from Hacker News

In the age of Apple Silicon, what's options are there for native Linux?

by arran-nz on 11/13/24, 3:42 AM with 8 comments

Hey everyone,

I'm looking for a new laptop for programming work.

I would prefer to use native Linux, but it seems like nothing comes close to Apple Silicon for battery life, portability and performance.

Which brings me to my question, should I suck it up and buy Apple Silicon, try Asahi Linux, or go with an x86 Dell, Thinkpad, etc.

  • by d3Xt3r on 11/13/24, 8:57 AM

    I agree with @gibbitz and @wmf. Whilst Apple Silicon has excellent battery life, that is only true if you're running macOS - that efficiency is lost when you run Asahi or other Linux distros (and I say this as an M1 MBA owner).

    There's also the Snapdragon X Elite if you want a different ARM machine, but it has similar issues as where not everything works under Linux.

    So at the moment, x86 is still the best bet if you want full Linux compatibility, and ThinkPads in particular have the best Linux support.

  • by gibbitz on 11/13/24, 5:41 AM

    The M chips will never be as efficient under Linux as macOS. Outside of immulation, Apple wants you stuck in their ecosystem. A Thinkpad is going to end up being just as efficient (or more) under Linux and a little cheaper solely because of predictable hardware.

  • by wmf on 11/13/24, 5:20 AM

    If you can wait a few months, Ryzen AI Max Pro (ignore the name) should be pretty powerful. Ryzen AI 370 isn't bad either.

  • by rstuart4133 on 11/14/24, 12:47 AM

    > I would prefer to use native Linux, but it seems like nothing comes close to Apple Silicon for battery life, portability and performance.

    Not quite true. Chromebooks can approach MacBooks in some ways. Google mandates 10 hours minimum battery life for anything labelled "Chromebook", along with 8 years of software updates. That's competitive with Apple.

    Chromebooks support crosini, which is a Debian installation. With crosini you are forced to use the ChromeOS "window manager" but everything else is standard Debian. GUI apps like Firefox, Gimp and so on just work. It still gets it's 10 hours when using crosini.

    Most Chromebooks are targeted at the education market and so are very low end, but there are a few high end Chromebooks. They are amd64. In MIPS/watt they are maybe 1/2 of what Apples M series can do, so they can't reach the heights Apple does - but they come as close as the hardware allows. You will probably see a Snapdragon X Chromebook ... one day. On that day, Apple will find its performance and battery life threatened by a "Linux desktop", assuming you are willing to call Debian + ChromeOS window manager a Linux Desktop. Who would have dreamt it?