work are few and far
| between.
| charcircuit wrote:
| >are few and far between
|
| They are more common than you would think. There just is
| not many willing to work on a shoe string salary.
| willis936 wrote:
| Very little progress made this year after high profile
| departures (Hector Martin, project lead, Asahi Lina and
| Alyssa Rosenzweig - GPU gurus). Alyssa's departure isn't
| reflected on Asahi's website yet, but it is in her blog. I
| believe she also left Valve, which I think was sponsoring
| some aspects of the Asahi project. So when people say
| "Asahi hasn't seen any setbacks" be sure to ask them who
| has stepped in to make up for these losses in both talent
| and sponsorship.
|
| https://rosenzweig.io/blog/asahi-gpu-part-n.html
| SamuelAdams wrote:
| Has Hector left though?
|
| https://lore.kernel.org/asahi/20251215-macsmc-
| subdevs-v6-4-0...
| dllu wrote:
| Marcan (Hector Martin) resigned from Asahi Linux early
| this year [0].
|
| Asahi Lina, who also did tons of work on the Asahi Linux
| GPU development, also quit as she doesn't feel safe doing
| Linux GPU work anymore [1].
|
| [0] https://marcan.st/2025/02/resigning-as-asahi-linux-
| project-l...
|
| [1] https://asahilina.net/luna-abuse/
| opan wrote:
| GP's LKML link is very recent unlike your two links,
| implying something could've changed.
| aliceryhl wrote:
| I have no insight into the Asahi project, but the LKML
| link goes to an email from James Calligeros containing
| code written by Hector Martin and Sven Peter. The code
| may have been written a long time ago.
| redeeman wrote:
| marcan and asahi lina is the same person
| rowanG077 wrote:
| Someone posting Hectors code or a quote does not mean he
| didn't leave. I'm really not sure how that could leave
| that impression.
| WD-42 wrote:
| Asahi is all reverse engineering. It's nothing short of a
| miracle what has already accomplished, despite, not because of,
| Apple.
|
| That said some of the prominent developers have left the
| project. As long as Apple keeps hoarding their designs it's
| going to be a struggle, even more so now.
|
| If you care about FOSS operating systems or freedom over your
| own hardware there isn't a reason to choose Apple.
| matthewfcarlson wrote:
| To be clear, the work the asahi folks are doing is
| incredible. I'm ashamed to say sometimes their documentation
| is better than the internal stuff.
|
| I've heard it's mostly because there wasn't an m3 Mac mini
| which is a much easier target for CI since it isn't a
| portable. Also, there have been a ton of hardware changes
| internally between M2 and M3. M4 is a similar leap. More
| coprocessors, more security features, etc.
|
| For example, PPL was replaced by SPTM and all the exclave
| magic.
|
| https://randomaugustine.medium.com/on-apple-
| exclaves-d683a2c...
|
| As always, opinions are my own
| ZiiS wrote:
| I strongly support a projects stance that you shouldn't ask
| when it will be done. But the time between the M1 launch
| and a good experience was less than the time since M3 I
| would love to know what is involved.
| WD-42 wrote:
| This is what ruffles my jimmies about this whole thing:
|
| > I'm ashamed to say sometimes their documentation is
| better than the internal stuff.
|
| The reverse engineering is a monumental effort, this
| Sisyphean task of trying to keep up with never-ending
| changes to the hardware. Meanwhile, the documentation is
| just sitting there in Cupertino. An enormous waste of time
| and effort from some of the most skilled people in the
| industry. Well, maybe not so much anymore since a bunch of
| them left.
|
| I really hope this ends up biting Apple in the ass instead
| of protecting whatever market share they are guarding here.
| SamuelAdams wrote:
| Have they though? Hector just added support for the power
| button, I wonder if he is officially back?
|
| https://lore.kernel.org/asahi/20251215-macsmc-
| subdevs-v6-4-0...
| aliceryhl wrote:
| That's an email from James Calligeros. All this patch says
| is that the author is Hector Martin (and Sven Peter). The
| code could have been written a long time ago.
| schmuckonwheels wrote:
| This is a very straightforward problem with a relatively simple
| solution:
|
| Stop buying Apple laptops to run Linux.
| GeekyBear wrote:
| The new project leadership team has prioritized upstreaming the
| existing work over reverse engineering on newer systems.
