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Ask HN: How ready for daily driving is Asahi Linux?

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Re: Ask HN: How ready for daily driving is Asahi Linux?

#101

Post by not1ofU »

capableweb wrote: post #91
not1ofU wrote: post #50

If you are in EU, you might be interested in this https://www.tuxedocomputers.com/ I am not affiliated, but recently purchased one and very happy with it.

Thank you for the recommendation. How are they keyboards and the general build quality? Like the hinges and other mechanical parts?

I got one of the midi sized systems, not a laptop. No complaints, the cable management is good. The parts are grand, the delivery was quick. I found it through a youtube channel called "the linux experience" - I think he is German. He does a review on their laptops, maybe that will be more usefull for you.

Re: Ask HN: How ready for daily driving is Asahi Linux?

#102

Post by csdvrx »

folkrav wrote: post #89
csdvrx wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are some gains from being able to adjust, and some other gains for being able to use any computer with the same shortcuts and the key where I expect them to be. Personally, I prefer the gains from the latter approach: for example, I use ThinkPad bluetooth keyboards with eink tablets and Termux when I want to switch to something easier to my eyes. Keeping the same environment (ssh + tmux + bash + vim) with simil…

> my workflow and habits have become very independent from the hardware Isn't being constrained to a particular keyboard layout being _really_ dependent on hardware, to the contrary?

There are various thinkpads laptops, bluetooth keyboards, USB keyboards all from Lenovo so I can mix and match.

There are also non Lenovo keyboard makers following the same layout like the Tex Shinobi.

To me, it seems better than the alternatives of having different layouts and maintaining different set of shortcuts.

Re: Ask HN: How ready for daily driving is Asahi Linux?

#103

Post by nextos »

viraptor wrote: post #30
notpushkin wrote: post #10

No GPU means it gets pretty hot sometimes (don't even try watching videos, I've literally burned myself :'). Otherwise I'd say I could use it as a daily driver: a bit clunky, needs some tinkering, but everything I personally need (VSCodium, Firefox, Docker, wifi, audio in the headphones) already works and works well. If you already have a MacBook you could use, just give it a try – you can dual-boot, so if it doesn't…

FTR, GPU support is very close now and if you really want to you can try it yourself. Basic OpenGL and all desktops should work. ( https://vt.social/@lina/109346469312488886 ) but yeah - definitely not working ootb yet.

I think right now the best option is to run macOS plus Nix for a Linux userland.

However, once GPU support and microphone lands in linux-asahi or mainline, it will be probably good enough to switch to Linux. The webcam is currently WIP. That would make a more or less fully functional machine: https://github.com/AsahiLinux/docs/wiki/Feature-Support

It's a shame there's no comparable x86_64 machine right now. A ThinkPad or a Surface could fill in this gap, especially with a Ryzen CPU. However, at least in the EU, MacBook Airs are much cheaper. Plus, they are fanless.

ARM-based machines from other manufacturers are also starting to appear, e.g. ThinkPad X13s. However, performance is still a bit behind M1 CPUs. Full Linux support may arrive sooner than for MacBook Airs, though. Booting Debian is not too hard right now: https://forums.lenovo.com/t5/Other-Linux-Discussions/Does-an...

Re: Ask HN: How ready for daily driving is Asahi Linux?

#104

Post by yusefnapora »

yusefnapora wrote: post #96
yewenjie wrote: post #9

Related question: does anybody exclusively use any Linux distro on MacBooks in a VM? What is the tradeoff and how is your experience? I want the MacBooks for the battery backup, but I cannot live without NixOS, and seems like Asahi is still a few months away.

I run NixOS in Parallels, and it's super nice. I copied a config from https://github.com/wegank/nixos-config/tree/main/hardware/pa... for an updated parallels-tools package, for things like copy/paste and mounting shared folders from the host OS. I'm really happy with it overall. All the hardware works perfectly, and I don't notice the bit of RAM & CPU reserved for the host. The only downside is that some packages ar…

Hmm, my edit below erased my original comment, as I wasn't paying attention... Anyway, the gist is that NixOS runs great in Parallels, using the patched parallels-tools module from this nixos config: https://github.com/wegank/nixos-config/tree/main/hardware/pa...

Some packages on nixpkgs aren't available for aarch64-linux, but mostly unfree stuff like Spotify that's available on macOS. Overall I really like it, and I hardly ever interact with the host OS anymore for dev work. That said, I still use macOS for casual browsing, since scrolling and trackpad gestures are smoother than in linux. Not a big deal, since copy/paste works fine.

edit to add a link to my config, which has a couple tweaks for screen resolution, etc: https://github.com/yusefnapora/nixos-system-flake/blob/main/...

Mine is using an older and more complicated version of the parallels-tools patch, so go with the one linked above if you end up using Parallels.

You could also try UTM, which now has support for Rosetta for x86 binaries. There's a good writeup for NixOS + Rosetta here that I can confirm works: https://xyno.space/post/nixos-utm-rosetta - I had some random instability with UTM though, so switched back to Parallels.

