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
* 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...
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.
I'm on the other side where I've been buying Thinkpads partly because of the display. Thinkpads have for a long time been one of the few laptop options on the market where you could get a decent matte non-glare display. I value that, battery life and performance above moar pixels. Sure I want just one step above FHD so I can remote 1080p VMs and view vids in less than fullscreen at native resolution but 4K on a 14" is absolute overkill.
I think most legit motivations for wanting very high-res screens (e.g. photo and video editing, publishing, graphics design) also come with wanting or needing better quality and colors etc too, which makes very-highly-scaled mid-range monitors a pretty niche market.
> I got too spoiled by retina screens, and I can’t comfortably use anything with lower DPI.
Did you make a serious effort while having an extended break from retina screens? I'd think you would get used to it pretty quickly if you allow yourself to readjust. Many people do multi-DPI setups without issues - a 720p and a 4k side-by-side for example. It just takes acclimatizing.
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.
Google folks pop up here and there and say it’s actively worked on. Unless you have more recent information, I believe the project is still alive.
Things have definitely changed, a lot.
Can you please let me know if there is an ISO to get any mainstream Linux distro working on this Snapdragon laptop ?
ASUS - Vivobook 14 14" FHD+ Laptop - Copilot+ PC - Snapdragon X
It's on sale for $350 at Best buy and if I can get Linux working on it it would definitely be an awesome gift for myself.
Even if there's some progress being made, it's still nearly impossible to install a typical Linux distro on one of these. I've been watching this space since the snapdragon laptops were announced. Tuxedo giving up and canceling their Snapdragon Linux laptop doesn't instill much confidence
This includes Vivobook S15, not sure about the 14.
I've followed that thread for almost a year. It's a maze of hardware issues and poor compatibility.
From your other response.
>but vendors usually require a firmware binary to be signed with their keys, which are burned into the SoC. As a result you cannot use Qualcomm's vanilla firmware and need to extract the original firmware as provided by the vendor, otherwise it won't load.
This makes the install process impossible without an existing Windows install. It's easier to say it doesn't work and move on.
It's going to be significantly easier to buy run Linux in an X86 laptop.
Not to mention no out of the box Linux Snapdragon Elite laptop exists. It's a shame because it would probably be an amazing product.
I get the hate on Qualcomm, but you're really one LLM question away from understanding why they do this. I should know, I was also getting frustrated before I read up on this.
Then it turned out this was the usual. Nothing had changed. It was just that people online have this desire to express that “the underdog” is actually better. Not clear why because it’s never true.
AMD is still hot garbage on Linux. Geohot primarily sells “green boxes”. And the MI300x didn’t replace H100s en masse.
I remember having to fight with fglrx, AMDs proprietary Linux driver, for hours on end. Just to get hardware-acceleration for my desktop going! That driver was so unbearable I bought Nvidia just because I wanted their proprietary driver. Cut the fiddling time from many hours to maybe 1 or 2!
Nowadays, I run AMD because their open-source amdgpu driver means I just plonk the card into the system, and that's it. I've had to fiddle with the driver exactly zero times. The last time I used Nvidia is the distant past for me. So - for me, their drivers are indeed "so much better". But my usecase is sysadmin work and occasional gaming through Steam / Proton. I ran LMStudio through ROCm, too, a few times. Worked fine, but I guess that's very much not representative for whatever people do with MI300 / H100.
And how does that work on AMD? I know the Steam Deck is AMD but Valve could have tweaked the driver or proton for that particular GPU.
Probably something hasn't run at some point but I can't remember what, more likely to be a Proton "issue". Your main problem will be some configuration of anti-cheat for some games.
My experience has been basically fantastic and no stress. Just check that games aren't installing some Linux build which are inevitably extremely out of date and probably wont run. Ex: human fall flat (very old, wont run), deus ex mankind divided (can't recall why but I elected to install the proton version, I think performance was poor or mouse control was funky).
