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Asahi Linux for M1 Macs Progress October-November 2021

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Re: Asahi Linux for M1 Macs Progress October-November 2021

#41

Post by kitsunesoba »

ChuckNorris89 wrote: post #12
peoplefromibiza wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

power users come and go. general population don't need macs, a $ 200 smartphone is more than enough for the majority who would spend 1.500 euros (in Europe) for a laptop that has a limit of 16gb of RAM? only people with lots of money to waste.

I suspect you'll get downvoted into oblivion for your PoV by the pro-Apple HN crowd and even though I do agree with you to some extent on the the high pricing (a basic M1 MacBook is half my NET take home pay as a dev in Europe, and double my rent costs) but value is subjective to most people, and for most, buying into the Apple ecosystem the value the ecosystem brings to their lives is justified, otherwise they would…

The other thing is that specs alone don’t tell the whole story. There’s plenty of x86 laptops that on paper have better looking specs than the MacBook Air, but few or none of them are as good at what makes a laptop a laptop — mainly, battery life and heat output. There are laptops that are thinner and lighter, like the Thinkpad X1 Nano that I own, but that thing can’t touch an Air in battery life, heat output, and in some aspects performance.

Re: Asahi Linux for M1 Macs Progress October-November 2021

#42

Post by GeneralMaximus »

peoplefromibiza wrote: post #10
hbbio wrote: post #3

The progress on all fronts is really impressive, and even the write-up is top notch. The pace at which the team advances is incredible, as it seems Apple support is minimal... Maybe the core tech users is negligible to Apple, but it shouldn't be: Winning over the power users generally precedes larger adoption and I wouldn't be surprised if Macs continue to gain market share in the years to come with their CPU lead.

power users come and go. general population don't need macs, a $ 200 smartphone is more than enough for the majority who would spend 1.500 euros (in Europe) for a laptop that has a limit of 16gb of RAM? only people with lots of money to waste.

While I've recently stopped using Macs as my primary computers, I can definitely see the appeal of Apple computers for a large segment of the population.

E.g I still have my old MacBook around for running Ableton, because support for pro audio on both Windows and Linux is not great. Linux is almost there with PipeWire support landing in most major distros, but Windows still requires a lot of fiddling with drivers and random EXEs downloaded off the web to get a reasonable setup going. And I'm not even an audio professional, just a hobbyist with very mainstream hardware.

I suspect a lot of media/design/film professionals are in the same boat. Not to mention software developers who want a smoother experience than Windows/Linux can give them. This has always been Apple's market and they don't care about anyone else.

Re: Asahi Linux for M1 Macs Progress October-November 2021

#43

Post by LeonM »

marcan_42 wrote: post #40
LeonM wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't get your expectations up too high. My ThinkPad X1E has horrible battery life under Linux, and has a boatload of issues with thunderbolt, the external dock, HDMI port, audio and WiFi. For example: when my Thinkpad goes standby with an external monitor attached via TB, some ACPI interrupt goes insane and starts burning 100% CPU resources. USB ports regularly don't work after stand-by. BMC support seems problemati…

> My ThinkPad X1E has horrible battery life under Linux I ran the M1 Pro for a whole day during early testing without charging (because we hadn't initialized the USB-C port yet) and didn't even run out of battery. And I didn't even have the power management driver running yet. > has a boatload of issues with thunderbolt We'll see how that goes, but I get the feeling Apple's Thunderbolt controllers are going to be a l…

Hi Marcan! Amazing to get a response from the man himself :) This is why I love HN.

Please don't take my post too cynical, I understand how much work has already gone into getting this far, but also how hard it is to get the last 1% functionality working 'just right'. So, I am just trying to tame expectations here :-)

Thanks for the great work! I enjoyed reading the progress reports, and watching the Youtube live streams on the bring-up.

Re: Asahi Linux for M1 Macs Progress October-November 2021

#44

Post by GeneralMaximus »

LeonM wrote: post #22
RMPR wrote: post #9

This is great and might actually prompt me to get a Mac, as much as I like ThinkPads, this battery life is simply on another level.

Don't get your expectations up too high. My ThinkPad X1E has horrible battery life under Linux, and has a boatload of issues with thunderbolt, the external dock, HDMI port, audio and WiFi. For example: when my Thinkpad goes standby with an external monitor attached via TB, some ACPI interrupt goes insane and starts burning 100% CPU resources. USB ports regularly don't work after stand-by. BMC support seems problemati…

Oh wow, this sounds quite painful. I almost bought the X1E, but now I'm glad I didn't.

I'm on a X1 Carbon Gen 9 at the moment. I've had no issues with anything at all, besides having to change some settings on the WiFi chip to prevent the connection from dropping. In fact, Linux has been more reliable with external monitors than my old Intel MacBook.

(FWIW, I have a Dell 4k monitor that has documented compatibility issues with some MacBook Pro models, so that's probably on Dell.)

Re: Asahi Linux for M1 Macs Progress October-November 2021

#45

Post by hpen »

peoplefromibiza wrote: post #31
saagarjha wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suspect that your workload that uses 64 GB of RAM and 2 1 TB SSDs could benefit from an extremely fast processor.

