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by nextos 1499 days ago
Me too, especially given that the M1 Air is (i) fanless and (ii) relatively friendly to Linux.

In the US you might also want to consider ThinkPad X13. With some discounts, it can be a good alternative if you prefer a standard architecture. In the EU sadly ThinkPad is sold via a third party reseller which has an atrocious customer service.

For around $600, depending on current deals, you can get a Surface Laptop Go which has a nice screen and just works on Linux. Avoid the baseline model if you can as it has an eMMC HD which is quite slow.
1 comments
happymellon 1499 days ago
> relatively friendly to Linux.

What makes you say that? Apple has never been friendly to Linux, and the M1 having zero support porting Linux by Apple continues this trend. What's more disturbing is that NVIDIA is friendlier.

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themadturk 1499 days ago
Asahi Linux is relatively easy to install and is pretty usable, even at this early stage. The key to Asahi's creation is the open nature of Apple's boot loader. No, Apple isn't supporting Asahi as such, but neither is it actively or passively standing in the way.
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zamadatix 1499 days ago
One could place a bet Asahi will get to such as stage at some point but at this stage you have to be a pretty die-hard tech nerd with a corner case usage scenario to claim it's "pretty usable" though. The speakers don't work, the USB ports won't work with 3.0 devices, the webcam doesn't work, the display brightness isn't adjustable, the touchbar doesn't work, and everything renders on the CPU since the GPU is unsupported killing the battery life. Eventually these things may be well supported or they may not.
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themadturk 1495 days ago
The only response I can offer to this is that I can browse the web, read email, and edit text with it. That's probably 85% of my computer usage right there. My MacBook Air doesn't have a touchbar, I can generally get by without video or games so CPU vs. GPU rendering and sound aren't critical, and I haven't needed to use a webcam (on that machine, that is) for months. Yes, USB is slow and battery life is shorter. But I use the Mac side most of the time anyway. Asahi is a fun experiment for me.
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happymellon 1499 days ago
It doesn't support the majority of the hardware and Apple hasn't provided any specs.

> Apple isn't supporting Asahi as such

That isn't Linux friendly, that's Linux indifferent.

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nextos 1499 days ago
I prefer x86 machines but M1's bootloaders are unlocked and Apple made some changes to facilitate running Linux: https://twitter.com/marcan42/status/1471799568807636994?ref_...

I still prefer open architectures, but the situation is better than with previous Macs, Chromebooks and even some PCs.

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happymellon 1499 days ago
Apple did something that they don't know why, so that meams it has to be to support Linux!

The majority of the hardware is not supported, and Apple has not provided any specs. Just having an unlocked bootloader is not Linux friendly.

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