I guess I don't play super-new games so YMMV there. Quick stuff I can recall, NMS, Dark Souls 1&2&3, Sekiro, Deep Rock Galactic, Halo MCC, Snow runner & Expeditions, Eurotruck, RDR1 (afaik 2 runs fine, just not got it yet), hard space ship breaker, vrising, Tombraider remaster (the first one and the new one), pacific drive, factorio, blue prince, ball x pit, dishonored uhhh - basically any kind of "small game" you could think of: exapunks, balatro, slay the spire, gwent rougemage, whatever. I know there were a bunch more I have forgotten that I played this year.
I actually can't think of a game that didn't work... Oh this is on Arch Linux, I imagine Debian etc would have issues with older Mesa, etc.
Finally, now I have 6x4090 on one machine. Just works. 1x5090 on other. Just works. And everyone I know prefers N to A. Drivers proprietary. Result great. GPU responds well.
I said "LLM lens" because you were talking about hardware typically used for number crunching, not graphics displays, like the MI300. So I was suggesting that the difference between what you hear online about the driver and your own experience might result from people like me mostly talking about the 2d / 3d acceleration side of things while the experience for ROCm and stuff is probably another story altogether.
Nodding along with the rest but isn't this backwards? Are M series actually outperforming an Intel i9 P-core or Ryzen 9X in raw single-threaded performance?
Have a look at Geekbench's results.[1] Ignore the top ones, since they're invalid and almost certainly cheated (click to check). The iPads and such lower down are all legit, but the same goes for some of the i9s inbetween.
And honestly, the fact that you have to go up to power hungry desktop processors to even find something to compete with the chip that goes in an (admittedly high-end) iPad, is somewhat embarrassing on its face, and not for Apple.
However, the M2 in the blog post is from 2022 and isn't quite as blazingly fast in single thread performance.
[1] https://nanoreview.net/en/cpu-compare/apple-m4-8-cores-vs-am...
> 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].
As to x86, Zen 6 will be AMD's first major architecture rework since Apple demonstrated what is possible with wide decode. ( Well more accurately it should be since the world take notice because it happened long before M1 ). It still likely wont be close to M5 or even M4 with Single Threaded Performance / Watt, but hopefully it will be close.
This is an oft-repeated meme, but not really true. Thinkpads, high-end lightweight gaming laptops like the Asus G14... There are many x86 laptops with excellent build quality.
The machine quality is pretty damn good, but Huawei machines are still better. Apple level of quality. And Huawei releases their machines with Linux preinstalled
The company to watch is Wiko. Its their French spin off to sidestep their chip ban. They might put out some very nice laptops, but a bit tbd
I have a Honor 200 pro, and the software is buggy and constantly replaces user configurations with their defaults every 3 or 4 days.
I would avoid anything Honor in the future at any cost.
I've moved completely to EliteBooks and am very happy with my decision. The build quality is superb, they're upgradeable, everything is replaceable and there's an excellent market and after market for parts, and HP has codepaths in their firmware for Linux support, meaning even Modern Standby works well.
Price points for refurb and used hardware are great, too.
It has no fans.
It's temperature never changes unless you really push it. I've never used any other laptop where I could feel at least some warmth when it was turned on.
My m1 air still has enough battery to run for a full day of usage, here several years after I bought it. Basically never loses power while the lid is closed either, but that is less of an issue.
This is indeed a problem. My Macbook Pro (with active cooling!) would commonly come within 5c of junction temp when compiling, mdworker_shared was running, or Docker was working.
It was an issue with the Intel Macs too, just much more readily apparent since they throttled faster. I wish Apple backed down from this hill, for the sake of my damned gonads.
It throttes and stuff, but it still outperforms the t14 i7 with 32gb ram I've got from my company. Granted, that one has a lot of enterprice stuff running, but still...
