You mentioned Docker and virtualisation and this tool has addressed most of my pain points with those, that's it.
I'm happy with my AMD Thinkpad running Linux ...
P.S. I believe that specific company did some level of rug-pull early on already and started charging people who already relied on it for free because they left Docker which started charging earlier, so I would be vary of relying on them.
https://web.archive.org/web/20230331034854/https://docs.orbs...
Otherwise you can still stick to free alternatives like colima which would be CLI only
A product is free. Then it isn’t free.
You can argue all day whether it’s ok to do this, and I’d absolutely say it’s fine, even laudable that they’re trying to make a real business where you have to pay for a product. Great for them!
But “rug pull” is absolutely still a correct description of what’s happening, because it was free, and now it’s not. Here’s a nice rug, but you have to get off of it by $DATE because we’re going to pull it. It’s a rug pull.
If it wasn’t a rug pull, I’d be able to keep standing on the rug (the free version.)
To make a non-fallacious analogy: If a ride sharing service gave car rides for free for a month, and a friend said "I'm going to use this instead of buying a car", you would very rightly say "they're going to pull the rug on the free rides, you may want to rethink that". And that would be a perfectly valid thing to say, even if the company told everyone the free rides were only for a month. Because the purpose of the discussion is whether it's a good idea to depend on the free service or not.
You seem hung up on this, like it's a judgement call or something. Maybe just free yourself of negative connotations with the term. It's fine to do this. I don't think it's a problem whatsoever.
The phrase is useful for what the metaphor implies: Likening using the product to sitting on a rug. If you start getting used to your place on the rug (putting your stuff on it, eating dinner on the rug, etc), you have to be aware that they're going to pull it, so you have to have a plan for when that happens (either pay or switch to a competitor.) Being aware of this is important: If you start developing a workflow that depends on this kind of software, you have to understand that it won't be free in the future and that you should either not depend on it, or be willing to pay. This is all fine.
The fact that you don't like the negative connotation doesn't mean the phrase isn't applicable.
You mean WSL2. WSL1 was more like Wine than a VM. I am still sour they did away with that approach, I thought it was the coolest thing.
Yes, indeed.
> I thought it was the coolest thing.
NT was designed to have different subsystems[1]. Win32 subsystem was a layer on top of NT, and was a peer to the POSIX subsystem, and IIRC even OS/2. WSL1 ideas was certainly not new in the context of NT. FreeBSD also has a Linux subsystem.
[1]: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/5d/Wi...
It was implemented as an NT "Pico Process", which was a pretty new concept in NT.
Why would you think that? They're working hard on upstreaming all patches ATM, adding new hardware support will be much easier afterwards.
I'm saying it's an open project and if people want to bitch they're going too slow they are welcome to contribute.
I'm saying it's an open project and if people want to bitch they're going too slow they are welcome to contribute.
Asahi Linux is a volunteer project. Devs commit their free time to work on something incredibly difficult, giving people the ability to run Linux on an entirely new platform, and all people can do is complain it isn't good enough.
And this is just one example, you see this kind of crap all over the Open Source community. Providing constructive feedback is one thing, bitching that they aren't working fast enough is another. Either get involved and find some way to help out, or shut up.
No, you're not. You're just regurgitating the same boring tired response of most OSS communities. It doesn't actually change or improve anything.
If you'd care to suggest a solution I'm sure everyone would love to hear it.
This is never going to happen, but you're certainly welcome to spend your energy online however you wish.
I write lots of Linux software but I have no intention to explicitly support Asahi or Macs whatsoever. Apple's greed is not something I will support with my money or my time, if Apple wants to court the Linux community then they can do it the same way Intel, AMD and Nvidia get along with us. Making your fans reverse-engineer devicetree drivers is just insulting.
Mac hardware is and will be a second-rate Linux experience, which is a shame because Apple could be competing with Nvidia for market share if they simply gave a shit.
Like I said, Apple could be a real player... if they had any incentive to compete.
Pretty hard to make that argument about people who explicitly want to get rid of Apple’s OS from their hardware.
It's almost never pragmatic to assume that your own suffering will necessarily yield a better outcome. Maybe your smoking hot partner eventually becomes a better person, but is it worth investing 10 years of mental anguish for the chance of getting there? A real pragmatist starts dating again, which forces their partner to stop taking themselves for granted. If Apple wasn't a literal monopoly, their customers could be holding them over a barrel and forcing their software products to compete naturally.
macOS sucks because their customers have an unhealthy emotional attachment to Apple. Americans forfeit their opportunity to regulate Apple into real competition, and now we are paying the price with top-down app censorship, UI disaster updates and bugfixes that add more bugs than fixes.
