←back to thread

213 points cnst | 1 comments | | HN request time: 0.349s | source
Show context
0xbadcafebee ◴[] No.42152436[source]
I upgraded from a 10-year-old Lenovo to a MacBook Pro M1 w/Asahi Linux for a while recently. It convinced me that we're not ready for ARM Linux desktops for general-purpose, regular-person use.

Besides all the crappy Linux desktop software today (I have been trying multiple recent distros out on multiple new laptops... all the Linux desktop stuff now is buggy, features are gone that were there 10 years ago... it's annoying as hell). The ARM experience is one of being a second-class citizen. A ton of apps are released as AppImages or Snaps/Flatpaks. But they have to be built for both X86_64 and ARM64, and extremely few are built for the latter. Even when they are built for it, they have their own bugs to be worked around, and there's fewer users, so you wait longer for a bugfix. The end result is you have fewer choices, compatibility and support.

I love the idea of an ARM desktop. But it's going to cause fragmentation of available developer (and corporate/3rd-party) resources. ARM devices individually are even more unique than X86_64 gear is, so each one requires more integration. I'm sticking to X86_64 so I don't have to deal with another set of problems.

replies(6): >>42152670 #>>42153220 #>>42153504 #>>42154905 #>>42155175 #>>42161569 #
1. pjmlp ◴[] No.42155175[source]
I believed the dream back in 2000.

Eventually I moved into VMWare Workstation, for GNU/Linux stuff on the desktop, with an aging Asus netbook on the side.

Nowadays, the netbook is dead, its used replaced by tablet, and my desktops are Windows/WSL (for Linux containers only, started on demand).

At work our workstations are a mix of Windows and macOS, leaving GNU/Linux on the servers.

Not even x86 is 100% usable on laptops, meaning supporting every single feature, and late nights to fix stuff eventually gets old.