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ARM64 Linux Workstation

jasoneckert.github.io

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Re: ARM64 Linux Workstation

#451

Post by neop1x »

wraptile wrote: post #289
apatheticonion wrote: post #152

I cannot wait for Linux to be fully usable on my Apple Silicon MBP. That is going to be such a killer environment to develop on. Crazy fast hardware, great high refresh screen, insane battery life, fantastic touchpad, gestures and keyboard. There is the potential that Windows games could run on it with some combination of x86 translation and Proton. Using MacOS on it feels like I have a ferrari with square wheels. Wa…

I really don't understand the obsession with Apple laptop hardware. There are many alternatives that objective better: more ergonomic, less reflective screens, better keyboards, cheaper, lighter.

I haven't seen a non-apple laptop with a such a great touchpad, sound and display. It is always only one, max two of these criteria.

I have been using x86 laptops in the past (terrible clickpad and speakers like a cheap handheld radio from '90 but whatever, I ignored the overpriced Intel Macs). But M2 is something which I couldn't ignore anymore, bought and I am very happy. They are awesome (unless you buy lowest spec 8GB RAM version)! My only complaint is the soldered SSD and apple pricing on SSD. Having a slot there would make so much sense...

Re: ARM64 Linux Workstation

#452

Post by wlonkly »

satysin wrote: post #352
apatheticonion wrote: post #152

I cannot wait for Linux to be fully usable on my Apple Silicon MBP. That is going to be such a killer environment to develop on. Crazy fast hardware, great high refresh screen, insane battery life, fantastic touchpad, gestures and keyboard. There is the potential that Windows games could run on it with some combination of x86 translation and Proton. Using MacOS on it feels like I have a ferrari with square wheels. Wa…

> Using MacOS on it feels like I have a ferrari with square wheels. Indeed macOS is the weakest part when working on Apple Silicon. Sure it’s quite pretty but it stumbles over itself with terrible quality of life features. macOS looks modern but feels around ten years behind other desktops now. Apple love to talk about how professionals and power users can get so much work done with the amazing Apple Silicon but igno…

It's funny, I love Stage Manager. I was worried about what I'd do after the Ventura upgrade because TotalSpaces is on life support, and so there was a chance it might stop working and I'd have to go back to 1-dimensional spaces after relying on two-dimensional spaces, and various 2D window manager workspace things, for many years.

But Stage Manager is what I actually wanted all along: let me group windows together, and then when I switch to one of them, bring the others along. For my typical workday I have my "slack, mail, mastodon" stage, a stage with a couple of browser windows, a stage with VScode and a couple of terminal windows, a stage with Obsidian and Omnifocus, and then ad-hoc stages as I need them. I add a terminal window to stages as I need.

I end up with the same benefits of two-dimensional TotalSpaces spaces, without having to care about the spaces' relative positions anymore! When I cmd-tab to VScode, I get my VScode "stuff", and when I cmd-tab to slack or mail, I get that "stuff", and so on. I wish I could make the transition faster, but with "Reduce Motion" turned on to skip the animation, it's not so bad.

Re: ARM64 Linux Workstation

#453

Post by dTal »

Joeri wrote: post #288
mardifoufs wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I keep hearing about battery life being just as almost just as good or better on linux (and on Windows too, though that's a more realistic claim). Yet even the latest gens thinkpads are pretty awful w.r.t battery. My friend bought an i5 12xxx Thinkpad X1 and can barely do 5 or 6 hours of screen on time, when the stated capacity is 16h. Lenovo denied a refund, because it's working as intended according to them (and my…

Lenovo’s battery life numbers are consistent generation to generation, but wildly unrealistic. My 2015 thinkpad (since replaced by m1 air) was rated as 12 hours but could do at most half in practice doing very light tasks and typically ran about 4 hours. So when you buy a thinkpad you should assume actual battery life is a third to half of the rated life. Apple’s numbers are equally unrealistic. They rate my m1 air f…

Eh... I have a T480. It's advertised at "17+" hours. With the 72Wh extended battery fitted, it has a total of 96Wh energy storage. With some small effort tuning (making sure the nvidia GPU is properly powered down etc) I can easily get its consumption down to about 5W - less, with lowered screen brightness and wifi off. 96Wh / 5W = 19h 12 min. Seems legit.

Re: ARM64 Linux Workstation

#455

Post by ajyotirmay »

pjmlp wrote: post #338
apatheticonion wrote: post #331

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The issue isn't that a MacBook is the wrong tool for the job, it's precisely that it's demonstrably capable of being the right tool for the job but Apple deliberately chooses to make it useless in an attempt to ring fence products within their ecosystem. The comparison to the console world is apt as it mirrors Apple's attempts to lock their platform down, much like the console ecosystem. Thankfully the bootloader is…

Buying a device for Apple ecosystem developers and pretending it is a Linux distribution, is precisely holding it wrong. Professional Developer !== Doing stuff on Linux distributions. Want Linux? Buy Linux.

