It's nice to see that M3 and later is coming, but as a Linux person, it's not necessarily a bad thing to be a bit behind the latest hardware. After all, many of us still use ancient Thinkpads running Linux, and prefer to buy used hardware for a better cost (M1/M2 hardware can be had much cheaper now).
There are a 1st gen M1 Air wedge and M1 Macbook Pro 14 in my home that belong to other family members. I look forward to running Asahi on them when the users eventually upgrade.
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.
people do it all the time for gaming laptops etc when probably 99% of their usage is at the same desk
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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%
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.
Is they possible with the built in WiFi chipsets?
Why would you think that? They're working hard on upstreaming all patches ATM, adding new hardware support will be much easier afterwards.
> 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.
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 a massive task keeping the large number of patches going, while simultaneously trying to land them in the mainline kernel.
Its painful to watch people choose Apple over a user respecting company that supports Linux well
Then again, the hardware that those companies release isn't quite as good as Apple Silicon, IMHO.
This is very different from PC hardware. It doesn't need to support linux. It just needs to not cut corners.
It might also encourage more laptop makers to ship machines with first‑class Linux support so people aren't forced to pick between hardware they like and the OS they want. And for folks who don't need a Mac specifically, the growing ecosystem of non‑Apple ARM laptops could offer a smoother path than shoe‑horning Linux onto proprietary silicon.
Heh. Who says it doesn't?
>Taken to the extreme, Imagine [...]
Okay. Likewise, imagine a computer exactly like you've described, except it costs five cents and measures a cubic kilometer. Sure, there may be a couple people for whom operating such a gigantic machine is no problem, but the vast majority of the world will never use it. So the size of the computer also doesn't factor into whether it's "the best", right? And so on for any single property you care to name.
Yeah, no. The price is as much a part of a product as its physical shape. If Macs cost about the same as non-Macs, maybe they'd the most popular computers in the world, but they're not. And even in that case, they would not be the best. If, say, the program I need to run doesn't run on a Mac, the best computer for me would not be a Mac, it would be whatever computer is able to run it.
Well, it’s not a formal definition, of course. But most review sites that compare products typically distinguish between best overall and best value categories. For example, if I asked gamers what the best GPU is, most would say the NVIDIA RTX 5090. Its price-to-performance ratio is terrible, but it still holds the crown.
> Okay. Likewise, imagine a computer exactly like you've described, except it costs five cents and measures a cubic kilometer. Sure, there may be a couple people for whom operating such a gigantic machine is no problem, but the vast majority of the world will never use it. So the size of the computer also doesn't factor into whether it's "the best", right? And so on for any single property you care to name.
I’m not describing a computer in general. I’m describing a laptop. What you’ve described wouldn’t even qualify for that category. And even if it did, size and weight are core quality factors for laptops. Portability is part of what defines the category.
> Yeah, no. The price is as much a part of a product as its physical shape. If Macs cost about the same as non-Macs, maybe they'd the most popular computers in the world, but they're not. And even in that case, they would not be the best. If, say, the program I need to run doesn't run on a Mac, the best computer for me would not be a Mac, it would be whatever computer is able to run it.
Price isn’t an property of a product itself, it's part of the product offering. If you have a laptop sitting on a table and you start using it, there’s nothing in the experience that tells you what it costs. If you can’t determine something by using the product, it isn’t an inherent attribute of it. Your cubic kilometer example also falls completely flat here, you can notice it when using the product.
So I'd agree with your point if we would be talking about the product offering. That includes things like pricing, warranty structure, on-site support, marketing message, availability etc.
The best laptop doesn’t have to match everyone’s personal needs. Your criteria may differ, but there are still objective qualities that most people agree are important in a laptop, build quality, display, battery life, input feel, and so on. In those respects, MacBooks tend to push these qualities to an extreme degree, more than any other laptop.
Not for me. My 3090 can already max out my UPS. Being gifted a 5090 would be a terrible inconvenience for me. What you mean is that it's the fastest gaming GPU. Is that what "best" means? Something is the best in its product category if it tops the chart on the primary property of that category that applies to some abstract consumer? An abstract gamer with no other constraints would just want the fastest GPU, so the fastest one is the best? Fine. But then I'm forced to ask, where do categories begin and end? The 5090 is the best gaming GPU, but it's not the best GPU. Macs may be the best laptops (I don't know, but I'll grant it), but they're not the best PCs, or the best gaming laptops. Or, if I'm feeling cheeky, not the best laptops for under $(price of a Mac - 100).
>If you have a laptop sitting on a table and you start using it, there’s nothing in the experience that tells you what it costs.