Re: Ask HN: How ready for daily driving is Asahi Linux?

#105

Post by pxc »

dmm wrote: post #98
reacharavindh wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By any chance do you know if AMD Ryzen CPUs retain the s3 sleep/resume facilities? As in can I get a Mac like suspend/resume behaviour with Ryzen and Linux?

> As in can I get a Mac like suspend/resume behaviour with Ryzen and Linux? What do you mean? Reliably suspending on lid close? That will depend on the system. My 12th gen Framework with Fedora is very reliable in that way. Battery lasting a week+ when sleeping? Don't count on it but sleep time will depend on the system. Even s3 sleep varied a lot. Some systems wouldn't suspend ssd during s3, for example. Arguably s2…

> s3, which can take 6-10 seconds.

What? S3 should be well under 5 seconds. 10 seconds is like a whole clean boot, or resuming from hibernation on NVMe.

Re: Ask HN: How ready for daily driving is Asahi Linux?

#106

Post by viraptor »

nextos wrote: post #103
viraptor wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FTR, GPU support is very close now and if you really want to you can try it yourself. Basic OpenGL and all desktops should work. ( https://vt.social/@lina/109346469312488886 ) but yeah - definitely not working ootb yet.

I think right now the best option is to run macOS plus Nix for a Linux userland. However, once GPU support and microphone lands in linux-asahi or mainline, it will be probably good enough to switch to Linux. The webcam is currently WIP. That would make a more or less fully functional machine: https://github.com/AsahiLinux/docs/wiki/Feature-Support It's a shame there's no comparable x86_64 machine right now. A ThinkPa…

I missed the x13s, thank you for bringing it up. So... now that I moved my gaming to Linux on handheld, I can move my laptop Linux to Arm. The current possibilities feel both weird and exciting.

Re: Ask HN: How ready for daily driving is Asahi Linux?

#107

Post by musicale »

yewenjie wrote: post #9

Related question: does anybody exclusively use any Linux distro on MacBooks in a VM? What is the tradeoff and how is your experience? I want the MacBooks for the battery backup, but I cannot live without NixOS, and seems like Asahi is still a few months away.

This is a nice idea actually for finessing the GPU driver issue - use the virtual GPU drivers. (As a bonus you still have access to macOS desktop apps if you need or want them.)

Personally I use tend to use Linux VMs as if they were remote servers, so I don't have a huge need for Linux GPU drivers.

One thing that helped with VMware Fusion is using host-local interfaces with static IP addresses. Otherwise I would tend to get disconnected from VMs when macOS disconnected from wi-fi, which was very annoying. This is less of an issue if you're using the VM window directly.

Re: Ask HN: How ready for daily driving is Asahi Linux?

#108

Post by allisdust »

bestouff wrote: post #24
allisdust wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dell XPS is the only laptop where I have seen this working reliably. Worst part is that thanks to zram, many distros removed hibernate functionality. So its not possible now to either sleep or hibernate on many laptop/distro combinations. This makes Linux unusable in most cases due to battery drain (and some times even dangerous as laptop gets super hot inside bag etc).

"Dell XPS" is too generic a term to be useful. I've got an old XPS 13 which works perfectly; I also got a newer XPS 15 (top of the line, 4500€) which never managed to sleep correctly (thanks to Intel s0ix hybrid-suspend) and often overheated in the bag. I got rid of the latter after 1 year, it was a mess to use.

The one I have is 2021 XPS 13. May be the 15 model is wired different somehow.

Re: Ask HN: How ready for daily driving is Asahi Linux?

#109

Post by pxc »

csdvrx wrote: post #69
capableweb wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> standard ThinkPad keyboard They're talking about how ThinkPad keyboards have looked and worked since forever. Seems it changed recently.

It hasn't "changed", it's more like a variant that's been introduced for both the gamers and end-users laptops line (Z series) The professional lines (ex: X series) are still using the standard ThinkPad keyboard.

GP is probably referring to the move away from the classic keyboard, which more resembles the IBM desktop layout (separated F keys in clusters of 4, standard home/end/pgup/pgdown arrangement, etc.).

To fans of that layout, the standard (still typical on desktops) was abandoned on ThinkPads ~10 years ago.

Re: Ask HN: How ready for daily driving is Asahi Linux?

#110

Post by pxc »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #39
mh7 wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well not even Windows can manage to sleep a 'modern standby' laptop reliably these days. I had to set hibernate on lid-close because Windows kept waking it up all the time even while closed.

I have always been curious why I have been seeing people with MacBooks close their lids and walk away at a moment’s notice for nearly 20 years, but I still do not expect to be able to do that from any non Macbook. Such a killer feature that one would think Microsoft would prioritize.

You don't get instant on with most hardware (some laptops have achieved it through CoreBoot, System76 sells some like that), but with anything that supports S3 and NVMe you can definitely get a reliable system where your laptop can sleep for weeks at a time. Just set up suspend-then-hibernate in systemd on a laptop with a fast SSD.
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