The point is that I can find the performance I need for half the price. The price of an M1 Pro it's not justified by a slightly faster CPU, no matter how low the power usage is. I could understand 20% more, but not two times. Also: most of my workflows wouldn't work natively on ARM Macs. That doesn't mean Apple doesn't have a great product with a big market. They simply will never be mainstream. My answer was to I wo…

Go to a university and look around at all the MacBooks owned by non tech people. You would be surprised by the fact they are everywhere.

Re: Asahi Linux for M1 Macs Progress October-November 2021

#46

Post by boplicity »

peoplefromibiza wrote: post #10
hbbio wrote: post #3

The progress on all fronts is really impressive, and even the write-up is top notch. The pace at which the team advances is incredible, as it seems Apple support is minimal... Maybe the core tech users is negligible to Apple, but it shouldn't be: Winning over the power users generally precedes larger adoption and I wouldn't be surprised if Macs continue to gain market share in the years to come with their CPU lead.

power users come and go. general population don't need macs, a $ 200 smartphone is more than enough for the majority who would spend 1.500 euros (in Europe) for a laptop that has a limit of 16gb of RAM? only people with lots of money to waste.

> who would spend 1.500 euros (in Europe) for a laptop that has a limit of 16gb of RAM?

Let's say you use a laptop for 6 hours a day, five days a week, 48 weeks a year, and that it lasts for 3 years. That's 4,320 hours of usage. For many people, it's worth paying 35 cents per hour to use a machine that's even just a little bit better than one that costs half that. I'm writing this on a high-end Macbook Pro that's 8 years old. It was very expensive when I bought it, but the "cost per hour" has actually been quite low. The benefit of a better experience during the entire duration of usage is well worth the added cost, in my experience.

Re: Asahi Linux for M1 Macs Progress October-November 2021

#47

Post by dagw »

peoplefromibiza wrote: post #31
saagarjha wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suspect that your workload that uses 64 GB of RAM and 2 1 TB SSDs could benefit from an extremely fast processor.

The point is that I can find the performance I need for half the price. The price of an M1 Pro it's not justified by a slightly faster CPU, no matter how low the power usage is. I could understand 20% more, but not two times. Also: most of my workflows wouldn't work natively on ARM Macs. That doesn't mean Apple doesn't have a great product with a big market. They simply will never be mainstream. My answer was to I wo…

The point is that I can find the performance I need for half the price.

But only sacrificing something else, like screen, battery life and/or build quality.

I bought a M1 Pro, not primarily because of its performance, but because it was the cheapest way to get the performance I wanted without sacrificing battery life or build quality in a hardware/software package I could trust to Just Work out of the box.

Re: Asahi Linux for M1 Macs Progress October-November 2021

#48

Post by GeekyBear »

ohgodplsno wrote: post #33
saagarjha wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suspect that your workload that uses 64 GB of RAM and 2 1 TB SSDs could benefit from an extremely fast processor.

Such as a high end Ryzen, which eats the M1 for breakfast ? Sure.

The M1 chips that have been released certainly can't compete on core count against desktop chips with Zen 3 cores, but compared to the laptop versions of Ryzen, the M1 is absolutely not being eaten for breakfast.

>The chips here aren’t only able to outclass any competitor laptop design, but also competes against the best desktop systems out there, you’d have to bring out server-class hardware to get ahead of the M1 Max – it’s just generally absurd.

https://www.anandtech.com/show/17024/apple-m1-max-performanc...

Re: Asahi Linux for M1 Macs Progress October-November 2021

#49

Post by riquito »

boplicity wrote: post #46
peoplefromibiza wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

power users come and go. general population don't need macs, a $ 200 smartphone is more than enough for the majority who would spend 1.500 euros (in Europe) for a laptop that has a limit of 16gb of RAM? only people with lots of money to waste.

> who would spend 1.500 euros (in Europe) for a laptop that has a limit of 16gb of RAM? Let's say you use a laptop for 6 hours a day, five days a week, 48 weeks a year, and that it lasts for 3 years. That's 4,320 hours of usage. For many people, it's worth paying 35 cents per hour to use a machine that's even just a little bit better than one that costs half that. I'm writing this on a high-end Macbook Pro that's 8 y…

You're confirming OP point though, you didn't upgrade in 8 years, because for your use case it was good enough and not worth the expense

Re: Asahi Linux for M1 Macs Progress October-November 2021

#50

Post by WastingMyTime89 »

peoplefromibiza wrote: post #10
hbbio wrote: post #3

The progress on all fronts is really impressive, and even the write-up is top notch. The pace at which the team advances is incredible, as it seems Apple support is minimal... Maybe the core tech users is negligible to Apple, but it shouldn't be: Winning over the power users generally precedes larger adoption and I wouldn't be surprised if Macs continue to gain market share in the years to come with their CPU lead.

power users come and go. general population don't need macs, a $ 200 smartphone is more than enough for the majority who would spend 1.500 euros (in Europe) for a laptop that has a limit of 16gb of RAM? only people with lots of money to waste.

I am not what you would call an Apple fan still I bought a Macbook Air M1 with 16Gb of RAM in France for around 1200€ a couple of months ago (to replace an early 2011 Macbook Pro - I don't change my personal laptop often). While I would never buy a Macbook Pro, I think the Air pricing was fine. The price is pretty close to other ultraportables, performances are very good, battery life is incredible, the screen is beautiful and I don't mind paying a small premium for a sleek design and good quality control. I don't feel like I wasted my money.
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