> Finding a laptop that works well is annoying, however.
It doesn't exist at the moment. :\
I would pay 2x the price of a macbook for a linux laptop with the same hardware quality.
The battery life and power/efficiency of my m4 pro is insane. It's so good that it's really hard to justify using anything else right now.
It's sad that the best Linux laptop right now arguably is a M4 Mac virtualizing Linux.
Framework?
I wanted to post this myself because I swear by my Framework 13 and it's my workhorse. However, it doesn't hold a candle to my wife's M3 Pro on a number of metrics mentioned here such as: Battery life, screen quality, and overall performance.
The Framework (Intel 12th Gen) also has the added benefit of heating the house, particularly with graphics "heavy" workloads (lots of windows open in GNOME Mutter, VMs, etc).
Framework is nice but it's far from Apple's laptop hardware quality. The biggest draw of the Framework is its modularity.
Based on my framework 13 and macbook m1, I think the only downgrade are the speakers and the trackpad. The keyboard is actually an upgrade, the 2.8k screen has a better size ratio but the contrast is not as good, I'd say it's decent. The trackpad performs well but it's the old hinged design and not haptic. Being able to service my own laptop, replace parts and max out the storage for less money than a mid-spec macbook is just unbelievable.
I wonder if providing a unibody aluminium "premium" option might help Framework capture the "build-quality" crowd. That combined with the improved keyboard may turn out to be a compelling offering. I think the main remaining challenge will be the display and trackpad.
Why not run it natively with Asahi Linux?
Well limiting to specifically OP's example (M4 Mac), Asahi doesn't support it yet. :(
Is Asahi installed side by side on a mac? You pick it at boot? And how “install and just use” it is?
> Is Asahi installed side by side on a mac?
Yes, the installer automatically (and reliably) resizes partitions for you. A minimum of about 70 GB for macOS is needed (anything lower is still possible but unsupported).
> You pick it at boot?
There's a default choice that will boot.
> And how “install and just use” it is?
Probably one of the smoothest Linux installs I've had in 10 years or so, since you just run the installer from macOS instead of flashing ISO files to an USB drive.
Just, FTR, you can also tell the Mac OS to reboot to Asahi, and you can tell Asahi (via CLI) to reboot to Mac OS
https://www.reddit.com/r/AsahiLinux/comments/1c2yasr/can_i_b...
When I was first getting my feet wet with Asahi I was using these methods a lot.
Asahi Linux doesn't support the M3 or M4. That said, I'd be curious why OP doesn't consider Asahi on M2 to be a good option. AFAIK the only thing missing at this point is Thunderbolt and USB-C display output (HDMI out works fine).
There are a few draw backs. dnf for arm linux doesn't support Tor Browser yet!! Power saving was quite bad when I tried a few month back. When on sleep mode, it drains more battery than on MacOS sleep mode.
There are a few other compile/transpile bugs here and there.... but I'm rooting for the it!!! Hopefully they can get sorted out soon.
IIRC, there bunch of random things that still don't work -- no USB-C output, webcam, audio and if I've to guess suspend/resume is probably not rock solid either. The only benefit is that you get to use Linux, but then you may lose on actually getting work done without worrying about these issues. The new UI is inferior, but can still get things done.
This information is very dated. Webcam/audio work fine nowadays, and suspend/resume have never had issues that I recall. IME the feature support page is very accurate (no hidden gotchas like "technically it works but it breaks after sleep").
USB-C output is indeed not working but actively making progress (so actively that some of the related patches have been sent to the kernel mailing list and merged this very week).
Webcam and audio both work now. I can't speak to how solid suspend/resume is because I haven't actually used it--I just follow the project--but I wouldn't necessarily assume it's flaky.
Asahi is only supporting M1, and partly M2 I believe. M3 was enough of a change that there are no drivers for it.
I run asahi on my M2 mini as the primary OS.
There's a bit of a pain in that I could only get Brave to run Netflix, but all that meant was that I switched to using Brave for all of my browsing.
There's no official Tor build for it, but there is an unofficial one (that I do not use)
The only real pain I have with it is that Facebook's javascript for its reels chews up RAM something horrible, which freezes the OS whilst being processed, and often causes me to reboot it
this is a psychotic question but have you actually tried doing that? like using a macbook as a vessel for running linux under parallels as a primary use?
I guess if you autostart the linux VM upon booting this should work. I am doing actually the same with BeOS but using a Linux as the hardware compatibility layer. Linux distro is configured to autologin to sway which starts a VM and run it fullscreen. The guest VM is configured to use all the laptop ram leaving only 1GB for the host. In the second virtual desktop the pulseaudio volume control, wifi and bluetooth management tools are automatically open so I can easily plug a BT headphone, switch network.
The linux distro automatically shutdown if I shutdown the VM. I am using swaylock to lock the screen when I am away.
I went down this rabbit hole but with UTM, didn't get far though. Anything GPU-accelerated will struggle, or straight up not work. That includes GPU-accelerated terminals and code editors. You will also have conflicts with touchpad gestures, hot corners, and keybindings. It's not a good way to go imo.