I didn't realize arguing like this was possible. So if the laptop instead of being borrowed was yours, but if you ever type and send an email with "テスト" on the subject and body it would explode, but you never send that email (because you don't speak Japanese), that's a perfectly fine laptop, right? I mean, it's the same thing; in one instance the price is irrelevant to you (because you didn't pay it), and in the other the little lithium bomb is irrelevant to you (because you can't ever set it off). So they're both equally good products, at least subjectively.
>build quality, display, battery life, input feel, and so on
Those are the way they are not in small part because of how much they cost. Do you think Dell wouldn't rather make make much higher quality laptops for the same cost and the same price? Yes, you can get a feel for the price of something by using it. Haven't you ever heard someone say "ugh, this feels so cheap"? It's a vague feeling that's difficult to attribute, but it is informed by real experience. Inexpensive products often "feel cheap" and bad to use, while more expensive products don't, or to a lesser degree.
1. "Best" versus "fastest" or "most expensive"
When I said the RTX 5090 is "the best GPU" for gaming, I meant it objectively tops the category on the core property most gamers care about: raw performance. That’s exactly why review sites separate "best overall" from "best value", they are acknowledging that there are multiple ways to judge a product. If you’re defining "best" by convenience or personal constraints, that’s fine, but that’s a subjective criterion, not the same as evaluating intrinsic qualities of the product. Conflating the two muddies this discussion.
2. Thought experiments
The "laptop that explodes if you type a certain email" analogy is clever, but it’s not equivalent to price. Price is an extrinsic property. It doesn’t affect the physical functionality or design of the laptop itself. A latent, never-triggered bug or trap is intrinsic, because it could affect you at any time if the condition arises. By contrast, whether you paid $50 million or $500 for the laptop doesn’t change its display quality, weight, or battery life.
3. "Feels cheap" argument
It’s true that price influences how companies allocate resources, and a higher-priced laptop can often feel better due to higher-quality materials. But that’s a correlation, not an inherent property. You can measure build quality, screen brightness, or input feel directly without knowing the price. Saying "Dell could make a higher-quality laptop for the same price" is exactly my point: price itself is not part of the intrinsic definition of quality, it’s part of the product offering.
I get that you’re making thought experiments and analogies to illustrate points, but many of them subtly shift the definitions or mix subjective preferences with objective qualities. That makes it hard to have a clear discussion about the intrinsic qualities of products versus their price or accessibility. If you keep ignoring this point and try to again shift the discussion I will stop engaging because I don't consider you acting in good faith.
You understood the exact opposite from what I said. Dell couldn't make a much better laptop for the same price, the same way Apple couldn't make the same laptops for much cheaper.
>Price is an extrinsic property.
No, it's not extrinsic. That was my point. Do you think materials and R&D are free for manufacturers and OS developers? The price is not merely correlated, it's a direct consequence of the build quality. You can't sell a product for less money than it cost to make it. Higher quality -> higher cost -> higher price.
>By contrast, whether you paid $50 million or $500 for the laptop doesn’t change its display quality, weight, or battery life.
In what world could you pay either $500 or $50M for two products which are otherwise equivalent? How do you think the latter one could be viable? Are you serious? Do you actually think cost and price are literally independent variables?
Apple made it impossible to use iMessage on a Hackintosh without spoofing another Mac that's not in use. That pushed A LOT of people away from using a Hackintosh.
The second thing is abandoning x86. Apple has already announced that macOS 26 is the last release to support their Intel machines. That means that next year, there will be no way to run the latest macOS on any Intel machine. That's basically the end date for all these projects, as the Hackintosh crowd has always been about running the latest version of the OS. They're not interested in running System 7!
Like I did put a Nvidia 650ti? in my Mac Pro, and it sorta worked initially under OSX, but way slower and glitchier than in Windows and eventually just fully incompatible.
Only Nintendo and the OEM PC companies have been able to make an integration relationship work.
Which I'm fine with on my laptop or Mac mini, but if you're building a tower with a GPU, yeah
The hackintosh is a far smaller and more ephemeral niche hardly qualifying as ever orienting the proverbial table.
Ftfy.
Why do you think that? The upstreaming efforts are more fruitful than ever.
While it'd be nice to be able to run Linux on my M2 MBP someday when Apple stops supporting it, ultimately, the reason many (but not all) power users buy Macs is because they want the UNIX/UNIX-like work done for them and for it to run on fast hardware. If I want something more customizable, I'm barking up the wrong hardware tree.
Does that solve the question of "what do I do with this Mac that no longer gets updates?"? No, but most people either list theirs for sale to someone who isn't as bothered by that, or trade it in at an Apple Store for credit towards the new shiny.
