No, android does not count.
Is there anyone who daily drives Linux on apple silicon or other ARM hardware? If so, then how is your experience, would you recommend it?
For at least 3 years, I’ve been wanting to get an apple silicon mac to daily drive Linux on, lately I’ve been seriously considering getting one of these machines, or even other ARM hardware, like the thinkpad x13s or even the new Qualcomm laptops.
I’m pretty much sold on a used macbook air m1 at this point, but I still wish to hear what other people have to say
arm64 != M* hardware
Arm on Linux is fine. Supporting all the other SoC parts will obviously vary by vendor. I believe there are still many things broken with Apple’s M* platform, but I’m pretty sure it boots. If you really want an Arm laptop, get one the new Qualcomm setups.
https://github.com/AsahiLinux/docs/wiki
Things are progressing really fast actually! Take a look at the feature support page
Well, I guess that’s subjective heh. The very rudimentary basics work on M3, but it’s not in any way capable of daily driving. M1 looks to be the safest if you really need to go with Apple, but it seems you’d be much better off with the Qualcomm as it has native support.
Don’t ditch macOS on the m1. Asahi has some critical features missing and you’ll want to be able to switch back.
Im using arch linux to respond to you right now from my dualboot Oneplus 6. Yeah linux on phones is cool. Recommended. 4.9 stars
I was using the pinebook pro ARM laptop with manjaro linux as a semi-daily driver for a while. It is fine for simple tasks and web browsing, but you cannot expect the hardware to be quick or snappy. I had consistent issues with wifi, and eventually I got fed up with the weak performance and switched back to an x86-64 architecture laptop. In terms of software and support, besides the wifi issues, it was fine
Ditto, except mine just died one day. I put it away for bed, woke up, flipped it open, Nada. Brick. I felt it was a bit slower than I’d like, but got pretty good battery life.
Really tempted to try a Musebook, based on Risc-V, because apparently I’m a sucker for punishment.
We do no kink shaming on this household
From experience, most apps/packages that are compiled for Linux are compiled for both x86 and arm. I’ve had no real issues getting software on my OnePlus 6 running on postmarket os (full Linux os on a phone basically). This is very likely because ARM is a thing in the server space, so most packages in your distros repositories will be compiled for all architectures (and that’s if it’s not required by the distro’s repos to have the two supported).
Other software ftom outside the repos where linux was already a second class citizen like discord or Spotify may be troublesome though
All Raspberry Pis (
excepteven the Pico) are ARM devices so… yes I’ve been using Linux on ARM for years. It’s been smooth sailing both as desktop or 24/7 home servers except for few very rare packages that aren’t build for that architecture and then themselves have dependencies making it hard but overall as time passes and there are ARM processors everywhere it’s only getting easier. I have not tried on Apple Silicon but here also support only seems to get better.PS: also been using the PineTab 2 nearly daily and less frequently PinePhone and PinePhone Pro, all on ARM, also only Linux, all good.
Actually, the Pico is also an arm device, just the M0 variant which admittedly barely counts as a computer.
Right, thanks, fixed even though I don’t believe one can run Linux on it. Made me curious about FUZIX though https://www.raspberrypi.com/news/how-to-get-started-with-fuzix-on-raspberry-pi-pico/
For at least 3 years, I’ve been wanting to get an apple silicon mac to daily drive Linux on
Can you tell us why?
Since the first release of apple silicon I was quite a bit impressed with the hardware, of course im not really an apple guy, and so I initially thought “cool, but that’s not for me”
And then came asahi linux, and it changed everything, in a very short period they got the GPU working, and then came vulkan, opengl 4 and 4.2, most stuff seems to be working already, either on the bleeding edge kernel or the mainline; https://github.com/AsahiLinux/docs/wiki Take a look at the feature support page, it’s really impressive.
I started to study more and more the development of Linux on apple silicon, and even more so after my laptop’s hinge has broken(tldr: I don’t have a laptop anymore, it’s just a PC); recently I’ve been wanting to buy a new laptop, so I can actually use it as one, of course, as any Latin American, I wish to buy for the long run, and all the options seem to be:
1 - Qualcomm laptops designed for windows ridden with shitware, useless AI, and a ducking copilot key( also I have terrible experience with the firmware of my current windows first laptop, I do not wish for more)
2 - Recent or older terribly power inefficient X86 laptops(mine is from 2021, the battery life sucked, even in windows, and it just heats up so easily, I don’t think it can even maintain maximum clock for 5 minutes straight)
3 - Apple silicon macs designed for macOS first that have a decent compatibility with linux, that will only get better with time.
Of course, I do believe X86 will get better with time, as it has already gotten, but until then, I either stick with my current deplorable hardware and wait until the improvements get actually mainstream, or buy another older x86 laptop, just to retire it later on.