Then they have to take the whole package or nothing at all. You can’t swap your partner’s brain. But you can change your OS on your computer. These things are not comparable.
> macOS sucks because their customers have an unhealthy emotional attachment to Apple.
No, macOS (currently) sucks because Apple is doing a bad job. Their customers’ relationship to the company is orthogonal to the OS’ quality.
(I love macOS, though I also have a ThinkPad with NixOS.)
I searched throughly for something as close to that MBP hw conf but with Linux compatibility. There's just no hardware equivalent to what the Macbookpro, including the build quality.
So I de idea to go for the MBP and install vmware + Linux. It's an amazing piece of hardware.
> And, of course, “When is M3/M4 support coming?”
https://marcan.st/2025/02/resigning-as-asahi-linux-project-l...
It's just amusing to me that Linux users since the beginning of time have been working hard on ensuring the maintainers of their software get upset at them and quit working on their software.
Over decades of seeing this, it is entertaining that people never change. There will be a great beauty to the vim v emacs wars in 5723 CE between the people of Gliese 251b and Gliese 251c.
M5 has major GPU changes again so that is even more ways off.
My Asus laptop with 32 GB of RAM is 4 years old, but resumes from the encrypted swap partition in under 5 seconds, which is fast enough for me.
I'm not sure of the status on other distro kernels but allowing it would be a significant bypass of Secure Boot's purpose.
That is worth discussing though, as it's a marked departure from old Macbooks that did support the UEFI method.
Needing a way to securely verify the hibernate image is ALSO a problem, and one of the reasons Asahi haven't focused on suspend-to-disk, but it's not the first-order issue.
I was able to follow a fairly standard NixOS config with lvm and encrypted swap. I've never had any issues after hibernating a couple times a day for 3 years.
I don't know what the fuck is going on with laptop hardware. That stuff seems to barely work, despite the chips and stuff being off the shelf. Most windows laptops cannot handle sleep correctly either.
Setting the BIOS option to "Linux-compatible sleep mode" fixed this, but it took me FOREVER to figure this out and I'm reasonably certain I first heard about this fix in a comment here.
Not a bit of a problem since.
Having such an obvious name like that is a gift, because otherwise you have to start decoding Intel Marketing names for their features to figure out which are actually anti-features.
The intention was to replace S3 with fine-grained per-device sleep modes that would in aggregate lead to idle power that is almost as good as S3 while allowing for the "wake up and check email" kind of features. But to the surprise of approximately nobody, this complex multi-vendor strategy relying on high-quality drivers for every single peripheral in the machine did not work out as well as planned. The plan also did not in any way require that S3 sleep be eliminated from newer hardware platforms; that was just malicious behavior from the Wintel conspiracy.
In a nutshell:
> Getting hibernate to work would mean a metric truckload of work on the drivers to support restoring firmware state. Not happening any time soon, it's basically forever the bottom of the priority list and we're unlikely to ever run out of other things to work on first.
> Fixing PM with no documentation is a game of trial and error. You do "more things" like macOS and hope that one of them reduces power consumption.
> It definitely isn't obvious what we're missing, and we don't know what the real answer is going to be. If we did, it would already be fixed.
people do it all the time for gaming laptops etc when probably 99% of their usage is at the same desk
In reality, far more than 1% of my computer use happens away from the desk where my desktop is located. I'm guessing I'm not alone in that.
Then there are non-development tasks, like 3D modelling or video editing.
Remote desktop is a kind of solution, but it's extremely sub par. Latency is not good unless you're on the same LAN in my experience.
It's not going to support WiFi promiscuous mode but maybe pick up a Pi Zero 2W or similar if that's a requirement.
I would imagine there would be more thermal throttling and throttling to reduce power usage on a Macbook versus a machine that wasn't designed to be mobile.
Thankfully my worklaptop is an m4 mb pro, so I have flexibility with that.
And indeed with virtual backgrounds in I do probably 3 meetings a week in my car so I can do quick errands without skipping a meeting here or there.
They could own a much more economical car, and have enough money left in the pocket to rent a van when they go on big trips, get delivered or rent a trailer the few times a year they need to carry large stuff.
Personally I like having a laptop because I use my computers in different rooms depending on the use case and occasionally on travel.
