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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

#91

Post by junga »

wolpoli wrote: post #86
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.

And even the T14s (gen 1) has a "cheap" trackpad with a plastic foil on top instead of a glass surface. The day before yesterday I did the upgrade from foil to glass on my T14s and it isn't the big leap I was hoping for. Sure, friction went down a bit but precession and gesture detection were good before already. The same upgrade on a T480s was a bigger improvement. Compared to my MacBook Pro (M1 Pro) the trackpads of my ThinkPads are always worse. Overall I'm in the same situation as the author of the article (if you substitute Arch for pop!_os with Cosmic) and totally agree with him.

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

#92

Post by numpy-thagoras »

Tiberium wrote: post #66
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…

I do agree that Apple Silicon is way, way more energy efficient and comparable to some top desktop x86 chips, but.. From reading different reviews and tests apparently it's normal for the CPU/SoC to reach a temperature of up 100C at full load, with the case being around 45-50C. Do you mean "heatless" as in specifically the outside case temperature - so those x86 laptops heat up the case way more than that?

My M4 Max under full load for audio transcode required manual fan curve changes to get the temperature down from 110º C (yes, it really got that hot) to 95º C (much better).

It doesn't even get that hot with LLMs running with max fans, where the SoC is about 80º C.

Aside from those use cases, the M4 Max runs 43º C or less even in summer conditions.

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

#93

Post by codeflo »

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…

> 8-10h battery life

If you think that's even close to good, then it's you who lives in a reality distortion field. But so are all of the PC laptop manufacturers, reviewers and buyers. I don't get it.

I desperately want to move to a Linux laptop (I run it on every desktop PC I own, and I hate that I have to deal with a locked-down system). I've tried more laptops than is probably financially healthy for me. There's no price point that buys you even close to what an entry-level Macbook Air offers, not only in terms of battery life, but also weight, screen quality and keyboard.

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

#94

Post by wongogue »

phkx wrote: post #79
jasoneckert wrote: post #29

I think the biggest takeaway from this blog post is that developers and other professionals should take more note of the tiling window managers available on Linux like Sway and Hyprland - they are insanely fast and customizable to exactly what we need to be more productive. I'm a Sway user (ironically on Fedora Asahi Remix on a Mac) and I won't have it any other sway... er... I mean way.

I switched from MacOS (from a 12 year old first generation retina MBP) to Arch and started out with hyprland. It was really nice initially while I mostly used terminals, a browser or launched Steam. But when I needed to do some paperwork (taxes, stuff involving wide spreadsheets) I often ran into trouble, e.g. when I needed to read some numbers off a pdf quickly. Rearranging the tiling to have everything in appropria…

If you want to have tiling but don’t like windows being automatically resized or having to do any resize at all, try niri. It’s a scrolling tiling window manager based on PaperWM. It is in the Arch repository and a KDE plugin called Karousel also exists on the same PaperWM paradigm.

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

#95

Post by madduci »

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 don't understand the claim. Since 2012 I have also.owned only Lenovo laptops and I've changed it only for a more performing one every 5/6 years, but they are still working flawlessly.

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

#96

Post by swiftcoder »

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…

> So from my experience a 5 year lifetime for a macbook is really nothing special and definitely not "crazy good".

I doubt they are dead after 5 years - I have a number of decade+ old MacBooks kicking around the family, and they work just fine.

It's more that anyone in software is going to need to upgrade around the 5 year mark anyway, because too much shit has changed in the outside world (for example, Apple's transition to ARM processors, or Windows 11 requiring recent TPM support).

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

#97

Post by crossroadsguy »

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…

MacBooks are great laptops until the day they break and you are out of warranty; or you are in warranty and Apple in its infinite wisdom and power decides they are not going to honour that repair. So MacBooks are laptops which you use with the constant hope that it doesn't break.

So are MacBooks just another level? Of course not! If you have to use something with the constant fear of it breaking down (and then the only options remaining buying a new one or repairing at the cost often as much or sometimes more than the cost of laptop itself) then that's anything but great. But what infuriates me is people asking "but how many times has that happened?", well, enough times in about half a lifetime! And their extra warranty (which are for + or +2 years, not sure) now cost a lot more than it cost the last time (w.r.t device price) I bought their extended warranty in 2012.

The problem is other than repair bankruptcy, other laptops, esp. at the lower segment of macs (Air et al), there really are not many good laptops in those prices. X1s are costly laptops. But if they offer comparable features then I'd say for repairability alone they will be great replacements.

> and don't have any issues either.

It's very different from something being great. While I absolutely hate Apple making their devices impossible to repair and fact more so making it an unwise decision to even try to repair for the cost, their laptops are actually quite good. But it stops there. Their phones are like ages behind competition and they have a business because of a captive/hostage user base :)

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

#98

Post by anon7000 »

ksec wrote: post #73
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…

> the heatless apple silicon To this day I still dont know why people worship Apple Silicon. Before it was even named and was mostly used by iPhone as A10, A11 and A12, when I stated these CPU are Desktop grade all I got was being laughed at. But then when it was put into usage by Mac using the same chip now known as M1, M2 etc. All of a sudden they are gold. Apple did at one point has the leadership of PPW ( Perform…

What the fuck are you talking about. A current high end laptop CPU is the AMD 9955HX3D, with Geekbench 6 of 3161/19080 geekbench. M4 Pro is 3812/20076.

Why do I worship apple silicon? Because it’s literally the best performing processor for a laptop on the planet. I can use it for a full day of work from the couch on battery, no performance hit, RAM maxed out, containers running, the fans never turn on, and it barely even gets warm. Or yeah, I can plug it in like a desktop and run multiple 4k high refresh rate monitors. And it’s not even that heavy or bulky.

all of that in one package was unheard of in a laptop before Apple silicon.

If you’re saying that desktop processors are still better, ok, but that’s a different story with different requirements. My MacBook is smaller than just the PSU and cooler I need for my nice desktop CPU.

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

#99

Post by baq »

WD-42 wrote: post #55
jasoneckert wrote: post #29

I think the biggest takeaway from this blog post is that developers and other professionals should take more note of the tiling window managers available on Linux like Sway and Hyprland - they are insanely fast and customizable to exactly what we need to be more productive. I'm a Sway user (ironically on Fedora Asahi Remix on a Mac) and I won't have it any other sway... er... I mean way.

To me it’s not even the tiling. It’s the ability to switch focus to windows in a directional manner. Like super hjkl or whatever. I have no idea how people are still using alt tab in 2025.

> I have no idea how people are still using alt tab in 2025.

Everything is full screen almost always. In a week I need windows tiled for maybe 2h.

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

#100

Post by baq »

throwawee wrote: post #46
boppo1 wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you like better than debian?

Don't know if you responded to the right person since I didn't mention Debian, but I did try it and the other major distributions a long time ago. Honestly, distros mostly felt the same to me apart from their repositories. Debian soured me by keeping its repo perpetually out of date. It's nice to never get burned by an improperly tested package, but never having the latest features and non-security fixes is less nice…

> It's nice to never get burned by an improperly tested package, but never having the latest features and non-security fixes is less nice.

That’s stable for you, even the ‘less nice’ parts are a feature of the distribution if you’re running a fleet. On desktops people have been running testing or unstable for this reason since forever.

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