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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

#311

Post by LtWorf »

kiliancs wrote: post #265
rwyinuse wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are plastic junk, but even they are likely to remain technically functional for more than 5 years. It's mainly things like battery life, screen & keyboard quality that make those laptops annoying.

In my experience and my family's you are lucky if they last 3 years. If they last 5 years there's usually a subpar experience, e.g. they overheat significantly at 2 years. OTOH, we have a few macbooks > 10 years still working.

And macbooks aren't overheating?

I've owned old macbooks… I got scalded by the metal screws on the bottom in the summer because apple thought looking sleek was more important than proper cooling.

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

#312

Post by LtWorf »

MangoToupe wrote: post #278
rwyinuse wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are plastic junk, but even they are likely to remain technically functional for more than 5 years. It's mainly things like battery life, screen & keyboard quality that make those laptops annoying.

> even they are likely to remain technically functional for more than 5 years Every plastic laptop I've bought has busted within two years, whether it's mechanical stress or poor heat design. They feel less like reliable tools and more like toys. Looking specifically at you, thinkpads. Meanwhile, the MacBook Pro I bought for myself for college 17 years ago still boots. The battery is dead, but that's an incredibly lo…

Booting once a year isn't "life" for a computer.

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

#313

Post by LtWorf »

bluecalm wrote: post #255
newsclues wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you used the cheap Dells and HP laptops that most people buy (not high end IBM machines)? They tend to be plastic junk. Yes thinkpads are good, but most laptops are trash disposable hardware

I am on my 3rd Thinkpad already and while I still like them they are not close to Apple quality. On my current one keyboard touches the screen when it's closed so the screen becomes dirty quickly. After Windows 11 upgrade it auto-dims on battery after like 30 seconds and I can't figure a way to turn it off. Hibernation never worked properly (apparently AMD/Windows issue). You don't need to deal with any of that on a…

> Hibernation never worked properly

You can blame microsoft for that unfortunately. They made the vendors to change how it all works to workaround windows issues and it didn't even work.

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

#314

Post by nullify88 »

noisy_boy wrote: post #232
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…

Indeed. I'm running 2019 Thinkpad X1 extreme gen 2. Runs a bit hot but still snappy with latest Fedora KDE edition. Just had to do a 100$ battery swap. The all aluminum chassis of MacBooks are lovely indeed; however considering I like the UI flexibility Linux provides and the crazy premium Apple charges for higher specs, it is pretty hard to justify.

I have an 2015 X1 3rd Generation Broadwell ticking along running Fedora KDE too. My Enter key is cracked and some of the speakers are failing, battery health at 70% was my daily driver for its initial 5 years now it primarily runs a browser and vscode. Still very capable No problems with sleep or wake, even Intel Rapid Start hibernation works although is a huge security hole.

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

#315

Post by articsputnik »

SwiftyBug wrote: post #301
articsputnik wrote: post #2

Why I ditched my M1 MacBook for a $1000 ThinkBook running Omarchy, an opinionated Arch Distro.

One thing I couldn't find in your post was the reason behind choosing the ThinkBook. I'm about to make the exact same switch you did (thanks for bringing up Omarchy, I hadn't heard of it before!). I'm considering a ThinkPad P14s. What made you decide on the ThinkBook?

My requirements were: affordable, as i didn't know if I stick to it, 32 GB of RAM, 14'' form factor and good keyboard. AMD for good Linux support. This ThinkBooks popped up, and I liked the look and just tried it. The matt screen was a bonus.

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

#316

Post by goyagoji »

kiliancs wrote: post #265
rwyinuse wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are plastic junk, but even they are likely to remain technically functional for more than 5 years. It's mainly things like battery life, screen & keyboard quality that make those laptops annoying.

In my experience and my family's you are lucky if they last 3 years. If they last 5 years there's usually a subpar experience, e.g. they overheat significantly at 2 years. OTOH, we have a few macbooks > 10 years still working.

There's the need to dust fans and then there's the possibility that OS computing requirements have risen which isn't often a Linux thing on old hardware.. OsX had exactly the same problem and had to make a minimizing release IIRC.

Computing kind of stagnated since 2010 and plenty of hardware since then still works fine today and is usable enough for many tasks. Apple was nice for needing not all that many different drivers but its statnge integrations like drive fans to bios are obnoxious.

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

#317

Post by articsputnik »

articsputnik wrote: post #315
SwiftyBug wrote: post #301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One thing I couldn't find in your post was the reason behind choosing the ThinkBook. I'm about to make the exact same switch you did (thanks for bringing up Omarchy, I hadn't heard of it before!). I'm considering a ThinkPad P14s. What made you decide on the ThinkBook?

My requirements were: affordable, as i didn't know if I stick to it, 32 GB of RAM, 14'' form factor and good keyboard. AMD for good Linux support. This ThinkBooks popped up, and I liked the look and just tried it. The matt screen was a bonus.

If i wanted a more similar device as macbook, i'd choose frameworker laptop, but they don't ship here where i live

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

#318

Post by piskov »

articsputnik wrote: post #317
articsputnik wrote: post #315

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My requirements were: affordable, as i didn't know if I stick to it, 32 GB of RAM, 14'' form factor and good keyboard. AMD for good Linux support. This ThinkBooks popped up, and I liked the look and just tried it. The matt screen was a bonus.

If i wanted a more similar device as macbook, i'd choose frameworker laptop, but they don't ship here where i live

Man, know thy mail forwarder

Shipito is one of many

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

#319

Post by piskov »

andoando wrote: post #309
baq wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also add a very important feature of ‘lid is closed - the computer is asleep and it wakes up when lid opens’. Both windows and Linux are simply broken in that regard. What I need is Apple MacBook hardware with a 100% supported Linux OS. This combination simply doesn’t exist and there’s no amount of money to make it happen (yes I know about asahi.)

You can dual boot Asahi Linux https://asahilinux.org/fedora/

It seams asaho is basically dead at this point.

Prominent maintainers quit and in a couple of months there will be two years since latest m3+ macs are unsupported

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

#320

Post by deltarholamda »

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 set up some Thinkpads from (I think) 2004 to use during Covid when some employees were doing work from home. Replaced the rust drive with an SSD and they used VNC to get onto their work desktops. It's a CAD shop with most everything on the server, so it's not feasible to do WFH with a laptop (not enough grunt, moving data over the Internet is slow), and it made much more sense to just do VNC.

This worked quite well. The Thinkpads were even (just) fast enough to do YouTube.

The point is that it really quite depends on what your workload is. If I made them use AutoCAD on these machines from 2004 they'd quit. This particular workflow was not ideal, but doable.

I have a 2020 M1 MB Air that I would love to replace, but it would be daft to. I don't bump up against any limitations. One of my kids uses my old 2011 MB Pro for his school, which granted I did upgrade to an SSD as well, but even so it's quite usable.

Mac hardware has been pretty consistently good for a very long time. They've had some stinkers (hello MacTV), but otherwise you can usually depend on them.

Like others I'm not thrilled with some of the OS changes, but the alternatives aren't a lot better. Windows keeps shooting itself in the foot, and chasing the Linux desktop is an exercise best left to those young enough to have the patience. I'm so done with distro-hopping.

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