I think my next laptop will be M2 Pro/Max, but honestly at the moment I dont see the need for anything faster. And having discovered Asahi, I dont think I could ever go back to a BigTech commercial Ad platform OS. This feels like My computer.
Is they possible with the built in WiFi chipsets?
The market really isn’t limited to “buying a windows laptop and putting Linux onto it” anymore.
Lots of OEMs support Linux as a first-class citizen.
For me personally I’m enjoying my Framework laptop a lot. Is it the same kind of hardware polish as a Mac? No, of course not. But owning a Framework is like owning an Apple in the sense that the community has fully integrated Framework systems into the ecosystem.
One command installs Framework fan profiles into Bazzite Linux. One command inside Linux updates UEFI and device firmware, try doing that with Windows!
Is the battery like half as good as a MacBook Pro? Yeah. It sucks a little bit. But also, owning/carrying around a $50 portable battery isn’t such a bad thing, and the weight difference is a wash since the 13” Framework is lighter than the 14” MacBook Pro.
And on the plus side, I paid a less than MacBook Air money for a system with 2TB of storage and 32GB of RAM (DIY previous AMD generation model), fully upgradable, fully repairable, with customizable I/O.
A new battery is DIY, $60, not $250 with a wait for service. Replacing a broken screen is DIY $200, not $700 and a visit to the Apple service depot.
One day, I’m sure framework will be selling an ARM mainboard with similar battery life compared to a Mac, and when that day comes I don’t even have to buy a whole new system to get one.
And on top of all that, it’s still a nice laptop that feels premium even though it’s assembled DIY. I’d say the keyboard is better than a Mac keyboard (though the trackpad isn’t).
But also, there are other OEMs where running Linux is a joy and a breeze, along with being fully supported and even sold preinstalled. System76, Lenovo, Dell, and HP all have Linux-supported configurations.
Framework is great, but it doesn't even come close in terms of quality. Specs are one thing, how the product looks, feels, attention to detail, and most importantly: long term viability! even if you take away everything else, macbooks are though. I've used a couple for over a decade with no hardware repair (except when I broke a screen). Most mac users have similar experiences, so it's not survivor's bias.
If all you care about is specs or open hardware, obviously Apple hardware is not for you.
I don't want framework or system76 to move to ARM, a lot of people like me still _need_ x86 hardware.
There isn't a single machine out there that's even moderately close in terms of build quality. Either at the dollar cost for an entry series MacBook Pro or Air with 36GB (38?) memory.
I don't think there's an OEM Linux or Windows laptop with Linux as a first class citizen laptop out there even moderately close for value, performance and build quality.
Shit I'm not sure if there's even one out there if you spent considerably more than on a MacBook. MacBook Pro's are pretty good value now.
Apple used the whole "economy of scale" effect to invest in specialized tooling/machining that would be too costly to recover the ROI for other OEMs. Keep in mind that consumer laptop makers to the most part don't make a profit (or have a low profit margin - last i checked at least) on laptops and printers. No one else has made the economics of using quality material, top of the line design, and specialized machining/tooling work like Apple.
For hardware quality, Huawei is solidly in second place, with the rest trailing pretty far behind.
Macs are great as an OS with UNIX infrastructure, aa graphical laptops relevant for workloads besides Photoshop and Sketch, not so much.
It’s such a problem that if I were to switch away from Apple, I’d try to find a way to go desktop-exclusive and not use a laptop at all, because everything else on the market is so compromise-ridden as to not be worth the trouble. And I say this as the owner of an X series ThinkPad, which are among the better options in that world.
It’s as if most laptop manufacturers can’t be arsed to take their products seriously. So frustrating.
But my favorite machine of late is a tiny ultra portable with a Ryzen AI 9 chip with 64Gb RAM, it's an x86 that's competitive with the new ARM stuff on power efficiency
GPD Win Max 2 with the AI 9 HX 370
I still have a fully functioning iPhone 4s somewhere. I could still use it as a daily driver hardware-wise, but it is sadly deprecated (32-bit), so - no software support anymore.
A MacBook loses software updates in 10 years. Sometimes less. You can install what amounts to reverse engineered Linux on one if you lose your macOS updates. You have a choice of basically one viable distro.
And this idea that no other competitor makes hardware in a similar class of quality is extremely outdated. I actually own both a modern MacBook and a Framework. This isn’t some HP shitbook from 2011. It’s all aluminum, like I said the keyboard is literally superior to Mac systems, and are we just going to gloss over 2016-2020 when Apple just shit the bed and made utter garbage? Are we going to gloss over how the current systems have a gigantic notch blocking the menu bar that’s somehow bigger than FaceID but only houses a middling webcam?
