Hi,

I’m planning to buy a new laptop soon.
The ThinkPad X1 Carbon was my top choice, but unfortunately, the Lenovo discount for DDs isn’t available in India yet.

Without any discount, it’s quite pricey, and I realized I could get
a MacBook for much less. It seems like a fun hardware option to try out.
I plan to run Debian on it ofcourse, but I'm uncertain if using
Asahi as my daily driver is a good idea.

I found a wiki page[1] for M1 Mac, but I’d love to hear if anyone has personal experience with it.

[1] https://wiki.debian.org/InstallingDebianOn/Apple/M1

Thanks
Nilesh

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W dniu 31.10.2024 o 10:28, Nilesh Patra pisze:

I’m planning to buy a new laptop soon.

I realized I could get a MacBook for much less. It seems like a fun
hardware option to try out. I plan to run Debian on it ofcourse, but
I'm uncertain if using Asahi as my daily driver is a good idea.

I found a wiki page[1] for M1 Mac, but I’d love to hear if anyone
has personal experience with it.

[1] https://wiki.debian.org/InstallingDebianOn/Apple/M1

I have Macbook Pro with M1 Pro cpu running Fedora Asahi Remix [1] on it.
Most of time it spends with lid closed and I use it headless but many
times used it during travelling.

1. https://fedora-asahi-remix.org/


KDE desktop works nice on it, WiFi, BT, speakers, USB, NVME, HDMI etc
work. For me the most missing parts are:

- Thunderbolt (you need usb3 hub between TB docking station and laptop)
- DisplayPort over USB-C connector

If you want to get Debian running on I would recommend tripleboot setup
with MacOS (you need it in case of firmware upgrades need), Fedora Asahi
Remix (to check how things work) and Debian (where some work will be
needed).

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Hi Nilesh,

At this point in time, the first page you should have a look at for
Debian on Apple Silicon is [1]. I think [2], which you linked to, needs
a major update.

I've been daily-driving Debian on an M1 Mac Mini since February, and
helping the Bananas Team with maintaining the Asahi stack since May. To
date, we provide full support for the entire user space stack except for
mesa, steam and widevine-installer -- the last two of which you may or
may not be interested in. Trixie will be the first Debian release to
provide such support.

I myself package and distribute the Asahi kernel [3], mesa drivers (with
full OpenGL, OpenCL and Vulkan support thanks to the outstanding work of
the Asahi devs) [4] and u-boot bootloader [5], which are the components
that have not been fully upstreamed yet, so they are not part of Debian
yet. The Asahi kernel is just the ordinary 16K-page Debian kernel + (a
lot of) Asahi patches, while for u-boot and mesa I have to be a bit more creative with the packaging since for those the Asahi and Debian
releases are rarely in sync. They too are mostly identical to the Debian packages though. My guiding principle is to treat them as they could be upstreamed any day, including submitting patches to make sure that the
entire stack, kernel, mesa and u-boot included, remains buildable in unstable/testing.

As far as stability goes, I had no issues [6] running Debian on Apple
Silicon as a daily driver. You can use it just like anyone would with an ordinary Debian installation. As for hardware support, have a look at
[7] for the support matrix.

Drop by #debian-bananas on IRC (also bridged to Matrix) to say hi, if
you're interested we'll give you more up-to-date information on how to
install Debian on Apple Silicon.

Best,

NC


[1] https://wiki.debian.org/Teams/Bananas
[2] https://wiki.debian.org/InstallingDebianOn/Apple/M1
[3] https://salsa.debian.org/NoisyCoil/linux-asahi
[4] https://salsa.debian.org/NoisyCoil/mesa-asahi
[5] https://salsa.debian.org/NoisyCoil/u-boot-asahi
[6] Except for very occasional breakages which are promptly resolved by
the Asahi devs and thus never caused serious problems
[7] https://asahilinux.org/fedora/#device-support

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On 2024-10-31 14:58 +0530, Nilesh Patra wrote:

I found a wiki page[1] for M1 Mac, but I’d love to hear if anyone has personal experience with it.

[1] https://wiki.debian.org/InstallingDebianOn/Apple/M1

I have had Asahi installed on my M1 macbook air for 2.5 years now
(since shortly after it was released) and overall I've been very
impressed with how well it has worked. I really only used it when
travelling to start with because it's small and in theory has very low
pwer management, but for the first 1.5 years sleep/hibernate didn't
work so it wasn't that much use as a daily machine because it went
flat when you weren't using it. Also there was no JOSM in arm64 debian
stable which is the main reason I have a laptop on holiday so I had to
resort to macOS quite a lot for real work.

