[panny]

>Apple laptops are top notch.

Not working with Linux is a function of Apple, not Linux. There is a crew who have wasted the last half decade trying to make Asahi Linux, a distro to run on ARM macbooks. The result is after all that time, getting an almost reasonably working OS on old hardware, Apple released the M4 and crippled the whole effort. There's been a lot of drama around the core team who have tried to cast blame, but it's clear they are frustrated by the fact that the OEM would rather Asahi didn't exist.

I can't personally consider a laptop which can't run linux "top notch." But I gave up on macbooks around 10 years ago. You can call me biased.

[gfody]

I just put Asahi on an M2 Air and it works so incredibly well that I was thinking this might finally be the year linux takes the desktop .. I wasn't aware of the drama w/Apple but I imagine M2 hardware will become valuable and sought after over M3+ just for the ability to run Asahi

[panny]

The really sad thing is Alyssa Rosenzweig was doing Libreboots on potato ARM laptops a few years ago. Asus C201 if I remember correctly. Alyssa went on to create Panfrost, which was fucking incredible. Then Alyssa left freedom and started working on Asahi instead. Now Lenovo is shipping a bad ass ARM chromebook with benchmarks in the M2 macbook territory, and where did Alyssa go? To work for proprietary Intel. There's a song playing in my head right now, Stabbing Westward: The thing I hate.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ir-jKSDZYY

Had Alyssa stuck with freedom, we would have had a very nice HP Chromebook x360 13b-ca0047nr, fully repairable, fully free cpu, gpu, and wifi, like a few years ago. 2016 Macbook Pro tier laptop, not at all shabby.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cwORx9fbxCA

And now today, an even better Lenovo chromebook 3nm, 16GBs RAM, even a 50 tops NPU... but no. Alyssa had to go chase proprietary Apple. We have the hardware today. FSF could be selling fully free RYF ARM machines right now. Like FULLY free, all the way down to the EC, below the boot loader, below the CPU firmware even. But they aren't. The talent jumped ship for a soulless corporate paycheck.

I'm not faulting anyone for making a living either, I understand. But I'm pretty sure Alyssa was making a decent living with Collabra. Now Intel has their claws in, and will bury that brilliant developer in a back office doing miserable work. Whatever money Intel is paying, it wasn't worth the pride and impact that could have been made in software freedom.

It's just sitting right there. Victory is just laying there for someone to pick it up. But nobody with the talent is even trying now.

[fragmede]

Theoretically what hardware would this person buy today, Jan 4th, 2026?

[panny]

A Lenovo Chromebook Plus 14, with an MT8196 processor, with fully free blobless ARM Trusted Firmware on github

https://github.com/ARM-software/arm-trusted-firmware

With user replacable WiFi hardware, with full panfrost GPU support... oh, wait, not that one, Alyssa left us.

[fragmede]

This one? https://www.bestbuy.com/product/lenovo-chromebook-plus-14-ol...