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From M1 MacBook to Arch Linux: A month-long experiment that became permanenent

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Re: From M1 MacBook to Arch Linux: A month-long experiment that became permanenent

#191

Post by pxc »

wolvesechoes wrote: post #181
pjerem wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’d say it’s barely 3 things : - The trackpad (but other manufacturers now have tolerable alternatives and anyway you can work without it) - The screen : at an equivalent price point (and even more), nothing comes close to Apple screens. The cheapest MacBook have a better screen than most high end PCs. - The audio : Apple truly did some sorcery to get such an awesome sound from machines that are flat as sheet. It’s s…

Guy is talking about laptop lasting for 5 years as not something that is special, and you respond with awesome sound quality. Apple threads are always so funny.

The sound on MacBooks is impressively loud and clear, but it's also not actually good sound. Because it couldn't be, in that form factor. So for things where you actually care about good sound (i.e., music, movies, TV), you probably still want headphones or speakers anyway.

Re: From M1 MacBook to Arch Linux: A month-long experiment that became permanenent

#192

Post by cruano »

trinix912 wrote: post #145
gbalduzzi wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe there is a similar situation in the mobile space with iphones, at least here is Europe where they are not ubiquitous. Most people use cheaper android phones, that are slower and with a much shorted timespan. then they try a 1k€ iPhone and it is great and conclude they prefer the iPhone to Android: it is not an apple to apple comparison, you should compare it to a 1k€ android lol. Same things happens on lapt…

You can easily pay $1000+ for a Windows laptop and still end up with a worse trackpad or keyboard than what all MacBooks have. I've made that mistake myself.

I got a razer blade that is around the same price as a macbook. At first it seemed like great build quality, but after replacing an inflated battery, an SSD that liked to shut off randomly and being blocked off latest windows due to the "old" CPU (this is a 2018-2019 laptop mind you) I've given up on it. Meanwhile my mom is still using my 2013 Macbook Air

Re: From M1 MacBook to Arch Linux: A month-long experiment that became permanenent

#193

Post by carlosjobim »

spangry wrote: post #11

Oh darn, I thought they'd gotten Arch running on an M1 but they actually switched to a ThinkBook. I somewhat regret my expensive switch from Linux to MacOS. MacOS is just so weird, it doesn't make any sense to me. For the first time in my life I feel like some tech-illiterate grandpa trying to figure out how to make his blasted computer do stuff.

Sell it and buy a PC.

Re: From M1 MacBook to Arch Linux: A month-long experiment that became permanenent

#194

Post by pxc »

reactordev wrote: post #131
apfsx wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What Lenovo model + screen option do you have that is better than the M1 Pro 16 inch screen? I've yet to see anything better.

He doesn’t have nano texture, I can guarantee that. His screen probably has fingerprints and glare and all sorts of issues like visible pixels. I’ve owned a hell of a lot of laptops and MacBooks are the best, not because of Mac, but because of the build quality. The touchpad is perfect, the aluminum body is rugged, the screen is amazing, and the audio truly is sorcery thanks to Apple acquiring Beat’s audionet. The wo…

Laptops only get fingerprints on the screen, unless they're touchscreens, when they try to be stupidly thin like MacBooks do, so that the screen routinely touches the keys. It's stupid design.

Re: From M1 MacBook to Arch Linux: A month-long experiment that became permanenent

#195

Post by mirzap »

svelle wrote: post #187
mirzap wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use WebStorm, CLion, Cursor, 2-3 Claude Code instances, Chrome/Brave with 50+ tabs, Docker, and a bunch of other things on MacBook Air all at the same time. It works. Never freezes. Never crashes. I tried that on Windows recently, and now on Arch with a lot more memory (32), and it simply can't handle it. I reboot daily. Freezes in the middle of the work. It may be the issue with nvidia drivers as other pointed out…

I also use a MacBook as my daily driver, but have used different ThinkPads for years and there is no way that that workload should bring any medium specced TP to its knees like you're describing.

Good to know. Many people recommend ThinkPads, but my experience has been with Dell. In the future, I might consider a ThinkPad or a Framework laptop.