I used it as my daily driver for about a month this year between
giving back my work Thinkpad and getting the M1 stolen (boo!). Once I
got the audio working (by moving to Testing) it became way more
useful, and the sleep/hibernate thing was fixed too so it worked very well. Also for a long time there was no audio, which was the most obvious omission.

The only things I didn't get working were:
1) Bluetooth (missing firmware, but even putting it in so the chip was recognised I still couldn't connect to anything)
2) Keyboard. Various keys like pipe and tilde in the wrong places. No Pound sign at all, and how the hell do mac people survive with no pageup/pagedown or 'insert' keys? and the really strange set of modifier keys? This was very frustrating.

These things could obviously be fixed (except the missing keys), but I
lost the machine before getting to the bottom of them. It's nice
hardware, especially for travel, but I'm not going to replace it - I'm
going to get another thinkpad mostly because I get a proper bloody
keyboard and 3 buttons (And I can get way more RAM and drive in an
ex-corporate Thinkpad for much less money than in a macbook)! Also that
machine had only 8GB RAM and 256GB drive which is just not enough for
my main machine. Useable, but annoying - it was way too easy to open
one too many firefox pages and it started thrashing and the desktop
usually died after a bit. That was the only 'unstable' aspect. Other
than that things seemed very solid.

Overall, I'd say Asahi/Debian is very impressive. You have to discover
that the codename is 'banana' to find the right wiki page and
Matrix/IRC channels for info and support. Which seems a bit perverse-
we don't use the wrong name to refer to any other company's
computers.

But if you can live with the keyboard/mouse and buy a machine with
enough welly for your purposes then yes it's a viable setup. A bit of
nerding is still required, although I expect the next debian stable
release will have pretty good out-of-the-box support for these
machines with minimal faffing.

My experience is with the M1. I don't know how well things work with
the M2 and M3. Probably not as solid yet.

HTH

Wookey
--
Principal hats: Debian, Wookware
http://wookware.org/

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Nilesh Patra dijo [Thu, Oct 31, 2024 at 02:58:02PM +0530]:

Hi,

I’m planning to buy a new laptop soon.
The ThinkPad X1 Carbon was my top choice, but unfortunately, the Lenovo discount for DDs isn’t available in India yet.

Without any discount, it’s quite pricey, and I realized I could get
a MacBook for much less. It seems like a fun hardware option to try out.
I plan to run Debian on it ofcourse, but I'm uncertain if using
Asahi as my daily driver is a good idea.

If you want to get your hands on an ARM laptop, you should consider the Lenovo Yoga C630. Yes, it's not anymore for sale, but I haven't found it difficult to locate used. It was produced in 2019, and since I got mine in 2021, it is my main laptop. I find it quite responsive, unlike those belonging to the "chromebook" market segment.

I searched a bit for them on Ebay, and found several items starting at ≈US$200.

Hardware support was much spottier when I bought mine, but it has gradually improved. With Linux kernel 6.11, I built my kernel completely from the upstream
source tree, with no external patches; I haven't tried booting the regular Debian kernel, but should try that soon. I only keep an older (5.19) kernel available, as it is the only one I have that supports an external HDMI display over USB-C (the patch was rejected upstream 🙁). I understand that with 6.11 audio finally works, but I haven't been able to use it.

Suspend and hibernate work correctly. Network connectivity, perfectly. I get ~10hr of continuous use without needing to recharge (I often let the power brick
in the dorm during DebConf). The keyboard is not the best I've seen, but given the low profile of the laptop, it's the best I would expect. The trackpad is quite good, and the screen is just lovely. And working on a ~1.3Kg computer with
zero moving parts, not even a tiny fan... is just beautiful!

There are some other laptops with similar specs and level of support. If I understand correctly, the Lenovo Flex 5G came out just after this model, upgrading the CPU (from Snapdragon 855 to 8CX) and WLAN connectivity.

I have found most useful the work of the "AArch64 Laptops" group in GitHub. I first installed my laptop with their fork of the debian-cdimage:

https://github.com/aarch64-laptops/debian-cdimage

I also became a regular at the #aarch64-laptops channel at OFTC. Lots of good knowledge came from it.

Hope this is useful to you!

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On 2024-10-31, Jeffrey Walton wrote:

There's also Pinebook and Pinebook Pro. It is Open Source hardware. <https://pine64.org/devices/pinebook_pro/>.

Having largely happily* used both the Pinebook and Pinebook Pro as
primary computers running Debian for three or four years altogether... I
do not believe they are Open Source hardware by any definition I am
aware of.