I do hope someone will make a pc that is as close to an air as possible though. I like Apple, but I'm not a fan of being bound to an US tech company these days. I'm not important enough to be targeted personally, but what if the US government decides to ban all Danes from US tech in the war for Greenland? Or the more likely scenario, what if Apple decides to go full Microsoft with AI and what not?
Closest I've found to an MBP 16" replacement.
Have been running Dell Precision laptops for many years on Linux, not sure about Lenovo build quality and battery life, but hoping it will be decent enough.
Would run Asahi if it supported M4 but looks it's a long ways away...
I’ve had issues with T14s for a couple of gens where the machine wakes up during the closed lid and runs the battery down. I’ve tried the usual troubleshooting.
This has been a non issue on Dell machines for almost 20 years.
Kernel params
## Seems to be needed for suspend to S0 (s2idle) without hanging (only needed on p16s)
acpi_osi="Windows 2022"
# Prevent spurious wakeups from a firmware bug where the EC or SMU generates spurious "heartbeat" interrupts during sleep
acpi.ec_no_wakeup=1
# Prevents dock from waking up laptop right after suspend
usbcore.autosuspend=-1
# Disable Thunderbolt PCIe root port wakeup (RP09)
echo disabled > /sys/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:1d.0/power/wakeup || true
# Disable USB XHCI controller wakeup
echo disabled > /sys/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:14.0/power/wakeup || true
# Disable ACPI wakeup for XHCI and RP09 (toggle if enabled)
grep -q "XHCI.*enabled" /proc/acpi/wakeup && echo XHCI > /proc/acpi/wakeup || true
grep -q "RP09.*enabled" /proc/acpi/wakeup && echo RP09 > /proc/acpi/wakeup || truePerformance is still very high so if they don't need the current top tier AMD horsepower, Intel is the way to go. It's also quieter, cooler and doesn't throttle. Not to mention the ability to use SRIOV GPU for running Windows software in a VM.
Also, Lenovo tends to limit HiDPI displays to Intel CPUs, for some ekhm unknown reason.
https://www.phoronix.com/news/Intel-Panther-Lake-NPU-Firmwar...
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.
Are you running windows?
That’s not at all reassuring.
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.
The problem with Ubuntu, as other mentioned, is that you get ancient version of some packages. Fedora is nicely up to date.
I've also only used Debian based stuff my whole life and even moving from apt to dnf or whatever it was causes too much friction for me haha, though it's not that bad obviously, if I really would see the positives.
Modern desktop Linux relies on software that's being fixed and improving at a high velocity, and ironically, can be more stable than relying on a distro's fixed release cycles.
KDE Plasma, Wayland support, Pipewire, etc all have had recent fixes and improvements that you will not get to enjoy for another X months/years until Canonical pulls in those changes and freezes them for release.
Similarly, newer kernels are a must when using relatively recent hardware. Fixes and support for new hardware lands in new kernels, LTS releases might not have the best support for your newer hardware.
Stability for a distro means “doesn’t change” not “doesn’t crash”.
Debian/ubuntu are stable because they freeze versions so you can even create scripts to work around bugs and stuff and be sure that it will keep working throughout that entire release.
Arch Linux is not stable because you get updates every day or whatever. Maybe you had some script or patch to work around a bug and tomorrow it won’t work anymore.
This does not say _anything_ about crashing or bugs, except that if you find a bug/crash on a stable system then it is likely you can rely on this behaviour.
It's a tradeoff that I'm happy with. I get to have a very up to date system.
That's a wild statement!
It really depends what you mean by "quality". To me first and foremost quality I look for in a laptop is for it to not break. As I'm a heavy desktop user, my laptop is typically with me on the couch or on vacation. Enter my MacBook Air M1: after 13 months, and sadly no extended warranty, the screen broke for no reason overnight. I literally closed it before going to bed and when I opened the lid the next day: screen broken. Some refer to that phenomenon as the "bendgate".
And every time I see a Mac laptop I can't help but think "slick and good looking but brittle". There's a feeling of brittleness with Mac laptops that you don't have with, say, a Thinkpad.
