Ask HN: How ready for daily driving is Asahi Linux?
Been lurking the GitHub issues, Twitter and blog but haven't really gained a full perspective.
I'm in the market for a new laptop, currently using a Carbon X1 which I'm generally very happy with. I'm only interested in laptops that I'd run Linux on, but been trying some of the late Apple MacBooks and like the hardware, just the software seems to get in the way sometimes.
So came across Asahi Linux project, which seems to be usable for daily work, minus some missing things.
But does anyone use Asahi Linux daily here and can talk about their experience?
115 comments
[ 45.5 ms ] story [ 510 ms ] threadThough its still very impressive what they got so far, and hope in the near future it will become a full functioning OS.
[1] https://github.com/AsahiLinux/docs/wiki/Feature-Support
I can't install asahi today and have the GPU work.
I'm sorry you lost internal speakers to that.
Have a look at https://github.com/AsahiLinux/docs/wiki/Feature-Support
I'm not asking much though: I just need a linux laptop which is fast (lots of rust compilations) and can stay for a whole day unplugged. Thunderbolt connectivity to dock it at home (and use bigger screens) would be perfect. I don't need the GPU, I'm mainly using the terminal and the CPU in fast enough for that.
But it's not even there: the CPU is heating even when doing nothing, the laptop doesn't sleep when closed (so the battery is draining too fast) , and thunderbolt is still far away.
But under some conditions it's nice, even nicer than the XPS 15 i9 I had before. I'm giving some undisclosed amount to marcan monthly, and I hope it'll be "usable" (for me) soon.
Linux is amazing but doing the right thing when you close the lid is a seemingly intractable problem for it. Maybe we need a hardware spec and a paid distro to finally solve these kinds of problems.
But don't get mistaken, I like this machine very much. When it works, it works fast and very well.
I've got an old XPS 13 which works perfectly; I also got a newer XPS 15 (top of the line, 4500€) which never managed to sleep correctly (thanks to Intel s0ix hybrid-suspend) and often overheated in the bag. I got rid of the latter after 1 year, it was a mess to use.
That isn't to say that it's worked out of the box. When I install Linux on a laptop, I'll put some effort into making sure everything works as wanted and this might involve adding kernel flags or mucking with dbus, and it certainly involves some research. If you expect any open source OS to behave like a proprietary OS you bought a license for, you're likely to be disappointed. If you come in with the expectation of learning to solve problems for yourself you'll fare much better.
Sleep works fine in my alder lake(12th gen) Framework on Fedora, as in it actually sleeps when you close the lid, but it won't last a week like a mac.
What do you mean?
Reliably suspending on lid close? That will depend on the system. My 12th gen Framework with Fedora is very reliable in that way.
Battery lasting a week+ when sleeping? Don't count on it but sleep time will depend on the system. Even s3 sleep varied a lot. Some systems wouldn't suspend ssd during s3, for example.
Arguably s2idle/s0ix is more mac-like, in that it is faster to sleep/wakeup than s3, which can take 6-10 seconds.
It's just not as well supported and is much more flexible, in the sense that the os has more control over what is running during sleep. Windows is supposedly takes a strategy of incrementally powering down devices as sleep duration increases to preserve battery.
What? S3 should be well under 5 seconds. 10 seconds is like a whole clean boot, or resuming from hibernation on NVMe.
How long does it take for your Intel Framework machine to sleep properly upon shutting the lid, and how long until it is ready to use after you open the lid?
I had to set hibernate on lid-close because Windows kept waking it up all the time even while closed.
Such a killer feature that one would think Microsoft would prioritize.
I think the interface approach made sense I earlier days of computing. These days it is better to make a zillion, exactly the same computer like Apple does.
Surely Microsoft has the resources to coordinate hardware and software with Dell/HP/Lenovo on making at least 1 reliable line of laptops where you can close the lid and reliably expect it to instantly sleep and not randomly wake up.
I don't care if the GPU lays there unused, I don't care if bluetooth doesn't work.
I hope Asahi Linux gets there someday soon.
If you have issues with this please report it to marcan (or somewhere on IRC in the project or whatever).
I want the MacBooks for the battery backup, but I cannot live without NixOS, and seems like Asahi is still a few months away.
Overall it all worked fine, and far more reliably than Linux on a modern laptop running natively (if you can get past the minor annoyances).
