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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

#451

Post by harshitaneja »

nextos wrote: post #27
harshitaneja wrote: post #12

I have been on an M1 macbook pro since launch and while I love the hardware, easily my favourite device I have ever owned but MacOS has just always been the thing to be the faustian bargain coming from being a linux person. I spend a lot of time SSHed into more GPU capable linux machines for most of my work and thus get an escape but after driving a friend's linux machine I started looking for a way to daily drive a…

> If someone has suggestions please share A recent ThinkPad with one of the latest AMD Ryzen U CPUs should have a very decent battery life. You just need some custom udev rules to set the right power saving states for different devices. Powertop should make this straightforward. IMHO, this is a great compromise, because you stay on x86_64 and Linux, you get within 3/4 of ARM's power efficiency, and hardware support i…

I use chromium based browser and applications so don't get to enjoy the benefit of the power efficiency gains of safari sadly.

Geat to know this about your experience with thinkpads. Due to your familiarity with multiple such devices would you be able to recommend a starting point for someone who wants something light with budget not being a constraint?

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

#452

Post by harshitaneja »

benreesman wrote: post #50
harshitaneja wrote: post #12

I have been on an M1 macbook pro since launch and while I love the hardware, easily my favourite device I have ever owned but MacOS has just always been the thing to be the faustian bargain coming from being a linux person. I spend a lot of time SSHed into more GPU capable linux machines for most of my work and thus get an escape but after driving a friend's linux machine I started looking for a way to daily drive a…

ASUD ProArt P16. I never want another machine. Slender, stiff, machined out of something expensive feeling. Everything works on 6.16, 4k OLED display, wonderful keyboard. Solid RDNA unit, NVIDIA card alongside. With a clean hyprland setup, light as a feather, battery lasts forever unless you run it hard. Makes M4 Macs feel bloated and cheap.

Will try to procure one for testing. It's a bit on the larger side for me though. How much battery life do you get on your average daily workload and what kind of workload is it? If you feel comfortable sharing.

Agreed about macs feeling bloated. I will not get overdramatic by calling latency in many functions unbearable but it is certainly quite high.

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

#453

Post by drcongo »

commandersaki wrote: post #362
strix_varius wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Uh he provided counter points to your distortion field comment, he doesn't have to just +1 the exact point of view of the parent comment. But here I'll bite: I've had MBPs for work for like 15 years now and I bought a personal high spec Thinkpad. I now regret that purchase because my work machine is better than my personal machine in literally every way. My over $2k Thinkpad just sits there gathering dust because I d…

My 12" powerbook from 2002 lasted well into 2011 until I formally retired it by giving to a mate. Most of my macbook airs have lasted at least 7 to 8 years. None have actually died and were still intact, but I just gave them away, so I don't know how much longer they lasted. My 2015 macbook pro (pre butterfly) is still going strong today; I did a battery replacement myself which was a huge pain in the arse, so it def…

I only recently retired a 2011 MacBook Pro which was running clamshell constantly for nearly all that time, with only one battery replacement due to swelling.

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

#454

Post by harshitaneja »

seabrookmx wrote: post #61
harshitaneja wrote: post #12

I have been on an M1 macbook pro since launch and while I love the hardware, easily my favourite device I have ever owned but MacOS has just always been the thing to be the faustian bargain coming from being a linux person. I spend a lot of time SSHed into more GPU capable linux machines for most of my work and thus get an escape but after driving a friend's linux machine I started looking for a way to daily drive a…

The Framework 13 Linux support is fantastic, and the hardware is pretty great too. Battery is good enough (5-6hrs) for me on the AMD model (Ryzen AI 5 340) but definitely not Macbook territory in that regard. I run Fedora and have coworkers who run Ubuntu and Arch as well without issue.

I like Framework devices but yeah sadly haven't used one with battery life that works for me. I can get a bit more than 5hrs on macbook under Asahi fedora with my usual usage.

Framework is so close to having it all though.

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

#455

Post by harshitaneja »

elteto wrote: post #41
harshitaneja wrote: post #12

I have been on an M1 macbook pro since launch and while I love the hardware, easily my favourite device I have ever owned but MacOS has just always been the thing to be the faustian bargain coming from being a linux person. I spend a lot of time SSHed into more GPU capable linux machines for most of my work and thus get an escape but after driving a friend's linux machine I started looking for a way to daily drive a…

x86 Thinkpads + Fedora work great. Hardware support out the box is almost perfect (I would say perfect because I don’t recall anything not working, but I may be missing something). In fact, Thinkpads used to have Fedora as an OS option, which is why I think the support is so good. Outside that maybe something like system 76. They advertise 14h for one of their models.

x86 Thinkpads is what I am gravitating towards as well.

