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Comment by andrewmutz | Hacker News Reader

Would Asahi linux on an apple laptop be the best Linux laptop experience these days for someone who prioritizes fanlessness?

It seems the other ARM option is the ThinkPad X13s, which presumably has lower performance.

Anyone have experience running linux on these machines and can compare the experience and hardware compatibility?

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I think so, X13s can become extremely hot and are slower.

Only things still lacking for single machine use is speakers, microphone and webcam: https://github.com/AsahiLinux/docs/wiki/Feature-Support

Also the ability to connect to external displays is missing - which is a pretty big one.

Although I would bet USB OTG HDMI works

I bet DisplayLink works.

wait so external displays work with a type-c to type-c connection?

Interestingly, for some modern Intel laptops, webcams/microphones aren't supported either, as they use the custom IPU6 protocol.

I think it depends. For me, fanless is super appealing. However, I have a Dell XPS 13 7390 with a i7-10710U where the fan is at 0 RPM most of the time I use it, and that is super satisfying to me. However, during a big compile, the fan does come on, sometimes it comes on at a high speed. But then, within about 30s to 1 minute, it goes back down to 0 RPM. I'm pretty happy with this, even though I love even more the idea of a computer that didn't even need a fan.

It's also worth pointing out that you can change the power governor in Linux whenever you want, so if you don't mind the compilation taking longer you can manually just throttle your PC to keep it silent at the cost of performance.

I believe so, but I would stick to the M1 models currently as they have a larger set of supported features complete at this time: https://github.com/AsahiLinux/docs/wiki/Feature-Support

Yes. X13s is less-powerful, has worse battery life, and I think even costs more…

> seems the other ARM option is the ThinkPad X13s

Seems there is a bunch of Windows laptops from Dell, Lenovo and Samsung besides the X13

https://www.qualcomm.com/products/mobile/snapdragon/pcs-and-...

they all have lower specs than M series, the Samsung and Thinkpad ones are the only two that have 16G of RAM. I think Macbooks are objectively superial in this ARM race, for now

If you don't mind skimping on speaker quality or, depending on model, screen resolution, I will again recommend lg gram laptops. I never heard the fan on my first, and my second only comes on if it is charging a low battery while on a video call, and even that is quiet compared to the helicopter noise of the last MacBook pro I had through my last employer.

> even that is quiet compared to the helicopter noise of the last MacBook pro I had through my last employer.

It's worth noting that this MBP was almost certainly an Intel model. The new ARM-based Apple laptops rarely have audible fans. This isn't to discount your recommendation, however.

To speak to this: I’ve triggered my 14” M1 Max MacBook Pro fan in two scenarios: Stable Diffusion, and Minecraft. At no point have I heard it run when I’ve been doing Actual Work.

It did leave me confused why people recommend Mac's, after I had to use them again for work in 2017, replaced with an even worse 2019 edition. The hardware was down the toilet in terms of keyboard quality and heating to uncomfortable temperatures.

I completely understand where you're coming from, I hated my 2019 also. It was quite warm even on idle. If a external display was connected the GPU had a bug where even at idle it used a lot of power and the whole machine was hot hot hot. Any work what so ever would make the fans unpleasantly audible.

M1/M2 Macs are in a completely different league. I'm on a 16" M1 Max and it is just a dream from a noise / temperature point of view. The fans _never_ come on during normal web dev work. And the laptop is cold to the touch. I only hear the fans come on during gaming and heavy compiling.

There are also the Windows Qualcomm snapdragon laptops and ARM chromebooks

Does it have to be a laptop? For desktop systems, there are many more options.

Haha, classic

I'm not aware of many fanless desktops outside of specialty systems.

Most are DIY, anything that is low wattage can be turned fanless if you buy some parts and build it yourself. But OP was daft with his answer. As someone who doesn't like the Apple ecosystem and only uses PC, I can only admit defeat when it comes to power efficiency. There is no way you could make a true fanless system run as well as Apple's efficient SOCs. PC parts that are as powerful generate a lot more heat and even with the best fanless cases and radiators there is only so much you can do to dissipate heat.

Is it really that bad?

When semi-idle (just typing in a browser), turbostat on a i9-10900T system shows values that fluctuate around these values:

        PkgWatt CorWatt GFXWatt RAMWatt
        4.86 3.89 0.15 1.57
        2.21 1.40 0.02 1.41

Mostly it's around the second line with the lower values. Of course, when under load, PkgWatt can go up to close to 100W (depending on the system tuning), but if the cooling solution can handle that for a sufficiently long time, is this really a problem? After all, this CPU, while somewhat dated, is not actually slow, especially for multi-threaded workloads.

I highly recommend a NUC with a fanless case from Akasa.

Maybe industrial applications for dust-heavy environments or avoiding movable parts in a general make up most of the fanless niche, but some manufacturers offer desktop-like system as well. Desktop-like because extensibility is limited: these systems are typically built around mini-ITX boards, and the passive cooling solution may have limited options for cooling SSDs. Sustained CPU performance can be quite good, particularly with the Intel T series or the AMD equivalent.

DIY is a bit hit-or-miss because if you want a truly silent system, you need select components for absence of coil whine, and I haven't found a good way to do that yet.

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