Just to double check: nix on Darwin isn't good enough?
Nix-Darwin (the module system that gives you some NixOS-like features with Nix on macOS) is nice, but macOS ultimately can't match the predictability and control one gets used to on NixOS. A system that updates in a non-uniform way, has limited configurability, and where the configuration of the system isn't given anywhere in a trackable, comprehensible form feels painfully chaotic in comparison.
(I can understand why Nix on Darwin (with or without Nix-Darwin) is a great fit for many, though. Having a 'normal', mainstream desktop underneath your still relatively predictable, explicit, reproducible dev tooling is awesome in a lot of ways.)
The README describes the experience, though the author takes the approach of using the VM mainly for terminal-based stuff.
I'm really happy with it overall. All the hardware works perfectly, and I don't notice the bit of RAM & CPU reserved for the host. The only downside is that some packages aren't available for aarch64-linux, e.g. Slack, Spotify, etc. I just run those on the host OS instead, which is a little annoying due to context switching but not a huge deal.
Some packages on nixpkgs aren't available for aarch64-linux, but mostly unfree stuff like Spotify that's available on macOS. Overall I really like it, and I hardly ever interact with the host OS anymore for dev work. That said, I still use macOS for casual browsing, since scrolling and trackpad gestures are smoother than in linux. Not a big deal, since copy/paste works fine.
edit to add a link to my config, which has a couple tweaks for screen resolution, etc: https://github.com/yusefnapora/nixos-system-flake/blob/main/...
Mine is using an older and more complicated version of the parallels-tools patch, so go with the one linked above if you end up using Parallels.
You could also try UTM, which now has support for Rosetta for x86 binaries. There's a good writeup for NixOS + Rosetta here that I can confirm works: https://xyno.space/post/nixos-utm-rosetta - I had some random instability with UTM though, so switched back to Parallels.
Personally I use tend to use Linux VMs as if they were remote servers, so I don't have a huge need for Linux GPU drivers.
One thing that helped with VMware Fusion is using host-local interfaces with static IP addresses. Otherwise I would tend to get disconnected from VMs when macOS disconnected from wi-fi, which was very annoying. This is less of an issue if you're using the VM window directly.
If you already have a MacBook you could use, just give it a try – you can dual-boot, so if it doesn't work you can go back to macOS and try it out again in a couple months.
UPD: and of course, don't forget to sponsor the developers! Every little bit counts.
That can't be good for the longevity of the device.... or of you for that matter
https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Mpv#youtube-dl_audio_with_s...
I've been using a variation on this theme for years, don't even really know how YouTube looks these days
I doubt it's really baking itself; most devices have a lower temperature target set in the software/firmware so that the user doesn't burn their lap, but the default thermal management behavior is done completely on-die.
However, once GPU support and microphone lands in linux-asahi or mainline, it will be probably good enough to switch to Linux. The webcam is currently WIP. That would make a more or less fully functional machine: https://github.com/AsahiLinux/docs/wiki/Feature-Support
It's a shame there's no comparable x86_64 machine right now. A ThinkPad or a Surface could fill in this gap, especially with a Ryzen CPU. However, at least in the EU, MacBook Airs are much cheaper. Plus, they are fanless.
ARM-based machines from other manufacturers are also starting to appear, e.g. ThinkPad X13s. However, performance is still a bit behind M1 CPUs. Full Linux support may arrive sooner than for MacBook Airs, though. Booting Debian is not too hard right now: https://forums.lenovo.com/t5/Other-Linux-Discussions/Does-an...
However great progress is being made on GPU driver. Check Alyssa Rosenzweig @alyssa@treehouse.systems and Asahi Linya @lina@vt.social on Mastodon. They have MPV (video playback) and a few 3d accelerated games @ 4k working. There's still a ton of work to be done, but it's making nice progress.
It's definitely not ready for a normal person, that's true. I'm working in text files to configure things, and had to debug the GUI not starting after my initial install.
That said, I was pleasantly surprised how much the basic Gnome desktop just got right after initial setup. My Bluetooth earbuds were plug-and-play, and watching Netflix in Firefox just required clicking the "Enable DRM" popup that appeared on the Netflix failure page.
I've run into more issues as I've progressed (e.g., USB 4 channel audio interface is recognised as a microphone but doesn't just show up by name in Audacity), and yeah - overall it's not ready for a non-programmer.