Regarding system76 I have heard really good things about their workstations but not about laptops. Have you used them? I recommend PopOS to anyone getting started with linux as the first distro though.

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

#456

Post by greatgib »

jmward01 wrote: post #32

Power management in all aspects is one big thing that I wish was better in all distros. Hibernate/fans/shorter battery life are real usability things. I only use windows when I am at risk of being fired for not using it and macos is 'acceptable' but there are soooo many little things that make me cringe about it (.DS_Store littering every drive I touch is close to the top) but if I knew I could get mac hardware, incl…

My experience with mac is that yes it looks like to have longer battery life with less fan noise sometimes, but it might be by tricking you into a worse user experience of your machine.

For example, you computer to always go to kind of sleep when it is not necessarily what you want.

Like with the memory, you will not see app crashing upfront, but at some point macos stops all the other apps when you switch app. And like going from a web browser window, to a pdf, and back, or from a browser window to another, you will experience something like a 1s delay between your click and the window showing up from being minimized.

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

#457

Post by danhau »

greatgib wrote: post #456
jmward01 wrote: post #32

Power management in all aspects is one big thing that I wish was better in all distros. Hibernate/fans/shorter battery life are real usability things. I only use windows when I am at risk of being fired for not using it and macos is 'acceptable' but there are soooo many little things that make me cringe about it (.DS_Store littering every drive I touch is close to the top) but if I knew I could get mac hardware, incl…

My experience with mac is that yes it looks like to have longer battery life with less fan noise sometimes, but it might be by tricking you into a worse user experience of your machine. For example, you computer to always go to kind of sleep when it is not necessarily what you want. Like with the memory, you will not see app crashing upfront, but at some point macos stops all the other apps when you switch app. And l…

I have not had this experience on my MB M2 Pro, although Safari can be quite sluggish.

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

#458

Post by kiliancs »

LtWorf wrote: post #311
kiliancs wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The other laptops overheat soon after purchasing, often with just the bare OS running. There is a 3 yo laptop that my parents still use, but it has to always be plugged in, and the fans will spin loudly even in suspension.

My >10 yo macbooks also have bad batteries. One of them won't last one minute, and will also overheat with minor workloads. They were not immune to overheating when new, but unreasonable overhearing (for the time) definitely didn't become an issue at within 3 years of purchase.

And that's with Intel macbooks. My M1 from Dec 2020 works like new (I'm sure the battery life has shortened, but not in a way that I notice). It overheated a couple times running LLMs—that's it. That's how I know the fans work.

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

#459

Post by W3zzy »

baq wrote: post #267
W3zzy wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We run dell or HP laptops at work. After 3 years they get replaced. I usually buy my old work laptop to use it for personal use or to hand off to my family. Tge first one I bought in that way is still working after 14 years. I converted it from Windows to Linux a few years ago and My mother uses it for browsing, banking and email. Personally I'm using a 7 years old HP. Batteries get upgraded when necessary and first…

The point is corporate wouldn’t need to replace the Apple MacBooks after 3 years. I’ve got an M1 air bought what feels forever ago and it’s still as fast as I need it to be. I’ve also been using hp laptops in my previous job and they couldn’t even wake from sleep when needed (but would wake in backpacks to the point IT explicitly forbade putting sleeping laptops in bags. Absurd.)

They do so because it's a tax thing. After three years the devices aren't deductible anymore. Benefit of the whole roulette is that all our devices are constantly under extends warranty so most defects are covered. It turned out to cost more to keep these devices for longer that to replace them every three year.

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

#460

Post by W3zzy »

baq wrote: post #267
W3zzy wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We run dell or HP laptops at work. After 3 years they get replaced. I usually buy my old work laptop to use it for personal use or to hand off to my family. Tge first one I bought in that way is still working after 14 years. I converted it from Windows to Linux a few years ago and My mother uses it for browsing, banking and email. Personally I'm using a 7 years old HP. Batteries get upgraded when necessary and first…

The point is corporate wouldn’t need to replace the Apple MacBooks after 3 years. I’ve got an M1 air bought what feels forever ago and it’s still as fast as I need it to be. I’ve also been using hp laptops in my previous job and they couldn’t even wake from sleep when needed (but would wake in backpacks to the point IT explicitly forbade putting sleeping laptops in bags. Absurd.)

THE WAKE FROM SLEEP IS TERRIBLY ANNOYING INDEED!!
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