I do most of my work over SSH on big metal machines, maybe that's the disconnect? But seriously, there are few things in the world that matter less to me than how fast my laptop is. I did some real work a few weeks ago on a ten-year-old Celeron POS and it didn't bother me at all.
Yeah, I believe that's where the disconnect is. I moved from a Thinkpad to the 16in Macbook Pro with the M3 Pro chip, and I am able to reliably build and write code that runs locally on 5 different Docker containers, for at least 10 hours. I once did a 48hr hackathon with this laptop and I only had to charge it I think 4 or 5 times. I need to be very mobile as I'm going to different locations to attend meetings or write code, and it's able to do everything reliably for a (very extended) workday.
I would have to move from wall socket to wall socket on my old Thinkpad, but something to note is that I was using Windows 10 at the time. The Macbook's best-in-class (in performance-per-watt and per-kg) hardware combined with the software was something that became unbeatable for my workflow.
That being said, my next laptop will be a reliable, non-Apple, but Apple-like performance, ARM64 laptop, and I'll be using some Linux distribution on it.
I can do everything you're describing with my XPS13. I regularly go days without plugging it in.
I guess that's hard for me to understand... do you just not have to compile things? Or do you just not mind waiting?
No matter how exceptional the laptops are for laptops, a real computer plugged into a wall is always going to vastly outperform them...
The yocto build I'm currently working on takes about six hours to complete on my biggest machine. Yes, it's an incremental build, but warming up a laptop would require several days of 100% CPU :)
It's also not really possible to test locally, even a VM of the right architecture is insufficient without doing a bunch of work to make it match the target hardware.
Often you can build a quick little ad hoc thing that lets you test some piece of it locally, but sometimes it's too much work.
Frequently I need to compile test several dozen Linux kernel configurations with different cross compilers, each of which takes half an hour to run on the huge box.
I can't imagine doing any of this locally on a single laptop, I would get 1% as much done as I currently do.
(When configuring a new hypervisor-ed OS, i use a Fedora ISO for arm64 (or aarch64 (?)) and in the UTM.app gui choose Linux, which reveals the option to use native Apple Silicon hypervisor over QEMU.)
just my $0.02
Asahi, while a heroic project, was always going to struggle long term and I wonder what kind of battery hit you take using it. I’d rather keep the vertical integration in the Mac ecosystem and just log into a vm that I full screen. Best of both worlds
Is Asahi able to run mlx with the full Apple hw optimizations?
I'm guessing it's a long shot for Resolve to run there, let alone with hardware optimizations.
Asahi has been fun to watch, and I’m happy it’s still moving along, even with the messiness of the past twelve months. I rarely boot into MacOS on the machine these days, and while I’m mostly using a PC these days, I am debating getting a used M1 Pro or Max for the battery life benefits (and access to Mac graphics programs on the rare occasions I need them).
The fact that M3 is technically possible, even if likely a while off, is promising.
So in that sense I think it's mostly just a resources thing: they don't feel it's worth their time and money to assist this process. Which, honestly, I can't get that upset about: we're not entitled to Apple spending resources to help people install other operating systems on their hardware; so long as they don't actively impede the process I see no reason to get upset.
einsteinx2•3mo ago
Though in the plus side, even the base M1 is so capable that even if they stopped there it would be useful for years to come.
ForHackernews•3mo ago
einsteinx2•3mo ago
Also as a minor counter point, the only reason Asahi is even possible is that Apple explicitly designed in support for booting other operating systems into the M-series chips. They certainly could have locked them down just like they did the iPhone and iPad, but they didn't. That was a conscious choice according to the Asahi folks.
So while they may not be sharing technical documentation/drivers or otherwise making it easy on the Asahi devs, even the famously "walled garden" Apple seems to have explicitly not restricted their new line of computers in the way you're describing.
transpute•3mo ago
Thank Xeno, who has since been creating open-source training on low-level firmware security at https://p.ost2.fyi, a new iteration of open training material published ~15 years ago at https://opensecuritytraining.info before joining Apple.
https://archive.fosdem.org/2022/schedule/speaker/xeno_kovah/
Rohansi•3mo ago
Don't you think it's interesting that it's an option for Macs but not iPad Pros? They both use the same SoC.
> So while they may not be sharing technical documentation/drivers or otherwise making it easy on the Asahi devs, even the famously "walled garden" Apple seems to have explicitly not restricted their new line of computers in the way you're describing.
Give it a few more years. Asahi will probably be so far behind that it wouldn't even matter. Eventually they can just turn off allowing third-party operating systems on new hardware.
