I’m looking for an Apple MacBook Air M2 alternative that could run Linux.

I need something fanless, super lightweight with very long battery life. The only apps I use are Shotcut video editor, Chrome and Firefox.

Any advice?

Is it a good idea to get a MacBook Air m2 and use something like Asahi Linux or should I wait for arm linux laptops to become available.

    • ShortN0te@lemmy.ml
      1·
      9 months ago

      The only company that can achieve that kind of efficiency is Apple. I say this as a proud Apple hater.

      It is not about efficiency, we already know for some time that x86 is not really efficient compared to newer architectures like arm and risc.

      But no other ecosystem exists that can force such an architecture move without much much more problems.

      So i would rephrase it as “The only company that can force that kind of fundamental change on its user and developers is Apple”

      I am not saying it is a bad thing (just alone the rosetta translate layer is actually really impressive). Would love to have some actually good and mainstream arm options such as Linux Laptop.

      • aard@kyu.de
        01·
        9 months ago

        Microsoft is trying the same - but royally screwing up how they deal with hardware partners. Performance wise the snapdragons they use are roughly a decade behind what Apple is doing - I have both systems for work projects.

        The x86 emulation in Windows is imo better solved than rosetta - but the rest of the stack is a mess. For example, the deployment tools only got arm support a few months ago.

        And Linux support on those things sucks - while using it on the M1 is great.

    • Lojcs@lemm.ee
      1·
      9 months ago

      Apple silicon is in no way a ‘quantum leap’ over anything. Even arm’s general efficiency in low power situations diminish as it enters ultrabook territory

        • Lojcs@lemm.ee
          1·
          9 months ago

          Where did you pull that from? Both amd and Intel has 20W class cpus that compete with base m-series cpus while being based on older nodes

            • Lojcs@lemm.ee
              1·
              9 months ago

              OK it seems all ‘15W’ cpus from those brands boost much higher so the wattages aren’t as good as I thought but here are some that still compete:

              M3 - 3nm, 20W
              Amd 7840U - 4nm, 30W, 15% slower on single thread and 20% faster on multi thread.
              Intel 1365U - 10nm, 25-55W, 15% slower on multi thread