You admit you broke a screen on your MacBook. How much did that cost you to repair? How long did you wait without your system to repair it? Or did you just go off and buy a new one?
and please ffs, stop misusing the term "gaslight". someone having a different opinion and experience than you is not the same gaslighting you. gaslighting is when someone blames you for a harm they themselves caused. it isn't even possible for me to gaslight you in this context since the harm caused can only come from apple or someone making you use apple products.
> And this idea that no other competitor makes hardware in a similar class of quality is extremely outdated.
You might be right, but framework isn't it. We're having this discussion to better inform each other, so what laptop do you recommend that has a similar build quality as an MBP?
It’s gaslighting because you’re trying to convince us of a different alternate reality than the observed truthful reality, not just a different opinion. You’re trying to tell us that factually non-user-repairable MacBooks with a manufacturer that refuses to sell spare parts with a major hardware reliability scandal under its belt less than 10 years ago will stand the test of time.
I never claimed that you can find hardware that is 100% as good as MacBooks, I’m only claiming that the extra XX% better hardware polish/quality/battery life you get with a Mac is not really worth giving up expandable storage and easy Linux compatibility in the context of someone who was going to install Asahi Linux instead of macOS. And there are PC systems that get closer than ever to MacBook quality. ThinkPad X1 Carbon, some higher end ASUS Zenbook systems I’ve played with, even some of the thin and light gaming-oriented systems out there are really nice quality as the space is very competitive.
If the only major compromises are battery life (solved by a $50 spare battery or a wall outlet at the coffee shop) or how much my laptop feels like a luxury indulgence like a fashionable handbag, I’m personally fine with that.
This is nonsense. I've owned Dell Business, Thinkpads and several Apple products including an iBook g4, Macbook Pro and a Mac Mini (G4 and Intel).
The Dell Business and Thinkpads while they don't look as nice are far more rugged. My Dell 6410 could probably be used as a make shift weapon in a fight and easily survive. I have a T480 and it while it is small and pretty thin IMO, it is built pretty sturdy.
Do they look as nice? No they don't. But they are similar quality if it is business. I personally prefer No BS and strength as they are meant for work.
The thing that macs do better than other laptops is the screens are usually nicer. However these days there is less of a gap. I was surprised how good the screen is on Dell Precision work provided me with.
> Specs are one thing, how the product looks, feels, attention to detail, and most importantly: long term viability!
You have this impression due to the packaging when you first open it. They deliberately design the packaging that way so you have that impression (there is a bit of science behind this).
https://filestage.io/blog/apple-packaging/
https://www.dreamcustomboxes.com/apple-packaging/
A lot of companies ape this packaging because it works.
> even if you take away everything else, macbooks are though. I've used a couple for over a decade with no hardware repair (except when I broke a screen). Most mac users have similar experiences, so it's not survivor's bias.
This is nonsense. Macs have over the last 15-20 years have had a very mixed record on terms reliability and repair-ability. Repairs are cost prohibitive. Many of the components are proprietary and cannot be sourced easily other than removing from other dead laptops. I am fairly friendly with a Mac repair specialist in my area. He says it is basically getting harder and harder to repair them.
I have first hand experience of the Mac Pro laptops circa 2015. Battery is glue'd in on many models and when the battery is EOL it will clock the machine down to 800Mhz even on mains. Removing the battery is difficult as you have to dissolve the glue. As it was out of warranty I had to get a local repair guy to remove it. Cost about ~£200. Later the same year the official charger went bad and burned up the power traces. Same local repair guy said it was about £150, that with the cost of a new charger made replacing the Mac a no go and I decided to recycle it.
Compare this with any Dell Business model. I can for the most part just crack off the back and remove and replace a lot of parts without any specialist tools. This is deliberate because they usually have to be serviced by IT departments.
> If all you care about is specs or open hardware, obviously Apple hardware is not for you.
Apple computer hardware for the most part is bought by people that want things that look nice.
even the things you mention in your post paint a picture of a difference that for a lot of usage patterns is much more significant than just the last 10%
I have been looking at the Lenovos though.
* https://x.com/FrameworkPuter/status/1960029405067313546
* https://x.com/FrameworkPuter/status/1975721241345728683
* https://bsky.app/profile/frame.work/post/3lvm6ahbrf22n
* https://community.frame.work/t/framework-supporting-far-righ...
So conferences in every western country should also not invite Chinese or Japanese speakers because they hold similar views to DHH? I'm so over this exhausting need to feel self-righteous.
