How usable is Asahi Linux

I'm using Asahi Linux on an M1 MBP since Oct. 2022.

It’s my personal machine that I use every now and then for programming projects and for organizing my files.

Everything I need works here. I even got suspend which consumes 5% battery in 2h. It’s not perfect but enough for my limited need.

All the software I need. Including Gimp, Darktable, and of course various command line/programming tools.

Edit: with the edge kernel I also get 3D acceleration bit I only tested this quickly in the webbrowser with WebGL.

I'd be curious to hear anyone report how many hours of battery life they get with Asahi under typical web browsing conditions (no video). I've seen plenty of folks use words like "decent" to describe it under Asahi, but very few precise numbers. I'd love to hear "I was able to use my MacBook for 9 hours in Asahi before it died", even if it's purely anecdotal.

One of the things about energy usage is that it requires your drivers to be all really behaving and in sync. Apple has probably spent many hours optimizing and organizing everything so that the power states all behave as they expect in order for the whole thing to deliver nice perf and power usage. Switching to Linux changes everything. I'm not saying it's going to be worse, but remember that every single driver will be different.

> are any laptop manufacturers getting close to Apple Silicon in terms of energy usage and performance?

Framework recently showed off their newer models hitting 11+ hours of runtime in a video playback test: https://youtu.be/tuw-YpbFkkM

Keep in mind that M2 has lackluster support. Specifically the Mac Mini has no display output (either via HDMI or USB-C DisplayPort).

I wouldn't want to buy such a modern computer and then use it without full graphics acceleration, just out of principle. But maybe my info on Asahi is out of date and they do have that.

> energy usage and performance

Define close. I'd say they've been close for awhile. Close enough for me anyway.

I daily drive Asahi Linux on my M1 MBA for CS in college. Currently, it's usable enough for that, coding, and casual web browsing, but for other use cases it still has a ways to go.

Right now, the area that needs the most improvement is software support. x86 Linux is already not ideal in that it isn't supported for a lot of commercial software and games, but ARM Linux is even worse in that regard, since even a lot of open source software isn't supported, at least not on the AUR. Along with that, the M1 doesn't support 32-bit software, so AFAIK there is no good way to use WINE to run Windows software currently.

A lot of open source software like LibreOffice, GIMP, Inkscape, Firefox/LibreWolf/Brave (only release version for FF), Webcord, and Signal can simply be installed using an AUR helper like paru. However, a good chunk of open source software isn't supported for aarch64 on the AUR, like Logseq, Joplin, Element, Sonixd, Bitwarden, Tor browser, Mullvad browser, just to name a few, so you'll need to figure out how to compile and update them yourself (I personally haven't bothered since I can live without them for now, and I couldn't get the "-git" packages to work either). Widevine can be installed (to use Spotify in a web browser), but the process is very hacky. Jetbrains IDEs can be installed, but Toolbox is not supported and a lot of the AUR packages don't support aarch64, so you'll need to install a lot of them manually. It is also possible to emulate x86 machines with QEMU (I used it to run Kali Linux for a cybersecurity course), but the performance is extremely bad and I don't recommend it. I also have not been able to install Blender or Unity, so for software like that you'll probably need to boot into macOS. And don't even think about running games yet, except for maybe Minecraft, Minetest, and SuperTuxKart.

Fortunately, the Asahi devs are aware that the software support is terrible, and they are making a lot of progress toward fixing it. Asahi Lina posted a video recently demonstrating running a variety of Windows games using her custom kernel (which I am currently super excited for), and Martin says that the main distro is going to be changed from Arch Linux ARM to one that actually has good aarch64 package support (which is rumored to be Fedora). So it looks like this situation will improve in the not-too-distant future.

There's also currently a variety of other quirks from it being alpha WIP software, such as no speaker support (which is currently being worked on), no external displays, no microphone, no camera, no fingerprint, worse battery life/sleep, and random crashes/lockups (although this has been a problem on every Linux laptop I've used).

So based on this, whether I'd recommend it depends on how much you love Linux and FOSS and whether it is compatible with your workflow. I personally hate relying on proprietary software for everyday personal use, so I am willing to put up with the quirks to have a system that I have full control over (and considering how amazing the Asahi devs are, I am confident that it will eventually get to a more usable state). If you're in the same boat, I'd recommend giving it a shot. If you just want a computer that works well, on the other hand, or you use a lot of graphical creation-related software, you'll probably want to stick with macOS instead for now, or get an x86 laptop like a ThinkPad.

(If you use it, make sure to use the edge kernel since it has all of the latest interesting features like GPU support. The installer also comes with a preconfigured setup with KDE, although you can also install bare bones ALARM like I did and install everything through the command line.)