Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

KDE runs on the Apple M2 with full GPU acceleration

vt.social

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 130 posts

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

#41

Post by coutego »

nu11ptr wrote: post #18
jjtheblunt wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i'm using it as a daily driver for a couple months easily, but my daily driving happens to not require the not-quite-perfect device drivers. i shutdown for sleep, for instance, which works just fine, since boot and login is super fast and restores everything.

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 no comparable laptops to M[1,2] Macs, AFAIK. Linux on an M1 simply flies. It's just stupidly quick. A MacBook with Linux is the most amazing Linux machine that exists, even without the GPU acceleration.

I bought my first MacBook just because of the M1 processor and /despite/ the OS, which is ok-ish but not my cup of tea. I'm looking forward to running Linux on it as my daily driver.

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

#42

Post by beebeepka »

tambourine_man wrote: post #31
kitsunesoba wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Serviceability is improved (though still not amazing) in all the machines with chassises redesigned during the "M" era — the "notched" MBP 14/16 and Air have easily accessible bottom screws (no need to remove rubber feet first) and don't have batteries glued in. Keyboards can be changed independently from the top case too. Notably, many Windows laptops fail on both of those counts (like the LG Gram which hides screws…

Macs, for me, are the software. This is something that became pretty evident during the Intel era. 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. Funny to read such an opposite opinion. I don’t mind the pretty casing, but it’s icing on the cake.

I am with the other guy - great hardware, with the m1, married to a barely usable software. I hadn't been forced to used it in a decade, and imho, but hasn't gotten much better. At least it's got brew going for it.

Horrible peripherals, too. I guess you love them for the same reasons I hate them.

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

#43

Post by coutego »

tambourine_man wrote: post #31
kitsunesoba wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Serviceability is improved (though still not amazing) in all the machines with chassises redesigned during the "M" era — the "notched" MBP 14/16 and Air have easily accessible bottom screws (no need to remove rubber feet first) and don't have batteries glued in. Keyboards can be changed independently from the top case too. Notably, many Windows laptops fail on both of those counts (like the LG Gram which hides screws…

Macs, for me, are the software. This is something that became pretty evident during the Intel era. 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. Funny to read such an opposite opinion. I don’t mind the pretty casing, but it’s icing on the cake.

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 it took time to adapt and, even to this day, I just find it easier to use Linux. It's just a metter of what you are used to.

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. Every other machine I use (Linux, Windows or ChromeOS) uses the same keybindings but in MacOS the same software I use everywhere else (e.g. Chrome) has been forced to change the standard keybindings to something else and and it's even not configurable. Programs just don't implement stuff as C-c to copy and C-v to paste. Programs link that functionality to S-c and S-v, instead. WTF? This means there is no remapping of the keyboard that can fix this, since the software itself is broken.

For me, this makes the machine pretty unusable. I'm a keyboard guy and quite fast at it. But when I'm in MacOS I waste a lot of time finding the right keybindings even for switching Windows. Example: S-w to close a tab but C-TAB to switch tabs %~(

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

#44

Post by kitsunesoba »

coutego wrote: post #43
tambourine_man wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Macs, for me, are the software. This is something that became pretty evident during the Intel era. 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. Funny to read such an opposite opinion. I don’t mind the pretty casing, but it’s icing on the cake.

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 started on macOS but can switch between control schemes pretty fluidly these days, thanks to having regularly used all three major OSes for several years. That said I wish there were at least one Linux DE that cloned macOS conventions as faithfully as the rest have cloned Windows conventions (with the exception of GNOME, which is more like what you'd get if you turned iPadOS into a desktop OS with Windows keyboard shortcuts).

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

#45

Post by School-Cotton »

nu11ptr wrote: post #18
jjtheblunt wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i'm using it as a daily driver for a couple months easily, but my daily driving happens to not require the not-quite-perfect device drivers. i shutdown for sleep, for instance, which works just fine, since boot and login is super fast and restores everything.

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 work on software that runs in prod on Linux and I don't want to deal with Docker for Mac.

3. While this is not yet the case, I think it's likely that someday Asahi will run better and more reliably on macs than mainstream distros run on PC laptops. The reason is that they only have one target (or, I suppose, one very closely related family of targets) whereas there are a pile of different PC vendors that are all subtly broken in different ways. I've _never_ seen a high-end PC laptop run Linux without tons of bugs and weird quirks; to get a solid Linux laptop experience, you seem to need to eschew discrete graphics cards and use a system that's a few years old at minimum.

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

#46

Post by ask_b123 »

coutego wrote: post #43
tambourine_man wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Macs, for me, are the software. This is something that became pretty evident during the Intel era. 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. Funny to read such an opposite opinion. I don’t mind the pretty casing, but it’s icing on the cake.

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…

Is S = command?

What I'm seeing is: close a tab -> cmd+w; copy something -> cmd+c; switch tab -> cmd+option+left/right arrow, switch window -> cmd + `

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

#47

Post by dopeboy »

nu11ptr wrote: post #18
jjtheblunt wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i'm using it as a daily driver for a couple months easily, but my daily driving happens to not require the not-quite-perfect device drivers. i shutdown for sleep, for instance, which works just fine, since boot and login is super fast and restores everything.

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).

Two reasons: battery life + touchpad.

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

#48

Post by rsynnott »

coutego wrote: post #43
tambourine_man wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Macs, for me, are the software. This is something that became pretty evident during the Intel era. 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. Funny to read such an opposite opinion. I don’t mind the pretty casing, but it’s icing on the cake.

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…

I wonder if this response is because common Linux desktop environments are _so_ derivative of Windows these days. I started using MacOS around 2004 (the G4 iBook was _amazing_ in its day; if you wanted a Unix-y laptop with decent battery life, working power management and wifi, and vaguely affordable, it was the only game in town), having previously been using Linux since about 2001 and Windows before that. At that time, Linux desktop environments generally didn't use the same conventions as Windows anyway, so moving to MacOS wasn't that jarring.

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

#49

Post by School-Cotton »

ask_b123 wrote: post #46
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…

Is S = command? What I'm seeing is: close a tab -> cmd+w; copy something -> cmd+c; switch tab -> cmd+option+left/right arrow, switch window -> cmd + `

Yes, coutego is using Emacs notation for key chords, in which S-whatever means what macOS users would call cmd+whatever, Windows users would call win+whatever, etc. "S" stands for "Super" key.

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

#50

Post by rsynnott »

tambourine_man wrote: post #33
tambourine_man wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Macs, for me, are the software. This is something that became pretty evident during the Intel era. 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. Funny to read such an opposite opinion. I don’t mind the pretty casing, but it’s icing on the cake.

On a second thought, there where some transformative hardwares though. The iMac 5k for me, almost a decade later, is still better than anything other vendors have to offer. It’s my childhood dream monitor. Such a shame that they never sold it separately. The M series laptops seem like an inflection point as well. A fanless powerhouse with more than a day's work of battery life and best in class monitor and trackpad.

> Such a shame that they never sold it separately.

Well, they sold the controversial LG 5K, which was the same panel, but certainly not the same build quality. I've got one, and it's... fine, and for a very long time was literally the only 5K monitor you could buy, but for the price it is not a well-built piece of kit. (And the first two versions had weird bugs)

They now (nearly a decade later) finally sell a fully first-party one, which is very similar.

Post reply on HN