Framework makes hardware and software. If you're going to close yourself off to any product or organization that happens to have some users you disagree with - then you're not going to get very far in this world. This is a wild, and frankly unhealthy perspective to hold.
> If you're going to close yourself off to any product or organization that happens to have some users you disagree with
I do not see where I mentioned Framework users. I care about the actions of the company. I care that they decide to support DHH, financially and through promoting his projects, and I care that they double down on their support in the face of push-back.
Because the push-back was dumb. This idea what we have to isolate and attack every person that we don't agree with is dumb. That you consider DHH's position on immigration sufficient to label him a fascist is dumb. All of it is moral showboating with no actual substance, otherwise you'd put your money where you mouth is and not purchase from most companies in the world that work with actual fascist regimes.
You're welcome to your opinion, and I have zero insight into whether DHH is a fascist or not, but by no means is that explicit support for fascism! It's not just exaggeration, it's actually a lie.
If you buy a machine from Framework you might indirectly support a project which is maintained by someone whose opinions you dislike.
If you buy a Lenovo machine you will contribute to the revenue of an authoritarian government that will use some of that money to perpetuate human rights abuses against its own citizens, and maybe the citizens of your own country too one day.
Which is the most moral choice here in your opinion?
To exaggerate, we could imagine that there was an explicitly nazi computer manufacturer who put swastika stickers on their laptops and everything. When faced with the choice of Lenovo and this explicitly nazi manufacturer, I would probably choose the Lenovo, even though you could probably do the same consequentialist math and conclude that Lenovo does more actual harm through their utility to the CCP than what the tiny nazi computer company can do. I imagine you feel the same way.
What Framework does is obviously way less egregious than my hypothetical example, but I'm still not comfortable associating with a company which so publicly funds DHH, for the same kind of reason that I would not be comfortable associating with the nazi computer company.
So this is really a signalling thing? If you bought a Framework laptop you'd be signalling to your peers that you're ambivalent about supporting an ideology that obviously you fundamentally disagree with and is unanimously despised within your groups?
And, sure, my peers play a role too. What message do I send, for example, to my transgender friends when I demonstrate that I don't mind Framework's public support of DHH's public transphobic rhetoric? What message do I send to my non-white friends when I demonstrate that I don't mind Framework's public support of DHH's public "the UK was better when it was all white" rhetoric? Et cetera.
DHH is certainly an ass, and this is my first time reading about the racist stuff (before this I just found him generally extremely unlikable), but just general association with someone with shitty opinions doesn't fully ruin a project for me. I guess Omarchy is popular nowadays (I'm really not sure why, if someone really knows, please explain), people are going to want to use it on their Framework computers, ergo: Framework has a reason to cooperate with Omarchy developers so their devices work like the customers want them to, and I guess I'm fine with it even if DHH leaves a bad taste in my mouth...
I guess I sort of feel similar in regards to suckless, I don't really like most of their projects, from what I've heard there are some abhorrent people involved, but I wouldn't really put blame on the distro maintainer that packages their projects for their users to use, I guess?
Though, I definitely get why people might feel differently.
That explains everything, no need to dig deeper.
I would understand if it was Lunduke or XLibre folk, but that's a complete non-issue.
* Here's his screed about how London was better before all the brown people moved in: https://world.hey.com/dhh/as-i-remember-london-e7d38e64
* Here's your typical right-wing anti-DEI rant: https://world.hey.com/dhh/the-waning-days-of-dei-s-dominance...
I'm sure there's more stuff I could link, but I don't have the time right now to go looking for more. I think this should get the point across.
Even though I disagree with DHH on all of these topics I don't see how it's relevant to Free Software at all unless the distro were using the webcam and IP geolocation and refusing to work for brown people in England.
I couldn't find anything specific.
Would appreciate a link to any based explanation
If you want to read the post, its here: https://web.archive.org/web/20250925050154/https://world.hey...
IMO, the implication is quite weak. The only place I found where the author mentions ethnicity, is when he refers to Pakistani rape gangs, and I assume, the choice if words is influenced by the article he links (can't verify, as the link to the article is broken).
Otherwise, this seems to me like an antiimmigration position, but I couldn't spot any racial or ethnical prejudice.
Carrying an extra powerbank that has to be charged daily (assuming you'll use your computer full day) is not something I'd just handwave like that.
Add on a starlink and you need a trolley to carry the weight of the power packs needed.
