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points by steelframe 2 days ago | 0 comments

I switched entirely over to Asahi Linux on my M1 Macbook Air and installed a third-party 55Wh battery, as the original battery had fallen below 80% capacity. That machine is good to go for another 5 years.

There are no features or performance characteristics of any of the subsequent M[2-6] Macbook Air or Pro models that I care about. I'm not really sold on running models on the hardware I have right in front of me. So long as I can rent an RTX PRO 4000 Blackwell at about half a buck per hour through a European provider, I'm fine using that with Qwen3.8-27B UD-Q4_K_M for the few things I consider more privacy-sensitive.

[–] passivepinetree 2 days ago

How is Asahi Linux from a reliability perspective? Last I checked there were some issues with docking and HDMI out that would've made it tough for me to use as a daily driver.

[–] cyberclimb 2 days ago

100% stable for me at the level of any other linux machine. True the USB-C display doesn't (officially) work yet but I have 0 issues with the HDMI.

I've been daily driving it for months with no blockers. You can tell Linux uses the battery less efficiently than MacOS though so that's good to know.

[–] andreash 2 days ago

Also really happy with Omarchy on Macbook. I installed the nightly kernel that has usb-c and it works really well. Connects fine to both LG Ultrafine 5k, and Studio Display. https://x.com/AGTPinsights/status/2106564829532328331

Still some tiny issues with waking from sleep lid closed, but I'm expecting to get that fixed myself with some prompting this week. The people working on Linux on Mac are really impressive (and have access to unlimited tokens), so I expect all issues to be fixed very soon.

Being able combine agents, linux software and Apple hardware is so much fun.

[–] IshKebab 2 days ago

> at the level of any other Linux machine

So, 97% stable then? (Downvote me but it's true.)

[–] esperent 2 days ago

I've been running Ubuntu on an MSI Ge66 gaming laptop, Intel + Nvidia gpu for a couple of years now. I did have some teething problems with wifi and sleep but after resolving those it's been rock solid. I'd say 99.9% stable if we're throwing out random percentages here.

[–] alerighi 1 day ago

Funny that Linux is perceived as unstable, I have to fix a Windows laptop where Windows starts up fine 1 time out of 10, while normally it freezes (not even blue screens) on the boot loading spinner, I've done everything possible (including of course running a 2 hours RAM test, and testing it with a Linux live USB) to exclude hardware problems, so what is remains is... Windows of course.

One of my coworker that uses a Mac has an issue with a USB dongle that stopped working randomly, not even with a system update. If he uses on its laptop the external monitor remains blank, the same dongle with another monitor and another identical Macbook with the same macOS version works, the same dongle with the same PC and another brand of monitor works, the same PC with the same monitor and a dongle of a different brand does work, but a different dongle of the same model doesn't. So I guess for some reason macOS saved the ID of that dongle and the setting got corrupted. Tried to reset the hell of it and it doesn't work.

I've never had similar issues with Linux. Most of the time when something doesn't work with Linux you just look at the logs, figure out what is wrong, correct it, and it start work fine again. Configuration of the system is predictable, if you install a software and then you uninstall it the system is left in the same state as before installing it, it doesn't leave files that waste disk space, as well as when you upgrade the system (yes, every Windows or macOS update leaves old stuff behind that it's impossible to delete, effectively "leaking" disk space at the point you have to perform a clean install).

[–] dannyw 2 days ago

While not Asahi/M1, I can tell you my desktop has been Linux Mint for about 5 years, including through distro upgrades, etc and I have had to troubleshoot it like once.

[–] cevn 2 days ago

97% is a high estimate based on my linux efforts.. just yesterday some kind of update, i think kernel, took out my amd graphics.. still wouldn’t pick anything else.

[–] csomar 2 days ago

Funny you say this. I had my issues with Linux during the years but last 2-3 years I have been running it with no issues whatsoever on a Dell XPS 9xxx series. I recently got an M5 Max and it had more issues than the Linux/Dell duo.

[–] radlad 2 days ago

PEBKAC

[–] educar 2 days ago

Love your bait

[–] IshKebab 1 day ago

It wasn't meant to be bait. I'd really like it if Linux was as rock solid as Mac or Windows. But it clearly isn't and it doesn't help anyone that so many Linux fans pretend it is (look at the replies!).

