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.
Out of curiosity, how do you rent such a device and who do you do it with? I'd be interested.
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.
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.
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.
> at the level of any other Linux machine
So, 97% stable then? (Downvote me but it's true.)
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.
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.
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.
Love your bait
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!
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.
PEBKAC
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.
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.
USB-C video still doesn't work but in my experience virtually everything else you need does.
Does DisplayLink work?
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
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?
> 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?
Not necessarily an endorsement, but one of the more popular ones: https://www.hetzner.com/dedicated-rootserver/matrix-gpu/
I understand that managing hw can be time consuming, but if you built a similar machine it would get paid off in ~18 months.
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