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KDE runs on the Apple M2 with full GPU acceleration

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Re: KDE runs on the Apple M2 with full GPU acceleration

#111

Post by TacticalMalice »

asguy wrote: post #81
Conan_Kudo wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would probably suggest that Lenovo comes pretty close to Apple in terms of build quality. I have both Macs and ThinkPads and they both feel pretty good. The Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 10 is available with Fedora Linux as an option[1] and pretty much everything works out of the box with great performance. If you're in Europe, you can also get the ThinkPad Z13 and Z16 (which are AMD-based laptops) with Fedora as w…

Lenovo isn't close. I have several generations of X1 Carbons, and they all do terrible things like: - Scratch their own screens when lids are closed - Have failing LCD connectors (especially true with my 4k variant). - Flex terribly. I bought an M2 Air recently, and it's a far better machine.

My 14 inch MB Pro also scratches and stains its own screen with the lid closed. It's the only problem I have with this machine.

Re: KDE runs on the Apple M2 with full GPU acceleration

#112

Post by sofixa »

astrange wrote: post #80
sofixa wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The hardware is pretty good. Utterly unmaintainable, unserviceable and unapgradeable, extremely overpriced tiering (e.g. adding storage or RAM which you have to do at purchase time), with limited options (e.g. i cannot stand glossy screens with shitty reflections everywhere causing eye strain), but still very good. However the software (macOS) is pretty shit and IMO hard to adapt to coming from any other OS. Raw perf…

Glossy screens have better picture quality (black levels) in any situation where you can control the lighting. That’s usually true for laptops because you can just put it on your lap and swing around to avoid sunshine.

> That’s usually true for laptops because you can just put it on your lap and swing around to avoid sunshine.

So the options are extreme eye strain due to lights/sun/my own reflection, or extreme back pain due to having to sit like a prawn to hide the light from the laptop? I'd take slightly lower visual quality (doesn't matter in the slightest for what i do on a screen) over either of those.

Re: KDE runs on the Apple M2 with full GPU acceleration

#113

Post by Fnoord »

School-Cotton wrote: post #45
nu11ptr wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Possibly stupid q: Why buy a mac if you are just going to run Linux on it? I suspect any comparable PC would be more economical (w/ exception of power draw).

There are a number of reasons. 1. I prefer Mac hardware to any PC hardware (I don't know any manufacturers who come close to apple in hardware quality, so I don't think the "comparable PC" you cite even exists in reality). 2. I prefer to use Linux, since I'm more familiar with it, I'm more likely to be able to debug it when things go wrong (macOS Just Works more reliably, but when it doesn't, I'm stuck), and also I w…

I have some hope Framework laptops are going to end up filling this niche eventually. Right now, Linux is an afterthought on them, but its the same for Apple M1/M2 series.

Re: KDE runs on the Apple M2 with full GPU acceleration

#114

Post by jemmyw »

kitsunesoba wrote: post #44
coutego wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm quite sure it's just a question of what you are used to. It is for me, anyway. My first PC (~year 2000) came with Windows but I wanted to use some software that only existed for Unix at the time and I was used to work in Unix anyway, so I heard about Linux and installed it. Great, I got an OS I was used to and the software I needed for my project. When finally I had to use Windows for work a couple of years later…

> Last year I bought a MacBook, because of the M1, and I can't get used to the "weirdness" of MacOS, specially the keyboard and the window management. For what it's worth, long time Mac users feel that *nix desktops and Windows have the same kind of "weirdness" you describe here. The majority of modern macOS conventions can be traced back to the original 1985 Mac or the 5-10 years following its introduction. I starte…

There is a tool that makes Linux act as if it has Mac keybindings. https://github.com/rbreaves/kinto I've been using it, with some custom config, and it's made life a lot easier as I use a Mac and Linux laptop at the same time.

Re: KDE runs on the Apple M2 with full GPU acceleration

#115

Post by bombolo »

asguy wrote: post #81
Conan_Kudo wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would probably suggest that Lenovo comes pretty close to Apple in terms of build quality. I have both Macs and ThinkPads and they both feel pretty good. The Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 10 is available with Fedora Linux as an option[1] and pretty much everything works out of the box with great performance. If you're in Europe, you can also get the ThinkPad Z13 and Z16 (which are AMD-based laptops) with Fedora as w…

Lenovo isn't close. I have several generations of X1 Carbons, and they all do terrible things like: - Scratch their own screens when lids are closed - Have failing LCD connectors (especially true with my 4k variant). - Flex terribly. I bought an M2 Air recently, and it's a far better machine.

Apple computers used to break their own plastic by hitting themselves with the closing magnets and some protruding pieces of plastic.

I guess it's why they make them of metal now… Less problems with bad design and using the user as a heat sink.

Re: KDE runs on the Apple M2 with full GPU acceleration

#116

Post by bombolo »

nextos wrote: post #36
recuter wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I get 12+ hours of battery life on my M1 Air, no longer bother with cables and outlets at coffee shops. What else I could buy of similar weight/size/battery/quality? Even if knew of an alternative, there are other unexpected perks to going with Apple: travel constantly, occasionally selling my old one and switching to a new machine is easy whereas with other brands would be impossible. Amortized cost is less than $1/…

This also happened when Macs transitioned to Intel and Core 2 Duo laptops were released. At the same price point, PCs were much noiser and had much poorer battery range. ARM laptops from other brands are starting to pop up but they will take at least a year to catch up in terms of performance. Right now, ThinkPad X13s runs Linux very decently, but it's less powerful than the M1. In the US market it might be cheaper t…

> This also happened when Macs transitioned to Intel and Core 2 Duo laptops were released. At the same price point, PCs were much noiser and had much poorer battery range.