I haven't done Linux (I have servers and such and "got used" to macOS enough for my needs) but I did in ages past do something very similar with Windows on Parallels on Intel Macs.
Same. Just give me my M4 Macbook Pro, but Linux compatible.
I'm sure people will chime in and say framework, or other Linux-first vendors but they still make too many compromises.
Speakers suck, or the display sucks, or the microphones suck, or they get too hot, or they are too loud, or battery life sucks in comparison, or the chassis feels like cheap plastic and cracks and breaks easily.
There is no other laptop on the market that beats the Apple silicon macbooks right now.
I continue to tolerate macOS just for this hardware, and the rest of the OEMs seem to have zero intention at all to trying to catch up.
> The battery life and power/efficiency of my m4 pro is insane.
They're coming. Look for AMD Strix Halo chips. They're in the comparably comfortable efficiency range.
> AMD Strix Halo chips
Do you happen to know any laptop that has a) equivalent screen quality (retina resolution), b) keyboard, c) trackpad but with full Linux support where all hardware pheripherals just work?
The ThinkPad X1 series usually have great linux support and you can option them with 2.8k@120Hz OLED panels, which at 14" lands between the Air and the 14" Pro in terms of PPI. I have a couple generations old X1 Yoga and all of the hardware worked out of the box with Manjaro and Debian, including the touchscreen and active stylus.
People usually buy them for the keyboards and trackpoint, but imo the touchpad is still pretty solid. It is a bit small on account of the trackpoint buttons taking up vertical real estate but its pretty responsive and multi-touch gestures work perfectly in my experience. I believe newer ones have larger trackpads than mine, though still not as large as a similarly sized mac.
I have a Gen 12 X1 and I'm very happy with it; huge step up over my previous Dell XPS, and all the hardware works great on the latest kernel.
Reminder that Thinkpad's makers, Lenovo, has shipped a laptop preloaded with the Superfish malware (https://easytechsolver.com/what-is-the-lenovo-controversy/)
This is true. However, Superfish hasn’t been relevant in years and Lenovo walked back on including such malware going forward as far as I can tell.
And furthermore, Superfish didn’t affect ThinkPads. Only lower end Lenovo models.
And surely didn't affect Linux installed on it, which is the topic of the thread.
HP ZBook Ultra G1a? It has Strix Halo, 14" 2880x1800 (242 ppi) 120 Hz VRR OLED, and Ubuntu 24.04 options.
Can't speak for the keyboard, but HP ZBooks/EliteBooks tend to be decent.
I'm typing this post on the 395+ 128gb RAM model. IMO, the keyboard is better than the one in the newest Macbook Pro. Just enough travel, and quiet enough so I don't disturb co-workers when I type.
I use it for development running Fedora Workstation. My job involves spinning up lots of containers and K8S KIND clusters.
I often reach for it instead of my 14" M4 Macbook. However, I will choose the Macbook Pro when I know I'll be away from a charger for a while. The HP, as great as it is, still has bad battery life.
The only downside is that the webcam _does not work_ unless you use Ubuntu 20.04 w/ the OEM kernel package.
The ISP driver which will enable the camera to work is in the process of being up-streamed, though. I believe they're targeting early 2025 for mainline Linux support.
> early 2025
Is that a typo?
There’s barely 4 months left in 2025.
Do you feel a difference between Strix Halo and other x86 machines you could lay your hands on to date? I want one, but with an M2 Max macbook pro and Zen2 desktop it feels very hard to justify.
I have this laptop with this display configuration and it looks amazing. However on Arch with Gnome/Wayland I cannot get color management to work, which is a problem since this display has such a wide gamut. Opening HN on it for the first time I was blinded by the deepest orange nav bar I could imagine.
The HP zbook g1a ultra is as close as you can get with Strix Halo. There are two screen options and the OLED one is high resolution. It's Ubuntu certified as well and can run LLMs nicely. The keyboard, trackpad, etc are all to notch. It's somewhere in between a mac pro and max.
I have one and love it but it's not close to my wife's mac on battery life.
I've yet to understand the point of OLED, if it sits at 400nits. All Apple's devices from iPhone to Studio Display are brighter, some of them are much much brighter even with OLED :/
Contrast and pixel response time. OLED PC monitors still look amazing even with low all-screen brightness.
> retina resolution
That just means 3024x1964. With other laptops you can either go up a step to 4k or down to OLED 2880xsomething.
Unfortunately it also means a software stack that can properly scale everything for such a display. Windows and Linux both have... issues around UI scaling that make this kind of a pain.
Well, the highest resolution MacBook has less than 4K resolution and there's plenty of 4K laptops out there...
Most "business" centric laptops work great with Linux, as long as you use a well supported distro (Fedora, Ubuntu, Debian, openSuse). YMMV if you use other distros...
I think it’s debatable whether full 4K makes any sense on a 14” or 15” screen.
Regardless, the parent asked and it's a thing...
Razer Blade is my windows laptop. The hardware is great, MacBook nice, but it needs the chip efficiency.
I had a 1440p 14" Lenovo Thinkbook that ran Linux fine. Ryzen 5800u, maybe $400 seconhand IIRC.
Your best option is framework IMO.
