• winety@lemmy.zip
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    5 months ago

    I hope that when my current laptop dies, a somewhat libre and linux-friendly alternative with an ARM chipset will be on the market.

      • shadowtofu@discuss.tchncs.de
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        5 months ago

        Without UEFI, the boot process is different for each device, requires a custom boot loader, or at least explicit support by the operating system. Is your laptop going to be supported by the distribution you want to use? What about in 5 or 10 years? With UEFI, the boot process is standardized, so it should just work.

        • mexicancartel@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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          5 months ago

          Oh yeah but well instead of using the UEFI we probably should include libreboot or coreboot. But uefi is better than nothing but since its tuxedo we should expect some libreboot

          • TCB13@lemmy.world
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            5 months ago

            Not “oh yeah” that’s a major concern and the biggest issue with ARM adoption. SBCs and ARM tablets are a mess when it comes to Linux support and one of the biggest reasons for it is the lack of an UEFI. Long term support as said is another very big concern, if you take any x86 box new or old things will work predictably because the OS doesn’t need to know the details of the boot process / low level hardware control.

              • bruhduh@lemmy.world
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                5 months ago

                That it’s open source, vendor uefi is rarely open source, plus coreboot have many other payloads like seabios, uboot, grub

      • bruhduh@lemmy.world
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        5 months ago

        Because how do you install Linux without ability to choose boot from USB (changing boot order)

      • mryessir@lemmy.sdf.org
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        5 months ago

        It is bearable but feature complete. Every month linaro and the community add functionality. The most recent things include a custom power-domain mapper implementation and apparently camera support.

        If you are running wayland you can simply install any os and its working oob.

        The laptops weight and heat production is awesome. Very practical. Also the body is exceptional sturdy and worth mentioning (even in comparsion to a T14, e.g.).

        But:

        • external monitors are not detected at boot
        • no hibernation
        • battery time is very depended on the task. It ranges from 4 to 13 hours.
        • no virtualization support, so one is stuck with tiny code generator runtime when using kvm
        • audio is pretty quiet, so depending on the environment an external source is required.

        I followed almost all patches on the lkml. It appears to me that the upcoming chip can benefit from the sc8280xp hugely. It sufficies for my use cases but I promised myself a little better, yet.

    • shirro@aussie.zone
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      5 months ago

      I like silent laptops but sometimes I want to max out the power budget and get work done without worrying about thermal throttling. Having a fan and customizable power settings gives users a choice. Apple takes that choice away.

      • d-RLY?@lemmy.ml
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        5 months ago

        When I got my first Raspberry Pi (4B), I was kind of shocked at how hot even my passive Argon case would get. Though I am guessing a more powerful and efficient ARM or RISC-V CPU would not spike to 100% so fast. But when I got my Pi 5 I made sure to get the official case that came with a fan while I waited for the more powerful active cooling fan to release. So much better at running stuff like YouTube or other media without hitting thermal issues (got the active cooling Argon One for my 4B with similar results too).

        Having more powerful ARM/RISC-V CPUs that can actually handle stuff I expect a full on laptop or especially a desktop will be awesome. But while we are in the “still not as good” period of these CPUs both matching x86_64 and programs for them being full versions. The inefficiencies of either needing emulation or just very un-optimized code as devs are getting the hang of ARM/RISC-V coming from x86 mean those temps are easy to hit.

      • Allero@lemmy.today
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        5 months ago

        Installing a fan negatively impacts the passive cooling ability (at the absolute least by taking space that could be occupied by a bigger radiator and by obstructing the airflow), so it’s always a tradeoff.

        Apple wanted to make it passively cooled, and it wouldn’t be possible at decent loads if a fan would be installed alongside passive cooler.

        • woelkchen@lemmy.world
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          5 months ago

          I have a 2021 Asus Zephyrus G14 unless I run a game, that thing is running without active cooling. Seems like a solved problem.

          • Allero@lemmy.today
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            5 months ago

            Solved for larger laptops.

            Macbooks are significantly slimmer, and have way less internal space that could be used to make a combined cooling system that would be passive most of the time.

            • woelkchen@lemmy.world
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              5 months ago

              The G14 is 14 inch and has a dedicated GPU, so without one the cooling requirements are far less.

    • Balder@lemmy.world
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      5 months ago

      I see it more of a limitation, you don’t want your laptop to warm (and it shouldn’t in light use), but you want to cool it for the few times it does.

      • Allero@lemmy.today
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        5 months ago

        Not necessarily. I own a passively cooled x86 laptop that runs just fine without throttling - granted, it’s based on Celeron series CPU, but when we talk of ARM laptops, we normally don’t talk powerful machines - Macs are rather an exception.