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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

#71

Post by Kuinox »

nextos wrote: post #68
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

Yes, but not in terms of heat and battery. What fanless laptop do you suggest with similar specs to a MacBook Air M1? The best think I have found that runs Linux reasonably well (still with lots of caveats) is the X13s. And I cannot get a decent price.

Heat and battery is directly tied to the performance per watt.

With equally performing software, the one with the best performance per watt will be run cooler and longer.

The graph I sent is not raw performance, but performance per watt.

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

#72

Post by wokkel »

Kuinox wrote: post #65
nextos wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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.

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

#73

Post by nextos »

Kuinox wrote: post #71
nextos wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but not in terms of heat and battery. What fanless laptop do you suggest with similar specs to a MacBook Air M1? The best think I have found that runs Linux reasonably well (still with lots of caveats) is the X13s. And I cannot get a decent price.

Heat and battery is directly tied to the performance per watt. With equally performing software, the one with the best performance per watt will be run cooler and longer. The graph I sent is not raw performance, but performance per watt.

Sure, but in practical terms are there any laptop makers that sell any CPU from that list, say a i3-1210U, in a good case and with good cooling?

Because, as I said in the original post, even when Apple was selling Core 2 Duos, their cooling was better than most other manufacturers. I was often buying Macs to run Linux because of this.

Also see what the parent post says about performance per Watt, which mirrors my experience as a user. No current x86_64 machine is close to ARM if you want low heat.

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

#74

Post by wizee »

Kuinox wrote: post #65
nextos wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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 score of ~14500. That's a lot better than the Intel CPU's 13453 at 29W. Now, if you limit the Intel CPU to a lower TDP by underclocking, the performance per watt can improve substantially (since the efficiency plummets when going for peak clock speeds), but it's still considerably behind the M1.

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

#75

Post by breakfastduck »

Conan_Kudo wrote: post #57
School-Cotton wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 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…

Not even close when it comes to build quality if we're being honest

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

#76

Post by breakfastduck »

psychoslave wrote: post #56
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 started to use a Mac for work a few months ago, first time in my life. I am still often frustrated with keyboard shortcuts, despite having installed a dedicated software to not feel in such an alien place. Sure there is a lot of muscle memory you can blame here. But how does it happens that the default OS doesn't provide the software option? Brew is nice, but here too it's community work filling the hole of the def…

Option + arrow / cmd + arrow does exactly the same as end / home etc, if you've just not found that yet.

I always find it interesting when people complain about keyboard shortcuts on macOS - but I feel exactly the same when I use anything else.

macOS keyboard shortcuts are amazing and os-wide. But they're not made obvious. Its really kinda snobbish that apple just assume you know them they treat it like 'because obviously youve used a mac forever'.

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

#77

Post by wtallis »

psychoslave wrote: post #56
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 started to use a Mac for work a few months ago, first time in my life. I am still often frustrated with keyboard shortcuts, despite having installed a dedicated software to not feel in such an alien place. Sure there is a lot of muscle memory you can blame here. But how does it happens that the default OS doesn't provide the software option? Brew is nice, but here too it's community work filling the hole of the def…

> The only way to shutdown the integrated screen and still have the camera usable is to duplicate the screen and diminish brightness to zero. Or use a magnet. Seriously?

Can you describe what your use case for this is, because this complaint sounds truly bizarre to me. You want to use the webcam at the top of the laptop display, while not using the laptop display itself, but using a separate display (and thus presumably not looking anywhere near the webcam)? Are you pointing the webcam at something other than yourself?

> No key to show the contextual keyboard.

What do you mean by contextual keyboard?

> Where is my select and paste with middle click, outside iTerm2 (community provided)?

The first-party Terminal provides that feature, too. But the rest of the OS doesn't natively.

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

#78

Post by chrisseaton »

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).

> any comparable PC

Not sure such a thing exists!

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

#79

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

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

#80

Post by astrange »

sofixa wrote: post #21
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).

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.
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