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0 points3abiton22d ago0 comments

I totally get it. I have the M4 Air, grabbed it for 700$ on sale. I also have a MSI Creator with Linux (wayland). Performance wise the base Air crunches through everything up until lots of things are open and gpu is roaring (encoding or streaming), and with colima, I have few incus linux containers up and running. Battery life is formidable. Nothing comes close.

My linux laptop (32GB ram / beefy gpu) barely withstand 40 min on battery, but can handle very daunting tasks, and obviously gaming.

These are 2 different use cases, but right now, for the ultra portable laptop, Air is the king, until x64 brings back the efficiency per watt. Even qcom can't compete. That being said, I am a big fan of the apple hardware and not the apple software, so whenever Asahi linux is ready enough (with good battery life), I am definitely jumping ship.

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zdragnar22d ago

That beefy GPU is the killer for battery life. There's quite a few PC laptops floating about that get in the 10-16 hour range battery life on lighter workloads (text editors, fast compilers, streaming video, browsing internet). I'm typing this on one right now. I wish it was running linux, but I need windows for work up until we get the last of our antiquated .net platform on core.

Sure, it's got integrated graphics so it won't win any gaming awards, but that's what the laptop with the beefy GPU sitting in the corner is for :) That thing pumps out enough heat to not be too pleasant sitting on a lap anyway.

clouedoc21d ago

Exactly. Big GPUs are the #1 reason battery doesn’t last on Linux laptops.

Power management is not done well with the GPU drivers in Linux. If they are not used, they still draw a lot of power, while that’s not really the case on Windows, from what I heard.

I think the best is to get a good Linux laptop, but with an integrated GPU. If you really want to do anything beefy, you can always use an eGPU :)!

Obviously this will never come close in terms of convenience as having an actual M series MacBook…

Wishing you best of luck for the .net migration!

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