|
| > Our priority is kernel upstreaming. Our downstream Linux tree
| contains over 1000 patches required for Apple Silicon that are
| not yet in upstream Linux. The upstream kernel moves fast,
| requiring us to constantly rebase our changes on top of
| upstream while battling merge conflicts and regressions. Janne,
| Neal, and marcan have rebased our tree for years, but it is
| laborious with so many patches. Before adding more, we need to
| reduce our patch stack to remain sustainable long-term.
|
| https://asahilinux.org/2025/02/passing-the-torch/
|
| For instance, in this month's progress report:
|
| > Last time, we announced that the core SMC driver had finally
| been merged upstream after three long years. Following that
| success, we have started the process of merging the SMC's
| subdevice drivers which integrate all of the SMC's
| functionality into the various kernel subsystems. The hwmon
| driver has already been accepted for 6.19, meaning that the
| myriad voltage, current, temperature and power sensors
| controlled by the SMC will be readable using the standard hwmon
| interfaces. The SMC is also responsible for reading and setting
| the RTC, and the driver for this function has also been merged
| for 6.19! The only SMC subdevices left to merge is the driver
| for the power button and lid switch, which is still on the
| mailing list, and the battery/power supply management driver,
| which currently needs some tweaking to deal with changes in the
| SMC firmware in macOS 26.
|
| Also finally making it upstream are the changes required to
| support USB3 via the USB-C ports. This too has been a long
| process, with our approach needing to change significantly from
| what we had originally developed downstream
|
| https://asahilinux.org/2025/12/progress-report-6-18/
| rubymamis wrote:
| Did someone do a deep dive on why battery life is so awful on
| Linux? Or is it some Ashai's driver's inefficiencies that causing
| this?
| temp0826 wrote:
| This is the case with most (all?) laptops running Linux
| regardless of hardware unfortunately.
| fsh wrote:
| This doesn't match my experience. My previous three laptops
| (two AMD Lenovo Thinkpads, one Intel Sony VAIO) had
| essentially the same battery life running Linux as running
| Windows.
| martini333 wrote:
| I think MacOS was implied...
| olyjohn wrote:
| Have you ever put MacOS on a PC laptop? Terrible hardware
| support and the worst battery life of any OS.
| functionmouse wrote:
| I used to hackintosh every laptop I could get my hands on
| that could do it, and always saw better battery life on
| OS X vs. Windows.
| sincerely wrote:
| I have an AMD thinkpad and get maybe 1/4 the battery life
| on Linux as I do when I boot inti Windows, did you have to
| do any tweaking to achieve that?
| fsh wrote:
| I typically install and enable tlp [1], but that's it.
| Some distros/DEs might have it out of the box, but on
| Arch I had to do it myself.
|
| [1] https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/TLP
| functionmouse wrote:
| You're lucky, my thinkpad x13 gen 2 AMD gets 5 hours on
| modern Fedora vs. 9 or 10 on Windows.
| izacus wrote:
| Each controller and subcomponent on the motherboard needs a
| driver that correctly puts it into low power and sleep states
| to get battery savings.
|
| Most of those components are proprietary and don't use the
| standard drivers available in Linux kernel.
|
| So someone needs to go and reverse engineer them, upstream the
| drivers and pray that Apple doesn't change them in next
| revision (which they did) or the whole process needs to start
| again.
|
| In other words: get an actually Linux supported laptop for
| Linux.
| Forgeties79 wrote:
| >In other words: get an actually Linux supported laptop for
| Linux.
|
| For a lot of people the point is to extend the life of their
| already-purchased hardware.
| bigyabai wrote:
| 1. Linux isn't a panacea for depreciated hardware, and it
| never will be.
|
| 2. If your priority is system lifespan, you are already
| using OEM macOS.
| Forgeties79 wrote:
| Never said it was "panacea for depreciated hardware." I'm
| saying it's a common use case.
|
| Every thread about Linux inevitably someone says "it gave
| new life to my [older computer model]." We've all seen it
| countless times.
| yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
| 1. I dunno about a panacea, but it's pretty great for old
| hardware. My 2011 desktop still runs Alpine Linux just
| fine.
|
| 2. By all means start with macOS, but eventually Apple
| will stop supporting your machine. And y'know what will
| still work and get updates then? Linux.
| bigyabai wrote:
| > but it's pretty great for old hardware
|
| Which old hardware? You're circling around to the
| grandparent's point again; Linux support is hardware
| dependent.
|
| > And y'know what will still work and get updates then?