To clarify, I'm totally fine with powerbanks, especially that these days even the cheapo ones support a subset of PD to charge a laptop (sometimes even 12V is enough, my Thinkpad allows that, I've read somewhere that Framework can charge from even 5V). I'm just not fine with solving an objectively poorer battery management (compared to Macs) by just buying external battery and calling it a solution. It's a workaround at best.
If I am guilty of hand waving a spare battery aren’t MacBook die-hard guilty of handwaving away major downsides to the device like soldered-in storage? I saved something like $500 compared to Apple by buying my own 2TB of storage.
And let’s be honest, it’s rare to actually need MacBook Air levels of “sitting away from a power outlet” battery life. It’s definitely nice to have and I definitely wish my framework had that level of battery life but it’s a want not a need, and it’s not as important to me as having a system I can repair myself, having a system that runs Linux with first-class support, plays PC games easily, etc.
I will also say that the spare battery being in my backpack now has coincidentally come in handy countless times outside of the laptop.
And if you want better battery life than that there are other choices like Lenovo, you don’t even have to use a Framework to get a great Linux laptop.
I love my Framework 13. I'm a long-time Mac user, but I increasingly found myself alienated by locked-down hardware and increasingly locked-down software, and so I ended up switching back to PCs. I greatly appreciate my Framework 13's user-serviceability. While I use Windows 11 + WSL (Microsoft Office is the main thing holding me back from using Linux exclusively, and yes, I was a regular LibreOffice user back in my student days when I couldn't afford a Microsoft Office license), it's great to have the option to go to Linux full-time on well-supported hardware.
With that said, my M3 MacBook Pro has absolutely amazing battery life. By comparison, my Framework 13 has rather abysmal battery life by 2025 standards. In fact, it feels reminiscent of my very first Apple laptop: a 2006 Core Duo MacBook, which got roughly five hours when brand new. Even putting my Framework 13 to sleep drains the battery after a few hours, while on my MacBook Pro, it barely sips from the battery.
I hope future releases of Framework laptops have better battery life; it makes a difference.
If you don’t specifically have a memory bandwidth-constrained workflow this doesn’t matter at all and having upgradable memory is still better for most people.
If Framework starts using CAMM modules or releases a Ryzen AI board with soldered RAM this difference is lessened/disappears.
fwiw the asahi kernel and patches are usable from other distros just fine; i've done it on nixos in the past and the linked blog post shows some stuff running on gentoo
If we compare like-to-like the rtx 5070 in a framework 16 has 384GB/s on its own, add the 86 and the combined memory bandwidth is higher than a M1 Max.
This is a weird assertion to make, if you don't have the parts on hand and can't walk into a store to buy them same-day. A big part of the reason I _do_ buy Apple laptops (besides the fact I do like the OS, battery life and hardware) is that I can walk into an Apple Store in any major city I'm likely to be in and purchase a replacement immediately should disaster strike while I'm traveling.
The fact of the matter is that sending a MacBook to depot and fixing it takes around a week including transit times to and from. Apple no longer does any computer repairs in store.
At $60 for a battery or $200 for a screen those parts are so cheap that I could just buy them to keep on hand and they’d still cost less than AppleCare.
Many parts like storage and RAM are standard where, yes, I can walk into a store and buy them and install them same day.
If I’m on the road and my laptop breaks, I’m buying a new one post haste, and resolving the problem when I get home. It’s like 2-3 hours worth of billing time to do so vs screwing about trying to repair. Simply not worth the time.
Have you ever heard of Amazon prime? You really think they don’t have a suitable laptop they can deliver to you overnight or maybe even the same day?
And anyway, this is really only an argument for “whatever is most popular,” not “what is the best machine.” If some other brand besides Apple was the most popular laptop in the world that other brand would get this same treatment by you even if the computer sucked (which MacBook Pro did between 2016 and 2020)
Essentially you’re saying that Budweiser is the best beer because it’s the most available. If I run out of beer I can get it anywhere.
Amazon prime might get one to you next day, late in the day. That is wildly insufficient for a business trip. If you’re in a city where they will deliver same-day, you can probably also go to a Microcenter and get a low-spec Thinkpad off-the-shelf.
Beer is not a necessity when traveling for business (though I actually happen to be perfectly happy to drink Bud Light, Coors Banquet, or PBR just as readily as a Grisette, since I’m not a snob), but a functioning laptop is.
As for popularity - sure - making a good product makes it popular. I was in fact so happy with the Mac between 2016-18 that I bought a second so I would have the nice low travel keyboard and Touch Bar available indefinitely.
