How does Ubuntu Linux on recent Qualcomm (ex-Apple Nuvia) Arm laptops compare to Asahi Linux on Apple Silicon?

There are many audio resampling libraries available that can convert from 44.1 to 48 kHz with no perceptible quality loss. E.g. see

https://github.com/hasenbanck/resampler#quality-analysis

This is presumably what Apple does. You kind of have to anyway or you have the stupid situation Linux used to have where only one app could play audio at a time.

No, battery life isn't on par.

The only way to get the battery life Framework advertised is on Windows' 'Ultra Efficiency' mode which cuts CPU performance by 25-50%, lowers brightness by 30% and deprioritizes everything in the background to such an extreme that responsiveness of those is measured in seconds.

It is not comparable at all to M-series or Snapdragon laptops happily chugging along at full capability and getting (compared to AMD / Intel) stellar battery life.

> My variosu Linux adventures have always resulted in doing random patches for audio or screen incompatibility.

This is the kind of dated argument that really makes me dismiss most of the critics. I was running xubuntu as my main desktop since 2010 at least, switched to Debian + nix + XFCE in 2022 and switched to full-on nixOS in 2024. I never had issues with audio then and had to go out of my way to "break" audio on NixOS when I wanted to try pipewire instead of pulse.

> feel like most Linux ricers wises for a MacOS-like experience

I've put together a Hackintosh once, tried for a few weeks as the daily driver. Aside from being able to use tools that dealt with real-time audio processing, there was nothing else I wanted to copy or bring to my Linux system. It cemented my opinion that most software developers that keep touting the "superiority of MacOS" never gave a fair shot at Linux on decent hardware and were just rationalizing their prior choice.

I use macos because of the battery life and because I want a Linux like experience without wondering if some weird software a company update forces on us will work, like citrix desktop or their random vpn client. But for someone who spends most of their time in the terminal, and the rest of the time in a browser, macos has some really annoying quirks especially when it comes to window management

In my personal experience macOS is fine but updates are often buggy or regress performance. Linux has just been the more polished option. Plus it just has a nicer desktop and apps.

"entirely possible" is a bit of a stretch. You can install some hacky WM and sketchybar but system settings, workspace three finger scroll speed, the finder app, window chrome, login screen etc are not something that can easily be changed. And the default apps are really not that great for power users. Calendar, Mail and Finder are all slow, dumbed down and only very superficially customizable. I daily drive an M2 Pro MBP and I was running a Linux desktop up until 2 years ago and I felt like there were barely any limits to customizing the latter while I have to fight macOS at every step if I want to do something that apple does not want me to do.

Not a problem I have had on Linux.

Some people seem to get better battery life with Windows than with Linux.

Most users on any OSes are not ricers. Most of my customisation is functional - panels and widgets placed for practical reasons. A lot of people do not seem to customise at all, or barely.

Ricing is big, but I also like the hackability and development friendly environment of Linux that isn't there on Macbooks (been running MacOS as a secondary for ~5yrs now)

MacOS is also optimised for M series chips in a way that realistically no linux distribution ever will be.

Definitely good to have the option, but you'll most likely never get quite the same performance or battery life on linux

> My variosu Linux adventures have always resulted in doing random patches for audio or screen incompatibility.

Is that on Mac hardware? I run a 14 year old Mac Book Air, and it works flawlessly with the latest Nixos, and has done for the last 11 years.

If you have issues on random PCs, it's because there are an enormous variety of them out there, with all kinds of incompatibilities that have to be worked around. On Mac hardware, there tends to be a more restricted number of variants, and after a few years, Linux becomes rock solid on them.

So the OP is correct, Linux on Mac hardware is the best combo.

Liquid Ass enters the chat, Apple can’t even make rounded corners anymore.

I was burned by the 2016 MacBook Pro keyboard, and once Liquid Ass was announced I knew it was time to get out.