Why are you so aggressively defending a trashy product? I can't reliably alt+tab on a MacOS to switch between windows and apps, there are hidden shortcuts, 3 modifier keys make it a nightmare to wrap my head around shortcuts, window tiling is trash (thanks for the save Rectangle), iTunes randomly popping up when I use my BT headset, applications need to be "quit", closing just isn't enough, but some apps quit when their last window is closed, weird! Stage manager, virtual desktop, a broken dock. It's a nightmare. MS Windows have invented such a cool way of switching between multiple windows of the same app, doesn't matter if those are minimised or not.

Oh, and Macs have a hide and minimise feature, wow! Just a cluster fuck entirely. Gazillion different ways of installing applications and then managing all those updates separately (a lot like Windows in that regard). These are all issues I face on a regular basis, haven't even dived into developer experience.

Re: ARM64 Linux Workstation

#456

Post by ajyotirmay »

baq wrote: post #387
pjmlp wrote: post #312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then don't buy a Mac, that simple. WSL 2 is a Hyper V VM for running Linux distributions, while WSL emulated Linux syscalls. Surely some of that salary can be used to make OEMs selling Linux hardware happy, instead of buying Apple and then complaining macOS isn't yet another Linux distribution. If you want WSL like experience on Mac, VMWare is happy to provide it to you. It is like complaining using Playstation SDK i…

> Then don't buy a Mac, that simple. If only. It was not my choice to make, it was my employer’s.

Difficult debating a fan's love with logic, right? This person is so aggressively justifying the MacOS decisions

Re: ARM64 Linux Workstation

#457

Post by andrewstuart »

apatheticonion wrote: post #152

I cannot wait for Linux to be fully usable on my Apple Silicon MBP. That is going to be such a killer environment to develop on. Crazy fast hardware, great high refresh screen, insane battery life, fantastic touchpad, gestures and keyboard. There is the potential that Windows games could run on it with some combination of x86 translation and Proton. Using MacOS on it feels like I have a ferrari with square wheels. Wa…

For desktop why wouldn’t you use Intel or AMD?

They’re faster and cheaper and more compatible and better software support.

I can understand people who want a Mac laptop, but seems weird to choose a slower, more expensive, less mainstream machine for desktop.

Re: ARM64 Linux Workstation

#458

Post by paines »

paines wrote: post #440
paines wrote: post #369

Earlier quoted context omitted.

thank you for that report. This convinced me to install it now.

Actually it works quite nicely on a M1 14''. Even battery life is quite good. Compared to my Dell XPS 15 7590 it has twice the battery life, easily if not even more. One thing which bothers me a lot as it makes the laptop hardly useable for me at night: display brightness cannot be adjusted, it is either off or 100%. Some user claim this can be accomplished by installing the asahi-edge kernel, which does not even boo…

Also the whole things seems somewhat un-deterministic. This morning I booted and the the Login screen nothing works. No keyboard input, touchpad won't move the cursor. Powerbutton works and will power off the machine. Then, u-boot starts and it stopped with some inputs, like it seems those keys I entered at the login scree, which shouldn't be at all NEVER....a few reboots and then it works normal. Very strange...

Re: ARM64 Linux Workstation

#459

Post by microtonal »

flkiwi wrote: post #416
microtonal wrote: post #304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had a ThinkPad T14 AMD and the battery life on Linux was very mediocre, even after tuning with powertop. It was usually 2-4 hours, on Windows more like 8-9 hours.

Conversely, I'm on a Gen 8 X1, and on Silverblue with tlp replacing power-profiles-daemon, I routinely get 8-9 hours. Anecdata and whatnot, but I'm pretty happy with modern linux + modern hardware. That's not to say I wouldn't love to get my hands on an M1 macbook to see the difference though...

Right, and that is the issue. If I buy a Mac and run MacOS I can be sure that I get long battery life. If I get a PC laptop and run Linux, it's a random crapshoot if the random combination of hardware, kernel version, etc. (I also used Silverblue and Fedora) of whether you get a good battery life.

Maybe Asahi Linux will improve things, since they only target a very small number of hardware configurations.

Re: ARM64 Linux Workstation

#460

Post by ActorNightly »

mgkimsal wrote: post #225
ActorNightly wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I seem to be in the minority, but I honestly don't get how people can develop productively on a laptop. The lack of full size keyboard, screen real estate, and uncomfortable touchpad compared to a mouse just feels horrible to me.

I’ve grown to hate using a mouse, and love the MacBook trackpad. Having your hands so close to both keyboard and trackpad means less travel time between.

True, but in terms of development, the main use of mouse is really selecting text for copy and paste (unless you are hardcore vim user), and scrolling.

Id be impressed if the speed at which you can select text accurately is higher on the trackpad than a mouse. I have seen lots of developers at work on their macbooks do the standard select text->copy->paste, and everyone is way slower at this then people who use mouse.

Maybe its my FPS gaming days that make me better at this, but then again, nobody really plays FPS seriously using trackpads

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