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.
The thinkpad-x13s-snapdragon is fanless and uses a qualcomm snapdragon processor, so an ARM like the macs use but lower performance. Batttery life is reputedly in the 20+ hour range.
Caveats:
Laptops based on the snapdragon elite processors will come out this year, and performance should be comparable to the Mx macs. So maybe better to wait. Although, those may be considerably more expensive, and who knows what linux support will be like, especially at first.
It’s tricky enough getting hardware video encode to work on Linux with “this is just an Intel IGP, the exact same thing as every other Intel IGP”. Decode can even be tricky at times. I am very pessimistic about getting video editing software working on a system as far off the beaten path as a Snapdragon.
If you stick with more mainline hardware, you have fallback positions like “use linux Davinci” or “dual boot Windows and use one of the gazillion tools there”, or “MacOS has its own cavalcade of media tools”.
The gpu is fully supported to my knowledge.
Thanks for the points you brought up. Very helpful.
1k? My last MacBook was 5k
With the advent of the m3, m2’s and m1’s still in inventory can be a steal, particularly 'Air macs which can be sub-1k easy. My mbp m2pro 16g was 1500. I’m not impressed by real-life macos performance tho, a lot of it is impressive in parts (blender rendering for instance) but everyday life is just the same… Yes, the same hanging Color Wheel Of Doom.
I hope your 5k investment isn’t having sound playback hiccups because dropbox is trying to log in and refresh in the background. I am actually furious with the 10% of the time I have to use macos on this machine.
My budget for laptops has always been <$350. Why are you willing to spend so much on a laptop?
Brand name
If it’s a revenue generating machine, the impact of 10 or 20% improvement in day to day could recoup the additional cost in a few months or a year.
Similarly, for someone who travels a lot, having a useful battery life of 8-10 hours of internet+video playback allows a work routine that is worry free wrt charging and this allows tighter travel schedules.
Ofc, this isn’t the case every time, but this creates anchor effect on several segments of the market. This also doesn’t include the extra cost of “luxury” aka thin and light or small bezels.
350 USD is perfectly fine if you don’t need a ton of battery life or color accurate screen or multimedia or multicore workloads. If you need any of this, most of the options get pricier than 700 USD. It’s not uncommon to have to shell out 1500 USD or more for the desired specs.
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If it’s a ThinkPad second hand can be just as good if not better than new/modern I’ve found