Sold my MacBook Pro M2 Pro, which has a stupid gigantic notch that blocks the menu bar items with no built-in mechanism for getting to them when they overflow.

Now I’m on a Framework 13” and I’ve had zero issues with Linux. Everything just works. KDE Plasma is way more customizable than macOS or Windows. I’m finally able to ditch slow Homebrew and use a real package manager. I can finally play light PC games on my laptop without dealing with streaming or Crossover.

My preorder is in for the Framework 13 Pro, which looks to get even closer to delivering a MacBook Pro for Linux. Meanwhile, Apple hasn’t changed their chassis design in 5 years, while Framework updates their hardware constantly while maintaining cross-compatibility. A company with less than 500 employees is catching up to a trillion dollar corporation.

I’ve already got my fully modular LPCAMM RAM delivered and ready with no Apple tax. I’ll get better battery life watching YouTube videos than a MacBook Pro and the graphics are just as powerful as the M5 base chip.

And if something breaks I won’t have to deal with the nightmare I went through with my 2016 MacBook Pro.

They don't have to support it, just document the system or release their own kernel code. They don't even have to mention Linux.

> Apple hardware margins are healthy enough that selling macbooks to linux users is pure profit, so no services lock-in needed.

What do you mean by needed? A lock-in is more profitable so is needed to maximise profits.

And risk of loss of control on the software ecosystem.

I don't know if that's true. Linux users are curious and will try more stuff but people mistake that they file bug reports (and usually detailed ones...) with complaining more.

Apple's MO is that it's their baby. End of. They don't do open. Their compiler is closed source, and so on.

They are operating under a patchwork of NDAs. It would take some effort to determine what they can disclose.

If they think macOS is one great idea, that's a terrible misjudgment.

They get more public goodwill from a single ad. The chronically online Linux-using engineer community is too small to matter.

The vast majority of people that buy Macs for the ecosystem aren't going to switch to Linux. That market will remain untouched. Outside of a few gamers who might want to put up with the x86-to-ARM translation layer and (for most A to AAA games) Proton to run some non-Mac games. And even they'll probably still dual-boot.

There's a portion of another market: people who want to run Linux and want a powerful laptop who buy x86 Laptops right now. Apple could expend very little relative effort while offering no official support by helping Asahi get that to a first class platform. They won't capture them in the ecosystem (and they never would have) but will still benefit from hardware sales to them.

Obviously, if they sold their hardware at a loss and subsidized that with ecosystem capture that would be a non-starter. But from everything we know, the hardware itself is very profitable.

Yeah, and having the only supported OS be MacOS means they can entice people to upgrade when they want. No continuing on with 8+ year old hardware and a lightweight Linux distro even if it's fine for the intended use case.

They do also make a lot of money selling hardware, and as things stand today that business happens to make them look like the first tech giant to actually profit from the AI boom (because the hardware they've been developing internally for years happens to be among the best consumer-grade options for self-hosting LLMs). Making their hardware more attractive to tinkerers could be a winning move right now.

This, but also you would be allowing people to learn Linux. Developer with a Mac has to be one of the most common linux defectors. I suspect most people don't realize how doable and comfortable the switch can be.

Linux users don't pay for anything anyway

Plenty are whining now and that doesn't seem to bother them. I mean, this is one of the largest companies in the world. This is the company that once told people they were holding the phone wrong. I can't see them being particularly more bothered by people complaining in a slightly different way.

so they don't care about users, they care about themself?

I don't see it that way. It's just the GP poster saying that they don't get it. Usually that means the GP poster isn't experienced enough to understand the rationality. So I generally assume the GP poster is simply naive.

Linux.

Thanks! That is a good page for me to monitor!

Honestly, knowing what I know about marcan, the decision was probably the result of an overwhelming/strong emotional reaction.

Not to just shit all over him or anything, but it really sucks to see someone who is genuinely top-ten-on-earth when it comes to "real hacking" struggle so much with socialisation and mental health.