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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

#81

Post by gbalduzzi »

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 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 laptops. If you try to use a 500-600€ laptop as work main machine for multiple years it will fall apart. Than you try a MacBook and it feels great because after 5 years is still usable.

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

#82

Post by MrScruff »

andsoitis wrote: post #3

> It just works. One thing I noticed lately is that sometimes a shortcut breaks, or something is not working anymore. This is also because Omarchy is just brand new, and I’m inexperienced running Linux as my main OS. But for the last 5 years with the M1, hardware-wise, things just worked. My experience over two decades has been that running Linux is like having a car you need to spend every weekend in the garage tink…

I think the ‘out of the box’ Linux desktop experience has improved a lot. To me the difference is in the long tail of software. On Linux the variety of toolkits historically available means depending on what software you’re using you may encounter a lot of inconsistency- I certainly do. On the Mac far less so.

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

#83

Post by chrisvalleybay »

joshdavham wrote: post #34

How confident are people that Omarchy will be well maintained in the future? I'm considering making that same switch from MacOS to Arch, but I'm not sure if I should have confidence in something like Omarchy which is relatively new.

If we look at how involved DHH has been with Rails since its inception, I trust Omarchy will follow the same path. This is his daily driver, and I don't think that will change after what happened with 37Signals vs. Apple.

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

#84

Post by asabla »

makeitdouble wrote: post #72
throwmeaway222 wrote: post #56

I don't know if anyone else agrees, but for some reason no one can replicate the smoothness of the Apple trackpad. And now with that PLUS the heatless apple silicon - I don't think I could go to another OS and the x86 hardware world. I would just feel like I'm in clunky-land. Now don't get me wrong, I like a lot about Linux desktops, but Mac gets a lot of things right. I don't want to take anything away from people m…

> no one can replicate the smoothness of the Apple trackpad There are newer trackpad for Windows, and the Surface line had pretty good trackpad as well (not Magic Trackpad levels, but perhaps 80% there ? The more surprising part to me when I gave up on the Magic Trackpad moving to windows is I was over it in a week. I only ever used trackpads for a decade, but mouse's just work that much better on Windows/Linux, espe…

I think so far some of the surface devices and some of the Razer (yes, the one making computer mices, keyboards and such) had been the closest.

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

#85

Post by rock_artist »

There are two points I feel are worth focusing and I’ve experienced similar:

- Linux is fast. Few years ago I wanted to run Linux and used my MacBook Air 2013 (one of the best machines I’ve had). It was amazing how Ubuntu ran so sleek especially comparing to the MacBook Pro 2018 with macOS.

- x86_64 feels less portable than arm. Since I got MBP from my work I’ve also got another machine for Windows. I’ve went with 13” MSI Perstige with 125H which was the latest back then offering hybrid cores (performance + economy). It’s 1kg is amazing and the OLED is also nice. But in order for the machine to actually compile and be snappy I need to ensure it’s not dropping to 0.4-0.8Ghz and then it easily gets warm and noisy.

The MBP 2021 also shows age. But even with more frequent fans and 80% of original battery it outperform the younger MSI since day one.

TL;DR

* Unless you need specific software, Linux distros are great and fast. Much more joy (imho) than Windows.

* SoC/ARM is still rare but it would be much more interesting comparison to current Macs in terms of portability (fans, battery life)

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

#86

Post by wolpoli »

throwmeaway222 wrote: post #56

I don't know if anyone else agrees, but for some reason no one can replicate the smoothness of the Apple trackpad. And now with that PLUS the heatless apple silicon - I don't think I could go to another OS and the x86 hardware world. I would just feel like I'm in clunky-land. Now don't get me wrong, I like a lot about Linux desktops, but Mac gets a lot of things right. I don't want to take anything away from people m…

A few years ago, I compared the trackpad on a ThinkPad T14 and a T14s and found that while on paper they are similar, the T14s has noticeably less friction with better tracking accuracy. I'll put blames on the PC vendors for playing around with their trackpad to sell higher end machines.

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

#88

Post by anon7000 »

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…

Well, yeah, and my mom was using my old 2012 MBP until it was a decade too. Main reason to upgrade to an M1 Air was the battery and the performance improvement that comes with a decade of processor and efficiency improvements. And I bet that’ll last another decade. I sold my previous two work MBPs back to family members as well, which they’re still using.

And btw a used M1 Air, at almost 5 years old now, is still a great budget choice for anyone.

Author should have just put in a longer time frame.

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

#89

Post by tomsmeding »

bitwize wrote: post #13
andsoitis wrote: post #3

> It just works. One thing I noticed lately is that sometimes a shortcut breaks, or something is not working anymore. This is also because Omarchy is just brand new, and I’m inexperienced running Linux as my main OS. But for the last 5 years with the M1, hardware-wise, things just worked. My experience over two decades has been that running Linux is like having a car you need to spend every weekend in the garage tink…

My experience is just the opposite: Linux requires more up-front tinkering, but once you get it into a shape you want, it tends to stay that way and get out of your way. Windows, by contrast, requires much more ongoing active maintenance, and previous releases were prone to simply shitting the bed without explanation or recourse. MacOS is better about this than Windows, but not as good as Linux. Now if you're talking…

Public service announcement: those "forum posts" are mailing list announcements. You can subscribe to that mailing list (arch-announce): https://lists.archlinux.org/mailman3/lists/arch-announce.lis...

And it's almost always something you need to do at system upgrade time. It's not like your system doesn't boot all of a sudden.

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

#90

Post by mirzap »

gbalduzzi wrote: post #81
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 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 simply can't compare anything to MacBooks. I had a Dell that I paid about $2,000 for, and it was really good (or so I thought). Then at work, I got a MacBook Pro, and that's when I saw the difference.

Its not only the Pros, no "high-end" laptop running Windows or Linux with just 8GB of RAM can perform better than a MacBook Air with 8GB. I don't know how Apple has optimized memory usage, but my personal feeling is that 8GB of RAM on Macs is equivalent to 32GB on non-Apple devices.

I'm not some Apple fanboy—I've been using Arch Linux daily for the past month or two, and it's great. However, there isn't a day that passes without screen freezes during peak usage, and I need to reboot every day or two. This happens despite having 32GB of RAM, an RTX 4060, and a Ryzen 5 7600. That never happens with my 5-year-old MacBook Air.

I really wish Linux were as good as macOS, I really do. I'm pushing myself to use it even though I experience frustration every day, but this simply isn't the case. It's easy to optimize the system and applications for one specific hardware configuration (like Apple does), but it's very hard, if not impossible, to do this for every possible hardware combination available today. That's why Linux and Windows can't win this performance battle.

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