|
| No, I don't. Depreciated iPads lay dead in piles, and
| they don't run Linux for shit. You want me to believe the
| M4 will graduate to the big leagues?
| kelnos wrote:
| That's an admirable goal, but, depending on the hardware,
| it can run into that pesky thing called reality.
|
| It's getting very tiresome to hear complaints about things
| that don't work on Linux, only to find that they're trying
| to run it on hardware that's poorly supported, and that's
| something they could have figured out by doing a little
| research beforehand.
|
| Sometimes old hardware just isn't going to be well-
| supported by _any_ OS. (Though, of course, with Linux,
| older hardware is more likely to be supported than
| bleeding-edge kit.)
| mystifyingpoi wrote:
| > It's getting very tiresome to hear complaints
|
| This is very true. I've been asked by lots of people "how
| do I start with Linux" and, despite being 99.9% Linux
| user for everything everyday, my advice was always:
|
| 1. Use VirtualBox. Seriously, it won't look cool, but it
| will 100% work after maybe 5 mins mucking around with
| installing guest additions. Also snapshots. Also no
| messing with WiFi drivers or graphics card drivers or
| such.
|
| 2. Get a used beaten down old Thinkpad that people on
| Reddit confirm to be working with Linux without any
| drivers. Then play there. If it breaks, reinstall.
|
| 3. If the above didn't make you yet disinterested, THEN
| dual boot.
|
| Also, if you don't care about GUI, then use the best
| blessing Microsoft ever created - WSL, and look no
| further.
| charcircuit wrote:
| WSL supports GUI apps now. They open up just like any
| other GUI app on Windows.
| mystifyingpoi wrote:
| I've tried this once for IntelliJ to work around slow WSL
| access for Git repos. Was greeted by missing fonts and
| broken scaling on the intro screen. Oops. But probably I
| was just unlucky, it might work well for most.
| opan wrote:
| I've never gotten along too well with virtualization, but
| would second the ThinkPad idea, or something similar. Old
| _/ cheap machine for tinkering is a good way to ease in,
| and I think bare metal feels more friendly.
|
| I'd probably recommend against dual booting, but I
| understand it's controversial. I like to equate it to
| having two computers, but having to fully power one off
| to do _anything* on the other one. Torrents stop, music
| collection may be inaccessible depending on how you
| stored it, familiar programs may not be around anymore. I
| dual booted for a few years in the past and I found it
| miserable. People who expected me to reboot to play a
| game with them didn't seem to understand how big of an
| ask that really was. Eventually things boiled over and I
| took the Windows HDD out of that PC entirely. Much more
| peaceful. (Proton solves that particular issue these days
| also)
|
| That being said, I've had at least two friends who had a
| dual boot due to my influence (pushing GNU/Linux) who
| ended up with some sort of broken Windows install later
| on and were happy to already have Ubuntu as an emergency
| backup to keep the machine usable.
|
| *Too old might be a problem these days with major distros
| not having 32bit ISOs anymore
| happymellon wrote:
| Linux might work with your hardware, but it might not work
| well.
|
| If your vendor is hostile like Apple, it will be hard to
| make it keep on working.
| izacus wrote:
| Noone is doing that with ARM MacBooks.
| Forgeties79 wrote:
| Yet. Plenty of people have with Intel ones - I'm one of
| them. My first experience with Linux was on a 2016 MBpro.
| And inevitably people will do the same with the silicon
| Macs, likely using Asahi it seems.
|
| Why are some of y'all so hostile to this idea?
| bigyabai wrote:
| It's not inevitable. That's not what that word means.
|
| Intel Macs supported Linux because they used Intel's
| Linux drivers and supported bog-standard UEFI. There are
| no preexisting drivers or DeviceTree files published by
| Apple for Linux. There is no UEFI implimentation, just a
| proprietary bootloader that can be updated post-hoc to
| deny booting into third-party OSes.
|
| > Why are some of y'all so hostile to this idea?
|
| I would love for Linux to support as many ARM devices as
| possible. Unfortunately, it requires continuous effort
| from the OEM to be viable. I've bought Qualcomm, Rockchip
| and Broadcom boards before, none of them have been
| supported for half as long as my x86 machines are.
| Nevermind how fast ARM architectures become obsolete.
|
| It feels like Apple is really the only hostile party
| here, and they coincidentally decide whether or not you
| get to use third-party OSes.
| ellieh wrote:
| > In other words: get an actually Linux supported laptop for
| Linux.