* With high awareness of limitations; they would by no means compare to
the apple or lenovo mentioned in this thread so far

live well,
vagrant

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Jeffrey Walton dijo [Thu, Oct 31, 2024 at 02:52:37PM -0400]:

There's also Pinebook and Pinebook Pro. It is Open Source hardware. <https://pine64.org/devices/pinebook_pro/>.

Right. And they are interesting hardware, indeed. But I have seen some of them, and none of their owners was willing to take it as a "daily driver". They are too underpowered.

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On Fri Nov 1, 2024 at 12:22 AM IST, Jeffrey Walton wrote:

On Thu, Oct 31, 2024 at 1:39 PM Gunnar Wolf <gwolf@debian.org> wrote:

Nilesh Patra dijo [Thu, Oct 31, 2024 at 02:58:02PM +0530]:

Hi,

I’m planning to buy a new laptop soon.
The ThinkPad X1 Carbon was my top choice, but unfortunately, the Lenovo discount for DDs isn’t available in India yet.

Without any discount, it’s quite pricey, and I realized I could get
a MacBook for much less. It seems like a fun hardware option to try out. I plan to run Debian on it ofcourse, but I'm uncertain if using
Asahi as my daily driver is a good idea.

If you want to get your hands on an ARM laptop, you should consider the Lenovo
Yoga C630. Yes, it's not anymore for sale, but I haven't found it difficult to
locate used. It was produced in 2019, and since I got mine in 2021, it is my
main laptop. I find it quite responsive, unlike those belonging to the "chromebook" market segment.

Thanks -- I will check this out.

There's also Pinebook and Pinebook Pro. It is Open Source hardware. <https://pine64.org/devices/pinebook_pro/>.

Right. However, these things are extremely hard to procure for me due to
import duties and potential restrictions at customs.

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On Thu, 31 Oct 2024 13:24:02 -0700
Vagrant Cascadian <vagrant@debian.org> wrote:

On 2024-10-31, Jeffrey Walton wrote:

There's also Pinebook and Pinebook Pro. It is Open Source hardware. <https://pine64.org/devices/pinebook_pro/>.

Having largely happily* used both the Pinebook and Pinebook Pro as
primary computers running Debian for three or four years altogether... I
do not believe they are Open Source hardware by any definition I am
aware of.

I've had a Pinebook Pro for about 4 years now, with Debian on it, and I have mixed feelings about it. It's not my "daily driver" because I have a much older machine that is more straightforward to use (also Debian).

For the first 3 or so years, I was running the custom kernel that had been recommended on the Pinebook Pro forums. I recently tried to use a kernel downloaded directly from Debian, and had no luck. It seems like a lot of the discussion on the Pinebook
Pro forums seems to suggest that the Pinebook-specific kernel version is still the way to go.

Does this match your experience? Have you had any luck running debian-provided kernels on your Pinebook Pro?

I did recently (earlier this year) update the u-boot to a Debian-provided version, and as a result, it now can display a boot menu on the built-in screen. It couldn't before.

Booting from a SD-card seems to be a bit of a black art, that depends in some unclear way on which u-boot version you have installed. Fortunately, this wasn't a problem when I was first getting it set up, but lately, I've run into problems.

I've been considering trying out Armbian, or Armbian-kernel-with-Debian-userland, but SD-card-boot challenges have slowed that down.

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On 2024-10-31 14:58 +0530, Nilesh Patra wrote:

The ThinkPad X1 Carbon was my top choice, but unfortunately, the Lenovo discount for DDs isn’t available in India yet.

Without any discount, it’s quite pricey,

I don't know if this works in India, and I don't want to put you off
getting an actual arm machine which is way cooler and more fun, but I
just thought it worth noting that 'as new' Thinkpads are available on
ebay remarkably cheaply here.

I've had good service from 'newanduserlaptops4u' who will sell me a
basic (8G RAM) X1 carbon for £180 right now https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/235791120381
They have loads of machines to choose from. There are other similar
suppliers I have used in the past - I've been buying thinkpads this
way for a couple of decades now.

New Thinkpads from lenovo are extortionate.

Wookey
--
Principal hats: Debian, Wookware
http://wookware.org/

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Hello,

Quoting Wookey:
On 2024-10-31 14:58 +0530, Nilesh Patra wrote:

The ThinkPad X1 Carbon was my top choice, but unfortunately, the Lenovo discount for DDs isn’t available in India yet.