GeekyBear•3mo ago
Apple has always sold iPads as a closed walled garden and Macs as an open platform.
Apple designed the Apple Silicon Mac hardware to allow you to run an unsigned third party OS without a negative security impact when you run MacOS, because it is an open platform.
However we have definitely seen examples of other formerly open platforms facing new restrictions.
Android was sold to the public as an open platform that Google is actively closing with new restrictions to side loading apps
Windows was sold to the public as an open platform, but Microsoft is locking out users who refuse to use an online account to access their local computer.
transpute•3mo ago
PTSD can block lights in tunnels.
2024: UTM SE entered iOS App Store, https://www.tomshardware.com/phones/iphone/utm-se-emulator-r...
2025: https://9to5mac.com/2025/05/01/jit-enabler-lands-on-app-stor... Sep 2025: sideloaded UTM supports JIT on iOS26 with StikDebug, https://x.com/utmapp/status/1967990008364798091Rohansi•3mo ago
The fact that you need to launch apps through a debugger to enable JIT is hilarious though. Every other platform either allows it all the time or doesn't! I would not count on it staying on the App Store - Apple can remove it whenever they want to
einsteinx2•3mo ago
I think that has more to due with product positioning. They see the iPad as an iPhone style device (though it’s slowly getting more Mac-like), so kept it locked down. Not saying I agree with their decision, but I get why they made it.
> Give it a few more years. Asahi will probably be so far behind that it wouldn't even matter. Eventually they can just turn off allowing third-party operating systems on new hardware.
Unfortunately I think this is probably going to be true, but fingers crossed.
I will say though that while I like the idea of Asahi in theory, I installed it for more than a year and ended up really never booting into it. When I needed Linux for something (which is pretty rare since most any tool I would want I can just run natively in macOS terminal) it was always more convenient to use a VM, so I personally won’t lose anything if I can only run macOS, but in principle I’d like it to stay open just like the Intel Macs were with Bootcamp.
Rohansi•3mo ago
Definitely. That part makes sense - I don't understand why they didn't lock it down from the start though. There was no guarantee a project like Asahi would have succeeded given the complete lack of documentation from Apple. Perhaps it was just a part of their plans to transition from x86 -> ARM because taking away the ability to install a third-party OS might have driven people away.
debugnik•3mo ago
Why would they fall behind? Asahi caught up from scratch the first time, they might catch up again. Maybe not for every new model, but they can simply skip some of them if forced to prioritise.
Lammy•3mo ago
Is it possible to buy a compatible M-whatever Mac and install Linux on it without network access, without it phoning home to Apple for permission?
Sincere question since I have only used one Apple Silicon Mac ever, and it was a work machine so I never tried Asahi on it. I am curious about the privacy implications of non-macOS support.
einsteinx2•3mo ago
I so know that once you have Asahi installed you never need to boot into macOS again if you don’t want to and don’t require network checkins or anything like that to keep using it.
Also unlike Windows 11, it’s trivial to set up macOS without ever creating an account with Apple, so you don’t have to give them personal info or even an email or anything to do the initial macOS setup.
bluedino•3mo ago
My M1 Air is 4 years old and it's by far the most capable 4 year old Mac I've owned.
einsteinx2•3mo ago
I tried out using Handbrake to CPU encode the same video on both devices. Amazingly the M1 Air was slightly faster than the i9, while comparatively sipping power, and staying relatively cool without even having a fan. The i9 on the other hand drained its battery super fast, sounded like a jet plane taking off, and was too hot to sit on my lap.
That’s when I knew it was really a massive leap forward.
DannyBee•3mo ago
This is more true on the gpu side than the cpu/soc side for sure. Speaking as someone who worked on this (i did a bunch of the m3 work here, and some wifi work) - it's not anywhere near as bad as embedded work i used to do many eons ago.
Apple doesn't like to spend tons of time/energy either, and since they make most of their own hardware interfaces (or force others to their specs), most of the time the driver->hardware interfaces are just being extended/improved year over year.
Sometimes things move from one bus kind to another, and there's different hookup to do, or you have to get around to some functionality you never did, etc. But it's not like you need a brand new driver every year for the usb controller, for example.
Power management is probably one of the worst changing areas, along with NPU/GPU obviously.
Put another way - outside of NPU/GPU, you can slowly build up enough of the driver base that it can be maintained and kept up to date by a small number of people with not huge amounts of time.
It's not there yet, but it's possible to get there.
This is because Apple doesn't get a lot from changing this stuff either.
einsteinx2•3mo ago
giancarlostoro•3mo ago