Re: From M1 MacBook to Arch Linux: A month-long experiment that became permanenent

#196

Post by ajuc »

cycomanic wrote: post #76

> But the quality of MacBooks is just another level. I had 3 or 4 so far since 2010, and each of them held at least 5 years. Crazy good. When I read things like this it really sounds like there is some reality distortion field in the mac world. How is that anywhere special? I'm running a thinkpad X1 as my 2 main laptops (it was my only work machine until 2 years ago) and I never felt the need to replace it. It gave m…

I bought Lenovo laptop back in 2016. It's still working - now as a media Control center. The only problems with it were LCD screen showing "deglueing" like there's a drop of transparent liquid behind the screen in 1 corner, and keyboard not working for a few keys. Neither are relevant for the current application.

Both problems appeared long past 5 years of usage, more like 7-8 years after I bought it. In fact I don't remember having a computer fail on me in within 5 years since I bought it. And I was buying cheapest crap possible for majority of the last 25 years.

I don't have much experience with Macs, but from talking with friends it seems they break more not less often.

Re: From M1 MacBook to Arch Linux: A month-long experiment that became permanenent

#197

Post by skydhash »

herbst wrote: post #125
spangry wrote: post #11

Oh darn, I thought they'd gotten Arch running on an M1 but they actually switched to a ThinkBook. I somewhat regret my expensive switch from Linux to MacOS. MacOS is just so weird, it doesn't make any sense to me. For the first time in my life I feel like some tech-illiterate grandpa trying to figure out how to make his blasted computer do stuff.

Same experience here. I wanted to like it, after all it appears to be exactly what I want. An professional, stable Unix system with enterprise support. I was and am still surprised that I found nothing of that and even Ubuntu or fedora community look more "enterprise ready" to me these days.

macOS is actively trying to hide everything unix these days and almost all the good features require building an app to access them (or buying one).

Re: From M1 MacBook to Arch Linux: A month-long experiment that became permanenent

#198

Post by mirzap »

PurestGuava wrote: post #179
mirzap wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is interesting to hear. I bought Nvidia because I thought they had better drivers and have a lot of support for AI and stuff, but now, in retrospect, this seems like a bad idea.

For AI, NVidia does have better tech, but on Linux at least the driver situation with AMD is infinitely better.

Oh, this was a great thread. I just investigated a bit which drivers I use, gpu.. And it turns out my arch was using built-in GPU (how?)

glxinfo | grep "OpenGL renderer" OpenGL renderer string: AMD Radeon Graphics (radeonsi, raphael_mendocino, LLVM 20.1.8, DRM 3.64, 6.16.0-arch2-1)

I've added a few env parameters Claude suggested in ~/.config/hypr/hyprland.conf, and now it shows: OpenGL renderer string: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4060 Ti/PCIe/SSE2

Will give it a try few days, to see how it behaves.

Re: From M1 MacBook to Arch Linux: A month-long experiment that became permanenent

#199

Post by skydhash »

mrtksn wrote: post #151
j4coh wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or, alternatively, non-illiterates have different needs.

macOS is quite popular among tech literate people too, it's almost the default OS for most techies.

A lot of those only have surface level knowledge about tech, especially reviewers.

Re: From M1 MacBook to Arch Linux: A month-long experiment that became permanenent

#200

Post by goosedragons »

pjerem wrote: post #80
cycomanic wrote: post #76

> But the quality of MacBooks is just another level. I had 3 or 4 so far since 2010, and each of them held at least 5 years. Crazy good. When I read things like this it really sounds like there is some reality distortion field in the mac world. How is that anywhere special? I'm running a thinkpad X1 as my 2 main laptops (it was my only work machine until 2 years ago) and I never felt the need to replace it. It gave m…

I’d say it’s barely 3 things : - The trackpad (but other manufacturers now have tolerable alternatives and anyway you can work without it) - The screen : at an equivalent price point (and even more), nothing comes close to Apple screens. The cheapest MacBook have a better screen than most high end PCs. - The audio : Apple truly did some sorcery to get such an awesome sound from machines that are flat as sheet. It’s s…

The MBA screen is /alright/. It's better than a lot of Windows machines but you can get better for the price for sure. I'd argue the screens in the Surface line are comparable and arguably better, 3:2, brighter, 120Hz at basically the same price. And there's loads of 4K OLED Windows laptops if you're willing to pay for them.

Apple screens also tend to have pretty bad response times too. They are sharp and color accurate but fall down in places.

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