Without any discount, it’s quite pricey,

I don't know if this works in India, and I don't want to put you off
getting an actual arm machine which is way cooler and more fun, but I
just thought it worth noting that 'as new' Thinkpads are available on
ebay remarkably cheaply here.

I've had good service from 'newanduserlaptops4u' who will sell me a
basic (8G RAM) X1 carbon for £180 right now https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/235791120381
They have loads of machines to choose from.

Thanks for this, however it says: "This Shop has no inventory available in your location"
for me. I've tried looking at options like these but did not find any of them trustworthy
enough and on the contrary, I've seen it easy to get scammed on buying refurbished or used
laptops and the vendor takes no guarantee for it.

some vendors on Ebay will provide shipping but that does not include custom handling fees
which can go to as much as 50% (or even more for premium) of the product.

There are other similar
suppliers I have used in the past - I've been buying thinkpads this
way for a couple of decades now.

New Thinkpads from lenovo are extortionate.

I can agree with that but reliable vendors are quite hard to get otherwise.

Thanks
Nilesh

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On 11/1/24 04:06, Brian Sammon wrote:

On Thu, 31 Oct 2024 13:24:02 -0700
Vagrant Cascadian <vagrant@debian.org> wrote:

On 2024-10-31, Jeffrey Walton wrote:

There's also Pinebook and Pinebook Pro. It is Open Source hardware.
<https://pine64.org/devices/pinebook_pro/>.

Having largely happily* used both the Pinebook and Pinebook Pro as
primary computers running Debian for three or four years altogether... I
do not believe they are Open Source hardware by any definition I am
aware of.

I've had a Pinebook Pro for about 4 years now, with Debian on it, and I have mixed feelings about it. It's not my "daily driver" because I have a much older machine that is more straightforward to use (also Debian).

For the first 3 or so years, I was running the custom kernel that had been recommended on the Pinebook Pro forums. I recently tried to use a kernel downloaded directly from Debian, and had no luck. It seems like a lot of the discussion on the

Pinebook Pro forums seems to suggest that the Pinebook-specific kernel version is still the way to go.

Does this match your experience? Have you had any luck running debian-provided kernels on your Pinebook Pro?

I did recently (earlier this year) update the u-boot to a Debian-provided version, and as a result, it now can display a boot menu on the built-in screen. It couldn't before.

Booting from a SD-card seems to be a bit of a black art, that depends in some unclear way on which u-boot version you have installed. Fortunately, this wasn't a problem when I was first getting it set up, but lately, I've run into problems.

I've been considering trying out Armbian, or Armbian-kernel-with-Debian-userland, but SD-card-boot challenges have slowed that down.

I am running armbian on a bunch of bananapi-m5's and it Just Works.

Cheers, Gene Heskett, CET.
--
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
-Ed Howdershelt (Author, 1940)
If we desire respect for the law, we must first make the law respectable.
- Louis D. Brandeis

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On 2024-11-01, Brian Sammon wrote:

On Thu, 31 Oct 2024 13:24:02 -0700
Vagrant Cascadian <vagrant@debian.org> wrote:

On 2024-10-31, Jeffrey Walton wrote:

There's also Pinebook and Pinebook Pro. It is Open Source hardware.
<https://pine64.org/devices/pinebook_pro/>.

Having largely happily* used both the Pinebook and Pinebook Pro as
primary computers running Debian for three or four years altogether... I
do not believe they are Open Source hardware by any definition I am
aware of.

I've had a Pinebook Pro for about 4 years now, with Debian on it, and
I have mixed feelings about it. It's not my "daily driver" because I
have a much older machine that is more straightforward to use (also
Debian).

For the first 3 or so years, I was running the custom kernel that had
been recommended on the Pinebook Pro forums. I recently tried to use
a kernel downloaded directly from Debian, and had no luck. It seems
like a lot of the discussion on the Pinebook Pro forums seems to
suggest that the Pinebook-specific kernel version is still the way to
go.

Does this match your experience? Have you had any luck running debian-provided kernels on your Pinebook Pro?

I only really used self-built kernels based on Debian packaging, and
once that was working, added support to the kernels in Debian. I have
not used them as much recently, but last I checked (a few weeks/months
ago), both Pinebook and Pinebook Pro with linux kernels from Debian
Bookworm (6.1.x). I have not checked newer kernels.

I never successfully used things like suspend or internal wifi, though.

I did recently (earlier this year) update the u-boot to a
Debian-provided version, and as a result, it now can display a boot
menu on the built-in screen. It couldn't before.

Booting from a SD-card seems to be a bit of a black art, that depends
in some unclear way on which u-boot version you have installed.
Fortunately, this wasn't a problem when I was first getting it set up,
but lately, I've run into problems.