Whether you believe it or not is irrelevant, frankly.
Just get a Framework, they're Macs for Linux.
> When documenting the security model, Apple use the example of an XNU kernel developer wishing to test their changes on a second macOS installation. It is apparent however that the platform security model was engineered to allow third party operating systems to coexist with macOS in a way that does not compromise any of Apple's security guarantees for macOS itself. *Rumours circulating that Apple are actively hostile towards efforts such as Asahi, or that their security must be bypassed or jailbroken to run untrusted code are unfounded and false*. In fact, Apple have expended effort and time on _improving_ their security tooling in ways that _only_ improve the execution of non-macOS binaries.
Regarding Framework laptops being "Macs for Linux," Frameworks are fantastic in their own way but they don't come anywhere near the build quality (or battery life) you get with a Mac.
We will see if they continue that attitude.
And yeah each iteration of the M chip has gotten better, but even a standard M1 is a very capable chip these days.
My work laptop is a 2021 MBpro. M1, 16gb ram, nothing special. Still very capable machine for video editing. One of my department livestream machines is an M4 Mac mini, 16gb ram as well. I regularly juggle between the two and the only two big things I notice are 1) multi screen support (M1 can only push to one external which is annoying), and 2) noticeably better but not wildly improved render times (admittedly this difference is a bit more stark when you’re doing heavy lifts like resolve fusion comps and intense coloring/masking). On any given day they are basically the same machine to me.
Suffice to say if you’re running on an M3 right now and are feeling the need for an M5, unless you’re doing really bleeding edge heavy duty work, I just don’t think there’s that much you’re missing out on. So Linux on an M3 to me is great.
Asahi is a bit like DOOM.
no unified cpu/gpu memory, but you can get nvidia gpus and work with cuda rather than mlx.
it's actually getting really good.
I also own an M4 so I can compare the two.
The M4 wins on slickness due to 1) unibody 2) Apple Silicon (and running local AI models, and the occasional game that is actually optimized for Mac like BG3) 3) excellent screen (HDR, high contrast, etc.), but the Framework wins on cool-ness and, frankly, ethics. (Especially since I put NixOS on it with ZFS-on-root mirrored across 2 internal SSD's.)
In the past, I've made this specific thing work with USB passthrough, Virtualbox, and external USB WiFi adapters with monitor mode support.
Get any of the modern laptops with good battery life, install linux + Elementary OS without any hacks or workarounds (or better yet, i3wm which is the best window manager for laptops), and never look back.
Or do what I do, which is buy $200 dells/thinkpads of ebay, and for anything requiring CPU, just ssh into your home server.
Personally I went a step further and use a lapdock with a samsung phone - acts like a laptop with Termux, and I can do pretty much everything with good battery life, because lapdock battery also charges the phone.
Seriously I would love to switch back to a full-time Linux distro but I'm more interested in getting work done and having a stable & performant platform. Loosing a day of productivity fixing drivers and patching kernels gets old. The M-series laptops have been the perfect balance for me so far.
You are talking like it was 1997.
The typical linux users don't have to do that. Only those who buy unsupported devices on purpose for the challenge to make them work.
[1]: I’ve seen these issues on Dell (XPS 13), Thinkpads, and HP laptops
The only drivers that I've had memorable issues with over the years are printer drivers, but those have nothing to do with the kernel. And printers are pretty cursed on every platform.
Webcam that has always worked flawlessly on Fedora on my other laptops.
Also Teams was much more reliable for the last 5-6 years or so I used it with ungoogled chromium on Linux than it did for the last 6 months using the official app on windows. I have had to kill it an awful number of times after struggling with unrecognized audio device, freezing video, or eveb freezing everything except sound.
Using a workstation and an AMD Thinkpad.
No idea what the future of that project, or its potential integration with other container management systems might be, but it is certainly interesting at first glance.
Why Not Use Apple Containers Instead?
Because Apple containers:
Aren’t meant for system-level isolation — they’re for app sandboxing.
Don’t provide process namespaces, cgroups, or Linux syscalls, which are essential to containerization.
Wouldn’t be compatible with the entire Linux-based Docker ecosystem (images, tooling, etc.).
So Docker sticks with Linux containers, running them in a VM layer on macOS.
That is the kind of thing that needs a strong vision from the top to provide.
What they did was impressive but nobody is superhuman and inherently Apple is all about control. Linux will always be - at best - a third rate citizen.