Linux on Qualcomm laptops really that bad? I’ve been considering a purchase of a 1st gen once the 2nd gen comes out (probably grab an ex display model on the cheap).
I’ve not been following developments closely enough, but I know the battery life (in windows at least) is tiers better than my current 4800hs / 1650 with 65% battery health.
I’ve too considered a MacBook, but their never within my budget for the spec that I want, guess I was too hopeful about Qualcomm laptops 😞
I don’t think its that “bad” current, but I’m sure you will have to wait for a bit, Qualcomm’s Linux kernel work is really not complete, and currently the only laptops you can get working with Linux are the thinkpad x13s and (maybe?) some other older models.
Not sure how unbothered your experience is going to be on any of these, and they’re all just as expensive as macs
Ahh yeah the price is a waiting game for me, Apple products hold onto their value and for me having the bleeding edge isn’t what I’m chasing these days.
Guess I’ll wait and see how the Qualcomm products go on the used market for their price.
I got my 4800hs for a steal; maybe I need to aim lower.
Ran Asahi for several months, tried it out again recently. It’s good/fine, I just don’t love fedora.
There’s some funkiness with the more complicated install, the AI acceleration doesn’t work, no thunderbolt / docking station.
MacBooks are great hardware but I don’t think they’re the best option for Linux right now. If you’re never going to boot into macOS then I’d look for x13, new Qualcomm, isn’t there a framework arm64 option now or was that a RISC module?
I’m also assuming you’re not looking to do any gaming? Because gaming on ARM is not really a thing right now and doesn’t feel like it will be for a long while.
I think the neural engine works, but you need an out-of-tree kernel module. The asahi wiki talks about that, they say it is yet to be merged on mainline.
Gaming on arm is absolutely a thing… But not on the M’s… About the other chips it’s just on its infancy right now, fex-emu(https://github.com/szllzs/FEXEMU) and box64(https://github.com/ptitSeb/box64) are both capable of running wine, and of course steam. Games work, I don’t think its 100% of native speed, and the compatibility must not be perfect, but like wine/proton I’m sure it’s only going to get better.
The apple silicon devices have 16k pages kernels, while x86 is 4k pages, that would not be a problem if we had 4k page emulation/simulation on Linux, but we don’t, seems like macOS’s way of emulating 4k pages is wasteful to performance, and the contributors do not wish to make a similar implementation, so we don’t get one for now.
You aren’t stuck to Fedora with Asahi, I’m running Debian on my M1 Pro MBP
I dunno if that counts, but I was given a Macbook Air M2 from work that I didn’t need and I’ve been happily running macOs on it for simple daily use.
Whenever the situation requires Linux I fire up one of 3 distros I have as a VM and they work like a charm. I pass-through one of the USB ports to the VM and it’s basically an M1 with Linux at that point in terms of performance (well not really, but it’s very smooth, no complaints).
Might wanna go that route instead, just run macOs natively and your favorite distro as a VM.
I daily drive m2 max on NixOS, all software just works (hyprland, keepassxc, etc. except discord).
opengl works well, vulkan won’t be stable and shipped by default for at least 6 months tho.
no wine, gaming, etc. no external monitor, only non-thunderbolt hubs work, no internal mic, quick battery drain while suspended, if all of that is fine for you, it’s a great dev machine.
That is quite interesting, have you tried the edge kernel?
Torvalds is using an apple Silicon now. He has some talks about how it is.
With macOS or Asahi?
He is on another level, so I imagine he can solve issues that arise compared to the average person 😁
I’ve done some embedded arm Linux dev work and use a raspberry pi 400 and an android phone. All work fine.
Honestly if you buy a Mac give macOS a try. It’s Unix based so you’ll feel at home in the command line. It doesn’t come with a command line package manager but there are two popular ones you can install (homebrew and macports).
It’s amazing. You press one button on a new out of box Mac and you’re in a zsh!
Also, sleep and suspend just work.
Mine sure doesn’t. I send it to sleep (since you can’t send it directly to hibernate like a normal OS), and the next day the battery is empty and it won’t start. This happens about once a month, and I haven’t found the common variable yet.
Aww, that sucks.
I can’t move the close maximize minimize buttons to the top right so MacOS is dead to me on arrival.
I did this. Was a ThinkPad Linuxer for years and now I just use an M1 for sysadmin/programming/web/vids. Quite happy to just use Linux on my servers these days. MacOS does the job nicely on laptop. I suppose it depends on how FOSS you want to be.
nix-darwin is kind of nice too, but only really for CLI tools. You can let nix-darwin manage your homebrew for GUI stuff, if you want.
I’d still take linux if I could though. macOS is just work mandated.