That said, I do have hopes that AI will basically solve this. It's extremely good at diagnosing low level bugs, reverse engineering drivers and so on. A silver lining of AI taking our jobs at least!

[–] radlad 1 day ago

> I'd really like it if Linux was as rock solid as Mac or Windows. But it clearly isn't and it doesn't help anyone that so many Linux fans pretend it is (look at the replies!).

It is perhaps also possible that others have different experiences with both Windows/Mac and Linux than you do. It's common for people to not notice what's broken, or what they have to workaround, with the software they use every day. People also have different workflows and priorities that determine whether their use of a tool is "rock solid" or not. (Something I certainly wouldn't say about Windows—or Mac!)

[–] wredcoll 1 day ago

I had to disable sleep mode on my windows desktop because half the time it wouldn't wake up again.

Windows is rock solid?

[–] unethical_ban 1 day ago

I don't think Linux is any worse than Windows at this point. Distros the burden of supporting every machine ever made while Windows gets pre-installed support by vendors. However, consumer Windows on my relative's HP laptop is absolutely horrendous experience. Online accounts, popups from crapware, constant ads in all the built-in apps.

Meanwhile my Windows install can't see either of the wifi devices, even when I try to install drivers from the manufacturer. CachyOS autodetects everything and it just works.

So, not pretending, I have fewer issues on multiple devices right now with CachyOS and Fedora than I do with Windows. If my relative had any capacity for learning new hotkeys, I'd already be wiping his machines and putting Kubuntu LTS on them.

[–] evanreichard 2 days ago

It's quite stable. Been running NixOS on my M2 Max with basically no issues (HDMI working fine as well). However the lack of adequate sleep / no support for suspend to disk led to me buying a Framework 13 Pro, and I'm now selling the M2.

[–] zamalek 2 days ago

Not a Mac user. I assume HDMI might be improving soon as AMD finally got the HDMI consortium to wind their necks in and full HDMI support was recently merged.

[–] gedy 2 days ago

It's great aside from no usb-c display, mine has an HDMI port though.

It's been my primary dev machine for 2 years

[–] Gigachad 2 days ago

USB-C video still doesn't work but in my experience virtually everything else you need does.

[–] stefandesu 20 hours ago

How about the fingerprint reader and especially battery life during standby/lid closed? Most of the time my M1 Air is just lying around and then I use it for a specific task, and the battery can last for weeks that way.

[–] monk_grilla 2 days ago

Does DisplayLink work?

[–] 72deluxe 1 day ago

Out of curiosity, how do you rent such a device and who do you do it with? I'd be interested.

[–] nl 1 day ago

No the OP, but I keep a $10 rolling budget on vast.ai. I tend to use it more for training things, but equally as useful. I pay about $0.15/hour for an A4000.

OTOH if you are really concerned about privacy it's probably not the best choice (it's random people's machines).

[–] fhn 1 day ago

note to self - Google, Microsoft, Meta, China, CIA

[–] 72deluxe 1 day ago

Intriguing, thank you.

[–] predkambrij 1 day ago

A note about privacy. AI model can do tool calls to leak your data. See https://cohere.com/blog/concerning-behaviour-popular-open-we...

[–] isatty 2 days ago

How is using an external provider any better for privacy sensitive issues? European provider does not automatically mean they aren’t logging everything or that they’d nor share that with a bidder?

[–] ayewo 2 days ago

> So long as I can rent an RTX PRO 4000 Blackwell at about half a buck per hour through a European provider, ..

Mind sharing the provider’s URL?

[–] steelframe 2 days ago

Not necessarily an endorsement, but one of the more popular ones: https://www.hetzner.com/dedicated-rootserver/matrix-gpu/

[–] papyrus9244 2 days ago

I understand that managing hw can be time consuming, but if you built a similar machine it would get paid off in ~18 months.

[–] nl 1 day ago

I think the point the OP was making was that you can rent this for a couple of hours when you need it, and then it makes sense. If you are using it say 2 hours a week (or even 5 hours a week) it's going to be much cheaper than building your own hardware for a long long time.

[–] senordevnyc 1 day ago

It's a little confusing from the page, but you can't actually use those hourly in terms of spinning them up on-demand for a few hours, because you pay the € 209 - 1499 setup fee when you provision one. They're just showing the monthly price broken down into an hourly price.

They're great servers, though, I have a whole fleet of them.