Re:Linux on a MacBook Pro (M1 Pro): How Good Is Asahi Now?
by LeFantome on Saturday September 16, 2023 @10:11PM
(#37540801)
They will work. It will just take a while.
Someday, I will buy a used M2 MBP, run Linux on it, and it will be awesome.
That may be a few years from now though.
Re:Linux on a MacBook Pro (M1 Pro): How Good Is Asahi Now?
by baz00 on Sunday September 17, 2023 @04:38AM
(#37542844)
I think that's a little hopeful on the basis you can't really buy a used PC laptop and it'll be awesome. I've been trying to do that for 25 years and it has never been awesome. There was an inflection point around 2006 where a Linux desktop machine was usable and comparable to a windows or mac machine but they have since left it in the dust.
Linux didn't do a whole lot other than keep changing the UI and never finish it since 2006.
Re:Linux on a MacBook Pro (M1 Pro): How Good Is Asahi Now?
by kakwa_ on Sunday September 17, 2023 @01:04PM
(#37547194)
Have been doing the secondhand laptop+Linux for 15 years and I have never felt like I was missing out on OS features.
And while true circa 2006 (these Broadcom wifi cards...), I have not experienced compatibility/lack of drivers in ages.
Re:Linux on a MacBook Pro (M1 Pro): How Good Is Asahi Now?
by kakwa_ on Sunday September 17, 2023 @12:51PM
(#37547061)
I kind of did that with PowerBooks back in the days.
The hard truth was that used Thinkpads were a better option.
For the same price you could get 3 years old ThinkPads which were more powerful and in better condition than 6 years old PowerBooks.
But I did installed Gentoo on my PowerBooks G3 and G4 (it just took 2 days to compile Firefox). And ironically, this knowledge proved useful in my first job when I repurposed old IBM Power servers with it.
I sometimes sense in people a degree of enjoyment in the process of tinkering with Linux on a Mac (or any other hardware) to make it function properly. This mirrors the satisfaction programmers often find when grappling with a compiler or achieving the ideal abstraction. However, it seems that this sense of accomplishment, while valuable in its own right, shouldn't be derived from the tools I use for my primary tasks. I prefer my machine to just work, so I can focus on addressing higher-level, more significant challenges.
I say this as someone who would be absolutely delighted if a few distros just worked 100% seamlessly on an MBP or similar. That would be a dream honestly.