I had one of those macbooks… very silent but the fan broke quite soon and to use it I had to limit the cpu frequency or it would overheat and shut down.

I take the noise over the sleek computer with the air intake and outtake placed in the same hole that overheats constantly.

The machine was completely unusable in the summer, the bottom would get scorching hot. I could NOT place it on my legs.

Re: KDE runs on the Apple M2 with full GPU acceleration

#117

Post by Kuinox »

wizee wrote: post #74
Kuinox wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There was ARM laptops before M1, nobody wanted them. M1 was ahead because it was 1 silicon node ahead for a year. The competition already caught back: https://www.cpubenchmark.net/power_performance.html

That comparison chart is not very accurate. The Core i7-1250U CPUMark score of 13453 is at 29W (TDP up), not 9W (TDP down), so the performance per watt ratio they're using is inaccurate. Also, if you look at the CPUMark score distributions, you see a bimodal distribution because it mixes the 10 W (MacBook air) and 15W (MacBook Pro) configurations. The 10W (MacBook Air) variant of the M1 achieves a median CPUMark scor…

10W is the typical TDP, not the max TDP of the M1 chip. AFAIK M1 chip does not specify max TDP, which can go higher than the max TDP listed than the i7.

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

Re: KDE runs on the Apple M2 with full GPU acceleration

#118

Post by Kuinox »

wokkel wrote: post #72
Kuinox wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There was ARM laptops before M1, nobody wanted them. M1 was ahead because it was 1 silicon node ahead for a year. The competition already caught back: https://www.cpubenchmark.net/power_performance.html

Nobody wanted an arm laptop because it doesn't run windows/existing software. Apple bundles an is and a decent emulator for old software. If they didn't nobody would want it.

There was ARM surface laptops existing before M1 macs. It run existing software except x64 apps sadly. Windows phone, was windown on ARM.

People didn't liked ARM windows laptop, first because the performance was crap, then because the poor compatibility.

Re: KDE runs on the Apple M2 with full GPU acceleration

#119

Post by tambourine_man »

psychoslave wrote: post #110
tambourine_man wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They aren't obvious on Windows either, are they? Keyboard shortcuts are mostly a pro user thing. And don’t get me started on the way that OS inserts special keys. How do you insert ® on Windows? Alt-01whoCanRemember? On the Mac it’s usually something that makes sense like Option + R. Ç? Option-C. ƒ? You guessed it.

>They aren't obvious on Windows either, are they? No, of course. But the gap between linux and windows for that matter is really smaller, thus my surprise. All the more with the way Apple is marketed as so great in ergonomics. >Keyboard shortcuts are mostly a pro user thing. Sure, I would not use a Mac had my employer not provided it. Like many coders out there I guess. But Apple is not willing to pay attention to th…

I have little experience with Linux desktop environments, I use it for servers through the command line only, but the little interaction I had seemed more of an attempt to mimic Windows, so it’s no surprise it behaves similarly.

Most web and mobile developers I know use Macs, by far. Windows development is targeted to enterprise custom software, in my experience. It pays handsomely, but no one seems crazy in love with the stack.

I don’t think Apple has to cater to users of other platforms specially when it considers its conventions superior.

Regarding bépo layout, dvorak is already a tiny niche. Bépo is a niche within a niche. I wouldn’t expect wide support anywhere really.

Re: KDE runs on the Apple M2 with full GPU acceleration

#120

Post by Maursault »

tambourine_man wrote: post #93
Maursault wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And I bought Macs exclusively when the hardware was both much slower and pricier than PCs (68k and PPC), because I loved the software so much. Incredible that these myths are being perpetuated by a Mac user. The fact is that at release, new Macs (including 68k and PPC) were always the most performant machines available in their class. Always. You could buy a cheaper x86, but it wasn't as powerful on that date. And…

At release , they mostly were. As soon as G3 was released it screamed. But then Intel kept bumping MHz every 6 months or so. Same with the G5, but that margin lasted even less. The G4 was just a sad period in the PPC line up on desktops. They made for good laptops though.

> The G4 was just a sad period in the PPC line up on desktops.

Not really. In 1999, the US government classified them as supercomputers and banned their export to over 50 countries. Apple tried to make hay of it, but almost immediately started lobbying to get the ban lifted. The last G4 tower was released in June 2003 and discontinued a year later and just got old by 2006 because Motorola already left AIM, and IBM wasn't delivering. Not Apple's fault, and the reason for the platform jump to Intel. But, again, at release, any of the high end G4 machines were faster than any consumer Intel tower, though 2003-2006 gave them plenty of time to catch up and pass the G4. The Mirrored Drive Doors 2003 dual 1.25GHz G4 was... is still a pretty sweet machine. It is still in use in Pro Tools studios because Digi equipment and plugins were expensive, and none of the PPC Digi components work on Intel. Try sourcing one. You'll be shocked what MDD 2003 DP sell for in 2022 at 18-19yo.

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