|
| 40% battery for 4hrs of real work is better than pretty much
| any linux supported laptop I've ever used
| nextos wrote:
| One of my favorite machines was the MacBook Air 11 (2012).
| This was a pure Intel machine, except for a mediocre
| Broadcom wireless card. With a few udev rules, I squeezed
| out the same battery performance from Linux I got from OS
| X, down to a few minutes of advantage in favor of Linux.
| And all this despite Safari being a marvel of energy
| efficiency.
|
| The problem with Linux performance on laptops boils down to
| i) no energy tweaks by default and ii) poor device drivers
| due to the lack of manufacturer cooperation. If you pick a
| machine with well supported hardware and you are diligent
| with some udev rules, which are quite trivial to write
| thanks to powertop suggestions, performance can be very
| good.
|
| I am getting a bit more than 10 hours from a cheap ThinkPad
| E14 Gen7, with a 64 Wh battery, and light coding use.
| That's less than a MacBook Air, where I would be getting
| around 13-14 hours, but it's not bad at all. The difference
| comes mainly from the cheap screen that is more power
| consuming and ARMs superior efficiency when idling.
|
| But I prefer not to trade the convenience and openness of
| x86_64 plus NixOS for a bit more battery range. IMHO, the
| gap is not sufficiently wide to make a big difference in
| most usage scenarios.
| cosmic_cheese wrote:
| The need to tweak that deeply just to get "baseline"
| performance really stings, though, particularly if you're
| not already accustomed to having to do that kind of
| thing.
|
| It'd be a gargantuan project, but there should probably
| be some kind of centralized, cross-distro repository for
| power configuration profiles that allows users to rate
| them with their hardware. Once a profile has been
| sufficiently user-verified and is well rated, distro
| installers could then automatically fetch and install the
| profile as a post-install step, making for a much more
| seamless and less fiddly experience for users.
| ffsm8 wrote:
| Not trying to discredit your idea, but I feel like you're
| misrepresenting the amount of optimization apple does by
| calling it baseline.
|
| It's generally the most optimized system down to the fact
| that Apple controls everything about it's platform.
|
| If that's considered baseline, then nothing but full
| vertical integration can compete
| cosmic_cheese wrote:
| For some laptops, this applies in comparison to Windows,
| too though (see elsewhere in thread for examples).
| nextos wrote:
| The advantage of Apple is that they deal with a tiny
| amount of hardware. Vertical integration enables
| aggressive optimizations.
|
| I agree that in case of Linux, a udev rule generator
| would be a fantastic step ahead in terms of usability.
| overfeed wrote:
| > 40% battery for 4hrs of real work is better than pretty
| much any linux supported laptop I've ever used
|
| Not sure what "real work" is for you, but I regularly get
| more than 12 hours of battery life on an old Chromebook
| running a Linux and the usual IDEs/dev tooling (in a
| Crostini VM). All the drivers just work, sleep has no
| detectable battery drain. It's not a workstation by any
| means, but dual core Intel's are great for
| Python/Go/TypeScript
| ryukoposting wrote:
| What's the bar here? My Thinkpad X270 gets about 16 hours
| under Ubuntu with swaywm.
|
| If we really want to get pedantic, its internal battery
| means the external pack is hot-swappable, so I can actually
| get several days on a "single charge." Good machine for
| camping trips.
| paddim8 wrote:
| It absolutely is not awful. You are doing something wrong then.
| It's not as good as on macOS of course but it's still great. I
| get 8-10 hours.
| imiric wrote:
| Exactly. This myth keeps being perpetuated, for some reason.
|
| I'm typing this from a ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 13 running Void
| Linux, and UPower is reporting 99% battery with ~15h left. I
| do have TLP installed and running, which is supposed to help.
| Realistically, I won't get around 15h with my usage patterns,
| but I do get around 10-12 hours. It's a new laptop with a
| fresh battery, so that plays a big role as well.
|
| This might not be as good as the battery life on a Macbook,
| but it's pretty acceptable to me. The upcoming Intel chips
| also promise to be more power efficient, which should help
| even more.
| mort96 wrote:
| Eh it's pretty awful. I get 8 hours, yes, but in Linux, those
| 8 hours are ticking whether my laptop is sleeping in my bag
| or on my desk with the lid closed or I'm actively using it. 8
| hours of active use is pretty good, but 8 hours in sleep is
| absolutely dreadful.