My absolute best laptop is a MIL-SPEC (I know, I know, there are many different types of military specs) LG Gram. Lighter than a MacBook too. And every single time I demo it to people I take the screen, I bent it left and right. This thing is rock solid.
I happen to have this laptop (not my vid) and look at 34 seconds in the vid:
The guy literally throws my laptop (well, the same) down concrete stairs and the thing still just works fine.
The friend who sold it to me (I bought it used) one day stepped on it when he woke up. No problemo.
To me that is quality: something you can buy used and that is rock solid.
Where are the vids of someone throwing a MacBook Air down the stairs and the thing keeps working?
I'm trading a retina display any day for a display that doesn't break when it accidentally falls on the ground.
Now I love the look and the incredible speed of the MacBook Air laptops (I still have my M1 but has its screen broke, I turned it into a desktop) but I really wish they were not desk queens: we've got desktops for that.
I don't want a laptop that require exceptional care and mad packaging skills when putting it inside a backpack (and which then requires the backpack to be manipulated with extreme care).
So: bring me the raw power and why not the nice look of a MacBook Air, but make it sturdy (really the most important for me) and have it support Linux. That I'd buy.
As for light and sturdy, the Netbook era had it all. A shame the world moved on from that.
My wife is the bane of electronic devices.
Phones simply won't survive a week without an industrial case. Screen projectors last as short as a single day.
The only computers that survived her JerryRigEverything levels of abuse are MacBooks+ who routinely fall off tables, stairs, or simply hands.
One even fell off open 90 degrees and rotationally fell right on the far edge at what would be the maximum torque position; there was massive deformation of the lid aluminum but the lid was still flat, the glass had no cracks, and the whole thing perfectly functional.
(note: these are the older designs from the first unibody to the last Intel laptop, not the newer Mx ones)
+ Well, except one, which had an entire pint toppled towards and sloshed right upon the screen which had the liquid slide straight into the exhaust vents. There was an audible poof as the screen went black)
For some anecdata, I have:
Stood on mine Poured water on it. Been hit by a car while cycling and fallen on it. Dropped it.
It’s fine. Has a few scratches and a small dent. The predecessor is a 2013 Air which has had a hard life. It’s going great.
A colleague put a piece of a4 paper between keyboard and screen then closed it, squeezed it and cracked the screen. Don’t do that.
Bad keyboard, bad aluminium body, soldered ram...
Is it just the Apple Silicon that somehow makes it worth it? It's ARM, most software is still written and optimized for x86.
The number one benefit is the Apple Silicon processors, which are incredibly efficient.
Then it’s the trackpad, keyboard and overall build quality for me. Windows laptops often just feel cheap by comparison.
Or they’ll have perplexing design problems, like whatever is going on with Dell laptops these days with the capacitive function row and borderless trackpad.
Apple's good enough for the average consumer, just like a 16-bit home computer back in the day. Everyone who looks for something bespoke/specialized (e. g. certified dual- or multi-OS support, ECC-RAM, right-to-repair, top-class flicker-free displays, size, etc.) looks elsewhere, of course.
Would you elaborate ?
I believe there are a few all-metal laptops competing in the marketplace but was unaware they were actually better than the apple laptops ... what all aluminum laptops are better and how are they better ?
it's a stylistic choice, not a logical one.
I was looking at Thinkpad Auras today. There are unaligned jutting design edges all over the thing. From a design perspective, I’ll take the smooth oblong squashed egg.
Every PC laptop I’ve touched feels terrible to hold and carry. And they run Windows, and Linux only okay. Apple MacBooks are a long mile better than everything else and so I don’t care about upgraded memory — buy enough ram at purchase time and you don’t have to think about it again.
Memory upgrades aren’t priced super well, granted, but I could never buy HP Dell Lenovo ever again. They’re terrible. I’ve had all of them. Ironically the best device I’ve had from the other side was a Surface Laptop. But I don’t do Microsoft anymore. And I don’t want to carry squeaky squishy bendy plastic.
