I’ve been running Linux for 14 months now and loving it.

My laptop is a HP Victus gaming pc, which is bulky and heavy, but Its powerfull.

I find myself laying on the couch more and developing from there half the time or doing laptop stuff more and more from the couch.

Lugging it to work and back is also not great.

In October I can buy a new laptop through work and write off half the price against tax, honestly I want everything a mac book offers.

Good solid build quality, not plastic. No GPU needed, just light weight, long battery life, shouldn’t heat up too much, good trackpad etc.

But fuck apple and their walled garden, so I want something Linux.

ARM is perfect for this, but does Linux play nice with it? What are my options?

Or do I just go with x86 and compromise

  • just some guy@sh.itjust.works
    1·
    15 days ago

    My pinebook Pro has been rocking it with fedora as its primary OS. The most issues it seems to have is with the wifi drivers after release updates. I’ve had good experiences with Debian/Armbian on SBCs too.

    My only advice on getting an ARM device to run Linux is to check the wireless used in your desired device has good existing support. It’s a bit of a pain having to dig around for a no-fail dongle just to update drivers for the internal hardware.

    • pedz@lemmy.ca
      1·
      15 days ago

      The biggest issue I’ve had with my Pinebook Pro is getting any external display to work. I have bought multiple dongles and none of them are working. In fact, there are multiple smaller issues all different depending on the OS installed. I settled on Manjaro but wifi stops working after coming back from suspend, and it needs to be rebooted. The speakers are weak too.

      And there’s software compatibility. Most of the software have ARM packages in multiple versions, but sometimes it doesn’t exists or can’t work. Like wine.

      It’s not very polished and it requires knowing tech and Linux a good deal. It’s functional enough and could be useful for development, but I wouldn’t recommend it as an everyday laptop.

      I tried to have it nearby and use it from time to time but I just end up getting back to my x86 laptop.

      • just some guy@sh.itjust.works
        1·
        15 days ago

        It is. Iirc when the m.2/pcie board for the pbp was released a lot of people did use for alternate wifi chips. I opted for a 2260 SSD. I may revisit the laptop and see if it’s hammered out now though

  • WbrJr@lemmy.ml
    1·
    7 days ago

    I think the only real arm laptop that runs Linux decently is a Mac. I have a m1 pro I repaired for cheap. I installed asahi on it, which went crazy smooth (after Mac-OS stopped messing around). It does not feel different or faster than my other laptop. The batterylife is quite long though.

    Its nice for coding and web, but its missing stuff:

    • flatpak, apt and the like need to offer arm versions of a package, not everything is available. (For example Signal is missing, video codecs are missing)
    • can’t watch Netflix (video codecs missing)
    • external monitors are not working yet (it should be close to a release)
    • I had Linux force stop some apps because ram was full (I played factorio, and I think one time this happened as well with freecad or so?)

    So in the end, you can get it working, for me its too much pain for too little change

    I would recommend a Mac m1 air with 16gb ram and 500+ssd.

    The asahi website shows what macs are supported, m1>m2>m3 etc

  • sudoer777@lemmy.mlEnglish
    0·
    14 days ago

    I use a MacBook M1 Air with Asahi Linux (using Fedora + Nix home-manager) for programming and web stuff and it works decently aside from a few missing features, although I hate the soldered storage and RAM. I might get a Framework or MNT laptop when it dies.

    • Auli@lemmy.caEnglish
      0·
      14 days ago

      Grass is always greener. Have a framework and want to get an M1 or 2. Nothing wrong with framework just want to try arm.

      • sudoer777@lemmy.mlEnglish
        0·
        14 days ago

        What sort of battery life do you get, and what’s the screen and touchpad like?

        • WbrJr@lemmy.ml
          1·
          7 days ago

          My frame work 13 has to me the best keyboard. Its really nice and clicky and has a nice long travel. Compared to some Lenovos and other devices i tried I like mine the best.

          The touchpad is ok. Its not a Mac touchpad but its ok I guess

  • undrwater@lemmy.world
    0·
    15 days ago

    Gentoo supports ARM quite well (obviously), but I’m not sure what new hardware is out there that has an open enough firmware (or that can be flashed with coreboot) that will allow a Linux install.