| dllu wrote:
| Apple does tons of optimizations for every component to improve
| battery life. Asahi Linux, which is reverse engineered, doesn't
| have the resources to figure out each of those tricks,
| especially for undocumented proprietary hardware, so it's a
| "death by a thousand cuts" as each of the various components is
| always drawing a couple of milliwatts more than on macOS.
| bjackman wrote:
| For optimal battery life you need to tweak the whole OS stack
| for the hardware. You need to make sure all the peripherals are
| set up right to go into the right idle states without causing
| user-visible latency on wake-up. (Note that often just one
| peripheral being out of tune here can mess up the whole
| system's power performance. Also the correct settings here
| depend on your software stack). You need to make sure that
| cpufreq and cpuidle governors work nicely with the particular
| foibles of your platform's CPUs. Ditto for the task scheduler.
| Then, ditto for a bunch of random userspace code (audio +
| rendering pipeline for example). The list goes on and on. This
| work gets done in Android and ChromeOS.
| CamouflagedKiwi wrote:
| Asahi doesn't yet support all the CPU power states etc. This is
| a known limitation, not sure how easy it is to reverse engineer
| though.
| SG- wrote:
| author mentions he paid $750 for a MacBook Air M2 with 16GB while
| on Amazon a M4 Air with 16GB is usually $750-800. I get it that
| M4/M3 aren't supported to boot Asahi yet, but still.
| chocochunks wrote:
| It's a year old article.
| SG- wrote:
| the point still stands as last year the M4 was released and
| was already seeing those deals especially with the M3 earlier
| too.
| chocochunks wrote:
| No, because the M4 Air wasn't even out until March of this
| year. It was only in the iPad and MBP last year.
| ezfe wrote:
| I mean for most purposes should be very similar so makes sense
| the price is similar
| codepoet80 wrote:
| I really wanted this to work, and it WAS remarkably good, but
| palm rejection on the (ginormous) Apple trackpad didn't work at
| all, rendering the whole thing unusable if you ever typed
| anything. That was a month ago, this article is a year old. I'd
| love to be wrong, but I don't think this problem has been
| solved.
| mort96 wrote:
| Yeah what is up with that? When I've tried to look into it
| I've just been met with statements that palm rejection should
| pretty much just work, but it absolutely doesn't and
| accidental inputs are so bad it's unusable without a
| disable/enable trackpad hotkey.
| commandersaki wrote:
| 256gb ssd as the minimum spec is criminal in my opinion.
| linsomniac wrote:
| Is it possibly because 256GB is the minimum spec of the MacBook
| Air M2?
| downrightmike wrote:
| I think they mean that is 2025, 256GB is unreasonably small.
| Which is true, Apple wants to up-charge hundreds of dollars
| just to get to the otherwise standard 1TB drive.
|
| Realistically, it is reasonable to expect 2TB drives, based
| on normal progression
| https://blocksandfiles.com/2024/05/13/coughlin-associates-
| hd...
| wtallis wrote:
| From a supply perspective, 256GB seems ridiculous because
| you can get way more capacity for not very much money, and
| because 256GB is now nowhere close to enough flash chips
| operating in parallel to reach what is now considered high
| performance.
|
| But from a demand perspective, there are a _lot_ of PC
| users for whom 256GB is plenty of capacity and performance.
| Most computers sold aren 't gaming PCs or professional
| workstations; mainstream consumer storage requirements
| (aside from gaming) have been nearly stagnant for years due
| to the popularity of cloud computing and streaming video.
| josephg wrote:
| Why? Lots of people more or less use their computer as a
| glorified web browser, with some zoom calls and document
| editing thrown in for good measure. 256gb seems overkill. My
| girlfriend is somehow still rocking a 2011 MacBook Air. She
| mostly just uses it for internet banking and managing her
| finances. Why would she want more than 256gb?
| karteum wrote:
| Possibly, but I don't see why those people would buy a new
| MacBook rather than a used 100$ laptop (which would be both
| better for their finances but also for the planet...)
| walterbell wrote:
| Battery life?
| trinix912 wrote:
| Because the price tag is quite high to get as much storage as
| you would 15 years ago for about the same money.
|
| I agree that many people use them as glorified internet
| machines but even then when they occasionally decide to back
| up some photos or edit a few videos the 256GB _non-
| upgradable_ storage quickly becomes a limitation.
|
| Price matters. 256GB is fine on a $500 web browsing laptop,
| but on a $1000+ one it's just a bad deal in 2025, even
| ignoring the fact that you cannot upgrade it later (it's
| soldered in place).