As an aside - I was under the impression x86 chips were still way behind Apple in battery life, but this doesnt seem to be the case. My new computer has a generation or two old Intel CPU (Meteor Lake) and I am getting 12+ hours out of a ~50Wh battery.
IMO your expectation is correct. Such is the fate of all reverse engineering projects, or more generally, all heroism-based projects. Heroism is not sustainable. A sustainable business model is sustainable.
Why though? My 2021 M1 still feels more beefy than pretty much any other laptop on the market. I have a M1, and an M4 for work and I barely feel any difference between the 2, they’re pretty much top notch. Sure, the M4 pro is more future proof, I can imagine myself still using my M1 in 2030 and my M4 in 2035. But I honestly don’t see the point in replacing an M1 with an M4 today.
Just my opinion though, I’m sure you have your own reasons for wanting to upgrade (I would guess RAM), but manage your expectations: the M1 is still an amazing machine.
Do I need it? No, of course not. But could I make use of the extra power? For sure.
And shiny new things are fun.
I installed Omarchy via Asahi Alarm [1] and have been running it for 3 weeks without issues. I spent half a day setting everything to my taste (keyboard bindings, monitors, waybar, etc.), and I'm still getting used to Hyprland, but I have a fast machine. RAM usage with everything I need open is considerably lower than on macOS (80% -> 50%), and I don't have to pay a monthly subscription for every little piece of software not built into macOS.
Asahi isn't perfect (touchpad rejection being my main issue), but I can live with the inconveniences. This is still a very good machine, and I can't afford a new one right now.
There are so many big and little things you get for free with the kernel running directly on your hardware that you just don't, and can't, get on macOS or Linux VMs.
Apple Support told me in their own words it's bricked. It's mine. I own it.
I'd _love_ to play with M1 with my own Linux install. I'm not about to open it up and unsolder/solder things though.
Apple support told me they couldn't do anything about it and I was essentially locked out of my own device forever.
You got locked out of your own Apple account? I don't see how getting it used from eBay matters.
There are native Linux laptops from several manufacturers such as Slimbook, Star Labs, System76, Tuxedo etc. Or if you prefer mainstream OEMs both Lenovo and Dell sell laptops with Linux preloaded (or have official Linux compatibility listed on the spec sheet). And of course, there's also Framework, if you're in the lucky 10% of the world's population where they ship to.
Personally I'm a big fan of ThinkPads - I have the Z13 Gen 1 and it's honestly running Linux on it has been one of the best non-MacBook laptop experiences I've ever had. Just picture this: all day battery life, suspend/resume that works 100% of the time, every bit of firmware upgradable from within Linux (fwupd) and literally *zero* errors in the dmesg/boot logs. I've had this machine for over 3 years now (running Bazzite and CachyOS, both on KDE) and have had no major with either the hardware or software.
I've also got an M1 MacBook Air, and the only thing it does better is the battery life, but otherwise I vastly prefer my ThinkPad. Happy to answer any questions.
I do absolutely love the z13 and prefer it most of the time...but I definitely would not call the battery life "all day" or even "almost all day"
Also by all day I meant working day (8+ hours), which is good enough for me to take my laptop off-site and work without a battery. Still falls a good bit short from the Apple Silicon MacBook or course, can't really compete with that until we get a decent Linux-native ARM notebook (unless you count Chromebooks).
The nice thing about Macs is that you don't really have to do that...
> I have a 2021 MacBook Pro with an M1 Pro.
> It's getting a bit old
You might try the UTM.app from the App Store (or build it), disable Qemu and enable Apple Silicon hypervisor, which i explain in the comment below, for very similar context and reason.
It's getting a bit old, so it would be nice to replace it with a new MacBook Pro in not too long. But honestly, losing Linux support would be pretty devastating.
Docker and virtualization just isn't the same. There's lots of interesting stuff you can do with your hardware in Linux, there's for example Linux-specific software which puts the WiFi card in promiscuous mode and does useful stuff with that. That sort of software doesn't work virtualized. And I have all sorts of issues with loopback devices in Docker in macOS; 'losetup --partscan' doesn't seem to work at all, even in a privileged container. For these sorts of things, having a genuine bare-metal Linux install I can reboot into is invaluable.
I wish things had turned out otherwise, and we didn't have to choose between buying a Mac without Linux support and buying a 3-5 year old Mac with Linux support. And I expect that as time goes on, Asahi will just fall further and further behind.
I'm not really sure what to do. Maybe this MacBook Pro was just a one-off, and I have to go back to buying Windows laptops and putting Linux on them. But they just aren't as nice.