The 2.8k panels are overall inferior to Apple's across a number of metrics, but they have a higher pixel density than the Air 13, (and has the S-tier aspect ratio of 3:2).
The FW13 keyboard is objectively pretty decent but not perfect, and is much much better than any keyboard Apple has made in the last decade, could be personal preference but apple has been making some pretty bad keyboards for a while now.
Trackpad on FW13 is OK, no one even comes close to Apple, but it's pretty decent, nothing upsetting if you're comparing it to any non-apple trackpads.
Framework has excellent linux suppport, all hardware bells and whistles generally work out of the box on every Linux distro, but Fedora, Ubuntu, and Bazzite are officially supported by Framework they QA against all three and work with maintainers to resolve issues and you can be totally confident that everything will just work. (At least work as well as it would on Windows!)
The other two downsides relative to a macbook are build quality and support. Although the FW13 is pretty solid in practice, I have dropped mine dozens of times and throw it in my bag and treat it overall rough and it has take on some dings and scratches but everything still works. But the frame is not very rigid, it flexes in lots of places, and it just does not feel as nice and solid as a macbook. And support can be hit-or-miss, like with any small manufacturer.
I think you’re talking about Apple’s butterfly keyboards which were only around for 3-4 years of the last decade you’re talking about. Apple’s keyboards have been great for 5+ years now.
Agreed. Only issue is that they wear down really fast. Your fingers sand them down at a mindblowing pace, and soon enough all of them are smooth, with most used keys having shiny blemishes on them
you’re smoothing your fingers wrong
I assumed that was grease.
... do you moisturise your hands? Because "sandpaper" shouldn't describe your fingertips
The performance seems to rival Apple's Pro / Max chips but the battery life can only do that for light workloads or videos.
I'm hoping maybe the Qualcomm laptops make some progress on battery life. I had an LG gram that had honestly surprisingly good battery life on Linux, and maybe the ThinkPads are good too.
Well the Qualcomm SnapDragon chips literally compete on operations-per-watt. But it depends on what you need -- raw horsepower with a mostly tethered laptop or on-the-go freedom.
I found that I’m missing the netbook era. I need some 11inch laptop when I’m on the go for email, writing, and coding. For more focused task, I’m not giving up my 2 monitors setup and my mechanical keyboard so the computer form factor matters less.
Try starlabs, best build quality I've ever seen after apple
what models have you used, specifically.
Have only owned the starbook mkvi (1 gen previous to current) since it came out 3years or so. Exhaustive research happily led me to discover it is the most Linux compatible laptop, even firmware updates can be performed natively from LVFS/fwudmgr. Knew it was the one when I learned in addition they are basically the only Linux laptop company that also produces their own hardware.
Screen I wish was brighter, and while I don't care, it doesn't have as many pixels as retina. The fan is not bad, but louder than a macbook. Battery I have not tested well, it is far away from battery life of a macbook. But the coreboot firmware allows me to set the charging speed (slower is better for battery) and the max charge level (which I keep at 60% when plugged in) Trackpad is great though, and keyboard is fantastic.
And all the parts are replaceable, as much as the Framework laptops. I don't know why they are not more popular.
It's messed up TBH, the only laptops competitive on battery are Qualcomm which comes with a different set of sacrifices instead!
I've asked this question very recently: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44319903
Spoiler Alert: There really isn't anything that comes close to the macbook (even at 2x price).
That's ridiculous. Thinkpads, Zephyrus G14, Framework, they all have performance, build quality, screens, battery, etc, comparable to a Mac.
Do they? So far I haven’t found anything that matches battery life, build quality, or trackpad quality.
also don't forget how quiet this thing is.
The G14 definitely matches in build or exceeds in build quality, keyboard, trackpad, speakers, and display. Battery life is shorter though. But it has a better GPU and supports Linux, which is way more important to me than an hour or two extra battery.
The Framework is also excellent, but with different compromises: that sweet display aspect ratio for instance, but no OLED.
>I would pay 2x the price of a macbook for a linux laptop with the same hardware quality.
Same, and I've been wanting this for 15 years now ...
Before their arm64 CPUs you could get a thinkpad or an xps and not have really bad FOMO. But now... it's just not even close :\
> I would pay 2x the price of a macbook for a linux laptop with the same hardware quality.
How about half the price?
Huawei are probably banned in the USA these days, however, the hardware quality is top notch and everything Linux works just fine out of the box. Not everything is perfect though, it all depends on what you want to do. If you are okay with integrated graphics (so no Blender or other 3D applications) but do need genuine Intel floating point single-thread performance, then give Huawei a go.
I have had plenty of Dell XPS, Lenovo things and much else over the years and all of them have poor thermal management and tend to creak if you use less than four hands to pick them up. The Huawei machines are in a different league.
As for battery life, I think you are right, but I am inanely loyal to genuine Intel and that means plugging in. I don't have problems with that.
People do get triggered by Huawei though, because the dreaded communists will steal your soul and brainwash you into hating the American way of life. So you might want to just cover up the badging lest anyone be offended. Ironically, a Huawei Matebook X Pro running linux is the laptop that is least likely to spy on you because the camera folds down into the keyboard.