| p0w3n3d wrote:
| To think that they had the audacity to sell 8GB RAM too
| zenmac wrote:
| >I am very impressed with how smooth and problem-free Asahi Linux
| is. It is incredibly responsive and feels even smoother than my
| Arch Linux desktop with a 16 core AMD Ryzen 7945HX and 64GB of
| RAM.
|
| Hmmm still have issue with the battery in sleep mode on the m1.
| It drains a lot battery when it is in sleep mode compare to mac
| sleep mode.
| whitehexagon wrote:
| Twice my battery was flat. Now I just do a complete shutdown,
| since Asahi boots in ~30s (M1 Pro).
| puff_pastry wrote:
| 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
| downrightmike wrote:
| We almost had really nice arm laptops, but they got super
| greedy about it having AI and no one wanted them.
| bigyabai wrote:
| ARM is a capricious licensor. It's hardly surprising.
| farmin wrote:
| 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-...
| 650REDHAIR wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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?
| RamRodification wrote:
| Kubuntu is nice. Not sure why it's not more popular. Or maybe
| it's just a quieter user base?
| farmin wrote:
| 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.
| arcade79 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| So, Debian? No snaps and that's my main motivation
| fylo wrote:
| 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.
| kwanbix wrote:
| If I was you I will have gone for the T or X series
| farmin wrote:
| Why?
| dllu wrote:
| 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...
|
| [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46375174
| valianteffort wrote:
| I bought a refurb gen 4 thinkpad on amazon for like $350 and
| it arrived almost brand new.
|
| Installed arch, setup some commands to underclock the
| processor on login and easily boost it when I'm compiling.
|
| Battery life is great but I'm not running a GUI either. Good
| machine for when I want to avoid distractions and just code.
| dllu wrote:
| Old Thinkpads are great! I used to have a Lenovo Thinkpad
| X1 Carbon Gen 6 with Intel Core i7 8640U, 16 GB of RAM, and
| 1 TB SSD. I installed Arch Linux on it with Sway.
| 999900000999 wrote:
| I have no faith in Qualcomm to even make me basic gestures
| towards the Linux community.
|
| All I want is an easy way to install Linux on one of the
| numerous Snapdragon laptops. I think the Snapdragon Thinkpad
| might work, but none of the other really do.
|
| A 400$ Arm laptop with good Linux support would be great, but
| it's never ever going to happen.
| walterbell wrote:
| 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.
| shmerl wrote:
| Never used MacBooks, but Lenovo Thinkpad laptops with Linux are
| really good in my experience. Get anything recent with AMD.
| gnarlouse wrote:
| All Firefox users should switch to librewolf. In the short term
| it's for telling Mozilla to go f**, in the long term it's a
| browser fork with with really good anti fingerprinting.
| port11 wrote:
| Not that I disagree, but why make that point here?
| gnarlouse wrote:
| They had Firefox in their dnf for asahi
| lugu wrote:
| Note that librewolf rely on Mozilla tech infra for account
| synchronization and plugin distribution. If you are truly
| hostile to this organization, is there another browser you can
| recommend?
| kristianp wrote:
| (2024).
|
| For those curious about the Alkeria line-scan camera, he wrote a
| blog about 3d printing a lens mount etc.
| https://daniel.lawrence.lu/blog/2024-08-31-customizing-my-li...
|
| Seems like a crazy hobby to me though! Photography is
| inconvenient enough without having to make your own mounts and
| use an sdk to do it! History is filled with inconvenient hobbies
| though.
|
| I would agree with the sentiment about the lack of good bright
| screens for lenovo's hacker laptops like the X1 carbon.
| cakealert wrote:
| The idea that a group of people would spend so much of their time
| trying to get linux to work on Apple hardware through reverse
| engineering always seemed absolutely crazy to me. I would never
| consider buying Apple hardware precisely because it doesn't
| support linux and the work they put in achieves nothing because
| the risk will always remain that they will lock the hardware
| further. Nevermind the fact that they will likely never fully
| reverse engineer all the components.
|
| It just seems like a completely pointless endeavor... perhaps
| some people buy into it? why would anyone buy overpriced hardware
| with partial support that may one day be gone? the enhanced
| battery life doesn't really hold much appeal to me, and the arm
| architecture if anything is just another signal to stay away.
|
| The only thing that makes sense to me is that they wanted the
| achievement on their resume, and in that given recent
| developments they succeeded?
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