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M1 Macbook Air (sh.itjust.works)

submitted 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

27 comments fedilink hide all child comments

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.

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[–] [email protected] 33 points 11 months ago (2 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 20 points 11 months ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 11 months ago

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

[–] [email protected] 5 points 11 months ago (1 children)

I do not like Apple as a company and would never buy direct. This one is second-hand and much cheaper than a framework. I would definitely buy a framework if that was an option.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago

Understandable. You can still find other laptops second hand and cheaper, that are upgradable. I think the market of used windows laptops is even bigger than the apple one. At the end of the day, it's your money. Do what you please pf course :)

[–] [email protected] 25 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

You'd be making a few concessions, specifically Microphone, and HDMI ~~out~~ in: https://github.com/AsahiLinux/docs/wiki/M1-Series-Feature-Support

That being said, those wouldn't deter me personally, especially if I got a good deal on one.

[+] [email protected] 20 points 11 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (2 children)

[deleted]

[–] [email protected] 6 points 11 months ago (2 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago

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.

[+] [email protected] 9 points 11 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (2 children)

[deleted]

[–] [email protected] 7 points 11 months ago (1 children)

I would not even consider it if it was 8GB, but this one is 16GB with 512gb of storage. It is a decent deal for what it is, and I've been looking for a decently powerful arm machine for awhile.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago

Yeah, i am retiring my XPS 13 only due to it having 8GB of RAM. It is quite an old model with i7-8550U - the speed is still perfectly fine as my daily driver, but I filled the memory to the brim way too often.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

If you decide to buy a MacBook (and from my recent experience with an M1 Pro I would advise against it) you should check in advance if all your daily software is available. Asahi itself is fairly stable and enjoyable to use, the software repo is still lacking in a lot of places though. As others have said, you’ll probably be better off financially and mentally with a decently specced used Thinkpad if Linux is your primary OS.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 11 months ago (1 children)

The m series really are a game changer for battery life and ease of use and weight. What the other person said about soldered on components is just completely ignoring the reality of the situation. There are plenty of arguments for and against soldered motherboards. Linus Tech Tips has a good video covering it.

The m1 isn’t as good as later chips, and the air really needs more oomph, but I literally run DaVinci Resolve, Lightroom Classic, and insta 360 studio on mine (mine is an M3) at the same time as I’ve got a thousand tabs in Firefox open and it can handle it just fine. Which is saying something as those are not lightweight programs.

I can’t compare it to an m1 air, but my dad has an m1 air and he’s never complained about it. He’s using it for just normal stuff though. Doc editing, web browsing, watching YouTube.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 11 months ago (2 children)

How much ram? I can't imagine the 8gb model

[–] [email protected] 3 points 11 months ago

16gb. It definitely would not be able to do all of that with only 8, but it would still be very capable.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago

I have a 24GB M2 and the thing dances around anything I throw at it. I'm typing on it right now with Onshape in a few tabs, orcaSlicer in a few windows, work in a few chrome tabs, a few iterm sessions, and a million other little apps in the background with very little hickups.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 11 months ago

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.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago

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.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago

You'll need some active cooling if you're gonna compile some code, so aim at pro 13, same size but without throttling in heavy tasks

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago

Microphone doesn't work yet, if you're doing lots of facebook calls, it won't work.

[–] [email protected] -2 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Not M1 but I tried installing Mint in my touch bar 2021 MBP and zero components worked. No track pad, no keyboard, wifi, Bluetooth etc.

Apple doesn't provide the drivers.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 11 months ago (2 children)

While that is likely true, Asahi is a bespoke Linux distribution for Apple hardware. It's what it was made for. At this point most of the stuff in the M1 is working fine on Asahi, as far as I've read. They even got 3D graphics working recently.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 11 months ago

Oh right on! Maybe I'll try that then, that MBP is collecting dust so I'd love to put it to good use. Thanks for the info.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Ah sorry I misinterpreted your comment. I see it's specifically for Silicon Macs. Mine's Intel :( I got too excited.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Laptop/Apple https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Mac/Troubleshooting https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Mac Here you go homie, for your first time use not arch but arch based distro with gui preinstalled