Nonetheless, I've been pleasantly surprised at how much better it works than it did the last time I tried a Linux desktop, in my mid-twenties. Things are definitely better.
...granted, I intentionally chose a machine that was designed with all Linux-supported hardware. I'm sure that helps a lot.
I enabled fprintd in my configuration.nix and bam - it showed up in the Gnome settings and I scanned a finger a few times.
Now I can sudo without having to think about it (which, granted, might defeat some of sudo's point...).
some people reported that a night costs 20 - 30% of battery life on framework laptop (after they configured s2idle deep properly), but nobody cares to measure the possible battery life difference between s2idle deep and s3
edit: I have 11th gen i5 intel nuc, but I didn't check whether the deep sleep works or not since it's a desktop
I was surprised that closing the lid seems to sleep it properly, and opening it wakes it up. I've heard horror stories of trying to make that work on Linux.
Om the other hand there are tons of features that are not ready. GPU, external display (allthough these are relatively close to), speakers, video encoder/decoder, USB3, thunderbolt, deep sleep states and more.
Whether it's ready is a very subjective question on what features you consider essential to have. Personally I will wait until GPU, USB3, thunderbolt and external displays work since I use those constantly.
[0]: https://www.hp.com/us-en/shop/mdp/hp-elitebook-865
[0]: https://www.notebookcheck.net/Schenker-Vision-14-Laptop-in-r...
[1]: https://us.starlabs.systems/pages/starbook
https://www.notebookcheck.net/Lenovo-ThinkPad-Z13-laptop-rev...
No need to change the CPU architecture.
Those new AMDs are great. I went with the system76 because it comes with and they support Linux. It sleeps and wakes ok too
If you shut the lid and come back in say 8 hours, will the battery be empty or does it really “sleep” like a Mac and retain most battery?
I used the machine last night on battery a couple hours and this morning I charged for 15 minutes then off to meeting where I used the machine. I'm back and 10 minutes in the battery is now at 85% (In the meeting and using the battery for a little presentation).
The longest time in my bag has been 3-4 days and the battery has not trickled down to zero. its kinda a movable desktop for me mostly.
I have an 7th or 8th gen intel version of the oryx pro. That machine has pretty dismal battery life, but it does game with Nvidia power.
It'll get a lot easier to find a good alternative now! Thanks a lot!
Sadly they do not test with Linux though...
But you need to relearn the keyboard as it's not a standard ThinkPad keyboard (no PageUp and PageDown above Left and Right)
That detail alone means I won't buy it.
Emulation or recompilation has fewer drawbacks than changing habits.
They're talking about how ThinkPad keyboards have looked and worked since forever. Seems it changed recently.
The professional lines (ex: X series) are still using the standard ThinkPad keyboard.
To fans of that layout, the standard (still typical on desktops) was abandoned on ThinkPads ~10 years ago.
Personally, I prefer the gains from the latter approach: for example, I use ThinkPad bluetooth keyboards with eink tablets and Termux when I want to switch to something easier to my eyes.
Keeping the same environment (ssh + tmux + bash + vim) with similar keyboards layouts means my workflow and habits have become very independent from the hardware: I only have maintain separate shortcut remapping solutions based on the OS (AutoHotKey for windows, sds100 keymapper for Android)
Isn't being constrained to a particular keyboard layout being _really_ dependent on hardware, to the contrary?
There are also non Lenovo keyboard makers following the same layout like the Tex Shinobi.
To me, it seems better than the alternatives of having different layouts and maintaining different set of shortcuts.
https://github.com/NixOS/nixos-hardware/tree/master/lenovo/t...
Haven't bought one yet, I'm still quite happy with this X1 from a few years back. You need a quite recent kernel with that laptop, and the wifi is a Qualcomm, not Intel, so check how is the Linux support before buying.
But... I am intrigued, just that I don't really need a fast laptop due to using a beefy desktop for development right now.
https://www.tuxedocomputers.com/
I am not affiliated, but recently purchased one and very happy with it.
I don't like OSX and after a year I'm still not really used to it. But... It's still a much better choice to deal with it than Asahi right now (emphasis on right now, I expect it will get there and I will gladly use it at that point). No GPU, no sleep, no audio, no real power management. If you need arm Linux for something concrete, VM is the way to go right now unfortunately.
Many thanks for sharing your experience!
To save your time. That is the answer.