If you install u-boot to eMMC, that is the first device in the boot
order for the RK3399 SoC, so will make it somewhat difficult to load
u-boot from microSD. sunxi systems make that a little easier, defaulting
to microSD over eMMC.

The boot order of your u-boot will depend, upstream u-boot fixed bugs
that hid various problems with extlinux style boot, and also u-boot
versions in recent years switched away from distro boot to bootstd,
which behaves a little differently.

I (and a few others) logged the versions of u-boot tested at:

https://wiki.debian.org/U-boot/Status

I've kind of been lagging with updating u-boot in Debian recently...

live well,
vagrant

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This is a multi-part message in MIME format.
Not sure I'd agree with that.

A weak CPU pegged at 100% all the time isn't necessarily frugal.
Underpowered doesn't always mean low TDP.

Le 31/10/2024 à 19:54, Alan Corey a écrit :

Underpowered = long battery life. I have an Acer CP-513 that ran about
10 hours when it was new.

On Thu, Oct 31, 2024, 6:36 PM Gunnar Wolf <gwolf@debian.org> wrote:

Vagrant Cascadian dijo [Thu, Oct 31, 2024 at 01:24:02PM -0700]:
> Having largely happily* used both the Pinebook and Pinebook Pro as
> primary computers running Debian for three or four years
altogether... I
> do not believe they are Open Source hardware by any definition I am
> aware of.
>
> * With high awareness of limitations; they would by no means
compare to
>   the apple or lenovo mentioned in this thread so far

Of course, there is always a Vagrant we can admire for his undying
stoicism 😉

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8">
</head>
<body>
<p>Not sure I'd agree with that. </p>
<p>A weak CPU pegged at 100% all the time isn't necessarily frugal.
Underpowered doesn't always mean low TDP. <br>
</p>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">Le 31/10/2024 à 19:54, Alan Corey a
écrit :<br>
</div>
<blockquote type="cite" cite="mid:CAOh3dDZVLC=giOHvasLj_sn8rOza7hCZnDgL=UJwoTu43yxiXQ@mail.gmail.com">
<meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8">
<p dir="ltr">Underpowered = long battery life. I have an Acer
CP-513 that ran about 10 hours when it was new.</p>
<br>
<div class="gmail_quote">
<div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr">On Thu, Oct 31, 2024, 6:36 PM
Gunnar Wolf &lt;<a href="mailto:gwolf@debian.org"
moz-do-not-send="true" class="moz-txt-link-freetext">gwolf@debian.org</a>&gt;
wrote:<br>
</div>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote"
style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">Vagrant
Cascadian dijo [Thu, Oct 31, 2024 at 01:24:02PM -0700]:<br>
&gt; Having largely happily* used both the Pinebook and
Pinebook Pro as<br>
&gt; primary computers running Debian for three or four years
altogether... I<br>
&gt; do not believe they are Open Source hardware by any
definition I am<br>
&gt; aware of.<br>
&gt; <br>
&gt; * With high awareness of limitations; they would by no
means compare to<br>
&gt;   the apple or lenovo mentioned in this thread so far<br>
<br>
Of course, there is always a Vagrant we can admire for his
undying stoicism 😉<br>
<br>
</blockquote>
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On Fri, 01 Nov 2024 14:55:56 -0700
Vagrant Cascadian <vagrant@debian.org> wrote:

not used them as much recently, but last I checked (a few weeks/months
ago), both Pinebook and Pinebook Pro with linux kernels from Debian
Bookworm (6.1.x). I have not checked newer kernels.

Hmm... I tried with 6.11.2 and didn't get a login prompt, neither
on-screen or via serial port. I've reported it at https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=1085305 ; maybe I'll try a 6.1.x kernel package.

If you install u-boot to eMMC, that is the first device in the boot
order for the RK3399 SoC, so will make it somewhat difficult to load

Mine *came* with u-boot on the eMMC. I was of the impression that they've been doing that all along. So, upgrading u-boot shouldn't change that part of things. (I haven't messed with the SPI yet). Of course, what happens *after* control is handed
over to eMMC/u-boot has changed.

The boot order of your u-boot will depend, upstream u-boot fixed bugs
that hid various problems with extlinux style boot, and also u-boot
versions in recent years switched away from distro boot to bootstd,
which behaves a little differently.

Hmm... maybe with the SDcards I was having problems with, they (that is, the data I had written to them) were not "bootstd compatible" or "not in bootstd format", if that means anything...

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