Most of all, I’m never getting on a customer support call with the outsourced vendors that do the support for those companies ever ever ever again. I’ll take a visit to an Apple store every day of the week.
Not sure about anything else, have ONLY used those.
That alone is already very compelling for me (no noise, no fan to wear out). Then on top of that it has:
* Amazing battery life
* Great performance
* The best trackpad in the world
* Bright, crisp screen
The only downsides are the lack of upgradability and the annoying OS, but at least it's UNIX.
"...It's just a flesh wound..."
My arms rest on the body, the last thing I want is for it to be a material that leeches heat out of my body or that is likely to react with my hands' sweat and oils.
(unfortunately in the EU they only provide the 3-prong plug in the long-tail variant, which is kind of a bummer)
I am very much a Linux person. But the battery life with macOS on the Apple Silicon is absolutely insane.
I've been a reluctant MacBook user for 15 years now thanks to it being the de-facto hardware of tech, but for the first time ever since adopting first the M1 Pro and then an M2 Pro I find myself thinking: I could not possibly justify buying literally any other laptop so long as this standard exists.
Being able to run serious developer workflows silently (full kubernetes clusters, compilers, VSCode, multitudes of corpo office suite products etc), for multiple days at a time on a single charge is baffling. And if I leave it closed for a week at 80% battery, not only does that percentage remain nearly the same when resumed-- it wakes instantly! No hibernation wake time shenanigans. The only class of device which even comes close to being comparable are high end e-ink readers, and an e-ink reader STILL loses on wake time by comparison.
I'm at the point now where I'm desperately in need of an upgrade for my 8 year old personal laptop, but I'm holding off indefinitely until I discover something with a similar level of battery performance that can run Linux. As I understand it, the firmware that supports that insane battery life and specifically the suspend functionality that allows it to draw nearly zero power when closed isn't supported by any Linux distro or I would have already purchased another MacBook for personal use.
Run a lightweight DE like i3wm with any modern thinkpad and you will get similar usable battery life of around 6-8 hours.
Generally though, battery life isn't an issue anymore considering fast charging is everywhere.
> you will get similar usable battery life of around 6-8 hours
My macbook M3 gives me way more than 6-8 hours, it's simply insane. It literallly lasts for multiple days.
> Generally though, battery life isn't an issue anymore considering fast charging is everywhere.
Not an issue indeed, I got used to always charging my X1 carbon. But then I got an M3 for work, and... well it feels like I don't have to charge it ever :-).
As I said: very much a Linux person, but the M3 battery life is absolutely insane.
I prefer the aluminium to the plastic found on most Windows machines. The Framework is made from some aluminium alloy from what I know, and I see that as a good thing.
The soldered RAM sucks, but it's a trade-off I'm willing to make for a touchpad that actually works, a pretty good screen, and battery life that doesn't suck.
But through all the Dells, Thinkpads and Asus laptops I've had (~10), none were remotely close to a full package that MBP M1 Pro was.
- Performance - outstanding
- Fan noise - non-existent 99% of the time, cannot compare to any other laptop I had
- Battery - not as amazing as people claim for my usage, but still at least 30% better
- Screen, touchpad, speakers, chassis - all highest tier; some PC laptops do screen (Asus OLED), keyboard and chassis (Thinkpad) better, but nothing groundbreaking...
It's the only laptop I've ever had that gave me a feeling that there is nothing that could come my way, and I wouldn't be able to do on it, without any drama whatsoever.
It's just too bad that I can't run multiple external displays on Asahi...
(For posterity, currently using Asus Zenbook S16, Ryzen HX370, 32GB RAM, OLED screen, was $1700 - looks and feels amazing, screen is great, performance is solid - but I'm driving it hard, so fan noise is constant, battery lasts shorter, and it's just a bit more "drama" than with MBP)
A modern M4 should tho