I’m looking to pick up an old M1 macbook from my work if I can slap linux on it and turn it into a usable laptop. Its the A2338
I’m most worried about hardware support and running into constant wifi, keyboard and software bugs.
Does anyone have experience using this class of device with linux?
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https://asahilinux.org/fedora/#device-support
I think the best answer is “support is progressing”.
Thank you, this is a great resource.
I have an M1 I use only with Linux. Pain points : no Thunderbolt, no HDMI, battery life is awful. Otherwise it’s a very nice machine. (I’m gonna sell it soon because of the aforementioned pain points)
M1 running Asahi is mostly fine. You’ll be missing some major features though, most notably the GPU hardware acceleration for certain things, and port features like Thunderbolt: https://asahilinux.org/docs/platform/feature-support/m1/#table-of-contents
Also, the leader of the project quit awhile back, and development seems somewhat stalled/slow now.
I dont even know what Thunderbolt is so I probably wont miss it, however no gpu hardware acceleration must hurt quite a bit. Do you notice it to be sluggish?
do you plug things like monitors in over usb-c? that may not work without thunderbolt.
Basic stuff is fine, but anything video or gaming related is a struggle. I’ve also noticed the power saving benefits aren’t there.
If you’re buying a Mac just use Mac OS. Linux on Mac hardware is always a pain. Even on x86 when they were relatively “normal” there were so many quirks that sucked. Plus their trackpads are always awful in Linux.
If you want Linux just get something else.
I use an M1 (Pro 14" 8 core 16GB) with Asahi. It’s extremely usable. WiFi is solid. Sound is solid. I never considered keyboard to be an issue… Its not. Things like brigtheness buttons still work. I have a tonne of USB devices and none of them had issues. I don’t think the fingerprint reader or the built-in camera work but I can test them if that’s a sticking point.
I very much like it and it’s easy to switch into OSX if you’re so inclined. I do for photo work. I know there are alternatives. I’m working on it.
The things I would warn about:
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in my experience, battery life is worse. Maybe around 1/2 of what OSX gets. With my overall battery health around 80%, I think I’m getting 4 hours in Asahi.
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this could actually be a skill issue (Linux newb) but I’ve had trouble installing certain packages in Fedora and Python and I assume it has to do with the M1 being ARM-based
Edit: remembered some things. As of the newest version, gaming is much MUCH better. I think you can do 720p or on medium or 1080p low with decent frames by just using proton on Stream. That’s wild to me.
In case you didn’t know, Asahi is the Linux distro designed for Apple Silicon Macs. Its based on Fedora with KDE as the desktop so it has a solid backens and a familiar but customizable interface. Its extremely simple to install and is beginner friendly.
Reply if you need more info!
is the HDR display working? I think I might not get it since it sounds like a lot of trouble. There are 2019 intel macbooks that might make a better linux laptop
Currently no HDR and looks like 60hz is the maximum refresh rate
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