I’m looking for an Apple MacBook Air M2 alternative that could run Linux.
I need something fanless, super lightweight with very long battery life. The only apps I use are Shotcut video editor, Chrome and Firefox.
Any advice?
Is it a good idea to get a MacBook Air m2 and use something like Asahi Linux or should I wait for arm linux laptops to become available.
I had the Pinebook Pro. It was pretty good, solidly built, had a 1080p screen and could handle Openshot video editor, web browsing and video playback. All I needed.
I didn’t have it hooked up to an external display but according to the website it can handle 4K playback. Mainly used it for listening to music in Cmus whilst browsing in Firefox.
Battery life was pretty good, about 10 hours IIRC but mine just stopped booting after I left the battery dead for a few months.
Might buy another one though https://pine64.com/product-category/pinebook-pro/
There are some purpose-built ARM Linux laptops available but as an owner of an unused Pinebook Pro… can’t recommend
Walking the path of a PC hater is not easy
Do it the Linux way and remove the fan yourself.
Just kidding. Or am I?
the m1 is fine with asahi. i don’t personally own one but i’ve worked on em in the past and its getting better by the day still.
idk about the m2 but it seems fine. people complain about the battery life being worse on asahi.
it’s gonna be years before arm laptops in general hit the scene in a big way and they’ll have the same problems that smartphones and sbcs have (weird non mainline kernel support, etc).
that’s not to say it isn’t happening, just that it’s happening slowly. you want to be in the big common platform as the transition to arm happens and like it or not, that’s apple.
if i were you i’d get the m2 and dual boot asahi. when its broke you still got the apple os that works fine.
I think most people don’t realize this but Apple Silicon is a quantum leap in computing. The only company that can achieve that kind of both power and efficiency is Apple. I say this as a proud Apple hater.
“Fanless” is mostly unheard of otherwise. Maybe some ARM SBCs but those are also very low powered.
it’s a “quantum leap” only in the original scientific meaning of “the smallest distance something can possibly move”
Yeah you just made that up
Noun
(quantum mechanics) The discontinuous change of the state of an electron in an atom or molecule from one energy level to another.
(figurative) An abrupt, extreme change.
(figurative, informal, nonstandard) A large, massive, significant change.
The entire concept of “quantum” is that it’s the smallest possible unit.
A “quantum leap” is the smallest measurable change in electrical charge.
The Planck length, based (it’s a long story, links below) on that smallest possible charge, is around 1.61×10−35 m. (That’s 0.00…00161, with about 31 more zeroes). Which is about as much societal/technical progress as I think Apple has made.
https://www.snexplores.org/article/explainer-quantum-world-super-small https://www.forbes.com/sites/startswithabang/2019/06/26/what-is-the-smallest-possible-distance-in-the-universe/?sh=518af32248a1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planck_units
Apple silicon is in no way a ‘quantum leap’ over anything. Even arm’s general efficiency in low power situations diminish as it enters ultrabook territory
And yet Apple Silicon competes with the best Windows Ultrabooks in existence while using 1/3 the power…
Where did you pull that from? Both amd and Intel has 20W class cpus that compete with base m-series cpus while being based on older nodes
Because it doesn’t use x86. It also costs twice as much compared to other arm based laptops, because Apple.
The only company that can achieve that kind of efficiency is Apple. I say this as a proud Apple hater.
It is not about efficiency, we already know for some time that x86 is not really efficient compared to newer architectures like arm and risc.
But no other ecosystem exists that can force such an architecture move without much much more problems.
So i would rephrase it as “The only company that can force that kind of fundamental change on its user and developers is Apple”
I am not saying it is a bad thing (just alone the rosetta translate layer is actually really impressive). Would love to have some actually good and mainstream arm options such as Linux Laptop.
Microsoft is trying the same - but royally screwing up how they deal with hardware partners. Performance wise the snapdragons they use are roughly a decade behind what Apple is doing - I have both systems for work projects.
The x86 emulation in Windows is imo better solved than rosetta - but the rest of the stack is a mess. For example, the deployment tools only got arm support a few months ago.
And Linux support on those things sucks - while using it on the M1 is great.
Snapdragon Elite is going to be a rather sizeable step forward, thanks to the Nuvia purchase. Windows on ARM exclusivity is also going to end in 2025, and apparently both AMD and Nvidia are going to have chips ready. I’m hoping Lenovo and/or Dell will put some effort into Linux support once we have better chips, and that the likes of System76, Framework, and Starlabs are able to release ARM models.
