Almost all laptops sold with Linux pre-installed or with support advertized only work well with Linux due to volunteer work similar to what is being done with Apple's stuff right now. Almost everything is proprietary with close to zero upstream support, you just don't notice it because the work has already been done.
Please tell me where is it because I will buy it instantly, and I’m only half kidding.
I don’t see how making linux available on possibly the currently available best laptop hardware any different to the previous decades of hacking a working wifi driver into the kernel. It was always an uphill battle, and we should be thankful for those who take up the hard work!
The battery life is the best of any laptop I have ever used by far.
And the performance for number crunching is as high as any x86 machine I had previously and per watt it blows everything out of the water. And it is dead silent while doing so, whereas every x86 'work' powered laptop I ever used would wind up sounding like a jet engine with my workloads.
So for someone who runs linux.. if they want to run it on hardware that is this nice (to me at least)... this is it. This is worth it. It's worth developing for.
Also, Apple is going to stick with the M-series SOC's for a long time now that they have switched. And they tend to keep hardware interfaces for a long time too. So the development of Asahi now will bear fruit for... at least the next decade I'd say.
I still use OSX for daily activities, but the kernel Asahi is developing may be my plan to stretch this 2021 M1 MBP 14 out hopefully to the year 2030, as MacOS moves on. My 2013 intel i7 Macbook Pro made it to 2021... 8 years of daily use and world travel. I was beyond the moon with that product performance and I'm expecting similar from these new macbooks based on my current 1.5 years of use.
System76? Star Labs? Purism? HP Dev One?
Because these things are rare as gold in the first place as being Linux ready isn't a focus for most OEMs, sometimes severely lag behind the competition in feature support (e.g. limited to UVC webcams with crap quality), have serious availability issues (Framework), you have a tough time getting service or spare parts, or barely any resale value, or limited choices in screens (which is the one and only thing keeping me from a Framework - who the fuck wants a 3:2 screen?). Also, tough luck getting firmware updates for embedded components.
Apple devices, spare parts and repair centers, in contrast, are widely available across the world (okay, maybe not in places sanctioned by the US), firmware updates come around when needed and hold their resale value for years.
https://system76.com/laptops-ultraportables https://system76.com/laptops-powerful
The only exception is the Bonobo, but it comes with a discrete GPU, so its battery life + weight are going to suck. Also, its keyboard is off center.
Most of the star labs machines have low resolution displays, but I can find nothing wrong with this one. If you choose AMD, a reasonable config is $2600, which is comparable to Apple. However, they are only building 10,000 units, and taking preorders, so it might be unobtainable:
https://us.starlabs.systems/pages/starfighter
The purism offering seems OK except that it is a 10th generation intel, and those were extremely bad, even by recent intel standards. Maybe they'll get an AMD refresh out the door with the same ergonomics.
The HP has an off-centered keyboard and trackpad and a 1080p display.
So, of those four vendors, there's one model that's vaguely competitive, but it's a limited production run pre-order.
Very few match on all aspects. I'd tried a few and always had one terrible issue. Terrible battery life, lousy screen, and/or terrible touchpad. Apple does seem willing to make improvements without as much worry about backward compatibility. There are a few that match on everything I care about, but often cost more than the Apple.
People like to complain and mention byzantine purchase methods. Wait for a lenovo sale, buy the bare bones model, apply the discount code, then buy dimms and SSDs from random bargain basement sellers. Oh and buy the linux compatible wifi card and do surgery on your laptop to get wifi working after suspend.
MBA is pretty compelling mix of performance, size, cost, and battery life. Unlike any x86-64 laptop, you can pay $500 more or so and get double the memory bandwidth. Or another $500+ and double it again. Definitely makes the macs better any PC at some workloads. Sure some x86-64 with a nice discrete GPU is way faster ... when plugged in to wall power.
It has the worst LCD panel I've seen in many years. It's not the resolution just poor contrast and poor color accuracy. It pains me to see it.
They went on sale recently, I bought one, and shortly afterwards (a few months ago) they stopped selling them.
Non-sbc aarch64 devices with good upstream support are damn near non-existent. I understand the Linux user market is small, but it's baffling to me that companies can't invest a small amount in having coordinated upstreaming efforts.
That said, I'm so delighted with my G14 2022 experience that I might just buy the 2024 version of it's all AMD again. I have better hardware control in Linux than Windows, I can play Halo Infinite in Linux (praise be Proton) and Windows. But... I suspect I'm going to be able to do the same thing on a likely more-battery efficient and nicer hardware M2 MBA by the end of the year. Nice to have options.
Edit: it's really soulcrushing to think about. Sdm845 devices are insanely cheap and yet upstream support still barely limps along, mostly with volunteer/donated efforts.
I know there are faster machines, but they’re usually hotter. There are cooler machines, but they’re usually not as fast. There are cheaper machines but the screens are worse. And there are long battery life machines but they’re usually low performance Chromebooks.
I don’t know of any other machine that made the trade-offs to end up offering a similar combination. At any price.
And I said nothing about noise or thinness.
Once you’ve used one, it’s a very seductive combination of features. I don’t want to go back to “6-8 hours of battery life is enough”, or hearing fans, or using my laptop as a hand-warmer in summer. And I don’t understand how 1080p is still so common.